Ten Lords A-Leaping

Ten Lords A-Leaping

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Amiss & Troutbeck 06

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents

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PROLOGUE
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EPILOGUE
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TEN LORDS A-LEAPING

Ida ‘Jack’ Troutbeck, rumbustious Mistress of St Martha’s College, Cambridge, has been elevated to the peerage. Although she finds the dafter aspects of the House of Lords hilarious, from the first day she becomes enthusiastically involved in its work. Disinclined to watch her language or moderate her manners, she appals conventional peers, but plots vigorously with others – including a mischievous duke – to scupper an anti-hunting bill of which she violently disapproves.

To assist her, Baroness Troutbeck conscripts her friend Robert Amiss, whose initial liberal dithering about the rights and wrongs of fox-hunting quickly gives way to a determination to defeat the puritans and fanatics who abound among the abolitionists. Though hampered by the eccentrics and bores on his side, he and the baroness are feeling confident of winning this contentious battle, when animal activists begin a campaign of intimidation. An attempt is made on the life of one of the baroness’s allies, and shortly afterwards the peers suffer horrifying carnage.

Amiss and the baroness – with some assistance from the cat Plutarch – throw themselves into helping the police with their enquiries.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fiction

MATRICIDE AT ST MARTHA’S

CLUBBED TO DEATH

THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH MURDER

THE ST VALENTINE’S DAY MURDERS

CORRIDORS OF DEATH

Non-fiction

TRUE BRITS: INSIDE THE FOREIGN OFFICE

THE BEST OF BAGEHOT

THE PURSUIT OF REASON: THE ECONOMIST 1843-1993

VICTOR GOLLANCZ: A BIOGRAPHY

HAROLD MACMILLAN: A LIFE IN PICTURES

JAMES CONNOLLY

PATRICK PEARSE: THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE

AN ATLAS OF IRISH HISTORY

Collins Crime

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB

First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Collins Crime

© Ruth Dudley Edwards 1995

The lines from
The Mating Season
by P.G. Wodehouse are reproduced with the kind permission of Hutchinson and the Trustees of the P.G. Wodehouse Estate.

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 00 232520 9

Set in Meridien and Bodoni by

Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd,

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

To John, my muse, and Jill, my versifier
and with special thanks for advice and help
to Pippa Allen, Gordon and Ken Lee, Carol Scott, the Lords Denham, Dubs and Morris, and Messrs Ede & Ravenscroft.

While I have tried to remain true to the spirit of the House of Lords, in the interests of the plot I have taken some small liberties with details of geography, customs and procedures.

Oh! glory of youth! consolation of age!

Sublimest of ecstasies under the sun;

Though the veteran may linger too long on the stage,

Yet he’ll drink a last toast to a fox-hunting run.

And oh! young descendants of ancient top-sawyers!

By your lives to the world their example enforce;

Whether landlords, or parsons, or statesmen, or lawyers,

Ride straight as they rode it from Ranksboro’ Gorse.

From ‘The Dream of the Old Meltonian’

W. Bromley Davenport

PROLOGUE

^
»

‘A baroness? What lunatic would make you a baroness?’

‘I’ll have no aspersions cast on Her Majesty the Queen, my boy,’ said Jack Troutbeck, ‘especially now I’m about to become a pillar of the Establishment.’ The cackle that followed was so loud that even at a distance of 4,000 miles Amiss had to move the receiver away from his ear.

‘You know perfectly well what I mean. Which of your multifarious admirers decided that what the House of Lords really needed to liven it up was you?’

‘Mainly Bertie.’

‘Bertie?’

‘My God, you’ve got so slow since you’ve been in India, Robert. Been on the hippy trail, have you? Been losing your marbles at the feet of some guru while in quest of your inner being?’

‘It’s not just that you’re out of date, Jack, it’s that you revel in it. Hippies went out when I was in kindergarten. Rachel and I’ve been around half of India on the cultural – not the mystical – trail, since before Christmas. Which is, of course, why we missed this bizarre announcement in the New Year’s Honours List. Now, who’s Bertie?’

‘The Duke of Stormerod, of course, you idiot.’

‘You mean the Tory Party’s
éminence grise
?’

‘The very one.’

‘What’s he got to do with you?’

‘Gab, gab, gab. The purpose of this phone call is to tell you to come home and help me, not to give you my life story.’

‘Listen, you old villain, if you want to get me back to participate in some foul plan or other of yours, your only chance is to coax me. Railroading is out. So is being so fucking elliptical that you leave me in more of a fog than I was when this conversation started.’

‘Oh, very well then.’ Her sigh came through the ether like a March gale. ‘When Bertie was but Lord Bertie Whittingham-Sholto, heir to the dukedom, and was in the House of Commons, he was Minister for Central Planning. Do you follow that?’

‘I even remember that, Jack.’

‘I afforded him light relief.’

‘You were his moll?’

‘More his hitwoman. My job was to duff up those of my colleagues who were putting bureaucratic spikes in his radical wheels.’

‘It’s a pretty poor metaphor, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

She ignored him. ‘So now he’s in the Lords he wants me to do down the forces of evil.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Wets, trendies, enemies of England. You know – the usual lot.’

‘In the House of Lords?’

‘More there than you’d think, I’m sorry to say. That’s why I need you. They’re mustering for a dastardly attack on our heritage.’

‘Which bit?’

‘I’ll tell you when you get here.’

‘Why should I?’ Even to his own ears Amiss sounded petulant.

‘Because you’ll have fun.’

‘Fun? Last time we collaborated…’

‘Yes?’

‘…it involved death, disaster, trauma, temptation, capitulation, emotional upheaval and general mayhem – all ending up in the triumph of Jack Troutbeck.’

‘Exactly,’ she trumpeted complacently. ‘It was fun.’

Amiss shrugged. ‘Well, while I’m job-hunting, I suppose I might be persuaded to help you out a bit. As long,’ he added hastily, ‘as what you’re at doesn’t offend my moral susceptibilities.’

‘Bugger your moral susceptibilities. When are you due back?’

‘In about two weeks.’

‘Ah, good timing. I’ll have done the palace by then and you’ll be just in time for my introduction to my peers. You can help me carry my ermine. Twelve o’clock sharp, Tuesday fortnight, lobby of the House of Lords, best bib and tucker. We’ll have lunch first, and then you can watch me turn into a noblewoman. Further celebration that evening.’

‘It’s the day I get back, Jack, after an all-night, twelve-hour flight.’

The familiar words, ‘Don’t be such a wimp,’ were followed by, ‘Must fly. Enemies to swat. See you then.’

Slightly dazed but, despite himself, feeling a rush of adrenaline, Amiss rang Rachel’s office.

Chapter 1

«
^
»

Rachel threw a pile of newspapers on the sofa. ‘I can’t say these reports add much to the sum of human knowledge.’

Amiss picked up the three-week-old
Independent
, from the front page of which Jack Troutbeck’s photograph stared out defiantly. ‘Among the predictable rewards to the party-faithful and the generous captains of industry,’ said the report sniffily, ‘was the surprise announcement of a peerage for the Mistress of St Martha’s College, Cambridge. Miss Ida “Jack” Troutbeck, CB, (61), was a Deputy Secretary in the Department of Central Planning when she retired three years ago to become Bursar of St Martha’s, where last year she succeeded as Mistress in tragic circumstances. In only a short time she has acquired a reputation in educational circles as an outspoken critic of what she terms “fatuous liberal poppycock.”’

The
Telegraph
noted approvingly that in her sparse
Who’s Who
entry, under hobbies, Miss Troutbeck had put ‘enjoying myself’. The
Guardian
registered concern that in a recent speech to the Annual Conference of Heads of Colleges, she had poured scorn on ‘namby-pamby ill-thought-out educational fads’. Although she would not be taking the whip, she was a Conservative Party nominee, so it was probable, observed the commentator darkly, that the Tory Party was playing its usual trick of promoting the disadvantaged only when they were extreme right-wingers. Amiss wondered how the
Guardian
would react if they knew that under Jack’s mistressship a black bisexual had been appointed to the bursarship of St Martha’s; then, reflecting on Dr Mary Lou Denslow’s opinions, he realized that it would scarcely undermine their argument.

The tabloids, of course, had got hold of what the broadsheets had been too tasteful to discuss. Although Jack Troutbeck had been relegated to page two of the
Sun
, with the front pages being reserved for minor decorations for a long-serving soap star (‘our Lenny’), a popular comedian (‘ “No, I never” Dwayne’) and a lollipop lady (‘Toddlers’ Angel’), the new baroness had two short paragraphs describing her as having been at the centre of a ‘Highbrow Double-Murder Saga’, which led to her getting the ‘Top Job’ in a ‘Snob College’. It had also got hold of a photograph of Jack looking murderous – if not highbrow – in gown and rakishly tilted Tudor cap on the occasion of her being conferred with an honorary doctorate.

Amiss finished the last of the papers and chucked it in the bin. ‘Drink?’

Rachel nodded.

‘Gin?’

Eyes closed, she nodded again.

As he reached for a couple of glasses from the kitchen cupboard, a familiar voice said, ‘Oh, no, sahib. It is inappropriate that you should demean yourself by entering the servants’ quarters. What is it that you want?’

A few days had been enough for Amiss’s spirit to have been broken by Ravi’s contemptuous subservience, arising from his view of Amiss as a guest, and therefore privileged, while being also an immoral parasite who shared the bed of the mistress of the house without having the common decency to make an honest woman of her.