The Pigeon Pie Mystery (17 page)

In an effort to cheer him, his comrade got to his feet and sang a comic song, performing a jig in the soil. But it only increased the other’s sense of desperation, and he sat down again. Fearing stoutness was to blame for his lack of finesse as a dancer, he placed both hands on his stomach. “Do I look like I’ve eaten too much shirtsleeve pudding?” he asked. The other roared so much he almost fell in, and the pair sang their way through every music-hall song they knew until the cats had fled, and the moon refused to come out from behind its cloud.

The horrible sound attracted the attention of the local constable, who naturally assumed someone was being strangled. After a thorough search, he announced that he would take the matter no further on the condition that they didn’t attempt another note. “Not even a whistle.” Eventually the much more reassuring sound of metal on wood could be heard, and they hauled the coffin up to the surface. The light from the lantern caught the brass nameplate, and the horrible truth that they had got the wrong grave settled on them in silence. Each blaming the other, they lowered the coffin back down and filled in the hole with language fit for a slaughterhouse. Holding the lantern in front of them, they clambered over the headstones in search of General Bagshot’s grave until they found it, more than an hour later, in exactly the same place they had left it.

News reached the palace that the General was coming up again long before he had reached the surface. One of the gravediggers told Wilfred Noseworthy on leaving the pub as an excuse for not getting in a round. But the weight of the revelation was too much for the turncock to bear, and he fled at once to Ye Olde Cardinal Wolsey public house and dining rooms on the Green. “They’re digging up the General!” he cried to the Superintendent of Hampton Court Pleasure Gardens. The Superintendent then rushed to the Mitre, the bastion of the upper servants. “They’re going to perform a post-mortem examination on the General!” he
gasped to a housekeeper. The housekeeper then ran home, hoisting her skirts so as not to lose speed. “The General was murdered after all!” she exclaimed to her mistress. The revelation then twice lapped the palace, and the residents who had felt cheated at the pronouncement of death from English cholera returned reinvigorated to their watching posts by the windows.

The first Dr. Henderson knew of the General’s second coming was when the coroner requested that he perform the post-mortem examination. Initially Dr. Frogmore, a general practitioner from Thames Ditton, had been asked, as he was the last medical man to attend to General Bagshot on the night he died. But he claimed he was suffering from ague. The truth, however, was that he belonged to a little-known subset of general practitioners who had a dread of autopsies. He justified his aversion by telling himself that he had chosen to become a doctor to cure the living, not to dabble his fingers in the viscera of the mysteriously dead. Dr. Henderson, however, was not in the least afraid of entrails, and, grateful for the fee, bicycled to Hampton Wick Mortuary, where he waited for hours until the gravediggers finally delivered the soil-strewn coffin. When he finished, he was in such a state of shock at what he had found that he returned home on foot, having completely forgotten he had come on his machine.

As word got out that the coroner was going to hold the inquest in the Mitre, having been lured by its famous Thames eels, the residents immediately released a flock of outraged letters to the Lord Chamberlain, pointing out that its bar was frequented by domestic servants. But there was nothing that could be done, given the charred circumstances. The offices of Hampton Wick Urban District Council, which were normally used, were still smouldering after the Keeper of Bushy Park set them alight in retribution for a councillor having bedded his wife.

More than an hour before the inquest was due to start, a herd of residents waited in the Mitre’s lounge, chattering with the animation of wedding guests. They had rushed over from the monument, some without breakfast, hoping to secure a public seat at the hearing. The Countess and Lady Beatrice sat on one side with the other grace-and-favour ladies. On the other stood the palace staff who had either secured a day off or contrived an illness in order to be there, including William Sheepshanks and Thomas Trout. The coroner’s officer, a short Scotsman with tangerine hair and a mismatching moustache, stood scowling in front of the door to the bar, refusing admittance. When the time came, he unlocked the oak-panelled dining room, which had been requisitioned for the proceedings, and stood back as a stampede of widows, elbows drawn, rushed in like indignant geese. They draped themselves over the chairs, saving those next to them for their friends. The officer, who had had little sleep on account of his wife, who flipped like a seal in her sleep, immediately ejected those who had parked themselves in the seats reserved for the jury and witnesses. He then steamed over to the dowager duchess settled in the coroner’s chair, jerked his thumb, and hissed: “Hop it.”

The ladies who had managed to bag one of the places for the public passed along humbugs and polished their opera glasses. Such was their elation, they managed to overlook the fact that some of the palace staff were seated amongst them, and restrained from tutting when they unfurled their napkins and started nibbling German sausages.

Suddenly the door opened, and they nudged their neighbours with the excited anticipation of a music-hall audience. In filed the witnesses as hushed as a congregation, led by Lady Montfort Bebb in sapphire blue leaning on her cane, followed by Cornelius B. Pilgrim in his monkey-fur coat, a copy of the
Anglo-American Times
tucked under his arm. Next came Mink in the new shade of blue-mauve that had been all over the fashion columns, with bunches of violets on her white toque. Walking closely behind her was Pooki, her face dwarfed by an unflattering black bonnet. Amongst the last in was Silas Sparrowgrass, who sat down and offered up a short prayer, keeping his good eye open. He started plucking at his Newgate fringe as soon as the local constable entered with a tall man with a grey waterfall moustache, who immediately took a notebook and pencil from the pocket of his raglan overcoat and surveyed the room. The homeopath’s agitation soon afflicted the other witnesses. Nails were bitten, mouths dried, and nervous melodies tapped on the floor.

In trooped the all-male jurors, ushered to their seats by the officer, clutching a pile of court documents. He was just about to confiscate a hip flask from one of them when Charles Twelvetrees appeared, his reading spectacles on his forehead and his hair drifting up from his scalp like mist.

“Gentlemen, the coroner!” the officer barked. The room rose to its feet as the solicitor entered with the weariness of a man who had spent much of his life pondering the circumstances of the inexplicably dead. With a loud sigh, he sat down at a raised table in the middle of the room, and immediately gazed out of the window, wondering what to have for lunch.

As everyone sank back down again, the officer marched to a spot in front of the jury and bellowed in an impenetrable accent: “Oyez, oyez, you good men of this district summoned to appear here this day to inquire for our Sovereign Lady the Queen when, how, and by what means Major-General George Bagshot came to his death, answer to your names as you shall be called, every man at the first call, upon the pain and peril that shall fall thereon.”

The jurors frowned back at him as they tried to work out what on earth the Scot had said, and several members of the public tittered.
The laughter snapped the coroner out of his gastronomic reverie, and he glared at them. Instantly they fell silent. Dragging his spectacles down to his nose, Charles Twelvetrees then glanced at the list in front of him, and called out the name of the first juror. There was no reply. The coroner peered over his glasses at the jury.

“Barnabas Popejoy!” he barked again.

Wearing a red neck scarf, the butterman, his cheeks as florid as a farmer’s, stood up from the two seats he was occupying. “Yes, sir?”

“Why didn’t you answer the first time?” Charles Twelvetrees demanded.

The juror swallowed. “I didn’t know I was meant to, sir,” he replied meekly.

“Were you not listening, man?” asked the already exasperated coroner. “My officer just informed the jurors to reply on the first call.”

Barnabas Popejoy glanced at the officer with a frown. “Did he?”

The coroner scowled. “I hope you’re not pretending to be deaf in order to get out of jury duty, Mr. Popejoy. It’s the oldest trick in the book. I’ve lost count of the number of ear trumpets that have been carried into my courtroom. Now, sit down at once.” Narrowing his eyes, he pointed to the rest of the jurors. “I expect to hear the rest of you loud and clear.”

The coroner worked his way through his list, each juror crying a definitive “yes” as his name was called. Once they were sworn in, he laced his short fingers in front of him and rested them on the table. “Now,” he said. “The body. I’m very much hoping it’s on the premises, as I requested. Otherwise we’re going to have to troop all the way over to Hampton Wick Mortuary, which I’m rather loath to do. According to my barometer, we’re due for rain.”

The officer stepped forward. “I’m afraid it’s in the deceased’s apartments at the palace, sir,” he said.

“What on earth is it doing there?” demanded Charles Twelvetrees, who, after several years of working with the man, no longer found his speech a mystery.

The officer swiftly blamed the Mitre’s manager. “Apparently he stood in front of the door when the mortuary assistants tried to carry in the coffin last night, claiming a dead body would harm the reputation of his Thames eels. The assistants didn’t want to lug it all the way back to Hampton Wick, so left it in the deceased’s apartments. I have it on good authority that the manager bribed them to take it away. They’re not usually that obliging, believe me.”

“Bribed?” queried the coroner with a scowl. “What with? Beer?”

“Eels, sir.”

Charles Twelvetrees raised his eyebrows, pressing a finger against his lips as he thought. “Are they as good as everyone says?” he asked.

“I’ve never tried them, sir.”

The coroner addressed the room. “Has anyone tried the Mitre’s eels?”

Lady Beatrice, dressed in yellow with a profusion of daffodils on her hat, immediately stood up. “Oh, yes!” she replied with a smile. “I often come with Lady Bessington when my cook is absent, and we have eels every time. They’re not at all costly, which is just as well, as I always end up paying.” As she sank back down everyone looked at the Countess sitting next to her, who immediately stared at her shoes.

The coroner tapped his pen on the table. “Either way, I shall be having words with the manager when we’ve finished.” He looked down at his papers. “Now, where were we?”

“The body, sir,” said the officer.

“The body, the body, the body,” the coroner repeated, trying to remember. “Oh, yes! Let’s get the viewing over with, shall we?
At least we haven’t got far to go. I’m wearing a new pair of boots, and they nip.”

Dr. Henderson stood up and asked whether it was really necessary to see the body. “It doesn’t make for pleasant viewing,” he pointed out.

“Of course it is!” Charles Twelvetrees exclaimed. “It’s not an inquest unless the body has been seen.”

“But the lid has been screwed back down.”

The coroner looked at him for a moment. “Then it will have to be unscrewed, Dr. Henderson. For all we know, you’ve got your mother-in-law in there.” He paused before adding: “Though I seem to recall you still haven’t found yourself a wife. You had better come with us.”

The jurors filed out after the coroner without the faintest knowledge of where they were headed, having failed to comprehend the officer’s reply when asked the location of the deceased. Silently they made their way across the road to the palace, wondering what was going on. As they passed the fruit seller in Fountain Court, the butterman suddenly felt the urge for some crumble and bought some rhubarb. The procession turned up one of the staircases and climbed to the top floor, where the coroner rang the Bagshots’ bell. While they waited for it to be answered, the jurors stared down at their boots in the sudden realisation that they would shortly be inspecting General Bagshot’s naked body wrenched from its grave.

The butler opened the door and surveyed the crowd in front of him.

“We’ve come to view the General,” the coroner announced, his spectacles back on his forehead.

“Certainly, sir. He’s in the dining room. If you’d care to follow me,” said the servant, leading the way down the hall. “I had planned for him to be viewed in the kitchen, but the cook wouldn’t hear of it. She locked the door and refused to hand over the key,
saying it’s no place for a dead body unless it’s got a tail. We’ve had what you might call a mutiny on our hands. A number of the under servants have taken refuge in the King’s Arms, and none of the upper servants will enter the dining room. It hasn’t been dusted, I’m afraid.”

One by one the jurors shuffled into the dining room and stood hesitantly next to the door, staring at the coffin on top of a large mahogany table. A smear of soil was still visible on the nameplate. Sitting at the head of the table was a constable reading the
Surrey Comet
.