The Pigeon Pie Mystery (37 page)

The Princess continued looking out the window. “It’s a pity she can’t interest herself in returning my family’s jewels.”

“Ma’am?”

The Princess was lost in her thoughts as the rain started to fall.

“Ma’am?”

Eventually the Princess turned.

“They are going to hang me,” said the maid, tears coursing down the hollows of her cheeks.

CHAPTER XIII
The Hazards of a Stuffed Codpiece

R. HENDERSON
woke to find Mrs. Nettleship bending over him, her smile revealing a flagrant disregard for dentists. Gripping his sheet, he silently hauled it up to his nose and remained perfectly still.

“Hit’s time to get hup, doctor,” she said. “You’ve hoverslept. There’s patients what’s waiting to see you. Mrs. Bagshot’s parlour maid his down there. I hexpect she wants those freckles getting rid hof hon haccount hof that nice-looking ’ouseguest. Silly girl. Hamericans like a lady with a title.”

“I’ll be right down,” said the general practitioner, from behind his sheet. “And Mrs. Nettleship, I must ask that you knock before entering. I have mentioned this on numerous occasions.”

“I did, Dr. ’enderson, but you didn’t ’ear me. Snoring like a magistrate during a trial, you was. Still, at least you got your beauty sleep hin time for the fancy dress ball. Oo are you going has, may I hask?”

The doctor hesitated. “Romeo,” he muttered.

The housekeeper beamed and clasped her butcher’s hands together. “Most fitting, doctor, most fitting, hit being a full moon tonight has well! I expect hit’s got a codpiece. I’ve got some hoily
rags hif you need hit stuffing. Let me know hif you want some ’elp. I can’t tell you what a pleasure hit would be.”

Once Mrs. Nettleship had closed the door, Dr. Henderson threw back his bedclothes and started hunting for a clean collar, his ability to second-guess where his housekeeper had put them impeded by his lack of sleep. After returning home from the Royal Aquarium, he had gone straight to bed but was unable to sleep following the Princess’s rebuttal. He had only just drifted off when the night bell woke him. Lighting a candle, he pulled on his dressing gown and groped his way downstairs, expecting an anxious father come to tell him of the imminent arrival of a baby. But through the speaking tube came the shrill voice of Mrs. Boots. “I’ve just seen a monkey in red velvet trousers looking at me through the bedroom window,” she shrieked. Fearing that the woman was finally fit for the asylum, the general practitioner quickly unlocked the door and led the way to the consulting room in his bare feet.

After lighting a lamp, he took his place behind the desk and asked her to tell him what she had seen as calmly as she could. Swathed in a shawl, her white shins exposed in the gap between the bottom of her nightdress and the top of her boots, the palace housekeeper clutched the armrests and disgorged her harrowing vision. The words came out in such a deluge that the doctor eventually asked to see her tongue in an attempt to dam them.

Unable to detect the smell of sherry, he suggested that the apparition was simply the product of sleep. “When one is dreaming, Mrs. Boots, each side of the brain acts independently, and as one conflicts with the other the most curious fantasies present themselves. In fact, the dreamer could be said to be in a state of transient insanity. Rest assured that there is absolutely no cause for concern. Dreaming can also often be traced to a physical cause, such as indigestion or constipation.” The doctor, his uncombed curls standing on end, then leant forward with a frown. “May I enquire into the state of your bowels?”

The housekeeper folded her arms across her considerable chest. “I’m not telling you such things, doctor! It’s enough your being interested in the contents of a lady’s piss-pot.”

“All I’m suggesting, Mrs. Boots, is that perhaps you have been eating too many sausages,” he said, sitting back and fiddling with his pen. “They’re extremely indigestible, and many a death has been traced to their consumption. If you must indulge, stick to those you’ve made yourself. It’s the only way of knowing what’s in them.”

The housekeeper shook her head. “I saw that monkey with my own eyes. Lit up by the moon he was, eating a penny bun.”

“Did Mr. Boots see it?”

“He was snoring so loudly I thought the ceiling was going to cave in, hence my being awake at such an ungodly hour.”

Watching his patient closely, the doctor asked, “Are you in the habit of drinking tea?” The woman’s eyes immediately fled to the corner of the consulting room.

The doctor sat forward with a frown. “I cannot overstate the evil effects of tea-worship. Not only does the tannin ravish the throat and stomach, but it can also induce melancholia and suicidal monomania. According to a recent study, the increase of lunacy amongst the lower classes is considered partly due to the amount of tea they now drink. Their teapots are never off the hob. Where is yours, may I enquire?”

The housekeeper refused to look at him. “On the hob,” she muttered.

“I suggest you go home and take it off at once. We’ll say no more of it.”

HAVING FINALLY FOUND A CLEAN COLLAR
, Dr. Henderson finished dressing and went straight to his consulting room without any breakfast. He was still wondering how to keep Mrs. Nettleship away from his codpiece when the last patient of the morning
sat down in front of him. The young soldier flushed violently, his eyes rooted to the floor. Finally he looked up and broached the delicate matter of nocturnal emissions. The doctor cleared his throat. “They’re not injurious to the health,” he stated. “However, they are believed to be caused by a mental disturbance combined with a derangement of moral faculties and should therefore not be encouraged. The problem can easily be solved by sewing a bobbin onto the back of your nightshirt.”

The soldier looked confused. “I don’t follow.”

“It will prevent you from sleeping on your back,” the general practitioner explained.

“I see,” said the soldier. “But I haven’t got a bobbin. Would that housekeeper of yours give me one?”

The doctor pointed at him with a frown. “Steer clear of that woman, whatever you do,” he warned.

Once the soldier had left, Dr. Henderson glanced out the window and saw Silas Sparrowgrass walking past in his beadle’s coat, a pair of long white ears protruding from his inside breast pocket. He stared at the homeopath, sensing something different. As he peered, he saw that he was wearing a much smarter topper than usual, which didn’t quite fit. Convinced that it was his own, he stood up with such indignation his chair fell over. As he picked it up, Silas Sparrowgrass turned to him and raised his hat with a cheerful smile, a muffled quack emerging from deep within his coat.

The doctor immediately sat down and reached into his drawer for his copy of
Modern Homeopathy, Its Absurdities and Inconsistencies
, and placed it on the desk to face his patients. As he fiddled with his stethoscope, as hunched as a tailor, his thoughts eventually turned to the ball that evening. He wondered again whether the Princess would be there, having pledged his now rusting machine at the pawnbroker’s to pay for his costume. Suddenly he regretted not having taken the advice of
The Gentleman’s Guide to
Politeness and Courtship
. “It is exceptionally bad manners to go to a ball unless accomplished in the art of dancing,” it warned. “Suitors should go to the expense of taking private dancing lessons rather than risk exposing their incompetence to their fair one.” Instead, over the last few weeks, he had attended the academy in Kingston, its cheap fees soon explained by the wooden leg of the master. A former sailor with a perpetual sway, Horace Pollywog gave cursory consideration to the correct placement of the feet, made no mention of the necessity of maintaining a dignified carriage, gave scant instruction on the dangers of an unregulated pace, and offered absolutely no warning of the hazards of knocking a lady’s knees with one’s own. There were times, when the attic was filled with the smell of rum, that he seemed more intent on demonstrating his mastery of the sailor’s hornpipe, a solo dance imitating nautical duties such as hauling ropes and climbing rigging. His renditions were so earnest that Dr. Henderson found himself treating the man’s solitary bunion with his leeches, having waived his charge out of pity for the man who had lost his other foot after stepping on a sea hedgehog. As the dancing master lay on the worn floorboards with the trouser of his good leg rolled up, he suddenly stopped humming a sea shanty and declared he was about to die. The doctor informed him that he was more likely to die from a sausage than a bunion, but the ex-mariner was insistent: if a man knew the precise moment when a storm was due, despite a cloudless sky, he could foretell something as intimate as his own death. In an effort to reassure him, Dr. Henderson reached for his pulse, but it was so feeble he could barely detect it. The teacher then looked him in the eye and said he had something of utmost gravity to tell him, and the general practitioner braced himself for a harrowing deathbed confession.

Holding up a trembling finger, the instructor warned in a whisper: “Never, ever attempt the Lancers. The average person has not the faintest knowledge of the steps. It’s the shortest known route
to pandemonium on the dance floor, and it’s almost impossible for a woman to forgive a man who has made her look ridiculous.” After requesting that he be buried at sea, his hand fell upon his chest and Horace Pollywog had danced his final polka.