Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

“Yes, about this big around.”

With remarkable restraint and not a little aplomb, the order was duly given to one of the houseboys, and minutes later Marc trudged upstairs with a head-shaped, half-frozen orange pumpkin under his arm.

Using some of the vests and jackets packed into the big trunk by Owen Jenkin, Marc arranged his bed so that the outline of a sleeping body clearly showed under the comforter. Against the pillow he laid the pumpkin, then draped a linen nightcap over its bald pate, and pulled the comforter up over its hairless chin. The night-sky outside his window was black and star-studded. A full moon bathed the room in quicksilver light. He hoped the deception would work. If the assassin who had tried to kill him this afternoon was determined to finish what he had started, tonight would be a logical time and place.

Next, he rigged a booby-trap against the door, which, as in most country inns, had no lock, merely a brittle wooden latch that could be jimmied with a penknife. He piled up, precariously, a tin washing-bowl, his canteen cup, and a crockery chamber pot so that the least jarring of the door would create a jangling tumble with enough noise to awaken him or in the least spook the intruder. He himself planned to sleep curled up in the oversize mahogany wardrobe across the room, leaving its door ajar and his officer’s pistol-reluctantly retrieved from the bottom of his own small trunk-cocked and ready.

Satisfied with his handiwork, he doused the whale-oil lamp and folded his weary bones into the bottom of the wardrobe. It was uncomfortable, but he figured that he could sleep anywhere tonight.

He had just begun to drift into a doze when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, which ended in the hall just outside his door. He recognized the voices, saying brief good nights: Ainslie Pritchard and Charles Lambert. He heard two doors close. Then he was fast asleep.

Something woke him. He sat up with a lurch and banged his elbow on a shelf. Christ! He was holding the pistol in that hand. He could have shot himself. Still trying to recall where he was and why, he glanced across the moonlit room. His facsimile lay undisturbed under its cozy camouflage. The booby-trap still teetered nicely. He looked towards the window. It was then that he heard voices, the noise that had wakened him. There were two of them, Randolph Brookner and Percy Sedgewick, very close to his door, exchanging unpleasantries in fierce, drunken whispers.

“I’m tellin’ you, Randy, for the last time, you do that once more and you’ll. . you’ll live to regret it!”

“What I do is my own business, and I won’t be bullied by a bumpkin farmer like you, you cowardly son of a bitch!”

“I don’t need no musket to make me a man, you prancin’ peacock!”

“If you weren’t my brother-in-law, I’d beat the living shit out of you right here and now!”

“You just remember what I said: no more, ya hear? I can make your name mud all over the county. And I. . I got a shotgun in my shed I use to kill rats and foxes and other vermin!”

“You snivelling little bastard. You think I’m afraid of you or anybody else? And don’t you forget, I can have you charged with treason in the wink of an eye. Only the fact that you’re my wife’s favourite brother stops me from-”

“The Scanlons were my neighbours, for Christ’s sake. What was I to do, turn the women and kids inta the bush to freeze! We’re farmers and Christians out in the country, not-”

There was a brief scuffling sound, some ferocious panting, then silence. Finally, two doors farther down the hall opened and closed discreetly.

Marc lay back, carefully placing the loaded pistol on his chest pointing away from him. He was hoping to spend a few minutes mulling over the significance of what he had just heard but was asleep before he could get started.

When he woke up again, he found he was still tired and aching now in places he had not previously noticed. From the angle of the sun across the chamber, he could tell that the morning was well advanced. He was happy that the party would be spending the day resting here. Owen had been right about the fragile state of his constitution: he was a long way from full recovery.

Then he remembered why he was curled up inside the wardrobe with his pistol. He looked over at the bed, then the door. No-one had come in to disturb his dreams or worse. Well, he mused, I’ve survived an eventful day and a night. What else can happen?

When Marc entered the dining-room, it was empty except for Adelaide Brookner. She sat alone, darkly resplendent in her mourning clothes, picking at some food growing cold on her plate. While her gown was low-cut in the current fashion, she had arranged a copious crepe scarf so that it covered her chest and neck almost to the chin, giving the effect of an Elizabethan ruff. Her expression was unreadable, as if all thought and feeling had been sucked inward and she hadn’t bothered to put a face on for the world. There was a slump of resignation to her posture, and it was all the more striking because there was an ingrained and obviously cherished pride in her person. She reminded Marc of the proud and intelligent Winnifred Hatch, now Mrs. Thomas Goodall. Just outside the front entrance he could hear the jangle of sleigh-bells. He walked into the breakfast-room and sat down opposite Adelaide Brookner.

“Good morning, ma’am. I seem to have overslept.”

Adelaide looked up and said tonelessly, “It was meant to be a leisurely day.”

“With a sleigh-ride, I presume, got up by our enterprising host?”

“To admire the sights of Cornwall,” she said, looking to her food. But there was more energy in her response. “Such as they are,” she added.

“I’ve seen them more than once,” Marc said. “I shall offer my regrets.”

“So you have regrets to give, have you?”

“Haven’t we all?”

She did not reply.

“You’re not partaking of the entertainment, then?”

“I’ve already tendered my regrets,” she said, with a trace of irony in her tone.

Marc went to the sideboard, where the cook, having seen him enter, had piled fresh bacon and sausage. Marc filled his plate, adding bran cakes, hot rolls, and marmalade. He poured out a mug of tea and returned to Adelaide.

She appeared ready to rise when he said softly, “You must miss your sister very much.”

Adelaide sat back as if she had been struck. When she lifted her face up to look at him, her eyes were filled with tears. “Marion was the only true friend I had in the world.”

“But surely there is your brother Percy, and, of course, your husband.”

She sniffed, as if he had just told an inappropriate joke, but she did not elaborate on that response.

Further discussion was stymied by Mr. Malvern banging open the front door and bursting into the reception area with his cheeks steaming and his eyes wild. His lips were working, like a basso rehearsing before a mirror, but no sound emerged. He spotted Marc.

“Oh, sir,” he wailed. “Come quickly. Something terrible’s happened!”

Marc rushed past him, winced as his gimpy leg rebelled, slowed to a measured trot, and went out into the frosty air to assess the damage. Behind him, from the smoker, he heard several others follow in his wake. A four-seat cutter and two Clydesdales stood serenely just outside the front door. A commotion to his left revealed two figures heading towards him from the direction of the stables: Gander Todd and Captain Brookner, the latter glittering in his tunic, breeches, and buckled sword.

“I warned him not to go walking on his own!” Malvern wailed again, this time behind Marc.

Brookner strutted up. “It’s a lot of nonsense,” he was saying to Todd, who was hobbling along beside his employer, bugeyed and clearly frightened. “Malvern, I specifically told you not to go blabbering on about this and scaring the life out of people!”