Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity and the Duke

“My publisher prefers to call them espionage thrillers, but never mind,” said Hallard. “Don’t hold much with labels.”

_ “But I’ve read everything you’ve ever written!” Emma exclaimed.

“He’ll autograph a complete set for you, won’t you, old man?” The duke beamed at Hallard. “Our writer-in-residence was instrumental in putting together Lex’s biography.”

“Just listened to His Grace and Miss Kate, really,” said Hallard. “Bit of a poser, really, making a character who was literally three-dimensional. But I liked the challenge.”

“And rose to it,” declared the duke. “Hallard was the one who discovered that ownership of England’s great estates falls into five basic categories: surviving families, few and far between; foreigners who wish they were English; corporations, which use the houses as retreats for harried executives; the National Trust, which turns them into museums—”

“And pop stars,” Hallard concluded. “Interesting subject, really, and His Grace made the research that much easier. It was like having an agent in place, really, with him spying on kids like Pogger and telling me what they fancied.” Hallard leaned forward, rubbing his palms together as he warmed to his subject. “Lex Rex couldn’t be a pretty-face pop phenomenon, y’see, because we couldn’t have people concentrating on His Grace’s face. We didn’t want a band with too much staying power, either. A medium-sized hit twice a year for five years would do us nicely. I figured that, if Time magazine called Lex the next Beatles within the first two years of our run, we’d done the job.”

“Their predictions inevitably fade,” explained the duke. He smiled slyly and scratched the end of his nose. “Hallard wrote the lyrics for Lex’s songs, as well. ‘Kiss My Tongue’ was, in my opinion, one of his noblest efforts.”

“I don’t know,” Kate teased. “I’ve always been fond of the ecological motif of ‘Slug Soup.’ And let’s not forget ‘Chafe Me, Baby,’ and—”

“That’ll be quite enough out of the pair of you,” Nanny Cole scolded. “Hallard may have written tripe, but you, Grayson, wrote the putrid music.”

“I did,” Grayson admitted sheepishly.

“But you’re a talented musician,” Emma exclaimed. “How could you bring yourself to—”

“Create such cacophony? I was following Hallard’s script. Everything about Lex had to be off-putting, to keep people at bay. And there Nanny Cole came into her own.”

Nanny Cole eyed him suspiciously, then turned to Derek and Emma. “I designed Lex’s costumes and makeup,” she said. “I created his bloody-awful image. Had to turn Grayson into a raving lunatic. Not as much of a stretch as he’d like to think.”

“Nanny’s costumes were brilliant,” Grayson said. “She has the soul of a poet and it embarrasses her terribly. Hence the bluff exterior.”

“I’ll buff your posterior if you don’t stop,” Nanny Cole growled, and Derek flinched as she grabbed him by the wrist. “Keep still,” she ordered as she held the sleeve of the nearly finished sweater up to Derek’s arm. “Good Lord,” she muttered, dropping the arm. “Built like a bloody great ape.”

Grayson snorted. “Nanny shaved my head and painted it red for the cover of the first album. I promise you, not even Grandmother would’ve recognized me once Nanny had finished with her paint pots. I scarcely recognized myself.”

“Surely you made some personal appearances,” Derek said, rubbing his wrist.

“Very few,” said Kate. “Lex refused to attend ceremonies of any kind and he was never seen in public without his makeup. It was perfectly in keeping with the character we’d established.”

“The press posed some danger,” Grayson went on, “but Hallard solved that as well. Whenever they showed up, Lex would scratch himself rudely and spout all those words one mustn’t say on the telly, at decibel levels impossible for microphones to miss. And we had Newland here, to look after security.”

Newland nodded but, unlike the rest of the staff, made no effort to explain his role. An uneasy silence enveloped the room, and everyone turned to Kate gratefully when she broke it.

“And then there were the videos,” she said.

“A godsend.” Grayson clapped Derek on the shoulder. “Remember the chaps I ran around with in Oxford?”

Derek nodded.

“One of them is a well-known rock singer now. I won’t mention his name, as he’s made an assiduous effort to deny his bourgeois past, but he’s the one who put me on to rock videos. That’s how we were able to get in at the right time.”

Kate’s eyes were dancing. “Lex Rex became the first pop star to take full advantage of the video boom. And we filmed them right here, in Gash’s studio.”

Gash twiddled his thumbs. “Jury-rigged from start to finish. Had no idea what I was doing, but that didn’t bother His Grace. Had no capital, neither, so I had to make do. Cleared out one of the subcellars, soundproofed it as best I could. Bought secondhand stage lights and cheap video equipment and off we went.”

Emma rolled her eyes, recalling the praise Richard had heaped on Lex Rex’s “rough-edged authenticity.” She wondered what he would say if she told him that the qualities he most admired were due solely to inexperience, ineptitude, and a tight budget.

The duke flopped into his chair and crossed his legs. “As it turned out, we had eight years in which to plan the whole thing, down to the smallest detail. I was twenty years old when my father died.”

“Grayson came down from university to follow in his father’s reclusive footsteps and disappear from public view,” Kate went on.

“When I reappeared, I did so as Lex Rex,” said the duke. “After eight years of intensive study, I was able to give rock-music fans exactly what they wanted. Then, of course, I gave them more of the same.”

“Look at any best-seller list,” Hallard murmured thoughtfully, “and you’ll know where that idea came from.”

“But...” Emma scratched her head. “But what about the Series Ten?”

“The what?” said Hallard.

“Hallard simply uses the computers,” the duke put in. “We leave the rest to Crowley.”

“Crowley?” Derek and Emma chorused.

From his place near the gaming table, Crowley smiled his polite, distant smile, tugged at his stiff cuffs, and folded his hands in his lap. “After leaving the old duke’s employ,” he began, “I moved to Plymouth, to be near my only daughter.” He looked down at the floor for a moment, then shook his head. “What the others have failed to tell you is that it is not a simple matter for a person of mature years to find employment. Nanny Cole had her flair with the needle; Gash, his mechanical skills; Hallard, his God-given gift with words; and Newland ...” He squinted at the tight-lipped security man. “Well, I’m not at all sure what Newland got up to, but I do know that his talents are in demand in many places.

“But what did I have to offer?” Crowley sighed. “Thirty years of loyal service counts for very little in the modem world, it seems. You can imagine my relief when I eventually won a post at a bank, entering check numbers on a computer. It was a very low-level position and tedious to the extreme. Sheer boredom led me to read up on computers and to explore my little machine’s capabilities.”

“Crowley was to the keyboard born,” the duke declared. “He took to programming like a duck to water, and he’s a dab hand at code-cracking, too. He’s had the best trackers after him, and they’ve yet to find a single broken blade of grass. Only one came within shouting distance, but he backed off.”

“Tut, tut,” Crowley murmured, accepting the tribute with a self-effacing wave of the hand.