‘It would be even better if one of the late birds had seen him.’
‘Hmmm,’ she said again. ‘It’s so very odd that they didn’t. It would have been perfectly light by the time they staggered out and there’s not much cover. A chap could hide behind that line of trees along the side of the club, but he’d have to be very careful. And getting there and back would leave him exposed to even the most casual of glances from even the drunkest of oafs.’
‘What about–’ but my ruminations were interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.
Lady Hardcastle glanced at the clock on the mantel – it was almost ten o’clock. ‘Who on earth could possibly be calling at this time of night?’ she said, affronted.
I laughed. ‘I shall find out,’ I said and got up.
I opened the door to find Bert, the Farley-Strouds’ chauffeur, standing there with a stack of books in his hands.
‘Oh, Bert, it’s you,’ I said. ‘We wondered who on earth could be calling at this hour. Is everything all right?’
‘Quite all right, thank you,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘Sorry to be calling so late but Sir Hector insisted that you needed these urgently.’ He proffered the books.
I gave him a puzzled frown as I took them. I opened the topmost book and glanced at the first few pages. ‘Ohhh,’ I said as I realized what I was reading. ‘The rugby club diaries; I’d forgotten all about them. Oh, Bert, I’m so sorry you had to drive all the way down here with these. It’s very sweet of Sir Hector, but they really could have waited until the morning. Can I offer you some tea?’
‘Very kind, miss,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘But I’d rather be getting back if you don’t mind. Got to be up early to take Sir Hector to Gloucester.’
‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘Well thank you again, and drive carefully on the way home.’
‘I shall, miss,’ he said, and with a smile and a tip of his cap, he turned on his heel and returned to his motorcar.
I took the books back through to the dining room.
‘Bert?’ said Lady Hardcastle, looking up from her notebook.
‘You heard?’ I said, and set the diaries down on the table. ‘He brought the rugby club diaries.’
‘So I gather,’ she said, grinning. ‘Here’s a plan then: we decamp to the drawing room, I’ll have a tinkle at the old Joanna – I do find I think better when I’m playing the piano – and you can scour the diaries for… for… lumme, I have no idea what you might scour them for. Background information, I suppose. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds rather pleasant, actually, my lady,’ I said, and began clearing away the supper things. ‘Coffee?’ I called from the kitchen a few moments later.
‘At this time of night?’ she called back. ‘I’m pouring brandy, you silly thing.’
We settled in the drawing room and as I listened to Lady Hardcastle’s beautiful interpretation of a selection of Chopin nocturnes, I leafed through the diaries. For the most part they seemed to contain accounts of matches (which Littleton Cotterell almost invariably lost) and notes of the more interesting decisions from otherwise rather dry committee meetings. This rather prosaic fare was interspersed with tales of some of the more entertaining goings-on at the club, usually involving jolly japes and drunken adventures. Throughout the late-1890s, one name seemed to crop up more than the others, former club president and benefactor Jonathan “Jester” Dunleavy. He had, I learned, been a scrum half of considerable skill in his day, and after his retirement from the field had continued to help with the running of the club and seemed to have contributed to the cost of much of the club’s furnishing’s from his own pocket. But his principal contribution to club life beyond chairs and tables had been the many pranks he had played or instigated both on his teammates and upon their opponents. His favourite had been the theft of trophies from the teams whom Littleton visited for away matches, which had then been proudly displayed in the club’s own trophy cabinet as “spoils of war”. They were always returned eventually, but in the meantime none of the victims had ever been able to work out what had happened, nor find any trace of the missing loot.
Lady Hardcastle reached the end of a particularly moving piece and sat for a few moments in contemplative silence before picking up the music and leafing through her collection for another piece. ‘Something more cheerful next, I think,’ she said. ‘How are you getting on, pet? Anything helpful in the annals?’
‘Not really, my lady,’ I said, and recounted some of the tales I had just read. ‘So there’s a history of trophy-related mischief, but nothing that might give us any clues to current events.’
‘I feared as much,’ she said, opening one of the ragtime pieces that she had bought the previous summer after meeting the boys from Roland Richman’s Ragtime Revue.
‘How about you, my lady? Has the music loosened your cogitations?’
She laughed. ‘I’m not certain one should enquire as to the state of a lady’s cogitations, pet. It seems impertinently personal. But give me a moment with this delightful looking two-step and we shall see if anything develops.’ She began to play.
‘Like castor oil for the soul, my lady,’ I said.
She stopped abruptly and turned around. ‘I’ve been such a dunderhead,’ she said. ‘That’s it. Come, we must retire at once; we’ve an early start in the morning.’
I frowned confusedly.
‘Quick sticks,’ she said, scooping up the music and closing the lid of the piano. ‘We need to be at the rugby club by six in the morning at the latest. To bed!’
And she bustled off, leaving me to pick up the brandy glasses and lock up for the night.
We were awake at five o’clock on Tuesday morning. I was an habitual early riser so I found it no hardship at all to be washed, dressed and ready for the walk before six, but Lady Hardcastle clearly found it a struggle. Her enthusiasm for her scheme – whatever it was – carried her through, though, and at the appointed hour we arrived at the deserted club. The early morning sunlight glinted on the dew-damp grass and mystery birds sang in the hedgerows.
‘Here we are, then, my lady,’ I said as we walked up to the pavilion. ‘Just after dawn at the rugby club, the dew still wet on the grass.’
‘Exactly,’ she said, waving her finger in the air. ‘Exactly so.’
Intrigued, I followed her round to the side of the pavilion, obeying her exhortation to remain as close to the wall as possible. As she reached the corner, she motioned me to join her and we both peered round together.
‘What am I looking at, my lady?’ I said, feeling more than a little foolish to be sneaking up on what appeared to be nothing more than a locked door.