Author: Charlie Higson
Category: Horror
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/charlie-higson/page,13,49988-by_royal_command.html
He came to a thicket of brambles, then some densely packed rhododendrons. He fought his way through. There was a stand of oak trees on the other side, and past them a straggly hedge. Beyond the hedge he could see a large, square house, painted pale pink. He stuck his head through the hedge and took a proper look. Two little girls in matching red tartan skirts were playing badminton on a large, well-kept lawn. The older of the two shouted towards him.
‘Hello,’ she said. She had a mop of curly hair and a rather serious expression on her face. ‘We’ve lost our shuttlecock. Did you see it come over your way?’
‘No,’ said James, ‘but I’ll have a look for you.’
He glanced around and saw the shuttlecock nestling in the branches of a tangled old tree.
‘Would you get it down for us?’ the girl shouted, in a manner that told James she was used to getting her way.
He quickly scrambled up and tossed the shuttlecock over to the girls.
‘Thank you ever so much,’ said the older girl. She couldn’t have been much more than eight years old, but seemed terribly grown-up for her age. ‘You are a very kind boy.’
‘Lilibet always hits it too hard,’ said her younger sister, who was a pretty little thing and lacked her big sister’s seriousness.
‘It was no problem,’ James called down from his perch in the tree.
‘You are frightfully good at climbing trees,’ said the little sister.
James shrugged.
‘I should like to climb trees,’ said Lilibet. ‘But Crawfie won’t let us.’
‘Who’s Crawfie?’
‘Our governess.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t always do exactly what Crawfie says.’
The girls laughed and ran off back to their game as James swung down from the tree and found Dandy waiting at the bottom with Roan.
Dandy had put his knife away.
‘Come along,’ said Roan. ‘We should be getting back. I don’t want you to get into any trouble, James.’
Dandy had a small open-backed lorry with the Eton crest on the side. He stowed the picnic things in the rear and offered Roan and James a lift back to the school. The three of them crammed into the cabin, James squashed between Dandy and Roan.
‘Well, you certainly made a very useful friend there, Bucko,’ said Dandy, once they were under way.
‘Do you think so?’ said James. ‘She was only a little girl.’
‘Only a little girl, he says. If things had been just a tiny bit different, she’d be our next queen.’
‘What do you mean?’ said James.
‘You really don’t have any idea who you were just chatting to friendly as you please?’ said Roan.
‘No, they looked vaguely familiar, but…’
‘They were the royal princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. Their father is the Duke of York and their uncle is Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor – the Prince of Wales – your future king.’
‘You mean that was Windsor Lodge?’
‘The very same.’ Dandy laughed and elbowed James in the side. ‘James Bond, by Royal Command.’
‘They seemed quite ordinary,’ said James.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Dandy.
‘Now that you’re pals with the Royal Family,’ said Roan, ‘I suppose you’ll be too high and mighty for the likes of us.’
‘Come off it,’ said James. ‘I don’t expect I’ll ever meet a single one of them ever again.’
‘But who on earth would want to kill you?’
‘If I could answer that question I’d be a step closer to knowing what was going on.’
James was sitting in his room with Pritpal and Tommy. They were eating toast with anchovies and listening to a programme of popular songs on Tommy’s radio; Al Bowlly was singing ‘The Very Thought Of You’. James had had to prepare tea for Theo Bentinck earlier and there had been the end of a loaf of fresh, crusty bread left over. Bentinck had told James to throw it out, but instead he had brought it up here and they had toasted it for themselves.
‘If I didn’t know you better, James,’ said Tommy, ‘I’d think you were making it up.’
‘If only,’ said James. ‘I thought at first I might be imagining it. But not any more.’
‘At the risk of repeating myself,’ said Pritpal. ‘Why would anyone want to kill you?’
‘And at the risk of repeating myself,’ said James. ‘I have no idea.’
‘It was not a rhetorical question,’ said Pritpal. ‘We need to analyse the situation. Let us think clearly, and try to work it out; what possible reason could anyone have for murdering you?’
‘I see what you’re driving at,’ said James. ‘OK… It could be someone I’ve upset in the past; there are plenty of them knocking about. It could be something I’ve done, something I know, something… dammit, Pritpal, it could be anything!’
‘Did anything happen to you in Austria?’
‘Apart from falling down a mountain, not a lot.’
‘Did you meet anyone odd?’
‘No… Unless you count Graf von Schlick.’
‘He sounds pretty bloody odd,’ snorted Tommy. ‘Who is he?’
‘He was a patient in the clinic I ended up at,’ said James. ‘I only mention him because he sticks in my mind.’
‘Why does he stick in your mind?’
‘It was late at night. He was in pain, raving. Shouting about how someone wanted to kill his cousin.’
‘Ah – so you are not the only one in danger,’ said Pritpal, with mock seriousness. ‘Graf von Schlick’s cousin is also at risk.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought much of it,’ said James, ‘except his manservant came in. A creep and a thug. There was a real air of menace about him. Afterwards, when I went back to say goodbye to Miles Langton-Herring I saw the Graf again. Only this time his bandages were off, and he looked at me like…’
‘Like what?’ Tommy interrupted.
‘Like he knew me.’
‘Well, he did,’ said Pritpal. ‘He had met you that previous night.’
‘Oh, I can’t explain it,’ said James. ‘The whole thing was just not quite right somehow.’
‘And it was after that you started seeing The Invisible Man?’
‘No,’ said James. ‘I’m pretty sure I first spotted him on the way to Kitzbühel.’
‘So the two things cannot possibly be connected,’ said Pritpal.
‘I don’t suppose so,’ said James. ‘If I hadn’t had my misadventure with Miles, I would never have ended up in the hospital. I would never have heard the Graf raving about his cousin.’
‘Who is his cousin?’ said Tommy.
‘He’s called Jürgen ,’ said James. ‘That’s all I know.’
‘Ach, my poor cousin Jürgen ,’ said Tommy, with a dreadful German accent. ‘Zey are going to blow him to smizzereens!’
The other two laughed at Tommy’s half-Chinese half-German pronunciation, and they were still laughing when the door opened and Theo Bentinck walked in.
‘What are you laughing at?’ he said.
‘Oh, it’s a crime to laugh now, is it?’ said James.
‘It depends on what you were laughing at,’ said Bentinck.
‘Well, you can rest assured we weren’t laughing at you,’ said James.
Bentinck looked around James’s room with some distaste, his small mouth pulled tight. His eyes widened as he spotted the remains of his loaf.
‘That is my bread,’ he said.
‘You were going to throw it out, if you remember?’ said James.
‘That’s not the point,’ said Bentinck. ‘It’s been stolen.’
‘No it hasn’t.’
‘Who took it?’
‘You know perfectly well who took it,’ said James. ‘I was tidying up, and –’
‘Be quiet,’ said Bentinck. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ He shifted his gaze to Tommy. ‘Did you take it?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Tommy sheepishly, and B
entinck turned his attention to Pritpal. ‘What about you?’
Pritpal wasn’t sure what to say. He glanced at James.
‘Leave them out of this,’ said James. ‘I took it.’
But Bentinck still had his eyes fixed on Pritpal. ‘Have you been eating it?’ he said.
Pritpal still had a corner of toast in his hand, so he could hardly deny it. He nodded his head.
‘You have been eating my stolen bread.’
‘It’s not stolen,’ said James. ‘You were going to throw it away. I didn’t like to see it go to waste.’
‘It strikes me that all three of you are guilty,’ said Bentinck, ignoring James.
James flushed with anger and jumped to his feet.
‘If you have your heart set on punishing someone, then punish me,’ he said hotly.
‘No,’ said Bentinck, clearly enjoying himself. ‘I don’t think I will. You three are messmates. From now on I will hold you all equally responsible if any one of you steps out of line. Have you got that, James Bond? If you do anything wrong, then I will beat one of these two.’
‘But that’s not fair,’ said James.
‘Isn’t it?’ Bentinck grinned. ‘Here at Codrose House we are trying to build team spirit and responsibility towards each other. From now on you are responsible for these two. You may think you’re tough enough not to be bothered by another beating, but let’s see how this pair of saps like it. You, Nandra, come up to Library for your punishment.’
James was so angry he didn’t know what to say, and, when Bentinck crooked his finger at the petrified Pritpal, he exploded. He pushed his way between the two boys and shoved Bentinck hard into the corridor.
‘You keep your hands off Pritpal,’ he said.
‘Just for that,’ said Bentinck, ‘I’m going to thrash both of them.’
James raised his fist but Tommy stopped him.
‘Don’t,’ he said, walking out of the room. ‘You’re only making things worse.’
James stood there quivering with rage. All he could do was watch as Tommy and Pritpal followed Bentinck towards Library.
15
Guest of Honour
‘Quite a pile,’ said the taxi driver as he steered round a bend in the long gravel driveway and saw Miles Langton-Herring’s family home for the first time.
It was indeed quite a pile. A recently built mansion in the popular Tudor style. It was extensive and rambling, with two long wings, a steep, red-tiled roof, countless elaborate chimney stacks, all sorts of outbuildings and a garage big enough to fit four motorcars. Light spilled out through its diamond-leaded windows and there came a hubbub of music and voices from inside.
A line of Rolls-Royces, Daimlers and Bentleys was waiting to drop guests off at the front steps and more cars were arriving every minute.
‘I’ll get out here,’ said James.
The house stood in its own grounds on the south side of the Great Park. James could have ridden over on a bus but he had gone to the extravagance of taking a cab because he was running late. Since the incident with the bread Bentinck had been making his life hell. James had been dashing around for him like an obedient dog so as not to get Pritpal and Tommy into any more trouble. This evening Bentinck had deliberately kept him busy for over an hour as he knew that James was going out.
It looked like the party was already in full swing.
James paid his driver and walked along the row of cars to the front of the house where two uniformed lackeys were greeting guests at the door. James filed in behind a man in a gleaming top hat and a woman weighed down with furs and diamonds.
He hadn’t known what to expect, and had assumed from the way that Miles had described it that the party would involve just his immediate family and a few friends, with maybe a cold buffet and drinks and some music playing on a gramophone.
It was becoming obvious by the second that he couldn’t have been more wrong. This was no intimate reception; it was a society ball. At least James was wearing his school uniform, complete with top hat, so he didn’t look too out of place among the men in evening dress and the women in their best gowns.
He walked into the hallway and stopped to look around. The largest floral display he had ever seen was standing in the centre, next to a string quartet that was struggling to be heard above the noise of the party. Oil paintings hung on the wood-panelled walls and twin staircases fanned up to the next floor.
James handed his hat to a girl and followed a small group towards the next room. He gave his name to the butler on the door, who was obviously expecting him, and found himself in a large, packed ballroom.
A jazz orchestra was playing at the far end and some of the more adventurous guests were dancing. Most people, however, were simply standing and chatting at great volume. James made his way slowly into the adjoining room that turned out to be a dining room. There was indeed a cold buffet, but it went far beyond anything he had imagined.
The table was near to collapsing beneath the weight of huge sides of meat, whole salmon, lobsters, game birds, bowls of seasoned rice, potatoes, every type of salad you could imagine, as well as cheese and fruit and trifles and huge glistening cream cakes and chocolate gateaux.
James carried on exploring. The next room he came to was a library, where older men with wide bellies and bald heads sat smoking cigars and drinking brandy. Then there was a billiards room, after that a formal sitting room, then a conservatory, then a smaller sitting room. Finally, James found himself back in the hallway.
He wondered, not for the first time, what he was doing here and looked longingly at the open front door. He appeared to be the youngest person at the party and felt completely out of place among the dukes and duchesses and millionaires. He wouldn’t be missed if he went home now. With all these people here Mr Langton-Herring would never even know if he had arrived or not.
He was just thinking about doing one final circuit before departure when he heard a familiar voice call out to him and he spotted Miles coming awkwardly down one of the staircases on his crutches.
‘James,’ he said, hobbling down the last few steps and coming over to shake him warmly by the hand. ‘I’m so glad you made it. Father will be so pleased.’
‘Are you sure? It looks like he has some far more important guests than me here.’
‘He loves to throw a party,’ said Miles. ‘The house was only recently finished and he’ll snatch any opportunity to show it off. Now then, have you had something to eat?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Oh, but you must. There’s some rather superior beef from our farm in Hereford so tender you can cut it with a fork.’
James smiled. How strange that he should be pleased to see this boy, who before had been nothing but an irritation. Ah well, any old port in a storm. He let Miles prattle on about the food as they went into the dining room and filled their plates. The food at Codrose’s was the worst in Eton and although the boys could make up for it by buying extra things for their tea, he was never really satisfied. He had to admit that this spread was a welcome change.
He and Miles went and sat on the stairs to eat their food and they chatted about this and that and not very much, and James began to think that maybe the party wouldn’t be such a bore after all.
Afterwards they went into the ballroom to watch the band.
‘How’s the leg, by the way?’ James asked.
‘Not so bad. The cast will be off in a couple of weeks. No dancing for me tonight, though.’
‘Me neither,’ said James, backing out of the way as a young man in baggy trousers swung a startled girl across the dance floor. Another group of guests parted to give the dancers room and James caught sight of Miles’s father, who, at almost the same moment, spotted James.
James was struck once again by how much the man resembled some wild furry animal, with his bushy moustache and side burns and mane of unruly hair.
‘Aha, the man of the hour,’ said Mr Langton-Herring, and he clapped his big hands together.
‘I was just looking for you, young Bond. They told me you had arrived in one piece, but I could find neither hide nor hair of you. Follow me!’
So saying, Mr Langton-Herring cleared a path to the stage, barking good-natured commands to his guests to get out of the way. James and Miles fell in behind him and they made their way across the dance floor in a small procession.
As Mr Langton-Herring approached the band he bellowed at them to stop playing. The bandleader hastily brought the song to an end and Mr Langton-Herring took the stage. He raised his hands for quiet and a hush slowly descended on the room.
James looked around. More guests were filtering in from the other rooms and all eyes were on the stage.
‘It’s time for the speeches, I’m afraid.’ Langton-Herring’s voice boomed out and there were theatrical groans from his audience. ‘It’s a good lesson to learn,’ he said. ‘We must pay for our pleasures. And your payment tonight is to listen to old windbag Langton-Herring give one of his infamous orations!’
Now James knew where Miles got his talkative habits. Though he hadn’t quite the charm of his father.
‘Tonight is a very special night for me,’ Langton-Herring went on, ‘because I have not one but two guests of honour, and I should like to say a few short words about each of them. Actually I should like to say a great many long words about them, but I fear I might be shot.’
A ripple of laughter passed through the guests.
‘My first guest of honour is a man whom you all know, and whom you will one day know even better. He is my neighbour, and it is my great privilege to call him my friend, but to you lot, you unruly rabble, he is your Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, our future King, Edward.’
A roar of approval filled the room. There were shouts of ‘Hurrah’ and ‘God save the King’ and a scattering of applause.
‘As I say, it is my very great honour to have him here tonight. So would you all raise your glasses… To the Prince!’
‘To the Prince!’ went up a great shout and two hundred glasses of champagne were up-ended.
‘My second guest of honour tonight is someone you won’t know,’ Langton-Herring continued once he had everyone’s attention again. ‘Although I am quite sure that he too is destined for great things. He is a boy. A boy at my son’s school. A boy called James Bond. Where are you, James? Come up here, lad.’