Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose Read online

  “And she gave you the come-on?” said Cape.

  “I knew what she was up to, naturally, but it still surprised me somewhat. This was in the nineteen-fifties, before casual sex became commonplace. One summer afternoon in my rooms in college, I yielded to temptation.”

  “And she got her scholarship?”

  “She did. She went on to get a doctorate, and she is now a Government Minister.” He named her.

  “That’s hot news, Pat,” said Cape. “What was she like in bed—playful?”

  “All this is in confidence,” said Patrick. He looked across at Linda, and she was filming the view, too far away to have heard. “It was terrific. She was incredibly eager.”

  “You heard that, Ben?” said Cape. “The Minister bangs like the shithouse door in a gale. Don’t go spreading it around the clergy.”

  Ben Tattersall was hunched in embarrassment.

  Patrick felt a surge of anger. The whole point of his story had been to take the heat off Ben. “How about you, Cape? Ben and I have been very candid. We haven’t heard much from you—about yourself, I mean.”

  “You want the dirt on me? That’s rich.”

  “Why?”

  “Ironic, then. Fine, I can be as frank as you fellows, if it keeps the party going. You may not have seen me in forty years, but I’ll bet you’ve seen my work on television. Have you watched The Disher?”

  “The what?”

  “The Disher. The series that dishes the dirt on the rich and famous. It’s mine. I’m the Disher. As you know if you watch it, my voice isn’t used at all. You have to be so careful with the law. No, my subjects condemn themselves out of their own mouths, or the camera does it, or one of their so-called friends.”

  Patrick was too startled to comment.

  The bishop said, “I don’t get much time for television.”

  “Make some time about the end of February. You’ll be on my programme telling the one about the parrot.”

  The bishop twitched and looked appalled.

  “I mean it, Ben. That’s my job.”

  Patrick said, “Remember what day it is. He’s having us on, Ben. She didn’t film us when you were telling the joke. I checked.”

  Cape said, “But you didn’t check the sound equipment in my rucksack. It’s all on tape. The parrot joke. And your sexy Minister story, Pat. We don’t expect you to talk to camera when you spill the beans. We tape it and use the voice-over. A long shot of us trekking up the mountain, and your voices dishing yourselves. Very effective.”

  “Let’s see this tape-recorder.”

  Cape shook his head. “At this minute, you don’t know if I’m kidding or not. I’d be an idiot to confirm it, specially up here. But I warn you, gentlemen, if you try anything physical, Linda is under instructions to get it on film.”

  “He’s bluffing,” Patrick told the bishop. “He probably sells used cars for a living.”

  Ben Tattersall was on his feet. “There’s a way of finding out. I’m going to ask the young woman. Where is she?”

  Cape said, “She went ahead, to film us crossing the ridge.”

  It was becoming misty up there, with another cloud drifting in, and Linda was no longer in view.

  “This will soon blow across,” Cape said. “We can safely move on. Then you can ask Linda whatever you like.” His calm manner was reassuring.

  The others followed.

  Curiously enough, the snow was not a handicap on this notorious ridge. It was of a soft consistency that provided good footholds and actually gave support. Had the night before been a few degrees colder, the frozen surface would have made the near vertical edges a real hazard.

  The mist obscured the view ahead, which was a pity, because the rock pinnacles and buttresses are spectacular, but Patrick was secretly relieved that he was unable to see how exposed this razor edge was.

  He kept his eyes on the footprints Cape had made, while his thoughts dwelt on his own foolishness. What had induced him to speak out as he had, he could not think. To a degree, certainly, it was out of sympathy for Ben Tattersall after that mortifyingly juvenile joke.

  There was also, he had to admit, some bravado, the chance to boast that a university professor’s life was not without its moments. And there was the daft illusion that this expedition somehow recaptured lost youth, with its lusts and energy and aspirations.

  I must be getting senile, he thought. If it really does get out, what I told the other two, the tabloid press will be onto her like jackals. He had never heard of this television programme Cape claimed to work for. But in truth he didn’t watch much television these days. He preferred listening to music. So it might conceivably exist. Some of the things he had seen from time to time were blatant invasions of people’s privacy.

  No, the balance of probability was that Cape was playing some puerile All Fools’ Day joke. The man had a warped sense of humour, no question.

  On the other hand, a programme as unpleasant as The Disher—if it existed—must have been devised by someone with a warped sense of humour.

  “It goes out late at night on ITV,” Ben Tattersall, close behind him, said, as if reading Patrick’s thoughts. “I’ve never seen it, but a Master of Foxhounds I know was on it. He resigned because of it.”

  “It’s real?”

  Cape Brown, out ahead, turned and said, “Of course it’s real, suckers. You don’t think I was shooting a line?”

  In turning, he lost balance for a moment and was forced to grab the edge of a rock while his feet flailed across the snow.

  “Hold on, man,” said Patrick, moving rapidly to give assistance. He grabbed the shoulder strap of Cape’s rucksack. Ben Tattersall was at his side and between them they hauled him closer to the rock.

  In doing so, they disturbed the flap of his rucksack. Out of the top fell a sponge-covered microphone attached to a lead. It swung against his thigh.

  Patrick stared in horror and looked into Ben Tattersall’s eyes. Despair was etched in them.

  “Look away.”

  “What?” said the bishop.

  “Look away.”

  Impulse it was not. These things always appear to happen in slow motion. Patrick had ample time to make his decision. He put a boot against Cape Brown’s arm-pit and pushed with his leg. The fingers clutching the rock could not hold the grip. Cape let go and plunged downwards, out of sight, through the mist. He made no sound.

  “He lost his grip,” Patrick said to Ben Tattersall. “He lost his grip and fell.”

  Nobody else had witnessed the incident. Linda was far ahead, her view obscured by the mist.

  Cape Brown’s body was recovered the same afternoon. Multiple injuries had killed him. The sound equipment in his rucksack was smashed to pieces.

  Each of them appeared as a witness at the inquest. Each said that Cape lost his grip before they could reach him. After giving evidence, they didn’t speak to each other. They never met again. Ben Tattersall died prematurely of cancer two years later, and was given a funeral attended by more than twenty fellow bishops and presided over by an archbishop.

  Patrick lived on until this year, having, as I explained, confessed to me that he had killed Cape Brown. He need not have spoken about it. How typical of him to want the truth made public.

  And there is something else I must make clear. As Patrick explained it to me, his story about the Minister offering to sleep with him to earn her scholarship was pure fabrication. Nothing of the sort happened. “I made it up,” he said. “You see, I had to think of something worse than a bishop telling a dirty joke, just to spare him all that embarrassment. After I’d concocted the story, I knew if it went on television everyone would believe it was true. People want to believe in scandals. Her career would have been ruined, quite unjustifiably. So you can imagine how I felt when I saw that microphone fall out of the rucksack.”

  You must agree he was a decent man.

  BERTIE AND THE BOAT RACE

  People close to me sometimes pluck up coura
ge and ask how I first became an amateur detective. I generally tell them it began in 1886 through my desire to discover the truth about the suspicious death of Fred Archer, the Tinman, the greatest jockey who ever wore my colours, or anyone else’s. However, it dawned on me the other day that my talent for deduction must have been with me from my youth, for I was instrumental in solving a mystery as far back as the year 1860. I had quite forgotten until some ill-advised person wrote to my secretary to ask if HRH The Prince of Wales would care to patronise the Henley Regatta this year.

  Henley!

  You’d think people would know by now that my preferred aquatic sport is yachting, not standing on a towpath watching boats of preposterous shape being manoeuvred along a reach of the Thames by fellows in their undergarments.

  The mystery. It has a connection with Henley, but the strongest connection is with a young lady. Ah, the fragrant memory of one I shall call Echo, out of respect for her modesty, for she is a lady of irreproachable reputation now. Why Echo? Because she was the water nymph who loved the youth Narcissus. The real Echo is supposed to have pined away after her love was not returned, leaving only her voice behind, but this part of the legend you can ignore.

  She was the only daughter of a tutor at Christ Church College, Oxford, and I met her during my sojourn at the University. I was eighteen, a mere stripling, and a virtual prisoner in a house off the Cornmarket known as Frewin Hall, with my Equerry and Governor as jailers. My father, Prince Albert, had rigid views on education and wanted me to benefit from the tuition at Oxford. Sad to relate, he deemed it unthinkable for the future King to live in college with boisterous young men of similar age. Six docile undergraduates of good family were accordingly enlisted to be my fellow students. They attended Frewin Hall and sat beside me listening to private lectures from selected professors. I don’t know who suffered the greatest ordeal, my fellow-students, the tutors, or myself. I was not academically inclined. The only inclination I had was towards the stunningly pretty Echo.

  I met her first across the dinner table, Papa having insisted that dinner parties should feature in my curriculum. I was to learn how to conduct myself at table, use the cutlery, hold a conversation and so forth. Most of my guests were stuffed-shirts, the same studious fellows who shared my lectures, together with various professors and clergymen, but, thank heavens, it was deemed desirable for members of the fair sex to be of the party. Some of the tutors brought their wives. One—I shall call him Dr Stubbs—was a widower and was accompanied by his daughter.

  Echo Stubbs. My pulse races now at the memory of her stepping into the anteroom, standing timidly so close to her father that her crinoline tilted and revealed quite six inches of silk-stocking—I think the first sighting I had of a mature female ankle in the whole of my life.

  When I finally forced my eyes higher I was treated to a deep blush from a radiantly lovely face. Her black hair was parted at the centre in swathes that covered her ears like a scarf. She curtsied. Dr Stubbs bowed. And while his head was lowered I winked at Echo and she turned the colour of a guardsman’s jacket.

  I shall not dwell on the subtle process of glances and signals that sealed our attachment. She didn’t say much, and neither did I. It was all in the eyes, and the barely perceptible movements of the lips. She enslaved me. I resolved to see her again, if possible in less constricting company. I lost all interest in my studies. Every waking moment was filled with thoughts of her.

  My difficulty was that she and I were chaperoned with a rigour hard to imagine in these more indulgent times. If my beautiful Echo ventured out of Christ Church, you may be sure her po-faced Papa was at her side. The only opportunities we had of meeting were after Morning Service at the Cathedral on a Sunday, when every word between us was overheard by General Bruce, my Governor, and Dr. Stubbs. So we spoke of the weather and the sermon while our eyes held a more intimate discourse altogether.

  During lectures I would plot strategies for meeting her alone. I seriously considered ways of gaining admittance to the family’s rooms in Christ Church by posing as a College servant. If I had known for certain which room my fair Echo slept in, I would have visited the College by night and flung gravel at her window. But in retrospect it was a good thing I didn’t indulge in such heroics because we had lately been troubled by a series of burglaries and I might have suffered the embarrassment of being arrested. My amorous nature has more than once been the undoing of me and it would have got me into hot water even at that tender age were it not for a piece of intelligence that reached me.

  The worthy Dr Stubbs, I learned, was a rowing man. He had been a ‘wet bob’ at Eton and a Blue at the University. For the past two years he had acted as umpire at the Henley Royal Regatta.

  I’ve already made clear my views on rowing, but I happened to be in possession of two useful facts about Henley. The first: that it was de rigeur that the fair sex patronised the Regatta in all their finery, congregating on the lawns of the Red Lion, near the finish. And the second: that the umpire followed all the races from the water, rowed by a crew of the finest Thames watermen. Do you see? I had the prospect of Dr Stubbs being aboard a boat giving undivided attention to the races whilst his winsome daughter was at liberty on the river bank.

  I devised a plan. I would go to Henley for the Regatta and hire a small craft, preferably a punt, without revealing my identity to anyone. I would furnish it with a hamper containing champagne and find a mooring close to the Red Lion. As soon as Echo appeared, I would invite her aboard my punt for a better view of the rowing. Need I go into the rest of the plan?

  Now one of the unfortunates who sat with me through those dreary lectures in Frewin Hall was a runt of a fellow called Henry Bilbo, about five feet in stature, and he happened to be the coxswain to the College First Eight. I’d noticed Bilbo being treated with undue civility by Dr Stubbs long before I learned of his connection with the Boat Club. If anyone else, myself excepted, arrived late for a lecture, he would be severely rebuked. Not Bilbo. He was an arrogant little tyke, too.

  “You would appear to lead a charmed life, Henry,” I remarked to

  him one morning after lectures.

  “Oh, I have the measure of old Stubbsy, Your Royal Highness,” he told me. “We rowing men stick together. He’s relying on us to win the Ladies’ Plate at Henley this year.”

  “Henley, when is that?” I affected to ask. I didn’t want Bilbo to know how eager I was.

  “The Monday and Tuesday after we go down. Don’t you know, Bertie? It is the Royal Regatta.”

  “Only because my father condescended to be the Patron,” I said. “Because it’s Royal by name, it doesn’t mean Royal persons are obliged to attend. Rowing bores me silly.”

  “Won’t you be supporting us?”

  “I have other calls upon my time,” I said to throw him off the scent. “Do you have a better-than-average chance of winning?”

  “Only if we can match the Black Prince,” he told me.

  “Who the devil is that?”

  “First Trinity. The Cambridge lot. They’ve won it more times than anyone else. They’re defending the Plate. But with me at the tiller-ropes, we should give them a damned good race. Dr Stubbs has stated as much.”

  “He takes an interest, then?”

  “He’s our trainer. It matters so much to him that he’s passing up the chance to be umpire this year. It wouldn’t be sporting, you see, for Stubbsy to show partiality.”

  This was devastating news, but I tried to remain composed. “So he won’t be on the umpire’s boat?”

  “Didn’t I make that clear? He’ll be on the bank, supervising our preparation. You really should be there to see us.” As a lure, he added, “The adorable Echo has promised to come.”

  Trying to sound uninterested, I commented, “I suppose she would.”

  “She’ll watch us carry the boat down to the water and launch it. She’ll be all of a flutter at the sight of so many beefy fellows stripped for action.” He grinned lasciviousl
y. “Her pretty chest will be pumping nineteen to the dozen. Wouldn’t you care for a sight of that?”

  “Sir, you exceed yourself,” I rebuked him.

  He apologized for the ungentlemanly remark. I’d always thought Bilbo ill-bred, even though his father was a Canon of the Church of England.

  After he left, I spent a long time considering my options. If Dr Stubbs was to be on the bank, he would expect his daughter to be beside him. My punting plan had to be abandoned.

  On the same afternoon, I announced my intention of calling on Dr Stubbs at Christ Church. I sent my Equerry to inform him how I liked my afternoon tea: quite simple, with poached eggs, rolls, cakes, scones, shortcake and a plate of preserved ginger. Anything else spoils dinner, in my experience.

  The beautiful Echo was not at home, more was the pity. She had left early to visit a maternal aunt, her father explained. I came to the point at once. “I understand, Dr Stubbs, that you are taking a personal interest in the College Eight.”

  “That is true, sir. We have entered for the Ladies’ Plate at Henley.”

  “I should like to be of the party.”

  “You wish to pull an oar, sir?” he said in some surprise, for I had never evinced the slightest interest in rowing.

  “Heaven forbid,” said I. “My intention is merely to accompany you and any other members of your family who may be with you.”

  “There’s only Echo, my daughter. She likes to watch the rowing. We’ll be honoured to have you with us, Your Royal Highness. I think I should mention, however, that I will be occupied to some degree with the College Eight.”

  “You needn’t feel responsible for me,” I assured him. “I’m capable of amusing myself.”

  He said, “I’m sure the stewards would be honoured if you would present the trophies, sir.”

  There was only one trophy that interested me. “No,” I told him firmly. “I prefer to attend incognito. Once in a while I like to behave like one of the human race.” I helped myself to another cake.