As to the louse Cumming, he was too tall and fair and Greek god-like by half, and had made a dead run at Elspeth back in the sixties—and him twenty years her junior, the lecherous young rip.
No doubt he’d been successful, but I’d no proof; she’d basked in his admiration, right enough, but since she did that with every man she met it meant neither nowt nor somewhat. The thing that set Cumming apart from her other flirtations (?) was that after twenty years' acquaintance she had suddenly dropped him like a hot rivet, even cut him dead in the Row. I never knew why, and didn’t inquire; the less I knew of her transgressions (and she of mine) the better—I reckon that’s why we’ve always been such a loving couple. I’d run across Cumming professionally in Zululand, where he was staff-walloping Chelmsford while I was fleeing headlong from Isan’lwana, and we’d met here and there at home, and been half-civil—as I always am to suspected old flames of Elspeth. Wouldn’t have anyone to talk to otherwise, and you can’t have ’em thinking you’re a jealous husband.
By the time of Tranby, to be sure, Elspeth was of an age where it should have been unlikely that either Bertie or Cumming would try to drag her behind the sofa, but I still didn’t care to think of her within the fat-fingered reach of one or the trim moustache of t’other. She’d worn uncommon well; middle sixties and still shaped like a Turkish belly-dancer, with the same guileless idiot smile and wondrous blue eyes that had set me slavering when she was sixteen—she’d performed like a demented houri then, and who was to say she’d lost the taste in half a century? Why, I remember reading of some French king’s mistress, Pompadour or some such, who was still grinding away when she was eighty. Well, there you are.
So I wasn’t best pleased when the Tranby invitation arrived; however, I figured that with Daisy on hand to keep Bertie busy, and Cumming reportedly pushing about some American female, I could stop at home with an easy mind. Then at the last minute, blessed if one of Daisy’s aged relatives didn’t croak, and since it would not have done for dear Lady Flashman to attend their foul house-party unaccompanied, I was dragooned cursing into service. I doubt if our Prince gave three cheers, either; for all the good toadying turns I’d done him, he was still leery of me, and didn’t care to look me in the eye. Guilty conscience, no doubt. Until now, that is, when he found himself taken unawares by the makings of a prime scandal, and the prospect of being ritually disembowelled by our gracious sovereign when she heard of it, and serve the fat blighter right.
I reflected on these matters as I shoved the ivories round the cushions, and reviewed events since we’d assembled at Tranby two days earlier, which was Monday. It was your middling country house, owned by a shipping moneybags named Wilson—not Society as you’d notice, but his place was convenient to Doncaster, where they were running the Leger on the Wednesday, and if his family and friends were second-run as these things are judged in the impolite world, well, Prince Bertie was a fellow vulgarian, and right at home, There were enough of his regular crawlers, Cumming and the Somersets, to keep him happy, the Wilson gang toadied him to admiration, and as in most bourgeois establishments the rations, liquor, and appointments were first-rate; none of your freezing baronial banquet halls where the soup arrives stone cold after being toted half a mile by gouty servitors and the bed-springs haven’t been seen to since Richard the Third’s day. It was cosy and quite jolly, the young folk were lively without being a nuisance, Bertie was at ease and affable, and if it was all a dead bore it was comfortable at least.
Elspeth was in her element, flaunting her mature charms on the first evening in a Paris rig-out which drew glittering smiles of envy from the female brigade and an approving grunt and leer from Bertie. She’d had the deuce of a struggle getting into the thing, with me heaving at her stays, but once all was fast and sheeted home she looked nothing like the grandmother she was, with her hair artfully tinted and that milky complexion carefully enhanced, but above all with that happy, complacent radiance which she hasn’t lost yet—and she’s close on ninety now. Aye, she’s always had the priceless gift of pleasing, has Elspeth, and making people laugh—for she’s a damned funny woman when she wants to be, a top-hole mimic, and all the more engaging because she plainly hasn’t got two brains to rub together. "Never see her but it sets me in humour," Palmerston used to say. That was her talent, to make folk happy.
She charmed Bertie, seated by her at dinner, won admiring glances from the other men with her artless prattle, and to my astonishment even exchanged pleasant banter with Gordon-
Cumming. Hollo, thinks I, has the old fire rekindled? Watching her at work, I rather liked the look of her myself, and that night, waking in the small hours to find that plump excellence cuddled up against me, I was amazed to find myself inspired to climb aboard, puffing and creaking, while she giggled drowsily, saying I was a disgrace and would do myself a mischief.
"At our age!" she murmured afterwards. "Whatever would the children say? Oh, Harry lad, d’you mind the Madagascar forest … Harry? Harry? My dear, are you all right? Shall I fetch you a glass of water … a little brandy, perhaps?" I was thinking, glory, glory, what a hell of a way to die, being in no condition to move, let alone answer, but I remember noting that she hadn’t minded a bit, and saying to myself, aye, you’ll still bear watching.
Ah, but fond recollection has carried me ahead of events. It was on that night, after dinner, that the Prince had proposed baccarat, and Cumming had supposedly cheated for the first time. I’d no inkling of this, of course, nor yet on the Tuesday evening, when he’d been seen doctoring his stakes yet again, the bounder—they said. Now, on the Wednesday night, the murder was out (among a few people, anyway), and I was in the pool room trying to fathom it—and, I confess, wondering what I might do to jolly the mischief along. Well, you know my style, and between ourselves … wouldn’t you?
First, though, to the fathoming. So far as I could judge, there was a choice of three explanations—each one so far-fetched as to be nigh impossible.
Odds on with the punters in the know was that Cumming had cheated. It didn’t wash with me, much though I’d have liked to believe it. He was a prime tick and arrant snob, a very model of military and social excellence, cool, handsome, lordly, rich, and moustached, wore his handkerchief in his sleeve, looked down his nose at the world, probably was too fastidious to shave in his bath, might well be a former paramour of my beloved, and on all these counts was ripe for any dirty turn I could serve him. But that wasn’t the point; however detestable I might think him, the plain fact was that swindling simply wasn’t his style. I told myself that even the unlikeliest folk do the damnedest things … was it possible that Cumming was the kind of reckless ass who’d play foul in a trifling game, not for gain, but for the sheer mad fun of the thing, to see if he could get away with it? There are such fellows; I’ve seen ’em. Rudi Starnberg, for one—ah, but he was a villain, in love with knavery. Cumming wasn’t, and for all the bone-headed bravery he’d supposedly shown at Ulundi and in the Sudan, I couldn’t see him bucking this tiger. He had too much to lose … and while I hate to say it, he was a gentleman.
Then the witnesses were either mistaken or lying. But error must be discounted: two or even three people might improbably be mistaken—but five? On two different nights? So all that remained was a conspiracy to disgrace Gordon-Cumming, by five assorted perjurers. Ridiculous, you say … well, I don’t. I’ve sworn truth out of England myself all too often, and seen the saintliest specimens lie themselves black and blue for the unlikeliest reasons. I’ve also known from the age of three that "honour" and "solemn oath" and "word of a gentleman" are mere piss in the wind of greed, ambition, and fear.