Amanderella and the Gooseberry Mystery. Chapter 4.

Chapter Four.

 

Tea at the Savoy.

 

Amanderella stepped out into the bright afternoon, the warehouse door clicking shut behind her. The air felt fresher after the dust-thick stillness inside, and she adjusted her hat against the glare as she made her way back toward Wimple Street.

By the time she reached Mrs Gaffletter’s front steps, the sun was still high, casting long, sharp shadows across the pavement. Amanderella paused, brushed a trace of warehouse dust from her sleeve, and rang the bell. Mrs Gaffletter opened the door with her usual air of solemn custodianship, inspecting Amanderella from hat to hem for signs of mud, disorder, or moral decline.

 “You are back earlier than expected,” she observed, stepping aside with the dignity of a woman permitting entry to a cathedral. “Your hair appears… acceptable.”

 “Thank you,” Amanderella said, removing her gloves.

 Mrs Gaffletter accepted them with the same funereal precision she applied to all domestic matters. “Tea will be in the parlour in ten minutes. I trust you have not encountered anything untidy.”

 “Nothing I could not manage,” Amanderella replied.

 Mrs Gaffletter gave a small, approving nod, the sort that suggested she would file this information away for later contemplation, and withdrew toward the kitchen.

 Amanderella climbed the stairs to her room, the envelope weighing more heavily in her handbag with each step. Once inside, she closed the door, lit the small lamp on her writing desk, and sat down.

 The room was quiet, the sort of quiet that made the ticking of the mantel clock sound unusually loud. She placed the envelope on the blotter, studying the peculiar crest: a pair of deeply carved acorns. Amanderella noted instantly that the impression was wide and coarse, the unmistakable mark of a dairy-maid’s butter stamp used in a moment of sharp necessity. For a moment she simply looked at it, her expression unreadable. Then, with the same calmness she applied to all things, from lantern slides to unexpected mysteries, Amanderella reached for her letter-knife.

 She broke the wax and unfolded the thick, cream-coloured paper. The handwriting was neat, upright, and unmistakably the work of someone accustomed to issuing instructions that were obeyed.

     Miss Amanderella Gottsnobbler,,

     You are requested to present yourself at The Savoy Hotel, Strand, tomorrow at precisely four o’clock in the afternoon.

     Enter by the main doors and proceed to the Palm Court. You will sit at Table Seven. Do not speak to anyone unless they speak to you first. You will be approached.

 There was no signature. Only the same peculiar crest, the umbrella rampant over the very small, very neat teacup, embossed faintly at the bottom.

 Amanderella read the instructions twice, then folded the paper with the same care she might have used for a rare botanical specimen. She slipped it into her handbag and sat back in her chair, considering.

 The Savoy. Table Seven. Four o’clock. It was all very precise. And very odd.

 Downstairs, Mrs Gaffletter’s gong sounded with the solemnity of a cathedral bell, announcing that tea was now available and that any resident who failed to appear within three minutes would be the subject of quiet but enduring disapproval.

 Amanderella rose, smoothing her skirt. Whatever waited at Table Seven, it would have to wait until after Mrs Gaffletter’s scones.

 The next afternoon, Amanderella arrived at The Savoy with the unhurried composure of a woman who had absolutely no intention of being impressed by marble floors, uniformed porters, or the faint, expensive scent of beeswax and lilies that drifted through the lobby.

She handed her coat and gloves to the attendant and crossed the foyer toward the Palm Court, where the afternoon sun beat down through the glass roof, filling the room with a warm, golden glow. A string quartet played something light and unobtrusive, the sort of music designed to make the wealthy feel even more at ease.

 A waiter in immaculate white approached her before she had taken three steps.

 Miss Amanderella Gottsnobbler?” he murmured, as though confirming the presence of royalty.

 “Yes.”

 “This way, madam.”

 He led her to Table Seven, a small round table set slightly apart from the others, positioned beneath a tall palm whose fronds cast elegant shadows across the linen. The table was already laid. A silver teapot steamed gently beside a plate of delicate sandwiches and a dish of small, perfectly symmetrical scones. Amanderella had not ordered any of it.

 She sat. The waiter poured her tea without asking how she took it, and, to her faint surprise, he got it exactly right.

 Amanderella lifted her cup, inhaled the steam, and allowed herself one quiet thought. ‘Whoever arranged this knows far too much.’

 She had taken only her second sip when a shadow fell across the table.

 A young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, neatly dressed in a navy walking suit with a small, sensibly sturdy hat, approached. She possessed the crisp, entirely efficient air of a professional woman who was currently navigating a highly irregular administrative crisis.

“Miss Gottsnobbler?” the young woman said softly, slipping into the vacant chair opposite without waiting for an invitation. Her voice was precise and perfectly steady.

 Amanderella set down her cup. “Yes.”

The young woman said, “I am glad you came. My name is Miss Felicity Harbottle. I am a private secretary, and I have arranged this meeting to lay a matter before you. I must warn you, it is more complicated than Mr Shovelock was authorised to say, and none of it must ever become public knowledge.”

Amanderella nodded. “My lips will remain sealed.”

 “The matter began a few years ago,” Miss Harbottle said, delivering the facts with the dry detachment of an accountant. “Following a dinner at a well-known peer's country residence, three gentlemen, the Noble Lord himself, a Church of England Bishop, and a Member of Parliament, made a rather foolish wager as to who could produce the heaviest gooseberry. You must bear in mind that they had been raising their glasses rather more vigorously than was wise.”

 Amanderella sipped her tea. “How much?”

 Miss Harbottle lowered her voice slightly, though her composure remained intact. “Five thousand pounds. Each.”

Amanderella did not choke, but she did blink. “I see. I suppose it required an equally extraordinary method to determine a winner of such staggering value. How on earth did they weigh them?”

 “The Noble Lord took the matter dreadfully seriously,” Miss Harbottle explained, “He commissioned a mechanical weighing machine from a very eccentric inventor. The machine was made of clockwork and brass, and was designed to look like a pig. It made a triumphant, rather loud squeal when it identified the heaviest specimen, which belonged to the Peer, whose fruit weighed nearly half an ounce more than the Bishop’s, and a full ounce more than the M.P.’s. The pig squealed so loudly that the footmen thought someone had been murdered. Afterwards, the winning gooseberries were preserved in brandy for posterity, as the Peer maintained it was the only dignified way to ensure they did not collapse.”

 Amanderella closed her eyes briefly, as though offering a silent prayer for the state of the nation. “A thoroughly dignified solution, I am sure. But if the Peer won the wager fair and square, why has he not simply collected his ten thousand pounds and concluded the affair?”

 “Because he is a remarkably wealthy man, and a generous one,” Miss Harbottle explained. “Once the excitement had settled, he magnanimously told his friends that he had no intention of taking a single penny from them. He forgave the debt entirely. However, being a man of immense horticultural pride, he insisted that the official signed wager agreement and the parchment ledger recording his victory must be preserved for the rest of their lives as a matter of historical record.”

 Amanderella’s eyes twinkled. “A gentleman’s compromise. He spared their wallets, but insisted on keeping the bragging rights.”

 “Precisely so. And to ensure this embarrassing proof of gaming never came to light, the brass pig, the ledger, and the signed agreement were locked away in a private vault at the Capital and Counties Bank in Threadneedle Street. “The vault was secured by a locking mechanism requiring three distinct keys: one held by the Peer, one by the Bishop, and one by the M.P. They swore that the vault should never be opened unless all three keys were brought together.”

 Amanderella leaned back against the plush velvet of her chair. “A sensible precaution. Where, then, has the system failed?”

 Miss Harbottle glanced with cool discretion toward a nearby table where an elderly duchess was delicately dissecting an éclair. “The system failed yesterday morning, Lady Amanderella, when a blackmail letter arrived. Someone has discovered the secret. They are demanding the wager be honoured in full, all ten thousand pounds, to be paid directly to them, or they will leak the entire affair, signatures and brandy-preserved gooseberries included, to the newspapers.”

 Amanderella’s eyes sharpened. “Blackmail. How very predictable. And what has been the reaction of our three gooseberry growers?”

 “Absolutely catastrophic,” Miss Harbottle stated calmly. “The Bishop, upon reading the threat, suffered a fit of terrible conscience regarding his gambling habits. In a panic, he hid his key in a highly secret location to ensure the vault could never be compromised, and promptly fell into a state of profound, melancholy. He now refuses to speak at all.”

 “And the Member of Parliament?” Amanderella asked.

 “He is facing imminent financial ruin and has entirely unravelled,” Miss Harbottle replied. “He knows about the letter, and he is currently threatening to blow the bank vault doors off with dynamite so he can burn the documents before the papers get hold of them. He is terrified the Peer will find out about the blackmail. As for the Peer himself, he is completely unaware of the blackmailer's threat; he merely thinks his two old friends have succumbed to a sudden, rather severe bout of depression. You must understand that the Bishop should not have been gambling at all, let alone for such a sum; he had preached many sermons on the evils of gambling. The M.P. could not afford it then and certainly cannot afford it now. He too has often spoken in the House of the dangers of gambling.”

 Amanderella regarded Miss Harbottle for a long moment, as though trying to decide whether she had misheard.

 “Let me see if I have understood,” Amanderella said, a wry glint in her eye. “Three grown men, a peer, a bishop, and a member of Parliament, wagered a ruinous sum on the weight of a gooseberry, preserved the winning specimens in brandy as though they were saintly relics, locked a mechanical pig in a bank vault, and are now trapped by their own three-key security system.”

 Miss Harbottle offered a rare, dry twitch of her lips. “That is a precise summary, Miss Gottsnobbler.”

 Amanderella gave a small, elegant shrug. “Very well. I simply wished to confirm that I had not fallen asleep in the hairdresser’s chair and dreamt the whole thing.”

 She lifted her teacup, taking a slow, appreciative sip of the perfectly poured blend. “And I suppose you require me to retrieve the Bishop’s key before the Parliamentarian resorts to explosives?”

 Miss Harbottle nodded, her sensible hat entirely steady now. “Precisely. The Bishop left a clue to the key’s whereabouts, but it is written in a code so utterly bizarre that Mr Shovelock was completely baffled. He said it required a mind that understood the grander eccentricities of the British establishment.”

 Amanderella set her cup aside, her manner suggesting that the matter of tea was now satisfactorily concluded. “Then it is an extraordinary stroke of luck, Miss Harbottle, that my hair is so impeccably arranged for a crisis. Pray, show me the Bishop’s clue.”