The Lady In Waiting

Thaddeus Blue, dressed in his white and teal-striped pajamas, closed the secret panel and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Small pockmarks of light illuminated concealed passageways and hidden stairs owing to tiny peep holes and fissures in the fabric of the old house. From these vantage points a voyeur might observe the affairs of Cricklewood Hall, but Blue’s intent, aligned with that of the fabulous Mrs. Peacock, went beyond observation. Attuned to the gloom, he made his way toward the rear of the great house, to where Mustard’s and Plum’s rooms were located.

It was the 17th Annual Needsy Finals, a prestigious event in the literary calendar. Cricklewood Hall, a gothic revivalist monstrosity, was the chosen venue. Finalists, a mix of past winners, rising stars, and promising newbies, were gathered for the weekend write-athon, under the direction of Miss Annabelle White, Needsy’s Chief Editor. The winner of the short story competition stood to win $5,000 and accumulate a massive five hundred points in the all-important, leadership table, currently dominated by Mrs. Celia Peacock.

Saturday evening and the manuscripts had been submitted. Sunday and the winner would be announced by Miss White.

Colonel Lionel Mustard was pegging his way down the back stairwell; his right knee had clicked into a position from which it would not un-click. Whilst gathering breath at the first corner landing, a disembodied voice whispered to him as if from the suit of arms that was standing in the dimly lit nook.  “Mustard is a plagiarist. He rustles up a forgotten or obscure classic, changes a few names, steals a hackneyed phrase here, borrows a tired metaphor there, and bingo! Utter rubbish! He doesn’t even have a consistent voice! He’s a fraud, a mimic, I tell you!”. The Colonel was enraged, his blood aboil. It had to be that rascal Plum, fourteen points his better on the Needsy leadership table.

Professor Earnest Plum was sauntering along the upstairs corridor, whistling the Tannhäuser overture, pausing at each painting, an unremarkable assortment of 19^th century landscapes and hunting scenes, interspersed with some vaguely arresting portraits of upper-crust pudding-faced people, which he assumed to be those of the Cricklewood family. From one such portrait emerged spoken words, “Plum is archaic, his work is overwrought, pedantic, farcical, and at the end of the day, just not relevant”. Professor Plum leant into the oil painting to better hear what was being said, “He’s a pretentious buffoon, and it’s time we called him out!”. Laughter. Earnest Plum stood there for a moment, looked up and down the corridor, at the ceiling floor, and then he suddenly realized that he must be on the far side of Mustard’s bedroom. That old huckster!

Annabelle White was sat at a small desk in her room, wishing she was a waif or a harlot in a Peacock Romance, not the bookish editor of a small literary magazine. She was laboring through “A Plunge Too Far”, Doctor Byron Black’s submission to the contest. The imbecile just could not sustain a consistent tense or point-of-view, places and names seemed to change randomly, and Newtonian physics seemed entirely beyond the author’s reach. When his protagonist fell through a hole in the floor, Doctor Black described the ensuing death as “untimely”, but for Miss White, it couldn’t have been more welcome.  She set Doctor Black’s six-page manuscript aside and turned with reluctance to the Reverend Mortimer Green’s submission, entitled “To the Fair, Twinning, and Lonely Considerations”, she did so without enthusiasm, anticipating a wordy quagmire.

Thaddeus Blue re-traced his journey along the secret passageways, his mission complete. The plot hatched in the privacy of Celia Peacock's weekend boudoir was a work of genius, devised over a breakfast of rose champagne and illicit sex. Whispered words, damaging aspersions, uttered in a disguised voice from hidden nooks behind the damp papered walls of Cricklewood Hall. The fraud! The Buffoon! The seeds of conflict between her rivals, Mustard and Plum, were sewn in accordance with her instructions.

Doctor Byron Black, lepidopterologist by day, Needsy newbie by night, was exhausted by the effort required to write “A Plunge Too Far”, so he retired to his top floor room early, but sleep was impossible owing to the creaking sounds behind the green door in the sofit beneath the lead-glass windows. He turned on the light and got out of bed. Cricklewood Hall was a spooky old place, but the noise seemed of mundane origin, a swinging door or loose window frame. The dark green door yielded and he poked his head into the aperture, his shoulders, his entire body, and then slowly navigated along a crawl space until he reached a platform that overlooked an unlit loft, apparently a concealed space. Moonlight slicing through a vent provided scant illumination a ghostly figure dressed in striped clothing – a convict? a madman? - tip toeing along the side of a wall, pushing at seams or joists. A hidden lever! A door opened with a mechanical rumble, and the phantasm slipped into a shaft of light, into a room. Two voices, one male, one female, engaged in laughter. The door closed, rumbled and clunked shut. Doctor Black clambered down from the platform, working his way across the creaking beams of the garret. His heart thumped and raced.

Thaddeus Blue, of the teal-striped pajamas, pushed open the secret door into Celia Peacock’s bedroom and rushed to the outstretched arms of his lover, into her fantastic world of torn kilts, ripped bodices, of trysts, pacts, plots, and infidelities. In moments, the elderly enchantress and the youthful sycophant were in the throes of passionate lovemaking, tossing and turning breathlessly on, in, and around, the four-poster. “Tie me to the posts”, she insisted, presenting him with a supply of silk scarfs, and soon the queen of historical romance was tethered, writhing naked upon the bed. “Blindfold me!” and as Blue did so, Celia arched backwards, a hot flush spread up her abdomen, and she released a scream of delight.

“How dare you call me a fraud!”, steamed Colonel Mustard, when he encountered Professor Plum in the library.  The Colonel brandished his walking cane.

“I did no such thing, you moron!”, shouted Professor Plum, “How dare you call me a pretentious buffoon!”. He loosened his cravat and swooped his cape aside.

Accusations escalated, personal insults flew, and soon the two old men were on the Persian rug, engaged in a slow-motion geriatric rough and tumble near the fireplace. First Plum was on top, his hands around the Colonel’s neck, then the position was reversed, and Mustard administered an ineffectual slap to his adversary’s bald domed head. Miss Daphne Scarlett, amused, stood by the fireplace, giggling, while the Reverend Green fussed about, trying to separate the septuagenarians and end this slow-motion battle. “Take it back”, puffed Plum, pushing Mustard’s nose. “Not on your life”, growled Mustard, applying a knee to Plum’s groin. “For God’s sake, stop!”, exclaimed Green, trying to pull the two men apart by inserting himself between them. Mustard pushed, Plum pulled, and Green toppled into the melee. Three arthritic old men wafting harmlessly at each other by the fireplace. Miss Scarlett, sipped at a brimming glass of Martini and idly observed that the Reverend’s tweed jacket seemed to have caught fire owing to a glowing ember that had escaped the fireplace.

Annabele White was startled back into wakefulness by a scraping sound in the attic, a scream in the room next door, and a noisy commotion from the direction of the downstairs library. She put aside Green’s sad-sack manuscript, a morbidly recursive mid-life crisis, lacking fire and spark, but strangely authentic. She opened her bedroom door and stepped onto the upstairs balcony overlooking the great hall. 

It all happened so very quickly. 

There was a creaking noise, the rafters and plaster bowed, and then a crack and a crash as a huge object fell through the ceiling above the renaissance-styled balcony, near where Miss White stood. Doctor Black in a heap, covered by splintered wood, chunks of mortar and a cloud of dust. The man groaned in pain.

From the room next door, Mrs. Peacock’s suite, there was a second scream, somewhat muffled but throaty and urgent this time. Alarmed, Annabele burst through the door to discover Celia Peacock, naked, blindfolded and spreadeagled on the four-poster, Thaddeus Blue, in the buff, whip dangling in hand, sitting astride her. 

And then the commotion downstairs escalated, Miss White rushed back out to the Italianate balustrading, looked down into the great hall, just as Colonel Mustard flew out of the library door and crashed into a marble-topped credenza, followed by a lurching Professor Plum, his progress impeded by Reverend Green who was wrapped around one of his legs. Miss Scarlett, staggering along as a spectator, clearly inebriated, threw a glass of something onto the Reverend’s smoldering tweed jacket, which instantly burst into blue-tinted flame.

“What on earth is going on?”, shouted Annabelle in schoolmarmish frustration, leaning her hands on the coping stone that ran atop the balustrading. Professor Plum, about to administer a feckless blow to the back of Colonel Mustard, stopped mid-swing, and seemed genuinely shocked at what he was about to do. Colonel Mustard, who a second earlier had been twisted over the credenza in readiness to parry the blow, let his arm fall to his side.   Reverend Green, assured that the duel had concluded, released Plum's foot, only to be instantly smothered in a white foam, as Angus, the night porter, emerged on the scene, fire extinguisher in hand, and directed the nozzle at Green’s flaming rear-end.

Meanwhile, Doctor Black emerged from the pile of debris. Physically intact but confused and disoriented, he stumbled through the open door of Peacock's bedroom, witnessed the same scene as Miss White, and nearly feinted at the sight.

***

The next day, at the lunch-time ceremony, Daphne Scarlett, nursing a hangover, accepted the Needsy Runner-Up Trophy for her last-minute submission, a neo-Edwardian farce, "Three Men in a Bout". Mustard, Green and Plum, sitting together at the rear of the drawing room, did not look happy.

The winner, of course, was Celia Peacock, for her steamy submission, "The Lady in Waiting", but unfortunately the author did not attend the event. Anabelle White explained that Mrs. Peacock had been unavoidably detained and sent apologies for her absence. Doctor Black, arm in sling, choked at the thought of Mrs. Peacock's detention, appeared distressed, and was therefore escorted from the drawing room by Angus the Cricklewood Hall porter.

***

When a disappointed Thaddeus Blue returned home to his small suburban home in the Boston suburbs, he was in a surly mood.

“So how was it”, asked his gaunt, weary wife, “the Needsy event?”

“Stupid waste of time and money”, he said, grabbing a white plastic trash bag that was stinking up the narrow hallway, and placing it outside on the doorstep. "Silly self-obsessed wannabees, monkeys at keyboards. Passive-aggressive critiques. Back-handed complements. Nepotism! That Peacock woman won again, some unbelievable historical romance drivel, kilts and bodices, drowning in magical realism, you know…”.

“How was the location?” asked his wife, hitching their bawling infant on her hip, “Cricklewood Hall? I’ve heard it’s amazing?”

“Well, it’s a creepy old mansion, tatty and falling apart”, said Blue, "I couldn't wait to get home to be honest".