Flashman And The Tiger

His sister, Mrs Lycett Green, middling pretty, inoffensive, ordinary enough and decidedly not Lucrezia Borgia in the making;

Her husband, Lycett Green, a stiffish, old young man, well pleased with himself and his position as master of foxhounds in some northern swamp. In my experience there are dolts, pompous dolts, and M.F.H.s, but they ain’t the plotting kind;

Berkeley Levett, a sound muttonhead in Cumming’s regiment, and presumably as well disposed to his chief as subalterns ever are, given that Guards officers are usually incapable of any feeling outside their bellies and loins.

Four unlikely conspirators, you’ll allow—unless you conceived it possible that Cumming, a noted rake, had ravished Mrs Lycett Green before tea on the Monday and provoked the other three into concocting a diabolic plot to avenge her honour—but the fifth witness killed the plot notion stone dead. She was Mrs Arthur Wilson, our host’s wife, as respectable a matron as ever rebuked a cook, nervously gratified beyond measure at the honour of having royalty to stay, and the last person, as Bertie himself had remarked, to wish to have scandal breaking over her roof. If she said she’d seen Cumming jockeying his chips, she meant it.

So there was no explanation, and if I wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery—which I confess was beginning to intrigue me for its own sake—I needed more eye-witness information. It would also be as well to discover if the scandal had leaked at all. On both counts my best source would be the wife of my bosom, who may be tripe-brained but has the eyes, ears and instincts of an Afridi scout, especially for things that don’t concern her.

I made a leisurely patrol, quartering ground and sniffing the wind: the Lycett Greens were nowhere to be seen, but Mrs Wilson was fretting at her fan and listening absent-minded to Lady Coventry in the drawing-room, and when I looked in at the smoke hole young Wilson and Levett were in deep confabulation, instantly dropped when I appeared, but not before I heard Levett exclaim: "I can’t touch it, Jack, I tell you! He’s my chief, dash it!" Signs and portents, thinks I, and passed on to the music-room, where one of the females was butchering Yum-Yum to the feigned admiration of the company, and my quarry was ensconced in a corner, fleecing some unfortunate foreigner at backgammon, shaking the dice and her upper works, the abandoned old tart, in a way which plainly put him off his game altogether.

"Another double six, count!" trills she, all rosy triumph. "I declare I never threw so many! Oh, and now a double four! What luck! Why, I am off entirely—oh, dear, and you have a man on the bar still! Oh, what a shame! Harry, come and see—I have a backgammon! Aren’t I lucky? No, no, count, I won’t have it—put your purse in your pocket! We play for love, not money," says she, looking roguish. "No, no, I shan’t take it, really, I assure you! Will you not play another game?"

"After two gammons and a backgammon in five games?" cries the ancient squarehead. "Ah, dear Lady Flashman, against chance and skill I can struggle, but when they are allied with beauty and charm I am overpowered altogether. Am I not right, Sir Harry? But I insist on paying my just debts," says he, planting his sovs in her palm, which gave the old goat the chance to kiss her hand and take a last fond leer at her top hamper, while she purred and protested.

"Och, isn’t he the wee duck?" sighs she, jingling her loot as he hobbled away. "Aye, weel, mony a mickle mak’s a muckle, as Papa used to say." She slipped it into her bag and broke into civilised speech. "But, you know, Harry, it was quite embarrassing, for I threw six and one, and double one, and double six ever so often! I’m sure he believes I use loaded dice!" Loaded tits, more like. "I was so glad to see you, for he breathes ever so hard, I can’t think why, and I could see he hated losing, and it was such a bore." She lowered her voice as she took my arm. "Indeed, it’s all rather a bore, don’t you think? Will we be able to go home tomorrow? Would the Prince be offended? I feel I have had as much of Tranby company as I can bear—and I’m sure it can be no fun for you, dearest." The piano gang had begun to perform the last rites on "Three Little Maids", with immense jollity, and as we went out she pulled a face and whispered: "I mean, the Wilsons do their best and are ever so kind and … and eager to please—but they are not really quite the thing, are they?"

She’s God’s own original snob, my little Paisley princess—as though her mill-owning father had been a whit better than the Wilsons. But the little skinflint had collared a peerage in his declining years, you see, and she seemed to think that his coronet and cash, with my V.C. and military rank, to say nothing of her own occasional intimacy with the Queen, raised us above the common herd. Which I guess they did, in an odd way—or if not above, apart at least. We ain’t top-drawer, but there’s no denying we’re different.