Free Skeleton-in-Waiting by Peter Dickinson

delayed, and then went bankrupt.”
    â€œThat’s awful!”
    â€œIt was, mercifully, the end of our misfortunes. The copies were already printed, and knowing His late Majesty’s view on Bolshevism my husband had taken the liberty of sending him one. His Majesty himself, as you may be aware, read very little, but his interest was aroused enough for him to express a wish to meet us, and when he discovered our plight he was gracious enough to offer my husband a post at the Palace, with residence and stipend.”
    â€œYes, I see. Great-grandfather was a funny old thing, but he got it right sometimes. I’d love to read the book. Have you got a copy you could lend me?”
    â€œSadly, no. The warehouse in which they were stored was bombed in 1942, so we lost every copy.”
    â€œAnd you’ve never thought of writing it again?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt would make a terrific film.”
    Mrs Walsh smiled. You could tell she had lived a lot of her life in a formal court, in which only royalty could change the subject so the courtiers had to find ways of signalling that it was time to do so.
    â€œYou must have found life a bit dull at the Palace, after everything you’d been through,” said Louise.
    Mrs Walsh nodded. There was for the first time a sense of some barrier coming down, an acceptance that Louise, unlike most people, was in a position to understand the peculiar boringness of court boredom.
    â€œFor myself, no,” she said. “After adventures such as we had endured dullness can be very precious. For my husband—he was, as I told you, an adventurer, but …”
    She fell silent at the movement of the door. Aunt Bea came wheezing in, followed by Carrie with the tea-tray. By the time they had settled and the cups had been poured Mrs Walsh had withdrawn into her hawk-like remoteness. Louise tried to imagine her on her adventure, sixteen—softer-looking then, surely, but with those clear, chilly grey eyes—screaming at passing trains for help, or tramping the immense Russian landscape—they’d gone south, but even there the winters could be icy and they must have got through a winter somehow—the mother dying, the rest of the family too, or lost on the way—and then the love affair with the Englishman who had saved her. Love, really? Looking at her now it was hard to imagine her loving anyone. Seduction? Rape? The mere need to share warmth in sub-zero hutments? Perhaps they’d found some louse-ridden drunken priest, fleeing the Bolsheviks as they were, to marry them. A year of that, the high plateaux, the fierce but uplifting primitiveness of places and people, the endless danger—and then to dwindle into the notoriously stifling ennui of Great-grandfather’s court. What a marriage.
    â€œMrs Walsh has been telling me that she met Granny in St Petersburg when they were both girls,” said Louise.
    â€œNo!” whispered Aunt Bea.
    â€œAnd she had astounding adventures escaping from the Communists.”
    â€œDear me. Do you mean to say, Mrs Walsh, that you can actually speak Russian, like HRH?”
    â€œIt is my native tongue, Lady Surbiton.”
    â€œWell, I must say, that might be very convenient.”
    â€œWhat on earth do you mean, Aunt Bea?”
    â€œWell, you see, my dear, HRH did at one point insist on giving me lessons in Russian, only I was so stupid, and now I have all these letters to sort through. I just thought Mrs Walsh might be interested in helping …”
    Aunt Bea looked round the other three with the innocent and vulnerable appeal of a child who doesn’t expect to understand the adult world, but assumes that someone will come and hold her hand and show her what to do. For the first time it crossed Louise’s mind that though it had appeared to everyone that Granny had mercilessly used and abused Aunt Bea—persecuting her with Russian lessons was a typical ploy—the