Blotto, Twinks and the Heir to the Tsar

Book 6: Blotto Twinks

by Simon Brett

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Tawcester Towers, the family seat of the Lyminster family, has suffered an unwelcome injection of distant cousins—so distant that they aren't even British!

Count Igor and Count Lyudmilla Bashusky had to flee Russia after the Revolution and have spent the intervening years building up debts in the hotels of Europe's capitals and sponging off ever more exasperated (and distant) relatives.

The Bashusky's arrival at Tawcester Towers causes a stir, and it's up to Blotto and Twinks, that indefatigable duo, to provide a solution to get them back to Russia. Reversing the Russian Revolution and getting a Tsar back into St Petersburg's Winter Palace is just the sort of challenge the fiercely bright Twinks relishes, though her dim-witted brother, Blotto, shows less aptitude for the subtleties of international politics, despite his commendable bravery.

The siblings soon find themselves in Berlin to try to broker a meeting with the White Russian community and swiftly become embroiled in a world of spies, counterspies, conspiracies and counterconspiracies.

Just when things seem to be looking up, little do Blotto and Twinks realise that their plans are being monitored by the spymaster Fyodor Vlachko, a former worker on the Bushusky's estate who has now risen to a senior post in the secret police of the newly formed Soviet Union....

Release date: July 2, 2015

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 208

Sample

‘It’s absolutely the lark’s larynx,’ Blotto confided in the stable to his hunter Mephistopheles, ‘being born with a whole canteen’s worth of silver spoons in one’s mouth. But if there is one major chock in the cogwheel to being an aristocrat, then it’s the poor relations.’

Mephistopheles whinnied reassurance. Though horses of his breeding didn’t actually have any poor relations, he was always ready to sympathise with his young master’s troubles.

And it wasn’t something that he had to do very often. Devereux Lyminster – universally known as Blotto – younger son of the late Duke of Tawcaster, was possessed of an emotional gamut that usually ran from ‘Pretty Jolly Cheerful’ to ‘Deliriously Happy’. He wasn’t much given to introspection. He left gloomy thoughts to intellectual types – clergymen, undertakers, poets and people like that.

Blotto had indeed been dealt a good hand in the poker game of life. His family history could be traced back to the Norman Conquest. He was blessed with extraordinary good looks, of the blond thatch of hair and piercing blue eyes variety. Though not aware of it, he was fatally attractive to women and when at Eton had inspired hero-worship in a whole generation of younger boys. The fact that his intellectual capacities made the average fruit fly look like a Regius Professor was not something that caused him any anxiety. He knew that if he got into some kind of glue pot where brainpower was needed, it could be readily supplied by his incredibly gifted sister, Honoria Lyminster – universally known as Twinks.

So long as Blotto didn’t have to stir from the beloved environs of Tawcester Towers, and so long as he participated, according to the season, in plentiful amounts of hunting and cricket, he required nothing else of life. He possessed in abundance all the ingredients for happiness.

So Mephistopheles always noticed when his owner was in a less than sunny mood. He whinnied again to show solidarity and waited for the young master to reveal more confidences of which he, being a horse, would not understand a word.

‘You see,’ Blotto went on, ‘every family has poor relations. It’s just something that people of our class have to put up with – a bit like mumps or measles or chicken pox. You know, and you expect a few of the wretched pineapples to be hanging around at Christmas time. But they never stay long. The Mater sees to that.’

He knew whereof he spoke. Blotto’s ‘Mater’, the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester, was not a woman to be underestimated. Carved from the living rock of history, since her husband the late Duke had died she had run the Tawcester Towers estate with a rod of iron. (As a matter of fact, she had done the same before her husband died. His will had never been a match for hers. His was always the velvet fist; hers the iron glove.)

Blotto and – to a lesser extent – Twinks had from birth been in awe of their mother. She had never believed in ‘modern’ ideas of mollycoddling her offspring. The Dowager Duchess’s principles of childcare involved her seeing as little of her progeny as was humanly possible, delegating their upbringing to the brutal regime of a series of nurses and governesses. So effective had this approach been that when Blotto and Twinks appeared at their father’s funeral, the Dowager Duchess did not recognise them and had to be introduced.

Her attitude to people outside the immediate family was even more frosty. Members of her own class existed only to be belittled. And when it came to poor relations, she was in her element. Her skills in patronising were legendary and she used them like a flamethrower. Not many of the poor relations who gathered at Tawcester Towers on Christmas Eve made it through to Boxing Day. Most, by then unable to resist the withering power of their hostess’s insults, had scurried off back to their humble homes.

There was some proverb Blotto could never quite remember, about fish and guests starting to smell after three days. With his mother in charge of festivities very few invitees lasted even that long.

‘You see, Mephistopheles,’ his master went on, ‘what makes the whole thing a bit of a candlesnuffer for boddoes in my sit is that you never know how many spoffing relations you’ve got. What you do know for sure is that it’s a guinea to a groat that they’ll be poor.

‘It all goes back to the Middle Ages, when there were a lot of what were called “domestic” marriages . . .’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘I’m not sure that’s the right word. ’Fraid I’m a bit of an empty revolver when it comes to words. No, “dynastic” – that’s the one. That’s the trout I should be tickling. Anyway, in these “dynastic” marriages, the sons and daughters of aristocrats were used like counters in a game of Ludo, shoved around the board and made to twiddle up the old marital reef knot with some other unlikely poor greengage with the right breeding. Wasn’t to do with love or any of that rombooley – mind you, it very rarely is nowadays either for people of our class. You wouldn’t believe the number of fillies the Mater has tried to get me trotting up the aisle with over the years. I’ve managed to escape the noose so far, but one day she’ll have me collared.

‘Anyway, back then – you know, in the Middle Ages, this “dynastic” marriage biz was just about increasing the size of their parents’ estates – or in some circs, countries. Very rare to have an aristocratic wedding in those days where the bride and groom spoke the same language, let alone had anything else in common.

‘Result is, people like us have got relations all over Europe, who might pop up at any moment like moles in the middle of the spoffing lawn. Which is what has happened with our latest unwanted visitors, the Bashuskys.’

Mephistopheles whinnied, perhaps acclaiming the fact that Blotto had finally got to the point. It was always difficult to know precisely what mental processes were going through that magnificent equine head.

‘They’re seventeenth cousins forty-three times removed or something vaguely round that map reference. And they’re about as welcome as slugs in a shower. Four of them – Count Igor, Countess Lyudmilla and their bliss-bereft offspring, Sergei and Masha. Well, they got in touch with my brother . . . you know, the Duke of Tawcester, though of course we always call him Loofah . . . and said they were relations and Loofah thought for some reason that the decent thing would be to invite them down for a weekend. Which would all have been creamy éclair, had they left at the end of the weekend. Which they didn’t. They stuck on like barnacles to a ship’s bottom. And because they’re family, we’re expected to entertain the lumps of toad-spawn for as long as they choose to stay here.

‘I keep saying they should go back to Russia, but for some reason apparently they can’t go back to Russia.’

‘The reason they can’t go back to Russia,’ announced an approaching voice that trilled like quicksilver, ‘is because of the Revolution.’

Blotto looked round as his sister Twinks wafted in on a wave of more exquisite perfume than that to which the stable was accustomed. Her beauty was, as ever, flawless. Hair so blonde as almost to be silver, cut in a fashionable bob, surrounded a perfectly shaped face whose ivory pallor was enlivened by the rose-red of her lips and the paler pink of her cheeks. Under the pleasing arches of her eyebrows sparkled a pair of azure eyes, whose colour darkened at times of high emotion almost to the depth of sapphires. Her slight figure was gracefully draped in a short dress of silver-grey silk above white silk stockings. She was the kind of iconic woman to elicit paeans of praise from sensitive poets. Though from the kind of people she met in her social circle she was more likely to hear cries of ‘By jingo, you’re a proper corker!’

Being her brother, Blotto of course didn’t notice any of this. All he did notice was that, like his, her disposition had lost its customary sunniness. ‘What’s pulled your face down the wrong side, Twinks me old biscuit barrel?’ he asked.

‘It’s Sergei,’ she replied.

‘Sergei Bashusky?’

‘How many other Sergeis do you know?’ she demanded with uncharacteristic pettishness.

‘Not a great many,’ her brother was forced to confess. ‘Anyway, what’s the stencher done to tweak your toenails?’

‘He’s fallen in love with me,’ Twinks replied as though announcing some global epidemic.

‘Oh, come on, me old frying pan, you ought to be used to that by now. Ever since I can remember, boddoes have been falling for you like giraffes on an ice rink.’

‘I know, but none of them has been as persistent as Sergei Bashusky. He hangs on like a burr to a beagle’s belly.’

‘But I thought you were quite good at dampening down chaps’ ardour, Twinks.’

‘Yes, usually I can scrub ’em off my dance card with no twinges. But with Sergei it’s different.’

‘Is that because he’s Russian?’

‘Could be. Never the most cheery of races, I’ve heard. They’d take brollies to the French Riviera in August. So maybe that’s what makes Sergei say what he says.’

‘And what does he say?’

‘He says if I don’t love him as much as he loves me, then he’ll coffinate himself.’

‘Toad-in-the-hole!’ said Blotto. ‘What, so you don’t come up with the silverware and then he’ll string a rope over a rafter?’

‘I think his favoured method is a revolver.’

‘Well, I’ll be jugged like a hare! What a wonky wheeze! Poor boddo’s not even out of his teens, is he? Can’t imagine why anyone would want to say “Goodbye, sunshine” at that age,’ said Blotto with complete honesty. His mind could not encompass the idea of someone feeling so low as to contemplate such extreme measures.

‘Mind you,’ he said encouragingly, ‘I’ve heard that a lot of boddoes who say that kind of globbins don’t mean it. They’re just crying fox.’

‘Wolf,’ said Twinks.

‘Sorry? Not on the same page, me old bread bin.’

‘The expression is “cry wolf”, not “cry fox”.’

‘Oh, that’s a bit of a rum baba.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, we don’t have any wolves in this country, do we? Whereas we’ve got lots of foxes.’ He patted the neck of his hunter affectionately. ‘Though there soon won’t be so many of them if Mephistopheles and I have anything to do with it.’

‘Yes.’ Twinks had long ago learnt that there were some conversations with her brother that were not worth pursuing, so she moved on. ‘But the wasp in the jam in this case is that I don’t know whether Sergei really means it or not. I mean, if I just dismiss his suggestion with a tinkling laugh and he goes on to pop some lead in his brainbox . . . well, I’m going to feel just the tidgiest bit responsible . . .’

‘Guilty?’

‘No, I didn’t say “guilty”. You should know, Blotto, that people of our class never feel guilty for anything they’ve done. Otherwise we couldn’t maintain our fine historical traditions of mutilating serfs, making money from the slave trade and being rude to the servant class . . . oh, and waiters. Could we?’

‘No,’ her brother agreed. Then he had a thought. This was an event of such relative infrequency that he could never restrain a huge beam when it happened. ‘I say, Twinks me old nailbrush, I’ve just had a buzzbanger of an idea.’

‘What is it, Blotto me old china toothmug?’

‘Well . . .’ The beam spread further across his impossibly handsome face. ‘If you were to say to Sergei Bashusky that his advances towards you are about as welcome as a snail in your salad and, so far as you’re concerned, you’d like him to drop off the edge of the world . . .’

‘Ye-es,’ said Twinks cautiously. She’d heard too many of her brother’s ideas over the years to be overly optimistic about their practicability.

‘. . . then,’ he went on, ‘Sergei might well take his revolver to some quiet and out-of-the-way place . . . and coffinate himself!’

‘I’m not sure that I—’

‘Wait!’ Blotto held up a hand to interrupt his sister. ‘I haven’t finished yet. Then all you have to do is get Count Bashusky to fall in love with you, then turn him down and – presuming these things run in Russian families, which they probably do – you tell him to strike his tents too, and he’ll go off with a revolver to some quiet and out-of-the-way place and . . . So then you’d be two down. All you’d have to do next is to get Countess Bashuskaya and Masha to fall in love with you . . . then you turn them down . . . they go to some quiet and out-of-the-way place . . . they coffinate themselves and . . .’ Blotto spread his hands wide in appreciation of his own genius ‘. . . we no longer have any of the Bashusky family getting under our feet and up our noses at Tawcester Towers!’

There was a long silence. Then Twinks said, ‘Hm . . . But, Blotto me old windscreen wiper, do you really think that fits in with the Lyminster code, the principles of noblesse oblige? To behave as you suggest would be absolutely outside the rule book for people of our breeding.’

Blotto didn’t contest what she said. Though he still thought his idea was a real buzzbanger, he could not resist the force of his sister’s argument.

‘Oh, broken biscuits,’ he said, with the vehemence of the disappointed.

‘I want to go back to Moscow,’ announced Masha, for maybe the fiftieth time that day. She stood by the mantelpiece, with one elbow on the marble surface and a cheek resting on her drooping hand. Her dress, highly fashionable though it had been at the court of St Petersburg in 1917, was now faded and darned in many places. (Twinks, who was by nature generous, had suggested to her mother that she might offer her distant cousin some of the elegant cast-offs from her own wardrobe, but had received a characteristic rebuke from the Dowager Duchess who said, ‘Great heavens, no! We don’t want to encourage the stenchers.’)

In similar pose, like a matching bookend, Masha’s mother Countess Lyudmilla Bashuskaya, also had an elbow on the mantelpiece and a cheek resting on a drooping hand. Her dress too had a shabby, dated look, making her appear older than her years.

Either side of mother and daughter, again with elbows resting on the mantelpiece, stood Igor and Sergei Bashusky. The Count was wearing some kind of military uniform decorated with an excessive amount of Ruritanian frogging in tarnished gold. Across the expanse of his slightly grubby white waistcoat stretched a dull red sash, pinned to the material by some meaningless Romanov insignia. From his sagging bloodhound face a moustache trailed like disheartened wisteria.

Sergei’s moustache was even less impressive. Blonder than his father’s, his facial hair hardly registered. The fair semi-circle on his upper lip could have been the result of over-enthusiastic drinking of a cup of milk. It did not make him look older than his years – rather the reverse. His pimply face also bore witness to his extreme youth. So did his thin knobbly body, which seemed to be all elbows. He looked as though he was barely into his teens, let alone out of them.

And Sergei had clearly been a smaller lad when his clothes were tailored for him. Now his jacket was cramped across his shoulders and had no hope of being buttoned up across his chest. His discoloured beige trousers stood at half-mast up his legs, revealing between their ending and the top of his boots an expanse of much-darned and tightly suspended sock.

(Twinks had suggested helping the Count out with garments from her late father’s wardrobe and offering Sergei some clothes which Blotto had grown out of, but again the Dowager Duchess had put the kibosh on the suggestion. ‘If we let them start to feel comfortable here, Honoria, we’ll never see the back of them.’ And Twinks had to concede that her mother had a point.)

Masha let out another lengthy sigh before repeating, ‘I want to go back to Moscow.’

Blotto was getting very sick of his distant cousin’s moaning. From what he’d heard of Moscow, it sounded pretty much of a swamp-hole and how anyone could want to spend time there rather than at Tawcester Towers baffled his intellect (which, it has to be said, did not require a great deal to baffle it). Apart from any o. . .