Strangeways to Oldham

The name was shouted in a glass-shattering screech, which echoed round the vast entrance hall of Belchester Towers. ‘Beauchamp! Where the dickens are you! Come here, at once! Beauchamp!’

Thus, she summoned the one and only other occupier of her vast house. She was standing now, in the entrance hall, holding a piece of paper in her hands; holding it at arm’s length and squinting furiously at it.

‘How may I be of assistance, my lady?’ Beauchamp had appeared at her side as if by magic, his footsteps silent as always on the stone-flagged floor. Lady Amanda didn’t know how he did it, but he had often caused her to jump nearly out of her skin, with this inexplicable trick of his, to move around like a shade, with no intimation at all that he was near her. He was just, suddenly, there.

‘What, in heaven’s name, is this?’ she demanded, thrusting the piece of paper in his face, without preamble.

Beauchamp took the proffered document, and scrutinised it in detail. ‘It would appear to be a fine for speeding, my lady,’ he informed his enraged mistress.

‘Just what I thought, but how the devil can it be? I haven’t had the Rolls out for ages. The thing’s covered in dust and cobwebs, out there in the stables.’ She followed this with a noise that it is only possible to write thus: ‘Hrmph!’

‘It does not concern the Rolls, my lady – it is, in fact, a notice for speeding on your tricycle.’

‘My tricycle? Absolute rot! How could I possibly have been speeding on my trike? Don’t know what the world’s coming to, when a respectable woman can’t even ride her own trike without breaking the law. It’s a load of absolute rot, Beauchamp, and I shall phone the Chief Constable about it. His father used to be a good friend of Daddy’s, you know.’

‘I fear that would do little good, my lady. It states here that you were travelling along the entrance road to the hospital, where the speed limit is only five miles an hour, and you nearly ‘had’ the senior orthopaedic consultant with your conveyance.’

Ignoring him completely, she continued, ‘I mean, what sort of damage can one do, with a tricycle?’

Beauchamp eyed Lady Amanda’s generous figure up and down, considered the weight of the ancient machine she had been propelling, and decided not to voice his conclusion, which was ‘a considerable amount’. ‘And the gentleman mentioned, my lady?’ he prompted her to further explanation.

‘He got out of the way in time, didn’t he? I didn’t exactly hit him!’