The Secret History of the Pink Carnation Read Free

novels at an impressionable age), the politics of the Harvard history department (too complicated to even begin to go into), and why I’d decided to come to England. When the conversation began to verge onto what had gone wrong with Grant (everything), I hastily changed the subject, asking Mrs Selwick-Alderly if she had heard any stories about the nineteenth-century spies as a small child.
    ‘Oh, dear, yes!’ Mrs Selwick-Alderly smiled nostalgically into her teacup. ‘I spent a large part of my youth playing spy with my cousins. We would take it in turns to be the Purple Gentian and the Pink Carnation. My cousin Charles always insisted on playing Delaroche, the evil French operative. The French accent that boy affected! It put Maurice Chevalier to shame. After all these years, it still makes me laugh just to think of it. He would paint on an extravagant moustache – in those days, all the best villains had moustaches – and put on a cloak made out of one of Mother’s old wraps, and storm up and down the lawn, shaking his fist and swearing vengeance against the Pink Carnation.’
    ‘Who was your favourite character?’ I asked, charmed by the image.
    ‘Why, the Pink Carnation, of course.’
    We smiled over the rims of our teacups in complete complicity.
    ‘But you have an added interest in the Pink Carnation,’ Mrs Selwick-Alderly said meaningfully. ‘Your dissertation, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Oh! Yes! My dissertation!’ I outlined the work I had done so far: the chapters on the Scarlet Pimpernel’s missions, the Purple Gentian’s disguises, the little I had been able to discover about the way they ran their leagues.
    ‘But I haven’t been able to find anything at all about the Pink Carnation,’ I finished. ‘I’ve read the old newspaper accounts, of course, so I know about the Pink Carnation’s more spectacular missions, but that’s it.’
    ‘What had you hoped to find?’
    I stared sheepishly down into my tea. ‘Oh, every historian’sdream. An overlooked manuscript entitled How I Became the Pink Carnation and Why. Or I’d settle for a hint of his identity in a letter or a War Office report. Just something to give me some idea of where to look next.’
    ‘I think I may be able to help you.’ A slight smile lurked about Mrs Selwick-Alderly’s lips.
    ‘Really?’ I perked up – literally. I sat so bolt upright that my teacup nearly toppled off my lap. ‘Are there family stories?’
    Mrs Selwick-Alderly’s faded blue eyes twinkled. She leant forward conspiratorially. ‘Better.’
    Possibilities were flying through my mind. An old letter, perhaps, or a deathbed message passed along from Selwick to Selwick, with Mrs Selwick-Alderly the current keeper of the trust. But, then, if there were a Selwick Family Secret, why would she tell me? I abandoned imagination for the hope of reality. ‘What is it?’ I asked breathlessly.
    Mrs Selwick-Alderly rose from the sofa with effortless grace. Setting her teacup down on the coffee table, she beckoned me to follow. ‘Come see.’
    I divested myself of my teacup with a clatter, and eagerly followed her towards the twin windows that looked onto the square. Between the windows hung two small portrait miniatures, and for a disappointed moment, I thought she meant merely to lead me to the pictures – there didn’t seem to be anything else that might warrant attention. A small octagonal table to the right of the windows bore a pink-shaded lamp and a china candy dish, but little else. To the left, a row of bookcases lined the back of the room, but Mrs Selwick-Alderly didn’t so much as glance in that direction.
    Instead, she knelt before a large trunk that sat directly beneath the portrait miniatures. I’ve never been into domestic art, or material history, or whatever they’re calling it, but I’d spent enough afternoons loafing around the British galleries of the Victoria and Albert to recognise it as early eighteenth century, or an extraordinarily good