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Algernon Montgomery.
Biggles leaned against the wall of the Officers’ Mess, frowning down at the letter in his hand as though reading it a tenth time might magically make the words on the page coalesce into some degree of sense.
He knew who Aunt Adamina was, of course; could still picture the Lacey family matriarch with a shiver of unease when he closed his eyes, though it had been well over a decade since he’d last seen her. But he recalled a sharp woman, with sharp features and sharp wits and a sharp tongue. The tone of today’s letter was sharp, but the old girl must have taken leave of her senses, or else Biggles had, because he could not for the life of him recall having met or even heard of a cousin named Algernon Montgomery.
Yet here it was in stark black and white: instructions to lend an eye to young Algernon, and make sure he kept himself neat and washed behind his ears and stayed away from French girls and French liquor. It was exactly the kind of letter Biggles supposed his aunt would write, but who the devil was Algernon?
Was he a relation of her husband’s, perhaps? He could not be her relation, Biggles knew, for his mother had had one sister and no brothers, and he remembered his aunt’s five children from the one visit the family had paid, shortly before his mother’s death: Frederick, the eldest, serious and scholarly; Percival, Charles’ age but peevish of temperament; Penelope, a vain little creature obsessed with her clothes; Arabella, a quiet little mouse with her nose forever in a book... and Agatha, the smallest, just a shade younger than Biggles, but full of high spirits and mischief. Biggles briefly examined his mental picture of an unruly little girl, fair hair teasing loose from haphazardly tied ribbons and a tear in the skirt of a velvet frock.
If he’d been asked to pick which of his cousins was most likely to display the nerve and ambition required to pitch up in the RFC, Biggles supposed he would have selected Agatha, but that was impossible, of course. He frowned, turning the missive over and over in his hands.
“Be careful the wind doesn’t change!” Mahoney called over as he hastened past to take his Flight up for an Ordinary Patrol. “I shouldn’t like to get stuck with a face like that.”
“No—you’re disadvantaged enough by your own,” Biggles needled back as he folded the letter up again. Reckless ruminating wouldn’t make the matter any clearer, and he rather fancied he could hear the rattle of the tender in the distance, so it looked set to be a short-lived mystery at any rate.
“Cheek!” Mahoney laughed, tossing the word over his shoulder. “I’ve not heard any complaints.”
“Folks would have to get a word in edgewise for that,” Biggles called after him, ignoring the rude gesture he was sure followed this piece of wit in favour of tracking the progress of the approaching tender.
It drew to a halt, and two young officers stepped down. The first paid Biggles no mind, striding off towards the Squadron office with the air of one who knew his way around an airfield; the second scampered towards him with the eager grace of an excited puppy.
“Hallo, cousin!” the newcomer greeted in a high, lilting voice, nodding with a grin at the paper still clutched in Biggles’ hand. “I see you got my letter.”
“Your letter?” Biggles felt his eyebrows shoot up. He eyed the youth in front of him, taking in the dirt-streaked uniform, the overlong fair hair, the smattering of freckles across a pert nose and the wide brown eyes that gave their owner a permanent expression of amused surprise.
“Well, yes,” Agatha Lacey returned brightly. “You don’t suppose Mamma wrote it, do you? She hasn’t any idea that I’m here.”
“You astonish me,” Biggles returned sardonically. “Why the devil are you here, come to that?”
“It seemed like a better use of my time and brains than marrying old Monty Fitzallan-Smythe, which is what dear Mamma would have me do now that I’m finished with school. Apparently finishing school is Paris or bust for the Lacey clan, and Paris is a bust under the current circs. Not having much mind to hitch my wagon to the first middle-aged neighbour to ask for my hand, I thought I’d pop across here and finish myself.”
“You certainly will, if you don’t start taking things seriously! My God, Aggie, you can’t just pitch up at an active airfield just because you feel like it! We’re at war here, and if you wander about in that uniform someone is going to stick you in a cockpit and curse a blue streak when you come down an almighty crack—if you even manage to get the crate off the ground.”
“Oh, I shan’t have any trouble there!” came the confident reply. “You didn’t think I’d written to the Air Board to get myself assigned here without knowing how to fly an aircraft? I’ve had full and proper training from the bright lads at Narborough: fourteen hours on Avros and ten on Camels, thank you very much—and whilst we’re on the subject of thanks, I’ll thank you to remember to address me as Algernon Montgomery.”
“Algernon Montgomery!” Biggles shook his head disgustedly. “Whatever possessed you to come up with that fair moniker? It’s positively frightful!”
“Isn’t it?” His cousin grinned broadly. “It’s exactly the kind of awful thing Mamma loved to foist upon us all. And it’s close enough to ‘Aggie’—or at least, ‘Algy’ is—for it not to be too noticeable if you slip up, but ridiculous enough in its entirety that I’m bound to be addressed by the whole thing for long enough for you to adjust to the change.”
“You’ll be lucky if you live long enough for anyone to remember that mouthful,” Biggles groused. “Most folks they ship out here don’t make it twenty-four hours. If you have a heart, you won’t unpack yet; spare me the bother of packing it all up again tomorrow. I haven’t the time—or the limbs, if your mother ever found out I let you go up.”
“Well, she isn’t going to,” Aggie—Algy!—said defiantly, tilting her chin up in an expression of immovable determination that Biggles well recognised from that long-ago visit. Aggie had always been the first to dream up a madcap scheme. She had been the one to suggest sledding down the grand staircase on tea trays; the fastest at sliding down the banisters; the last one found in every game of hide and seek. If he closed his eyes, Biggles could still see her, clutching a tiny, shivering bundle to her chest as she stamped her little foot, haranguing three village lads for throwing stones at a kitten, so fearless in the face of impossible odds that the older boys had turned tail and fled in the wake of her six-year-old wrath.
If the newly minted Algy Lacey said she could fly a Sopwith Camel, Biggles was inclined to believe her—and God help any Albatross, Fokker or Rumpler that happened to get in her way.
“Well then, Algernon Montgomery,” he said with the merest hint of a smile, “let's go and find you a machine.”