A Curious Beginning (19 page)

Her word could have been a lie, but I would have staked my own life upon that smooth, guileless brow. Lady Cordelia was that rarest of things—a creature without malice. She reminded me of a statue I had seen once in Sicily of a placid Madonna, above worldly cares and sweetly indulgent of those below her.

She went on. “As for my brother, the best way to explain Ambrose is to say he is vague and oblivious. It isn't his fault, of course, but he spends nearly all his time with his collections. He takes almost no notice of the world around him. That is why I have the management of his household. I keep his account books; I organize his staff. I even oversee the rearing of his children since the death of his countess.”

I must have looked surprised, for she paused, and when she spoke again her voice was softer. “I love my brother dearly, Miss Speedwell, but I am not blind to his faults. He would be less than useless at murder. He has no stomach for the gritty realities of life. He couldn't even bring himself to talk about the baron's death with me. One of the advantages of being a lady,” she said with a sudden wry twist of her pretty mouth. “Gentlemen seldom like to discuss unseemly things with us.”

“But unseemly things are often the most interesting,” I pointed out.

“Indeed.” She gave a sudden smile, illuminating her face like a rainbow after a storm. “But we have more pressing matters to speak of than my brother. Is it possible to prove that you were not at the baron's house on the night of his murder?” she asked Stoker.

“Well,” he said, tugging a bit at his collar, “in point of fact, I was with someone.”

“Excellent!” she said, but almost as soon as the word fell from her lips, she followed Stoker's glance to me and gave a little sigh. “If you spent that evening together unchaperoned, I am afraid the damage to Miss Speedwell's reputation will render her a less than desirable witness to your whereabouts.”

“Oh, that is the least of our troubles,” I told her with a wave of the hand. I outlined—as briefly and delicately as clarity would permit—my previous romantic entanglements. “So you see,” I finished, “the Queen's Counsel would label me a harlot and discount entirely any alibi I could provide. Also, I suspect leaving Little Byfield in the company of a gentleman I had only just met and spending the night with him in the privacy of his carriage would not be received at all well.”

True to the maxim that a lady never betrayed shock, Lady Cordelia merely inclined her head. “Is there anything else?” she inquired pleasantly.

Stoker covered his face with his hands. “For the last several days we have been living as man and wife in a traveling show,” he said, his words muffled.

Lady Cordelia gave a brisk sigh. “Well, I don't suppose you could have managed things much worse unless you had actually been found standing over his body with the fossil in hand.”

Stoker winced, dropping his hands. “Is that what killed him? A fossil? The newspaper gave no details.”

Lady Cordelia's sympathy was very nearly palpable. “I sent only the edition with the briefest account. I thought it might be less painful for you to hear the details from a friend rather than read about them in some sensationalist story.” They exchanged a look of understanding. “But I will tell you whatever you need to know. As far as the murder weapon is concerned, the investigators established it was a rather heavy piece of something—a shell, I think it was.”

“An ammonite,” he said flatly. “It was a fossilized shell. I know the one. He always kept it on his desk. What was it, then? A crime of opportunity?”

She shrugged. “The inquest determined it was murder by person or persons unknown. Signs of a brief struggle, and immediate flight when the housekeeper, Mrs. Latham, came to investigate.”

“Was she harmed?”

“She was pushed down quite roughly and hit her head. She remembers nothing, only an impression of darkness and pounding feet. But she will be all right. She has gone to stay with her sister in Brighton,” she said in the same distracted tone. She fell silent a moment, then roused herself, her manner suddenly brisk. “I think it best if we do not apprise his lordship of your presence here just yet. He returned from Cornwall with me and is locked in his study, wrestling with a rather thorny paper he is writing for the
Journal of Antiquity
. He would not thank me for the interruption. We will hope that by the time he is finished, the matter will be resolved. In the interim, you must stay here in the Belvedere.”

“Are you certain we will not disturb his lordship?” I asked.

“My dear Miss Speedwell, when my brother is engaged in his writing, you could walk into his study unclothed and take a nap upon his desk and he would not notice. Besides, we cannot hope to hide you from him forever. Merely until we can choose a propitious time to tell him. Now, I shall require a scarf or glove. Some piece of raiment that I may use to introduce your scent to the dog.”

I unwrapped the bit of scarlet silk I had worn at my throat and handed it over.

“That will do nicely. If you happen to see a creature that looks like an overgrown bear roaming about, that is Betty. Once she has your scent, she will not harm you.”

“Betty?”

“Short for Betony,” Stoker informed me. “His lordship's sheepdog from the Caucasus. Two hundredweight on a lean day.”

“Heavens,” I murmured.

Stoker turned to Lady Cordelia. “What about the gardeners? And the children?”

“The children are away,” she told him. “The late countess's family like to have them for a few weeks at the end of spring each year. The younger ones, that is. Hugo and Casper are at school. As for the gardeners, so long as you take the path back through the shrubbery to the little gate, you should not be seen. They are busy planting an herb knot near the kitchens and the work is exacting.” She gestured to a narrow door in the paneled wall. “Various earls through the centuries have used this as a sort of sanctum, a place to escape the family. They fitted it out with various comforts. You will find the necessary domestic offices in there, a sink and . . . and, er, other plumbing conveniences. The Medici cabinet by the stove has a few tins of cake and tea and other things to eat. Please help yourselves, and I will bring more provisions later. In the meantime, rest and make yourselves at home among the collections. I think you will enjoy them, Miss Speedwell, and Stoker has always longed for the chance to have a good rummage.”

“You have thought of everything,” Stoker said quietly.

A touch of rose blossomed on her cheeks at the compliment. “I try.” She stood and extended her hand to me. “Miss Speedwell, a moment?”

I took her hand and walked with her to the door, where we were just out of Stoker's earshot.

“Miss Speedwell, it is not my place to say this, nor your responsibility to respond, but I hope you will do your best to keep him occupied.”

“I am afraid I don't take your meaning, my lady,” I began.

She gave me a thoughtful look. “Then let me speak plainly. By whatever means necessary, I hope you will keep him from boredom. It is the demon that torments him and drives him to drink. It will destroy him if he lets it. And we who are his friends must not permit that to happen.”

I nodded. “I will do what I can, Lady Cordelia.”

She squeezed my hand and slipped away, graceful as a fawn as she departed.

I returned to the snug and fixed him with a challenging eye. “You have heard what Lady Cordelia suggests. That we hide out here in safety until the police have found the culprit.”

“I did,” he said in a perfectly reasonable tone.

“And you agree that this would be the most logical, sensible course of action?”

“I do.”

“And you understand I mean to do precisely the opposite?”

His mouth curved into a slow smile. “I do. Where shall we begin?”

I returned the smile with one of my own. “At the beginning, of course.”

O
ver tea and a tin of shortbread we plotted our strategy.

“Let us establish a working hypothesis upon which we both can agree,” I began.

“The trouble is, we have bloody few facts upon which we can hypothesize,” he grumbled.

I waved a hand. “A trifling matter. We shall turn our attention to the fact at hand. The baron was murdered in his own study. Not by either of us,” I added firmly. “Further, we may infer that the crime was one of passion and not the culmination of some monstrous scheme.”

“And how may we infer that?”

“The lack of a weapon. The murderer seized a paperweight, which you have identified as an ammonite belonging to the baron, a piece that rested upon his desk. It was the perfect weapon of opportunity for a careless villain who had brought no weapon of his own.”

“Or a clever villain who would rather use a weapon belonging to the victim than something which can be traced to him,” he pointed out.

I frowned. “I like my theory better.”

“I had little doubt you would,” he conceded graciously. “Carry on.”

“In either event, the man—I think we can agree it was a man?”

He nodded. “Max was tall. I should think a woman would have to be uncommonly strong to have wielded that ammonite to such effect.” An expression of singular distaste had settled upon his mouth and I hurried on.

“So our man was either a creature of sudden temper who quarreled with the baron and seized the nearest weapon at hand or a cool fellow with a cunning brain who plotted this out.”

“Without knowing which, it will be difficult to track him,” Stoker mused.

“Why so?”

He shrugged. “Tracking is my stock in trade, a skill I learned as a boy and perfected as a man. One must understand one's prey. I can track a jaguar through a jungle for forty miles and never lose him, but this—”

He looked suddenly tired then, and I realized what the past days had cost him. He had borne the loss of a beloved friend—one of the few he could claim. He had held my life in his hands, and he had confronted the ghosts of his past at every turn.

I thought of Lady Cordelia's parting words. Deliberately, I reached into my bag and withdrew the flask of aguardiente. I poured a measure into his teacup and handed it over.

He drank it slowly, the color coming back into his face as he sipped. I could almost see the warmth passing through him, kindling his blood where it had run cold and slow.

“Now,” I said with an air of command, “try again. If you were to track the baron's murderer, where would you begin?”

“In the baron's study,” he said promptly. “It is the last place we know the fellow has been.”

“But surely the police—”

“The police are only as good as the men they send. They are a motley crew, composed of respectable tradesmen's sons and vagabonds, liars, and clerks. Some are no better than the filth they arrest.”

“You have no cause to think well of them,” I observed.

“I do not.” His mouth was a thin, hard, bitter line. “If they sent a blackguard who walks a beat to collect protection money and harass the prostitutes, the killer could have left a case full of calling cards and they still would not have found him. If they sent one of their best, then the place will have been gone over thoroughly. Even then, something may have been missed.”

“Very well. We shall begin at the baron's. You will apply yourself to seeking out the spoor of this particular leopard,” I said with some relish.

“And what will you be doing?” he demanded.

“I will be attempting to discover what the fellow was after.”

“After?”

“Yes. He must have come for something. What was it? A quarrel over property? A personal misunderstanding? A lady?”

He shook his head slowly. “Max had no romantic attachments, not in all the years I have known him. He never spoke of anyone, at least. I always had the sense that he had no interest in love affairs.”

“Really? I formed quite the opposite impression. I think he was a great deal in love with my mother.”

“Why?”

“I haven't the faintest. But during our journey to London, he mentioned something about how I looked exactly like her. Something in his manner, the soft way he spoke of her. It was quite moving.”

He sat back in his chair, his mouth now slack with disbelief. “I could smother you with that tea cozy and no one would blame me,” he said in a voice thick with emotion.

“Whyever should you want to?”

“Because, you daft, impossible woman, you have been concealing a possible motive from me for the whole of the time we have been together!”

“What motive? I merely said he seemed attached to my mother.”

“And I am telling you, he had no love affairs. If he loved her, it was
the
love affair of his life. Something possibly worth his life, even.”

“Rubbish,” I said stoutly. “He told me nothing at all about her save that I look like her and that he would explain everything to me when he had the chance.”

“A chance that never came,” Stoker observed. “Rotten luck for you. I am sorry.”

I shrugged. “At least I know a little more now than I once did. The baron knew her, and that is a place to begin.”

“Indeed.”

“So how do we get into the baron's house? The poor misused housekeeper is gone to Brighton,” I reminded him.

“Another point for your argument that the killer has not a cool and cunning brain,” he told me. “He was interrupted in searching the study. A more experienced fiend would have simply killed Mrs. Latham as well and carried on. He hurried out, giving her a knock instead.”

“Searching the study,” I began.

He lifted his eyes to mine. “Like your cottage.”

“The same fellow?”

“Possibly. But what can he be looking for?”

“That is what we must ascertain. I presume a spot of housebreaking is in order?”

He grinned, a smile of rare and devilish charm. He dipped into his pocket with his fingertips. “No need. I have a key.”

“Then we need only wait for nightfall,” I said. “What shall we do with ourselves in the meantime?”

His gaze brightened, but before he could speak, Lady Cordelia returned carrying a basket. “I have brought food—enough for tonight and tomorrow morning. I thought it best if I did not come down here every time. It might arouse suspicion.”

I peered into the basket and saw a large cheese, a few roasted fowls, some cold potatoes, wedges of game pie, a loaf of bread, and the remains of a small saddle of beef. There was butter and jam and even a jar of chutney jostling for space with crisp apples.

“Bless you, Lady Cordelia. We shall feast like princes.”

Stoker's gaze slid away from hers, and she tipped her head thoughtfully. “I presume from your guilty air that you intend to ignore my good advice and go out?”

Stoker looked abashed, but I refused to be cowed. “We do.”

“To the baron's, no doubt?”

“Indeed,” I said, willing Stoker to silence. I had the unshakable feeling he would try to apologize for our plan, perhaps even be talked out of it, and I had no intention of permitting that to happen.

“Of course you do. I ought to have suspected it. No creature of feeling and spirit would be content to sit by and let matters take their course. All nature would rebel against it,” she acknowledged. I gave her a gracious nod, pleased she saw things my way.

She sighed. “In that case, here is a revolver,” she said, handing over a small weapon perfectly sized for a lady's hand. “Make certain you leave after eleven. That is when Betony is taken out for her evening patrol of the grounds.”

She left us then, and I realized Stoker had not said a word for the duration of her visit. “What ails you, Stoker? Cat got your tongue?”

He stroked his chin thoughtfully as he stared at the revolver. “I was merely thinking that it may have been a very grave mistake to introduce you to Lady C. If the pair of you ever put your minds to it, you could probably topple governments together.”

I smiled as I pocketed the weapon. “One thing at a time, dear Stoker. One thing at a time.”

•   •   •

Some hours later—after a cold meal of Lady Cordelia's offerings and several games of two-handed whist during which Stoker collected a sizable IOU from me—we ventured forth. I dithered a moment over my hat but in the end opted to lay my favorite rose-bedecked chapeau aside for my second-best, a much smaller and less obtrusive affair decorated with a lush cluster of violets.

Stoker peered at my carpetbag in stupefaction. “How much have you packed in there? It is a veritable Aladdin's cave.”

I held up my hatpin to the light, admiring the slender strength of the steel. “Packing a bag efficiently is simply a matter of spatial understanding,” I told him. I thrust the point of the pin home, skewering the hat neatly to my loose Psyche knot. He eyed the unguarded tip warily, but I noticed in addition to the blade he usually kept in his lanyard, he slid a second into his boot.

“Good heavens, how much trouble are you expecting?” I demanded.

He blew out the candle. “In my experience it is the trouble you do not anticipate that is the most dangerous.” We stood in the darkness for several minutes to let our eyes adjust, saying nothing, scant inches apart. I could hear him breathing, long slow breaths, and smiled to myself. He was calm—almost unnaturally so, and this was precisely what I required in a partner in adventure. At my signal we moved to the door, slipping into the night. He took my hand and led the way through the grounds of Bishop's Folly, following the path we had taken earlier in the day. I expected he would drop my hand once we left the property, but he kept it clasped in his, even as we eased out of the gate and through the darkened streets.

He chose alleyways and quiet parks rather than the well-lighted thoroughfares crammed with the vehicles of the fashionable. We crept across silent squares and ducked into areas thick with shadows. Whilst society went about its business in the broad roads we skirted, the creatures we passed in the shadows were those who made their living by their wits—prostitutes and vagabonds, thieves and blackguards, bent upon their degradations. Once, when we heard the sharp step of a constable upon his rounds, Stoker whisked me into the dark corner of a tradesman's yard, pushing me up against the brick wall as his arms came firmly about me. I hitched my leg around his waist and twined my arms about his neck, knotting my fingers in his hair as he pressed his face into my neck, nuzzling the delicate skin of my ear. The bobby's light flashed our way, illuminating a stocking-clad leg and a glimpse of thigh tight in Stoker's grip. The bobby chuckled, no doubt taking us for a wayward maidservant and her panting swain, and went about his business. We waited a moment, clinging to each other as his footsteps faded into the distance.

Stoker pulled away just enough for me to see his eyes gleaming in the shadows. “He is gone,” he said hoarsely.

But his hand still rested upon my thigh and my hands were still knotted in his hair. “In that case, we ought to let go of each other,” I said evenly.

He sprang away from me, smoothing his hair as I straightened my skirts. “I must apologize—” he began.

I waved an airy hand. “Think nothing of it. Your quick thinking under the circumstances was commendable,” I told him.

He slanted me a curious look but said nothing more.

Arm in arm, we proceeded on our way. After a rather uneventful passage across Hyde Park—we inadvertently disturbed a pair of male lovers entwined beneath a tree who cursed us roundly—we emerged near Curzon Street. Another several minutes saw us safely into the baron's street, a quiet but respectable address, and Stoker led me down to the area, where we gained entrance through the tradesman's door.

There is a stillness to empty houses, and this house was quieter still. It was as if nothing had ever moved there, no one had ever walked its echoing passages. Stoker had dropped my hand when we entered the basement, but as we crept upstairs to the main floor, I reached for his, suddenly very much in need of his warmth. The curtains had been drawn in the front of the house, but not the rear, and the shadows shifted as we walked, as though our very presence stirred something that had been resting only lightly.

“Do you think the baron haunts it?” I whispered.

He whirled on me, nearly upsetting an elephant's foot stuffed with an assortment of walking sticks. “Haunts? Don't be daft.”

“It isn't daft. Some of the greatest scientific minds of our time believe in ghosts.”

He squeezed my hand with a trifle more pressure than necessary. “This is no time to debate the mental shortcomings of Alfred Russel Wallace,” he said in an acid tone. His hand was suddenly cold, and I realized that for him, the notion of the baron's ghost might not be entirely academic. If the old fellow haunted the place, the appearance of his specter would be far more upsetting for Stoker than for me. I returned the squeeze and drew him back a little.

“What are you doing?”

“I am going into the study first. If he is haunting the place, you shan't want to see that. I shall get rid of him.”

“How? By menacing him with your hatpin?”

“You needn't resort to sarcasm, Stoker. I am certain I will think of something. In the meantime, behind me, if you please.”

He muttered something profane but did as I bade him. I opened the door he indicated, pausing a moment to register my impressions.

“Well?” he asked nastily. “Any lingering ectoplasm, or are we free to proceed?”

I stepped forward. “Quite free,” I replied, my tone distracted. Quick to sense a change in mood, Stoker put a hand to my shoulder.

“What is it?”

I sniffed. “I don't know. There is something here. I cannot place it. It certainly is no ghost. Do you think we might risk a light?”