Death Wears a Mask (33 page)

He looked down at me, his expression not quite as pleasant as it had been a moment ago. The faint warning bell that had been going off in my head seemed to get louder.

“There's no need for you to rush away.”

I looked at him warily. There was something in his tone that I didn't quite like, a hint of something dangerous beneath the light words.

“I'm afraid I must be getting back.”

“Or you could stay, and we could take advantage of our time alone.”

“I beg your pardon?” I had heard him correctly, but I thought I would give him a chance to retract it.

“I believe I've made myself clear enough,” he said. “Surely you haven't misinterpreted it.”

I felt a surge of irritation at his insinuation and at the direction in which this conversation was headed. I was not certain how he had come to believe that I would be in any way receptive to advances.

“It appears you are under some misapprehension about me, Mr. Foster,” I said coolly, hoping to put the conversation to rest.

It didn't seem to have worked, for he smiled, and it was not a very nice smile. “Come now, Mrs. Ames. You needn't play the prude. After all, you've been toying with Dunmore. Well, I won't let that worry me. You wouldn't be the first woman we've shared.”

I was not easily given to embarrassment, but I flushed at his crudeness.

“There is nothing untoward occurring between Lord Dunmore and myself,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady in the face of my growing anger and repugnance. I pushed past him and reached the door, but he pressed his hand against it and prevented me from opening it.

“You can protest all you like, but we both know the truth.”

“Please let me past, Mr. Foster.” My voice was calm, though, in truth, I was both furious and alarmed. His posture made it very clear that he did not intend to let me out of the room.

He smiled again. “I don't think you really want to go. I've known many women like you. You're tired of your husband's philandering and want to get even. Perhaps you're just bored and looking for excitement. In either case, I can offer you a remedy.”

“I don't want…”

“I think you do.” He stepped closer, pressing his body against mine as his hands dropped to my waist. I tried to step back and create a space between us, but he propelled me backward, pressed me between himself and the wall near the door.

“Let me go at once,” I said. I considered screaming, but I doubted very much I would be heard above the noise of the ball.

I put my hands against his chest to push him back, but it only seemed to encourage him. “Don't play hard to get, Mrs. Ames.”

He tried to kiss me then, and I turned my face away, pushing against him as hard as I could. He was strong, lean, and muscled from his years on the tennis court, and I didn't move him in the slightest. I felt the first surge of real fear as I realized he did not intend to release me.

“I like a woman with fight in her,” he said with a laugh. His mouth dropped to my neck, and I tensed at the sensation of his lips on my skin.

“Mr. Foster, let me go,” I demanded, struggling against him as hard as I could.

He grasped my arms, his fingers boring into my skin, as he pressed me more tightly against the wall. His eyes came up to mine, and there was something unpleasant in them. “I'm tired of playing games with you.” He tried to kiss me again, and when I turned my face away he whispered something very coarse in my ear.

I'm afraid he gave me no choice. I brought my knee up quickly and very hard.

He released me and staggered back, doubled over and swearing vigorously. I stepped quickly past him, pulling open the door. “I do not play games, Mr. Foster.”

I left the room without a backward glance.

 

29

UNDER ANY OTHER
circumstances, I would have left the house at once. As it was, I could not leave before our plot had been carried out. I just had to be sure to steer clear of Mr. Foster for the rest of the evening. I wondered if I should tell Inspector Jones what had happened, but I doubted anything much could be done about it. It was my word against Mr. Foster's, after all.

I could scarcely believe it myself. Mr. Foster had never appeared anything but pleasant and polite, the very picture of a gentleman. Then again, I knew perfectly well how deceiving appearances could be. It only took the right circumstances for the mask to drop away.

One thing I now knew. Mr. Foster was a very likely suspect. If he was capable of treating women in such a fashion, I didn't doubt for a moment that he might be capable of worse.

I was so lost in thought, still shaking with anger and the residue of fear, that I didn't hear the voice until it had called me three times.

“Mrs. Ames.”

I looked up and saw Vivian Garmond standing near the stairs.

“Hello, Mrs. Garmond,” I said, trying to compose myself.

“Might I speak to you for a moment?”

I looked back at the door to the sitting room. Mr. Foster had yet to emerge, but I didn't particularly want to be there when he did.

“Certainly,” I told her. I was not at all in the mood for another confrontation at present, but I supposed now was as good a time as any to talk to her.

“There's a little room just this way,” she told me. She led me without hesitation down the wood-paneled corridor just beyond the sitting room, obviously familiar with the house. She stopped before a door and opened it, switching on the lights, and we stepped inside. It was a small study, the impersonal décor indicating it was not much used.

She closed the door behind us and turned to me. “I saw you go into the sitting room, and I knew that he was with you, so I waited outside,” she said. “Much longer, and I would have come in.”

“Mrs. Garmond, please believe me when I say there is nothing between me and the viscount.”

She shook her head. “No, Mrs. Ames. I was talking about Nigel Foster.”

I frowned, confused.

She hesitated, as though trying to decide something. Then she went on in a quiet, steady voice, her sad, dark eyes meeting mine. “I know what people say about me, Mrs. Ames. I see the way they look at me with contempt, how they avoid talking to me whenever they can.”

I wasn't sure what to make of what she was telling me, so I waited.

“People believe that my son is Alexander's. Well, he isn't.”

I was surprised. Frankly, I wasn't sure she was telling the truth, but the paternity of her son was none of my affair, and I certainly didn't intend to judge her for it.

She must have read the sympathy in my expression, for she went on. “I think I can trust you to keep this to yourself, Mrs. Ames,” she said. “I … I was married to Mr. Garmond very briefly before his death. Alexander came along later. But when I came home afterward and people started talking, I let them. Alexander doesn't care what people think. He never has. And it was better people thinking my son is his than knowing the truth. You see, Mr. Garmond was not my son's father either. Nigel Foster is.”

I stared at her. This I had not been expecting.

She continued in a calm voice, as though it was someone else's story she was telling from memory. “We were in Greece at the same time, and I got caught up in the romance of an affair with a handsome, charming tennis star. I fell quickly for him, but our romance was short-lived. By the time I discovered I was expecting a child, he had left the country. Mr. Garmond came along then, and shortly after we met he asked me to marry him. I accepted, but he died unexpectedly of an illness, and I found myself quite alone and pregnant in a strange country. It was then I met Alexander. He was very kind to me. I gave birth to my son in Greece, and Alexander accompanied us home.”

“Did you ever tell Mr. Foster he had a child?” It was none of my business, but I couldn't stop myself from asking.

She shook her head. “I didn't want him to know. You see, he's not a good man. I realized that almost at once. There were always other women, a great many of them. And he … he has a bit of a violent streak. He expects people to give him what he wants, and he is willing to take it if they don't.”

This I had seen firsthand.

“He was engaged once to a young woman, but I had heard they broke it off. Did you hear that?”

“Yes,” I said, remembering what Mrs. Roland had told me.

“They said she had been in an accident of some sort, but the truth of it was that he beat her and she fell down the stairs.”

I stared at her, horrified. “Why wasn't he arrested?”

“I can only assume she was too afraid to tell what had happened. I counted myself fortunate to have parted ways with him, and I had never thought to see him again. But then we were both invited to the Barringtons' dinner parties. I tried to act normally, as though we didn't have history, but it soon became apparent that he wanted to … renew our acquaintance. That night at the ball, he had followed me upstairs and tried to push me into one of the bedrooms. We struggled, and it was only when someone came along that I managed to slip away. I think he intended to move on to someone else after that. I was, well, hiding in one of the bedrooms when the shot sounded.”

I thought of the bruises I had seen on her chest at the hat shop. That explained them, her uneasiness when I had mentioned Nigel Foster, and why she had lied about being in the ballroom when the murder had happened.

“I don't think he would have cared about me in the slightest, if it hadn't been for Alexander. But once he knew I cared for someone else, he decided he would stop at nothing. It isn't as though he loves me. He only wanted to prove that he could have me.”

An athlete's competitiveness, I thought. Combined with the violent streak of a ruthless man, it might prove deadly.

“Nigel's attentions made Alexander jealous at first, though he'd never admit it. But things have often been uneasy between us. We've quarreled frequently, almost since the beginning. He is kind but often thoughtless. He always does just as he pleases with no consideration for anyone else. Nigel's return to London was just the final straw. Alexander and I had a terrific row and said some terrible things to one another. Until that night at the Barringtons' home, we hadn't seen each other in weeks. Mrs. Barrington didn't know, of course, and I think it was all rather awkward for her.”

It made sense that Lord Dunmore had begun dangling after me that night. Perhaps it had been his own attempt at inducing jealousy in the woman he loved. I never ceased to be amazed at the games we play with the people we love. I had been guilty of it myself, to some degree.

“I've been planning to go away,” she said, “saving money to go to my sister in Australia. Then I went to see him a few nights ago, and … Well, I thought it might be possible to make amends. But now I just don't know. We quarreled again tonight…”

“Was it about the diamond?” I asked, hoping to make amends for that at least. “There's an explanation.”

She shook her head. “It wasn't that. It's just so many things,” she said sadly. “I think Alexander cares for me, in his way, but I can't go on the way I have been. I just can't.”

“I'm sorry,” I told her. I could think of nothing else to say. I knew only too well that one-sided devotion just wasn't enough.

“I just thought you should know,” she said, turning toward the door. “I didn't like to leave the country without someone knowing the truth.”

I stood in the room for a moment when she had gone, digesting what she had told me. I didn't know what to make of this unexpected confidence. While I did not wish sympathy to bring down my guard, her story had had the ring of truth to it, and I didn't believe she was the killer.

I felt sorry for her, and I hoped that, if she could not find happiness here, she would find it in Australia, starting a new life with her son.

The clock on the wall chimed eleven, drawing me back to the matter at hand. I had informed all the suspects of the location of the Dunmore Diamond. I supposed I needed to go upstairs and see if the trap would have any effect.

I went out into the hall and was walking back toward the foyer but stopped before turning the corner when I heard voices.

I recognized one of the speakers as Milo. His arrival did not so much catch my attention as did the fact that there was a woman with him.

They were speaking in French.

I hadn't seen Helene Renault at the ball tonight, but I could think of no one else with whom my husband would be conversing in that particular language.

“Come into this room with me,” she was saying. “I must speak to you.”

I hazarded a glance around the corner and saw them enter the sitting room in which my earlier dramatic scene had been enacted. Luckily, they did not close the door completely behind them.

Naturally, I did what any self-respecting wife would do and moved to listen. I leaned against the wall, hoping that anyone who happened to see me would think I was only resting after a particularly strenuous waltz.

“I had to come and see you tonight,” she told him. She had a low, sultry voice that was only enhanced by the fluidity of her native tongue. It was exactly the kind of voice I would have expected a French seductress to have, and I found it intensely irritating. “I think, perhaps, that you're angry with me, and I couldn't bear that.”

“Not at all,” Milo answered in an amiable tone. “Why should I be?”

“Because we were caught in that photograph. I knew that it would displease you.”

“It wasn't so much the photograph that surprised me.”

“You mean the kiss?” She laughed, a throaty laugh that sounded well-rehearsed. “You didn't like it?”

“It was, shall we say, ill-timed.”

I felt a sinking feeling, as though all my worst suspicions had been confirmed. Milo was chiding her for her indiscretion and nothing more. I wanted to walk away, but I found that I couldn't. Not just yet. I had to know how things really stood between them, the extent to which she had captured my husband's affections.