The Dark Enquiry (16 page)

Sir Morgan and I exchanged glances of amazement. “I have never known her to do such a thing. She must like you very much indeed.”

“I am honoured,” I told him, and I was rather surprised to find that I meant it. She was a lovely creature, and the interlude had been well worth the price of a peacock feather.

I made an effort to retrieve the subject we had been pursuing before Nin’s appearance.

“Will you be able to finish the book?”

He lifted one shoulder in a theatrical shrug. “Perhaps. I hope to, but if I cannot, I might turn the subject into an epic poem instead, something Byronic. Pity, really, as I think it would make a far better novel, but if I cannot capture the essence of Madame, I will have no choice.”

We settled in for a cosy gossip then, consuming two more pots of green tea and several more plates of biscuits. He was charming company, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly until the clock—a pretty affair of quite good
chinoiserie
—struck the hour.

“Good Lord,” I cried. “Is it really so late? I must fly.”

He kissed me on both cheeks and urged me to come again.

“If only for Nin’s sake. And now that we are known to one another, I will know you better,” he proclaimed. I agreed and took my leave of him, returning to the carriage with a sour Morag.

“What ails you?” I demanded.

She pursed her lips. “That heathen fellow served me green tea.
Green
. As if that’s a proper colour for a person’s tea,” she groused.

“And did you discover anything of interest from him?”

She flapped an irritable hand. “He didn’t say two words to me, he didn’t. But there was a charwoman come to clean and she told me plenty.”

“Go on,” I said, but I dearly wished she would not. I had felt an instant affinity for my newfound cousin, and I would not like to think he had any hand in Madame’s murder.

“The heathen what wears a turban, he waits upon his master as valet and majordomo,” she informed me. “He brews up the tea on a spirit lamp and the biscuits are brought in, as are all the master’s meals. There’s a charwoman for the heavy work and the valet fellow to look after the master personally. All of the meals are sent in and the laundry sent out. Very economical.”

“Very economical indeed, for a fellow who claims to have a great deal of money,” I mused. “Brisbane must make enquiries about that and see if he is as solvent as he claims. So that’s the end of it? No boys kept to run errands or shine shoes?”

“Not a one. I asked about the errands and the char said the master gives her a coin or two extra to do for him or she finds any passing lad. There’s none attached permanently to the house.”

“Blast,” I muttered.

I contemplated the list of séance guests in my notebook. As much as I would have liked to have found a gentleman with a definitive motive and a kitchen boy in service, I had crossed all of the men from my list, even Sir Morgan. Further investigation would be necessary for each of them, but I strongly believed that each of them either would have wished to keep Madame alive or would have been indifferent to her death. None of them had had a sufficient motive to bring it about, including Sir Morgan. His urbane demeanour had slipped momentarily when we had discussed his book, and I had seen real anguish there as he described his efforts to capture Madame’s character in words. More time with her would certainly have suited his purposes, just as it would have the General. Only Sir Henry had been finished with her, but he had been finished with half a dozen other mediums and no one had reported a rash of murders against the mediums of London. No, he had taken his irritability home and exercised it upon his daughters and that had been the end of it, I was certain.

I clucked my tongue, wondering what I had missed. I put the matter aside and ordered the coach to take us home.

I did not see Brisbane that evening, for he was still engaged upon the case in Richmond until very early in the morning, and over breakfast I took the opportunity to begin to relate to him my activities of the previous day. I told him about my interviews with the general and Sir Henry, as well as Morag’s discoveries—or lack of. His expression grew blacker and blacker as I spoke, and I hurried the matter along by telling him merely that I had learned nothing of significance from my last call and left it at that.

Brisbane shook his head, and I thought I detected a new silver hair in the inky depths. “I ought to lock you in your room,” he commented finally.

“But then you would never have learned all that I had discovered yesterday,” I reminded him. I tried very hard to keep the note of triumph from my voice, but I fear I failed.

“Very true,” he agreed. “Of course, I am not the only one who knows what you were about,” he added, tossing the
London Illustrated Daily News
onto my lap.

I skimmed through the newspaper, and several pages in and below the fold but still quite prominent, I found it—a sketch of me dashing from my carriage to a town house. I looked positively hoydenish, skirts flying, hairpins rattling to the ground, as keen as any hound on the scent of a hare. Ahead of me, a cadaverous Swan rapped on the front door, and behind me, a distraught and rather slatternly looking Morag bent to gather my pins.

I swore softly, and Brisbane did not correct me. “But how—” I began, and broke off as I saw the byline.

“Our ginger-haired American friend.” I swore again, and Brisbane nodded towards the newspaper.

“Sullivan was very thorough. He followed you from here to Portia’s house and then to your first two calls. I don’t suppose it occurred to you to look to take precautions to see if you were being followed?”

“Of course not!” I snapped. “Would it have occurred to you? Do not answer that. If it had, you would have warned me. You cannot fault me here.”

“No,” he acknowledged. “That would be unjust. But I find it curious just the same.”

“What?”

“Sullivan took great pains to follow you, and yet I left the house before you. I am the enquiry agent. Why did he choose to pursue you?”

My mouth felt suddenly dry as I skimmed the blurry text. “He does not connect my calls with Madame, but he makes it quite clear I called upon each of those men in the course of an investigation.”

“The implication is rather nasty,” Brisbane agreed.

We fell to silence then, a terrible silence and the weight of it nearly crushed me. Just when I thought I could bear it no longer, I heard a faint ringing sound, shrill and accusing for all its faintness. After a long moment, Aquinas appeared in the doorway, his expression apologetic.

“The telephone for you, my lady. It is the Earl March.”

I swore yet again and Aquinas pretended not to hear. I rose slowly and made my way around the table, wondering when Father had managed to have a telephone installed at March House. Just as I passed Brisbane, his hand shot out to clamp hard upon my wrist. He turned his head slowly, piercing me with that implacable black gaze. “Do not think this is finished,” he said, and the awful calm in his voice was worse than any anger might have been.

I walked to the telephone with the lagging steps of a doomed queen making her way to the block. I could hear Father raging before I even picked up the earpiece.

“Father,” I said brightly. “I did not realise you had installed a telephone.”

“Of course I have! If it is good enough for that damned upstart the Duke of Marlborough, it’s bloody good enough for the Earl March,” he shouted.

It required a great deal of hubris to refer to a duke with a title of some two hundred years’ duration as an upstart, but I had no chance to raise the point. He launched himself into a tirade against my appearance in the newspaper, permitting me not the slightest word. I let him continue, for there was no possible way of stemming the tide of his ire, and after a quarter of an hour, he ended with an order. I was to come to March House immediately.

“Yes, Father,” I murmured. He ranted again for another half an hour before cutting the connection abruptly. I collected Morag and called for the coach, and to my astonishment, Brisbane was already seated inside, waiting for me.

“You are coming with me to March House?” I asked, my throat tight with gratitude that I should not have to face the ordeal alone.

“Only to make sure there is something left of you for my turn,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“I do not see why you should be so angry. We did agree to work together,” I reminded him.

“We did not agree that you should expose yourself unnecessarily to public speculation and physical danger,” he riposted.

I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a hand. “We will discuss this after his lordship has had a turn at you.”

He said nothing more for the duration of the trip, and I sulked in the corner, sniffing occasionally into my handkerchief. It was not a strategem. Tears did not work upon Brisbane any more than they did my Father. But it gave me something to do while we rode along in our speaking silence.

We arrived far too quickly at March House, and there seemed to be a pall over the place. The butler, Hoots, opened the door and shook his head mournfully at me. “Oh, my lady,” he murmured, and I felt my temper beginning to rise.

“Yes, I know,” I snapped. “Where is he?”

“In the garden,” he said, gesturing beyond the staircase to the garden door as if I had not lived in that house for the whole of my life before marrying Edward. I stormed past him, flinging open the garden doors. I had hoped to catch Father off guard, throw him a little from his planned attack, but my diversion had no effect whatsoever. Father was already engaged in a battle with his hermit. I reached them just as Auld Lachy was brandishing an enormous seashell. With his green robes and long white beard and hair, he looked like Neptune’s slightly mad brother. It was the tea cosy upon his head that rather spoilt the effect.

“Hello, Lachy. That’s a pretty shell you have there,” I said politely.

“Do not take his side,” Father ordered. “I will deal with you in a minute.”

“Aye, you would tell the poor lass to hold her tongue!” Lachy shouted. “You know she would agree with me. A seashell grotto is much to be preferred to a fernery. A fernery! Have you ever heard a thing so ridiculous?” He turned to me, and I spread my hands and gave him a bland smile as I found a place to sit. It looked as though matters might drag on for a bit.

Brisbane discreetly seated himself some little distance away on a painted toadstool. Lachy fashioned garden furniture out of stumps, and this one was one of his best. He shaped and painted them in fanciful designs. My own seat was a great snail with a curiously stern expression.

Lachy looked from me to Brisbane. “Are we to have a tea party then? I am a hermit. That means I want solitude, not a mess of people trailing through my garden as if it were Victoria Station!”

“Your garden!” Father started towards him, his complexion reddening by the moment. “This garden, and everything in it, belongs to me. And if choose to put a fernery in it, I will bloody well do so.”

Lachy crossed his arms over his chest. “The hermitage falls within my purview. It is in the contract.”

“Don’t you even think about lecturing me upon the contract, you impossible Scottish insect. I wrote it,” Father raged.

“And all improvements must be approved by me,” Lachy returned coolly.

Father snapped his jaw shut, which I knew meant—as did Lachy—that the hermit had carried the day. I was rather happy for Lachy; after all, a fernery is usually an exercise in boredom, but I was keenly aware that Father’s ire would be fully directed at me as a result. Triumphant, Lachy tactfully withdrew to his hut, cradling his seashell like an infant.

As if on cue, Father swung around and began to lecture, fluently and with one or two obscure Shakespearean references thrown in for good measure. I heard about the proud name of the Marches being dragged through the mud, the unspeakable constructions that could be put on my actions, the infamy I had called down upon my ancestors. This last was a bit much considering what infamy my ancestors had accomplished in their own time.

“You forgot about the sharpness of a serpent’s tooth,” I put in sulkily.

“Do not speak!” my father thundered, setting off on another round of vituperation.

I hazarded a look round at Brisbane. “Are you going to say anything?”

Brisbane crossed one leg lazily over the other, flicking an imaginary piece of lint from his trousers. “I think he is doing quite well without me.”

“I did not mean for you to help him, I meant to defend me,” I said, huffing slightly in my indignation.

“Do not turn around,” my father ordered. “I am not finished with you.”

The curious thing about Father was that he had two types of tempers. The first was quick to catch, like very dry kindling held to a flame. It burst, burnt itself out and was finished with very little to show for it. It also happened so frequently that most of us children had learned to ignore it entirely. We had discovered that by waiting a quarter of an hour, we could avoid engaging at all when he was in such a mood because it would have passed, quick as a summer storm.

But the second variety was altogether different. It required every mite of his innate theatricality, causing him to pace and rage, holding forth upon our shortcomings like some sort of tragic actor soliloquising the doom of all mankind. These rages were epic, lasting hours if he was not diverted, and occasionally ending with disinheritance. The only consolation was that he always felt so wretched for losing his temper that within hours he would repent and reinstate our allowance and usually send along a nice present.

I had little hope of that this time. He carried on for so long I began to get a little hungry. I had not had much breakfast, and he really had gone on an unconscionable period of time. Just as I pondered the wisdom of ringing for Hoots to bring sandwiches, Father recalled himself.

“And that is why you really are the most shockingly misbehaved March in seven generations,” he concluded, drawing himself up with all the nobility of his position. My only consolation was that in his rage, he had not thought to ask precisely
why
I was engaged upon those calls. I had already made up my mind to shield Bellmont if the situation demanded, but I was immensely relieved it had not come to that.