The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (36 page)

“Their names?”

“I prefer not to say. You may take my word for it. Should suspicion fall on me, I would be able to name my companions. If you seek a murderess, you will have to look elsewhere. My husband was not altogether an amiable man; I dare say he made many enemies in his time.”

To her surprise, Sir Humphrey seemed to accept this. “Mr. Napier was a man of excellent reputation, but our enquiries have revealed some irregularities in his way of life that—”

“Pray say no more, I do not wish to know.”

“Can you tell me of any enemies of his that you know about?”

“No.”

Sir Humphrey gave her a penetrating look, but he had no further questions, except that, as he was about to take his leave, he said, “I believe that you had a servant in your employ at Tyrrwhit, one Meg Jenkins.”

“My husband had such a servant, yes. I can tell you nothing about her; my husband and the housekeeper saw to all the hiring of staff. She was dismissed by my husband earlier in the year.”

“Do you know why?”

“I suppose her work was unsatisfactory.”

“Like your answers,” said Miss Griffin when Sir Humphrey had gone. “Upon my word, Alethea, I never knew you could be so like your father, so haughty and controlled.”

Alethea collapsed on the sofa, landing with such force that little puffs of dust rose in the air. “Was I haughty? I didn't mean to be.”

“I rather think it was the best thing you could have done, since it made your evasiveness sound like reserve and pride, that you did not like to admit that you had married a man not worthy of you.”

Alethea laughed. She found herself wishing that Titus had been there to see her playing that particular role—one she was sure he didn't think her capable of.

“It's what the soldiers say, isn't it, that one should get over rough ground lightly?”

“Were you in company? What kind of company, Alethea? I am very surprised that Sir Humphrey didn't press the point.”

“Oh, the best company, only it would not be quite convenient for me to name names at present.”

Miss Griffin's shrewd eyes were upon her, and Alethea found herself reddening. “Do not look at me like that,” she said. “I have done nothing wrong, nothing I am in the least ashamed of; however, I don't wish to drag others into this business. That man knows quite well I didn't murder Napier.”

“I think that is so, which is why he let you off so lightly.”

If that was lightly, heaven help the poor soul who came up against Sir Humphrey when he was in a more forceful mood. She felt that she had brushed through as well as she could. “It is odd about Meg Jenkins; I wonder why he asked about her.”

“A servant with a grudge is always going to be under suspicion.”

“I saw little of her, she was only at Tyrrwhit House for a week or so, a fresh-faced country girl. Welsh, and shy, and very young; she can't have been above fifteen.”

“A tasty morsel for a man of loose morals,” said Mrs. Griffin.

Alethea thought of her husband's mistress: the false, complacent Mrs. Gillingham. “I do not know that he was in the habit of molesting the female servants.”

“I think that there was a great deal about the man that you were unaware of” was Mrs. Griffin's final word on the subject. “Now, I wish to return to my writing, and I recommend you to put Sir Humphrey's visit out of your mind. A little music will restore your spirits, I am sure.”

Alethea didn't exactly feel unease, more a sense of curiosity. Who had hated Napier enough to kill him? Was the attack the result of a sudden argument, a mistake in the heat of the moment, or a contemplated crime of revenge or punishment? It occurred to her that she might never know, that her husband's death could become one of the many murders whose perpetrator was never found or brought to justice.

Figgins took a darker view. “They'll hang some poor creature for such a crime, they always do.”

“What, an innocent man?”

“Or woman. Londoners like to see a woman hang.”

 

A sound night's sleep did much to lift the darkness that the visit from Sir Humphrey and Figgins's remarks had cast on her spirits, and she rose happily from her bed to look out on a London drenched in pale sunlight, a hazy sunlight that promised a hot June day. She sang to herself as she drank her morning chocolate, and as Figgins helped her dress. “How uncomfortable it is to wear black on such a day,” she said to Figgins, who was trying to restore some order to her curling hair. “Do you think I might not wear lighter colours within doors?”

Figgins gave her hair a forceful tug. “What, with the likes of Sir Humphrey calling at every moment?”

“I am sure we shall have no more callers,” said Alethea confidently.

She was mistaken. An hour later, she was seated at the piano, practising assiduously, when there was the sound of loud knocking upon the front door.

She stopped playing; her hands rested on the keyboard as she listened.

Oh no, surely that was Letty's voice. What was she doing in London? And another voice, just as familiar, that of Mr. Fitzwilliam. Surely Figgins would have the sense to deny her—only it would take more than Figgins to keep Letty at bay.

The door opened. “Upon my word, this is a fine time to be playing the piano,” said Mr. Fitzwilliam. “Here is Letitia, come with me to inform you of what has now happened, and to take you back with us to Aubrey Square.”

“I have told Figgins to pack up your things,” said Letty. “I never was so shocked as when I heard you had taken yourself off to this house.”

“How are you, Letty? I hope that Figgins knows she takes her orders from me.”

“Hoity-toity; well, it is clear that you have not heard the latest news. I was never so ashamed of anything in my life as when Mr. Fitzwilliam told me. To think that our name—”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Letty, what news?”

“The worst imaginable,” said Mr. Fitzwilliam.

 

Titus, being a Whig, didn't belong to Pink's, the Tory club, but patronised Benedict's, an establishment on the other side of St. James's. He had taken a cup of coffee there, discussed the new iniquities of the present government with his friends, and was sitting in a comfortable leather chair, idling through a newspaper, with his mind very much elsewhere, in the region of Melville Place, wishing that he might think of a reason for calling again at number seventeen.

A member he knew by sight as one Harvey Greendale was talking to a red-faced stranger in a blue coat. “This will dent the Darcy pride,” Greendale was saying.

“It's a disgrace, and the girl is only eighteen, a pretty way to behave. I always said Darcy took too lenient a line with those girls of his; he should spend less time junketing off abroad and more time attending to his family.”

“Adultery and murder, pretty charges to be laid against his daughter. I warrant he'll be travelling back as fast as wheels will carry him. Do you suppose she'll have to stand her trial?”

“Bound to,” said blue coat. “It's too big a crime and too much in the public eye for it all to be hushed up.”

“She had better be got out of the country if her family want to save her neck.”

“The question is, who is the man she ran off with? These young women have no discretion in their amours, that's the trouble with them. I suppose it's as likely to have been her lover who pulled the trigger, but they do say it was a woman who did it. Evidence of the servants, you can't get past that.”

“Now that it is all out in the open and in the newspapers, more witnesses will come forward, it's always the way.”

Titus had frozen at these words. He noticed now with a strange sense of distance that his hands were trembling slightly as he turned over the pages of the newspaper.

There it was, in the usual unctuous, insinuating words with which the writer announced to a censorious world some exciting tidbit of scandal. With how much regret the newspaper had learned that the authorities were eager to ascertain the whereabouts of Mrs. N, widow of the tragically murdered Mr. N, at the time of the said murder. There was some reason to believe, the paragraph continued, that all had not been well between the recently married couple, and that Mrs. N had quitted her husband's roof in the company of one Mr. H, a young man whose present whereabouts were unknown. The newspaper had it on the best authority that a woman was known to be the culprit, and that Mrs. N was unable to provide convincing details of her own movements on the night when the terrible deed was perpetrated, beyond asserting that she had been in company all that time.

The editor of the newspaper concluded in a gush of morality that the grim outcome of the investigations might cause alarm to any female who was contemplating straying beyond the bounds of matrimony—and added that Mr. D, Mrs. N's father, was expected to return to these shores at the earliest possible moment.

A blast of rage shot through Titus as he screwed up the newspaper and hurled it into the fireplace, where, it being a warm June evening, no fire was presently burning. One or two members raised their voices in protest; most of them, after one glance at Titus's thunderous face, kept their opinions to themselves.

How had the newspaper got hold of their information? He had met Sir Humphrey, an old friend, at the club the previous evening, had ascertained that he had called upon Alethea, was perfectly satisfied with her answers, and was pursuing his enquiries among quite a different order of female: those connected with the more fashionable bagnios and bawdy houses.

“Was Napier killed by a whore?” Titus had asked.

Maybe not, Sir Humphrey said, for women were unaccustomed to pistols, but there was reason to believe that a woman of such a kind—dressed very fine, but certainly no lady—had visited Napier that evening, and Mrs. Gillingham, who looked after Napier's house where he lodged, admitted that he often had women come for the night. It seemed, Sir Humphrey said, with a kind of grim distaste, that such assignations were the purpose of Napier's visits to London. “With his wife of only a few months left to languish in the country,” he added. Doubtless the whore who had visited Napier had had a protector; he was probably the one who had fired the fatal shot.

Where, then, had the rumour in the newspaper originated? Titus asked himself. Somewhere or nowhere, like all such vicious pieces—and how had they got hold of Mr. H?

He remembered that he had promised to attend a party at his sister's house. There he might pick up any gossip that was circulating, he told himself, and at least his sister wouldn't believe what she read in the newspapers, she had far too much sense. His faith in her good sense was dented, however, when he found Mrs. Vineham among those present.

“So, you are back in England,” she cried as he bowed to her. “I found Italy such a bore, Byron quite besotted with that dreadful Italian woman, Lord Lucius more than ordinarily tedious, and so I determined to make my way home as soon as ever I could. By the bye, have you heard the shocking scandal concerning that young Mr. Hawkins?”

“Mr. Hawkins?” said Titus, his heart missing a beat.

“Why, yes, the young man you befriended, the nephew of Mr. Darcy, only he turns out to be no such thing. I met a man in Venice, such a bore of a bishop I can't tell you, but he is closely connected with the family and assures me that no such nephew exists. Now it turns out that he was Mrs. Napier's lover, that she ran off with him—it is incredible, I know, but perfectly true. I have heard it said by several people who know the parties concerned. So young, so rakish; we live in a wicked world, do we not, Mr. Manningtree?” She gave him a dimpling smile, her eyes widening at him with a none-too-subtle invitation.

“If the young man were eloping with Mrs. Napier, why was he travelling to Italy?”

“Oh, to escape from her family; they got wind of the affair and were determined to prevent their running off together; he would have had to fight a duel had he stayed in England, and I dare say he is no use at that kind of thing; why, he is hardly more than a boy. So he abandoned her, quite ran away, only when he reached Venice he must have been summoned by her, for they say he quit the place in a monstrous hurry, and now it is all about town that he or she or both of them together did for poor Napier. Is it not shocking?”

“Is it not all nothing but a sour rumour? I would beware, ma'am, of being so ready to blacken another's name; such malicious gossip has a way of rebounding upon the rumour-mongers.”

“Upon my soul, you are very serious and moral tonight. I know what it is, you were taken in by Mr. Hawkins; how men hate to be shown up as lacking in judgement.”

Annoyed beyond forbearance, Titus found his sister and took his leave. “You cannot expect me to stay when you invite creatures like Mrs. Vineham,” he said.

“Oh, that poisonous woman, I didn't invite her at all, she came with the Durstons, and I could hardly turn her away at the door.”

“I advise you to do so next time, she doesn't belong in civilised company.”