To Wed an Heiress (14 page)

H
aro thumbed through the latest issue of
The Sporting Magazine
for a minute, read a short article on how to keep one’s hunters in fine fettle, and then listlessly tossed the magazine down on the end table. All morning they had been waiting for the Bow Street Runner to arrive, and now that he was here there was nothing but more waiting. If only the fellow would hurry up and ferret out the culprit. Although, unless it were some stranger from the woods who had done away with Arabella, Haro was not so sure he wanted to hear the results of Pevensey’s inquiry.

Haro fidgeted in the armchair, jumped up, and paced. He wished that he took snuff so that he would have something to do with his hands. Blast this inactivity! He wanted to ride, to dig his heels into his favorite mount and send the beast bounding through the woods, to have the winter wind slicing at his face like a cutlass and the rhythm of hooves soothing his spirit. But he had given his word to Hastings—he could not leave the house until Pevensey had finished his investigation.

Ah well, if he could not ride, perhaps he could locate a companion, someone to shoot billiards with or play a game of chess. For the last week he had cared little about how the other inmates of the house were spending their time—except for Arabella, of course, but that infatuation was not something he wished to dwell on. Now, all he could think about was how pleasant it would be to have some company. Torin was still sitting with their mother upstairs, and Eda had not come back to the drawing room. He certainly did not want to seek out William Hastings, and the servants were out of the question.

That left no one. Or rather, it left Philippe Bayeux, the architect. Haro cocked his head to the side. He hadn’t caught a glimpse of the Frenchman since the incident. Supposedly, he was keeping to his room to spare the feelings of the family. Or maybe to spare his own feelings? Eda had said the fellow had a tendre for Arabella. If so, he was probably sitting in his room all Friday-faced and broken up. A slight twinge of guilt attacked Haro, insinuating that as Arabella’s fiancé
he
ought to be more broken up about what had happened too.

Haro picked up the magazine again and rolled it into a child’s telescope. He would go have a look at what Bayeux was up to, and if he could not distract the poor fellow from his grief, why then, at least the poor fellow could distract
him
from his anxious pacing. The telescope slipped out of his hands as he dropped it carelessly onto the sofa.

It took Haro a few minutes to locate which chamber Bayeux had been placed in. The housekeeper, sensing the confusion over whether the architect was a guest or an interloper, had assigned him a small bedroom somewhere between the family and the servants. Haro rapped on the door with polite knuckles. There was no response. He rapped on it again.

“Yes?” came a voice—whether grieving, harried, or irritated, Haro could not tell. “What do you want?”

“I say, Bayeux,” replied Haro with as much cheer as he could muster. “I was hoping to coax you into an afternoon game of billiards.”

There was a pause. “
Non
.
Merci beaucoup,
but no.”

Haro grimaced. The fellow sounded distraught. “Well, in all honesty, the billiards were just a pretext for pouring down a glass. Care to join me for some brandy in the billiards room?”

There was another pause, and then Philippe Bayeux swung open the door. His face was as haggard as a night watchman’s at the end of his shift. But whatever the circumstances might be, it seemed he was a man who improved his own spirits by drinking other people’s.

“Your lordship is a generous man,” said the Frenchman. Haro was not entirely sure if it was a compliment.

“Terribly unfortunate you having to be detained here,” said Haro, making small talk as he led the way down the corridor. Just after the words left his mouth, he realized how callous they sounded—as if he were bemoaning the dratted inconvenience of having his fiancée murdered.

Fortunately, Bayeux had receded into his shell of silence and seemed to take no notice of the earl’s gaffe. They entered the billiards room and Haro, for the sake of appearances, set the billiard balls up on the table. “And now then,” said Haro, throwing open the door of the liquor cabinet. “I’m for brandy. You?”

Bayeux walked over to the cabinet and took hold of the bottle of gin.

“Blue Ruin, eh?” said Haro with a whistle. He had a dim memory of his father indulging—and perhaps, overindulging—in it, which was probably why the bottle was in the house. It was not a selection he himself favored. Gin always tasted like eating an evergreen forest, and although he liked the scent of pines when riding through the woods, he did not fancy them blended up in a glass. “Well then, help yourself.”

The architect had not waited for the invitation. And indeed, if the earl had not been present, it was likely that he would have ignored civilization’s dictates and drunk directly from the bottle.

Haro sipped his brandy in silence. He had gone looking for Bayeux because he needed something to occupy his mind, but now, he realized that the kinder and more necessary thing would be to occupy Bayeux’s. “It’s been quite the cold spell we’ve been having this year.”

Bayeux shivered. “Yes, very cold.” The clear glass of the gin bottle showed that its store had already been significantly depleted.

Haro floundered in the wake of that response. His mother had taught him how to converse fluently with strangers, but every single one of the scripted pleasantries that he weighed upon his tongue felt like cutting capers at a funeral.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.

The Frenchman set down his glass of gin and buried his head in his hands. “It is not your fault.”

Haro sighed. At least there was one person who did not blame him for Arabella’s death.

***

After Miss Hastings’ maid had flounced her way out of the parlor, Pevensey wandered over to the window and stared out of it for a few moments, hands behind his back. The conversation with Mademoiselle Mathilde, despite her recalcitrance, had been very illuminating.

His thoughts were interrupted by a gentle clearing of the throat. It was Henry. “Mrs. Alfred sent me, sir, to see who should be sent up next.”

Pevensey wrinkled his nose. He had not heard Henry’s footsteps on the staircase, as by rights he should have, had the footman been coming up from the kitchen.

“It seems only fair that if I’ve seen the lady’s maid, I ought to see the gentleman’s manservant.”

“Just as you say, sir,” said Henry, and he stepped out of the room smartly to alert the Earl of Anglesford’s valet.

Pevensey took up his pencil as soon as Garth entered, but he found himself far less interested in this sketch than he had been in the previous one. The valet’s manner was stiff and guarded, and he weighed all his statements like a butcher might do before wrapping them in brown paper and presenting them to Pevensey.

“Now, see here,” said Pevensey candidly, after he had learned that Haro had not acted in any way unusual on the morning in question and displayed no agitation whatsoever, “if you had seen his lordship throttle Miss Hastings and dump her body in the pond—with your own two eyes, mind you—would you tell me?”

The question did not penetrate Garth’s reserve, but he at least acknowledged the merit of it. “No, sir, I would not.”

“So I thought. I thank you for confirming that his lordship rose early and dressed to go downstairs. But since you cannot confirm anything further regarding his whereabouts, I think I have no further use for you.”

Garth inclined his head and exited. His presence in the room was swiftly replaced with the ubiquitous Henry. “Who next, sir?”

“Why, you, Henry!” Pevensey shrugged. “Since you’re here.” He tucked his pencil behind his ear. “Tell me about the argument that took place between the earl and Mr. Hastings.”

“I don’t know about any argu—”

“Nonsense, Henry!” said Pevensey, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “You are evidently adept at listening through keyholes.”

The footman colored. “I don’t know what you mean, sir—”

“I daresay you hid in the linen closet there, yes, just outside the door as Mademoiselle Mathilde was leaving?”

The footman swallowed visibly.

“So, tell me, Henry. What exactly was said during the argument between the earl and Mr. Hastings?”

It was a guess, but it might prove profitable. Henry’s discomfort was a telltale sign. Pevensey pulled out his notebook and began to sketch—a man in livery with an exaggeratedly long nose and an unmistakable proximity to a keyhole.

“You’ll not mention anything to his lordship about this?” the footman blurted out. “Or to Mrs. Alfred?” Of the two, it seemed like Mrs. Alfred was the more formidable in his eyes.

Pevensey’s eyes flicked upward with disdain. “I will mention whatever I please and whatever proves pertinent. Continue.”

The footman sighed audibly and gave in to the inevitable. As he talked, his speech settled into the familiar patterns of his childhood rather than the proper diction he had learned to assume around his betters.

“I weren’t meaning to eavesdrop,”—a time-honored introductory statement to such stories, thought Pevensey—“but I had brought a Cornish pastie and some ale to the library for Mr. Hastings, just like he’d asked for, and I was about to knock on the door, when I heard voices. They were too loud not to recognize and too angry to interrupt. ‘Why then,’ thought I, ‘here’s no time to be delivering a pastie. I’ll wait right here ’til the gentlemen settle down a mite and then knock on the door proper-like.’”

“You may omit what was
thought
,” said Pevensey, the scritch-scratching of his pencil making everything seem very official from the other’s perspective. “Simply state what was
said
.”

“Well, the first thing that I heard was Mr. Hastings calling his lordship some names that I’d be ashamed to use on my worst enemy,”—Pevensey doubted that the first footman had any enemies more daunting than an envious second footman—“and his lordship started to shout a little too. He called Mr. Hastings a bully and said he had a mind to end the engagement.”

“Aha!” Pevensey wondered if this decision on the earl’s part was premeditated or if he had been provoked into making it during the course of this conversation. “What then?”

“Mr. Hastings roared something at him about not being a gentleman. And then they quieted down. I waited a few minutes and knocked to deliver the pastie. His lordship was just leaving as I went in.”

Pevensey reflected that the story confirmed what Hastings had told him. The earl had decided that morning to jilt the mill owner’s daughter. But it still did not tell him
why
he was jilting her. And the answer to that question might be of crucial significance in this case, for even if the earl turned out to be innocent of Miss Hastings’ death, Pevensey had a hunch that the relationship between the two was still the prime mover which had set the event in motion.

“One more question for you,” said Pevensey, “before I go back to the servants’ hall to interview the downstairs servants. Have you ever heard Lord Anglesford shout at anyone before, the way he shouted at Hastings?”

“No,” said the footman, with a pause. “Come to think of it, I never have.”

***

“Time for your nap,” Eda said, as Great-Uncle Harold’s eyes began to droop.

“Nonsense, my dear!” said Uncle Harold, but before many more minutes passed, he was snoring away in the chair by the fire in the garret.

Eda took the time to brown another piece of toast for herself, munched on it thoughtfully, and then put another log on the fire to ensure that Uncle Harold stayed warm. She wandered aimlessly down the stairs from the attic.

At the door of the music room she paused. She thought about playing some Mozart on the pianoforte but realized that those sunny scale passages cascading through the house would be too heartless, even for someone who had despised Arabella as much as she had. Her lips compressed into a firm line. In life, Arabella had threatened to destroy the spirit of Woldwick, and now, even in death, she was still casting a pall over the place.

Throughout the last week, Eda had never thought any further than how to get Arabella’s claws out of Haro. She had not realized that those claws would leave marks, some of them so deep that perhaps they would never heal. But then, it all depended on the outcome of this investigation.

She descended the main staircase down to the morning room, pulled out her paper and began to sketch. It was a face she knew by heart she had sketched it so many times. But she had never before sketched it like this, lips slightly parted, eyes filled with intense longing…what was it he had been about to say, standing before the mantel in the drawing room?

Her head bowed low over the paper, and her black hair, half of it unpinned, fell forward over her shoulders, framing the whiteness of her long neck.

The door opened, and Jacob Pevensey sauntered in unannounced as if he were a houseguest or a member of the family. Eda sat up sharply, dropped her pencil, and turned over the paper to conceal the drawing. “How can I help you,
sir
?”

“Oh, please! Stay seated, miss,” said the Bow Street Runner, in a tone that he had doubtless cultivated to soothe the nerves of gentlewomen. But Eda was not taken in. He had come to ask questions, and she must be careful what answers she gave. She knew the general impression led to suspicion of Haro, so whatever she said must cast doubt on the general impression.

“I’ve just come from interviewing the servants.”

“All of them?” Eda’s eyebrows raised. He had only been here a couple of hours. Either the man was incompetent at questioning or a very efficient investigator.

“The ones that mattered,” said Pevensey smugly. Eda was reminded of how much she had always disliked red-haired men.

“Do I matter enough to be interviewed?”

“But of course! Is there even a question of that?”

Eda supposed that a serving maid would have blushed at that or simpered coyly. She would give him no such satisfaction. If he dared to try to kiss her hand, as it looked like he might, she would box his ears!

“What are you drawing?”

She placed her hands protectively over the reverse side of the paper. “Is this part of the interview?”

“Just a question from one artist to another.”

Such familiarity was not to be borne! Eda looked at the Runner coldly. “My sketches are private.”

“All except the one you gave as a gift to Miss Hastings?”

Eda’s mouth fell open. “Who told you about that?”

“The second footman.”

She forced her mouth to close. It had never occurred to her that the servants would take an interest in her rivalry with the mill owner’s daughter. But now that she thought about it properly, it was only natural for them to gossip about it below stairs.

“It was a picture of Monsieur Bayeux, the architect, wasn’t it?”

It seemed that he already knew as much. “Yes.”

“Now that is curious. Why would you give the young lady a picture of Monsieur Bayeux? Surely, it would be more usual to give a picture of your cousin, her fiancé, for her to treasure?”

She had thought that this freckle-faced investigator could not penetrate her defenses, but at the idea of giving Arabella a keepsake picture of Haro, every sense revolted!

“I thought,” she said, swallowing hard, “that she would prefer the picture of Monsieur Bayeux, seeing as how they had been previously acquainted.”