A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem, page 11
A petite brunette in a deep purple silk gown and carrying a disgruntled-looking Siamese cat approached them as quickly as her narrow skirts would allow.
“My dear! I came as soon as I read about the murder in The Times!”
It was the lady who had been with Lady Katherine the day they’d met in London. Her writing partner, Miss Caroline Hardcastle.
If she’d seen news of the murder in London, that meant that Darrow would be busy answering questions from the public, who’d been assured the Commandments Killer had been caught. It was perhaps unbecoming of him, but he couldn’t help feeling the man—and Wargrove, too—was reaping what he’d sown.
“Caro, why on earth are you carrying Ludwig around with you like the villainess in a penny dreadful?”
Lady Katherine’s voice, tinged with amusement, brought him back to the scene before him.
Her next words, however, gave him a start.
“Where is Ludwig’s leash?”
As if he’d heard his name and knew he must respond, the cat gave an aggrieved yowl that sounded remarkably like a human baby.
“Hush, dearest,” Caro soothed, and Eversham was unsure of whether she meant the lady or the cat. “I would have put him on the leash, but the stationmaster forbid it. Can you imagine? Now the poor mite is put out with me because he had to remain in the basket for the duration of the train ride.”
“Poor Ludwig.” Kate smoothed a hand over the cat’s head, and while she did so, Miss Caroline Hardcastle’s gaze turned to the man standing behind her friend.
As Eversham watched, her mouth formed an “O” of surprise and her eyes widened to a comical degree.
Perhaps noticing her friend’s lack of speech, Kate glanced behind her and saw just whom her friend was reacting to.
“Oh yes,” she said, as if she’d only now recalled that Eversham, whom she’d spent that morning questioning a murder suspect with, was there.
“Caro, this is Mr. Eversham of the Metropolitan Police,” Kate said in a remarkably calm voice. “He’s been called here to investigate poor Mr. Jones’s murder.”
To Eversham, she said with a speaking look—though he wasn’t sure what the look was saying precisely, “Inspector, this is my writing partner, Miss Caroline Hardcastle, and this unhappy fellow is Ludwig, her…well…her cat, I suppose.”
Caroline Hardcastle unceremoniously passed Ludwig to Kate and offered Eversham her hand.
Feeling as if he were performing in a Drury Lane farce, he took her proffered hand and bowed over it. “Miss Hardcastle, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I have so many questions” were her first words after a perfunctory response to his greeting.
“Later,” said Lady Katherine in a quelling voice. “Can we please remove ourselves from the entryway before you begin peppering him with questions he’ll no doubt be unable to answer?”
As if she’d only just realized where they stood, Caro gave a nod, then took her very large cat from her friend and extended a hand, as if asking Kate to lead the way.
“I’ll leave you two ladies to your reunion,” Eversham said before they had a chance to walk away. “I promise you may ask me anything you like later, Miss Hardcastle.”
Lady Katherine glanced in the direction of Lord Valentine’s study and gave Eversham a brief nod.
“Thank you for this morning,” she said before turning to a once-more wide-eyed Caro and ushering her up the stairs.
For a moment, Eversham stared after them, feeling more confused than ever.
Putting the oddity of the encounter from his mind, he asked the butler about his master’s whereabouts and soon found himself in Lord Valentine’s blissfully calm study.
“I apologize for returning to the house before the rest of you.” Lord Valentine was seated behind his desk with an inkpot at his elbow and a stack of newly sanded sheets of paper beside him. “A servant came to inform me of the new arrival and then I decided to bury myself in my work.” He said this as if the two occurrences were connected, but Eversham didn’t comment.
“It’s no matter,” Eversham said. “While we were in Lewiston, however, Lady Katherine and I had an opportunity to speak with Mr. Green and I have a few questions for you.”
“Before we begin,” the other man said, “I wonder if you will call me Val? I do appreciate the benefits that come from having a courtesy title, but it can be quite stuffy in an informal setting. And I like to think that we are on the way to being friendly if not friends.”
“Perhaps you’d better wait until I finish my questions before you ask that,” Eversham said wryly.
The lord’s eyes widened a little. “Green must have had something interesting to tell, then.”
Not wanting to prolong the situation with small talk, Eversham outlined what Green had told them about his argument with Fenwick Jones and the steward’s attempt to blackmail him into giving up the letters with threats of a “rightful owner” of the missives.
“You won this estate in a card game, did you not?” he asked, watching Lord Valentine’s expression for any hints of deception or discomfort.
But if he felt any sort of guilt or worry over the detective’s question, Valentine didn’t show it.
“It’s common knowledge.” He shrugged.
“What about the contents of the house?” Eversham asked. “Were those included with the house, or were they auctioned to settle more of the debt?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Valentine shook his head. “There were things here in this house when I bought it that seemed to date back to Philbrick’s time, but I wasn’t particularly interested in maintaining it as a museum to the fellow. I know it’s probably sacrilege to say so around these parts, but I never was one for poetry. Much less his.”
“So you don’t know who Jones could have been speaking of when he mentioned the rightful owner of the letters, then?” Eversham asked.
“I wish I did. Jones was a competent steward, but we weren’t particularly close.” Valentine stared off for a moment, as if trying to remember something. Turning back to Eversham, he said, “I did get the feeling that he may have been hiding something. There wasn’t any particular thing he did or said. Just a sort of discretion about his movements, I suppose. I gave him free rein over the running of the estate, and I must say, he was quite good at bringing it back into productivity after lying fallow for many years. But we didn’t speak of personal matters. And whenever he left for a few days, I got the sense he was seeing someone, but I didn’t ask and he didn’t volunteer.”
Leaning back in his chair, Eversham sighed. He’d hoped finding out what the argument between Green and Jones had been about would clarify things, but that was not the case.
“It can’t be that bad,” Val said, a note of commiseration in his tone. “It sounds as if this lead about the letters gives you more than you had before at least.”
“The trouble is I don’t know if Jones was being truthful or not.” Something about what Green had said concerning the threat from Jones was bothering him, but he wasn’t sure what. “And I’ve searched the man’s rooms and there was no trace of correspondence or anything that might have let us know whom he’s been in contact with.”
Valentine frowned. “I know the man received a great deal of mail. But that’s to be expected when his family didn’t live nearby. I saw a few of his letters myself a time or two before they were brought to him.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “In fact, I distinctly remember one letter in particular because my butler brought it to my attention a few weeks ago.”
“What stood out about it?” Eversham asked, curious.
Val huffed out a laugh. “I always forget how starchy servants can be. Austen complained to me because it was very obviously from a woman. I believe it was heavily scented, and Austen thought it set a poor example for the impressionable young male servants. They looked up to Jones, I think. And Austen felt that letters from ‘a paramour,’ as he called them, were improper.”
Eversham wasn’t the least bit surprised. The rules that governed the behavior of servants were often more rigid than those that regulated the strictest members of the middle class. It was easy enough for people like Val and Lady Katherine, who were the offspring of peers, to ignore niceties. They would carry their courtesy titles for the rest of their lives. Which, in turn, bestowed upon them the automatic respect of most of the people they met.
Lady Katherine might own a newspaper, and Val might write for it, but those endeavors could never entirely erase the privilege that came of being born to a noble family.
For someone like Jones, whose position of steward was far above every servant in the house he served, to behave without a care for propriety was an affront to every servant who had to follow every rule of the household to the letter or risk being sacked. Jones might have been born into a higher station than they were, but he was a servant now, and if he didn’t behave as one, then it endangered the structure by which Austen and the rest of the servants ordered their lives.
Could one of the servants, angry about his cavalier attitude toward their way of life, have killed Jones, then tried to cover up the motive with that note?
“What was the outcome of Austen’s complaint?”
“I told him I’d see to it.” Val shrugged. “And I told Jones to be more discreet. I didn’t give a hang about the fellow’s affairs. But Austen is worth his weight in gold and I won’t have him disrespected. No matter how much of a prig he might be at times. I suppose he has his reasons.”
For someone who was writing a biography of a prizefighter who grew up in the London Rookeries, Eversham thought wryly, Val was blithely unaware of the degree of his own ignorance. He rather wondered that Lady Katherine hadn’t made him see his own folly, but then again, perhaps it wasn’t her responsibility to school her friends on their blind spots.
Thinking of Katherine reminded him of his earlier encounter with Miss Hardcastle, and deciding he’d learned as much as he could from Val, he said, “I left Lady Katherine heading upstairs with Miss Caroline Hardcastle just now. She’s an unusual young lady.”
At the mention of Miss Hardcastle, the other man’s expression turned grim. “If I didn’t know her presence would ease Kate’s mind—and no matter how she will insist that finding Jones’s body was of no consequence, I know it alarmed her—I would have locked the gates to the estate and turned her away.”
Eversham felt his eyes widen. “She wasn’t that bad. A little eccentric perhaps, but—”
Interrupting him, Val said tartly, “The queen is a little eccentric. Miss Hardcastle is a bloody Punch illustration come to life. She is perhaps the most irritating person it has ever been my misfortune to cross paths with. Even her damned cat, who loathes me, by the way, is a better judge of character than Miss Hardcastle.”
“Were we talking about her ability to judge char—?”
But Val hadn’t even heard him. “I tried to do her the courtesy of warning her off a chap who I know for a fact frequents one of the ugliest sorts of brothels in London—you’ll know about those dark corners, Eversham, you’re a policeman after all—and of course I couldn’t tell her why because she’s a damned lady. And do you know what she said to me? Have you any notion what she said?”
Since he didn’t think his response was necessary, Eversham let him continue.
“She told me to mind my own affairs.” Valentine looked as if he wanted to tear his hair out by the roots but settled on running a hand through it instead. “As if I were just interfering with her for my own amusement.”
“That is frustrating,” Eversham said carefully, not sure whether he was expected to comment further. When Val didn’t continue, he offered, “If Miss Hardcastle is anything like Lady Katherine, then I would guess she is rather headstrong.”
“But Kate is a widow and runs her own household.” Val shook his head. “Caro—that is, Miss Hardcastle—might consider herself to be past the age where it matters, but she is still an unmarried young lady, and as such, she should guard her reputation.”
“She cannot be above one and twenty, surely?”
“Seven and twenty,” Val said, to Eversham’s surprise. “Though she behaves as if she’s barely out of the schoolroom sometimes.”
“If she’s still unmarried, should not her family be ensuring she avoids characters like the one you warned her about?” Eversham asked.
“They can’t control her,” said Val dismissively. “Her father works in the city and is rich as Croesus. He’d give her the moon if she asked for it, I daresay. Her mother has tried, but I think she’s given up. So Caro—that is, Miss Hardcastle—does as she pleases. Which makes her vulnerable to the sort of men who only want her for her fortune.”
“You’re a good friend to try to protect her,” Eversham said.
“We’ve run in the same social circles for years. I’d do the same for any acquaintance.”
Eversham could tell plainly it was a lie. He wasn’t sure, however, if Val was lying to himself, or only to Eversham. Either way, it was clear he didn’t dislike the unusual Miss Hardcastle as much as he pretended.
“Of course.” He nodded. “She’s lucky to have you.”
Thinking back to Katherine’s words after they left Green’s office, he noted to himself that he hadn’t clarified which “she” he referred to.
“I suppose I should go make sure she hasn’t caught the eye of Barton,” Valentine said, his jaw set. This time, it was clear enough to Eversham which “she” he was referring to.
As the two men neared the door, Val stopped as if just remembering something. “I wonder if there might be some of Philbrick’s things stored out in the folly.”
Eversham frowned. “Folly?”
“It can’t be seen from the house,” Val explained, “but I know when I first came here, Austen had some of the items that remained in the house stored there temporarily. But it’s entirely possible temporarily turned into permanent.” He shrugged. “It’s not as if it’s actually in use.”
Which meant if there were items belonging to Philbrick there, they’d be undisturbed, Eversham thought with a spark of interest.
“Excellent,” Eversham said. If there was a clue as to the identity to Philbrick’s mystery heir, he’d lay odds it would be in the man’s abandoned belongings.
Chapter Ten
Kate could practically feel the vibrations of curiosity emanating from Caro as the two ladies made their way upstairs to the bedchamber the latter had been assigned.
It was only the fact that her friend had to use every ounce of her physical strength to keep Ludwig from leaping down and running amok through Thornfield like a whirling dervish that saved Kate from discussing her odd partnership with Eversham on the stairs, where anyone could overhear.
“Perhaps you have some task that might be more easily completed below stairs, Harrison.” Caro’s words to her maid after they’d closed the door to the chamber behind them were less a question than a request.
Used to her mistress’s need for confidentiality in her discussions with Kate, Harrison gave a brief curtsy and took herself off.
Once the servant was gone, Caro, who had settled Ludwig into his cushioned basket with a bit of catnip, turned to her friend and gave her a hard hug.
“My poor dear,” she said, then pulling away, she looked Kate over as if searching for visible signs of trauma. “Was it very dreadful? I know we’ve talked enough about the horrible things that can be done by one person to another, but we’ve never seen an actual murder for ourselves. You must have been overcome with nerves.”
Allowing her friend to lead her to the corner of the room with a pair of comfortable chintz armchairs and an overstuffed footstool, Kate took a seat and let Caro fuss over her a little. She, herself, wasn’t a particularly demonstrative person. But Caro, despite her rejection of many of the social expectations put on women, was a caretaker, and seeing to Kate’s comfort was her way of showing she cared.
Harrison must have known they’d be needing refreshment, because a tea tray was arranged on the table tucked between the chairs.
“It was upsetting, I will admit,” Kate said once they were both seated and each had cups of tea in hand. “I don’t even think I realized at first that he was dead. There’s an impulse, I suppose, for the mind to offer some other, less awful, explanation for what you’re seeing.”
“Had you spoken with him very much?” Caro asked, her dark eyes shadowed with concern.
But Kate was quick to reassure her. “No, we hadn’t spoken more than a few words to one another. I gather he wasn’t particularly close to anyone in the household, though he did spend some time with Valentine discussing estate matters.”
At the mention of Val, the sympathy in Caro’s eyes was replaced with a glint of cynicism. “Why am I not surprised that Lord Valentine was the one most familiar with the man found murdered on his property?”
This startled a laugh from Kate. “I hope you don’t mean to suggest Val is a killer, Caro, because though I understand you might not be overly fond of him, I don’t quite think his interference in your affairs warrants wishing him to hang for murder.”
Caro sighed. “Of course I don’t want him to hang,” she said with a grudging degree of remorse. “But you cannot deny me my right to loathe him. More than once, he’s seen fit to put his aristocratic nose in my business.”
“I can see now why neither of you has mentioned knowing the other to me,” Kate said with amusement. “Your antipathy knows no bounds.”
Then her expression turned serious. “I think he’s been more upset about what happened than he lets on. You know how men are. Always intent on keeping their emotions in check.”
The noise Caro made might have been sympathetic, but it also might have been critical. When it came to Lord Valentine, Kate wasn’t quite sure where her friend’s feelings might go.
“Enough about our infuriating host.” Caro leaned back in her chair. “I want to know how it is that you and Andrew Eversham appeared to be so cozy when you came in just now. Who knew the famous Eversham was so attractive? You certainly made no mention of it after you met him in London.”
