A Sinister Establishment

by Lynn Messina

  Taking note of the time, Bea asked him again to show her where exactly the body was when he found it.

  His eyes darted to the scullery maid, as if worried about offending her sensibilities with his answer, but he made no protest as he walked toward the small table that usually held le peu guillotine and stopped a few feet short. “It was here,” he said soberly, his lips compressing tightly as he recalled the horrible event. “It was right here. I found him almost as soon as I entered the room.”

  Like the rest of the kitchen, the spot where he stood was immaculate. The wood itself showed signs of wear—stains, scratches, gauges—but there was not a hint of the copious amount of blood that must have spilled from the victim.

  That could not have been an easy thing to accomplish.

  “Who cleaned the floor?” Bea asked.

  As innocuous as the question was, it caused Esther to squeal in horror at the grisly allusion and then immediately apologize for displaying inappropriate squeamishness. “I’m sorry, your grace. It’s just that it’s so…”

  But she could not say what exactly it was, for it was too dreadful for words, and Parsons explained that the scullery maid had fainted the moment she grasped fully what had happened to the chef. “She was one of many,” he said approvingly, as if swooning was the only proper female response to decapitation. Then he added with a hint of censure, “Gertrude cleaned up the blood with the help of Thomas.”

  Bea looked at the sturdy kitchen maid. “You did not faint?”

  Although her tone had been neutral, Gertrude stiffened with offense. “It was not as if I wasn’t deeply distressed by Monsieur Alphonse’s death. I worked closely with him for two years and liked him very much. It was a horrible tragedy, what happened. But wringing my hands in distress would not get the floor clean, and Mr. Mayhew was more concerned with disposing of the le peu before anyone else got hurt to assign a footman to the task. I was left with the choice of doing it myself or stare at the large puddle of blood.”

  “Describe it,” Bea said.

  Uncomprehending, the kitchen maid stared at her. “Pardon me?”

  “The puddle,” Bea explained, gesturing to the floor as she tried to imagine what it had looked like when Parsons entered the room in the early hours of the morning. She knew nothing about the properties of blood but assumed that it behaved similarly to water in many ways. How far it had spread and how much it had dried would provide her with some useful information. “Describe it.”

  Gertrude blanched at the request but nodded faintly. “The floor tilts ever so slightly to the east side of the room, so the blood ran toward the fireplace and away from the entrance.”

  Bea nodded. “And how far did it travel before it started to dry?”

  The servant took several steps deeper into the room and stopped about two feet from where Parsons had found the body. “Here. It was hardest to scrub up the blood where it had begun to dry. It made a ring around the edges.”

  “That could not have been pleasant,” Bea observed.

  Stoically, the kitchen maid said that it had to be done.

  Bea accepted the simple truth of the statement and considered the scene in light of the information she had just discovered. If everything in the kitchen had been washed and returned to its place last night and le peu was not substantial enough to accommodate a grown man, then the missing cleaver might in fact be the murder weapon, not Mr. Réjane’s invention.

  If so, where was it now?

  Most likely with the assailant, she thought, for it would have been impossible for Parsons to make an argument for the cutting apparatus with a bloody cleaver lying next to the body.

  In that case, a careful inspection of everyone’s quarters might reveal the guilty party.

  It was equally possible, however, that the killer had left it behind, tossing it onto the floor in a moment of frenzy or panic. If that was true, then the cleaver could very well still be in the room.

  But where?

  Not in plain sight or Parsons would never have succeeded in convincing Mr. Mayhew and the constable.

  Pensively, Bea lowered herself to look under the tables, shelves and cabinets.

  At once, the three staff members gasped in collective horror at the sight of the Duchess of Kesgrave on her knees.

  Recovering first from his astonishment, Parsons said, “Your grace, you really must not…you must let us…the floor isn’t clean…tell us what you are…how can we help…”

  Although she was mildly amused by his distress, she conceded that it was probably quite justified and reckoned she was the first peeress to ever drop to her hands and knees in public. Nevertheless, she did not allow their disapproval to sway her from her purpose and, having ruled out the table that supported le peu, she lowered her head another inch to look under the cabinet directly to the left of the entry arch. It was the next closest to where Parsons found the body and, sure enough, she spotted something that very possibly met the description of a largish meat cleaver. At the very least, it appeared to have a wooden handle. It was too far away for her to tell for sure, and she tried stretching her arm under the cabinet.

  Devil it! It was just beyond her grasp.

  She could reach it if she lay flat on the floor, but even she knew that was an indignity too far. Miss Hyde-Clare could have got away with it without raising an eyebrow, but the Duchess of Kesgrave engendered expectations.

  Reluctantly, Bea rose to her feet and addressed Parsons. “Beneath the cabinet, about partway to the wall, you will see a device with a wooden handle. Please retrieve it.”

  The butler was horrified by the request, his face losing some of its color at the prospect of pressing his entire body on kitchen floorboards recently soaked with blood, but he was too well trained to deny her and complied immediately if not enthusiastically.

  He was a tall man, however, with longer arms than Beatrice, and could grasp the handle without prostrating himself, which, she thought, was a nicely consoling factor. Judging by the grimace on Parsons’s face as he brushed imaginary dust from his knees, he did not agree.

  Only when he felt sufficiently self-possessed did the butler hand Bea the item he had retrieved from under the cabinet. As she had suspected, it was the missing cleaver and given the dried blood on the blade, the murder weapon as well.

  All three servants comprehended its significance at once, but only Esther, who suffered from an excess of sensibility, promptly dropped to the floor in a faint. Gertrude inspected the scullery maid’s head for damage, noted only a small bump and scoffed at the insipid antics.

  “Silly thing. It looks no different than after cutting up a side of beef,” she muttered.

  Parsons, who did not appear to be much more solid on his feet than the scullery maid, said defensively, “It is a little different knowing that the blood is from a human, not a cow.”

  Out of respect for her superior, Gertrude granted that it might indeed be a little bit different.

  Bea, holding the cleaver, noted its weight was quite substantial and its blade was remarkably sharp. It had been honed recently and had probably cut through Mr. Réjane’s neck with relative ease.

  Oh, but why the neck? There were so many easier ways to kill a man than chopping off his head with a cleaver. Indeed, there were easier ways of killing a man with the cleaver—a slice in the gut, for instance, would do the deed very well. It would take a little bit longer for him to die from loss of blood, however, and he would have time to cry out for help.

  Was someone nearby to provide assistance?

  She turned to Parsons, whose color had yet to return, and asked him what time he had discovered Monsieur Alphonse.

  Despite his agitation, he replied calmly. “I woke at five, and the first thing I do every morning after dressing is reignite the fire in the kitchen and put on a pot of water so that when Gertrude wakes up a half hour later, it is already boiling.”

  Unprompted, the kitchen maid substantiated his claim. “I typically come down at five-thirt
y and the water is always boiling. Esther keeps the same schedule and will say so when she finishes her faint.”

  Parsons then added, also without encouragement, that he had not seen the cleaver. “It was dark when I found Monsieur Alphonse—I had only my candle—and it was a very unsettling experience, so I might have overlooked it. But I really didn’t see it and have no idea how it got under the cabinet. It’s very shocking, your grace, how easily you found it. I cannot believe the murderer counted on such clever thinking. I, for one, really thought it was the le peu. The machine had so much potential to do damage.”

  As she was not privy to his actual emotional state when he’d discovered the body, Bea could not evaluate the truth of this assertion. She could, however, point out that le peu had no blood on its blade.

  Taken aback by her conviction, he said in amazement, “It did not?”

  “It would have been scrubbed clean like everything else in the kitchen before Gertrude went to bed,” she explained, “and as it was not the murder weapon, it would have had no opportunity to get dirty.”

  Defensively, Parsons said, “The murderer might have cleaned it.”

  Bea allowed that it was possible but thought it made Mr. Mayhew’s determination to destroy the device all the more suspicious. Depriving anyone of the chance to examine it ensured that the story of accidental death was more readily believed.

  But if Mr. Mayhew had something to do with it, then why had he left the cleaver to be found under the cabinet? Surely, he would be inclined to dispose of it with the same thoroughness as the guillotine?

  Alternatively, why not return it clean to its original spot? Then no one would have cause to wonder about it at all.

  Possibly, such an activity had not occurred to him—and why would it? He was the owner of a commodious home and a man of considerable material comfort. In all likelihood, he had never washed a kitchen implement in his entire life.

  Or maybe it had been tossed under the cabinet in a fit of panic. Could he have still been in the room when Parsons entered the passageway, and hearing him approach, threw it under the cupboard before slipping out through the scullery?

  “Was Monsieur Alphonse still warm?” Bea asked.

  Parsons’s eyes grew impossibly wide and his cheekbones seemed to flare. “Excuse me?”

  “When you found his body, was it still warm or had he started to grow cool?” she said. “The body’s temperature will provide us with a sense of how long Monsieur Alphonse was dead before he was found.”

  The rational explanation did little to assuage Parsons’s outrage at the assumption that he had touched the corpse. “I would never do anything so disrespectful. Monsieur Alphonse deserved to rest in peace even without…even without”—it was difficult for him to get the words out but he persisted—“his head. I had barely understood what I was seeing before Thomas came into the room and started screaming. I calmed him down, then placed a tablecloth over Monsieur Alphonse to ensure his dignity and went to wake up Mr. Mayhew. After that, I did not return to the kitchen until after the constable and his men had left. I believe the same goes for everyone in the house. We allowed Mr. Mayhew and the constable to settle the matter between them.”

  Gertrude confirmed this, stating that she had not entered the kitchen until after ten o’clock.

  “Ten o’clock?” Bea repeated thoughtfully.

  That was a full five hours after Parsons discovered the body. What did that tell her about the time Mr. Réjane was killed?

  Nothing, she realized.

  Accordingly, she turned to the butler and asked him to describe the puddle as he had seen it early in the morning. “Was the blood oozing or had it settled into place? And was it still warm?”

  But if the servant had been indignant at the idea of touching the dead chef’s skin, he was utterly repulsed at the prospect of soaking his fingers in his blood. Sputtering in horror, he reiterated that it had been too dark to see anything and he would not have looked even if he could. “The man was dead!” he cried when he was capable of complete sentences. “That is all I know, your grace, and I must beg you to apply to Mr. Mayhew for further information regarding Monsieur Alphonse’s condition. He talked to the constable at length.”

  As Bea had every intention of interrogating the master of the house, she nodded smoothly and asked either of them if they knew when Esther had finished in the scullery.

  “Not long after me, maybe one-thirty?” Gertrude said. “We share a bed, and I had just fallen asleep when she came in. The door scrapes when you open it. But you will have to confirm the time with her when she awakens. I am sure it won’t be long now.”

  But her tone was satirical, indicating that she thought the very opposite.

  “Had Monsieur Alphonse mentioned his plans to leave?” Bea asked.

  Gertrude’s square face sharpened in response. “Monsieur Alphonse was planning to leave? He said nothing about it to me. Did you know, Mr. Parsons?”

  But the butler was already shaking his head vigorously in denial. “I am certain that is not true. He had no reason to leave. His situation here was very comfortable, and Mr. Mayhew endeavored to accommodate him whenever possible. He rarely denied him anything, and Monsieur Alphonse certainly didn’t deny himself much.”

  Although Parsons spoke evenly, without any indication of antipathy or resentment, Bea thought she detected a simmering dislike in his words. Before she could ask him to elaborate, however, Henry appeared to announce that Mr. Mayhew was ready to see her now.

  Chapter Seven

  Having occupied only the farthest fringe of society for more than half a decade, Bea knew little of the less illustrious members of the ton.

  Beau Brummell, of course, was well familiar to her, his extravagance, both in personal style and contempt for the regent, having drawn her notice. In the same vein, she had followed the career of Lord Byron, admiring his work (and eagerly awaiting the next canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage like everyone else) while flinching over the many questionable choices he had made in pursuit of personal satisfaction. She could recognize all the patronesses of Almack’s and had even conversed with Lady Cowper at the Leland ball, thanks to Lady Abercrombie’s determined efforts to bring her into fashion.

  But only the light from the brightest stars in the firmament had managed to penetrate the darkness that surrounded her on the periphery, and as a result, she knew nothing about Mr. Mayhew.

  No matter!

  He was only too delighted to rectify the situation.

  “Our principal seat is Helston Park, which my paternal grandfather, Samuel Mayhew, acquired after its owner defaulted on the mortgage, leaving the stately country estate in abject disrepair. My father, Richard Mayhew, hired Robert Adam to remodel the home, a massive undertaking that in some respects continues today, the efforts of which were more than worth it, as I am sure you will see when you and the duke consent to visit,” he said firmly, issuing a summons, not an invitation.

  The entire conversation had been conducted thusly, with the banker and member of Parliament from Aylesbury assuring her of one thing or another: She would adore his wife, greatly admire his children, look with awe upon his art collection, highly esteem his business acumen and stare in wonder at his deft command of his horses.

  Mayhew and Co.—the banking concern established by his great-grandfather—was equally a bastion of accomplishment: It began distributing banknotes more than eight decades ago and was the very first institution in the world to provide its customers with printed cheques to increase the efficiency of the system.

  Knowing nothing of the Mayhew family or the architectural wonders of its family seat, Bea could not judge the accuracy of the vast majority of his claims. It seemed unlikely to her that all the superlatives he used could uniformly apply based simply on the law of averages. Surely, at least one of the portraits in his collection was not quite stellar or his ability to sweep a tight corner with four in hand not entirely the vision of grace and beauty he insisted it was. N
evertheless, she was willing to allow him the benefit of the doubt.

  On the history of banking, however, she could extend no such courtesy, as she knew the year the Bank of England issued its first form cheque and it was a full six before Harold Mayhew established his company.

  It was, she thought, a reckless boast, for anyone with even a cursory knowledge of financial innovation knew printed cheques were an invention of the Bank of England. Needless to say, Bea’s interest in the topic was more than just passing, as she had read all three volumes in Jasper Penwilk’s masterful study on European banking systems and the advantages of free competition.

  Faintly contemptuous, Bea made no effort to correct Mr. Mayhew’s error for the same reason she had made no effort to interrupt his endless pontification: She could perceive no value in alienating Mr. Réjane’s employer.

  Well, she amended with silent humor, there would be some value, for she would enjoy taking the wind out of the insufferable popinjay’s sails.

  Kesgrave might also be given to ostentatious displays of knowledge, but his information, although frequently as dull, had the advantage of always being accurate.

  Additionally, it had less to do with his own personal self-aggrandizement than with particular facts about the world.

  As Mr. Mayhew launched into a description of his grandfather’s tenure as Lord Mayor of London (1741–44), Bea wondered how much longer she was expected to listen to his speech before she could ask about the destruction of le peu guillotine, his conversation with the constable and his feelings on his chef’s refusal to remain in his employ. It had already been fifteen…no, she thought, glancing at the clock…twenty minutes, and at some point, her silent submission to his ceaseless prattle would begin to seem insulting. Only a partially insensible woman could listen without protesting.

  Five minutes more, she thought, turning away from the sight of Mr. Mayhew in all his splendor—the chartreuse-colored waistcoat, the snug silk breeches, the buckled pumps with a low heel, wide whiskers—to examine the simple plasterwork on the ceiling.