A Sinister Establishment

by Lynn Messina

  Bea, who had already planned on confirming Mr. Mayhew’s own account with his valet, thanked Annette for her time and requested that she send for Stebbings. The maid complied at once, rising to her feet and executing a smooth curtsey before striding to the door. Standing on the other side, eager to be of service, were the Mayhews, and although Bea assured the couple they did not require refreshments, the banker pushed his elbow into the opening before Bea could close the door.

  “I have an excellent Haut-Brion in the cellar that I have been saving for a special occasion,” he added as inducement. “I would be delighted to open the bottle and toast to your happiness while we wait for Stebbings.”

  Firmly, Bea thanked him for the generous offer but explained that it was essential to their investigation that she and the duke have a moment to confer privately before their next interview. Mr. Mayhew, attempting to insert himself again into the process, responded with his qualifications, for as a banker he was accustomed to private conferences and knew many tactics for conducing successful interviews.

  He barely managed to remove his arm before Bea shut the door.

  Even so, she could still hear him on the other side cataloguing his skills.

  Having never had anyone be overly eager to assist her before, she knew the problem was uniquely the fault of the duke. If he had been a second son—or even a third or fourth or someone wholly unimportant—then she would not have vexatiously obsequious bankers risking damage to their limbs to curry her favor.

  “Fie on you, Kesgrave,” she said with mild exasperation as she heard Mrs. Mayhew offer muffled consolation to her husband.

  The duke, who was accustomed to accepting blame even when he did not know its cause, approached Bea with amusement flickering in his eyes. “Oh, no, brat, not this time. If you have any complaints about your current situation, you must lodge them with yourself, for interviewing servants in the tiny dressing room of the wife of a toadying banker was not on my list of activities for the afternoon. If you recall, I had suggested we have an informal dinner in our bedchamber. Indeed, according to my itinerary, you should be trembling beneath me right now, not waiting to ask a valet about his tussle with a dead chef.”

  It hit her hard, the surge of emotion that swept through her at these words, the wave of desire that washed over her. All at once, it was impossible to breathe and difficult to stand and she pressed her back against the frame of the door for additional support.

  How casually he said it—trembling beneath me—how coolly, as if they were still discussing Mr. Réjane’s cheroots.

  Was this how it would be going forward, the sublime tossed carelessly into the mundane?

  Forcefully, she drew air into her lungs and took two steps away from the door to prove to herself she was sturdy on her own. Then she curled her fingers to resist the compulsion to touch him and, striving to match his nonchalant tone, said, “Although I now have a keen understanding of how a duke may manipulate time, I also have a passing acquaintance with the clock mechanism. There is one on the wall over there, which is how I know that, according to your own schedule, you would still be bracketed in your study with Mr. Stephens discussing the roofs. I would not be trembling beneath you for another one hour and forty-eight minutes.”

  A light entered his eyes, hot and fierce, and observing it, Bea felt a strange mix of potency and powerlessness. It was, despite the absurdity of their location and the knock on the door signaling the arrival of Stebbings, a welcome sensation because it made her feel giddy and happy to be in the absurd location awaiting her next suspect.

  The annoyance she had felt at Mr. Mayhew’s enervating neediness lifted as she stepped farther away from the door.

  Kesgrave, assuming an air of fresh understanding, announced that he began to perceive at last why she nurtured such a sharp dislike of dukes. “You are under the misapprehension that we possess magical abilities like Merlin or a sorcerer in a fairy story. Rest assured, my dear, I can no more manipulate time than I can control fire. That said, the clock on the wall over there is off by several minutes, for in fact you should be trembling beneath me in one hour and fifty-one minutes.”

  Naturally, she was compelled to point out the pedantry that required him to account for three minutes.

  Although he usually submitted meekly to the frequent charge, he caviled now at the allegation, for it was not a fondness for accuracy that motived him. “Rather, when you regret your decision to alter our schedule—and I am confident you will very shortly—I want to make sure you lament every minute.”

  Smothering a grin, Bea opened the door to admit the valet and, realizing she could not bear to listen to Mrs. Mayhew prattle anxiously again about the wobbliness of the John Cobb chair, asked to be conducted to the servants’ hall.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mrs. Blewitt, in accordance with the behavior of her fellow servants, was eager to blame another member of the staff for Mr. Réjane’s horrendous decapitation. To her credit, however, she managed to patiently answer several of Beatrice’s questions before forcefully pointing her finger.

  Calmly, she recounted her movements during the relevant interval in helpful detail, explaining that after reviewing all the items in the pantry so that she could replenish the stores the following day, she had inspected the kitchen to make sure it was up to her cleanliness standards. Then she retired to her room, performed her nightly ablutions, said her prayers and climbed into bed. Although she had not checked the clock specifically to see the hour, she felt strongly it was a little after one.

  Furthermore, she readily owned to having a longstanding disagreement with Monsieur Alphonse regarding the plants she chose to cultivate in the little courtyard garden. It was a trifle annoying, yes, the way the Frenchman repeatedly derided her rosebushes, but certainly nothing over which she bore him a grudge.

  “He would have preferred that I grow onions,” she explained, “because he thought you could never have too many of them. I am sure that is true, but my garden is an English one and must contain roses. I told him I was happy to share the plottage so that he may grow his own crops, but he had no interest in doing the work. I think he just enjoyed tweaking me about my roses. I did not mind in the least. It was like a game to him. Monsieur Alphonse did not take many things seriously. I understood that.”

  As the chef’s nonchalant attitude had been mentioned in several interviews, Bea nodded absently at this statement and opened her mouth to question the nature of the disagreement, which had been described to her in considerably harsher terms by the scullery maid.

  Before she could utter a word, however, Mrs. Blewitt’s placidity broke and she cried plaintively, “But I do not understand why you are asking all these questions about my behavior when you must already know who the killer is. It’s Gertrude. Gertrude hated Monsieur Alphonse and everyone knows it. She could not bear how freely he moved about the house, coming and going as often as he pleased. Every time he wandered out of the kitchen to walk around the square or visit Gunter’s, she seethed with anger, and he wandered out all the time, whenever the mood struck. It happened just yesterday! In the middle of preparations for the party! He simply disappeared for almost an hour, leaving the pots boiling and the quails roasting and not telling a soul. Gertrude was beside herself. I have never seen anyone so angry. She roamed the kitchen, muttering to herself and brandishing a ladle like it was a club. I really thought she was going to knock him on the head as soon as he returned. I was prepared to intercede before things got out of hand, but eventually she remembered to check on the quails and returned to work. Even so she could not stop muttering. I paid it no heed because she was always fuming about one thing he did or another. Also, the kitchen boy spilled a bowl of cream and that created another uproar. But then this morning…when I saw…when I saw…his body…”

  She lowered her head ignominiously and confessed that she had been so distraught to realize what Gertrude had done, she had fainted dead away.

  “Never in my life have I behav
ed with such abandon,” she confessed, falling silent again.

  A moment later, however, she continued without prompting. “When I saw what had happened to him, I realized that I’d misjudged Gertrude. Her anger had not subsided but had grown worse and terrible. She’s the one you are looking for, your grace. It pains me greatly to say it, for I have worked alongside her for four years, but the truth cannot be suppressed: Gertrude Vickers killed Monsieur Alphonse. May God have mercy on her soul.”

  Curiously, Stebbings, the valet, had said almost the exact same thing about Henry Pearce, the brown-haired footman who had requested Bea’s calling card before allowing her to enter the house. He had made the accusation with a hint of outrage in his voice, as if he could not believe he had to defend his own behavior when a man like Henry was allowed to roam freely.

  “Did I lose my temper when I saw Monsieur Alphonse standing on Mr. Mayhew’s coat—the silk weave with the cerulean stripes?” the valet had asked, his tone reasonable. “Why, yes, I did, and I defy any man of sense and feeling to act with total equanimity when confronted with wantonly abused silk. Did I wish he had more respect for the fine quality of Mr. Mayhew’s wardrobe? Without question, I’d begged him before to take more care when looking for a cheroot. Indeed, I had advised him to stop treating the master’s dressing room as his own private tobacconist. Did I slice his head off because of it? Good gracious, no. As beautiful as it is and as flattering to Mr. Mayhew’s frame as its tailoring is, it is just a coat, and I have the sense to realize it is just a coat. But I will tell you who doesn’t have that sense of proportion: Henry Pearce.”

  Bolstering his argument, he’d cited the footman’s ready temper, which had been frayed by months of little sleep because he shared a wall with the chef, who snored loudly. “He would be up all night long listening to the thunderous noise. Some nights he cannot get a single minute of sleep. I am not surprised he finally reached his limit and snapped. He is, you will notice, disconcertingly robust. He carries wood up to the top floor several times a day, and he can lift the drawing room table all by himself. I can do neither,” Stebbings added, “for I would never do anything so uncouth as develop muscles. They ruin the lines of one’s jacket. I can barely slice through a joint of mutton without causing a muscle strain.”

  More curious yet, Henry had described Mr. Laurent, the groom, in similar terms when he had identified him as the murderer.

  “Obviously, you have to look at who among the staff has the ability to do something like this,” the footman had pointed out pragmatically. “Mentally, I mean, not just physically, and in that case you must consider Mr. Laurent as a suspect because he has a habit of treating people like horses. I’ve seen him put down an injured mare without flinching. And he had a terrible row with Monsieur Alphonse yesterday morning because he took one of the horses without asking. He had done it before and Mr. Laurent had warned him that it could not continue, but Monsieur Alphonse ignored him and did it anyway.”

  In actuality, the similarities in the servants’ behavior—Mrs. Blewitt, Henry, Laurent, Stebbings—were not curious at all, for the impulse to drive suspicion away from oneself and toward another was perfectly valid given the circumstance. To know that someone in the house, someone with whom you worked closely, someone with whom you interacted on a daily basis, was capable of cutting off your associate’s head with a meat cleaver was a disturbing proposition at best. At worst, it was a truly terrifying notion to consider, an insidious waking nightmare that crept up your spine like a chittering scarab as you pondered who might be next.

  It was little wonder the servants were examining one another with well-honed suspicion.

  But being the next victim was not the only thing they feared. Weighing more heavily on their minds was Bea herself, the Duchess of Kesgrave, suddenly and inexplicably thrusting her nose into their business. And making such a fuss about it too! Had the matter not been settled hours ago? Did the constable not leave the premises at nine-thirty that morning at peace with his determination of accidental death? Why, then, was there a peeress in their own servants’ hall eyeing them all distrustfully?

  It was only a game to her, was it not, this playing at being a lady Runner. It was what the gentry did, adopting humble roles for their amusement and then throwing them off just as lightly. Marie Antoinette, most famously, constructed an entire peasant village where she could pretend to be a dairymaid who milked cows and tended the garden.

  Number forty-four was just the Duchess of Kesgrave’s Hameau de la Reine. She would ask her questions and point her finger like a spinning top landing at random, and then she would move on to the next consuming interest, gratified by her ingenuity, and they would go to the gallows.

  Bea knew the comparison to the former queen of France was excessive, if for no other reason than the parallel was unlikely to occur to any of Mr. Mayhew’s servants, but she felt the argument held. They had no reason to trust her, even if they had heard about her confrontation with Lord Wem, and the consequences for them were dire, particularly now that she had assumed a duchy. Her word would be taken on faith, the evidence she presented accepted as gospel truth, and the person she deemed guilty would be crushed under the wheels of justice.

  There would be no genteel exile to the wilds of Italy.

  She had not noticed it at first, the way her new status was altering her investigation, pulling it in strange directions so that it did not form a familiar shape. Rather, it produced a line that squiggled from one edge of the paper to the other, haphazardly bouncing in enthusiastic confusion. Unlike the lovely curls Dolly had arranged, the power conferred on her by marriage—the clout she possessed, the influence she wielded—was an intangible thing she could not see when she looked in the mirror. She could only see it now in the eyes of her respondents.

  Having Kesgrave beside her, of course, did little to mitigate the problem, for even if the staff somehow managed to forget who she was, he was right there to remind them. Silently, he sat in the room, judging the proceedings and adding to her consequences.

  ’Twas the very devil!

  Marlow, no doubt, would attribute every advance she made in her investigation to the duke’s commanding presence.

  Even so, she could not resent his company. The transition from spinster to wife had been so jarring—wonderful, to be sure, but also swift and unsettling—that she could feel only relief in the familiarity of the situation. So much had changed in the past twenty-four hours, and yet his belief in her ability remained unaltered.

  Whatever happened later, whatever reasonable objection he made to his wife’s unusual avocation, she would have the knowledge of his enduring respect.

  It would have to be enough.

  Mindful of her authority, Bea answered Mrs. Blewitt’s accusation with a mild nod. She kept her expression neutral, deliberately bland, because she did not want to encourage the housekeeper to add elaborate details to her narration in order to make her associate appear guilty. At the same time, she did not want to discourage her from providing vital information.

  It was, she acknowledged with a faint hint of exhaustion, a difficult fence to straddle, and struggling to maintain her balance, she found herself longing for the nonthreatening drabness of Beatrice Hyde-Clare.

  Mrs. Blewitt, however, was disconcerted by the underwhelming reply and asked curtly if Bea had heard her clearly. The servant remembered herself a moment later, lowered her head and mumbled an apology, which she immediately repeated with more coherence.

  “Gertrude is the kitchen maid?” Bea asked, recalling that Mrs. Mayhew had mentioned her as well. She had scalded the velouté, and Mr. Réjane, according the report, handled the incident with equanimity.

  Could his measured approach have had the opposite of its intended effect and somehow created resentment?

  “Yes,” Mrs. Blewitt said.

  “I will make a note of it,” Bea said, thanking her for the information and promising to speak with her next. “First I would like to hear more about
your argument with Monsieur Alphonse.”

  “I do not think there is anything else to add,” Mrs. Blewitt replied. “We quibbled about the roses as we frequently do, then, as I said, I went to the pantry to assess our needs for the coming week, inspected the kitchen and went to bed. As it was a longstanding disagreement, I do not think you need to put too fine a point on it, your grace. We bickered but bore each other no ill will. Monsieur Alphonse was a fine cook and an excellent card player. On quiet evenings we would play whist for ha’penny a point well into the night.”

  Bea acknowledged this assertion with another noncommittal nod, for a claim of friendship with the victim was another common feature of her interviews.

  By all accounts, the dead chef had rubbed along well with the entire household: Edward Laurent, the groom, a fellow French exile whose shared heritage forged a nigh-on-unbreakable bond; Martin Stebbings, the valet, who considered the victim to be as a father, often seeking his advice on personal matters; and Henry Peace, the footman, whose success at nine pins had increased considerably since the victim had begun instructing him on the game’s finer points.

  For every tale of Mr. Réjane’s selfishness, privilege or general inconsideration she heard, she was treated to three more describing his generosity, thoughtfulness and good humor.

  The barrage of stories, the way they seemed to volley from cruel to kind and kind to cruel, further squiggled the shape she was trying to discern. After speaking to almost the entire staff, she still could not identify a single cohesive narrative amid the jumble of noise. It was all clamor—screechy and distorting—and she didn’t know what to think.

  Indeed, the only thing she knew for certain was that she had failed to eliminate a single suspect from her list, other than Mrs. Mayhew and her maid. Everyone to whom she had spoken had both an opportunity to harm the victim and a reason to wish him ill.

  And everyone, just like Mrs. Blewitt, had professed bewilderment when she broached the subject of their disagreement with the renowned chef.