A Sinister Establishment

by Lynn Messina

  “As much as I adore listening to you pontificate interminably on tedious subjects, your grace, I simply do not have the time right now to indulge you,” she said. “Come please. We must hurry.”

  Kesgrave restored the wedge of Wiltshire to its plate and placed both on the tray. “The Black Death, which was spread by rats, killed several million people in the span of only a few years.”

  “You are stalling,” she said.

  “I am, yes,” he said agreeably, “but I am serious as well. This is an old house and we are constantly fighting pests.”

  Smothering a sigh, she leaned over the bed and piled the ham slices neatly on the tray, then wiped gently at the faint greasy stain on the bedcover. “There,” she said, brushing the last few crumbs into her hand, “now we can return the tray to the kitchen on our way to search Mrs. Wallace’s rooms. I applaud your efficiency. Now do let’s go.”

  “Given my stance on traipsing through the servants quarters, I would expect you to anticipate my aversion to searching the housekeeper’s rooms,” he said.

  “We are looking for a murderer, not a rasher of bacon,” she countered tartly.

  “I don’t believe the distinction between the two is as great as you think it is, as both can wait until morning,” he said. “Please ring for Joseph to collect the tray and tell me why we are searching Mrs. Wallace’s office. As I know establishing yourself with the staff is one of your goals, I am compelled to warn you that rifling through her private possessions in the middle of the night is not the best way to go about it.”

  Never one to continue the fight after the cause had been lost, Bea tugged the bell pull and settled herself again on the bed. “In light of your ridiculous theory regarding Mr. Réjane’s proposal—and speaking of establishing oneself with the staff, calling your housekeeper a dotty female is also not ideal—I realized that he might have had another purpose in coming to Kesgrave House to speak with her. In that event, the proposal was merely a pretext to gain him entry into her rooms. Why would he want access to her rooms? To hide something in a safe place.”

  Smiling at her reasoning, he called her conclusion outrageous but conceded it was still more plausible than Monsieur Alphonse’s nurturing a hopeless passion for Mrs. Wallace. “What do you supposed he secreted away?”

  “Ah, yes, what do you suppose, your grace,” she asked with pointed annoyance, “for it could be almost an infinite number of things. If only someone would let us investigate the answer right away rather than requiring us to twiddle our thumbs with tedious impatience until respectable calling hours.”

  But if she had hoped to heighten his interest in the mysterious hidden object, she failed miserably. He displayed no curiosity in the unknown item and only nodded absently as she began to speculate. What her comment did awaken, however, was a sense of challenge, and he was determined to do everything he could to alleviate the tedium of waiting.

  “For I cannot allow my wife to expire from boredom,” he said softly as he pressed her against the pillows. Carefully, he took the glass of champagne from her grasp and settled it on the night table in noticeable contrast to the heedless way she had knocked his own drink out of his hand.

  “Not unless you are lecturing her on the Great Plague,” she added as caveat.

  She felt his smile on her skin as he pressed kisses against her neck. “Not unless.”

  Already, she felt her boredom easing. “What about Joseph?”

  An inarticulate murmur was his only response.

  “He will knock at an inopportune time,” she said breathily, her ability to think rationally slipping away as sensation began to overtake her.

  “I will leave the tray outside,” he said reassuringly, although he demonstrated no indication of doing so. Indeed, he seemed to sink further into her as he raised the hem of her night rail.

  “Oh, yes, that will keep the Black Death from your door,” she said on a light laugh before succumbing entirely to her husband’s attentions.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Denied the opportunity to burst in on Mrs. Wallace in the middle of the night, Bea was reluctant to bother her now that Kesgrave had deemed the hour appropriate for an invasion.

  “It is not an invasion,” she said sharply as he escorted her down the hallway toward the staircase in the back of the house. “It is a conversation.”

  “Followed by a frenzied ransacking of her private possessions,” he said.

  “A thoughtful search,” she corrected but knew the distinction was not as clear as her emphatic tone implied. If only they’d made their foray under the cover of darkness with the fire of discovery propelling them forward. Now, in the bright light of day and after several hours of consideration, the hunt for Mr. Réjane’s hidden object felt intrusive, almost like the invasion Kesgrave claimed it to be, and like any incursion, it required a careful negotiation of terms. The details would have to be worked out in advance before a single drawer could be inspected.

  It was so inefficient, the demands of diplomacy, and yet it was not the inefficiency of the endeavor that had her taking the stairs more slowly than usual.

  No, it was the looming awkwardness of the forthcoming conversation. It was perfectly wretched to have to tell one’s housekeeper that her suitor’s seemingly earnest proposal of marriage had been naught but a ploy to gain access to her room to use it as a strongbox. If Mrs. Wallace put any stock at all in his offer, then she would find this information to be a cruel betrayal.

  Furthermore, the revelation would require her to contemplate just how her employers had arrived at their distressing conclusion. As she was a reasonably intelligent women, the obvious answer would occur to her quickly enough: Baffled by his offer, they had turned the matter over and over again in their heads until they found an explanation more outlandish than the act itself.

  Mrs. Wallace would be mortified to realize she was the target of so much ducal consideration and confusion. The poor woman would probably never be able to raise her head again in the presence of Kesgrave and would be well within her right to hold the new duchess responsible for the humiliation.

  So much for establishing herself with the staff, Bea thought wryly.

  All this awfulness could have been avoided if Kesgrave had simply allowed her to pursue her supposition the night before. Her plan had not been without its drawbacks, she conceded, but it had had one significant advantage: the disorienting nature of sudden arousal. Awakened from a deep sleep, her wits nicely scattered, Mrs. Wallace would have stood bemusedly by as her things were carelessly rummaged through by the Duke and Duchess of Kesgrave.

  Like a horde of locusts clearing a field, they would have been gone before she scarcely knew they had been there.

  Quick and clean, all feelings spared!

  But no, Kesgrave had to insist on respecting his servant’s privacy.

  Did he not comprehend what being lord of the manor meant?

  As churlish as she was with Kesgrave for creating what she considered to be an intolerable situation, she refused to hand the matter over to him. The notion that Mr. Réjane had hidden something of great value in the housekeeper’s rooms was hers, and she would be the one to explain it to Mrs. Wallace, no matter how wildly implausible it sounded.

  There was always a chance—slim, she felt, but no less real—that her conclusion entirely missed the mark, and if that was the case, then it would be her name the staff bandied about in the servants’ hall, not the duke’s.

  At the bottom of the staircase they turned right and immediately encountered Joseph, who, spotting the duchess first, smiled in greeting, for her presence belowstairs was already a familiar sight. A moment later, however, his eyes perceived the duke, and he straightened his posture so forcefully Bea feared his spine would crack.

  Knowing better than to show concern for his physical well-being, Bea dipped her head in acknowledgment and wished him good morning.

  “Good morning, your grace,” he said, speaking a little louder than was necessary in his
anxiety.

  Or perhaps, Bea thought, he was alerting his colleagues to their presence, for the other servant they encountered en route to the housekeeper’s rooms already had his eyes tilted down when they passed.

  Mrs. Wallace was standing on the threshold of her office and did not appear unduly alarmed by their presence—an impressive accomplishment, Bea decided. Given the subject of their previous discussion and how infrequently Kesgrave visited the lower quarters, the housekeeper must have some inkling of the impropriety or discomfort to come.

  Bea greeted her warmly and announced they had a matter they needed to discuss with her right away.

  “Of course, your grace,” Mrs. Wallace murmured, “please come in.”

  Although Kesgrave professed to be afraid of earning his staff’s disapprobation by invading their private quarters, he displayed no ill ease at being in Mrs. Wallace’s small office. Smoothly, he gestured to a chair, encouraging the housekeeper to take a seat, complimented her on the cheerful assortment of yellow roses that sat in a white porcelain vase on her desk, and received her gratitude with a gracious nod. Then he leaned against the door.

  Bea, perceiving it was her turn to speak, decided there was no point in gently working her way up to the awkward topic. She would state it simply and without equivocation. “Mrs. Wallace, it has come to my attention that Monsieur Alphonse may have used his visit to you on the day he died as an opportunity to hide something in your office.”

  The housekeeper was as skilled as the rest of the servants at concealing her emotions, but she could not smother the shock that entered her eyes or resist the urge to look at Kesgrave for confirmation of his wife’s statement. Her surprise was fleeting, however, for only a moment later, she returned her gaze to the duchess and announced that she had no recollection of her visitor behaving in a manner that suggested he had a secret object to hide.

  “He sat in that chair,” she explained, indicating the one Bea currently occupied, “and spoke to me for about thirty minutes.”

  As much as Bea appreciated Mrs. Wallace’s dispassionate response, she could not help being slightly taken aback by it and wondered at the effort it required for her to appear unaffected by the news. Naturally, she did not draw attention to it and surveyed the room from her vantage point. She saw few opportunities for concealment. The desk was simple and solid, with no outfacing drawers or compartments, and the chair was likewise plain and sparse.

  Thoughtfully, she considered the shelves along the wall.

  Could they be reached from the chair?

  Gauging the distance, she imagined her fingers would just touch the edge of the wood. If Mr. Réjane was several inches taller than she, he might have been able to make firm contact….

  But that would require quite a lot of conspicuous stretching and Mrs. Wallace claimed to have noticed nothing amiss.

  That meant he must have hidden the item while the housekeeper was absent from the room. “Did you leave him alone at any point?”

  “No,” she said firmly, and then immediately drew her brows together. “Well, yes, I did, but only very briefly and just to go into the other room. He suggested we toast to our futures—his in Paris, mine in London—and I went to get a bottle of cordial my mother sent me. I keep it in a chest at the foot of my bed. It could not have taken me more than half a minute to fetch it. Actually, we needed glasses as well, and those took me a little longer to locate. Perhaps I was gone for one and a half minutes. Is that enough time for him to have hidden something? He certainly did not seem harried or disturbed when I returned, and I took particular note because I wanted to reassure myself that he was not hurt by my refusal. Additionally, nothing was out of place after he left, which I know because I always straighten up every night before I go to bed. If something had been moved, I would have noticed.”

  “I do not doubt that, Mrs. Wallace, for you are remarkably efficient,” Bea said sincerely. Although flattery may be as good as solving a murder for earning a servant’s respect, her admiration for the housekeeper was genuine. If only every person she interrogated were as straightforward and informative as she. “With those constraints in mind, where do you think he might have hidden the object?”

  Mrs. Wallace pursed her lips and looked around her room consideringly. “It would depend on the object, I suppose. What are you looking for?”

  It was a reasonable question, and Bea admitted with some reluctance that she did not actually know. “But bearing in mind what you said earlier about his not appearing to have something to hide, we may assume the item was very small or very slim.”

  “Like a letter?” Mrs. Wallace said. “Or a piece of jewelry?”

  Bea agreed they were both likely prospects.

  The housekeeper sighed and admitted with consternation that it could be anywhere then—hidden behind the console, pressed between the pages of a book, tucked discreetly in a drawer. Then she looked at her mistress and asked how she would like her to conduct the search. “I can do it myself or summon one of the footmen to look.”

  Ah, yes, of course, Bea thought, struck by the trickiness of the situation. She had been so worried about embarrassing Mrs. Wallace with her suitor’s true motives, she had failed to consider the specifics of the search itself. Obviously, it would be untenable for the Duke of Kesgrave to rifle through his housekeeper’s things—not because she was his housekeeper but because he was the duke. Peers of the realm did not do their own rifling. They employed servants for that.

  She had done it again, she realized with satirical humor, brought Kesgrave to yet another new low. Would there be no end to the depths to which she would consign him? And this time it would somehow be worse because she would be diminishing him in the eyes of his own servant.

  Would assuring Mrs. Wallace that she intended to perform the task herself help to improve his standing among the servants?

  Probably not, she decided, as marriage to her had already dealt it a decisive blow.

  The question was, then, could it do further harm?

  She rather thought the answer was no, as Marlow steadfastly believed she was a brazen hussy, an opinion no doubt shared by the rest of the staff. In that case, shamelessly hunting through the housekeeper’s possessions was in perfect keeping with their expectation of her and nothing would be lost. If anything, Kesgrave might gain their compassion for having allowed himself to be gulled into a match that was even less advantageous than they had first perceived.

  But that was not ideal either, earning the pity of one’s retainers.

  Then again, really, how much sympathy could a servant truly feel for a duke? She herself loved him quite dreadfully, and she had so little care for his dignity that she’d brought him to his housekeeper’s office to comb through her things.

  Before Beatrice could reply to Mrs. Wallace, Kesgrave intervened “Did you have those flowers?”

  Focused on the pragmatic concerns of the search, Mrs. Wallace was startled by the question and appeared initially incapable of grasping it. “Did I have.…” She repeated, trailing off before lapsing into a moment of silence. “Yes, your grace, I did. Mr. Marlow gave them to me from the delivery we received from the florist on Wednesday,” she explained as the color rose in her cheeks. Hastily, she added that they were only castoffs. “With sparse blossoms or bruised petals. He did not think they were fit for the drawing room or your bedchamber, so he gave them to me.”

  At first Bea attributed her blush to the revelation of Marlow’s kindness—and recalled suddenly the odd high squeak the butler had made when he learned of Mr. Réjane’s proposal—but she quickly realized Kesgrave was the source of her embarrassment. She was horrified by the prospect that he might think that she had appropriated his flowers for her own enjoyment.

  Mildly, Kesgrave applauded the practicality of the arrangement and commended the butler for coming up with it, as there was no reason for such lovely roses to go to waste. “But I was thinking rather that the vase might make an excellent hiding place,” he said, “
as it is in within easy reach of the desk.”

  The vase!

  “Yes, of course,” Bea said eagerly, eyeing the vessel, which was slender, to be sure, but not so narrow that an emerald ring or a pearl necklace would not slide easily through the opening. “So not a secret document revealing Mr. Mayhew’s true parentage, then.”

  Kesgrave’s lips quirked, indicating that he had not realized they were entertaining that possibility. “Not a secret document, no.”

  As Mrs. Wallace looked on in bewilderment, Bea lifted the vase and noted its inordinate weight. “That would seem to confirm your supposition. Would you like to do the honors?” she asked, holding out the vase.

  He deferred to her and asked Mrs. Wallace to retrieve a glass so they may empty the water neatly. She complied at once, disappearing into the other room and returning with two goblets and a teacup. “I was not sure if one would do,” she explained awkwardly.

  Bea removed the roses, placed them gently on the desk and tilted the vase. At once she heard the clang of metal and smiled excitedly at Kesgrave. A few moment later, several dozen gold coins clattered onto the surface. “Well done, your grace,” she murmured.

  Agog, Mrs. Wallace stared at the treasure. “But that is a small fortune in guineas. In my very room. Under my very nose,” she said, her tone as amazed as it was dismayed, before fervently apologizing to the duke for her ignorance. “I had no idea. I assure you, your grace, I had no idea at all. I cannot believe Monsieur Alphonse dropped them in there while I was getting the cordial. There are so many. I was gone for only one minute, maybe two, and when I returned, he was sitting in that chair, as calmly as you please, and he had just placed a small fortune in my flower vase. If I had had any suspicion that such a wicked scheme was afoot, I would have reported it to you at once, your grace. Oh, my, and think of the scandal if Dolly had found the money when she came in to change the water. What a horror! If I had had any clue they were there, I would have come to you at once. You must believe me, your grace.”