by Lynn Messina
“You can but you won’t,” she pointed out.
He acknowledged this as true but remained adamantly convinced that she would eventually find something to appreciate in his situation. “Even if it is only my library.”
“Which I have still yet to visit,” she said, sounding genuinely surprised by that development. There she was, mistress of Kesgrave House for almost forty-eight hours and she had yet to hide herself away.
“We must rectify that immediately,” he said, “for I have an absurd desire to see you trembling there.”
And now she blushed, for she had failed to realize not only the various locations in which one could conduct marital relations but also that he had been considering them so thoroughly.
Obviously, a newly married man could not be expected to resist so charming a response in his bride and the second delicate kiss quickly turned passionate.
But even as Bea began to contemplate the advantages of the settee, Kesgrave drew back, shifted uncomfortably and moved several inches away from her on the cushion.
“Mrs. Mayhew,” he said.
Her thoughts still muddled, she stared at him in confusion.
“You said she found the meeting productive,” he explained, a pleased smile hovering on his lips. “Did you as well?”
Oh, he liked that, didn’t he, corrupting her ability to think clearly. “Yes and no. She had no recollection whatsoever of Gertrude Vickers threatening Monsieur Alphonse with a cleaver, which is why I have summoned Mrs. Blewitt to confirm it. However, she did provide one vital piece of information. The reason she met with Mrs. Blewitt and Mr. Réjane to finalize the menu on Thursday was her husband was called away at the last minute for a meeting with a new investor called Mr. Bayne.”
Kesgrave raised an eyebrow in a particularly refined manner. “Oh, did he?”
“Indeed, yes,” she replied firmly.
“And I trust she explained to the company why her husband was absent from the meeting,” he said.
“I think we may safely assume she did,” Bea confirmed, “which is why Mr. Réjane went haring off to the bank the next morning to meet with his own Mr. Bayne and discovered promptly enough that the clerk did not exist. He then returned to Berkeley Square and confronted Mr. Mayhew, who admitted that he never had any intention of providing the loan. In response, he resigned his post and rifled through his employer’s dressing room until he found something of value to compensate him for what he felt he was owed.”
The duke regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment and then said, “It is, I agree, an important piece of information, but I am not sure it adds anything to the case against Mayhew. Knowing why Réjane chose to go to the bank on the morning of the dinner party doesn’t incriminate him further.”
Bea knew this was true: Just because every one of Mr. Réjane’s actions on the last day of his life traced back to his visit to the bank did not mean his murderer’s did as well. The chef’s anger had cascading effects. His outrage over Mr. Mayhew’s lies, for example, led to his searching his employer’s dressing room and the vicious argument with Stebbings. In the same way, his theft of the coins led to his visit to Mrs. Wallace, which caused the quails to dry out and Gertrude’s public drubbing at the hands of her employer.
These resentments were engendered by the visit to the bank but not directly caused by it.
Cascading effects, she thought again.
But as plausible as these sequences of events were, they felt slightly too tortuous to Bea, as if she were rummaging around for a more complicated solution when a simple one was right before her. If the bank was somehow central to the explanation, then surely Mr. Mayhew himself was central to the explanation. He was, after all, the one who had grasped on to the butler’s benign explanation and ordered the immediate destruction of the evidence. And he had tried to coolly manipulate her every movement from the moment she’d stepped into his drawing room.
There was a cold-blooded shrewdness about Mr. Mayhew she simply could not dismiss, which she tried to explain to the duke by citing the example of the skewer.
“The skewer?” he said.
“Yes,” she affirmed, “the skewer. Subtly, he indicated that he did not know what a cleaver was by calling it a skewer. It is that clear-headed attention to detail that makes him dangerous. He’s awake to the game and playing it at all times.”
Kesgrave looked doubtful, and before he could make a counterargument, she allowed that it was all a bit of a speculative stretch.
“Obviously, Gertrude Vickers’s immoderate temperament makes her a much better suspect, which is why we are waiting on Mrs. Blewitt’s pleasure,” she said.
Joseph returned then with additional tea cakes for the plate and a silver teapot that gleamed brightly in the light.
“Perfect,” Bea said happily as he rearranged the tray. “Mrs. Blewitt will be so overwhelmed by the magnificence she will immediately tell us everything we wish to know.”
But Mr. Mayhew’s housekeeper was definitely not as easily intimidated as his valet, and she stood stiffly near the doorway, refusing either to take a seat or accept a refreshment.
“Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew are my employers,” she said with rigid determination, “and they have treated me with respect and consideration for more than a dozen years. I will not say one word against them. I am sorry if that creates a problem for you, your grace, but I must abide by my conscience.”
Bea darted a look at the duke, for it was unexpected that the unsavory banker had managed to inspire loyalty in at least one member of his staff, then returned her gaze to Mrs. Blewitt and assured her she had no desire to make her violate any of her principles. “Indeed, I did not invite you here to discuss your employers. I had a question about Gertrude Vickers.”
At once, Mrs. Blewitt’s posture relaxed and she repeated the name in surprised relief. “Oh, yes, I see, Gertrude. Well, that’s all right, then. What would you like to know about her?”
Bea marveled at the change in her demeanor. “We are trying to assess her ability to control her temper. You have talked previously about her many outbursts, but we are interested in one in particular.”
This information confused the housekeeper, and she regarded Bea cautiously. “Of course, your grace. I will do my best to recall the specific incident.”
“It is in regards to Mrs. Mayhew,” Bea said.
At once Mrs. Blewitt shook her head. “Gertrude has a fierce and unregulated temper, but she would never lose it with Mrs. Mayhew. She has full respect for her authority and desires to keep her position. She knows which side her bread is buttered, even with all her problems with Monsieur Alphonse.”
“Of course,” Bea replied, for she had not imagined the kitchen maid losing her temper with her mistress. “Rather, I was wondering if Gertrude had one of her episodes in front of Mrs. Mayhew.”
Once again, the housekeeper fiercely denied it.“Oh, no, never!” she said. “She is not lost to all reason. In their presence she is as respectful and deferential as anyone would want.”
As Stebbings himself had freely admitted that he had cast around somehow desperately for someone else to blame, Bea was only mildly surprised to hear his account contested by the housekeeper. Increasingly, it appeared that the spinning top pointed firmly at Stebbings.
“What about near them?” Kesgrave asked, drawing attention to himself for the first time. “Has Gertrude lost her temper when Mrs. Mayhew was belowstairs? Perhaps she did not realize she was there?”
“Oh, that, yes,” Mrs. Blewitt said with an easy smile. “She has done that on at least two occasions that I can recall or maybe three. She doesn’t realize how her voice travels from the kitchen when she yells, even though I have told her repeatedly that I can hear every word in my office and stillroom. I am sure it is the same in the butler’s pantry. One time she threatened to burn Monsieur Alphonse’s ear off while Mrs. Mayhew and I were discussing the sugar budget. It was very embarrassing for me because it looked as though I have poor control of
the staff. It would have been in her rights to criticize me, but even though the yelling made our conversation difficult, she spoke as if nothing was amiss in the kitchen and we never discussed it. She is very gracious like that, always worrying about everyone else’s comfort. Another time the hubbub was so loud she had no choice to interrupt our meeting and investigate.”
“And what did she find?” Bea asked.
“Gertrude pacing the kitchen floor and yelling about Monsieur Alphonse’s inconsideration. Four pots boiling and he walked out! He wanted a muscadine ice from Gunter’s so he left to get one in the middle of dinner preparations. She was irate.”
Now that sounded more like the scene Stebbings had described, Bea thought. “Was she wielding a tool as she paced and yelled?”
“An implement?” she repeated pensively, then shook her head. “I cannot recall any one in particular, but she must have had something because Gertrude is always clasping a poker or tongs or whatnot.”
Vague though it was, the answer still substantiated the valet’s version of events. “And did she cease pacing and yelling when she saw Mrs. Mayhew?”
Mrs. Blewitt laughed wryly. “Gertrude stop in the middle of a tantrum? Never! She continues to wail and scream until she wears herself out, usually after three or four minutes. Then she calms down and acts as though nothing remarkable has happened. I have never heard her apologize or even acknowledge that her response might not have been appropriate, especially when she is wrong. On that occasion the four boiling pots were actually simmering broths, so there was nothing to be done but wait.”
It seemed to Bea that the woman she was describing—hot-headed, impetuousness, irrational—could easily swing the meat clever she happened to be holding in her hand and make several deep cuts in her victim’s neck before she even realized what she was doing. Red-hot rage was swept along by its own momentum, like a wave crashing on the seashore, but it needed a push to begin its wild descent. It required provocation.
The question, then, was: Did Mr. Réjane provide it?
Given what they knew about his actions on the night of the murder, it did not seem impossible. He had torn up Mrs. Blewitt’s roses in a fit of pique because his temper had been worn thin by his confrontation with Mr. Mayhew and his was tired of her accusations. In a similar mood, he could have decided to take out his churlishness on the kitchen maid for past offenses.
“How did Monsieur Alphonse respond to Gertrude’s outbursts?” Bea asked.
Mrs. Blewitt furrowed her brow. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, your grace.”
“What did he do while Gertrude was pacing the kitchen with a poker or tongs and yelling invectives?” Bea clarified.
“Oh, I see. He had no response because he was never around. Gertrude always lost her temper after he left the room,” she explained.
“So he bore her no resentment in return?” Bea asked.
Smiling faintly, Mrs. Blewitt said, “He bore no resentment against any person, just my roses. He was remarkably even-tempered for a chef, especially one who worked in the finest kitchens in Europe. I am not saying he didn’t have his moments because he did, but most of the time he was pleasant and calm. He seemed to truly enjoy cooking and creating things and he was always happy to teach Thomas how to do something better, like slicing onions. I think the most impassioned I’ve ever seen him was on Friday morning, when he returned from an errand in a lather about something, and then all he intended to do was write a sternly worded letter.”
Well, it was not all he’d intended to do, Bea thought, for only a little while later, he was ransacking his employer’s personal possessions and stealing a small fortune that he promptly hid away in a neighbor’s house. Nevertheless, the mention of a letter was interesting and she pressed the housekeeper for more information.
Offended by the implication that she would read a fellow servant’s private correspondence, Mrs. Blewitt insisted she could relate no details about the missive. “And of course I did not ask. I would never pry. All I know is that he was extremely unhappy with the level of service he had received at the establishment and was determined to make sure the owners knew it.”
The owners, Bea thought, meaning the four younger Mayhew siblings.
She darted a glance at Kesgrave, who also considered the information significant, and asked if Mr. Mayhew knew about the letter.
Mrs. Blewitt’s eyebrows flew up to her hairline. “I should think not! Monsieur Alphonse was unconventional in many ways, but even he was not so freakish as to seek out the master of the house and tell him about an unsatisfactory shopping experience.”
But what if Mr. Réjane mentioned the letter to him during their quarrel? Perhaps Mr. Mayhew had reason to fear his brothers’ showing interest in his management of the bank.
Could he be hiding something?
Having extracted all the information she required from Mrs. Blewitt, Bea asked her husband if there was anything further he would like to know, and receiving a negative response, thanked the housekeeper for her time.
Clearly relieved to be dismissed, Mrs. Blewitt lowered into an awkward curtsey and bid them good day. Then she all but ran from the room.
As soon as she was gone, Bea turned to Kesgrave and said with barely suppressed excitement, “You know what we must do now.”
Smiling faintly, he said, “I know what we should do, which is question Mr. Mayhew about the letter to judge if it caused him concern, but I fear you are going to say something utterly foolish like break into Mayhew & Co.”
She beamed at him with approval. “Yes. We must break into Mayhew & Co.”
His shake of the head was swift and emphatic. “No.”
“Oh, but we must, for we cannot proceed in our investigation until we know what the victim knew,” she explained sensibly. “If he discovered something truly reprehensible about Mr. Mayhew while he was at the bank, then Mr. Mayhew would have cause to kill him before he could reveal the truth to his brothers. Perhaps he stood to lose everything. As you yourself have pointed out several times, Mr. Mayhew’s motive is weak. But money is a strong motive. If Mr. Réjane discovered something while he was at the bank, we must discover it too. It is imperative!”
Again, more calmly this time, he said no.
But a one-word answer wasn’t a reasonable argument, and she knew the duke would not expect her to abide by it. That he had a sincere respect for her intellectual abilities had been made abundantly clear on several occasions, and if he truly wanted her to agree with him, he would make an effort to apply logic to the situation. The fact that he did not indicated more than anything that he agreed with her.
“As you proposed two methods earlier, I will leave it to you to decide which is the more suitable approach,” she said graciously, “although personally I prefer the late-night option, for I find your ability to open any lock inexplicably stirring and relish the prospect of skulking in dark corners with you.”
“No,” he said tersely.
Oh, but his resolve was slipping.
Bea drew several steps closer to him. “Although most people bow eagerly to your coronet, there are limits to its influence, your grace, and I am certain convincing a man to admit to incriminating evidence is an inevitable boundary. It is up to us to uncover the truth, and the only way we can do that is to break into the bank and examine its operation for ourselves. Given your vast knowledge of financial matters and the deft way you handle your own accounts, I am sure you will spot the impropriety in a matter of minutes.”
“Now you are trying to flatter me,” he said accusingly.
She made no effort to deny it. “But only because you make it easy by excelling at so many things. If you weren’t quite so impressive, your grace, I would be reduced to less dignified methods.”
Curiously, he tilted his head and asked what could be less dignified than blatant flummery.
“Salaciously insinuating that the sooner we identify Mr. Réjane’s killer, the sooner we may resume our tour of the house,
starting with the library,” she said mildly. “Fortunately, your excess of accomplishments spares me the necessity of such debased innuendo.”
But Kesgrave, whose eyes sparked with heat at the mention of the library, observed that his own opinion of himself had taken a sharp tumble recently. “For one thing, I am far too easily manipulated by my wife.”
Because it was all still just a little too difficult to fully comprehend—dull Beatrice Hyde-Clare ensnaring the impossibly handsome and excessively imperious Duke of Kesgrave—she assured him he need only wait a short interval and the weakness would pass. But Kesgrave, clearly convinced the affliction was permanent, sighed with a hint of weariness and said with firm decisiveness that it would not.
Chapter Eighteen
As the Harpers had made the strategic mistake of locating their fictional theater in a well-populated city in reasonable proximity to London, Bea suggested that the Erskines reside much farther afield—in the upper-north corner of Scotland.
“The county of Caithness has two municipalities of significant size, Wick and Thurso,” she explained, their coach lurching slightly to the left as they turned onto Catherine Street en route to Mayhew & Co. “The former has a thriving herring industry, so I suggest we hail from the latter. We are far less likely to meet anyone who grew up in Thurso. Now do let me hear your Scottish brogue, Kesgrave, bearing in mind, of course, that the Highlands dialect is slightly different from the Lowlands’ because it is more phonologically informed by a Gaelic substratum.”
Kesgrave, his lips twitching with familiar amusement, reminded his wife that there was no need for them to assume false identities. “We will stride into the bank as the Duke and Duchess of Kesgrave and announce that we would like to deposit funds in a new account.”
Bea, whose opinion of his plan had not improved upon repetition, pointed out yet again how foolish it was to act with such blatancy. “The clerk will know at once something havey-cavey is going on when two such august personages purport to step into their bank on a Sunday afternoon to personally open an account.”