“Nonsense. If Bertie were not attending to his company he would insist himself.”
“I don’t know about that. I am in his black book right now,” Lonsdale said.
Anne was about to open her mouth to ask him about that, for she wondered if it had to do with Mr. Thomas Graeme and the scene at the last musical evening, but Lonsdale rose, swaying and clutching onto the back of the chair.
“Please let me send for Fothergill!” Quin said, alarm in his voice. “He is right round the corner, a most obliging fellow and a wonderful physician.”
“Don’t fuss, Quin. Tell Bertie to come see me when he has a moment, will you?” He followed the maid out of the room and was gone.
Miss Susanna Hadley gratefully sank down in his vacated chair and sent a pathetic look to Anne, who still perched on the stool by Quin’s chair. “My aunt is a wonderful woman, and I do appreciate her letting me stay with her in Bath, but she is so determinedly needy of information and it is fatiguing when she has someone pinned and expects me to help her elicit news.”
Anne, who had suffered Lady Sharples’s inquisition, sympathized. “My mother is like that. When we are in company I am expected to help her in her quest. They should go out in company together and work as one.”
Susanna laughed. “It sounds as if they might make the ideal conspirators.”
“Unless their methods are too much alike, then they would cancel each other out.”
The pianist was begged for another tune, and he moved to the piano. His elegant playing was a delight. As the music echoed and danced, the small group well entertained, Anne made her way to her hosts, who stood together, arm in arm.
Anne made some slight comment on the pianist, then said, “Bertie, when you have a moment Lonsdale would like to speak with you. He has gone upstairs to rest.”
He grimaced. “He has not chosen the best time to want to see me,” he said. “I will go soon enough.”
Anne drifted away, wondering what was wrong with her usually equable friend. It seemed that the tension between Bertie and Mr. Lonsdale had not abated. Time would solve it, she thought. She had never known Bertie to hold onto a grudge for long.
Alethea was then asked to sing. Bertie replaced the young musician at the instrument, and he and his wife sang a duet.
“I confess, I love to hear them,” Anne said, sitting down by Quin. “I’ve said it before, I know, but it never fails to amaze me; they have what I would call the perfect marriage. It is charming. A true marriage of minds and hearts.”
Susanna sighed. “’Tis true,” she said, then looked at Quin and blushed. “Would that every lady was so fortunate.”
Quin watched her admiringly as applause for the duet erupted. The listeners again broke into groups, gossiping, laughing, flirting and exchanging glances. There was a convivial lightness in the crowd, but Anne was weary and did not take part. Even with her friends she was beginning to feel de trop, as Quin and Susanna leaned toward each other and whispered confidences.
Fortunately Lord Westmacott, appearing worn out, approached and bowed. “Anne, dearest child, I hesitate to take you away from your friends, but I’m not as young as I wish I was. It is time for this elderly gentleman to return to his own warm fireplace. I would take you home, my dear, and then deliver this young fellow to his lodgings.” At his side was the pianist, his rosy cheeks burnished to red as he bowed to Anne.
“I would not keep you out late for the world, sir. I will get my cloak and we can leave.”
She said her goodbyes to Quin and Susanna, begged them to give her farewells to the rest of the company—particularly her hosts, who were still seated at the piano playing requested pieces and laughing with some of their guests—and asked Quin to have Alethea send her a note when she was free for tea. She then exited to the stairwell with Lord Westmacott and summoned the maid. The girl curtseyed prettily and then trotted up the stairs to get Anne’s cloak.
A moment later there was a piercing shriek from above. Anne gasped and stared up the stairs as the hubbub in the next room stopped and the piano playing ended with a crash of chords. A few of the male guests raced out to the stairwell, asking what was happening.
“What in heaven’s name is going on?” Lord Westmacott asked, his voice trembling with irritation and weariness. The young pianist clutched his arm and, wide-eyed, stared up the staircase.
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “But I mean to find out.” She had gathered her skirts in one hand and had a foot on the bottom step when, white-faced, the maid hurled herself halfway down the staircase and paused, clutching the banister.
“Help, help!” she shrieked, tearing at the lace cap that confined her hair. “Oh, please help! Mr. Lonsdale . . . the gentleman is . . .” She paused, blenched, then slumped down onto the steps in a faint.
Chapter Twelve
Bertie, who had erupted into the hall with a couple of his guests, bolted up the stairs, the skirt of his coat flapping. Anne hesitated for one moment but then followed, hastening as quickly as possible, squeezing her full skirts past the young maid, leaving her to be cared for by others.
Alethea had followed her husband to the stairs and cried out, her voice following them upward, “What is going on? Anne, what is it?”
“Take care of that maid; she collapsed on the stairs!” Anne said over her shoulder. “I’m following Bertie. The poor girl said something about Mr. Lonsdale. He was ill earlier.” Out of breath, she paused on the landing, turned, and gazed down at Alethea’s face in the midst of the upturned faces of others of the company, all with similar expressions of puzzlement mingled with irritation. “Summon Quin’s physician friend, Dr. Fothergill, will you?”
“Why? What is . . .”
The rest of Alethea’s cry was lost as Anne followed the sound of Bertie’s stomping footsteps up the stair and down a hallway. An inhuman wail echoed, followed by guttural sobbing, the sound a wrenching, keening howl of desolation. She picked up her skirts and ran down the hall to an open door through which she bolted, gasping for breath.
Bertie was prostrate across the slight body on the bed, the prone and still figure of Alfred Lonsdale. Anne raced across the room. “Bertie, is he—”
“He’s dead! He’s . . . gone,” Bertie wailed.
“He can’t be,” Anne cried as the stench of vomit insinuated itself up her nose, the earthy aroma of defecation competing in her nostrils. She moved to Bertie’s side and bent over the bed.
The young man was indeed dead, his skin chilling in the cold room, his eyes open and staring, and his face and body soiled by the vomit and effluence of his last minutes. While below they had laughed and talked and drank, listening to tinkling music and lilting voices, Alfred Lonsdale had been alone, dying in agony.
“I’m so sorry, Bertie,” Anne sobbed, taking her friend’s arm and trying to tug him away from the body. But he stubbornly clung to the young man’s hand and pressed it to his cheek, howling over it, hardly able to catch his breath, his urbane and elegant face a mask of pain and sorrow. “Come away . . . come leave him alone,” Anne said. “There’s nothing you can do for him now.”
“I won’t leave him alone. He died alone!” He looked around wildly, into the corners of the room, pressing the young man’s hand to his lips. “My dear friend; how cruel a fate. Anne, do you think his spirit is here? Oh, Alf, how could you leave us!” His tortured cry finished on a groan of pain.
Alethea entered and saw the scene. “Oh, no!” she cried, and sagged against the doorframe. “What happened? How did he . . . ?”
“He was ill,” Anne said sadly, turning from her friend, though her hand was on Bertie’s shoulder. She could feel how the sobs wracked his whole body. “I spoke with him as he sat with Quin an hour or more ago. He was very ill. Quin wished to summon his physician, but Mr. Lonsdale would not have it, so Quin told him to go up and rest. Remember, I told you he was upstairs and wished to see you. Did you, Bertie? Did you come up at any time?”
He started and looked up
at her. “I . . . no, I never came up. I wish I had. I so desperately wish I had.”
Of course, Anne recalled; he had moved to the piano very soon after she gave him the message and had been there until this discovery. “My dear friend, don’t blame yourself,” Anne said gently. “We didn’t know it was illness unto death. He seemed frightfully in pain, a digestive upset, but not . . . not dying!”
Bertie sagged again over his friend and wept. Voices below rose up the stairwell, and they could hear Quin’s above them all. Then, a few minutes later, a plainly dressed gentleman entered the room.
“Doctor, thank goodness!” Alethea cried.
The gentleman was of medium height and middle age, brown-haired, with no peruke over his head. Extreme haste was evident in his unshaven face and mussed hair, his cravat absent, his clothes in disarray. “Where is the patient?” he said abruptly. “I could not get a bit of sense out of anyone below, not even your maid, usually a most sensible girl, nor your footman, Crabbe, who said he knew nothing. Quin didn’t appear to know what was happening either. Where is the patient?”
“No patient here, I’m sorry to say,” Anne said. “Dr. Fothergill, I assume? Quin’s physician?”
The man nodded soberly.
“This young gentleman, Mr. Alfred Lonsdale, has expired,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over Alethea’s weeping and Bertie’s moan of sorrow. “He was ill and we sent him upstairs to rest, but the maid found him dead.”
The doctor crossed the room and tried to see Lonsdale.
“Bertie, you must let the doctor have a look,” Anne said, trying to take her friend’s arm. “Perhaps he can tell us . . . Doctor, how did the poor young fellow die?”
Reluctantly, Bertie allowed Anne to pull him from Lonsdale’s side; his satin coat was stained with his dead friend’s vomit, but he was too distraught to notice or care. The doctor leaned over and sniffed, then frowned. He touched Lonsdale’s cheek, then peered into his eyes, and frowned some more and shook his head. He straightened and looked over his shoulder at the three of them, now standing together, for Alethea had taken her husband’s arm and supported him. She looked as ghastly as Bertie, her skin ashen, her eyes still streaming with tears and her lips pressed together but trembling, choking back sobs of horror. Anne supported Bertie on the other side and felt his whole body tremble.
“I cannot say,” he said finally.
“That’s all? You charlatan, no wonder Quin does not recover!” Bertie bellowed, pulling away from his wife and Anne’s clutches. His hands fisted, he stood alone in the dim center of the room. “Not know? He has suffered and died. What killed him?”
“Bertie, please, you’re doing no good raging at poor Dr. Fothergill,” Alethea sobbed, folding her arms over her stomach.
“Mrs. Birkenhead, it’s perfectly all right,” the doctor said, one hand held out to stay her protests. “I am accustomed to the emotions of a deathbed.” He turned his gaze back to Bertie, his expression one of profound sympathy. “If you please, who are this young man’s closest relations?”
“I happen to know them,” Anne said, drawing the doctor’s attention. “Mrs. Clary Basenstoke is his aunt, and her home is where this young man lives . . . lived. He has a cousin, Mr. Roger Basenstoke.” She told him the Basenstoke address. “That is all the family he has, I think.”
Alethea nodded. “He has stayed here on occasion; I . . . I made him up this room in case he could not stand it at the Basenstokes’ any longer!” She burst into tears.
The doctor put his head to one side. “Pardon me, Mrs. Birkenhead, but what do you mean by that, Mr. Lonsdale not being able to stand it at the Basenstokes’?”
She shook her head, pressing her lips together.
“She means that Roger Basenstoke is a bully and Alfred is . . . was gentle and easily distressed.” Bertie swiped one large hand over his face. “The poor boy knew he had a home with us if ever he felt . . . threatened.”
A twinge of alarm twisted Anne’s stomach. She watched the doctor’s shadowed face, how his gaze seemed to turn inward.
“You ask how this young man died, and I cannot answer. I would like to, but I’m no magician. I require more information. Do you think Mr. Basenstoke would allow me to do some investigation?”
“What kind of investigation?” Anne asked before Bertie could say anything.
The doctor frowned as he gazed at her, as if trying to assess her place in the discussion. “I am a physician and a scientist. I have questions, perhaps more than Mr. Birkenhead. Given a few hours with his body, it is possible I may have answers.” He paused and looked back at the body. “I’d at least like to try.”
Answers; what an innocuous word for what he was implying. “You think he was poisoned,” Anne said, even as she thought it.
Alethea gasped. “No!” she cried.
Bertie yelped, “What?”
Fothergill was silent, but his expression spoke volumes. He had not expected anyone to realize his meaning, nor was he prepared to confirm or defend his surmise. “I’ll need Mr. Basenstoke’s permission.”
“Roger? Whatever for?” Bertie roared, his face glowing red as if he had quaffed an entire bottle of port, something he had been known to do at a party in past. “We were closer to Alfred than his closest relatives. Cared for him a damn lot more.”
“Mr. Basenstoke is the closest male relation to Mr. Lonsdale, and so legally the one to ask,” Anne said. “Is that your meaning, Dr. Fothergill?”
“It is, Lady Anne.”
“But why do you need his permission? Surely, as a physician attending the scene, you have a right?” Anne said. “And surely, as the young man died here, the Birkenheads have a right to know how he died?”
Fothergill watched her for a moment, then nodded, approval in his expression. “You have a point, my lady. A good point. I don’t know if it would hold water legally, or is a cracked vessel, but we need to make a decision swiftly. I am willing to risk the family’s displeasure in the search for answers.” He turned to Bertie. “This is your home, and this poor young gentleman has died in it. Do you so request it, sir? Do you ask me to take possession of the body, and give permission for me to try to find out what killed him?”
“I do,” Bertie said, his voice gruff and thick with emotion. “And damn the consequences.”
“Then so be it. I’ll make the arrangements.”
• • •
In the drawing room a wan and trembling Bertie, who had discarded his stained coat and donned another, gathered the company together. He stood in front of the fireplace, with Lord Westmacott standing close by. Alethea was sitting on the edge of the chair where Quin was ensconced, holding her brother-in-law’s hand. Quin had been told of the terrible occurrence, and tears rolled down his pale cheeks.
Bertie cleared his throat and looked around at the company. “Media vita in morte sumus,” he said solemnly. “In the midst of life, we are in death. Poor Alf . . . Mr. Alfred Lonsdale . . . has passed. We don’t know why. I would like to say here and now that he was a lovely young man. A flower of youth, and as sweet-tempered and angelic a boy as I have ever met.”
Alethea reached out and took her husband’s hand. He nodded and squeezed it, then released.
Lord Westmacott put his arm over Bertie’s shoulders and patted. “I’m sorry, dear boy. He seemed a charming fellow.” He turned to Anne. “My dear, I am sad and tired. Would you indulge an old man and let me see you home? I feel the need for my fireside and a glass of port before bed.”
“Unless you need me, Alethea? Bertie?”
Alethea said, her voice clogged with tears, “You go on home, Anne. Thank you for . . . for helping.”
“Helping?”
“Helping decide . . . the doctor . . . you know,” Alethea said wearily, waving her hand to indicate the rooms above. “Your resolve has helped immeasurably.”
Anne nodded, wordless. Bertie, Alethea and Quin would support each other in this, an hour of sorrow. The rest of the subdued par
ty had either left or was now in the process of leaving. Anne, the musician and Lord Westmacott followed Susanna and Lady Sharples out. It was a silent carriage ride, conversation circumscribed by the presence of the weepy young pianist. He was, it appeared, of the temperament that was sensitive to poetry and death, able to weep equally over a poem or a pyre. Westmacott said he would take the young man back to his lodgings after seeing Anne to her door. Anne felt out of sorts and oddly jealous of the pity shown the young man. Who was he to weep? He didn’t know Alfred Lonsdale, as she did.
It was, Westmacott explained in a murmur when she remonstrated, because as an artist and an Italian he was a fragile fellow, his sensibility charming, if hard to bear at times. Anne, an Englishwoman, was made of stronger stuff and must make allowances for such a gentle soul, easily bruised by witnessing brutal death.
“He didn’t witness anything,” Anne whispered to her friend. “I’m the one who saw the dead body, for heaven’s sake.”
“Don’t be petty, Anne dearest,” Westmacott said.
Chapter Thirteen
After a restless night with little sleep, as her mirror told her the next morning, reflecting dark circles under her eyes, Anne sent a message to Osei at his lodgings. She wanted to know if Mr. Basenstoke had helped him find something for Tony to rent. Instead of replying, he attended her personally. She was at the breakfast table alone when the butler brought his card in.
“Tell Mr. Boatin to join me. And can you have cook send up some more coffee?” It was, she knew, the secretary’s preferred beverage.
Osei was ushered into the breakfast room and bowed.
“Help yourself to coffee and whatever is on the sideboard, Osei,” she said. “And sit. I wish to speak of many things, and you are probably my best choice for someone in whom to confide. I’m happy you chose to attend me this morning.”
He smiled and adjusted his spectacles. “I have much information and news to impart—I have found his lordship a townhome—and it seemed easier to speak with you than to write it all in a note.”
Lady Anne and the Menacing Mystic Page 12