Lady Anne and the Menacing Mystic

by Victoria Hamilton

  The answer to that was, she wasn’t thinking, she was reacting. Her brain was buzzing with thoughts and mysteries and half-baked theories. Where was poor Alfred Lonsdale poisoned that day? Probably as she had suspected, right there at the mystic’s table. Why kill him at all? Bella Venables had told her son that Lonsdale knew too much, and she could not let him ruin her one hope of financial security, marriage to the baron.

  She stopped and put out one hand, leaning against the wall of a shop that was closed for the morning, trying to catch her breath. She must be a sight, her soggy cloak heavy, her hair matting with the intermittent drenching rain despite the hood. Her recurring problem with shortness of breath had come back with the damp air and too much exertion.

  She swept a lank lock of wet hair out of her eyes, tucking it into the hood, and glanced around. The street was deserted, residents and visitors alike preferring the warmth of hearth and home. Only one carriage passed her, and no sedan chairs. Her mind kept mulling over what she knew, looking desperately for one piece of information that would exonerate Mrs. Venables. But her own ears could not have deceived her. Bella had killed Lonsdale.

  The betrayal of the Birkenheads was breathtaking! Bertie had given Bella a home, safety, and the opportunity to find comfort and a path out of the penury in which she had been left by illness and the death of her husband. To believe the woman a poisoner she had to believe that she was in league with that awful woman, the Mystic of Bath. And to believe that, she had to believe that everything she knew was wrong, that a well-bred, well-connected woman of Bella Venables’s gentility would align herself with a common . . . common . . . Anne stopped dead, and the sound of her own footsteps seemed to echo back to her.

  How had she missed the one unavoidable logical truth? If she had been in her right mind she would have grasped the truth immediately. Bella was Thomas Graeme’s mother; he had said so and she had not protested, and in fact had acknowledged her son. And Anne knew now that the mystic was Thomas Graeme’s grandmother, which meant she was Bella Venables’s mother.

  How could that be? Anne wiped rain out of her eyes and walked on, toward the Cross Bath, shivering from the damp that had soaked down to her skin. What had Thomas Graeme said in their earlier conversation? He told her that she didn’t know Bella Venables. That her own cousin, Bertie Birkenhead, didn’t know Bella Venables.

  Graeme meant that quite literally. She had to acknowledge the truth as she now understood it: they did not know her. Bella was not really Mrs. Bella Venables, long-lost cousin to Bertie. She was some schemer, a cheat who imposed herself on Bertie and Alethea as his long-lost cousin Bella, a swindler who, with her mother and son, was bringing in money from any number of schemes. Her mind raced and dashed back and forth, through theories, around impossible hurdles, her confusion becoming deeper with every stumbling, weary step.

  But this was no time for bewilderment. Resolve coursed through her, stiffening her spine and hastening her pace. Bath Street turned, and Hot Bath Street merged with it. There ahead was the Cross Bath. When she stopped again she heard footsteps behind her, but when she turned, she saw no one. She shivered and huddled under her cloak, wiping ineffectually at the rain blowing in under her hood, misting her eyesight, then hurried onward.

  Was Quin even at the bath? If her mind hadn’t been so clouded, if she hadn’t been so confused by the conversations she had just had, it would have occurred to her that Quin may have left his appointment early, for she knew that the Cross Bath, once you were past the door and changing room, was open to the sky. What invalid would brave the raw cold rain for a hot bath?

  She looked up from her halting, stumbling walk. She was here now, she thought, and may as well find out if Quin was inside waiting out the rain. A misty miasma drifted, swirling, around her. It emanated from the hot springs encountering the cold air. The Cross Bath was a newer structure, rounded in front and squared off at the rear, with three doors on three sides. She wiped rain from her eyes again, wondering which of the doors was unlocked, and if anyone would be about in such foul weather.

  Cursing her impatience and impulsivity, she tried one door but it was locked. On the other side, though, was the pillared semicircular roof over the main entry; the words The Cross Bath were engraved and picked out in gold. That door was open and she slipped in, looking about for an attendant. There was a pump room, but it was deserted.

  The foggy spa mist pervaded the interior of the bath. Overhead thunder rumbled, trembling through the structure, and the sky loosed a torrent of rain, the drumming of which drowned out all other sound. Enough of indecisiveness; she must find someone, and if she startled an almost naked invalid it was too bad. She was about to enter a narrow passage to her left when the door behind her opened and she whirled, hoping it was an attendant returned from some errand.

  Bella Venables, as drenched as Anne, entered and shut the door behind her. “Lady Anne, I fear there has been a misunderstanding between us,” she cried, her lovely face twisted with emotion.

  Her heart pounding from being startled, Anne put one hand over her chest. She drew herself up and glared at the woman. “I don’t think there is any misunderstanding,” she said, her voice guttural with fear and echoing in the stone structure. Another clap of thunder rumbled. Staring at the other woman in the sheltered gloom of the entry, she steadied herself, summoning all her courage, and said, “In fact, I think I know the true story behind your actions. When I thought you were Mrs. Bella Venables and believed you guilty of killing poor Mr. Lonsdale, I thought what a betrayal it was, knowing how much your cousin loved him. But now . . . now I know that Bertie is not your cousin at all. You are not Mrs. Bella Venables.”

  The woman blinked and stiffened. “You’re out of your mind,” she said, taking one step forward, her tone guttural and tense. “You’ve completely misunderstood, as I feared. I knew you were dangerous, but now you sound like a veritable raving lunatic. No one will believe a word you say.”

  “I think the authorities will believe me,” Anne replied, taking a step backward. “All they have to do is trace your actions before you arrived on Alethea and Bertie’s doorstep. You used the money you stole from the real Bella Venables and funds provided by Bertie to travel here from Spain, perhaps with your son, and your mother! The Mystic of Bath. What a joke!” Anne said, pouring all the disdain she felt into her words. “You set your mother up to swindle the gulls of Bath. And then you thought of further ways to use her ‘sight’; to find lonely hearts the ideal mates, someone to leave wealthier when they died.”

  “You’re mad, and so I shall tell everyone with whom I speak.” Her tone was haughty but her expression was calculating and her eyes hard, like dark glistening marble.

  “You will find that people are more than willing to listen to me, the daughter of the Earl of Harecross—”

  “With a lunatic brother, and showing signs of lunacy herself!” she cried, advancing toward Anne.

  “Don’t you dare speak so of my brother!” It was time to find Quin and Dr. Fothergill, and if they were not present, someone who could summon a chair for her to get to the Birkenheads’. Anne swept toward a passage, hoping to find an attendant. In the eerie silence of the passage her heels clattered on the stone floor, echoing; the structure had the air of being vacant. But surely it would have been locked if no one was there? “Hello?” she called, her voice echoing. “Is anyone here?”

  The attack took her by surprise, for who would expect an elegantly gowned lady of forty to briskly seize another woman and wrestle her through a door? But that is what the woman who was not Mrs. Venables did.

  Breath taken by the surprise, off-kilter and slack with amazement, Anne was no match for the ardor and strength of a desperate woman, and soon she was wrestled, stumbling, beyond the open arches to the hot bath, steam arising even as rain steadily roiled and rippled the surface. She rasped, her old asthmatic injury reasserting itself in such close, humid confines. Coughing and wheezing, she found her footing and her voice in the
same moment, and shouted for help as she struggled with the surprisingly strong lady. The rain intensified, and the wail of the wind carried away Anne’s voice. But she would not be beaten.

  She staggered close to the pool, her cloak and skirts tangling in her legs causing her to lurch, though the iron hold of the older woman kept her upright for the moment. She stared up at her and trembled at the red, enraged face looming over her. Bella bent her backward. The pavement was wet. Anne slid and hovered precariously at the edge of the pool until the other woman shoved her hard, the bruising force of her hands on Anne’s chest taking her breath away in its suddenness. Desperately she reached out, but as hard as she tried to clutch at her assailant’s dress, it slipped from her grasp as her opponent cried out in victory.

  Her sudden backward entry to the water was shocking. She descended down, down into the depths, the water closing over her face as she was gasping; she choked on water and desperately tried to spit it out and not inhale it, but all she could do was close her mouth, even as she did not have enough air in her lungs to sustain her. The water’s buoyancy lifted her and she rose up—or what felt like up—floating, trying to kick but unable to from the tangling torment of her feminine garb, layers and layers of cloth that weighted her, wet and clinging and all-encompassing.

  She broke the surface, choking and gasping; she could not draw in a deep breath and felt as though she was suffocating. But then the heavy wool of her cloak dragged her back down. She was unable to kick or even paddle. The water again closed over her head, the warmth saturating her until she wanted to let go, to breathe in and stop fighting, stop trying to find a way to the surface again. All remaining air bubbled out of her, and she struggled to keep from breathing in water, smothered and swamped by the heat and cloth, a shroud swaddling her limbs.

  She got one arm free of the cloak, finally, and flapped, pushing against the water and triumphantly breaking the surface, sputtering and coughing. She looked up through the rain, water and hair streaming in her eyes, trying to find purchase on the edge of the bath pool with her gloved hands.

  The fraudulent Mrs. Venables leaned over the edge and hissed, “Oh, no, you don’t!” She put one hand on Anne’s head and tried to shove her under the water. Anne twisted away, desperately trying to find footing, but the woman grabbed a handful of hair and pushed. “You will drown,” she shrieked against the wail of the wind. “And no one will ever know why you were here!”

  “Except me!” rang out a voice. Anne, thrashing and flailing at her assailant’s hand, could see through water-misted eyes as Quin limped toward them. He gave his doctor a shove away from him, shouting, “Dr. Fothergill, restrain Mrs. Venables!” His doctor grabbed the woman by the arm, clutching her harder as she fought him; he successfully pulled Bella back from the water’s edge and she tumbled to the stone pavement, screeching in protest, her wild wails torn from her by the battering wind. Quin limped closer, battered by the sudden gale but indomitable for all that, and knelt by the pool’s edge. He put out his hand to Anne, who flailed and wallowed. “Come, my lady; let me help you,” he hollered above another rumble of thunder.

  He grabbed her hand, but her glove came loose and he fell backward, just the glove in his grip. He clambered to his feet and again knelt at the edge, this time grasping her bare hand, slippery from the mineral water. But his bony hand clutched hold of her. He wasn’t strong enough to pull her out, of course, but the sight of his dear, determined face and his hand holding her fast gave her the courage to find her footing—she discovered that though deep, the bath was not truly over her head—and take it, clinging there until two burly attendants, drawn by the noise, arrived. One helped her climb awkwardly out of the water, assisted by Dr. Fothergill, who had tersely explained to the other attendant that Mrs. Venables must he held until a magistrate was summoned.

  Quin stoutly stated loudly that whatever else had gone on, he had seen Mrs. Bella Venables try to shove Lady Anne Addison’s head under the water, so to drown her. He would happily charge her with attempted murder.

  All of them retreated inside the shelter of the Cross Bath enclosure, a constant stream of abuse Bella Venables’s only addition to the conversation. Dr. Fothergill, shocked and appalled, ensured that the bath attendants kept hold of her, for she was a danger to Lady Anne and possibly to herself, judging by her threats, accusations, and statements that she would drown herself. Quin repeatedly pleaded with her to calm herself and explain; why was his cousin trying to hurt their friend?

  “She’s not your cousin, my dear Quin; this is not Mrs. Bella Venables.”

  He lapsed into confused silence and stared, shaking his head in puzzlement.

  • • •

  A local magistrate, roused from his warm and comfortable fireside, arrived within minutes at the Cross Bath and spoke to the accused as a bath attendant pinioned her arms behind her. A courtly gentleman of advanced years, he was taken aback by her stream of insults and epithets, her tone and words becoming coarser as time went on. Given the victim’s identity as the daughter of an earl, he was willing enough to accept Quin’s assertion that he wished to lay charges of assault and attempted murder against the woman for her attack on Lady Anne Addison.

  He pronounced himself satisfied that the events warranted the charges, then advised them all to go to their firesides as he was going to his until he had sorted it all out. Anne clutched his arm and the old gentleman, taken aback, patted her gloveless hand and kindly asked what he could do for her.

  “There is another, her accomplice and her son; you must arrest Mr. Thomas Graeme. He is known by many in the Pump Room, and was an accomplice to murder by either her or her . . . her mother. He must be seized before he leaves town in the company of his grandmother.”

  “Who is his grandmother, young lady?” the magistrate asked.

  “She is none other than the infamous Mystic of Bath, sir, and can be found most likely at Margaret’s Buildings. Anyone along there can direct you to her rooms,” she replied as Dr. Fothergill and Quin looked on, twin expressions of amazement on their faces.

  “It shall be done, my lady,” the magistrate said.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  An hour later Quin, Dr. Fothergill and Anne were ensconced at the Birkenhead townhome. Anne would not countenance being taken home in her bedraggled state, knowing it would distress her mother to see her, and send her grandmother to her sickbed at the scandal of it. Anne had explained in brief what she now knew, but there would be further explanations required. Alethea, horrified by Anne’s ordeal, loaned her one of Bertie’s banyans and had her maid help Anne untangle and dry her long, luxurious hair. They sat in Alethea’s bedroom, by the fireside, Anne luxuriating in the warmth and protection it offered.

  “I cannot believe that Bella—or whoever she is—did such a thing!” Alethea exclaimed, sitting opposite her friend as the maid finished and put aside the brush. “She always seemed so . . . so—”

  “So ladylike? You would not have thought so if you saw her expression as she tried to drown me.” Anne’s throat was sore from yelling and screaming. She took a long draught of sweetened tea, soothing and warm. “And if you had heard the names she called me, Quin and the magistrate! I didn’t even know some of the words. I cannot think of it without shuddering. Let us speak of something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Anne studied her old friend, thinking of all she now knew. She waited until the maid had left the room and took Alethea’s hand, chafing it between hers. “My friend, I will say now what I did not say, in my shock, the other day; you could have told me long ago, you know, of your . . . your secret. You could have . . .” She sighed and shook her head, wishing she had more eloquent words of reassurance. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

  “You think that now.” Alethea’s eyes swam with tears. “Secrecy has become a habit, a trick of survival in an unfriendly world, and I do not trust easily. I’ve been betrayed before. Both Bertie and I learned early what it was to place our trust in unwort
hy people and have those people turn on us and use our truth against us as a razor, cutting deep in many directions.”

  “I’m sorry,” Anne said simply.

  Alethea squeezed her hand. “You may have been the one person I could trust with my secret, but I could not know that.”

  “But you know now?”

  “I do.”

  Anne thought of something and started. She looked at her friend, who gazed back with a question in her eyes. “The other day you told me of sneaking off to the artist’s cottage, the tutor who taught us art. You said you had a passion for him. So that was a lie?”

  “You implied I had a passion for him, but all I said was I was madly in love.”

  Anne’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh! With the model?”

  Alethea sighed and her eyes held a dreamy expression. “Ah, yes, the beautiful model. She was his lover.” She cast a glance at her friend. “And mine, too. I was so young . . . what were we, fifteen? She taught me much. She was divine, a Titian goddess who loved equally men and women, though in truth I don’t think she loved anyone but herself. She broke my heart, but at least she taught me that I was not the only woman like myself, that there were others who shared my attraction for the same sex.”

  They were silent for a moment, but thoughts could not long be kept from the dramatic events of the day. “Poor Baron Kattenby!” Anne said with a sigh. “What will he do when he learns the truth about his delightful Mrs. Venables?”

  “Perhaps he will see the true value in a woman like Mrs. Basenstoke. She is kind and good, and she would make him happy.”