by Anna Elliott
Holmes opened the yellow envelope, glanced at the contents, and then turned to the men at the table. He said, “Dr. Watson and I will be leaving you now.”
He handed the message to me. It read:
COME AT ONCE ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH. MISS JANINE AND HER MOTHER FOUND MURDERED. LESTRADE.
14. A DEADLY DELIVERY
Lincolnshire
LUCY
My first thought on meeting Lady Lynley’s husband was that he could have stepped straight off the stage. Not because he was unusually handsome or had a commanding presence, but because any theatrical producer would take one look at him and instantly cast him in the role of “Country Squire.”
Lynley House was a large, handsome manor house built in the Palladian style, and we were seated in Lord Lynley’s private study.
A gas fire in the grate showed walls covered in dark burgundy hangings. Heavy velvet curtains framed the windows. A tall bookshelf filled with ancient-looking leather-bound volumes stood to one side of Lord Lynley’s desk. On the wall, the portrait of a gentleman in the white neck ruff and doublet of the late 17th century scowled down from the back of a rearing black stallion. The scowling man bore a striking resemblance to the current Lord Lynley.
Lord Lynley himself looked to be somewhere around fifty, with graying hair just beginning to thin on the crown. His face was heavy in the brow and jaw, with deeply-set brown eyes and a ruddy, weathered look to his skin.
He was wearing an impeccable suit of country tweed, but it wasn’t hard to picture him sitting astride a horse and wearing a hunting jacket, shouting yoiks! and tally-ho! as he galloped after an unfortunate fox.
“I really don’t know what more I can tell you,” Lord Lynley said.
Becky spoke up beside me. “But you haven’t actually—”
I interrupted her before she could finish saying what I was certain she was going to, which was that in order for Lord Lynley to tell us anything more, he would have to have already told us something in the first place.
I smiled politely. “You haven’t yet told us where you think Alice might have gone. Do you think your wife’s theory is correct, that she may have traveled to London?”
Lord Lynley moved his shoulders. “No idea.” He had a gruff, hearty baritone voice that matched his appearance so perfectly that it was almost uncanny. “Who knows what odd notions these girls get into their heads, eh?” He laughed, then leaned forward towards me across his desk, spreading his hands out, palms open. “Look here, Mrs. Kelly, I’ll be honest with you …”
I kept my polite smile firmly in place, but inside my head, my father’s voice came to mind, commenting sardonically with one of his favorite sayings:
Any time a witness volunteers to speak honestly, you can be reasonably assured that the statement to follow is a lie.
“My wife sent a telegram this morning, letting me know you were coming, but until that moment, the truth is, I had no idea that my wife was planning to consult you. I’m da—” he glanced at Becky and checked himself. “—dashed sorry that you were dragged into our mundane little domestic trouble. I don’t know where Alice Gordon is, but I’m sure there’s no mystery about it. She was unsatisfied in her work and wanted a change of scenery.”
He glanced out the study window, where beyond the house grounds flat, marshy land stretched out like dull brown carpet beneath the iron-gray sky.
I had never been to this part of England before. The Fens, also sometimes called the Fenlands, were a vast coastal plain covering five counties and roughly 1,500 square miles. The land here alternated between marshes, and places where the marsh had been drained and turned into flat agricultural lands threaded by drainage channels and dikes.
Maybe it was the chill weather outside. Maybe I had simply lived amidst the constant noise and bustle and fierce, rushing life of the London streets for too long.
But everything about the landscape outside felt bleak, almost eerie.
Lord Lynley went on. “It’s a common problem we’ve had, I’m afraid, with keeping staff out here. I have hopes to oversee the drainage of more of the lands on the estate, which would encourage more neighbors to settle nearby. But for right now, we are rather isolated.”
I’d already seen the books on agriculture on the edge of His Lordship’s desk.
“Drainage?” I repeated.
“That’s right.” For the first time since the beginning of the conversation, a spark of what sounded like genuine enthusiasm warmed Lord Lynley’s voice. He brought his fist down on the edge of the desk. “There’s good land out there—good, farmable land. But it’s under feet of water. The idea is to divert the water, channel it into dikes and canals so that the land can be drained and cleared for farming. We’ve made a start, up to the north of the estate, but we’ve run short of—” he stopped, clearing his throat. “That is, it takes time. Time and the most modern advances in agricultural engineering. In the meantime, girls like Alice believe they’ll find more life and company of their own age in a town, rather than stuck out in the country.”
“Your wife seemed worried that something might have happened to Alice.”
For a split-second, a shadow of something hard, almost angry, seemed to pass across Lord Lynley’s expression. Then it vanished, and he gave me a tolerantly-amused smile. “My wife was very fond of Alice. Naturally, the girl’s departure wounded her feelings deeply. Serena is of a highly sensitive, nervous temperament, and her health is … not what it should be, a good deal of the time. She gets these strange fancies that something sinister has occurred, and nothing will dissuade her from that theory.” He chuckled. “Bless you ladies, but you do get the oddest notions into your heads and then nothing and no one will get them out again. But there’s nothing to them. Just nervous fancy.”
I took a sip of tea from the cup that a uniformed parlormaid had brought. A part of me was tempted to ask whether he wouldn’t like to simply pat my head and offer me a sweet if I behaved like a good little girl and let the matter drop.
But I studied Lord Lynley instead.
As unsuited for one another as they seemed on the surface, Lord Lynley and his wife had one thing in common: like Lady Lynley’s upper-crust accent, everything about Lord Lynley—and his study—was trying just a little too hard.
Of course, I was slightly cheating. Thanks to Holmes’s files, I knew already that Lord Lynley’s father was the first of the family to have gained the title, after making his fortune as a merchant in the China trade.
But even without that information …
The books on the bookshelf might be expensive and leather-bound, but they weren’t actually old. I had glanced over the gold-embossed titles, and the oldest book on the shelf was a copy of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. None of them looked to have been so much as cracked open, either. The only books that looked to have been read were the ones on agriculture and drainage.
The portrait, too, of the 16th-century man who so strongly resembled Lord Lynley, used colors that no actual 16th-century painter would have possessed. It was a modern work, probably made with Lord Lynley himself as the model, designed to lend a baronial air to the room.
“Did you ever hear Alice express a desire to go to London?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I hardly had any dealings with the girl,” Lord Lynley said. “She was my wife’s servant, not mine, you understand. Although now that I come to think of it—yes, I did hear her say that she wished she could find work there. And, of course, if she had a day off, that was how she spent it—traveling to town so that she could see a theater revue. And she—”
He cut off.
Becky fidgeted in her chair. I waited a count of three. Long enough to still appear polite—not quite long enough to allow time to come up with a really convincing untruth if that was what His Lordship was trying to accomplish in the silence.
“She did what?” I asked.
Lord Lynley’s already ruddy cheeks turned a shade darker. “She applied for work in Shellingford. At—at t
he bakery, I believe.”
My eyebrows lifted. “The bakery?” It was an odd choice of employment for a former lady’s maid. Most girls with Alice’s background would apply to a millinery shop or dressmaker’s. “Had Alice experience in cookery?”
“Yes, her mother was a cook in a London patisserie shop, as I understand it.” Lord Lynley cleared his throat, shuffling a few of the stray papers on his desk. “Perhaps that might be a fruitful avenue of inquiry in London. Checking bakeries and pastry shops.”
“Possibly,” I agreed.
I could have said that anyone who couldn’t tell lies better than Lord Lynley ought to give up entirely on even making the attempt. I had met two-year-olds who were significantly more adept at prevarication.
But that would accomplish nothing except to get me thrown out of His Lordship’s study—and I couldn’t afford that yet.
“The first step, though, is to see whether she left behind any clues here as to where she might have gone. Has someone looked through her things?”
Lord Lynley tilted his head inquiringly, a frown knitting his brows. “Things? How do you mean?”
“Her possessions.” It actually wasn’t hard to speak patiently. I still had no idea what had happened to Alice or what His Lordship’s not-very-skillful lies were covering up. But I didn’t like anything about the feeling that this conversation was giving me.
Uneasiness—the same uneasiness I’d felt during the interview with Lady Lynley—was raising all the tiny hairs on my neck and arms. It made it comparatively easy to smile blandly at His Lordship’s overdone look of incomprehension. “Surely someone must have looked through Alice’s room?”
“Oh.” Lord Lynley’s face cleared. “Ah, yes. We tried, but she’d taken all her things with her. The room she shared with one of our other maidservants was entirely cleared of her possessions. She didn’t leave so much as a stitch of clothing or a pencil stub behind.”
The study door opened to reveal the same stately, gray-haired butler who had shown Becky and me in.
Lord Lynley glowered at him. “Yes, Rothwell? What is it?”
“A parcel for you, sir.” Rothwell carried a paper-wrapped bundle on a silver tray. “The boy who delivered it said that it was quite urgent.”
“Parcel?” The line between Lord Lynley’s brows deepened. “I don’t remember ordering a delivery of any kind. Must be some tom-fool notion of Serena’s—”
He reached for the silver letter opener that lay on his desk, making to cut the strings that tied the package shut.
“Don’t!” I sprang up out of my chair.
Lord Lynley jumped, nearly slicing his finger with the edge of the letter opener, and ground out a muttered curse. “What on earth—” He transferred the glower to me.
“I don’t believe that you should open that. At least not without proper protection. Look.” I pointed to two small holes that had been punched into the brown paper covering and through the pasteboard box underneath. “Those look to me like breathing holes.”
“Breathing holes?” Incredulity stamped Lord Lynley’s face, then he gave a dismissive snort. “Nonsense. The parcel probably just got damaged in the mail.” With a quick twist, he severed the string and tore open the parcel’s wrappings, then tipped open the lid of the box.
A wriggling, slithering mass of dark brown bodies squirmed out onto Lord Lynley’s desk.
His Lordship sprang back with a sharp cry, and I caught hold of Becky, dragging her back towards the door. Strictly speaking, maybe I ought to try and help Lord Lynley, but I’d already recognized the diamond pattern of the snakes’ scales—and given the choice between protecting Lord Lynley’s life or Becky’s, there was no contest.
The writhing knot fell apart into three snakes that slithered towards the edge of Lord Lynley’s desk. His Lordship was still holding the letter opener. In a single, swift movement, he brought the blade down onto the head of the first snake, wrenched open the drawer of the desk and knocked the other two snakes inside.
He turned the key in the drawer’s lock, then looked up at the butler, breathing hard. “Rothwell. Get Faraday to come up here from the stables to deal with the bloody creatures.”
The butler was standing frozen in the center of the room, momentarily shaken out of his polished, stately calm. “But sir, Faraday has no experience with snakes that I know of—”
“I don’t care!” Lord Lynley’s voice cracked. “Tell him to bring in some rat poison or something and just get rid of the things!”
“Yes, sir.” Rothwell bowed and departed, quickening his pace to almost a run as he left the room.
Lord Lynley mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and sank back into his chair—though he kept it pushed well back from the desk. He kept eyeing the drawer. He was probably wondering—as I was—whether the snakes would be able to wriggle their way out.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kelly, that you were forced to witness that … unpleasantness.”
The dead body of the snake that he had stabbed still lay limp across the blotting pad on his desk. I had seen uglier sights, and bloodier ones, too. But I still fought a shiver.
“Unpleasantness is certainly one word for it. Those are swamp adders. Their venom won’t necessarily kill you, but it will certainly cause pain and possibly serious illness. I hope you’ll forgive me for pointing it out, Lord Lynley, but it would appear that someone dislikes you a good deal. Sending poisonous snakes through the mail isn’t exactly a subtle message.”
Lord Lynley’s face was blotchy: splotches of red patterned across his pale, almost grayish skin. But he straightened, appearing to pull himself together. “Nonsense. Just some foolish practical joke.” He rose, extending a hand to me. “Thank you for coming. I’m confident that Alice is quite safe, wherever she may be.”
It was a clear dismissal.
I nodded. “We won’t take up any more of your time, then. Come, Becky.”
We started for the door, but after a few steps I turned back. “There’s just one other thing you might be able to help with.”
Lord Lynley’s brows creased in a slight frown. “Yes?”
“I was hoping—” I stopped. Under ordinary circumstances, I didn’t put any stock in premonitions. But right now, I felt as though someone had taken a cube of ice and dragged it down the length of my spine.
“We’ll need somewhere to stay for tonight,” I finished. “Preferably somewhere near the train station. That’s where we left our bags.”
Upon our arrival in Shellingford, we had hired a carriage and come straight here.
“Ah, I see.” Lynley’s expression cleared. “Well, there is the Grand Hotel in town, of course, but I can’t recommend it—their service is poor at best and the rooms are very overpriced, especially for only a visit of a single night. You might try Susan Anderson, who lives on Applegate Street. She runs a small inn and rents out rooms at very reasonable rates.”
“Thank you so much. And please tell Lady Lynley when you speak to her that I hope her health improves.”
“I’m sure it will.” His tone hadn’t changed, but there was another blink-and-you’d-miss-it tightening of his lips as he spoke. “It’s largely a matter of willpower, of course. When our minds conceive health, our bodies obey.”
15. A MESSAGE
London
WATSON
I still shudder inwardly at the recollection of what we found at St. Philip’s Church. We arrived after an hour-long cab ride, passing only a short distance from John Swafford’s rooms. An ambulance waited on the street outside the church steps. We entered.
“A bad business, this,” Lestrade said, and led us down the center aisle of the church. Two constables with stretchers waited in the outer aisle.
The bodies of Miss Janine and an older woman both lay crumpled on the floor between the back of the second row of pews and the seat of the pew behind it. Both bodies were twisted at an awkward angle. Miss Janine’s feathered hat lay on its side on the floor. Her blonde hair was
streaked with crimson.
Each woman had been shot in the back of the head.
“Mother and daughter,” said Lestrade.
“Powder burns on both wounds,” Holmes said, bending over the two bodies. “Shot at close range. The kneeling bench is down. They were both praying when they were shot. Perhaps that is a mercy.”
“We don’t know when,” Lestrade said. “The church sexton found them when he opened the church at eight o’clock this morning.”
“When did he close?”
“Six o’clock at night, but the death could have been before that. The sexton wouldn’t have seen them. He wouldn’t walk all this way down to the front.”
“I agree. On the floor, they would have been below his line of vision,” Holmes said.
“They were praying for John Swafford’s soul,” I said.
“Who told them Swafford was dead?” asked Holmes.
A uniformed constable stepped forward. “This is my beat. I had to break the news.”
“What time was that?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Around five.”
“So they went into the church, possibly immediately afterward.”
“They were upset enough to need some sort of consolation, I can tell you that,” the constable said. He went on, “I don’t think the bodies have been touched—after they were shot, I mean. Nothing to indicate a robbery. Both purses are unopened.”
“Were you followed, constable?” asked Holmes.
The man seemed surprised. “Why would anyone want to follow me?”
“Someone waited for these two ladies. Someone wanted to kill them as quickly as possible after they heard the news. Someone who would have known your errand, constable.”
“Why would someone want to kill them?”
“They were likely killed because they knew John Swafford,” Holmes said.