Death of Connor Sanderson_Prequel to Fire & Ice Series

by Karen Payton Holt

  It was the second time today, Reggie had made reference to Lavinia being smitten, and Connor did not like it. “Perhaps, if the opportunity presents, I should make it clear to Lavinia that I think of her only as a sister?”

  “Oh, she knows that, Connor. But, hope is hard to suppress.” The moonlight sliced through the trees and illuminated Reggie’s grimace. “Is it such a crime to wish for the ideal world?” His warm regard sought Connor’s face. “To wish my best friend and my sister were a match?”

  “No, Reggie. But the ideal world is thousands of miles away.” Connor’s voice swelled to fill every space in the carriage with regret. More than thousands.

  The carriage swung in a graceful arc, following the curving horseshoe path of the driveway, and drew up outside the Hall, beneath an impressive pillared portico. It was an Edwardian enhancement to the cream-colored facade. After all, it would never do for the ladies’ finery to suffer in a downpour of rain.

  Lavinia stood framed in the door way, the skirt of her long emerald dress shimmering like the breeze over soft grass in the meadow as it flowed over her curves.

  Reginald tutted loudly. “I see Lavinia has forgotten her manners. Mama will not be best pleased, and Mr. Phelps will be muttering under his breath, I am sure.”

  Connor smiled. “Opening the front door to family is hardly a crime, although, I concede, Mr. Phelps may not agree. And you forget, Lord Reginald. You are hardly conventional. Lords do not usually work. I am surprised His Lordship did not have a heart attack when you insisted on becoming a doctor.”

  “Father has Jonathan as his heir to the estate.” Reggie met Connor’s amused regard. “You could join me in doing nothing, after all, you are family in father’s eyes.”

  “Touché, Reggie. But, I could not abide sitting in a drawing room drinking tea all day.”

  The carriage rocked as William jumped down onto the ground and pulled open the door.

  Connor waited for Reggie to alight first, and, as he stepped out to stand beside him, he dipped his icy-cold hands into his pockets and closed his fingers around two pieces of warm coal, each wrapped in white linen handkerchiefs. He took a moment to smooth his elegant black dinner jacket and tug on the tails of his ivory brocade waistcoat before gracefully ascending the wide stone steps and entering the house.

  “Reggie. Connor. So wonderful that you could come.” Lavinia’s enthusiasm was brittle and awkward, and both men played along, smiling down at her. She linked her arms through theirs and self-consciously drew them across the thick gold and cream-colored carpet of the spacious entrance hall. “Mama and Papa are in the drawing room.”

  As they headed through the doorway, Reggie shot an apologetic smile at Mr. Phelps, the butler, which helped smooth his ruffled feathers.

  “I have announced your arrival, Your Lordship,” said Mr. Phelps stiffly, making the point that he was still performing those duties Lavinia had not interfered with.

  Connor entered the drawing room and smoothly extricated himself from Lavinia’s hold, shooting a fleeting glance down into her face. Her hopes were etched across her features, and Connor decided it was kinder to be cruel. Gazing out across the busy room, he said dismissively, “I hear you have young men vying for your attentions this evening. I shall release you to dazzle them, my dear.”

  As he turned away, feeling like a callous heel, Connor could not miss the rush of blood which stained her cheeks with embarrassment, and the delicate aroma of her sudden perspiration. Pinning a careless smile on his face, he took a deep breath, presented his broad back, and left her standing in the doorway.

  The large salon was tastefully decorated with deep, leather-covered couches arranged in intimate pairings. The dozen standing lamps scattered throughout the room cast pools of light over the polished wood of the occasional tables, and picked out the golden threads in the richly patterned carpet.

  However, Connor barely noticed as his senses were assaulted by the cocktail of human emotions which drenched the space. He could pinpoint the placement of every person in the room even had he closed his eyes. And, three of those assembled here are incredibly nervous.

  Curiously scanning the room, he sought them out.

  Lady Tilly Cranham, Reggie’s seventeen-year-old sister sat with a fixed smile on a face which still had the plump contours of childhood. It was her first dinner party with single men in attendance, so Connor understood why her mouth was dry and her fingers plucked nervously at her skirts.

  Reggie’s eldest sister, Lady Victoria Fountain, was alone this evening. Connor had heard about the crisis at Birkbeck Bank, and her husband, Larry Fountain, was up to his neck in securing a way out. The delicate pucker carved between her brows showed that she was worried. That too, I understand.

  Connor honed in on his final victim, and the unexpected air of irritated anxiety which clung to the smartly attired Captain Matthew Rice. Connor flicked a glance over his upright figure, resplendent in a scarlet uniform with his empty sword scabbard at his belt. As the captain’s fingers played over the scabbard as though, in his head at least, he prepared to face an opponent in battle, Connor wondered why.

  The puzzle can wait. Good manners, first.

  Drifting smoothly across the room, Connor sought out Reginald’s mama, Lady Isobel Cranham, took the hand she offered, and brushed his lips over the back of her lace glove.

  “Lady Isobel,” Connor said, “you look magnificent this evening.”

  “Cornelius Sanderson,” Lady Isobel frowned fleetingly, her mature beauty still eye catching as her hazel eyes danced with indulgent amusement. “It has been too long. You know you are always welcome.”

  Connor nodded and said on a smile, “Of course, My Ladyship, and my mother would be grateful that you did not allow the truculence of a seventeen-year-old boy to drive you away.”

  Chapter 6

  Lord and Lady Cranham, George and Isobel, were like an aunt and uncle to Connor, whose own family came from more humble middle-class beginnings. When his mother, Clarissa, a distant cousin of Lady Isobel, died of consumption, his father, Victor, unable to cope, had chosen to spend all his time at his gentlemen’s club, immersing himself in the wining and dining of peers and clients, and hiding behind his duties as a lawyer in the City of London.

  Within weeks of Clarissa’s death, Victor Sanderson, dependent on port and whiskey, descended into a drunken stupor by the end of most evenings. Being in no fit state to travel the dozen or so miles home to the Sanderson country estate, he would sleep at the club, leaving the seventeen-year-old Cornelius to fend for himself.

  Anger at the loss of his mother boiled inside the young Connor until he could no longer stand it. He had taken to hiding out in the attic, avoiding the constant assault of the well-meant kindness of strangers, and the servants. The encrusted grime on the leaded panes in the window blocked out most of the natural light. The dank gloom suited his mood, and when his candle guttered and died before he could light another, Connor swore softly.

  He spat on the white lawn handkerchief he always carried in his pocket, and scrubbed at the dirt in determined sweeping strokes until a funnel of sunlight forced a path across the black, aged floorboards. It was then that the glint of gold caught his eye. Stepping forward, he closed in on a box with metal-capped corners which protected its floral design from damage. He remembered it instantly. It had stood on the bureau in his mother’s sewing room for years.

  “When did it disappear?” He could not remember.

  The hinges creaked as he prized them open, and as he expected, it held bundles of letters tied together with frayed red ribbon, from the days when his parents were courting. He weighed them in his palm, thinking, this was all that remained of his mother’s heart and soul. As he reverently laid them back inside, unread, he discovered a loose envelope with the address written in a different hand.

  A weight nestling in one corner piqued his interest and, turning the envelope in careful expectation, he caught his breath when a heavy gold signet ring
fell into his palm.

  “The Cranham crest.” Connor knew the coat of arms well. His governess had taught him the importance of English aristocracy, making sure he knew the correct term of address, and how to carry himself in their company.

  “Why would mother have this?”

  Connor turned the ring over in his palm; his thoughts tumbled at the same time as his fingers toyed with the edges or the letter which had fallen into his lap.

  Integrity lost out to curiosity, and he unfolded the notepaper and read it. The note was from a distant cousin who begged Clarissa to get in touch. They shared a great-great-grandfather, and Lady Isobel Cranham had just learned the Sandersons were living relatives.

  I beg you, Clarissa, if ever you have need of us, present this crest at Cranham Hall, and your welcome will be warm, your cousin, Isobel.

  Connor would never know why the letter went unanswered, but what he did know was that he could use the facts to his advantage. He was tired of marking time, and waiting for his father to surface from the depths of a grief he refused to share.

  His father had abandoned the pretense that he could bear to be in the house without Clarissa, and had rented a townhouse in London, promising Connor that he would send for him when he was more settled. Connor, who was the image of his mother, sharing her dramatic coloring of raven black hair with sapphire-tinted highlights, striking ocean blue eyes, and pale skin, knew his father was avoiding looking at his face.

  He had no reason to stay at the Sanderson family home. He, too, wanted to escape. The groundsmen and gamekeepers were more than able to run the estate, and his father’s butler received his orders via telegram. I am still a callow youth in their eyes.

  One night, lying in bed staring at the ruby-red, curtain swags framing his four-poster, claustrophobia pressed down upon his chest. Turning his head, he stared at the heavy gold ring which had sat upon his bedside chest since he had found it, and as it winked in the flickering candle light, he decided. I will go.

  He packed his belongings in his father’s largest leather trunk, and handed his governess, who he considered had no more to teach him, a forged note from his father. Drawing his tall seventeen-year-old frame to its impressive six feet height, and squaring shoulders which were broader than they had been six months ago, Connor exuded mature determination.

  “At her invitation, I am spending the summer with my mother’s cousin, Lady Isobel Cranham. Father bids you visit your family and return in the autumn, on full pay, of course.” Staying close to the truth when fabricating a lie is always the best way to go.

  Miss Smythe, the governess, no doubt seeing her own chance of escape, nodded sagely. But the glint in her keen eye filled Connor with momentary panic.

  But then she folded her hands demurely at her waist and said quietly, “Enjoy your summer, Master Cornelius.”

  Unspoken words of final farewell hung in the air as Connor stood for longer than was necessary before bursting into movement. Picking up the heavy case, he left the house and climbed into a hackney carriage.

  He made the journey to Cranham Hall, and may have been brave enough to knock on the door, but as he took in the impressive edifice in all its splendor, the dozen chimneys reaching proudly into the ice blue sky and the ornately carved buttresses standing as sentinels on each corner, he felt he would be leaving one prison behind only to enter another.

  Instead, he followed his gut instinct. Watching his mother’s death, as consumption had filled her lungs with fluid, ignited an appetite to understand the weakness of the human body beyond the reach of the governess’ schoolroom.

  For Connor, the human brain held the same degree of fascination. So, when he reached London, hoping to learn more about his father’s increasingly fragile mental state, Connor landed himself a position as a porter inside the East Kent Lunatic Asylum, using his height and bulk as a smoke screen and lying about his age.

  He could not become a medical student until he was twenty-one, but that did not prevent him studying alone in his rented rooms by the light of a guttering candle.

  Connor would have gone undetected, except that he dared to challenge a young intern whom he knew had misdiagnosed a patient. The man was suffering mental delusions, that much was true, but he was also displaying the signs of consumption. I will not stay silent, and allow the man to die.

  Major John Hall-Edwards from Birmingham had delivered his lecture on how to use an x-ray machine, something Harker, the coachman, would doubtless have called newfangled, but reading the results was not so easy. Connor noticed the deformed club-like fingers on the hands of the patient, and his head was screaming lung disease.

  Like a terrier, he nipped at the heels of the young intern until he had listened, and taken the x-ray slides to his consulting physician. Connor was proven correct, and that was the start of a deep-seated resentment as he recognized Connor as a threat.

  Foreboding gathered in the corners of Connor’s mind as the weeks of summer drew to a close. Deep inside, he was still a child waiting to be caught out breaking the rules.

  He carried Isobel Cranham’s ring in his pocket, rubbing his fingers over it as a talisman, expecting his father to walk through the door at every turn and order him back to the schoolroom.

  Working, getting one’s hands dirty, was not the done thing.

  The middle classes hung determinedly onto the coat-tails of aspiration. The Sandersons had climbed to a rung on the ladder where running their country estate fed the family and a modest number of household staff. Father would be livid if he knew my situation.

  His pretense was shattered one evening when he returned to the porters’ station to make a mug of tea, and to wait for one of the bells mounted in a row along the wall to clang and summon a porter to wheel a patient back to his bed on a ward.

  He walked into the small bare room, and six sets of eyes turned to graze over him and scuttle away again.

  Connor frowned as he said, “What’s happened?”

  The words had barely left his mouth when a policeman entered the room. Quietly closing the door, he turned in Connor’s direction.

  “I take it that you are-” Flicking a glance down at the notepad he expertly flipped open, he looked back at Connor and said, “Mister Cornelius Packham.”

  Connor’s youthful complexion flushed as he said firmly, “Yes.”

  The policemen’s narrow-eyed stare settled on the mutinous chin, taking in the gritty determination embedded in Connor’s flint-gray gaze as he mused, “Now, where would a young, working class lad get an eighteen carat gold signet ring? Bearing the Earl of Cranham’s seal, no less?”

  Sweat broke out on Connor’s brow. He drove his hand into his pocket, and finding it empty, suddenly, borrowing the surname of his father’s under-footman at the estate yawned as a chasm of ill judgement.

  Constable Cavendish’s tone dripped sarcastic triumph as he said, “It wouldn’t be this you’d be looking for, hmm?”

  Cavendish held out a hand containing the ring. His lip curled as he looked Connor up and down, seemingly irritated by the young man’s well-groomed appearance, despite the frayed cuffs and badly sewn-on buttons.

  Connor instinctively made a grab for the ring, and Constable Cavendish slammed his fist shut.

  A grim smile failed to light up his eyes as he said, “Cornelius Packham, you are under arrest. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  The police officer grabbed a handful of the coarse serge fabric of Connor’s cheap uniform, yanked him around, and twisted his arm back. He snapped a metal cuff on one wrist in a deft practiced maneuver.

  “You’ve got this wrong,” Connor ground the words through gritted teeth. “I can explain. My name is Sanderson... the ring belonged to my mother.”

  “You’ll explain down at the police station.”

  The other cuff clicked in to place.

>   Connor’s anger simmered inside his tight frame as the copper jabbed him in the back, and he lurched his way out of the hospital loading bay doors.

  Surreal crossed the boundary into stark reality, when Connor saw the black Mariah parked in the street outside. The policeman behind the steering wheel leapt out when the hospital door burst open. Stepping smartly around to the rear, he twisted a handle and revealed the dark cavernous space in the back of the wagon. Connor’s blood boiled as Cavendish’s hard grip spanned the top of his head, ducked him forward, and shoved him headfirst into the holding area of a cage of wire mesh walls, lined with wooden bench seats.

  It was difficult to hang on to dignity with his hands cuffed behind his back. The metal links rattled as he lost his balance, smashing into the wall with one shoulder, before sliding down until he hit the seat with a bruising crash.

  Connor’s eyes watered at the smell of urine stinging his nasal lining, his ears reverberating as the metallic thump of the door plunged him into darkness.

  He braced his feet on the slatted wooden floor, distaste stirring in his stomach as the soles of his boots slipped over the greasy surface. Connor bellowed loudly, and the echo of his anger was drowned out by the gunning of the engine as the car lurched into motion.

  “Shut up, laddie. You’ll get your chance,” a muffled voice shouted and a fist banged on the partition beside him.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. Picturing his father’s apoplectic face when he discovered his son had been arrested, Connor decided the anger of strangers would be easier to handle. Calmness descended as he surrendered control. He thought of his mother’s gentile features and knew that this Lady Isobel, even if she shunned him, would not see him rotting in jail.

  A half hour later, sitting in the stuffy police cell, listening to the descant of voices, ranging from angry through to drunk, seeping through the cracks in the crazed plaster of the walls, Connor hoped he was right.

  “But will she even remember her cousin, Clarissa?” The letter had been in that box in the attic for a long time, after all. Sitting on a narrow bunk, Connor rested his head back on the pillow of his folded jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and settled in for a long wait.