Mystery Loves Company

by Sheri Cobb South

“Of course.” Julia took Pickett’s coat, then gave him a wink and a smile and removed herself from the room.

  “And now, monsieur, voila! We begin.” Suiting the word to the deed, he began to ply his brush.

  “There’s a short spot at the crown,” Pickett said, finding his tongue at last. “It had to be shaved—”

  “Oui, oui, madame has told me all,” Monsieur Albert assured him. “It is not difficult. Madame’s first husband, le vicomte, had a thin spot, oh, of the smallest, which I had the honor of helping him to conceal. But this—” He ran one hand through Pickett’s thick curls. “This will be un plaisir. Monsieur has hair for which many a lady would commit murder.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Pickett muttered, remembered the lascivious lady at the Washbourn masquerade. Being favorably compared to Julia’s first husband, however, had gone some way toward reconciling him to the process, and he relaxed somewhat in his chair—until he heard the metallic whisper of blade sliding against blade, and realized to his dismay that his head felt curiously light.

  He whirled about in the chair, and stared with horrified disbelief at the sheet covering the floor. On its pristine folds lay a hank of long brown curls, tied at one end with a black ribbon.

  “You cut off my hair!” He clapped one hand to the back of his head, and narrowly missed being stabbed with the Frenchman’s scissors.

  “Have a care!” Monsieur Albert exclaimed. “You will do yourself an injury, non? But oui, I give monsieur a coiffure of the most fashionable, as madame has desired. I will now trim the ends, if you will permit.”

  “My permission doesn’t seem to be necessary,” Pickett grumbled under his breath. Still, the damage had been done, and so he had no choice but to let the man finish what he’d begun.

  At last Monsieur Albert pronounced himself “fini.” He gave Pickett a hand mirror and stepped back, confidently awaiting the expressions of praise and gratitude that must surely follow when his client gazed upon his reflection. His client, however, was speechless, and not necessarily with admiration. Pickett, looking into the mirror with some trepidation, was relieved to discover that from the front, at least, he did not look so very different. It was only when he turned his head to the side, and saw the ends of his hair just curling over the collar of his shirt, that he could tell the extent of the violation that had been perpetrated on his unsuspecting head. He reached back gingerly and fingered the shorn ends at the nape of his neck.

  “If monsieur will notice,” the hairdresser put in, “the spot he so deplored is quite hidden.”

  That much, at least, was true. Now that the curls at his crown were no longer confined to their ribbon, the tuft of short hair was easily lost among them. He supposed he should be grateful, but it was the principle of the thing that offended him. He had never agreed to have his hair cut, had never even said he wanted to have his hair cut, and yet Julia had taken it upon herself to—

  “Oh, my,” breathed a soft feminine voice, a voice that certainly did not belong to Monsieur Albert.

  Pickett turned and saw Julia standing in the doorway, staring at him wide-eyed. Her obvious admiration acted as a balm to his wounded pride, until he reminded himself that of course she would like it; she had orchestrated the whole thing, and had done so without his knowledge or permission. He turned away from her, hardening his heart.

  “Thank you, Monsieur Albert,” Julia told the hairdresser quickly, realizing at once that all was not well with her husband. “How much do I owe you?”

  “I will send madame my bill,” he promised, being wise enough in the ways of the aristocracy to know that his noble clients would consider it shockingly vulgar for him to demand payment at the time his services were rendered.

  As soon as the Frenchman had taken his leave, Julia turned to Pickett. “Darling, what is the matter?”

  “What’s the matter?” he echoed incredulously. “What’s the matter? Julia, I didn’t want my hair cut! I never said I wanted my hair cut!”

  “You did,” she reminded him, taken aback by his vehemence. “I offered to send for Monsieur Albert, since he’d always cut Frederick’s hair, and asked if you would prefer me to ask Emily Dunnington who cuts her husband’s, and you said it wouldn’t be necessary. So I sent for Monsieur.”

  “I said it wouldn’t be necessary to send for anyone at all!”

  “You didn’t!” she insisted. “I’m sure you didn’t!”

  “Well, it’s what I meant!”

  “And am I supposed to be able to read your thoughts?”

  “No, but you might at least have asked!”

  A hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach suggested to Julia that he might have a point. Still, she had spent long six years deferring to a husband who always managed to put her in the wrong, and she had no intention of falling back into the same pattern with her second husband. “For heaven’s sake, John, it’s hair! If you don’t like it, you can always grow it out again.” Seeing he was not convinced, she wrapped her arms around him and ran her fingers through the short curls at the back of his neck. “I think it looks splendid. Can you not at least try to like it?”

  “I like you,” he said, heaving a sigh of resignation as he returned her embrace. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  And it must be said to his credit that he tried hard to believe it.

  * * *

  Pickett arose the next morning with his good humor apparently restored, but it seemed to Julia that there was an invisible wall between them that had not been there before, and she knew (the warmth of his farewell kiss notwithstanding) that she was not entirely forgiven. After he had set out for Bow Street, Julia decided to try and restore herself to his good graces with a little investigating of her own. With this end in view, she dressed for the day in a Pomona green walking dress with a matching spencer, and set out on foot for Grosvenor Square. Upon arriving at the Washbourn residence, she sent up her card, and within a very few minutes was ushered into the drawing room where Lady Washbourn sat waiting to receive her.

  “My dear Mrs. Pickett,” the countess said, rising to drop a curtsy. “How kind of you to call! Won’t you sit down?”

  The walk had not been long, but the sun was warm, and Julia was only too thankful to sink onto the brocade sofa, conscious once again of the sense of fatigue that had plagued her all too frequently of late.

  “Would you care for tea?” asked her hostess, reaching for the bell pull. “Or something a bit stronger—sherry, perhaps, or a glass of peach ratafia?”

  “No!” Recalling her husband’s suspicions regarding the peach ratafia, Julia was certain she would never be able to drink it again, and certainly not under Lady Washbourn’s roof. Seeing her hostess regarding her with raised brows, she added in a more moderate tone, “That is, tea would be lovely, thank you.”

  Lady Washbourn gave the necessary orders to the butler, along with her instructions that he was to deny her to any other callers. After he had left the room, she turned back to Julia. “Dare I hope—that is, have you some news for me?”

  “I’m afraid you are laboring under a misapprehension,” Julia said. “I have not come as an emissary for my husband. I only wanted to thank you for your hospitality in inviting Mr. Pickett and me to your entertainment, and to express my regret that it ended in such a tragedy.” Which was not entirely accurate, Julia reflected, but it was true insofar as it went.

  “Oh. I see. Yes, I thought it was going rather well, until—until what happened to poor Annie.” Lady Washbourn gave her a strained smile. “I fear I am not quite comfortable in company. It was my husband’s mother who suggested that we host a party to allow me to practice entertaining.”

  Privately Julia thought an intimate dinner or two, followed by perhaps a card party or a musical evening, would be less demanding for an inexperienced hostess, and therefore more suitable, than a large masked affair at which guests would be prone to take advantage of their anonymity in order to conduct themselves in ways they never would have risked, had t
heir identities been immediately apparent. Aloud, however, she merely said, “You are fortunate, then, in your mother-in-law. I wish mine had been as understanding.”

  “Mother Washbourn has been everything that is kind,” the countess agreed, “which is all the more remarkable when one considers that she was once Lady Beatrice Frampton, the daughter of the Duke of Moring, whose holdings apparently include most of Hampshire.”

  “But—forgive me, your ladyship—”

  “Oh, pray call me Eliza.”

  Julia thought their acquaintance was rather slight to have progressed already to the use of Christian names, but credited it to the poor little countess’s hunger for friendship, rather than any intentional impropriety on her part.

  “Eliza, then,” she said, acceding to this request, “I was under the impression that you and Lord Washbourn had been married for two years already. How is it that you have only now begun entertaining?”

  Lady Washbourn nodded. “Yes, we married in the summer of ’07. But Washbourn’s father died very shortly after the wedding—he had been ill for some time, and was particularly wishful to see his son wed before he died—and then my own father died not long after, so we have spent most of our marriage in mourning.”

  Julia searched these words for any implied criticism of her own failure to mourn her first husband for the full twelve months Society judged proper, but found nothing beyond a simple statement of fact. “A sad beginning to your life together,” she said sympathetically. “Let us hope the end of your mourning marks the beginning of happier days ahead.”

  “I hope so.” The countess’s bleak expression held very little hope for this desirable outcome. “Mrs. Pickett, may I—may I ask you a personal question?”

  “I suppose so,” Julia said warily.

  “How long after your marriage—your first marriage, that is—was it before you realized you’d made a mistake?”

  Julia blinked, taken aback by the question in spite of her hostess’s warning as to the personal nature of her query. Julia would most likely have given a sharp set-down to anyone else presumptuous enough to press for such confidentialities on so short an acquaintance, but decided to indulge Lady Washbourn for the sake of her husband’s investigation. After all, if Lady Washbourn were to receive such confidences, then she could hardly balk at answering Julia’s own inquiries.

  “It was not so bad at first,” Julia recalled, casting her mind back to that time almost seven years earlier when she and her first husband had been newly married. “Indeed, our wedding trip was quite—quite pleasant.” Pleasant, yes, but six weeks with Lord Fieldhurst in Paris during the brief Peace of Amiens had been nothing to compare to six days with John Pickett in a shabby two-room flat in Drury Lane. Still, she had been a bedazzled nineteen-year-old girl, with no knowledge yet of how glorious—or how painful—marriage could be.

  Lady Washbourn eagerly leaned forward in her seat. “Oh, yes! Our honeymoon was lovely, too.” A shadow crossed her face. “I knew Washbourn did not love me, of course. He had hoped to marry Lady Barbara Stafford, but in spite of her father’s exalted rank, Lady Barbara’s dowry was no more than respectable, and Washbourn had to wed a fortune if he hoped to salvage his family’s heritage. I knew I was not his first choice, and yet I thought—I hoped, anyway—that I could make him happy, that in time he might learn to love me.”

  “But honeymoons have to end sometime, don’t they?” Julia remarked sympathetically. “In my case, it was a summer in Brighton that sounded the death knell, for it was there that I discovered Fieldhurst had a predilection for opera dancers. We had been married for almost a year by that time, and while there had been signs that he was unfaithful—unexplained absences, women of the demi-monde who smiled at him a bit too familiarly when we encountered them at the theatre or in the park—he assured me I was worried about nothing, and I was only too ready to believe him. Then, too, I was unable to conceive a child, and that eventually drove a wedge between us.”

  “In my case, there was nothing so definite as that,” Lady Washbourn recalled sadly. “By the time we returned from our honeymoon, we were—friends—or at least I thought we could be, in time. I had every reason to believe we might learn to be happy together. But after we returned to Washbourn Abbey, something changed. Little things began to annoy him, and although I’d had charge of my father’s household after Mama died, I didn’t do things at the Abbey the way Washbourn’s mother, and his grandmother, and his great-grandmother had done.”

  “And I suppose your predecessor’s remaining beneath the same roof hardly helped matters,” Julia remarked, belatedly thankful that her own mother-in-law had removed to the Dower House in anticipation of their return from Paris.

  “No, no, you do Mother Washbourn an injustice,” the countess protested. “She has been nothing but supportive. Whenever I committed some faux pas through ignorance, she always defended me. I remember one incident shortly after we returned from our wedding trip, when I ordered that the medieval tapestries in the hall should be taken down so they could be cleaned and repaired. Washbourn was beside himself when he saw they were gone, and it was Mother Washbourn who reminded him that I was brought up with a different set of values, and did not understand the significance of an ancient tradition and ‘elegant decay,’ as she put it. And I must say she was right,” she added with unexpected candor. “I cannot see the sense of letting one’s family treasures fall apart through respectful neglect when they could be saved by a discreet stitch or two on the back, where no one could possibly notice.”

  Julia was inclined to agree, provided the restoration could be done in such a way as to render the repairs invisible, but she suspected the Fieldhursts would not have agreed with this philosophy any more than the Washbourns had done.

  “And then,” continued Lady Washbourn, “Lady Barbara’s husband died in a hunting accident. Now she is free, and Washbourn—isn’t.”

  “Your ladyship—er, Eliza,” Julia began, choosing her words with care. “My husband told me that he suggested you might leave London for a time, and that you refused even to consider it. Under the circumstances, would it not be better—?”

  “No!” Lady Washbourn shook her head emphatically. “I won’t run away and leave Lady Barbara a clear field. Perhaps I might do so if I thought she truly cared for him, if I thought he might find with her the happiness he has not been able to find with me. But she is an odious creature who cares for nothing but herself! He might be unhappy with me, but he would be utterly miserable with her.”

  “Perhaps if you were to go away for a time and leave him to her, he might discover that for himself,” Julia suggested, trying another tack. “It is quite possible that without the lure of the forbidden, the lady would lose much of her appeal.”

  “I understand what you are saying, but I cannot,” the countess insisted. “Besides Washbourn, there is our daughter to consider, you know.”

  “And for your daughter’s sake, you must do what you can to stay alive,” Julia pointed out with some asperity.

  She might have saved her breath. While Lady Washbourn was perfectly willing to concede Julia’s point, she remained adamant. In the end, Julia was forced to admit defeat, and took her leave without persuading her hostess to take what steps she might to save herself. Still, she could not feel the visit was a complete waste, for she had made one interesting discovery: Lady Washbourn, in spite of her suspicions, was deeply in love with her husband.

  13

  In Which Comedy Turns to Tragedy

  Pickett, meanwhile, entered the Bow Street Public Office to considerable fanfare.

  “Will you look at Lord John!” one member of the Foot Patrol exclaimed loudly enough to be heard over a chorus of appreciative whistles. “His lady wife is going to make a gentleman of him yet.”

  “Turn around,” commanded Mr. Dixon, making a spinning motion with his hand. “Let us see the back.”

  Suppressing a huff of annoyance, Pickett turned.

  “Very smart,
” said Mr. Colquhoun, observing this exchange from the bench. “Still, you might have warned us. Mr. Carson here might have arrested you as an imposter.”

  “You had as much warning as I did,” Pickett said with some asperity. “When I got home last night, Julia had a curst Frenchman waiting for me with scissors in hand.”

  “Ah well, you may find you like it, once you get used to it. And if not, well, it will always grow back. It’s only hair, you know.”

  “So she said,” Pickett grumbled.

  “All jesting aside, what do you intend to do today regarding the Washbourn investigation?”

  Pickett resisted the urge to protest that it was no jesting matter, and instead described for the magistrate his meeting with the doctor. “Which sounds rather suspicious, given that there’s a large portrait in the Washbourn drawing room which shows her ladyship wearing a blue dress,” he concluded. “I intend to call in Grosvenor Square and find out who painted it, and when.”

  Mr. Colquhoun nodded in approval, and Pickett set out for Grosvenor Square. Upon reaching the Washbourn residence, however, he suffered a check.

  “Her ladyship is otherwise engaged,” the butler informed him, “but if you would care to leave a message—?”

  Pickett was tempted, but reminded himself that any such message might reach the ears of Lord Washbourn or the dowager countess. He shook his head. “No, no message, thank you.”

  Deprived of his primary object, Pickett satisfied himself instead with calling at a nearby art supply house, and inquiring of the proprietor whether he included Prussian blue among his inventory.

  “Oh, aye,” the shopkeeper informed him. “It’s one of my most requested paints, and no wonder. A hundred years ago, you know, the only blues available to artists tended toward gray or green, like cerulean, or else were so costly, like ultramarine, that only well-established artists could afford them.”

  In fact, Pickett had not known, but the information gave him an angle from which to introduce his next question.