by Tessa Arlen
“So Mrs. Wickham came here to meet one person and was surprised by another. The first was probably an admirer, and perhaps the other might have been the man or woman who murdered Mr. Bartholomew, or perhaps it was her husband who surprised her. I can’t imagine why anyone could think otherwise.” Mr. Stafford made his statement matter-of-factly enough but he was still looking at Mrs. Jackson.
“Good heavens above, you are most probably right.” Clementine was grateful for his quick mind and his willingness to rise above the palpable strain that was building between him and her housekeeper. Did Jackson actually believe that it might have been Mr. Stafford who met Mrs. Wickham here last night?
“And the next question one would ask oneself is: Who was the man that came to meet Mrs. Wickham?” Mrs. Jackson, looking a little less tense, asked the question of the fountain in the middle of the herb garden.
“You mean Mr. Evans, don’t you?” Mr. Stafford was laughing now. “For, undoubtedly, it was the butler. Mr. Evans is known in the village as Dennis the Dandy and he is particularly partial to attractive young women—a fact I am quite sure you are aware of.” Ernest Stafford’s eyes were resting on Mrs. Jackson’s face with an inquiring expression, inviting her to see the funny side of it all.
“Good grief, Dennis the Dandy—how priceless.” Clementine’s laugh sounded a little forced and she glanced at her housekeeper. “All along it was the butler!”
“Yes, it must have been, m’lady.” To Clementine’s relief, Mrs. Jackson smiled, a wholehearted beam that swept away all earlier traces of suspicion. “He is actually called Dennis the Dandy in the village?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Stafford. “Everyone locks up their pretty daughters when Mr. Evans goes down to the village for a pint on a Friday night. Why, Mrs. Jackson, you surely didn’t think it was me that the femme fatale of Hyde Castle was meeting in the orangery?” He had stopped laughing, and Mrs. Jackson blushed and then quickly recovered herself: “No, Mr. Stafford, I didn’t for one moment imagine it could be you…”
And Clementine, heartily relieved that this little matter had been cleared up between them, thought to herself that when her housekeeper lied, she did it with such composure.
Chapter Fourteen
“Now then, Jackson, we must plan our next steps,” Clementine said as they walked back to the house after saying goodbye to Mr. Stafford, who had made quite a business of locking up the orangery before they left. “We shall assume for the time being that Mrs. Wickham went to the orangery to meet Mr. Evans. So what we must discover now is who attacked her. And to do that we need to find out several things.
“Did Mr. Haldane leave the house last night after he had finished drinking port in the dining room with Mr. Wickham? Or did Mr. Wickham slip out of the house to follow his wife to the orangery after he left the dining room? Both Mr. Haldane and Mr. Wickham are high on our list of suspects, Jackson. And we probably need to check up on Mrs. Bartholomew and Mr. Urquhart as well. Would you be prepared to see if you can find out if anyone belowstairs might help us with these questions? Without your alerting Mr. Evans that we suspect him of hobnobbing with Mrs. Wickham, that is. And I will have a little chat with Mrs. Wickham about her visit to the orangery. She must be quite desperate for affection if she goes running off to meet Mr. Evans in the grounds at night. What did Mr. Stafford say the villagers called him, Randy Dennis?”
Mrs. Jackson’s head whipped around and she looked quite horrified for a moment. And then she stopped in the drive and looked down at her feet, half in embarrassment and half in delight, and laughed. “It’s Dennis the Dandy, m’lady, though your name for him is very apt,” she said when she had caught her breath.
“Yes, I imagine it probably is,” Clementine said and the two of them stood in the early morning sunshine to enjoy their joke together.
But what Clementine did not say, as they walked on, shaking their heads at the oddities of the human race, was that she found the household at Hyde Castle more and more baffling each day. It was beyond her to imagine that a woman from a respectable family would want to involve herself with a butler. Clementine was not a prude or a snob—far from it. And in the circles she moved in she was aware that every so often the daughter or wife of an aristocrat did occasionally lose her reason completely and run off with a servant. In the past it was usually a groom who accompanied some lonely and despairing wife, or spinster daughter, on her morning ride and gave her the friendship and attention the poor thing so desperately needed, to lure her into running from hearth and home. But a butler was rather scraping the bottom of a barrel, she thought. Butlers were usually men of senior years, obsequious in manner and often more rigid in their thinking than the gentlemen they served.
Clementine tried to recall what Mr. Evans looked like, and in doing so remembered the assessing look he had given Mrs. Wickham last night when he had been called into the salon by Mrs. Haldane and instructed to mount a search of the grounds. Yes, of course it was the butler that Mrs. Wickham went to meet. His assessing glance as he took in Mrs. Wickham’s dishevelment had said it all. She had probably been attacked as she had waited in the orangery for him to arrive. If that was how it had happened, what a surprise it must have been for him to find her sitting on the sofa in a state of complete disarray and sobbing on Mrs. Lovell’s shoulder after she had failed to turn up for their meeting.
She did not share these thoughts with Mrs. Jackson. Since she suspected that the revelation that Mr. Evans was flirting with a guest in his mistress’s house, once the amusement of Mr. Stafford’s account of the butler’s habits had worn off, had evidently embarrassed her proper housekeeper, who had remained silent throughout their walk back to the house.
* * *
Clementine tapped on the door of Mrs. Wickham’s room an hour before luncheon and was bidden to enter. Its occupant was dressed and sitting in a chair by the window, a book open on her lap. A book she had hastily picked up to indicate that she had been busily reading when she had been interrupted, Clementine noticed, because it was upside down.
“Just popped in to see how you were doing, Mrs. Wickham, and to give you this.” She did not offer the shawl that she was holding in her left hand; she held out a little flask of lavender water. “Lavender water is such a pleasant scent to help steady the nerves after a nasty shock. I do hope you have recovered, somewhat.” She sat down unbidden in the chair on the other side of the fireplace and let the shawl drop into her lap. She noticed that Mrs. Wickham’s eyes had fastened themselves on it as soon as she had walked into the room. Poor thing, she looks quite desperately scared, she thought, without any pity, for she was here to help.
“Good morning, Lady Montfort,” the young woman said. Her eyes were pink either from lack of sleep or weeping, or both. A small flair of anger lit Clementine’s stomach for whoever had hurt this harmless but very self-absorbed young woman. She drew a breath and made herself notice that Mrs. Wickham’s hair was beautifully dressed and her morning dress impeccable. Good for you, she thought, no need to completely give up because your married life is so without love that you have to go looking for it in places that ultimately disappoint.
She looked around the room. It was clear that when Mrs. Haldane’s friends came to stay, they always occupied the same rooms. This room was almost claustrophobic in clutter that had probably accumulated over many visits. There were pattern books from fashion houses strewn on the bed and on the tops of tables; over a chair in the corner were draped samples of richly patterned dress fabric. Some skeins of embroidery silk were dumped down on another chair by the window. And evidently Mrs. Wickham was a reader, for books were everywhere. She glanced at the titles of several of them on the table next to her. Her Knight Errant, by Polly Perkins, had a bookmark poking out about two-thirds of the way through, but there was also a copy of Guinevere’s Lover and one of Love Itself, both by Elinor Glyn. Aha, she thought, she likes her novels to be on the racy side. She was surprised that Mrs. Wickham kept her more unseemly reading matter out i
n the open like this and not locked away. Miss Glyn’s books were not considered suitable reading for gentlewomen. She set her bottle of lavender water down on the table next to Elinor Glyn’s clandestinely popular best sellers.
“Thank you, Lady Montfort, how very kind of you,” Mrs. Wickham faltered, as she accepted that Lady Montfort was here to stay for a while. Her voice had broken a little on the acknowledged kindness. Oh dear, thought Clementine, feeling a little guilty, this is going to be only too easy.
“I only hope you were not too badly hurt last night?”
“Just bruises, Lady Montfort, nothing more serious.” The young woman’s face was pale and Clementine noticed that she held her upper body quite still, as if any movement might be painful. Again she remembered seeing Mr. Haldane striding from the house, holding his stout stick in his hand.
“Yes, a little arnica will perhaps help with the bruising. I think I might have some.…”
“Mrs. Lovell … was most kind.” Silence, her eyes still on the shawl the young woman was evidently waiting.
“As you can see, I found your shawl. You dropped it in the herb garden when you were running from the orangery.” She kept her eyes on the young woman’s face and saw it redden. Fair-haired women always blush so easily, she thought, as she watched Dorothy Wickham’s eyes widen.
“But I wasn’t in the orangery,” she said a little too defiantly. Clementine wanted to cry out, “Tosh,” but she bit her tongue, there was no need to be derisive.
“Oh, you weren’t? How very strange, because that is where we found it.” Clementine left the young woman to wonder if Evans had already snitched. “My dear Mrs. Wickham, I am only interested in knowing what happened when you were attacked. Why you were in the orangery is absolutely none of my business, and I wouldn’t dream of asking you about it. But I would like you please to tell me, as clearly as you can, exactly what happened when your attacker came upon you.” Clementine had already decided that a direct approach was the best way with this young woman, and was relying on her social status and her mature years to intimidate the younger woman into revealing the truth of the goings-on last night.
Mrs. Wickham bent her head and started to weep, hoping perhaps that, like Mrs. Lovell, Lady Montfort would rush to soothe and make things right. Clementine sat her out, and after a while said in a kind but firm voice, “When you are ready…”
Mrs. Wickham sat up a little straighter in her chair.
“Yes, I was in the orangery. It was the first time it had been opened since Rupert’s death. He was such a good friend … I wanted … I wanted to spend some time there, where he died.”
How awfully morbid of you, thought Clementine, when he died so horribly. She waited.
“I heard a movement in the back of the room behind the trees, and I turned. I thought I saw someone standing at the far end of the row of trees. I called out. But no one answered, and I thought perhaps the moonlight and the shadows had made me imagine that someone was there. I turned back toward the door and then before I knew it someone pulled my shawl up over my head and I was pushed down onto the floor. I lifted my head to cry for help and that is when he kicked me, hit me. Before he ran away.”
“You say he…”
“I imagine it was a man. But I saw no one, as I said.”
Clementine nodded. “That must have been very frightening for you,” she said gently. “Did this person say anything?”
“No.” Her face was pale with anxiety, making her eyes look even more pink and strained.
“You think it was not a tramp, then?”
Mrs. Wickham shook her head.
“Last night you said that you definitely thought this person knew who you were; why is that, if you did not see who it was?”
“I was very frightened as I lay on the floor. I did not dare lift my head, but when I heard the footsteps disappear into the night, I had the distinct feeling that it had been someone I knew.” In the comforting light of day, sitting safely in her room, she spoke with complete conviction.
“And do you think your attacker was already there when you arrived?”
“Yes, they must have been, otherwise I would have seen them come through the door. I was facing the door with my back to the trees.”
“When whoever attacked you left, what did you do next?”
“I was very frightened but not too badly injured. I got up and untangled my head from my shawl. I couldn’t be sure if my attacker had actually left the building or the area. So I went outside and looked around.”
“And once outside?”
“I stood on the path for a moment or two and then I’m afraid my nerve broke. I couldn’t tell if anyone was in the shadows watching me. I was so frightened I would be attacked again. So I ran as fast as I could, across the herb garden and the lawn, back toward the house. I crossed the drive and the upper lawn to the terrace—the conservatory was the first door I came to.” She was out of breath but she was no longer crying, and she was, it seemed to Clementine, rather excited by telling her story. Clementine thought that if she asked Mrs. Wickham anything at this point she would willingly supply the answer.
“Did you see anyone at all on your way back to the house, Mrs. Wickham? Anyone at all, please be frank with me, this will go no further but it is very important.”
It occurred to Clementine that Mrs. Wickham was bored to tears in a house full of people far older than herself, all studiously engrossed in their roses. She livens her empty hours by playing games, poor little ninny.
“Yes, I thought I saw someone walking up the drive ahead of me. It wasn’t anyone I recognized—it might have been my attacker I suppose. It was a fleeting impression, a dark figure among dark shadows lit only by the moon.” Clementine had the strangest feeling that she was quoting from one of the romantic novels she enjoyed reading.
She decided to take a risk. “Oh, I am sure that it was Evans, the butler,” she said in a voice as smooth as milk. And Mrs. Wickham half rose from her chair in a panic.
“Den … Evans…?” she cried out, and then, hearing how loud her voice sounded, she turned away in case she said anything she might regret.
“Ah, so you think it might have been the butler who attacked you?” persisted Clementine.
“No, most definitely not—it cannot have been. It was someone else.”
“Then perhaps it was Mr. Evans whom you had arranged to meet in the orangery, Mrs. Wickham? Please tell me if it was, otherwise he might be wrongly accused of attacking you.”
“Yes, it was Mr. Evans I was waiting to meet in the orangery, but he certainly did not attack me,” Mrs. Wickham said rather melodramatically as she lifted her chin and shook her golden curls. And then she heard herself and her face fell. “But no one must ever know, Lady Montfort. Mr. Wickham … my husband…”
It was like bullying a kitten and Clementine felt instantly ashamed of herself. There is no need to be unkind and make her uneasy even if she is a dangerous little troublemaker, she reminded herself, and added, “I simply can’t imagine how Mr. Wickham will find out, my dear, for I most certainly will not tell him. There is nothing for you to fear from me. And I think you have been a very brave and courageous young woman for being so candid with me.”
“I promise you, Lady Montfort, there was no harm in what I was doing in the orangery. No harm at all. And I would be grateful, truly grateful if you would not tell anyone that I was there to meet Mr. Evans.” For the first time, Mrs. Wickham expressed herself without a trace of self-conscious emotion. “Mr. Evans has been a very good friend to me,” she said, her voice low, “and it would be wrong to get him into trouble with his employers.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Mrs. Wickham.” She smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. After all, if this young woman was in love with a butler, then that was entirely her affair. “As I said, it is not my business whom you are involved with.”
“It is not what you think it is.” Dorothy flared up a little now that she was sure her sec
ret was safe. “No one could possibly understand that Mr. Evans and I have genuine feelings for each other.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mrs. Jackson went looking for Lady Montfort and found her in her room, standing by the window.
“Ah, Jackson, come on in. I just had my little talk with Mrs. Wickham about her encounter last night, the poor silly creature. She admitted to having been in the orangery. Her attacker was there when she arrived, she thinks, standing behind the trees. He sprang on her from behind, pulled her shawl over her head, pushed her down onto the floor, and hit her a couple of times before running off.”
“So she didn’t recognize him, m’lady.”
“No, she had no idea whom it might have been, she was taken by surprise, which was probably the attacker’s plan. What is more, she admitted that she had been there to meet Mr. Evans. I reassured her it would go no further.” Her ladyship looked not in the slightest bit embarrassed that she had immediately passed this information on to her.
“It seems that the person who attacked Mrs. Wickham was there for some other purpose than to surprise her with Mr. Evans, then, m’lady. So it might have been the other way around, Mrs. Wickham surprised whoever was already in the orangery when she arrived.”
“Yes, it would seem so. And anyway I can’t imagine Mr. Wickham lurking behind the trees in the orangery just to surprise his wife, can you? Wouldn’t he have waited for the lover to come along too, and then have the satisfaction of surprising them both? But you can never tell with men. But Mr. Wickham might have been lurking in the orangery for some other purpose entirely. Did you perhaps have any luck with your inquiries belowstairs?”
“Yes I did, m’lady.”
Mrs. Jackson had spent a long and frustrating forty minutes in the laundry room with Mrs. Walker before she could return to Lady Montfort with the news that Mr. Wickham had left the dining room after port and cigars with Mr. Haldane. This is the reason I avoid gossip and small talk, she said to herself. For she’d had to listen to every mundane detail of life belowstairs at Hyde Castle and every tortuous opinion the upper servants held on the misfortunes of older men who marry younger wives before she could slip in the one question she wanted the answer to.