Ready Set Rogue

by Manda Collins

  “Shall I fetch you something from the village while I’m out?” he asked her, moving back so that Polly, who had just entered with a bowl of hot water, could place it on the side table.

  “No, nothing,” she said with a smile at his sweet offer. “Just be careful yourself. You seem convinced that yesterday’s shooter was after me, but it’s entirely possible that you were the target. You were standing right next to me, after all.”

  But he waved away the suggestion. “I wasn’t the one who’d just been warned by a gypsy fortune teller that I was in danger.”

  When she opened her mouth to counter his argument, he shook his head. “But nonetheless, I will take care. At this point, I suppose we cannot afford to discount any theory about the shooter.”

  And with a wave, he stepped out of the room, leaving Ivy to Polly’s tender care.

  * * *

  After ensuring that Maitland would keep close watch over Ivy in his absence, Quill set out on horseback for Squire Northman’s house. But when he arrived, he saw Dr. Vance’s familiar carriage waiting at the door. A pang of foreboding ran through him.

  “Is someone in the house ill?” he asked the groom who stood waiting to take the horse’s reins.

  The young man winced. “One of the maids, my lord” He looked around as if to see who was watching them. “Took her own life, like.”

  With a curse, Quill sprinted up the stairs of the portico and when the door opened, he didn’t wait for a greeting from the butler. “It was the maid Elsie, wasn’t it?” he asked the man, who looked aghast at Quill’s lack of decorum.

  “I’m sure if you will wait in the drawing room, my lord, Mr. Northman will explain in due time what has happened,” Watson said in a dignified huff.

  But his lack of reply to the question told Quill all he needed to know. Brushing past the indignant servant, he hurried through what looked to be the servants’ hall and followed the sound of weeping and murmured whispers to a small group of servants standing near an open door.

  “My lord,” the butler called out from behind him. “I’m sure if you will just come with me Mr. Northman will be happy to—”

  “It’s all right, Watson,” said Northman himself, as he stepped out from the door where the crowd was gathered. “I’ll speak to his lordship here.”

  Quill glanced back at the butler, who looked perturbed at the breach of protocol, but was silent.

  Northman, who looked grim, gestured for Quill to come forward. “You lot should go down to the kitchens and have some tea. I’ll let you know of any news as soon as I’m able.”

  Watson came forward and ushered the servants, a couple of footmen and three weeping maids, back toward the other end of the hall.

  “I don’t suppose you know why my wife’s maid, whom you and Miss Wareham questioned only days ago,” Northman said with a scowl to Quill as they stepped into the grim little bedchamber where Elsie had drawn her last breath, “would wish to take her own life?”

  Quill was silent for a moment as he looked to where Dr. Vance stood over the body of Elsie, which was lying stiff on the floor. It was obvious from the posture of the corpse that her death had not been a peaceful one. Her face was contorted in a rictus of agony, and her hands were tightly fisted against her chest. He wondered suddenly if this is what it had been like for Celeste and was assailed by a renewed sense of determination to find out who had done this to her. To them both. For he was sure now that whoever had killed his aunt had also killed her maid.

  The doctor, who had been making notes in a small bound book, turned and met Quill’s eyes. It was clear that the other man had come to the same conclusion.

  To Northman, Quill said, “I have a suspicion that the same person who killed my aunt might have killed Elsie.”

  If the magistrate was shocked by the news, he didn’t show it. Instead he scowled. “What makes you think that Lady Celeste was deliberately murdered? I thought we’d decided that she likely died of a wasting disease, Vance.”

  That he and Vance had discussed the possibility that Celeste’s death may not have been from natural causes was evident from Norman’s words, and Quill would have demanded an explanation, but Vance spoke up, cutting him off. “I told you at the time, Northman, that I could not be sure without sending the body to London for autopsy. And that was not what the family wished. Now, thanks to some pointed questions from his lordship and Miss Wareham, I have decided that it is likely that Lady Celeste was poisoned by the tonic Elsie was giving her for her headaches.”

  The squire looked grim. “Has my wife been in danger this whole time?” he demanded with icy calm.

  Vance had the good grace to look abashed. “I would never have allowed her to come here if I’d suspected the maid at the time of Lady Celeste’s death,” he said defensively. “It was not until Lord Kerr began asking questions that it occurred to me that the tisanes were the likely source of the poison.”

  That didn’t seem to reassure Northman much, but he did not belabor the point. “So, Elsie has also been murdered? What about this indicates that she didn’t simply take her own poison in a fit of conscience?” He gestured to the overturned teacup on the floor beside the body, the dregs of the last sip clinging to the bowl of the floral-patterned porcelain.

  “Aside from the fact that there are far less agonizing ways to die,” Quill said, stooping to pick up the cup and sniff it. As he’d suspected, there was no strange odor. No indication that it was been laced with anything other than tea. “There is the fact that the amount of poison needed to kill her so quickly would be all but impossible to drink in such a concentrated source as a single cup of tea.”

  “Would it not depend upon the poison?” Northman demanded. “Surely they all cannot taste foul.”

  “I suspect in Lady Celeste’s case,” Dr. Vance said, taking the cup from Quill and sniffing it with diffidence, “that the culprit was aconite. Since the visit Lord Kerr and Miss Wareham paid me earlier in the week, I have done some research into substances that might cause symptoms that mimic those of a wasting disease or cankers of the bowel, and aconite seems to be the most likely source. And it could easily be masked in a brewed tonic of the sort Lady Celeste was in the habit of taking.”

  “But if there was no sign of aconite in Elsie’s tea,” Northman said, his mouth tight, “then how the hell did she ingest it?”

  Quill stooped and pulled a small box—the sort that was often used by confectioners to preserve sweetmeats and other sweet delicacies—out from beneath the bed, where it lay on its side. The lid was off, and Quill looked inside before showing it to the other two men. At the bottom there was both greasy residue and some crumbs.

  “Did Elsie receive any gifts in the past several days?” he asked Northman. “Anything unexpected or perhaps a surprise to mark her birthday or some other special day?”

  Northman pokered up. “I am not in the habit of keeping track of the personal lives of my household staff, Lord Kerr. I couldn’t even tell you when the damned woman’s birthday was, much less whether she received any gifts on the occasion.”

  “Then we should question your housekeeper,” Quill said, not bothering to ask whether it would do any good to speak to Northman’s wife. Cassandra was also not the sort to show an interest in the lives of her servants. Even one so personal as her own maid. “I suspect the poison was delivered over the course of a few days, which would be easy enough to do if it were used as an ingredient in a pastry or sweetmeat.”

  Vance nodded his agreement. “Aconite might have been unpalatable in a single cup of tea, but spreading it out over several pieces of candy or biscuits would make it less noxious.”

  Cursing, Northman shook his head. “I would have liked to know there was a madman poisoning people in my district before he struck in my own household, Vance.”

  “And shooting,” Quill said, not wishing to lose sight of his original reason for seeking the magistrate out. “Yesterday someone made an attempt on Miss Ivy Wareham’s life as we walked bac
k to Beauchamp House from the gypsy fortune teller’s caravan.”

  Looking as if he wished himself anywhere but the Sussex coast at that very moment, Northman cursed again. “I guess you’d better come up to my study so that I can take down the details and have my investigator look into it.” Turning to Vance, he said, “I’d like for you to testify at the inquest, doctor, so please ensure that your report is as thorough as necessary.”

  The physician shot a look of sheer loathing at the magistrate’s back as Northman turned and dismissed him. Quill filed that away for future reflection, and with a look of commiseration with the doctor, turned and followed Northman from the room.

  Chapter 27

  A bit of toast and tea in her room was all Ivy could stomach thanks to yesterday’s pain-relieving dose of brandy, so she arrived in Lady Celeste’s magnificent library before any of the other ladies.

  Once again she was hit with the wish that she’d been able to meet the woman with the diverse scholarly knowledge who assembled such a collection. Not to mention the artistic sensibility that had directed Lady Celeste to design the room itself, with its gorgeous inlaid ceiling and rich mahogany and gilt-edged shelving. The visual effect was breathtaking, and Ivy was certain that it had been her benefactress’s intent to overwhelm each visitor who stepped into what had clearly been a labor of love for the lady.

  But with the thought of Lady Celeste’s life came the thought of her premature death. And even as she took in the details of the room that had been Celeste’s personal domain, Ivy wondered for the first time if there weren’t some clue to the identity of who had killed her hidden here. The thought was overwhelming given that the collection, according to Greaves, contained some seven thousand volumes. If Celeste had thought to secrete some message in one of the books, it would take more than Ivy working with her uninjured arm to find it in enough time to catch the killer before he struck again.

  With a sigh, she stepped over to the shelves behind the massive desk Celeste had used for her own personal studies. If Ivy were going to hide something, it would definitely be near where she spent the most time. And the books on these shelves, if the wear on their spines was any indication, were amongst Lady Celeste’s favorites. Unlike the rest of the shelves, these few behind the desk seemed to be arranged in some order that only their owner had understood. Multi-volume novels were sandwiched between mathematical treatises and philosophical works.

  For instance, she thought with a smile for the happy disorder of it, here were two volumes of Samuel Pepys diaries beside the third volume of Madame d’Arblay’s Cecilia. Whether Lady Celeste had simply shelved them as she finished or she kept them there to reread favorite passages, Ivy had no idea. It was one of those circumstances of day-to-day life that was lost along with Celeste. And like so many details of that lady’s thoughts, the reason for it was impossible to learn now that she was gone.

  If only Lady Celeste had, like Pepys, kept a record of her … Ivy stopped, her hand reaching out toward the shelf in question, arrested by her train of thought.

  What were the chances that a woman who so valued philosophy and scholarship and the life of the mind would not have kept some sort of record of her studies or, if not her scholarly pursuits, then at the very least of her thoughts? It was hardly uncommon for a lady to keep a journal, but for a woman of Lady Celeste’s proclivities to not do so would be positively unheard of. Especially if she knew, as her letter had indicated, that she was not long for this world.

  Thus it was that when Sophia, followed close behind by Daphne and Gemma, wandered into the room after breakfast, it was to find Ivy balanced on the rolling ladder along the shelves on the wall behind the big desk using her good hand to remove a single volume at a time to see if there was anything behind it.

  “What on earth are you doing out of bed?” Sophia asked aghast, hurrying to stand gaping up at where Ivy seemed to hang upon the library wall. “You were shot yesterday, Ivy. You should be resting.”

  “Or at the very least refraining from climbing ladders when you’ve only one hand to save yourself with,” Gemma said from beside her sister. “You might have waited until someone else was in the room before you decided to tempt fate and gravity by taking your life into your own hands.”

  “Fate and gravity have nothing to do with one another,” Daphne said staring up at Ivy with interest. “One is an abstract concept that relies upon supernatural beliefs to sustain it that cannot be proved or disproved, while the other is a natural law that can easily be proved by dropping any common object from a height equal to or greater than the length of said object. I doubt it is possible to tempt either because they do not possess human feelings.”

  “Yes, thank you, Daphne,” Sophia said with a small sigh. “I believe that was one of those ‘figures of speech’ we were discussing yesterday. I doubt Gemma meant literally that fate and gravity would be wracked with the desire to make Ivy fall from this ladder.”

  Ivy could see from her elevated height that Daphne wished to argue the point, so she spoke up. “I am looking for Lady Celeste’s private diaries, and since you have come in at just the moment when I was considering the folly of my decision to climb this ladder, I will thankfully accept your help in descending.”

  With Gemma holding her waist and Sophia holding the ladder, Ivy carefully made her way, step by step, down from her perch.

  Daphne spoke up almost as soon as her feet were on the floor again. “I believe I saw some journals in Lady Celeste’s bedchamber last evening when we were playing hide-and-seek with Jeremy.”

  “Why were you in that part of the house?” Sophia asked, her pretty face scrunched up in puzzlement.

  “Why were you playing hide-and-seek on the night I was shot?” Ivy asked, cutting to what, for her, was the more pertinent question.

  Gemma smiled sheepishly. “Jem overheard his mother and Lord Kerr speaking about what happened and he was frightened that whoever shot at you might try to get into the house. So the duke thought a game of hide-and-seek might prove a useful distraction.”

  On hearing that young Jeremy had been frightened, Ivy felt a pang of distress for the boy. From what she’d heard, he’d already had what wasn’t a particularly uneventful childhood, so hearing that someone living in the same house had been shot must have been upsetting.

  Gemma, however, was distracted by something else. “Speaking of the duke,” she said, her eyes narrowed on Daphne, “both you and he were missing for quite a long time while the rest of us played. You didn’t see him somewhere near Lady Celeste’s diaries, did you?”

  To Ivy’s astonishment, Daphne blushed. Something Ivy hadn’t been sure was possible.

  “I may have run into him in the vicinity,” she said, looking just past them into the room beyond, her usual habit of not making eye contact seeming more intentional than usual, though Ivy knew that was absurd. “We hid together for a while before realizing that no one would be coming to find us there.”

  “I’ll bet you ‘hid,’” Gemma said with a smirk. “I suspect you two have been doing quite a bit of ‘hiding’ over the last day or so.”

  Daphne frowned. “Of course we haven’t. At least, only while we were playing hide-and-seek. It would be odd to hide during the normal course of a day.”

  Ivy shared an amused look with the Hastings sisters. “I think what she meant, Daphne,” she said with a grin, “was that you and the duke have been spending some time together. Alone time.”

  The cloud lifted and Daphne nodded. “Oh, yes. We have. He is quite good at kissing. Though I haven’t been able to convince him to take me as a lover. He is convinced that it would not be proper. And no amount of convincing on my part will sway him on the matter. It is really quite frustrating.”

  Ivy, Sophia, and Gemma all stared at her.

  An uncomfortable silence descended upon them.

  “I’ve shocked you,” Daphne said with what sounded to Ivy like disappointment. “I don’t know why I cannot seem to tell what will and wil
l not shock my acquaintances. I do not wish to distress you all. Certainly not while Ivy is still recovering from a gunshot wound.”

  Her innate sense of fondness for the other girl made Ivy push past her surprise at her declaration about the Duke of Maitland, and she moved to touch Daphne on the arm. She’d sensed from their first meeting that anything else would prove uncomfortable for her. “We are surprised, dear, by your plain speaking, but not distressed. Pray do not become distressed yourself. It’s just that we are not used to hearing such things, and well, as perhaps your mother has told you, it’s not quite appropriate to speak of such things in public.”

  “But you’re my friends,” Daphne said, looking even more puzzled. “We are not in the middle of a ballroom. I know well enough not to speak of such things in drawing rooms, or in mixed company, or at the mantua-makers.” The way she listed off the locales where she knew not to speak told Ivy that these had been where she’d done so in her mother’s presence.

  “She’s right,” Gemma said with a rueful smile. “We are her friends, and we are alone in here. So she’s technically correct.”

  Before Daphne could tell them that technically was the only way to be correct—something she’d done on a previous occasion when Gemma used the term—Ivy spoke to the issue at the heart of their discomfort. “Daphne, I realize that it is frustrating for you to be rejected by the duke, but he is quite correct that it would be quite improper for him to ahh…” She searched for a word that was explicit enough for Daphne to understand, but not so graphic as to offend the other two ladies.

  “Engage in sexual congress with me?” Daphne supplied, not betraying with so much as a blush that the term embarrassed her. Ivy wondered what must it be like to be so comfortable with speaking about such things. It had to be difficult, of course, since her plain speaking often landed Daphne in trouble, but on the other hand it would be such a relief not to be constantly afraid of saying the wrong thing.