Lisbon

by Valerie Sherwood

  Suddenly his eyes had a cold look. “You were mistaken, Charlotte. I have been nowhere near the Royal Cockerel. ” “But of course you have! I saw you there.”

  “In the dusk one’s eyes play tricks,” he told her firmly. His eyes strayed to the flowers, now reposing in an earthenware vessel that a serving wench had brought. “Nor have I yet settled our bill at the Royal Cockerel. You considered the last room stuffy; it may be that you will prefer it to this one, which, with the windows open, may smell of fish since it is nearer the waterfront and the varinas are constantly parading by. It may be that you will prefer to go back to the Royal Cockerel.”

  “Oh, no, of course I won’t! And I do not understand ...” She was beginning to doubt that she had seen Rowan. It had been only a glimpse; could it have been someone else who looked strikingly like him? “I do not understand why you asked Annette to bring me here or why—”

  Her voice halted as he held up his hand. “Charlotte,” he said, “spare me all this. I have received a message from the man I was to meet here. It seems his plans have changed, and I may have to leave—perhaps tomorrow— for Evora.”

  “Then why change inns?” Charlotte was bewildered. “If we are leaving Lisbon so soon, why—”

  “I had already made the arrangements here when I heard,” he cut in. “And having gotten accommodations here, I met some English people I thought you might like. They’re staying here—right down the hall in fact—and we are to meet them downstairs for dinner in”—he consulted his gold watch—“five minutes.”

  “What?” cried Charlotte, delighted at the idea of meeting people who—hopefully—would never have heard of the Talybonts. Perhaps, she told herself as she hastened to smooth her hair and get all her hooks properly fastened, that episode was at last over and the Talybonts and Annette would drift out of their lives.

  “Are you ready?” he asked impatiently.

  “Yes . . . no, I can find only one of my gloves. I saw

  Annette pick them up and I thought she had put them down on the bed here, but there’s only one.”

  “Never mind. Charlotte, we must not keep our new friends waiting. If you have lost one of your gloves, we will search for it tomorrow—first in this room, and then, if necessary, at the Royal Cockerel.”

  Thus scolded, Charlotte scurried from the room after giving one last despairing glance back at the one glove reposing on the bed.

  The English people were named Milroyd. They were from Lincolnshire, and this was their first trip to Europe. There were actually nine in their party, but Charlotte met only three because the nursemaid and five children were taking dinner upstairs in their room. But Preston Milroyd, his plump wife, Alice, and his sister Mary were very pleasant and cordial, if a trifle dull. Preston Milroyd, despite his drooping mustache and sleepy expression, seemed to regard himself as a great rake, and after dinner he snapped up Rowan’s proposal that they “take in the town” while the ladies “sip wine and rest here at the inn. ”

  “Perhaps the ladies would enjoy ‘taking in the town’ as well!” said Charlotte tartly, and was disappointed when both the Milroyd ladies tittered, taking her remark as a great joke.

  Preston Milroyd fingered his mustache and regarded Charlotte tolerantly. “Quite a little high flier, your wife,” he told Rowan in a jovial voice. “Well, don’t wait up, ladies!”

  “No, don’t wait up.” Rowan threw Charlotte a quelling glance, which was greeted by a toss of the head.

  Why was he forever off somewhere? she asked herself. Where did he go every night? She started, realizing that one of the Milroyd ladies had spoken to her, and tried to gather her wits to cope with, “Do you prefer cross stitch? Qr would you rather crochet? For myself, I find embroidery more satisfying, don’t you, Alice? Alice favors blackwork. ”

  They were off to a boring evening, but they were the first English people she had met here, barring the Talybonts, and Charlotte made a sincere effort to win their favor.

  They bade her good night warmly at her room, made little clucking sounds over “getting the bride safely tucked in,” and made their way to their own quarters, which, she understood, took up all the rooms on one side of their floor of the inn.

  Charlotte searched every cranny of the room, but her search did not turn up the missing glove.

  At last she went to bed, but not to sleep. Occasionally she got up and went to the window, watching parties of noisy roisterers on the street below staggering back to their inns. Rowan was right, she thought bitterly—Lisbon by night was a man's town. The only women she had seen on the streets tonight were obvious bawds.

  Rowan came in with the dawn and found her still awake.

  “What on earth did you and Preston Milroyd do all this time?” she demanded, and Rowan laughed.

  “Drank, told stories, made the rounds of the taverns. Preston Milroyd is a man of parts. Couldn't stop telling me swashbuckling stories about his adventures as a young blade in Lincolnshire.” He chuckled.

  “I couldn't find my glove,” Charlotte said sulkily.

  “Ah? Then we must dash over to the Royal Cockerel and look for it at once. Milroyd is still down in the common room—he couldn't make the stairs. We'll escort you, my lady!”

  “At this hour?” Charlotte wondered if he was half-drunk.

  “Certainly at this hour. I'll pay my bill before the chambermaid discovers the room is empty and the landlord decides I've taken French leave, you'll find your glove, and we'll be back in time to breakfast with the Milroyd ladies, both of whom, Preston tells me, are early risers, up at cockcrow!”

  Charlotte could hardly believe they would go out at dawn to look for a glove. She dressed in haste and was whisked away to the Royal Cockerel by a half-awake staggering Milroyd and Rowan, who in the outside air seemed, save for a certain overbrightness of the eyes, to be as fresh as the morning.

  At the Royal Cockerel they burst in on a most astonishing scene.

  Katherine Talybont, clad in a red satin dressing gown, her long dark tresses spilling over her shoulders, stood in the middle of the room. Her back was toward them as they entered the common room, and from her lips emitted a high keening wail. About her a number of men shuffled their feet and looked embarrassed—among them the landlord, several lackeys, some men who appeared to be guests of the inn, and two who looked to be members of the local constabulary.

  “What has happened?” Charlotte gasped.

  The landlord, who upon seeing them enter had promptly crossed toward them, answered her query.

  “The English gentleman, Eustace Talybont, is dead,” he replied gravely. “Killed by a footpad at my front door, I'm sorry to say, although whether he was coming in or going out isn't too clear, and the lady seems too hysterical to help us. His body lies upstairs but his wife refuses to go up there. A doctor's on his way and we re hoping he can persuade her.”

  “This footpad, did they catch him?” demanded Rowan. “Oh, no need. Talybont apparently killed him himself. They were found lying together outside. We've taken Talybont's body upstairs and deposited the footpad's body at the side door. It will be terrible for the guests to look out the window and see him there. We re waiting for the authorities to come and take him away.”

  “Terrible.” Milroyd hiccuped. “Terrible.”

  “I've come to pay my bill, for we re joining friends in another inn,” Rowan told the innkeeper.

  “I fear there'll be many others who will find another inn this day. ” The innkeeper sighed. “After what's happened here. ” “When did it happen?”

  “Toward dawn, we hazard. The Talybonts had some kind of argument at the place where they dined, and the wife”—he nodded toward Katherine's red satin back—“left Talybont and came back to the inn in a coach with some other members of their party who left early. Talybont came back much later—and never made it through the door, apparently. We think this footpad must have been lying in wait to spring on someone in the darkness.”

  “Darkness?” asked Rowan sharp
ly. “But there is a lamp outside the inn.”

  The landlord sighed. “It had gone out—or else the footpad managed to extinguish it—because it was very dark outside and Talybont’s body was found when one of the servants, noting that the lamp outside was not lit, went out and tripped over the bodies. We surmise that the footpad, seeing Talybont approaching the door, seized him from the rear and drove a dagger into his heart. But Talybont, being quick, brought up his own dagger as he was dying, drove it into his attacker’s side, and ripped upward. It all happened silently. No one in the common room heard a thing. We were hard put to mop up the blood. It—”

  Charlotte shuddered. “I have lost my glove,” she interrupted, thinking to be gone from this place as quickly as possible. “While you settle the bill, Rowan, I will go up and search for it.” She had already started away when Rowan called to her.

  “No, wait, Charlotte,” he said sharply. “I will accompany you as soon as I have paid.”

  His peremptory call to Charlotte apparently carried to Katherine, as their low-voiced conversation with the innkeeper had not. Her keening wail cut off so abruptly that the room of a sudden went eerily silent. She seemed to grow taller, and she brushed aside an object that was being held out to her.

  “That is not my husband’s dagger. My husband did not own a dagger!” She pushed at the shoulder of a man who blocked her way. He stepped hastily aside and Katherine charged across the room and brought up before Rowan. She did not seem to see anybody else.

  “This is your doing!” she panted. “You could not bear to see me happy!” She drew back her arm and struck him a stinging blow in the face.

  Rowan never even flinched. “Kate, you are hysterical,” he snapped. “Making a scene will not bring Eustace back. ” For a moment Katherine looked as if she might faint. She wavered on her feet. Then she turned and waved the group toward her.

  “This is your man!” she cried. “This is the man who killed my husband—not that lackey outside! Footpad indeed! Was my husband robbed? No! I tell you they were both murdered—by Rowan Keynes!” She pointed dramatically at Rowan.

  Uneasily the men converged on Rowan.

  Charlotte found her voice. Rowan was not defending himself—she would defend him!

  “This woman is mad!” she cried. “My husband and I spent the entire evening with this gentleman and his family at the Iron Crest.” She seized Milroyd's arm as if presenting him to the company. “And after we ladies had retired, the two of them were out until dawn—until just before we came over here, in fact.”

  “That's true.” Milroyd was nodding his head. “Lots of witnesses everywhere.”

  Katherine stared at him. She seemed suddenly to collapse. “Murderer,” she whispered, glaring at Rowan. “You will burn in hell for this night s work!”

  “No doubt the devil will find us both, Kate. But if anyone charges that I murdered Talybont . . . ”—his voice rang out and his dark head swung about, challenging everyone in the room—“you'll find dozens of people who'll remember us in the taverns right up to dawn, when we came over here.”

  “And I'll tell you where to find those dozens”— Milroyd hiccuped—“for I bought every last one of them a drink!” He wagged a finger in officialdom's face and began to enumerate the taverns they had visited and the names of some of the men they had talked to.

  Rowan, content that he was not to be charged with anything despite Katherine's outburst, was counting out money into the landlord's hand. When he had finished he told Milroyd, “We'll meet you out front. I must take Charlotte up to look for her lost glove.”

  A chambermaid accosted them outside their bedroom door. “Is it true, sir, that the people down the hall were murdered last night and that the lady's maid has fled?” she asked, big-eyed.

  “No, only the gentleman was murdered,” Rowan replied irritably. “And how do they know the maid has fled? It is early, perhaps she has found a softer bed elsewhere in the inn and is loath to leave it!”

  The chambermaid giggled and Charlotte gave her a look of distaste. She herself was still very shaken by what had occurred downstairs.

  “Open the door, please, Rowan,” she said crisply. “I have not the key.”

  The bronze glove was lying on the bed where Annette had apparently left it. Charlotte stared at it, confused. She had a distinct memory of that coverlet being smooth and empty when she had left yesterday.

  She picked the glove up. One of the fingers seemed to be stiff, stuffed with something.

  Before she could investigate, Rowan took the glove gently from her fingers. “I will take charge of this until we get back to the Iron Crest,” he told her calmly. “We cannot have it getting lost again. God knows what new excitement may lie in store!”

  “I can’t understand why Katherine would accuse you,” Charlotte said unsteadily. “I mean, you might kill him in a duel, but not . . . not like this. It was dreadful of her. ” “Yes, she has her dreadful moments, has Katherine,” he agreed cheerfully. “Come, we will go out the side door and avoid another scene with her.”

  Charlotte followed him reluctantly, for in that direction lay a corpse. There was a grim-looking servant standing guard beside it. She tried to move on by very fast, but she was caught up short by Rowan stopping to gaze down at the body. Very still it lay in its travel-stained brown clothing, with a worn brown tricorne lying over the face, obscuring it from the view of passersby.

  Very deliberately Rowan reached down and removed the tricorne, looked into that dead face.

  When it came into view, Charlotte thought for a moment she was going to faint.

  The man who lay there was the same man that Rowan had stared at so intently at the waterfront just before he had bought her that enormous bouquet of flowers that now adorned their room.

  At that moment Milroyd came round the corner of the Inn and joined them. He was sobering up in the clear morning air. He stared down curiously at the body of the footpad. “Villainous-looking fellow, isn’t he?” he remarked cheerfully.

  Rowan nodded and dropped the hat back down to cover that dead face. “Villainous,” he agreed.

  “Awful of that woman to accuse you of her husband’s murder,” Milroyd said as they rode back toward the Iron Crest. “Poor hysterical creature, she couldn’t have known what she was saying. ”

  “Katherine was overwrought,” said Rowan. “We were betrothed once and she has a vengeful nature. I am afraid her tirade has quite upset Charlotte.” He looked down at his pale young wife, sitting silently beside him.

  When they were at last alone, back in their big front bedchamber at the Iron Crest, Charlotte gave her husband a level look.

  “Rowan,” she said, “what have you done? What have I helped you do?”

  He was looking down at her with a mixed expression on his face. “Charlotte,” he said, and there was an earnestness in his voice, “I have done nothing. I swear to you that I did not know that footpad who waylaid Eustace Talybont.” His voice held such a ring of truth that Charlotte was hard put not to believe him.

  “Do you swear to me before God that you had never seen that man before?” she demanded.

  “Seen him before? Certainly I had seen him before. Yesterday morning at the docks I saw him—so did you, I think. He stood there in that motley crowd looking like a stranger in a foreign land, and for a moment I thought I had seen him before. But I had not. He sounded almost regretful. “I took a good look at him just now and he was a complete stranger to me.”

  “And Annette is missing,” she added bitterly.

  “We don’t know that. He sounded impatient. “But under the circumstances I think I will stay away from the Royal Cockerel. I do not wish to seem to be conspiring with Katherine Talybont’s maid.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes. She had to believe him. She had to or she would surely go mad.

  But that remembered sight of Rowan—or of a man who looked precisely like Rowan—in a blue suit and hat that were the very mirror of Eustace Talybont’s, e
ntering the Royal Cockerel yesterday, would not leave her.

  She fingered the bronze glove that Rowan had given back to her. All of its fingers were quite supple now— empty of whatever the glove had contained.

  In spite of herself, she had begun to feel afraid. “Charlotte.” Rowan interrupted her thoughts. “I am glad that we have struck up an acquaintance with the Milroyds, for I will feel safe leaving you in their care.”

  “Leaving me?” She felt dizzy.

  “Yes. I told you I must go to Evora. The trip would be arduous for you, and since you do not ride, arduous for me also. I will be back in a week, possibly two. I have paid for your accommodations in advance and I will leave you in pocket money. Milroyd has promised to take care of you. ” “When are you going?”

  “This afternoon—but do not worry, I will take you to lunch first, and after that Milroyd seeks my advice on some tiles he wishes to ship home to his estate in Lincolnshire.”

  Lunch hardly seemed to be the problem—the world was moving too fast for her.

  “What will I tell the Milroyds?” she demanded. “About the reason for your leaving so suddenly?”

  “Oh, say that it concerns an inheritance and that I was startled to learn of it and have told you nothing because I cannot yet believe it myself, and if it turns out to be true, I want to surprise you with it.”

  He was so glib, she thought wonderingly. Lies rolled so readily off his tongue.

  But squiring his wife to lunch and helping Milroyd select tiles were not all Rowan chose to do that day. Indeed he and Charlotte spent the day very publicly, going about everywhere. Charlotte had an uneasy feeling that was the reason Rowan was escorting her to so many places—to be seen. Perhaps to appear to be above reproach, a man with nothing on his conscience. And the day wore on into dusk.

  The lamps were already lit and candles flickering in holders when Rowan, staring moodily out their bedchamber window into the courtyard below, announced that late though it was, he must get started.