“I love it when you tease me, Professor.”
Who was teasing? “I will interview Ambers in the colonel’s study. You will gather up more clothing, or lecture the footmen, or do whatever you need to do. I’d also like to speak with Shreve.”
“In the colonel’s study? That’s diabolical.” Abigail apparently approved of diabolical.
“My brother Matthew suggested it by letter. He has much more experience in these matters.”
Matthew had more experience in matters involving the ladies, who’d always found him charming, and he had more experience in matters of murder. Advice in either regard would have been welcome, but Axel had found the words to solicit Matthew’s opinions regarding only the murder.
Ambers was not in evidence in the stables, so Axel escorted Abby around to the man’s quarters, a tidy two-story cottage far more commodious than what Wheeler enjoyed. A maid answered the door, looking flustered to find both the magistrate and her employer on the stable master’s front porch.
“Please send Mr. Ambers up to the manor at his earliest convenience,” Abigail said. “And do set your cap on straight, Miller, lest Mrs. Jensen get to scolding.”
The maid remained in the doorway, alternately dipping curtsies and gawping, while Abigail marched down the steps, Axel trailing behind her. When he linked arms with her to escort her across the garden, she came to a halt.
“I tell myself it’s merely a house—my house now. Not a very pretty place, with all that black hanging about the windows.”
“Black doesn’t flatter you either,” Axel said. “I’m glad you don’t insist on full mourning when you’re at Candlewick. You might consider putting in flower beds along the front walkway. Lavender borders work nicely where the drainage is good, heartsease does well in spring and autumn—”
She’d started walking, towing Axel along. Caroline had frequently ignored him when he’d begun on horticultural musings.
“I like delphinium,” Abby said. “Your eyes are that blue, sometimes. When you kiss me.”
“You’ve peeked? Abigail, I’m mortified.” Also pleased.
Axel had peeked too, though apparently not at the same moments. He’d watched her face as pleasure overcame her, mentally compared the curve of her lashes against her cheek to the curve of a rose petal at full bloom. Desire echoed through him at the memory, despite the cold, despite his need to wring answers from Shreve and Ambers.“I was an utter virgin regarding kisses, Mr. Belmont. I suppose one doesn’t peek?”
She’d been a virgin in other ways too—a virgin to shared pleasure—but had she been a virgin in the simplest sense of the word?
“Are we in a hurry, Abigail?” For the idea that Stoneleigh hadn’t consummated the marriage in any sense made Axel want to stop, stand still, and simply ponder.
“I want to be done with this, Axel, but every step we take closer to that house, the more angry I grow. I can still hear him: A lady doesn’t call attention to herself. A lady is modest at all times. A lady never seeks to put herself or her own needs forward, but thinks always of others. Gregory said a shop girl trying to masquerade as gentry must be grateful for a little well-intended guidance.”
“You married a right bastard, Abigail. A true gentleman does not presume to correct a lady.” Or use foul language before a lady.
“I do so enjoy your facility for honesty. Let’s get this over with.”
Axel led her up the steps, which some fool had neglected to shovel free of snow, and opened the door for her. She swept through, sparing the black-clad knocker not a single glance.
The foyer was deserted—no butler, porter, or footman to be seen.
“I was right to do this,” Abby said, untying the black ribbons beneath her chin. “The staff is not dealing well with Gregory’s passing, and they need to know I haven’t forgotten them.”
The mirror over the sideboard was sashed with black, also finely coated with dust. Axel resisted the urge to assist the lady out of her cloak, though he did hang it on a peg for her before seeing to his greatcoat.
“I sent no warning of our impending visit.” Matthew had advised that a sneak attack yielded more productive interviews. “You might find the servants gambling for farthing points over a tipsy hand of whist below stairs.”
“Which I, of all people, do not begrudge them. I want to start sorting through Gregory’s belongings, and ridding the house of as much of it as I can. If I recall the reading of the will, there were specific bequests. Ambers was to have Gregory’s collection of pipes, Shreve his snuff boxes. First, I want to see the study.”
“To whom did he leave his weaponry?” The whereabouts of the household firearms mattered when a lady was feeling insecure. Other than the relics on display in the library, Axel couldn’t recall a gun cabinet on the premises.
“Gregory owned only small arms,” Abby said, running a finger through the dust on the mirror, “and those mostly left over from his cavalry days. The fowling pieces in the library are merely for display.”
“What about when he went shooting? Did he use Sir Dewey’s firearms?” Matthew claimed that guns had quirks and characteristics, and successful hunting usually required knowledge of a specific firearm.
“I don’t know.” She cast a glance down the corridor, from which no helpful footman or housekeeper emerged.
“Shall I go with you, Abigail?”
“No, thank you. In my own home, among my own staff, I should be comfortable enough. Perhaps you might alert the servants that company—that the owner is on the premises?”
Emotion quivered through her voice. Anger, very likely, possibly fear beneath that, and maybe, far below the reach of conscious thought, excitement at the prospect of turning this oversized hunting lodge back into a gracious country estate.
They were alone, and Axel knew not what to say that would fortify her against those conflicting sentiments. He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her cold knuckles.
“All you need do is scream. One good cry of dismay, a shout will do. I’ll be down that corridor like a hawk on a field mouse.”
“A lady never creates needless drama.” Abby kissed him on the lips—a right smacker that promised woe unto the man who protesteth such familiarities under the lady’s own roof—and then she marched off toward the study.
Not five minutes later, Axel interrupted a rousing argument over late-morning tea in the servants’ parlor. He’d climbed halfway up the footmen’s stairs when a terrified scream rent the air.
Chapter Twelve
Axel was down the corridor faster than a plummeting hawk, his arms around a distraught Abigail.
“Gun,” she panted, gaze fixed on the open door to the study. “He has a gun. A man, in there—” She waved toward the study, her whole body trembling. “There’s a safe, and a gun, and you can’t go—”
“You lot,” Axel barked at the servants assembling at the top of the steps. “See to Mrs. Stoneleigh.”
He thrust Abby in Mrs. Jensen’s direction, stole a look into the study, then strode in, swiped the gun off the sideboard and set it on the desk.
“You wait right there,” he instructed Shreve, who looked ready to wet himself, “or I’ll arrest you before you twitch in the direction of the door.”
Shreve had given Abigail an awful fright, and for that alone, he should be arrested, questions of murder and thievery aside. Axel went back to the corridor, where servants in various stages of unliveried dishabille remained gawking.
“Mrs. Stoneleigh was understandably upset to find an unexpected situation at the scene of her husband’s demise,” Axel said. “You may return below stairs.”
The lot of them remained unmoving.
“You may return below stairs now.”
“Please do as Mr. Belmont asks,” Abby said. “Thank you all for coming to my aid.”
Mrs. Jensen, a formidable, aging blonde with a hint of pumpernickel in her speech, drew herself up.
“I can remain, if madam would like.”
The footmen, maids, and assorted others were clearly willing to remain as well. Now they showed loyalty to their mistress?
“I was simply startled, and I’d forgotten today was half day,” Abby said. “Mr. Belmont will summon help if it’s needed. Before I leave the premises, I’ll impose on Mrs. Jensen for a chat.”
“Of course, madam.” The housekeeper cast Axel a sniffy glance, then herded her charges in the direction of the stairs.
“I’m fine,” Abby said when her staff had departed. “That’s Shreve in the study?”
She sounded fine, but she was adept at sounding fine. She was once again the pale, self-contained creature Axel had encountered the night of the murder.
“Shreve has swooned by now,” Axel said. “The damned nerve of the man, giving you a fright like that. You’ll assist with this interview, if you’re up to joining me in there. All you need do is look bereaved and affronted, which one supposes you are, though you should also ask any questions that come to mind.”
He held out a hand, a presumption—a hopeful presumption, because he needed to touch her.
Abby studied his outstretched palm as if it held a blue and purple rose. “You want me to ask Shreve questions?”
“Of course.” Involving her in the interrogation was the only reasonable means of keeping her by Axel’s side. “That was a fine specimen of a scream, Abigail.”
She grasped his hand. “I’ve been saving up, apparently.”
They lady preceded Axel into the study, head held high. “Shreve, you have a deal of explaining to do. Mr. Belmont is by nature a patient and fair man, but the circumstances are most troubling. Set aside any notion you harbor of dissembling, or the gallows could await you.”
“M-madam.” Shreve bowed. “Of course, m-madam.”
“Mrs. Stoneleigh, perhaps you’d like to have a seat?” Axel gestured to the desk at which Stoneleigh had died. Abby settled herself behind it with all the aplomb of a judge taking the bench.
Shreve remained by the side board, a wall safe gaping open behind him.
“What’s this?” Abby moved the gun aside and peered at a sheet of vellum. “You intended to leave the colonel’s employ?”
Axel locked the French doors—lest Shreve think to take the fresh Oxfordshire air of a sudden—then accepted the paper from Abby.
“The date is nearly two weeks before the colonel’s death,” Axel said. “What were you about, Shreve?”
Shreve cleared his throat and put his hands behind his back. He resembled one of Axel’s university scholars preparing to launch into a lengthy, articulate recitation about a reading assignment the boy hadn’t so much as glanced at.
Abby ran a pale finger around the nacre inlay on the gun’s handle. “Mr. Belmont is patient and fair, while I am newly bereaved, and reputed by all and sundry to be nervous and given to dramatics.”
“I respectfully beg madam’s leave to disagree,” Shreve said, rocking forward. “At every turn, we tell those fools at the Weasel that you are the steadiest, kindest, most reasonable mistress, that you are the soul of solicitude and understanding, and—”
“And thus your protestations reinforce their every suspicion to the contrary,” Axel said. “Put your coat on in the presence of a lady, Shreve. Why did you give notice?”
Abigail had latent talent as a thespian, for she aimed the gun in the direction of the French doors and sighted down the barrel, while Shreve fumbled into his jacket.
“The colonel was growing difficult,” Shreve said, when he’d buttoned up with shaking fingers. “Increasingly difficult, and I am not the only staff member to remark this. I’m two years beyond the age at which the colonel had told me I might have my pension, and thus I felt justified in stepping back from my post.”
Plausible. Abby confirmed that much with a glance, and set the gun down. “Why do you suppose the colonel was becoming difficult?”
“Advancing years? Too much time in the tropical sun as a younger man? His temper was growing shorter, he was forgetful but wouldn’t acknowledge it, and he… One doesn’t want to speak ill of the departed.”
Abby resumed her perusal of Shreve’s letter of resignation. “Does one want to hang by the neck until dead for a murder one didn’t commit?”
Axel had no evidence to tie Shreve directly to the murder, and Shreve had no apparent motive. The butler had also had so much opportunity over the years, that for him to have killed Stoneleigh in the middle of a full house and by means of a loud gunshot made no sense at all.
Nonetheless, Shreve sagged, bracing himself with a hand on the sideboard. “The colonel had begun throwing things. His snuff boxes, even his pipes.”
Abby set the paper aside, as if it had developed a rank odor. “He loved those dratted pipes. The lot of them are willed to Ambers. The snuff boxes were to be yours.”
Were to be… before Shreve had been caught in the grip of felonious impulses.
“I was not stealing, madam. Please believe me. I simply had not been able to locate the combination until today—half days come only once a week, you know—and I wanted you to decide what to do with the safe’s contents if I could get it open.”
Axel believed him, up to a point. A man who’d serve for many uncomplaining years beneath the heel of an arrogant martinet hadn’t the daring necessary for theft. Such a man would, though, be motivated to retrieve his letter of resignation from the safe if he hadn’t found it in more predictable locations first.
“The colonel died a good month ago,” Axel said. “It took you that long to open the safe?”
“I could not find the combination, Mr. Belmont. I fault myself for that, but I could look for it only during the odd hour on the odd day, and I was growing desperate. Mrs. Stoneleigh’s health is reported to be improving, and we hoped she might return to us here. Once that happened, I’d have little opportunity to retrieve—to open the safe.”
“To retrieve your letter of resignation,” Abby said, “because you wouldn’t mind working for me in the colonel’s absence.”
Shreve had the sense to remain silent.
“Where was the combination?” Axel asked.
“Under the colonel’s blotter.”
“I looked under the blotter the night of the murder. Nothing there.” Axel had rifled the entire desk, sorting through papers, two pouches of tobacco, pipe paraphernalia, old letters, and other orts and leavings of a man’s life.
“I do apologize, sir. I meant, on the underside of the blotter. Once or twice when I delivered the colonel his nightcap, I caught him writing on the underside of the blotter. Most odd, but I’d forgot about it until the, um, present situation arose.”
Timid, sensible, and diplomatic. “How long have you known about this safe?”
“The colonel said he’d had security measures installed prior to taking possession of the estate,” Shreve replied. “On the subcontinent, one typically had a safe or two, for obvious reasons. Unrest was lamentably common.”
“So you’ve known about this safe all along,” Axel said, “and you kept the information from the magistrate investigating Stoneleigh’s murder—a murder that took place in the very same room as the safe?”
“Mr. Belmont, I mean you no disrespect,” Shreve said, “but Stoneleigh Manor belongs to Mrs. Stoneleigh now. Should the contents of the safe devolve to the discredit of madam’s deceased spouse, then it is for her alone to say how relevant those contents are to your investigation.”
“A lovely sentiment,” Abigail said, “though woefully self-serving, Shreve. Mr. Belmont, I will leave you to examine the contents of the safe, your discretion being utterly trustworthy.”
She rose, while Axel resisted the urge to applaud her performance.
Shreve bowed. “My resignation is, of course, yours to accept, madam.”
“I’m sure Mr. Belmont will have more questions for you, Shreve. Your fate lies in his capable hands.”
Abby moved toward the door, leaving the letter of resignation tucked under the gun
on a corner of the desk, and the etched blotter wrong side up, like an unearthed rune stone.
“I’ll be in Gregory’s suite, Mr. Belmont.”
Not by yourself, you won’t. “Would you object to the company of footmen while you’re about your tasks there?” Axel asked.
He did not dare order this woman to do anything, and his pleading skills were lamentably rusty.
“I’ll need assistance if I’m to box up the colonel’s belongings for the poor. Shreve might help as well, assuming he remains at liberty.”
Shreve nearly collapsed against the sideboard, while Abby made her exit.
“You’ll not hang,” Axel said. “Not for murder, but bear in mind we have more than two hundred capital offenses here in Merry Old England. Why didn’t you tell Mrs. Stoneleigh about the safe when you had the chance? She bided here for a fortnight after the colonel’s death, and you were the fellow who suggested she be removed from the premises.”
A suggestion Axel had been reluctant to heed… at the time.
“I was honest with you then, Mr. Belmont, and I shall be honest with you now,” Shreve said, straightening. “Madam was not doing well. She hadn’t been doing well for some months. Mrs. Jensen saw madam nearly faint any number of times. The chambermaids saw evidence of a bilious stomach. We considered that Mrs. Stoneleigh’s poor health was one of the factors weighing on the colonel’s disposition, in fact.”
Abby had been tired, pale, and underweight when she’d arrived at Candlewick. Weak, not precisely ill.
“What were her symptoms?”
“One doesn’t want to be indelicate.”
Axel took the place Abby had vacated behind the desk. He let silence build, one of Matthew’s first recommendations for conducting a proper interrogation. Silence was the best friend of the king’s man, and Axel had a talent for holding his peace, as it happened.
“Madam appeared to occasionally suffer the bloody flux,” Shreve expostulated, blushing furiously. “She was losing her appetite. We feared a wasting disease, but the colonel was not fond of physicians, and one hesitated to speak up.”
It Happened One Night: Six Scandalous Novels Page 19