It Happened One Night: Six Scandalous Novels

by Grace Burrowes

  “All true. My brother is brilliant in his way.”

  In the way of siblings, Matthew had implied his brother was also somehow not brilliant.

  “Axel would not thank you for meddling.” That Matthew Belmont might welcome Abby into the family was a comfort though. Axel might offer, if the alternative was to destroy Abby’s reputation, or put her in harm’s way. “One marriage of expedience was more than sufficient for me. I would not ask a man I care for to undertake another, particularly when the result would be to deny his heart’s desire.”

  That comfort, of knowing Axel could have the recognition he deserved, was rich. A rose with thorns, but beautiful and fragrant, nonetheless.

  “So expedience sent the professor straight up the stairs last night,” Matthew mused, “when he’d claimed to be intent on consulting his references regarding the long-term effects of smoking hashish? Interesting.”

  “Straight up the stairs?”

  “Bearing gifts of fruit and flowers, and looking mightily determined. Warms a brother’s heart, to see such a devotion to scholarship in a younger sibling.”

  Abby knew not what to say to that, so she cued her mount into a canter, and left the observant Mr. Belmont laughing in her wake.

  “Your retirement has just become imminent,” Axel said, jabbing a finger at the papers on the ornate oak table in Handstreet’s conference room. He’d laid Ambers’s and Shreve’s affidavits and a copy of Abigail’s signature next to Handstreet’s so-called power of attorney.

  The evidence spoke for itself.

  “You purport to have dealt honestly with Mrs. Stoneleigh prior to her marriage,” he went on, “but you did not observe her creating this power of attorney, or even compare her signature with any known examples. You accepted Stoneleigh’s word that these signatures were valid and cheated a young woman out of her fortune.”

  Handstreet rose, a bad move from a histrionic standpoint, because he was several inches shorter than Axel.

  “You take great liberties with the facts, Mr. Belmont. Mrs. Stoneleigh was grieving, barely an adult, without a friend in the world, depending on shops that teetered on the brink of ruin, and Colonel Stoneleigh took her entire situation in hand. You were not present, he was, and that woman desperately needed his good offices.”

  Kicking, even in a choice location, was too good for such a maggot.

  “Now you compound your fraud with mendacity, Handstreet. Cassius Pettiflower, who prospers in the book trade to this day, says the businesses were doing well, and always had. He investigated the Pennington family finances in anticipation of offering for Abigail, but was repeatedly turned away by Stoneleigh when he came bearing condolences. He has no reason to dissemble, while you wouldn’t know the truth if it delivered a stout blow to what passes for your cods.”

  “You speak ill of the dead,” Handstreet sniffed. “The king’s man, insulting a respected military—”

  Axel leaned across the table, treating Handstreet to his best professorial glower.

  “I speak the truth regarding the living. You colluded in Stoneleigh’s fraud. You mispresented a young woman’s situation and delivered her into the hands of a scheming, vile, greedy, sick, murderous old man. The statute of limitations has not run, Handstreet, not on the fraud, not on conspiracy to commit fraud, not on conspiracy to commit murder.”

  A beat of silence went by, while Handstreet’s gaze dropped to documents which proved his wrongdoing three time over.

  The solicitor crumpled into a chair, a legal hot-air balloon losing its wind. “Murder, Mr. Belmont?” Handstreet tugged at his cravat, as if somebody had tightened a noose around his fat neck.

  Axel stuffed the documents—including the fraudulent power of attorney—into his saddlebag.

  “Mrs. Stoneleigh is recovering from poison administered repeatedly by her husband’s hand. You put her in the colonel’s care, knowing he’d cheat, lie, steal, and otherwise break the law for his own purposes. How long did you think he’d wait before conveniently assuming the role of sole heir to the Pennington fortune?”

  Handstreet turned a mottled red. “Murder, you say?”

  “Murder, from a proximity and position of trust you alone made possible.”

  Handstreet filled the chair with his prosperous figure. Oxford boasted excellent tailors, fine bootmakers, skilled jewelers, all of whom he apparently patronized. No less than three watch chains stretched across his belly, and a gold ring winked on the smallest finger of his left hand.

  Crime paid, as Matthew often observed. Crime could pay very well.

  “Despite what you might think,” Handstreet said, “somebody needed to deal with that young woman’s situation, Mr. Belmont.”

  “And no one in the business community was a close enough friend of the family to do that? Her late grandfather had no trustworthy connections left from his years in the military? Her cousin—now a countess and married to a duke’s heir—could not be prevailed upon to solicit the assistance of titled relations?”

  Axel had no idea what the cousin’s situation might have been years ago, but next of kin still meant something under the law, and Handstreet had done nothing to put Abby in touch with what little family she had.

  All the mendacious bluster deserted Handstreet, leaving a frightened, fat, aging disgrace to the legal profession.

  “My wife will not survive the scandal,” Handstreet rasped. “I beg you to think of my wife. Her nerves are delicate, the physician’s bills alone beggar me, and then she’s off taking the waters in the north for months… The colonel came across her at Harrogate…”

  Stoneleigh, doubtless, had learned of Handstreet’s financial woes and the wife’s mental instability and had taken advantage.

  Though what had Stoneleigh been doing in a venerable, stodgy spa town?

  “You will leave the profession,” Axel said. “You will tidy up your affairs, close this office, and either live so quietly that Abigail Stoneleigh never hears your name again, or you will leave this county and not return. If the shingle outside your door is not taken down by the first of next month, I will file charges. Your best effort at reparation to the wronged party will be in Mrs. Stoneleigh’s hands by that date, or your wife’s ill health—or tippling—will be the least of your worries. When information is laid, I can assure you, the signatures will be valid. Good day.”

  Leaving Handstreet’s office for the chilly air of a quiet street was a relief, though Axel was still fuming when two streets over, he opened the door to a nondescript establishment trading as “F. Farleyer, Tobacconist.”

  Tobacco itself was considered a sacred herb among many indigenous peoples. Axel, however, inherently mistrusted anything—gambling, drink, tobacco, hashish—that lent itself to compulsive consumption.

  Witness his tantrum regarding Abigail’s medical use of laudanum.

  The scent of the tobacconist’s shop was pleasant, richly botanical, with smoky overtones of cherry, vanilla, citrus, and spices.

  “Good day, sir. May I be of assistance?” A dapper, graying fellow stood behind a marble-topped counter, his spare frame putting Axel in mind of an apothecary.

  Axel passed over a card. “I come on the king’s business, if you’re Mr. Farleyer?”

  “Marie Farleyer was my grandmother,” the fellow said, studying the card. “She supported herself with this shop through a long widowhood. How might I be of assistance, Mr. Belmont?”

  “I’m investigating the death of Colonel Gregory Stoneleigh, whom I understand to have been a devoted patron of your shop.”

  Farleyer’s posture and expression remained unchanged—carefully so. “A pity about the colonel’s passing. He was a customer of long standing, and he and his patronage will be missed.”

  Axel pretended to study the jars lining the shop’s shelves, which again put him in mind of an apothecary’s or herbalist’s establishment.

  “I’ll pass along your condolences to his widow, but what exactly, was his custom?”

  Farley
er tucked the card under the counter. “Why, tobacco, of course.”

  Today must be Lie to the Magistrate Day in Oxford. “Stoneleigh had no less than twenty different pipes that we’ve located so far. One expects he’d buy tobacco from a tobacconist. What sort of tobacco?”

  “Lately, he favored that blend there to your right, which is mostly Virginian, with a bit of this and that thrown in.”

  Axel lifted the lid of a large glass jar and took a sniff. “Very appealing.” Rich, nutty, a hint of apples, nothing remarkable. Also nothing at all like the blend Stoneleigh had kept in the pouches in his desk drawer.

  Farleyer remained behind his counter, his expression bland, his gaze… uneasy.

  “If you were out of this blend,” Axel asked, “did he have a secondary preference, as some people will alternate between black tea and gunpowder?”

  “The jar on the corner of the center table, almost empty. It’s popular and relatively inexpensive. The university fellows favor it, and the colonel occasionally did too.”

  Axel sniffed, and again, other than a general tobacco odor, nothing in the jar fit with his recollection of the tobacco in Stoneleigh’s pouch.

  “Interesting blend. What’s in it?”

  Farleyer prattled on from behind his mercantile pulpit as Axel wandered about the little shop, stopping before a shelf of pipes and pamphlets. The paraphernalia of the tobacco habit was arrayed in a manner intended to separate patron from coin—all gleaming brass, shining wood finishes, elegant boxes, and delicate brushes.

  And an elegant brass water pipe.

  “Do you smoke, Mr. Farleyer?”

  “No sir, I do not.” No diffidence or hesitation about that reply.

  “Neither do I,” Axel said. “Hard on the lungs, I think, despite what the physicians say. Then there’s the fact that tobacco can become a habit.”

  A minute pause ensued as Farleyer studied a patron outside the door. The fellow had a hand on the latch, but as Axel approached the counter, the prospective customer went hustling up the walkway.

  “A harmless habit, I’m sure, Mr. Belmont, and physicians do assure us it’s quite healthful and relaxing. Had you specific inquiries to put to me?”

  “Can you tell me anything that might be of interest regarding Colonel Stoneleigh’s personal habits? His death does not appear to have been a simple accident.”

  Farleyer stared past Axel’s left shoulder, as if scouring memory for something helpful—or as if concocting a falsehood.

  “You already know the colonel smoked, and smoked a fair amount. You know he favored certain blends. I’m not sure what sort of information I could convey that would benefit your inquiry.”

  Another customer nearly came into the shop and went so far as to touch his hat brim to Farleyer before retreating from the door. Young fellows, both of them, likely university scholars indulging their gentlemanly habits.

  Or needlessly running up their accounts.

  “Here is what I know,” Axel said, coming face-to-face with Farleyer across the marble counter. “You have lied to a magistrate on the king’s business not once but three times. Somewhere on these premises you likely stock hashish, and the cannabis from which it is derived. Stoneleigh bought his supply from you. You also lied to me twice regarding the colonel’s preferred blends of tobacco, confirming that you have something to hide, though you’re not very adept at hiding it. What I don’t know, is whether I must arrest you for obstructing my investigation. That matter—for now—remains in your hands.”

  Farleyer extracted a handkerchief from an interior coat pocket and mopped first his brow, then the corners of his thin lips.

  “The colonel’s demise had some irregularity about it?”

  “No, Mr. Farleyer, it did not. The colonel’s demise had a great deal of irregularity about it. I’m guessing that the merchandise he or his stable master picked up without fail on the first Wednesday of each month had some irregularity about it too.”

  The scent of the place was making Axel queasy, and that put him in mind of Abigail, whom he hoped to find napping peacefully in the glass house rocking chair when he returned to Candlewick.

  Farleyer tucked his handkerchief away. “The colonel’s preferences weren’t that unusual, though they ran closer to the fancies of a young man. He liked a bit of cannabis mixed with his tobacco.”

  The combination wasn’t unusual. “Anything else?”

  “One doesn’t like to speak ill of the—”

  Axel slapped both palms down on the marble counter top. “Of the murdered. Not simply dead, murdered. His widow has no explanation, no idea who would wish the colonel ill, why, or whether she’s safe in her own bed, on the very same premises where her husband lost his life. Relieve yourself of any excesses of discretion, for I suffer an excess of zeal when it comes to finding justice for all concerned.”

  Threats apparently had a greater impact than lectures. Farleyer wilted, much as Handstreet had.

  “All right, then, but you must not linger here, Mr. Belmont. You’re driving away my regulars, and they are not a patient lot. The colonel, like many who return from India, like many of the university scholars, enjoyed the occasional pipe laced with opium.”

  Goddamned opium. “How occasional?”

  “I cannot say, and not because I want to prolong our conversation. Everybody’s sensitivity to opium is different—ask the apothecary across the way if you don’t believe me. Some people can use the drug for years with no ill effects. Some people can’t function without it and must have increasing quantities or all manner of medical difficulty results. I’ve rarely seen a tobacco enthusiast become dependent on opium, but then, one wouldn’t see such a thing, would one? Nobody advertises an addiction if they can help it.”

  Axel spared a thought for Handstreet’s wife and her delicate nerves, which might well be nothing more than an over-fondness for Madeira, Godfrey’s Cordial, or some other patent remedy.

  “How much, relatively, did the colonel buy each month?”

  “A good amount, but he was a devoted pipe smoker, and enough to send you into endless pipe dreams might have had a barely discernible effect on him.”

  Outside, a few fat snowflakes drifted down, lazy white harbingers of a miserable ride back to Candlewick. So much for a mug of coffee and plate of rum buns with Axel’s nephews.

  “I’d like a record of all of the colonel’s purchases for the last year, amounts, dates, items, and details, sent out to my residence within the week. Is there anything else you can tell me that might give me insight into the colonel’s death?”

  Farleyer’s mouth twitched. “I didn’t like him.”

  Axel purely and passionately hated the late colonel, on Abigail’s behalf if not on general principles.

  “Meaning?”

  “The college boys smoke their fancy pipes, get behind on their accounts, and are a general bother, but they’re college boys. The professors, fellows, and deans, they’re a bunch of self-important buffoons, but largely harmless. I like them all. Their custom is steady, and they mean nobody any harm. The colonel and even the dandy he sent ’round to fetch his order acted as if having his custom was a great privilege, but I sensed… desperation. If I forgot to wrap his order before he arrived, or I had too many customers to see to him immediately, he’d fly nearly into a rage. The man of business he sent in his stead wasn’t much better.”

  Another dispassionate observer commenting on Stoneleigh’s foul temper.

  “Do customers typically use both hashish and opium?”

  “Some… the more adventurous, but I don’t favor it. Both hashish and opium dull the senses, and the opium can become a habit quickly. One likes to think one is selling a mere recreation to those who can enjoy it. In the colonel’s case… he was not my favorite customer.”

  “If you recall anything else, please drop me a note.”

  Axel left the premises and on instinct, crossed the street as if heading for the pub three doors up. Before he even reached his de
stination, three customers had passed through Farleyer’s door, suggesting…

  Suggesting that procuring their regular supply of tobacco was for those three urgent, and something they’d not undertake with a stranger in the shop. Perhaps Farleyer specialized in certain adulterations of the product. Axel made a note to ask his nephews about that, if he ever got to see them again.

  His backside was taking a decided chill from the stone bench he’d appropriated, when the first of Farleyer’s customers emerged from the tobacconist’s and marched directly across the street to the apothecary.

  The second did likewise five minutes later.

  A tobacconist adulterating his product with opium had to obtain that opium from somewhere, and the apothecary was the logical source. Nothing unusual about that.

  And yet, the cold prickle down the back of Axel’s neck had nothing to do with the thickening snow, and everything to do with the apothecary right down the street.

  Farleyer needed a reliable supply of high-quality opium to add to his tobacco, and a man bent on poisoning his wife needed a reliable supply of poison to accomplish his goal.

  Axel rose and marched straight for the apothecary’s door.

  “Well, there is good news,” Matthew said, leaning down to sight along his cue stick. “The snow means nobody will be expected to attend services tomorrow.”

  Abby hadn’t thought of that, though it was good news. “And we know Gregory was consuming both hashish and opium, which might explain his foul tempers. One wonders if Sir Dewey knew.”

  Axel remained by the sideboard, his cue stick in hand. “How could he not? He traveled with Gregory, but either he didn’t consider aberrations from regular tobacco use remarkable, or he hoped we’d not consider them noteworthy. Matthew, spring will arrive before you take your shot.”

  “Genius cannot be hurried. My daughter Priscilla reminds of this regularly.”

  How easily he spoke of the child, whom Axel had described as a right terror, about eight years of age, devoted to her stories, her pony, and managing her newly acquired older step-siblings.