The Devious Duchess

by Joan Smith

  “What arsenic are you talking about? There was never any arsenic in this house,” she stated firmly. Her sharp gray eyes bored into his.

  “Deirdre,” Belami said, turning to her for support.

  She didn’t hesitate a moment. “That was years ago, Belami. I told you I hadn’t seen it for years. I’m not even sure it was arsenic. One of the servants once warned me away from it, that’s all.” She turned to her aunt then and explained, “Belami is referring to a little envelope that used to be in the rose vase in the china cabinet, Auntie. You probably weren’t even aware of it.” She turned her cool gaze back to Belami.

  Their eyes locked in silent battle. The world had suddenly turned upside down on Belami. Here he was trying to help the old lady, and all he got for his trouble was lies and insults.

  “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth, both of you,” he said, trying to control his temper.

  “Help us! Ha, is that what you call it?” her grace exclaimed.

  “Yes. If you are innocent, why should you try to hide the fact by stealing that bowl and washing it? And I don’t understand, Deirdre, why you’ve suddenly changed your mind about the white arsenic in the vase! There’s obviously something going on here that I’m not aware of. If I’m expected to help you, we have to be frank with one another. You’ve got to tell me, Duchess,” he said slowly, emphatically, “did you kill your brother?”

  Charney’s nostrils pinched into black slits. “I consider that question an impudence and an insult, sir. I will not be insulted under my own roof.”

  “Would you care to step outside, madam?” Belami shot back before he got a hold on his short temper.

  "I would not, but I suggest you step outside with your bag and baggage and do me the favor of not returning. Deirdre, you will return that little chip of diamond you made the error of accepting from Lord Belami.”

  Deirdre pulled the ten-carat “chip” from her finger and handed it to him. She looked even angrier and more intransigent than Charney. “We must remember our manners, Auntie. We haven’t thanked Lord Belami for his help.” The last word nearly sunk under the load of irony she heaped on it.

  He accepted the ring without a word. The world had gone mad, or he was having a nightmare. Soon he’d awaken and everything would be all right. He quite often dreamed he was losing Deirdre. She left him nearly every night. Ran off with rajas and kings, and rakes and rattles of all manner. But the diamond felt so very cold and hard and real as he squeezed his fingers around it.

  After a long silence, he finally spoke. “What was I supposed to do? Just what was my intended role in this charade?”

  “One never expects much from you, Belami,” the duchess informed him. “I had some hopes that you could at least keep a civil tongue in your head and behave like a gentleman, but then that is expecting a bit much of any son of Lady Belami, the peagoose.”

  Belami’s mother held a very special place in his life. To cast a slur on her was tantamount to a slap in the face. Had the duchess been a gentleman, she would most certainly have found herself issued a challenge. But she was a lady, so he did the next best thing and gave her a good setdown.

  “The company one keeps is bound to rub off on one. I was a gentleman before I made your acquaintance, madam. I bid you good night. “

  He performed a stiff, graceless bow and left the room, listening all the while for the sound of Deirdre’s footsteps following him. All he heard was a muffled “Good riddance, say I,” from the duchess.

  Chapter 6

  Deirdre had no desire to be in the saloon when Belami left the house. To avoid it, she went upstairs with her aunt, who was indeed exhausted. The duchess was in a strangely soft mood.

  “Was I overly hasty in expelling Belami? I’ll go to his room now and speak to him if you like. He’s an excellent parti, Deirdre. It won’t be so easy to find a replacement if I . . . after the scandal of Dudley’s death.”

  She sank onto her bed with a sigh. Deirdre had to lift her bony legs up for her. She placed a blanket over her aunt and held her hand. It was only the second time in her life that she could remember doing so, the first having occurred in the saloon during Straus’s visit. The new mood of intimacy prevailing between them made Deirdre’s next question possible, though by no means easy.

  “Auntie, did you put arsenic in Uncle Dudley’s stew?” she asked, and stared hard while awaiting an answer. “I’m not condemning you. If you did it, there must be an excellent reason that I know nothing about, but I must know what the results of that chemical analysis will be. If—if there is poison in it, you see, we must hire you a very good lawyer.”

  “I certainly did not, my dear. I didn’t dislike Dudley in the least. I only went to see if I could learn from him why he had called his lawyer. He was annoyingly coy. I finally had to ask him point-blank if he had changed his will. He said he had not, but he was planning to. That is what makes it look so very bad for me. It is generally understood that I stand to get half of what he possesses. As Nevil had just left, it seems he meant to hand it all over to that rogue, barring whatever he gives to Adelaide, of course. That is why I know Nevil didn’t kill him. He might have done so after the will was changed, but never before. I am the one who had a—motive, is that what Belami calls it? I had a motive. I was there, which gives me the opportunity, and now that Belami has gone sounding off about the arsenic in the vase, it looks as though I also had a method. But I promise you on my honor, my dear, I didn’t kill him.”

  Deirdre nodded her head in acceptance. “I believe you. I never believed anything else. But who could have done it?”

  “As that dreadful man said, it is a mystery. I have even been wondering whether Dudley didn’t do it himself. That is something that didn’t occur to anyone else. Perhaps you should mention a word to Belami . . ."

  “I shan’t be seeing him, Auntie,” she said, her voice hard.

  “Don’t be overly hasty. I really feel I must consult with him on one matter, Deirdre. No one would know better than Belami what lawyer could best defend me.”

  “It won’t come to that!” Deirdre exclaimed. “How could it possibly? You’re innocent. They can’t prove you did it.”

  “No, but they could drag me into court to try to prove it. There—that sounds like him leaving now. Run out and speak to him.”

  Deirdre felt a strong impulse to do just that. She opened the door and saw that it was only the valet carrying down Belami’s case. “Where is Lord Belami?” she asked.

  “He is gone, miss. He left a note for you shoved under your door.”

  “Thank you.”

  He must have scribbled off the note and left in a great hurry. Eager to get away, and no wonder! Was any fiancé ever treated in such a shabby fashion? But really his behavior to Auntie was unforgivable. She went to her room and retrieved the note. Written at the pitch of his anger, it could hardly have been less conciliating.

  Dear Miss Gower:

  Thank you for a delightful visit. I would appreciate it if you would also convey my thanks to her grace. Your faithful servant, Belami.

  Not even a mention of where he was going. Would it be back to London? To Beaulac, perhaps? Or would the scent of an intriguing mystery not keep him in the neighborhood? Very likely he would be required to give testimony. And he was expecting that analysis from James Marsh. No, he wouldn’t leave. He would go to the inn in Banting. And if she knew anything about Dick, he would be making investigations within the hour to discover what Nevil had been doing in town.

  She wouldn’t sit on her thumbs either. She had learned a little something about criminal investigations from him. She’d go over to the Grange right this minute and see what she could learn from Nevil and the servants. First she had to go to tell Auntie that Belami had left. Her aunt accepted the news with resignation. She lay quietly on the bed with her eyes closed, looking exactly like a corpse. She didn’t even ask what Deirdre meant to do.

  Though it wasn’t much after five o’clock,
darkness had already fallen. It was faster to run across the meadow than to have the carriage harnessed up and the horses put to. There were no fearsome shadows in the meadow, no menacing trees with clawing branches to frighten her. The moon cast a cold, white light on the ground, giving plenty of illumination for her journey. She went to the kitchen door, as there were lights burning there and none in the front of the house. She opened the door and let herself in.

  “Oh, miss, you scared the daylights out of me!” Polly gasped, jumping a foot from the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Polly. I should have knocked.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, miss. If I’d thought a minute, I would have known it was someone from Fernvale. It couldn’t be Bagot, you see. Lord Dudley let Bagot take Mrs. Haskell to visit her aunt.”

  “There’s been no word from her yet?”

  “We don’t expect to see her before tomorrow.”

  “Is Mr. Straus here?”

  “He’s been quizzing the life out of me and Anna all day, but he’s gone now, thank the Lord. Would you care for a cup of tea, miss?”

  “Perhaps I’ll join Nevil upstairs. You can bring it up to us."

  “Sir Nevil, he’s not here, miss. He took one bite of Anna’s roast joint and said he’d be putting up at the inn in Banting, but he’ll be back tomorrow morning. He better do it, too, or I won’t be here!”

  Deirdre looked a startled glance at her. “Why, what do you mean, Polly?” For a brief, wild instant the girl sounded like a possessive lover. It darted into Deirdre’s head that Polly was very attractive in a common way that would by no means disqualify her for Nevil’s affection. He was a trifler with parlor maids and milking maids, though, of course, when he went into society, it was with a lady.

  “Didn’t they tell you? They’re bringing the old gentleman back tomorrow for waking, right here in his own saloon. I’m not staying in the house with a corpse and only Anna Wilkey to keep the spirits away.”

  “But the duchess gave no such order. You must be mistaken,” Deirdre said.

  “Oh, no, miss. Sir Nevil gave the order. He said he’d be here, and he’d better be.”

  “Mrs. Haskell might be back by then, Polly, and she won’t let the spirits pester you. I wanted to ask you one other thing. About that bowl of mulligatawny my aunt brought to Lord Dudley . . ."

  “The constable knows all about it. He asked me and Anna till we’re blue in the face, but we didn’t touch it. I know it’s gone, miss, but I didn’t break it. How could I? He had the door locked and took the key away with him. I didn’t mean to tell him your aunt had a key. It just slipped out like, when he was asking who could have got in."

  Deirdre realized that her aunt had been busy behind her back. It was true that she had keys for all the doors at the Grange. Had them in her possession forever, for no reason, like the arsenic. Auntie had sent one of the servants over to the Grange to collect that important piece of evidence, which looked so terribly as if she were guilty. It required a strong act of faith to go on believing she was innocent.

  “That’s all right, Polly. I’ll have a word with Anna before I go. Is she upstairs?”

  “Sir Nevil ordered her to dust and sweep and polish the saloon for the waking tomorrow. He’s told me to make up these sweets to serve the mourners. Not that there’ll be many. In such weather, I mean,” she added hastily, when she recalled to whom she spoke. Polly was a thoughtless, loose-tongued girl, but there was no vice in her, and Deirdre wasn’t in a condemning mood.

  Anna was applying her turpentine and beeswax to the tables and didn’t welcome any interruption. “If Polly goes before Mrs. Haskell comes back, I ain’t staying here alone,” she announced as soon as she recognized Deirdre. “I’m not staying alone in the house with no ghost.”

  “If Mrs. Haskell isn’t back, there will be someone from Fernvale here, Anna. Indeed, either the duchess or I or both will be here in any case. You should know better than to believe in ghosts.”

  “He was murdered—uneasy souls are the ones come back to haunt. And a murderer loose as well. We ought to get extra pay working under such unnatural strains.”

  Anna was overwrought, and in any case Deirdre couldn’t think of any clever questions to ask her. She did hear one unsolicited piece of information, however. Anna looked up from her polishing and said in her sly way, “I suppose Polly’s in a fine snit with her beau not staying overnight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was sore as a boil when she found out Sir Nevil was going to the inn. There’s something between them, miss. I don’t think it would be right for him to stay here when there’s no one else around but me. I caught him squeezing her when I went into the kitchen this afternoon. He looked as if to kill me, and then right after dinner, he said if that dry roast was the best I could do, he’d go to the inn, but I think he was just afraid of talk.”

  “I’m sure you would never cause any scandal about Sir Nevil or Polly either,” Deirdre said at her most haughty. My, but Anna was a nasty piece. It wouldn’t do to encourage her.

  Deirdre left very soon afterward. She was a little nervous after the girls’ prattle about ghosts. Not that she believed in them, of course, but suddenly the meadow looked less friendly than before and Fernvale looked farther away. She lifted her skirts and started across it at a run. When she was halfway home, she was short of breath and slowed down to a walk, her fear suddenly dissipated. Shep was her usual companion on such trips as this. How she missed him! In all the happenings of Dudley’s death, she hadn’t given Shep much thought, and it now occurred to her that she didn’t even know what had been done with his remains.

  There was a light burning in the stable, and she went to ask the groom about Shep. “We all miss that old dog. He had the sweetest temper I ever saw. What other dog in the world ever let a cat bite his ears? But his time was come, miss. He had an easy passing. Had a grand last supper and all, though he didn’t eat much of it. I gave him a proper burial, miss,” Evans told her in a kindly way.

  “Where? I’d like to see the grave.”

  "Come out in the morning and I’ll show you. You wouldn’t see a thing in the dark. It’s behind the barn.”

  "I'd like to see it now,” she said, and went out by herself. Evans was mending a harness, and she didn’t ask him to accompany her. She wanted to be alone with her unhappy, uneasy thoughts.

  The grave was easily found. It formed a black hump in the earth. Sad to think of poor Shep, buried in that frozen ground. The soil was so hard it sat in sharp-edged lumps. Evans must have had to use an axe to start the hole, to get below the frost line. They probably wouldn’t bury Dudley till spring. There was an old mausoleum in the graveyard where winter corpses were stored. But Shep would remain here, where he had been placed, and she’d erect some small sort of memorial stone—just a simple slab laid flat on the earth.

  Her step was slow as she walked back to the house. As dismal as her visit had been, she wasn’t at all eager to be home. There was nowhere she wanted to be. She hardly wanted to exist at all, unless she could turn the clock back and live in the past. The future held nothing but fear and sorrow. She could almost envy Polly Shard. Her greatest fear was of a ghost.

  It was after six, and her aunt was resting. The cook offered Deirdre some soup or a sandwich, but she didn’t feel that she could swallow anything, for the lump in her throat. She went up to the saloon and sat all alone, with only one lamp burning. No tears sprang to her eyes. She was gone far beyond tears. Uncle Dudley was dead. Her aunt’s very life was in danger, and she had turned Dick off. There would be no wonderful wedding, no honeymoon in Italy. The exciting life she had anticipated as Lady Belami was only an illusion. She had half known it would never really come to pass.

  She hardened her heart against all these miseries and told herself that she wouldn’t marry Dick if he came begging. He had been insufferably rude to Auntie, and poor Auntie needed her now. All her life, she had been taking things from the duchess, and now it was her
moment to repay. It would be unforgivably selfish to turn away. But why had Dick sent that sample off to be analyzed? What demon possessed him to go making new trouble when there was already such a surfeit of it?

  She poured a glass of sherry and continued her thinking. It was impossible to avoid the most overwhelming question of all. Had the duchess poisoned Dudley? She denied it, and Deirdre tried to maintain her conviction that she was telling the truth, but it was difficult with so many contradictions staring her in the face. Especially the fear that gleamed in her aunt’s tired, old eyes and that had turned her, in the space of an afternoon, from an autocrat into a human being. And it was money at the root of it all. If Dudley had meant to change his will in Nevil’s favor, would Auntie . . . No, she wouldn’t let herself even think such a thought.

  Whatever had happened, she would do everything in her power to protect her aunt. Deirdre had become the stronger force now at Fernvale. It was for her to make decisions, to do what had to be done to save the situation. She would discover from Nevil and Straus and the servants what Belami was up to, what tack the investigation was taking, and she would do everything in her power to protect her aunt. Because even if some wretched mishap had occurred, she knew in her heart that the duchess hadn’t willfully stirred arsenic into the stew and handed it over to kill Dudley. She wasn’t that black-hearted, no matter what they all thought.

  That was one concrete thing she could do! She could ask the servants about the envelope of arsenic. She set down her glass and fled to the kitchen, where the girls were washing their own dinner dishes and Cook was preparing the dough for tomorrow’s bread. It was such a cheerful scene, with the aroma of yeast on the air and the friendly clatter of dishes.