The Shadowcutter

by Harriet Smart

  “And how did Mr Syme take this?”

  “Of course he told her to hold her tongue and tried to get her to go away, but she would not. So he went out of the pavilion and took her to one side, and said something, and that silenced her and she went on her way.”

  “And how did Mr Syme explain all this to you?”

  “He said she was a poor sad creature who had lost her wits, who had conceived a passion for him – which of course he had done nothing to encourage.”

  “And you believed that?”

  “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “Of course I did. He had just asked me to share his lot with him, and I would never agree to marry a man who I could not trust entirely.”

  “So he spoke to her and returned to you?” said Giles.

  “Yes.”

  “And you are certain about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how long did you remain there?”

  “Another hour, perhaps. Until it got dark.”

  “You did not think you would be missed from the drawing room, then?”

  “No, I had said I was going to bed.”

  “When in fact you had a tryst with a lover?”

  “With a man I intend to marry, Major Vernon,” she said, with a touch of defiance.

  “Still?” he said.

  She covered her face with her hands.

  “You said you would tell me the truth,” he went on. “I am not sure this is it in its entirety, Lady Augusta. A man who asks you to lie for him is not worthy of your affection, let alone your hand.”

  Slowly she got up and walked up to the communion rail and stood staring again at the cross, her hand pressed to her breast. Giles could see that there were tears streaming down her face.

  “I am sorry to have to press you like this, but you know in your heart that it is for the best, I think.”

  She nodded.

  “You see, I don’t think you would have stayed with him after Eliza Jones came and said those shocking things to Mr Syme. You would have taken flight, leaving him there with her. You had already lied to your parents about your whereabouts, for his sake, and your conscience was burning like fire already, I should imagine.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, reaching for the rail to steady herself. She turned slightly towards him. “How did you know?”

  “I know you are a good daughter. Anything he has made you do is an aberration. Her distress will have roused your suspicions, I think.”

  “She was so unhappy,” she said. “And to think he might have caused that – yes, I was frightened and confused and so uncomfortable, so I ran back to the house when he went to speak to her. You are a magician, Major Vernon, you can see into my head!”

  “So your earlier story?”

  “He told me to say that was what happened, should I be asked.” She now fell to her knees and covered her face. “Oh dear Lord! And since then I have told myself a hundred thousand times that he could not do such a thing to a poor creature, but now –”

  He left her there to her prayers and self-reproaches.

  He came out of the chapel to find Sukey waiting in the undercroft.

  I saw you out in the garden, sir,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. I wanted a word. In private.”

  “Is it Mrs Vernon –?” he began.

  “Oh, no, she’s quite well – she and Lady Maria are practising piano duets together. They decided it was too hot to go out, mercifully. No, it is about this business with the jewels. You did say they went from a cabinet in the strong room?”

  “Yes?”

  She nodded, thought for a moment and said, “Then I think I have worked out how it might have been done – if you’ll let me try and explain.”

  “I am all ears,” Giles said.

  “This morning, I was down to the servant’s quarters and I wanted something from the housekeeper – some more camomile tea for Mrs Vernon – so I was waiting outside her room.” She broke off. “Perhaps I should show you, it would be easier to explain if we are there.”

  So they went together down the tunnel and into the complicated tangle of rooms and passageways that kept the great house running so comfortably.

  Sukey stopped at a bend in the corridor.

  “Now, if you stand here, you can see everything coming and going along that passageway,”

  “And that is the housekeeper’s room there?”

  She nodded. “Almost at the centre of everything. And it is quite busy along here at that time in the morning, because they are taking the plate out of there to clean it. Four of the footmen went in to that room there several times with it and came out again without closing the door behind them, let alone locking it. It struck me, that if you had a mind to it, and you knew what you were doing, it would be easy to slip in when the door was open and do what you had to, and all the time the men would be standing gossiping over there, taking their ease – just like they did this morning.” She gave a slight shrug. “But perhaps I’m just being daft?”

  “No, not at all,” Giles said, rather impressed with her analysis of the possibilities.

  “And then I thought, if you had the right tools, then it would be easy.”

  “Yes, quite.” He found he was slightly shocked. “Tell me, how do you know about such things?”

  “My late husband – he and his friends were great ones for the craic. They would sit by the fire, drinking and talking of everything, politics, poetry, crime – everything under the sun. I was in the corner, listening. It was an education of sorts.”

  “I am sorry you were exposed to that,” Giles said, rather disturbed at what she might have had heard. O’Brien had said that Sukey’s husband had been a wastrel, who fancied himself a writer, but had preferred the bottle and bad company. “They should have stopped their tongues, out of consideration to you.”

  “I don’t think they even noticed I was there. And there was nowhere else for me to sit and I was not an object of any interest to any of them. Besides, I am glad I heard it – all of it. Ignorance is as corrupting for a woman as coarse talk. Stupidity is a dangerous condition. Isn’t that what you tell your men?”

  “I can’t argue with that,” he said with a sigh. What she had endured was not pleasant to contemplate. “And I have to say I am glad of your knowledge and observations. As a hypothesis that is plausible. One might make a broad assumption that Eliza Jones is our jewel thief.”

  “Perhaps it was for her lover,” Sukey said. “A woman will take stupid risks for a man she loves, and taking a set of jewels like that is taking risks.”

  “She was with child. I wonder if she was trying to secure her future.”

  “Oh poor soul,” said Sukey. “Yes, that makes sense. But then how is she to sell stuff like that?”

  “To a fence or to someone who knows a fence.”

  Giles thought for a moment. Syme was most unlikely to have those sort of connections, and he had mentioned other men.

  “I thought half an hour ago that I might have identified the father,” he went on, “but you are making me wonder if there isn’t something more complicated going on here. If she had the right contacts then she might have stolen to order. That is often what happens with serious thefts. Someone asks for it be obtained. She would have to know it was there in the first place, as well.”

  “That would be common knowledge, surely, Major, amongst the maids, among all the servants, for that matter? If Miss La Roche goes down there regularly to fetch things for Lady Rothborough, then anyone standing where I was, would know that was where the jewels were kept. She would see Miss La Roche going in and out with the jewel cases. If Miss Jones was staying here with her mistress all those times before then...” Sukey shrugged. “She might even have seen them. Perhaps she asked to see them. I could imagine that. Maybe on another visit. You did say she had stayed here before?”

  Giles nodded. “We must talk to Miss La Roche again. What you say makes perfect sense.”

  “And did you not say, that her Ladys
hip does not like the parure, that she never wears it –?”

  “So it might have been stolen months ago, and no-one would be any wiser, because no-one has asked for it – until yesterday.”

  “But if Miss Jones were still alive,” Giles said, “would we suspect her? Is the fact she has been murdered making us make a false connection? Perhaps she is just an innocent victim.”

  “I would say that people get murdered for a reason,” said Sukey after a moment.

  “There is something in that,” he said. “Now did you say you were down there this morning to ask for tea from the housekeeper?”

  “Yes, camomile.”

  “Where did that tea come from?”

  “A tin in the dry stores room. I went in with Mrs Hope. It’s just off her sitting room.”

  “Yes, of course it is!” said Giles. “And was the door to the store locked?”

  “No. Why?”

  “We found tea, dried tea, in Miss Jones’ cuffs. I was wondering where it might have come from. How would you come to have tea in the cuff of your sleeve? May I?” He caught Sukey’s hand, and looked at her cuff. Like Eliza Jones’ it was deep and the end was folded back. “Excuse me,” he said, dropping her hand. “I need to try an experiment. Will you help me with it? It is rather a wild thought but there might be something in it.”

  A few minutes later they were with Mrs Hope in the large, well-appointed dry store room that, as Sukey had pointed out, adjoined her sitting room. It resembled a fashionable grocer’s store, with every edible commodity imaginable having a specific container, from tiny cannisters of expensive, exotic spices to great wooden barrels of flour and meal. However, it was the large japanned tea chests that interested Giles.

  He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It contained the tea leaves he had found in the cuff of Miss Jones’ sleeve.

  “Now Mrs Hope, what sort of tea is that?”

  She put on her glasses and examined it.

  “That’s a black Indian.”

  And which chest is that?”

  “This big one here, sir.”

  “May I see inside it?”

  She pulled out the chest and opened it.

  “When was this refilled?” he asked, observing it was almost full.

  “Oh, about a fortnight ago, just before the family got back. I can give you the exact date – it is in my ledger.”

  “You supervised the filling?”

  “Yes, sir, of course. Bard the grocer from Stangate supplied it. I like to see exactly what goes in there. You can never be sure with these people. Why, sir?”

  “If you will just indulge me a moment,” Giles said, taking off his coat and handing it to Sukey. He then rolled up his shirt sleeve, plunged his hand deep into the chest, and began to rummage around. Mrs Hope and Sukey, naturally, looked at him as if he were a madman, which he felt himself to be for some long moments, until his fingers suddenly came across something hard. He seized it and pulled out his hand, causing a small explosion of tea leaves over the floor. In his hand he held a simple drawstring bag, made of linen ticking. It jangled and clattered as he set it down on the table.

  “That isn’t... is it?” Sukey said, in an excited whisper.

  “I think it might be,” he said, taking his coat back from her. “Please do the honours.”

  Sukey opened the bag and reached in tentatively. She came out with a glittering crown, thick with diamonds and rubies and pearls.

  “Oh my!” exclaimed Mrs Hope. “It’s the Rothborough tiara. What on earth was it doing there?”

  “With luck, we have the whole parure,” said Giles, looking into the bag. It contained a dazzling jumble of jewels.

  Sukey stood gazing at the object in her hands, quite transfixed by its extraordinary lustre. Then, as if it were about to burn her, she set it quickly down on the table.

  “What is that all worth, do you think?” she said, watching as Giles reached into the bag and came out with a matching bracelet.

  Mrs Hope could not resist the lure of the tiara and was turning it in her hands.

  “It’s so heavy!” she said. “No wonder her Ladyship doesn’t care to wear it. It would give you a terrible headache. But on the right head, it would look very fetching. Lady Charlotte, for example –” She sighed and put it down on the table.

  “We had better go and see Lord Rothborough,” Giles said putting the tiara and bracelet back into the bag. “Come Sukey, you did most of the work of finding them. You can give his jewels back to him,” he said, giving her the bag.

  -0-

  They found Lord Rothborough with Charlotte and Augusta in his private study. It was clear that a scene that was far from pleasant had been taking place. Augusta was obviously in some distress, and the moment Giles came in she made for the door.

  “Augusta –” Rothborough said, but she ran past Giles.

  “This is perhaps not the best moment,” Giles said.

  “I hope you have good news for me, Major,” Lord Rothborough, with a great sigh. “I have been hearing some sorry tales just now.”

  “We have recovered the jewels, but that is probably poor consolation in the circumstances,” Giles said.

  He gestured to Sukey who presented the bag to Lord Rothborough with a curtsey. He stared at it with some astonishment.

  “In here?”

  “In there, in a tea chest,” said Giles. “In the dry goods larder.”

  “How extraordinary,” said Rothborough, opening the bag and laying out the pieces on his desk. “There is a bracelet missing – but otherwise, this is the complete set. Here, Charlotte, this was your grandmother’s favourite piece. It was got from Russia, I believe.” And he handed Lady Charlotte the tiara. “Put it on,” he said. “I have often thought you should wear it.”

  Rather self-consciously, to her credit, Lady Charlotte obeyed her father and crowned herself.

  “Magnificent,” said her father. “Thank you, Major Vernon.”

  “It was Mrs Connolly who solved the greater part of the puzzle,” Giles said.

  “Be careful he does not make you a constable, Mrs Connolly,” said Lord Rothborough.

  “Now, that is a good idea,” said Giles. “I have often thought that women constables would be of great service in certain situations.”

  “Oh, I should not care for such a cut in my wages,” said Sukey, with a smile.

  “Too sensible by half,” said Lord Rothborough.

  Giles studied the display of jewels.

  “Does the other bracelet resemble this one?”

  “Yes, they are a pair,” said Lord Rothborough.

  “I wonder where that might have got to. We should search Miss Jones’ room again. But she was perhaps too clever for that. Of course, the bracelet may have gone on ahead, so to speak, as an advance sample.”

  “Perhaps to the man who killed her,” Sukey said.

  “Perhaps,” said Giles. “And Syme may help me with that, when I have put him a little longer on mental rack. He may give me some clue as to who this other man might be.”

  “I am glad to hear that!” said Rothborough. “And I am glad you are here to deal with him, for I am not sure I could be responsible for my actions if the wretch were to cross my path. He has used Augusta abominably! I have a mind to have Bodley lock him in his room. He will be grateful for it – a stout door will protect him from me, the insolent beggar.”

  “From what Augusta said,” Charlotte said, “it seems he may have killed Miss Jones.”

  “I am not sure of that,” Giles said. “But he is certainly a strong suspect at present. I trust with a little pressure, he may tell us a great deal more.”

  “You mean he will confess?” she said.

  “He may exonerate himself or hang himself. We shall see.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Syme was in his room. He had sent for his luggage and was packing, or rather he was throwing things into his box in a fashion suggestive of panic.

  “Do not imagine you wi
ll be allowed to leave in these circumstances,” Giles said, closing the door behind him and leaning against it. “You and I have only just begun talking.”

  Syme put down the bundle of folded linen he was holding and said, “Whatever Lady Augusta has said to you –”

  “I am to disregard?”

  “She may be confused about what occurred. Women are liable to misinterpret things, especially when they are swayed by their feelings.”

  “Lady Augusta struck me as anything but confused,” Giles said. “Sit down, Mr Syme, will you?” He took his notebook from his pocket and consulted it. “Now, you claim that you only saw Miss Jones pass by the pavilion where you had your tryst with Lady Augusta.”

  “Yes, yes, that is all,” he said, sitting down in the armchair.

  “Yet you told Lady Augusta to spin quite a different tale should I ask about this. She claims that you asked her to say that you went and spoke to Miss Jones, but only for a moment.” Syme studied his fingers and made no move to answer. “Is she mistaken about that?”

  “She may have recalled it wrongly.”

  “Or you forgot what you told her to tell me?” Giles said. “That is the trouble with lying, one is liable to make mistakes.”

  “I think she was mistaken,” he said.

  “That’s interesting,” said Giles. “So now I have three versions of what happened.” Syme glanced at him nervously. “Your initial account, the version of events that you asked Lady Augusta to recount and, finally, another one entirely, which she eventually admitted to me, in a state of some distress.”

  “If she was in distress then you must doubt the veracity of it,” Syme said after a moment.

  “You are a fine lover,” said Giles. “Very gallant. This third story is rather inconvenient for you, so I will excuse you. Lady Augusta told me that after Eliza Jones appeared and abused you, she was so shocked at what she saw and heard, that she at once ran back to the house.”

  “She may have done,” Syme said.

  “Leaving you alone with Eliza Jones, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Syme after a pause and not meeting Giles’ eye.

  “And how did go on from there? What did Eliza say to you? Lady Augusta said she was angry with you.”