by M C Beaton
His monocle sprang from his dead eye and rolled across the table, glaring up accusingly at Sally, like another disembodied eye.
Sally gripped the arms of her chair quite tightly.
The marquess quickly went around the table and lifted Freddie’s head out of the soup and, supporting him, felt for his pulse.
“Mrs. Stuart,” he said, “I am afraid Freddie is dead.”
“It’s his heart. I knew it would happen,” said Mrs. Stuart calmly.
Sally was too young to recognize the calm of utter shock and despair. She was outraged. Justice must be done.
The duke rose to his feet. “I’ll call Doctor Barchester,” he said.
“You’ll call the police.”
The duke and duchess, the marquess, and Mrs. Stuart all gazed at Aunt Mabel, aghast.
“What?” demanded the duke stupidly, his high color at its most pronounced.
“That woman,” said Sally, slowly and distinctly and pointing to Mrs. Stuart, “told me that she intended to poison her husband. She said that Doctor Barchester was too old to be efficient and that he would put ‘heart attack’ on the certificate if she told him to. I insist that the police be called and that an autopsy be performed on Mr. Stuart.”
“Come with me,” said the duchess, walking away from the table. Sally followed her out.
The duchess swung around in the hall. “What’s all this nonsense?” she demanded. And so Sally told her.
“Annabelle Stuart has been talking that sort of rubbish for years,” said the duchess coldly. “You have done a terrible thing to add to her shock and grief with your wicked accusations.”
“I believe she poisoned him,” said Sally stubbornly.
The duchess surveyed Aunt Mabel with awful contempt. Then she touched a bell on the wall. When the butler answered the summons, Her Grace said in a voice that dripped acid, “This person is leaving, now. Have her out of here, bag and baggage, as fast as possible.”
Then raking Sally from head to toe with a look of utter disgust, the duchess turned on her heels and marched back into the small dining room, slamming the door behind her.
Sally was more than ever bent on seeing justice done. Her anger against the villainous Mrs. Stuart kept her at top boil, and she startled the duke’s servants by demanding to be set down at the police station in Bath.
Paul, she was sure, had discovered her identity—or rather had recognized under the disguise of Aunt Mabel the girl he had proposed to. He had looked as shocked as the others when she made her accusation. He should discover that she had been right. The police were politely disbelieving, but Aunt Mabel’s fame had spread far and wide and at last they were impressed. Sally said she would stay at the Palace Hotel in Bath until she heard the result of the autopsy.
Nonetheless, the police wanted to spare the ducal family as much embarrassment as possible. The matter was kept out of the inky hands of the press, and the autopsy was rushed through. In a bare twenty-four hours an Inspector Davidson called on Aunt Mabel at the Palace Hotel.
Sally listened in horror as he explained that the autopsy, which had been performed by a famous London surgeon, had revealed that the Honorable Freddie Stuart had died of a heart attack, nothing more.
Sally buried her face in her hands and burned with shame and distress.
His voice softening a little, the inspector pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her.
“Now look here, mum,” he said. “I’ve no doubt that what you told us was all true—that Mrs. Stuart had told you she was going to poison her husband. But these here people have their strange ways, and Mrs. Stuart has been saying the same thing for years. Even her husband knew. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
In despair Sally remembered the conversation in the railway compartment with Freddie, the Marquess blithely asking Freddie if his wife was still trying to poison him.
“Someone s-said s-something,” she faltered.
“Ah, well, there you are,” said the inspector. “That’s the aristocracy for you, mum. Why, if some of us behaved like them, they’d have us locked up for sure. Still, it’s not for us to criticize our betters, is it? You’ve done a cruel and very silly thing, but the family has decided to forgive you, since they can understand you being confused by their little ways.”
Little ways! Sally felt she had wandered into a Through the Looking Glass world.
All she wanted to do was to get as far away from the lot of them as possible. She would never get over this shame and disgrace. Never.
After the inspector left, she went downstairs to pay her hotel bill. The bill, said the clerk, smiling, had been sent to the Marquess of Seudenham at his lordship’s request.
Sally eventually climbed onto the Bath train bound for London, feeling as if the coals of fire that had been heaped on her head were burning through her wig.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Have some more tea,” said Miss Fleming soothingly.
Miss Frimp, Miss Fleming, and Sally were seated around the table in their Bloomsbury flat. Sally had cried until she could cry no more, telling them, when she was able, the whole story of her horrible visit.
“You’re well out of it, you know,” said Miss Fleming. “You would be amazed at the things I hear when I go down to the country with Mr. Wingles. At the last house party, they were all talking about old Lord Beech’s little ways. They said he harnesses his wife up to the dogcart and drives her around the estate.”
“Goodness!” screamed Miss Frimp.
“Now, you, Sally,” pursued Miss Fleming, “would be better off married to a nice clean-cut army officer.”
“I want Paul,” said Sally in a dreary voice.
“Well, you can’t have him,” said Miss Fleming testily. “You’re a very lucky girl. You say he recognized you and didn’t expose you? Even after you said all that about Mrs. Stuart? Believe me, you’re very lucky indeed. And only think! You’re writhing in shame and mortification, and all because you accused that old trout, Annabelle Stuart, of killing her husband. Well, if you ask me, you’re not to be blamed. The woman’s raving mad. She’s been going on like Lady Macbeth for so long that someone was bound to take her seriously. She’s got no one to blame but herself. It’s all been very painful, but the best thing you can do, Sally, is to start work in the morning and work and work and work. I find that’s the best cure for any ill.”
“All right,” said Sally drearily. “I’ll work and work and work, and one of these days I won’t need to disguise myself as Aunt Mabel. I’ll look like Aunt Mabel.”
“There’s nothing wrong with age,” said Miss Frimp severely, and Sally apologized hurriedly, for Miss Frimp did look exactly like Aunt Mabel, except her wrinkles were real.
Sally took herself off to bed but, tired as she was, it was a long time before she fell asleep. The marquess’s handsome face and mocking blue eyes seemed to float in front of her in the darkness of the room. She loved him utterly and completely, and he was probably as mad as a hatter. They all were. And with that dismal thought, she at last fell asleep.
A week passed while a brief thaw turned the London streets into miserable canyons of slush. Sally worked and worked, the pain in her heart almost constant. Now she knew why love was described as a sickness. “Love is a sickness full of woes,/All remedies refusing.” She was touched by the affection and sympathy of her two elderly friends.
Her distress was not helped by a surprise visit from Emily, who arrived at the Bloomsbury flat one evening with all the children.
Emily was remarkably uninterested in Sally’s job or her friends. She simply sat there, large and placid, while her children kicked the furniture and Marmaduke got sick on the carpet. Sally envisaged presenting, as her only family, Emily and offspring at Banjahar, and shuddered. Perhaps she should welcome Emily’s visit, yet it surely underlined the vast gulf that lay between her background and that of the marquess. Their father had been a colonel, but his regiment was not one of the famous ones, and his background had been una
shamedly middle-class. The social code was strict. Everyone knew that the good Lord placed people in their strata on the day they were born, and to try to climb higher was flying in the face of Providence.
Certainly the aristocracy married actresses and chorus girls, but somehow they did not seem to lose their heads over middle-class girls and, if they did, it was usually to ally themselves with some wealthy American heiress who would save the crumbling family estates from going under the hammer.
Matilda Fleming was very worried about Sally. The girl was not eating enough. Matilda racked her brains to try to remember if she had ever been in love and could not. Her sole aim in life had been to be financially independent. Mr. Wingles, her boss, was a bachelor. She had been his secretary for many years, anticipating his every need, filling in as substitute wife when he was summoned to the newspaper proprieter’s estate. She was very fond of him, very fond indeed, she admitted to herself. But her feelings toward him had never blossomed into anything warmer than a sort of maternal affection. So mused Miss Fleming as she stared from her window down into the congested traffic of Fleet Street.
And then she craned forward. A glittering carriage was pulling to a halt a little way up the street but still in her line of vision. As she watched, the Marquess of Seudenham alighted. He looked up and down the street and then started to say something to his coachman on the box.
“Ah, Miss Fleming,” said Mr. Wingles, coming out of his office, “if you will just type—”
“Can’t!” said Miss Fleming, leaping to her feet and shooting past him at a rate of knots.
He stared after her in amazement. In all the years she had worked for him, he had never even seen her flurried.
Miss Fleming shot out of the office of the Daily Bugle and, lifting up her skirts, sprinted up Fleet Street like a six-year-old. The marquess was still talking to his coachman and was fortunately about the only person who did not turn around to watch the strange sight of an elderly lady pelting through the slush as if the hound of Heaven were after her.
Sally jumped to her feet in alarm as Miss Fleming erupted into her office, babbling, “He’s here. He’s coming here. The marquess.”
“What am I going to do?” wailed Sally.
“What’s all the row?” demanded Mr. Barton, coming into Sally’s office and staring, amazed, at Miss Fleming.
“I think,” said Miss Frimp primly, “that Miss Fleming is trying to tell us that the Marquess of Seudenham is coming here to unmask Aunt Mabel.”
“Oh, no, he’s not,” said Mr. Barton, springing into action. “Here, Sally, get into my office, lock the door, and stay there. Miss Fleming—go with her. Miss Frimp—get behind the desk. You’re going to be Aunt Mabel and that’s that. All our jobs depend on it.”
He hustled Sally before him into his office, Miss Fleming following on their heels, ignoring Miss Frimp’s frightened cry of protest.
“Oh, please,” begged Sally. “He knows I’m not an old lady. He saw through the disguise. Can’t I see him?”
“Look here, my girl,” said Mr. Barton sternly, locking Sally and Miss Fleming and himself into his office. “You gave me your promise that no one—I repeat, NO ONE—would ever find out that Aunt Mabel is not the sweet old bird she’s cracked up to be, and I’m holding you to that promise. I—”
He broke off as they heard footsteps on the stairs.
“It’s him,” whispered Miss Fleming. “Shhhh!”
The Marquess of Seudenham was feeling remarkably cheerful. Freddie’s funeral had gone off well. Not a breath of scandal had reached the press. Mrs. Stuart had found on the reading of her late husband’s will that she had been left a very wealthy woman indeed, and that had gone a long way toward mitigating her grief.
His mother, on calmer reflection, had forgiven Aunt Mabel. “If one didn’t know that Annabelle Stuart was practically certifiable, then a mistake like that could arise,” his mother had said.
Now all he wanted to do was see the girl he had held in his arms in the snow. He felt sure she would not wear her disguise in the office.
He stood for a moment on a small, dark, dingy landing. And then he saw the frosted glass door marked LETTERS EDITOR.
He found that his heart was beating hard. He straightened his waistcoat, straightened his tie, opened the door, and walked in.
The room was in semidarkness. Miss Frimp got up and came around the desk. “Can I assist you in any way, sir?” she asked nervously.
The marquess threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, my darling love,” he said. “Do you have to wear all that rubbish in the office as well?”
Miss Frimp opened her mouth and let out a small bleating sound. Still laughing, he pulled the old lady into his arms.
“You enchant me,” he said, suddenly serious.
Then he bent his head and kissed her passionately. All at once he realized he was, in fact, holding an elderly lady in his arms. He released her abruptly and looked at her in dawning horror. “Oh, God, I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he gasped. “My apologies, ma’am.” And turning on his heels, he fled out of the door and down the stairs.
Miss Frimp stood, one hand leaning on the desk for support, staring after him. Across the landing, Mr. Barton cautiously unlocked his door.
He waited a few moments before gingerly opening the door of Sally’s office. Sally and Miss Fleming followed close behind.
Miss Frimp was still standing where the marquess had left her.
“Are you all right, Miss Frimp?” asked Mr. Barton anxiously. “You look strangely flushed. He—he didn’t hit you or anything?”
“He kissed me,” said Miss Frimp dreamily, “and… and… do you know, I liked it!”
“Oh!” wailed Sally. “It should have been me!”
The Marquess of Seudenham retired to his country estate, his mind a blank. He tried to lose himself in the intricacies of estate management and farming, which usually kept him totally absorbed. But as the long winter wore on, that wretched girl, whoever she was, began to creep back insidiously into his thoughts. At first sheer humiliation and rage kept him from thinking of her, for he had been made to look an utter fool twice, and for that he put the blame fair and square on “Aunt Mabel’s” shoulders.
The bitter cold vanished at last as the spring finally arrived. His mother had telephoned several times, asking him to come home on a visit, and each time he had put her off, always preferring to immerse himself in his own affairs. At last, as the days grew warmer, he began to make several trips up to town to see his friends. Then once again he began asking a select few to go back with him for weekend house parties. The talk was all of the forthcoming Season, but the marquess felt little interest in it. For some reason he felt sure he would not find his adventuress at any of the functions.
It was only when he admitted that she would not leave his thoughts that he finally decided to sit down one day and either exorcise her or find some clue as to her whereabouts.
And so he sat down and wrote as much about “Aunt Mabel” as he knew. As his pencil flew over the paper a strange picture began to emerge.
He sat back and reread what he had written and frowned. He was all at once sure that his lady had, in fact, really been employed as Aunt Mabel and that the old lady he had embraced so passionately had been masquerading as Aunt Mabel to deceive him. Lady Cecily—he still called her that in his mind—was undoubtedly a very young girl. Would it be at all possible that the magazine did not want anyone to know that their famous Aunt Mabel was a young girl?
He took a deep breath and decided to try once more. But this time he would see the editor.
As he mounted the steps of Home Chats he was met by the office boy, who laconically informed him that Mr. Barton was in “Auntie’s” around the corner. The marquess looked puzzled, his brain full of Aunt Mabel. “Auntie’s,” explained the office boy, was the Red Lion.
Fortunately for the marquess, the Red Lion was comparatively empty, and the obliging landlord indicated Mr. Barton, who w
as sitting at a small table in the corner over a pint of beer. His head was bent over a sheaf of notes, and he was writing busily.
His look of surprise when the landlord and the marquess came up to him soon changed to one of trepidation at the sound of the marquess’s name.
“Sit down,” said Mr. Barton with a sigh. “I suppose you’ve come about Aunt Mabel, my lord?”
The marquess nodded, ordered a pint of beer, and sat down at the table with Mr. Barton.
“Well, my lord,” began Mr. Barton reluctantly. “How can I be of assistance to you?”
“Who is Aunt Mabel?” demanded the marquess.
“The elderly lady you saw on your last visit to our offices? Her real name is Miss Frimp.”
The marquess took a deep breath. “Now, I want the truth, Mr. Barton. At the time of Aunt Mabel’s visit to my mother, was that Miss Frimp?”
Mr. Barton hesitated.
“The truth, man!”
Mr. Barton spread his hands in an oddly Gallic gesture of resignation.
“No, my lord.”
“Then who was she?” The marquess resisted a strong temptation to pick up Mr. Barton and shake the information out of him.
“I suppose since I don’t know where she is now, there can be no harm in telling you,” said Mr. Barton, taking a pull at his beer.
And so he told the marquess about the death of the original Aunt Mabel, and how the young girl in the crumpled sailor hat had taken over and had been so good at the job that he had employed her on the understanding that no one must ever find out her true identity.
He explained how they were frightened that the duchess would find out that the famous Aunt Mabel was only a young girl and that Sally had disguised herself as an elderly lady.
“But something happened,” said Mr. Barton sadly. “Sally suddenly ups and says—let me see, about the end of January, I think—that she doesn’t want to go on pretending to be someone she’s not. She says she’s already trained Miss Frimp, her secretary, how to answer the letters, and she says as how Miss Frimp looks like the picture of Aunt Mabel in the magazine. I still didn’t want to let her go. Said she could stay and write another column. But she insisted she had to get away. I don’t know why,” said Mr. Barton, although he knew precisely why. He knew it was because Sally was in love with the marquess and had come to the conclusion that marriage was out of the question and had decided to remove herself from anything that reminded her of him.