by Louise Allen
Allerton. That rang faint bells… He put the thought aside as unimportant for now. ‘How far up the stairs was the rail sawn through?’
‘About seven steps from the bottom.’
‘And it is a circular stair? Carpeted?’
‘Yes, to both. I had the carpet put down when Guinevere took a liking to the tower room.’
‘Lady Northam is a good rider?’
‘Very.’ The older man seemed to rouse himself at the question. He sat up straighter and smiled proudly. ‘A cracking little rider. Light hands and nerves of steel.’
‘And the shot in the Park?’
‘That was a miraculous escape. She had pulled the check string for the driver to halt so she could get down to look at one of the new plantations and seconds after she stepped down the bullet hit the back of the seat just where she had been sitting.’
There was a tap at the door and Twite entered. ‘Excuse me, my lord, but Hoskins the footman has recommended his brothers as additional guards. There are four of them, I understand, all strapping young men employed on a casual basis as porters at Covent Garden market. He thought they would supplement our forces here. Hoskins has been with us several years and has always proved very satisfactory, I feel we could trust others from his family if you approve.’
The Viscount looked at Jared. ‘Have Mr Hunt interview them when they arrive. Well?’ he demanded as the door closed behind the butler. ‘What are you looking so quizzical about, Hunt?’
‘An impression, merely. Something that may not be of any consequence, but I must think on it.’ If he was right then something very strange indeed was going on here, something even more mystifying than attempted murder.
Chapter Four
Just what were they dealing with here? Jared probed again. ‘Has Lady Northam suffered from any illnesses, anything that might have left her with a weak heart?’
‘Not so far as I am aware. She is perfectly healthy. Did her reaction today seem like that of a woman with a weak heart?’
‘No, not at all.’ She felt like a healthy young woman in every respect. Her heart was thudding under mine with great regularity, the pulse in her throat… ‘Lady Northam appears to be standing up to the strain very well. Do you require me further today once I have interviewed this footman’s family battalion of guards?’
‘I suppose not. My wife had intended going out this evening, some reception or another, but I will see to it that she rests instead. I’ll tell her I am feeling shaky, that will keep her in. You will return tomorrow, Hunt?’
‘Certainly, my lord. I will be here after breakfast.’
Jared checked with the gamekeepers again and exchanged one of the other footman for the one on the roof. ‘What is your name?’ he asked as the man turned to the stairs.
‘Thomas, sir.’ He seemed somewhat agitated.
‘There is no need to be afraid. It was only a firework, you know.’
‘Aye, sir. I’m all reet…right, sir. I haven’t been in London long, I’m used to country life. Didn’t expect it to be like this, and that’s the truth.’
‘It rarely is,’ Jared assured him.
He spoke to the Hoskins brothers as they arrived at the kitchen door an hour later, breathless from a rush across London. Twite had worked out a rota of guard duties and rest times that seemed eminently sensible once Jared had adjusted it so that no two Hoskins brothers were on duty together. They looked reliable enough, but this entire situation was a confusing mess and he was not prepared to trust anyone.
The workmen were packing up when he finally arrived back at Great Ryder Street. Jared walked round with the foreman, approved the work and discussed priorities for the next day, then went upstairs, unlocked the door and checked the rooms. No-one had been in there, none of the tell-tales he had set as a matter of routine had been disturbed.
There was no reason to expect trouble, not here, but he had no idea what hornets’ nest Lord Northam was asking him to poke a stick into. The attacks seemed motiveless and Guinevere was standing up to them well. Too well?
Jared reminded himself that she was Lady Northam to him and went into the pocket-sized kitchen to contemplate what might make his dinner. Two eggs, a lump of streaky bacon, the heel of a loaf and half an apple pie from the bakery around the corner. It would do, when and if he worked up an appetite for it.
But now… Now he needed to think. He stripped off in his bedchamber and pulled on the breeches and shirt he wore when he was exercising, mentally positioning the great bed he had purchased that morning and sparing a thought for the joists beneath where it would stand. Best to get the carpenter to check how solid they were. He had no intention at the moment of doing anything more energetic on that bed than sleeping in it, but better safe than have a great lump of seventeenth century woodwork fall through the floor with him on top of it.
Downstairs, on the bare and swept space that would soon be his salle d’armes, he began to stretch for half an hour of the increasingly complex moves he aimed to perform daily. Then push-ups: two-armed, one-armed, until the sweat ran. Finally he took down his heaviest sword and began the sequence of exercises. Cut and thrust, parry and riposte, alternating his hands, eyes open, eyes closed, until he stopped thinking of anything except what his body was doing, focusing on how each muscle was responding, noting the exact point when the burn began, correcting every minute fault until at last he slumped against the wall and slid down it to sit, head bent, panting. Satisfied. Mind clear.
The cold water sluiced over his heated skin, the tiny surface muscles beneath twitching in involuntary protest. Two buckets was all he could use before the tub he stood in was full, but tomorrow the copper bath from the auction rooms would be delivered along with the bed. Amidst fantasies of steaming hot water and lengthily indulgent soaks Jared stepped out, trailed wet footprints across the floor as he towelled himself down and, still damp, dragged on a loose linen shirt under the heavy silk robe he had brought back from India.
He fried the eggs and bacon in a skillet over the fire, spread butter on the bread, poured ale, his attention focused minutely on what he was doing, the sound of the spattering fat, the smell of the bacon, the bubbles bursting in the froth on top of the ale in the pewter tankard.
It was not until he sat down to eat at the table made of planks propped up on scavenged bricks that he let himself think. He ate one-handed, the other occupied jotting down a list of housekeeping matters for the next day: look for a domestic agency to supply a valet who could cook, a word to the builders about the floor joists and the deliveries, restock his pantry.
He finished off the food, mopped up egg yolk with the last of the bread, washed it down with the ale and pushed away the plate. Finally he dragged the list in front of him and wrote at the bottom in small capitals, WHY?
The threads of thought, the frisson of unease, the puzzling elements had come together as he exercised, had coalesced into a pattern as he ate. He had not been imagining things: whoever was plaguing Guinevere Quenten, Viscountess Northam, certainly wished to torment her. But kill her? He thought not.
‘Unless the intention is to cause you anxiety, even drive you out of your wits, I cannot understand what your attacker is trying to achieve, Lady Northam. They most certainly cannot intend to kill you.’ Jared sat back in the deep armchair and let his words sink into the silence of the elegant drawing room. The explosion would come soon enough.
‘Are you insane, sir?’ Lord Northam’s fist came down on the delicate tea table, sending his coffee cup toppling. He ignored the flood of hot liquid over the inlaid surface and lurched to his feet.
Jared stayed where he was. Courtesy and precedence demanded he rise but it would only inflame the atmosphere to have two large men confronting each other. He steepled his fingers and waited while the Viscount made a stomping circuit of the room, his feet kicking up soft Chinese silk rugs, the tails of his coat sending flower arrangements rocking.
Lady Northam raised her fingertips to her lips, whether in prayer or to hold bac
k words, Jared could not tell. Her eyes were fixed on her husband, wide and very blue. He wondered if the colour depended on her mood or on the light.
Finally Northam arrived back in front of Jared. ‘Do you think we are inventing this? Imagining it?’ he demanded. ‘You were here yesterday, you saw what happened. Or maybe,’ he added with awful sarcasm, ‘that was a collective hallucination?’
‘I will explain, my lord. Perhaps if you were to sit down it might be less agitating for her ladyship.’ When the other man subsided back into his chair with a grunt Jared said, ‘That was not a bomb yesterday, that was a large firework. It could have caused injury, it might have provoked a heart seizure in a frail person, but you are neither elderly nor sickly, are you, Lady Northam? And this came down the chimney of your own room, not one you both habitually use, therefore it can hardly have been aimed at Lord Northam.
‘And while we are on the subject of heart failure, the bite of the British adder or viper is rarely fatal unless the person bitten is old or weak or very young. Then we come to a broken handrail a few steps up a well-carpeted stair. Bruises, perhaps a broken limb might result if you had fallen, but not, I would suggest, much more, considering that you are a healthy young woman with all your faculties.’
‘And what about the interference with my horse?’ she said.
‘You are a good rider, I believe?’ A nod. ‘And that was a reliable, steady horse you were accustomed to?’ Another nod. ‘And this happened in a village where help was at hand?’
‘Yes. It was alarming when it happened but I was soon able to control Brandy, my mare, sufficiently to slide from the saddle. My groom was attending me.’ Her eyes were fixed on his face, her lips parted as though there was a question there she could not quite articulate.
‘You forget the shooting!’ The Viscount looked ready to erupt out of his chair again.
‘Someone had a firearm and they were following you. They were able to put a bullet into the exact place you had been sitting – after you had left it. Why not while you were sitting there? Why not when you were out of the carriage in plain sight and an easy target? Lady Northam, someone is most certainly persecuting you, but if they are attempting to kill you they must be the most inept assassin on the market.’
Guin closed her mouth, swallowed, tried again. ‘You are saying that I am not in danger?’ She was becoming angry, she realised. ‘Or perhaps you believe I am making it up?’
He sat there, calm and controlled, dispassionately laying out the facts. Facts that made her and Augustus look like alarmed peahens, with about as much intelligence.
‘No, that is not what I mean. You could have been hurt in any of those attacks and you are certainly suffering anxiety and stress with good reason, but you would have been very unlucky indeed to have been killed by any of them.’
‘Why did Bow Street not point this out to me?’ Augustus demanded. He looked as though he was not certain whether to be relieved or outraged. Neither did she, come to that. Both, she decided.
‘You are a member of the aristocracy, my lord, a man of status and influence. They are not going to argue with you when you come to them and announce that your wife is in danger of her life. They may not even have thought it through, simply reacted.’
‘And you are not intimidated by my title and influence, Mr Hunt?’
‘No, my lord.’ He smiled fleetingly and for some reason Guin’s pulse kicked up. ‘My last employer was a duke, if you recall.’
‘You are very sure of yourself for a man with no background, no history from before your seventeenth year.’
‘Yes, I am. You are very close to this, Lord Northam. I can look at it as an outsider, unemotionally. You called me in, you have paid me well for my skills – I am unlikely to be of much use to you if I am lacking in confidence or afraid to put matters to you straight.’
It was time to intervene before her husband in his bafflement and frustration alienated this man to the point of him turning on his heel and leaving them. They needed him. Yesterday she had been afraid of him, a little. Had resented his hard-edged competence. Now… ‘Augustus, my dear. Mr Hunt is on our side,’ Guin said mildly. ‘He is trying to help us see the whole picture and he has made a valuable point.’ She found herself smiling at the swordmaster who looked back, serious, his eyes shadowed. Did she imagine it, or had the severe line of his lips relaxed, just a trifle? She made herself stop looking at his mouth.
‘What? Oh. Yes, apologies, Hunt. Shouldn’t have said that about your history. Bad form.’
So what was that about? She watched Jared Hunt as he made vague, soothing noises. He was really very good with Augustus, almost as good as she was. ‘But if whoever this is does not intend to kill me, what can they be intending?’
‘I believe you need to reassess who might wish you ill, my lady. You have been trying to find a motive for murder. Now you must think again about who might want to make your life miserable, put you in fear, torment you. This is at a very different level of motivation from killing, although such harassment is deeply harmful.’
‘You said yourself that the motive may be irrational,’ her husband objected.
‘True, but the absence of deadly intent must mean the obsession, if that is what it is, is less extreme, although the level of spiteful intent may actually be higher. Of course, if we are dealing with a lunatic, someone utterly irrational, then arguments about motive are no help at all. Now I must probe each incident in more detail. The time, place, who was there, exactly what happened.’
‘I am due at my dressmaker in an hour,’ Guin said with a glance at the clock. ‘Will you accompany me, Mr Hunt? You can begin to ask me what you need to know as we travel.’
‘I am at your disposal, Lady Northam.’ He said it with so little nuance that, somehow, the words seemed to carry a double entendre that he was anxious not to stress and in suppressing only emphasised.
Guin closed her eyes for a moment while she composed herself. She was a married woman and while hers was not a marriage such as girlish dreams were made of, it was a marriage. A good, honest, companionable marriage. And, more importantly for her, she owed Augustus a great debt, one she could never repay. She would certainly never dishonour him by a dalliance with another man and even finding herself affected by one, as she realised she was by Jared Hunt, felt perilously like betrayal.
‘My maid is fully in my confidence,’ she added. ‘She will come with us.’
‘Of course, Lady Northam.’ The slight lift of one eyebrow hinted at his surprise that she even thought such a detail worth mentioning. Of course he would expect her to be accompanied. She must have imagined the momentary warmth in his gaze, a secondary meaning in what he had said a moment ago. How very embarrassing if he had suspected what she was thinking.
The mysterious little notebook reappeared when they took their places in the carriage. Today, April the first, the weather was fine enough for the open coach, but Augustus would not hear of it so early in the year, so they were in the closed carriage, the panel of slightly brighter maroon leather in the middle of the forward-facing seats a reminder of that bullet in the park. The upholsterer had repaired it speedily, urged on by Augustus’s desire that she should not be reminded by the bullet hole. Instinctively Guin sat to one side of it while Faith her maid sat opposite, her back to the horses.
‘In the middle, if you would, my lady.’ Jared Hunt settled next to her, his broad shoulders taking up enough room that she had no choice but to sit against that patch, the colour of dried blood. ‘If I say down, I want both of you on the floor, at once. Do you understand?’
‘Perfectly,’ she said tartly, the memory of that long, hard body pinning her to the carpet in her sitting room all too vivid.
‘Good. Let us discuss the adder in the sewing basket. Where was it?’
‘On the terrace at Allerton Grange in Yorkshire.’ He looked at her sharply, so she explained. ‘In the first eighteen months of our marriage we went to Northam Hall, in Dorset, my husband
’s principal country property, when we wanted to be away from London. But Augustus had only acquired Allerton quite recently and there were matters requiring his attention, so we had moved there for a few weeks in the middle of March.’
She explained carefully, wanting to give him every detail. ‘I had taken my embroidery outside because the Spring sunshine was so lovely, even though it was a trifle chilly. I wanted to add small details to the design and that needed good light, but I was interrupted by unexpected visitors. I left the basket with my work where it was, on a table on the terrace. When I returned and lifted the embroidery frame from the top the adder was coiled inside.’
‘And it was not there before?’
‘Absolutely not. Earlier I had rummaged right to the bottom in search of my thimble, I could not have missed it.’ She paused, thinking back to the shock of seeing the snake curled there like a jewelled rope on top of the silks. ‘It was quite a large one.’
‘Could it have crawled in when you were away? Although in March it would only just have emerged from hibernation and would be sluggish, I believe,’ he added. ‘I have more experience recently with cobras in India than the snakes of the English countryside.’
‘The basket was on top of a pedestal table, sir,’ Faith interjected while Guin was digesting the fact that Mr Hunt had been in India. ‘My lady had laid her embroidery frame over the top, and that is quite large. I cannot see how the snake could have crawled in by itself.’
‘So who could have approached the terrace unobserved, Lady Northam?’
‘Almost anyone,’ Guin admitted. ‘I was entertaining our callers in the salon on the other side of the house. There would be a risk of being seen by the servants, of course, but anyone could walk across the lawns from the shrubbery.’
‘Or come out from the house.’
‘One of us, you mean, sir? One of the staff?’ Faith shot an apologetic look at Guin, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, my lady. But I’ve been thinking about it so much. Who would have a snake hidden, be carrying it about, just on the off-chance that they would come across your sewing box outside and unattended?’