With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense

by DeWees, Amanda

  “As you say,” I returned, taking a seat in the straight-backed chair he had placed before the great desk, which he seemed to have appropriated. “I have a crowded schedule of beating housemaids and squandering my husband’s money, so it’s best we wrap up the trifling matter of my father-in-law’s murder as quickly as possible.”

  That won me a grudging smile. “My apologies, Lady Telford. Murder cases do not find me in the best of humors.”

  “Most understandable. How may I help you?”

  He seated himself in the worn leather-upholstered chair behind the desk, and I wondered suddenly how many years Lord Telford had conducted his business from that very spot—all of the day-to-day matters that came with being a landowner. How indignant he would have been to have his chair borrowed by a mere inspector.

  But Strack was speaking, and I gathered my wandering attention.

  “I’d like your account of the day and night leading up to the discovery of your father-in-law’s death,” he said. “I’m looking for corroboration of certain facts that have been disclosed by other witnesses—”

  “Witnesses?” I exclaimed.

  “Not to the death itself,” he explained. “No, we haven’t been fortunate enough to locate any such creature yet, although that would be ideal! I meant only witnesses to some of what seem to be key events leading up to the crime.”

  “Such as the argument between my husband and his father,” I said, suspecting that this unfortunate episode would have been made known to him already. Atticus was too forthright not to have disclosed the distasteful event.

  Sure enough, the inspector gave a curt nod. “I’d like to hear your version of that, if you please.”

  “I only overheard part of it; not as much as Genevieve, my husband’s ward. Unfortunately what we heard convinced us that we two were… less than welcome in Lord Telford’s eyes.”

  “Be plain, please. What exactly did you hear him say about you?”

  Of course it was pointless to engage in polite euphemism. “He indicated that he knew of my true origins,” I said, “and had the gravest suspicions about Vivi’s.”

  “And what are your origins, my lady?” He leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers across his waistcoat, and regarded me steadily.

  “Irrelevant to your investigation,” I said crisply. “Have you any other questions for me?”

  For a moment I thought he would pursue the point, but then he seemed to change his mind. “Quite a few, yes,” he said. “I’ve been informed that earlier on the night of that argument your husband was involved in another violent confrontation. He forcibly ejected a guest from the house, I understand.”

  “You make it sound as if he engaged in a brawl,” I protested. “It wasn’t like that. My husband is a civilized man.”

  “So these explosive rages are rare events?”

  “Of course! That is, there was nothing explosive about it.” I must be more careful; the man clearly had no compunction about twisting my words. “I do not know who you’ve spoken to, but if they gave the impression that my husband was violent in any way, they misled you.”

  “Ah. So your husband has never engaged in any physical confrontations that you know of?”

  I chose my words carefully. “I have never once seen him raise his hand against anyone. He is not a violent man—it takes a great deal to anger him.”

  “And yet twice in twenty-four hours he was observed in an angry conflict. What am I supposed to believe, Lady Telford, when your husband’s behavior changes so markedly? Has he taken leave of his senses?” He leaned forward over the desk, his eyes fixed on me as if he could catch me in a lie. “Or has his marriage to you created some change in him?”

  “He has not changed,” I protested. “Only…”

  “Only what?”

  The words emerged in a rush. “When my husband had Lord Veridian thrown out, he believed he was defending my honor.”

  The inspector pulled a face of such withering skepticism that I could feel myself shrink. “Pardon my plainness, my lady, but that makes no sense. From what I hear, the only parties maligned by the viscount were your late brother-in-law and the women with whom he consorted.”

  I opened my mouth but found I had no words.

  Now the inspector’s chilly eyes, as gray as his hair, fixed on me even more closely. “If you have anything to say that may remove suspicion from your husband,” said Strack, weighting the words with significance, “you owe it to him to speak. If you have anything to say, however embarrassing, that could keep his neck out of the hangman’s noose, now is the time to say it.”

  With part of my mind I knew that this man was using manipulation to make me speak. But with word already having reached him of the altercation with Lord Veridian as well as the argument with the old baron, he certainly had good reason to view Atticus with suspicion. I could remove some of that suspicion by telling him of my past and Atticus’s mistaken assumptions about me… by revealing my social credentials and my marriage as the lies they were.

  For an instant I felt a terrible doubt. What if being forthright with this man brought infamy upon me—and, what was more important, on Atticus? What would the inspector do when armed with the whole truth about me?

  I knew that if Atticus had been with me he would have told me not to concern myself with the consequences for him, and yet it was for his sake that I dreaded letting the truth be known. But this was a matter of his innocence—and moreover, until he was ruled out as a suspect, the real killer would walk free. I had to believe that telling the truth was the right thing to do, no matter how much havoc it might cause when word escaped Gravesend… as it was bound to do. I took a deep breath, folded my hands in my lap, and looked squarely at the inspector.

  “The truth is this,” I said. “As a girl, I was a servant here at Gravesend. My mother was housekeeper. When I was seventeen I was dismissed and sent away when it was discovered that I had been meeting with Atticus’s brother, Richard.” This was more difficult than I had anticipated. I sat up straighter as if it would lend strength to my will. “It… it was assumed at the time that I was carrying Richard’s child. A false assumption.”

  His expression had not changed, so either I had not shocked him or he was adept at disguising shock. “So Richard left no children behind when he died at Eupatoria.”

  He had been doing research, it seemed. “As to that,” I said slowly, “I cannot say for certain. I only know that there was no child of my body.”

  A quick nod seemed to indicate that he approved of my precision, but, to my great relief, he did not press for more details. “After you were dismissed, what happened?”

  I sketched in how I had passed the years that followed and how Atticus had emerged once more into my life with his peculiar proposition. “At first I think his father was deceived into thinking me a proper match, and he accepted me, more or less. I don’t think he would have respected any bride Atticus brought to Gravesend, but he seemed to find amusement in my conversation. If he had suspicions, he did not bait me with them—and I’m certain he would have done so, had he the opportunity.”

  “So how did he discover the truth about you?”

  “From what I heard him say to Atticus, he must have remembered me and belatedly made the connection that I was the maid who was dismissed.”

  “Did this strike you as peculiar, this belated realization?”

  I shook my head. “Unlike some masters, Lord Telford did not take great notice of the female servants—of any of the servants. I think we were largely faceless to him. Literally so, in fact, for it was the rule then for us to turn our faces to the wall if he came upon us about the house. I think that would have made it difficult for him to recognize me. But not impossible, especially given the notoriety of my dismissal.” I tried to recall what else I had overheard and what might be useful to the inspector. “He seemed to think that Atticus had done something shameful in bringing me here as his wife; he took it as a personal slight.”

&n
bsp; “You must admit that he had some right to feel that way,” observed the inspector. “For a man of his standing to discover that his son has foisted an impostor onto him and has presented him with a chambermaid for a daughter-in-law… well, many men would be incensed at such a thing. I’m putting it as he might have seen it, you understand.”

  “Of course,” I said, quelling the indignant flare of anger that had tried to rise in me. Perhaps he was trying to evoke just such a response from me, perhaps even… a new thought made my eyes widen. “I did not kill him, if that’s what you mean,” I said sharply. “My pride was not stung to the degree that I would have murdered an old man merely for saying some unflattering things about me.”

  He spread his hands in a conciliating gesture, but my outburst had not visibly startled him. “I have not made any such accusation, Lady Telford.”

  “It would be in your mind, though; naturally it would. From your perspective it may seem that I had a great deal to lose should Lord Telford spread word of my true history.”

  “So you had not, in fact, a great deal to lose?”

  “Of course not. My husband was fully aware of my past when he proposed our arrangement, so he wouldn’t have abandoned me had it become common knowledge. The worst consequences would have been our being cut by all his acquaintance.” My voice slowed, and the inspector leaned forward, seizing on my sudden doubt.

  “Indulge me for a moment, my lady. If we were to make a hypothetical case for your murdering your father-in-law, you might have killed him if it would have saved your husband from becoming a pariah, mightn’t you? Think of the shame that would have followed. He would have been dropped from his clubs, snubbed by all his neighbors, derided until the two of you were forced to—what? Leave Gravesend? Sell the property, take up a trade? A living death for a peer… and for his luxury-loving wife, who feared poverty to the extent that you did.”

  “That’s quite enough,” I snapped. “I’m aware of this possibility—indeed, it still exists. Silencing my father-in-law would only have been a temporary stopgap. Once he said the words, they were out in the world; there was no calling them back.”

  That surprised him, perhaps the first thing I had said that did. “Are the walls of Gravesend so easily permeated that one word of gossip can spread through the air of the entire country?” he inquired, only half facetiously.

  “Deride it if you wish, but a house as big as this one always has listening ears. For a start, a good valet is never quite out of earshot of his master if he can prevent it; he needs to be close enough to respond quickly whenever his presence is desired, to the point that he seems to anticipate his master’s wishes if possible. And servants speak to each other about their masters; anything that affects those above stairs affects those below, sometimes to a far greater extent.” My voice had taken on a lecturing quality, and I stopped to gather my thoughts and make certain I was not letting Strack lure me in a direction that I might regret. “What I mean is,” I said, “no matter how much I may dread a future in which my husband and I are cast out of Gravesend, there would have been no advantage, and every disadvantage, to trying to silence Lord Telford in that way. Indeed, I think that if he still lived he would greatly enjoy keeping the secret, precisely so he could hold it over our heads and torment us with it.” Belatedly I realized that this was not strengthening my case, and I fell silent, vexed with myself.

  “Hmm.” He made a few notes in pencil on a sheet of Gravesend stationery. “How would you describe the state of your marriage, Lady Telford?”

  “I assume you have good reason to ask something so intimate.”

  “I do. Are you and your husband generally in accord?”

  I hesitated. There flashed into my mind the memory of lying in Atticus’s embrace as he kissed me half out of my wits… and then fleeing from him in anger and wounded pride. “Like every married couple, we have occasional differences; but for the most part, yes, we are on good terms.”

  “Yet not on good enough terms that you can vouch for his whereabouts on the night that his father died.”

  This was so clumsy an attempt to shake me that I almost laughed. “Inspector, my husband’s father was seriously ill—enough to warrant sending a servant out in the middle of the night to fetch the doctor. If you think that in those circumstances a reasonable man would calmly compose himself for sleep at his wife’s side… well, you either underrate the bond of filial loyalty or greatly overrate my charms.”

  He did not find my riposte amusing, however. “This kinship you speak of,” he said intently. “Were your husband and his father close, then?”

  I knew he would catch me out if I overstated the degree of warmth between Atticus and his father. Feeling my way with caution, I said, “I’m sure you know by now, having spoken to my husband, that he and his father argued from time to time, that they have—had—incompatible personalities.”

  “I’ve heard something to that effect, yes.”

  “The truth is that Lord Telford loved Richard better than Atticus. And perhaps in the years since Richard’s death his father, in his grief, exaggerated Richard’s virtues and turned him into a paragon.” My voice slowed as I realized I might have been describing my own mental processes. “He viewed Atticus’s normal human weaknesses with a more jaundiced and resentful eye, contrasting him always with the son he had loved and lost, whom he had come to look on as impossibly superior.”

  As had I, not so long ago now. Unlike Lord Telford, however, I had come to appreciate the man Atticus had become… so much so that the idea that he might be prosecuted for murder struck a terrible cold into my heart. The thought of losing him filled me with something akin to panic.

  Strack was watching me closely, and I wondered what my face had revealed to him. Mentally I gave myself a shake. “My husband is the kind of man who feels the obligations of honor and loyalty very deeply,” I said. “He and his father would have had to have been seriously alienated for him not to have had Lord Telford’s welfare uppermost in his mind. Whether he liked his father I cannot say, but he would have died himself it if could have prevented this terrible thing from happening.”

  “So even though your husband had gone so far as to throw a peer of the realm out of his house for having indirectly insulted you, he would not have raised his hand against his father for making specific, personal aspersions about your character.”

  I knew how weak my argument seemed, but that only made me more desperate—and more stubborn. “He would never have struck his father,” I stated. “Lord Veridian was different; he would have been able to defend himself if there had been any question of a physical altercation.”

  “What you are telling me, then,” said the inspector, “is that your husband had neither the motive nor the temperament to kill his father.”

  “Exactly,” I said in relief.

  “Whereas you, on the other hand, did.”

  “But I’ve told you, it was too late—”

  He silenced me with a curt gesture. “Even if I grant that it was too late to stop word of your true origins from spreading, that in itself could be powerful motive for murder. Your father-in-law was doing his best to poison your marriage and your place in this house, Lady Telford. It might have been too late to undo the damage he had done, but it would not have been too late for revenge.”

  After what I had said, I could not now pretend to be indifferent. Certainly the old baron’s berating of Atticus had roused a primal rage in me. Perhaps I had a streak of the Furies in my character. But if that were so… “Inspector Strack,” I said, “you seem a good judge of character. If I had wanted to avenge myself on my father-in-law, do you think I would have chosen so peaceful a means of dispatching him as smothering?”

  Feminine voices rose in the hallway, and Strack’s eyes flicked toward the door, behind me. He must have instructed Birch not to enter without permission, for a knock sounded. I had to repress my now-instinctive response and let Strack answer. It was strange to realize how proprietary I h
ad become after so short a time as Gravesend’s mistress.

  It was indeed Birch who opened the door, but it was Genevieve who fairly flew into the room, towing a reluctant-looking Henriette by the hand.

  “Inspector Strack?” she demanded. “We must speak with you at once. Henriette has evidence that is vital to your investigation.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Her attempt to sound serious was undermined by her charming accent and the pretty sight she made even in her mourning dress of sober black. Her blue eyes were bright with determination, her cheeks flushed, and I was not surprised to see an answering flush darken Strack’s cheeks.

  Without seeming to be aware of it, he smoothed down his moustache with one knuckle, first one side, then the other, all without removing his eyes from the girl. He had risen upon her entrance, and seemed now to be trying to stand up even taller. Poor man—he little guessed how signally he was failing to impress her. But the flash of sympathy I felt for him suddenly made him feel less like an intruder.

  “Miss Genevieve Rowe, I believe?” he said deferentially. “I had intended to speak to you confidentially. If perhaps we could meet alone after Mrs. Blackwood and I are done—”

  “I won’t hear of it,” I said sweetly. “Without a chaperone? It would be unseemly. Why not carry out your questioning now?”

  Strack shifted his weight from one foot to the other and coughed. “It isn’t how I prefer to conduct an investigation—”

  “Listen to me, if you please.” Genevieve’s imperious tone should have been comical, coupled with her frivolous appearance, but she had a trick of tipping her head back and narrowing her eyes that seemed to be quelling the inspector most effectively. I reflected that I should learn how to use the technique myself. “I have come to tell you what Henriette saw. Henriette is my Aunt Clara’s maid, and she is most concerned that she witnessed something important.”