With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense

by DeWees, Amanda

  “Why does she not say so herself?”

  “Henriette speaks very little English,” I explained. “Of all the household, Genevieve is most fluent in French, so it’s natural that Henriette would go to her with information.” Despite my calm words, I was troubled by this unexpected intrusion. I did not like having no advance warning of what the maid was about to tell Strack.

  Strack, too, was troubled, but for a different reason. “I don’t speak French. How can I trust that you’re translating her testimony accurately?”

  In response, Genevieve offered up a performance that would have made Sybil Ingram proud. Her lower lip quivered ever so slightly, and her eyes went huge and wounded for an instant before she squeezed them shut and turned her face away as if fighting tears. “I am no liar, Mr. Strack,” she whispered pitifully. “It is true that I want to clear my foster father’s name, but to suggest that I would deliberately tell a falsehood…!” She broke off as if words had failed her, and I rose from my chair to put my arms around her.

  “Inspector, you must see that Vivi is incapable of such a thing,” I chided, as she buried her head in my shoulder and gave a long injured sniff. “The sweet girl has been very sheltered, and to accuse her so—!”

  “Pray don’t distress yourself so, miss,” he exclaimed, rounding the desk to offer her his handkerchief. “I am a blunt man, and I spoke too roundly. I merely wish to make sure that—”

  “That I do not deceive you with false information, like a—a common criminal!” She sniffed again and uttered some broken French phrase. I patted her back and did my best not to smile.

  “Not at all, miss, not at all. Nothing could be further from my mind. Please, be seated, and be good enough to forget my words. Lady Telford, do you think we might have some tea brought for the young lady? Or perhaps some spirits of ammonia? Dear me, I never meant…”

  “I shall be quite well,” Vivi announced tragically, seating herself in the offered chair and crossing her ankles with a martyred air, “once you have heard Henriette’s testimony. Then we shall trouble you no more.”

  Henriette herself had been observing these goings-on with a faint crease between her eyebrows that suggested perplexity, but in all other regards she was so composed as she stood quietly by with her hands folded that I wondered whether Genevieve had prepared her for her theatrics. I had to trust that Genevieve knew what she was doing… and that Henriette’s testimony would not prove dangerous. It was impossible to read anything from her calm demeanor.

  “Henriette happened to be crossing the long gallery just after dawn this morning,” Genevieve announced. “As you must know, the late Lord Telford’s chambers are located at the east end of the gallery.”

  “Why was she in that vicinity?” asked Strack, seating himself again behind the desk, but with a far less confident air than that with which he had questioned me.

  “I shall ask her.” Genevieve directed a question at the maid, and Henriette replied in a calm stream of the same language. “Henriette was on her way to Aunt Clara’s rooms to ready her for the day,” Genevieve told us when Henriette had fallen silent. “She took that route because she knew that I had dropped a glove yesterday and thought that it might have been when Mr. Bertram and I visited the gallery to look at a painting of the first Lady Telford.”

  Bertram again, was it? If Genevieve intended to accept him as a suitor, I must begin acting as chaperone. Now was scarcely the time to be distracted by a side issue, however.

  “What did she observe when she passed?”

  Again Henriette gave her answer and Vivi translated it. “All was quiet. Then the door opened and a man emerged, walking quickly. He did not notice Henriette, for she carried no light, and he quickly crossed the gallery and made for the small servants’ door just before the entrance to the main stair.”

  “So he knew his way about the house,” mused Strack. “Can Henriette describe this man?”

  For the first time Vivi looked genuinely troubled. She glanced at me and then dropped her eyes to the floor. “Yes,” she said slowly. “She says it was my Uncle Atticus.”

  From the sudden alert tension of the inspector’s posture, I knew that this must be a damning statement. “What time did my husband say he left his father’s rooms?” I asked. The words forced themselves out of me.

  Strack gave me an even look. “At least a half hour before that,” he said, and let that sink in before continuing to Genevieve: “She had no doubt it was Mr. Blackwood—I should say, Lord Telford?”

  Genevieve put the question to Henriette, who shook her head decidedly. “Mr. Blackwood,” she said in heavily accented tones.

  “She is positive,” said Genevieve sadly.

  “Even without a light? In conditions so dark that he did not even see her?” I objected. “I don’t mean to suggest that Henriette is deliberately misleading us, but I would hate for Mr. Strack to be misled by testimony that isn’t entirely certain.”

  Genevieve, to my embarrassment, repeated this in French to the maid, who shook her head again, this time even more stubbornly, as she answered. “She says she is certain,” Genevieve told us.

  “This changes matters,” said Mr. Strack, and suddenly he was brisk and almost jaunty as he scribbled notes. “Changes them materially. I believe I’ve detained you ladies long enough, and I’ll need to speak to Lord Telford again.”

  “A moment,” I said suddenly. “Was the man carrying anything?”

  Genevieve translated the question, and Henriette shook her head with emphasis. That meant the man had used no walking stick. My heart beat just a bit faster as hope swelled in me.

  “Henriette said that the man she saw walked quickly as he crossed to the door.” I wasn’t certain how to phrase my question without putting the answer in her mouth, and I knew that Strack would be quick to discount the response if I seemed to lead Henriette to it in any way. “Was there anything else that struck her about his—his manner of progress across the hall?” I asked carefully.

  After the usual back-and-forth, Genevieve said, “She says no.” Then her eyes widened as if she realized the purpose behind my question, and a smile began to curve her mouth. “I shall ask her to show us, non? To give us a demonstration?”

  “What is this in aid of?” Strack wanted to know, but I said, “Indulge us just a minute more, and we’ll tell you.”

  Henriette gave Genevieve a baffled look when the girl conveyed our request, but then she seemed to reconcile herself to it; this was, after all, probably not the first eccentricity she had encountered during her years in service. After a moment’s thought, she set off across the room to the door with a long, easy, rapid stride. When she reached the door she turned, said, “Voilà!” and spread her hands as if to ask if that had satisfied us.

  Indeed it had. Vivi and I clutched each other’s hands in delight, and I almost laughed with relief. “Mr. Strack,” I told him, as he stood giving us a long-suffering look, “my husband was born with a club foot. He received treatment for it as a boy, but it still troubles him sometimes. That means that he generally walks with a stick, and a slight limp is still evident under certain circumstances—”

  “Such as when he is weary from an evening of dancing followed by attending his deathly ill father all night,” Vivi chimed in. She darted over to Henriette and kissed her on both cheeks. “It was not Uncle Atticus that Henriette saw after all!”

  The inspector was not easily convinced, however.

  “She said she recognized him,” he pointed out. “I find it difficult to believe that this house contains another man who could be mistaken for someone she is so familiar with.”

  “Well, the house was full of guests and their servants,” I said, “a great many of them men. They have all departed by now, so it’s impossible for us to ask them to assemble where Henriette can examine the features of all of the men. It’s possible that one of them bears a resemblance to my husband—enough to pass for him in a dim gallery, seen not at all at close quarters, when my
husband is the man that Henriette might have reasonably expected to be emerging from his father’s room.”

  The look Strack gave me was not at all friendly, but I was too happy and relieved to care. He might glare at me from then until doomsday if it suited him; I knew only that Vivi and Henriette and I had to some degree lessened the suspicion that had hovered over Atticus. “In other words,” he said tonelessly, “you think that one of your house guests murdered his host? Or a servant did so? What possible benefit could such an act be to them?”

  I could not keep from smiling. “That’s for you to determine, isn’t it, inspector? A man as ill-tempered and eccentric as my father-in-law may well have made enemies among his neighbors and tenants. I’ll be only too happy to make up a list of all of our guests with their addresses so that you may go interview them all.”

  “You are too kind.” The sarcasm fairly dripped from the words, but in my giddiness I let it pass without rebuke.

  As much (I suspected) for the sake of appearances as from any real hope of turning up additional evidence, the inspector remained for another few hours, questioning other servants. Brutus he had already spoken to, but he brought him in to examine further. By the time Atticus and I stood arm in arm by the front entrance to see the inspector on his way—Strack having declined rather rudely our offer of hospitality for the night—he looked to be in an ill humor.

  My own high spirits had ebbed, if truth be told. Now that I felt Atticus was safe, the knowledge that some unknown person had invaded our home and brutally killed a member of my family finally seemed to be sinking in. I squeezed Atticus’s arm more tightly, and after a swift glance at my face he placed his hand over mine.

  “It’s a horrible business,” he said quietly.

  I nodded, unable to speak for a moment.

  “Don’t worry. He strikes me as a tenacious man, and a just one. He’ll find whoever did it.”

  “I hope so,” I whispered.

  “You and Vivi should stay together tonight,” he continued. “I’ll tell her to have her maid gather whatever things she needs and take them to your room. And I’ll sleep on a cot in the dressing room so as to be close at hand should anyone try to disturb the two of you. If that won’t be an intrusion,” he added.

  I made myself smile. “It seems a very sensible arrangement.” More sensible, probably, than my sharing his room and his bed… as bewitching a prospect as that seemed for the instant before I firmly shut my mind against the idea.

  Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I would have been horrified at entertaining such a thought, as betrayed as I had felt. But the irruption of far graver matters had made that long-ago breach of trust seem like a relatively minor transgression, and one that I found I could forgive in view of the countless ways Atticus had shown consideration for me.

  Indeed, perhaps it was more than consideration. From what I had overheard his father say during that last argument, it seemed that Atticus might have deliberately misled me with his tale of being rejected as a suitor by all the marriageable women in his circle. If he had truly not sought anyone as a bride in earnest until he approached me, that led me to consider the possibility that he had held me in his heart during all the years after I had left Gravesend. It was a thought of poignant beauty—a thought that humbled me.

  Thinking about the cause of our parting, however, reminded me of a more pressing matter. “I must warn you,” I said to him, “that I told Strack all of my history, and all about our agreement. I suspect that word will spread—may already have begun to, in fact. I felt that in so serious a matter I ought to be completely honest, and for my own part I’m not ashamed… but I do hope that you won’t be made to pay a price for my low origins.”

  He seemed lost in thought, and I wondered with sinking heart if I had done the wrong thing. The last thing I wanted was for him to suffer because of me.

  After a moment he seemed to come to himself. “I’m sorry, Clara, my mind was somewhere else. What were you saying? No, of course you should not regret having been forthright. Whatever comes, we shall weather it.”

  We would weather it. In spite of all of the tension and worry casting a cloud over us, I felt my heart lift at the implied promise that he and I would face the future together.

  Because of the excitement of the day, Genevieve was in a talkative mood and did not want to let either of us sleep. When she climbed into bed beside me, looking in her nightdress like the princess before encountering the pea, she was chattering away and showed no signs of stopping until Atticus’s voice, muffled but plaintive, came from behind the dressing-room door: “Vivi. Have some mercy, for God’s sake.”

  That quieted but did not silence her. “He is probably cross at giving up his place to me tonight,” she told me in a whisper, and smothered a giggle behind her hand.

  “Genevieve! You should not be thinking about such things.”

  “You need not sound so shocked, Aunt Clara. But if it embarrasses you I shall not speak of it further.”

  “Good.”

  “Though why you should be embarrassed I cannot imagine. You are married, after all, with a baby coming! And what a beautiful baby it shall be, with the two of you as parents. I shall love to have a little cousin to play with.”

  “I’m far too old to be thinking about having a child,” I objected.

  She waved that away with a grand unconcern. “I have known ladies older than you who had babies. Plenty of babies.”

  The discussion was threatening to get out of hand, and in any case a question had been nagging at me ever since our session with the inspector. “Genevieve,” I whispered, “when you brought Henriette to see Inspector Strack, did you already know that the man she’d seen walked without a limp?”

  She was silent for a moment, then: “I did not know. But I was nearly certain. Henriette is sharp eyed; she would have told me of such a thing at once if it had been so. Just as she would have said if he had carried a walking stick.”

  “So you brought her in while I was with the inspector so that I might raise the possibility.”

  “Exactement! It was more convincing coming from you.”

  Good heavens. Such a gift for strategy seemed wasted on a debutante; Genevieve should have been ruling nations alongside Queen Victoria herself.

  I was still not entirely convinced, though, that it was suggestibility that had led Henriette to believe she had seen Atticus, and that troubled me. There had been that time when I, too, had thought I had glimpsed him where he was not… “Genevieve,” I said softly, “do you believe in ghosts?”

  At any other time I might not have asked the question. But huddled together like children in the darkness, which woke strange fears and invited the sharing of secrets, it did not seem so foolish to ask.

  Genevieve, too, seemed to be more susceptible to talk of spirits in this setting. “I do not know,” she answered, and her whisper was very thoughtful. “I do not think I do… but I should die if I ever met one. I do hope that, if there are any about, they leave us be tonight.” She surprised me by kissing my cheek and then sank her head deep into the pillow beside mine. “Good night, Aunt Clara.”

  “Good night, Vivi,” I said, touched. Was this what it was like really to have a niece—or a daughter? I had never thought to find myself in that position, but I had grown quite fond of Genevieve now that I was no longer—I forced myself to admit it—jealous of the place she held in Atticus’s heart. He had a big heart, after all, quite large enough to hold the both of us in it.

  A sigh escaped me as I gazed across the darkened room toward the dressing-room door. There had been no sign of life from that quarter after his plea to Genevieve for quiet. Was he sleeping? I hoped so, for his own sake. The thought crossed my mind that, no matter how companionable it was to share my bed with Genevieve, how much more secure and protected I would have felt nestled up against my husband with his arms around me.

  The idea was impractical, but when I tried to chase it away, the thoughts that took its pl
ace were far more unsettling. A murderer was still on the loose, after all, and the inspector still harbored suspicions about Atticus. When at last I fell into a troubled sleep, I dreamed that the ghost of old Lord Telford was leering out from behind every death mask on his sitting-room walls, laughing silently at me and Atticus.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The next day Inspector Strack resumed his questioning, having departed no farther the night before than to a nearby inn. When I passed the library door, I could hear his level voice alternating with the higher, nervous tones of one of the maids.

  I was at a bit of a loose end unless he decided to question me again. Atticus had been gone when I had rather hesitantly knocked at the dressing-room door that morning, and I had not seen him at breakfast or about the house. As I passed the drawing room a big, familiar laugh rang out, and I found Mr. Bertram and Genevieve within, sitting close together on a settee with a large volume of watercolors spread over their laps. Both looked up quickly when I entered, and I thought there was a little dimming of the smiles on their faces when they saw me. I was intruding on their wooing, evidently.

  “Mr. Bertram,” I said calmly, crossing toward him, and he hastily set the book aside and rose to clasp my outstretched hand. “I’m glad to see you, and I know Vivi must be as well.”

  “My dear Mrs.—I mean, my dear Lady Telford,” he said contritely, “I am so sorry that you find me in such unbecoming mirth. I came to express my condolences to you and your husband, but I was waylaid by this impertinent miss as soon as I had said hello and goodbye to Blackwood. Please accept my sympathies for the loss of your father-in-law.”

  “It was most kind of you to come, and I’m grateful to you for bringing a smile to Genevieve’s face. I’m afraid we have been keeping company with no little anxiety and horror here, and a friendly face is most welcome. But you say my husband has gone?”

  “To the building site, yes. I had planned to ride out with him, but he begged me to excuse him so that he might have some time in solitude.” He rubbed the back of his neck in a boyish gesture of unease. “I hope I did right, Lady Telford. I didn’t feel I ought to insist upon accompanying him.”