Daughters of Disguise (Lady C. Investigates Book 4)

by Issy Brookw

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded.

  Ruby tossed her head back but she kept her eyes on Stanley. “Someone feels it is his duty to meddle in my business,” she said.

  “I am not — m-meddling,” Stanley said. He dropped his gaze. “I am sorry, my lady. Did you need me?”

  “Yes. I need you to accompany me on a walk. Ruby, go and ask Mrs Jones if you can be useful to her.”

  “My lady? I am no inn servant.”

  “You will need a wide range of skills in your future life,” Cordelia said through tight lips. “The things that I have taught you are all very well for a lady’s maid, but will not serve you as the wife of a tradesman. You need to know plain cooking, the tricks of cleaning, and how to manage a household. Go. I am doing you a favour.”

  Nothing about Ruby’s demeanour suggested that she agreed it was a favour, but she left the room.

  Stanley looked deeply unhappy. Cordelia suspected she knew what was plaguing him. She told him to go and get his hat and jacket, and meet her in the lobby of the inn.

  “Let us go and explore the castle,” she said to him once they were both ready to leave. It was a ridiculous suggestion. They’d been around the heap of stones. It didn’t really warrant a second visit. But it was a place to go.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  They walked in silence at first. Stanley needed time to settle. Eventually, as they wandered along the seafront, she broached the subject. “Stanley, have you been arguing with Ruby about her courting?”

  He hesitated. He didn’t want to speak behind someone else’s back. She let him ruminate on it for a while. He broke, in the end.

  “Yes, my lady,” he said. “I am concerned for her.”

  “I am aware that she is becoming involved with a young man. He is apprenticed to a barber, and I have spoken with the barber himself. I do not think you need to be concerned. And anyway, the young man has a long apprenticeship ahead of him, and cannot wed for the moment.”

  “But he can do other things,” Stanley said, stammering hard. “What of her? And what of her soul? Oh, my lady, I wish I could make her see that she … is worth so much more than she thinks.”

  “Indeed she is,” Cordelia said. “Your concern gives you credit. But what if the apprenticeship ended early, for example, and they did get married? What then? Would you not be happy for her?”

  “Of course I would,” Stanley said, and he looked deeply unhappy about it. Cordelia was unconvinced. It was obvious that the young man held something of a candle for her maid, but it was also clear that he would never — could never — act upon it.

  And Ruby’s forward ways must be some source of pain for the young and upright coach boy, Cordelia reflected.

  They had reached the ruin of stones that was still called the “castle”. It was a pleasant place for people to walk and talk, and she saw that it did deserve a second visit. The remains of the castle were on a headland that rose up above the bay below, although it was not as tall and imposing as the sketches in books had led her to believe it was. The views in particular, across the sea, were beautiful.

  There was a fashionably antiquarian charm about the place, and it was popular with both tourists and locals alike.

  There was, like in the larger towns and cities, a good turnout of people who wanted to make some money, too. There was someone selling seaweed and another selling small pies. One enterprising soul had dragged up a small cart with three barrels of cider on it, and was selling the drink in rented pots and tankards. The business all around her was conducted in Welsh and English; many of the tourists seemed to be Welsh-speakers themselves, and the best merchants were the ones who would speak both languages with ease.

  Then she spotted a booth that had been set up. There was a long table and all manner of pamphlets and leaflets on it, and the booth itself was of thick canvas around a wooden frame, like a sideshow one would see at a fair or circus. Standing behind the table, a poster in his hands, was the tall figure of the man she and Ruby had met when they had climbed Craig-lais. She struggled to remember his name. Twm came to mind, but that was his nickname, wasn’t it?

  Stanley was drawn to the booth, along with a handful of other people. “Not more Chartists, I hope, my lady,” he muttered. “You had better stay back.”

  “No, I know this man,” she said, and went up to the table. “Good day!”

  “Ah, hello, madam. Your maid is not with you today?”

  “No, I have my coachman’s apprentice here, Stanley,” she said, remembering that the man seemed to like to be introduced to everyone, no matter their station. She had almost expected him to call her “Cordelia” rather than “madam”. He would certainly never call her “my lady.”

  “Good day, Stanley. I’m Gethin Hughes,” he said.

  “Ah — Twm Shhh…?” Cordelia said.

  “Twm Sion Cati, my other name, well done!” he said. “Go ahead and call me Twm otherwise I, and everyone else, will be confused. May I interest you in a sale of paintings to raise funds for the education of poor children?”

  “Of course! I should be delighted.” She saw that his leaflets and information were all to do with philanthropic endeavours both locally and abroad. Stanley began to leaf through them, too, interested in the missions and the more religious charities.

  “Are you a Chartist, sir?” Cordelia had to ask, as she scanned a sheet of paper which was calling for better working conditions in the mines for boys. Since 1842, of course, boys under ten had been banned from working underground but the polemic she was reading wanted that to go further and insist that boys should be fourteen before they undertook mine work.

  “I have some aims in concert with them, but I hesitate to ally myself completely with the movement,” he said.

  “This proposal here,” she said, “would that not actually cause more damage? These boys work to bring in an income for the family. In some areas, mine work is the only work. By preventing them from working for a further four years, surely some families will experience even greater hardship. What are the boys to do? Sit at home and eat the food they can’t afford?”

  “They should be in schools or trades, or apprentices to masters who treat them well,” Twm said. “I don’t disagree with you but the problem is not one for those people to solve themselves; it is incumbent on men like myself, and women like yourself too, madam, to effect the changes in society needed, for the benefit of the lower orders. For all.”

  “I suppose you support free libraries also?”

  “Naturally,” he said. “I welcome the new act for the establishment of museums but we must go further and empower local boroughs to found reading rooms and libraries that are open to all. The opposition, I am sad to say, comes not from the workers nor from the elite. No, it is the rising class of middling sorts that seek to stymie these initiatives. They are precarious in their position and they feel threatened by those above and below. It’s a sad state of affairs, is it not?”

  “Indeed it is,” she said. “I wonder, though, that you have chosen to do your work here, in a small seaside town. Would you not effect greater change in one of the cities of England, like Manchester?”

  “Certainly that seething cess pit of a town attracts me,” Twm said with his customary grin. “But there is work to do here, first, and now that we have lost two of our most prominent workers for change…” His smile faded, and at first, Cordelia thought it was because he was thinking of Miss Scott and Miss Walker.

  But then she followed his gaze and saw what had really stopped his mirth. Davies the Scavenger was riding past, on the road that ran along the lower edge of the mounds and depressions that had once formed the castle’s outer walls. He was followed by the cart pulled by a stocky pony, and two scruffy men walked by the cart. It was half-full of rubbish, sorted into piles.

  Davies rose up in the stirrups, straightening his legs, and twisted to shout over the people’s heads. Cordelia had no idea what he was saying, as it was a barrage of Welsh.
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br />   “I shall not answer him,” Twm said, and he began to fiddle with the pamphlets laid out on the table, sorting them and stacking them and fanning them out again, all a distraction tactic.

  “What is he saying?”

  “Oh, he likes to rail against me, and taunt me for my failure,” he said. “I mentioned it before, I think; my intention to use the position of Scavenger to improve the working lives of the paupers who have to do the work itself. He mocks me, that is all.”

  “Why did the council give the position to him?” Cordelia said. “He does not appear to be a popular man.” For, as she watched, she realised that the two men walking by the cart were acting as much as bodyguards for Davies as they were scavenging for refuse. The townsfolk avoided Davies, for the most part. A few looked his way but the expressions on their faces were blank, or unfriendly.

  “He is one of them, and that is the end of it, I am afraid,” Twm said, shrugging. “It is a system that must end, but I am not sure how.”

  “The court leet, the crack…”

  “The crachach. Yes. So you see, it does not matter how popular or unpopular Davies is, and let me tell you, he is unpopular. It doesn’t matter, see, because he is who he is.”

  “Are all the shopkeepers and business folk part of this?” she asked, though she suspected she knew the answer.

  “Most but not all.”

  “Mr Scott, the apothecary? Mr Lloyd, the barber? Mr Mogg, the wine importer?”

  “All but Lloyd,” Twm said. “And there are a few more, up and down the street, but only a few who are not of the council. And me myself, of course. I am an incomer too, and no part of this sorry cabal.”

  “But this Davies is protected by his status,” she said, musingly, as she watched him sit back down in the saddle and kick his horse onwards.

  Davies had ridden closer and he caught her words, and he pulled up his mare. “Protected from what?” he said in his spitting way, his words thick with the undercurrent of Welsh always below the surface.

  Stanley, quivering but brave, stepped half in front of Cordelia and choked out a few words, stammering so hard that no one knew what he had said, but she was very proud of him nonetheless. His meaning was perfectly clear.

  “From too much examination into your working practises,” Twm said, appearing at Cordelia’s other side as he came out from behind his table.

  “Angel pen ffordd, diawl pen tân, ynte?” called a woman, with a loud and cackling tone, calling the women around her to roar with laughter.

  “What?” Cordelia said.

  Twm whispered, “An angel on the road, a devil at the fire. At the fireplace, I suppose.”

  “Two-faced?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I heard you!” Davies said, addressing the woman who had hurled the apparent insult at him. “Cer i grafu!”

  She didn’t need Twm to translate that. It was clearly an angry dismissal. A few others called out and she knew from the tone that they were more insults and taunts.

  “You’ll have me blamed for every ill in this town,” Davies said, now addressing a man to his other side. He kicked at his horse again to urge it forward. “The floods, they were me, weren’t they? And the heat wave. Oh, and what happened to those ladies, was that me, too?”

  “Was it, though?” the same man shouted. Cordelia could not see him but he had a gravelly and distinctive voice.

  “Of course it wasn’t! I was drinking in the Ship all day and everyone there will tell you so. Get out of my way now, drewgi!”

  He forced his way through the crowd that had gathered, and the cart lumbered behind. The two men seemed oblivious to the altercation, and indeed, they were left unmolested by the jeering public, who recognised them as workers with no choice as to whom they served.

  “What do you think, Twm?” Cordelia said as the people around them thinned out, pursuing other distractions now. “Could he have killed Miss Walker and injured Miss Scott? I know they were friends of yours.”

  “I would believe anything of that man,” Twm said. “But it is likely to be true that he was in the public house all that day. He is known for it.”

  “I shall have to see about that,” Cordelia said. “There is something wholly unpleasant about that man.”

  “Go carefully,” Twm said. “It is difficult to touch him.”

  “I would not want to touch the man,” she retorted with a sniff. “But justice, real justice, is as open to all as your free libraries are.”

  “Would that it were so,” Twm said, and he sighed heavily.

  Stanley spoke up. “My mistress is always on the side of right, and that means she cannot fail.”

  Twm widened his eyes in surprise, and met Cordelia’s equally surprised gaze. Stanley’s hubris made her uneasy.

  She hoped that he was correct.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Incomers, she thought. People who are not of the old court leet. People who are not part of the council. People who are not burgesses.

  People like Caradog Lloyd, the barber, who spoke so disparagingly of the ladies. And she had a strong feeling, now, that there was some link between him and them, from their shared past in the village. It could tell her more about who could want to harm the ladies, she thought, if only she could ask the right questions.

  So Cordelia took Stanley with her and went from the castle, back through the narrow twisting streets, to the barber’s shop. She asked him to come in with her, and to watch and learn as much as he could. She was certain, after her last encounter with the man, that she did not want to be alone with him. He was too sure of his attractiveness.

  It was quiet in the shop, and George was just being sent out on an errand. He nodded without recognition as he waited just in the entrance for both Stanley and Cordelia to come in, then he went out carrying some parcels without a backwards glance.

  Caradog grinned widely at the pair of them. “Ahh, madam holidaymaker — Lady Cornbrook, was it not? — and the mistress of the woman my apprentice has taken a shine to.”

  Stanley bristled.

  “Indeed,” she said.

  “And are you here to have the lad smartened up?” Caradog nodded at Stanley and began to pull out a chair ready for him.

  “Ah — no.” She weighed up the pros and cons of revealing her true intent, and decided that the time had come to be honest. “I am investigating the murder of Miss Walker and the attempted murder of Miss Scott.”

  He laughed, then grew serious for a moment, then relaxed and laughed again. “You? Under whose authority? None, I would say. Well, it is a fine pastime for an idle lady, is it not? But I wager I could amuse you a lot more than a little light armchair sleuthing, if you are looking for something to fill your empty hours with.” He smarmed his way over to her and Stanley coughed.

  “I am working with the authorities,” she told him. She decided not to say that it was only Constable Evans and that he had been barred from investigating further. “But you must not feel as if you are a suspect,” she went on. “I am seeking only to find out more about the ladies, and you knew them as children, didn’t you?”

  “Who said that?” he demanded.

  “Why, you yourself said as much, when I came to see you last.”

  “Did I?”

  “Do you deny it?” she said, pressing him.

  Caradog finally stepped away from her, and wandered over to the bench on the wall below a long mirror. He tidied up some brushes, and said, “No, I don’t deny it. I just don’t care to be associated with them, that is all.”

  “And why is that?”

  “The obvious reasons! They were busybodies, do-gooders, and unnatural in their dress. It was against all reason. They had ideas about men and women that were … well, they must have been from the devil.”

  “And are you a churchgoer, Mr Lloyd?”

  “Who, me? Oh, chapel on a Sunday, of course,” he said, and his manner was so dismissive she immediately knew him to be lying, and unconcerned about that
lie. “So if I am not a suspect,” he went on, “who is?”

  “I cannot possibly disclose that. I would like to hear, from you, more about the past history of the ladies. I have been asking about their possible enemies here in this town, but what of the village you all came from? That is why I am here to talk to you.”

  “I had nothing to do with them,” he replied shortly.

  “Nothing at all? In a small village? Why did you leave?”

  “To start this business, of course!”

  And that seemed entirely reasonable. She nodded. “And you can think of no one — neither here nor there — who would stoop to the deeds that have been committed?”

  “Not really, no.” He licked his lips. “I am feeling a little persecuted here, you must know.”

  “I can’t see how.”

  “Have you been going around the town asking everyone?”

  “Yes,” Cordelia said. “I have, as it happens. There are mixed feelings about the ladies. And yourself, Mr Lloyd.”

  “Me? Why would anyone be against me?”

  “I have never yet seen a customer in this shop,” she said. “And you are not a burgess, are you?”

  “I am not yet,” he said. “But it is early days.”

  “Do you think they will accept you? You, an incomer?”

  “I am Welsh. They will,” he said. “There are some old sorts on the council, but they cannot stay in power forever, you know. Anyway, there is more than one way to get Wil to bed.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just that, I am sure that things will change for me, over time,” he said. “One way or another.”

  “Who is it on the council, these old sorts, who seem to be thwarting you?” She took a deep breath and stepped closer towards him again, dropping her voice. “That must be so frustrating for you.”

  “It is,” he said. “Oh, they are all pleasant enough people, to my face, except that Davies, of course. Rhys-Potter and the rest of the Potter family, they seem to have most of the positions on the council.”