by Tessa Arlen
“Yes, that’s right. So what did I do then? Oh yes, now I remember, I talked to Tricky.”
Clementine smiled, what a perfect name for young Trevor Tricklebank.
“Tricky? Oh good heavens, is that what he is called? Tricky! It is a perfectly splendid name for him. I wonder if Hermione knows!” Clementine laughed at the thought of Hermione’s affable twit of a nephew, with his continual ability to charm the old lady and at the same time make no effort to fulfill his obligations as her only surviving family member.
“I am quite sure Trevor has been called Tricky ever since his days at Harrow. We talked of money, what else?” He laughed, sharing the joke with her that he was sought after because of his prowess for making lots of it. “Everyone is worried about money these days, thanks to the exorbitant taxes we pay.”
“I don’t know how they manage their allowances at all, these young men with their highly expensive way of life” said Clementine, carefully guiding the conversation back to Tricky.
“Well, they gamble a good deal, a big win here and there. Hopefully they don’t touch their capital.” Mr. Greenberg shook his head at the profligacy of the financially unenlightened and ate another oyster.
“So you stayed downstairs with Tricky, sorted out his financial affairs, and kept him company.”
“Until Miss Wells-Thornton came down so they might leave for another party together.” He smiled at her and she thought for a moment that he winked an eye.
“So you saw them leave, then?” Clementine knew she was now pushing the limit, but Mr. Greenberg seemed not in the least put out.
“Yes, I saw them leave. I walked outside with them to get a breath of air. Mr. Tricklebank put Miss Wells-Thornton into his motorcar and told the driver to take her on to her party. And then he said he would hail a taxicab, and off he walked into the night.”
“But surely he was supposed to be going on with Miss Wells-Thornton!” Clementine pretended to be shocked.
“And that is why he is called Tricky, my dear Lady Montfort, because that is what he told his aunt so he could leave what was doubtless a boring evening for him, and go off and enjoy the town in his own way.” It was quite clear that Mr. Greenberg approved of Tricky’s tactics, and he laughed in approval of his naughtiness to his aunt, and Clementine laughed, too. It was so entirely typical that an aging old lady who controlled the lives of countless people could be so easily duped by the one person she doted on.
“What about Captain Vetiver? Was he still in the dining room alone with Sir Reginald?”
“I have no idea at all about Captain Vetiver.” Clementine distinctly got the impression that Aaron Greenberg had no interest at all in the captain. “The dining-room door was closed and one of the footmen said that Sir Reginald had made it clear not to disturb them until he rang.”
A waiter filled their glasses with champagne and they thoughtfully sipped for a moment or two.
“The footman said ‘them’?”
“Yes, the footman said ‘them.’” He caught her eye and shook his head. “But Vetiver is not the type, my dear Lady Montfort, to do something as distasteful as stab a guest in someone else’s house—he is far too nice for that. It was an act of brutality, and Vetiver is too correct, too clean, too much of a hand-washer.” Mr. Greenberg laid down his fork and lifted his glass.
“Well, who then?” Her straightforward question made him laugh.
“Now don’t try to lure me into playing that game—you remember, my dear Lady Montfort, we have been told we mustn’t chatter about what happened that night. Of course I am assuming they meant talking to people who were not present at Winston’s birthday party, otherwise we would be guilty of doing something like breaking the Official Secrets Act.” He took a contemplative sip from his glass. “No, I think some socialist got in through the dining-room window. Hermione should have hired a porter for the front door, a big brawny chap with a nice stout truncheon. A shame all around really. Lady Ryderwood’s voice is superb and we were only treated to one song, and Miss Gaskell’s playing was so simpatico.”
Mr. Greenberg popped another oyster into his mouth, and said more to himself than to her, “Mmm … like kissing the sea on the lips.” And Clementine, for the first time in years, blushed.
Chapter Seventeen
Clementine was feeling a little jaded, as she had drunk far too much champagne the night before and had come to the conclusion that getting into bed at three o’clock in the morning several nights in a row was regrettably a thing of the past. Really, time spent in town is sometimes such hard work, she thought crossly as she sipped black coffee with lots of sugar, in the hope of stilling her pounding head. I almost wish I were returning to the country with Ralph.
If she had not had quite so much champagne, the evening would have been perfect. Both Aaron Greenberg and Veda Ryderwood were wonderful company. Mr. Greenberg, a deft and witty raconteur, had kept them entertained with lively tales of his early banking days in Istanbul and Paris, his handsome head thrown back to laugh at his youthful naïveté at the hands of the world’s most formidable banking sharks. And surprisingly Lady Ryderwood, in her own gentle, unassuming way, had recounted stories from her earlier life in the Balearics, of trips to Seville in Andalusia for the gypsy festivals.
With the onset of a headache that would accompany her day, Clementine remembered she had made a rash promise to ride with Lady Ryderwood the following morning and was beginning to regret the thought of getting on a strange horse and cantering up and down Rotten Row with possibly the entire Household Cavalry for company. What could she have been thinking? She looked across the room at the upright figure of her housekeeper, who had arrived with her coffee and was standing by the door with ill-concealed zeal as she waited for Clementine to begin their meeting.
Mrs. Jackson, alert and well rested, had the clear-eyed intensity of one who has enjoyed a full eight hours of untroubled sleep and is obviously brimming with information. Let her go first then, thought Clementine. She finished her coffee and nodded a world-weary head at her housekeeper. “Go on, Jackson, I can tell your visit to Kingsley House must have been a good one.”
“Yes, it was indeed, m’lady, most informative. My visit was primarily with Matron, but I had an opportunity to talk to several of the boys.” Here she looked down at her hands, and Clementine suspected that things with Matron had not gone smoothly. Mrs. Jackson rarely revealed her feelings, but in Clementine’s considerable experience her housekeeper’s rigid demeanor was easily translated into one of distaste.
“And what is Matron like?” Clementine encouraged her housekeeper to elucidate.
“She is a rather interesting individual, m’lady. The place is well run, but the boys are scared of her. At the end of my visit she was rather challenging, accused me of snooping, which of course I suppose I was. It was altogether rather unpleasant.”
So that’s it, thought Clementine, as she picked up on the faintest note of contempt in her housekeeper’s voice. Matron is a bully, a fault that Jackson finds unforgivable.
“She was challenging, Jackson? Now that’s interesting. So she is sensitive about people knowing what’s going on in her bailiwick, is she? Do you think she was concealing something?”
“Perhaps a little overprotective, m’lady, but more usefully she is a gossip. She made it clear she believes that Miss Gaskell is out to catch a husband in Miss Kingsley’s house and that she had set her sights on Sir Reginald. Who, as Matron made quite clear, was dedicated to his position as governor on the board of the charity and with no time for Miss Gaskell at all. But I was also able to confirm that the photograph under Miss Gaskell’s pillow was indeed a likeness of Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, as there is a portrait of him hanging in the hall of Kingsley House.”
She went on to fill Clementine in on her conversation with the candidate pages for the charity evening and her final conversation with Arthur Symes, winding up with a brief account of Matron’s aggressiveness at what she perceived was Mrs. Jackson’s un
orthodox questions of the boys she had interviewed.
“And that’s not all, m’lady. Almost as soon as I got back to Chester Square I was told Mr. Tricklebank had been taken off by the police, because he had lied about where he had been when Sir Reginald was murdered.”
Suffering as she was from a liverish condition, Clementine was only mildly enthusiastic for her housekeeper’s good work.
“Well done, Jackson, you are extraordinarily on top of things. I learned last night that Captain Vetiver remained in the dining room with Sir Reginald, with the door closed, and the butler outside so they might not be interrupted. Interesting, don’t you think?” Her housekeeper acknowledged that indeed it was.
“And, I heard about Mr. Tricklebank’s lie too. I wonder if he is under arrest? Let’s talk about that in a moment, Jackson. Please sit and make yourself comfortable, so we can concentrate on all we have learned, and work out our next steps. It seems we have been awarded some possible suspects.
“So, Miss Gaskell with her unaccounted-for twenty minutes has put herself at the top of our list, and now this connection with Sir Reginald makes me very suspicious. What d’you think, Jackson?”
“I am not too sure about…”
“It appears she has a motive. She was dangling after an independent man, an ideal marriage prospect for her. He obviously reciprocated in some way; perhaps he gave her a photograph of himself, which she kept hidden. Right there a red flag is waving away at us. Then perhaps he decides Miss Gaskell is not an appropriate wife for a newly appointed peer and he backs away. He tells her as much on the evening of the party. She finds herself downstairs alone with him, they quarrel, and she kills him.”
She turned to her housekeeper, who was watching her closely. The expression on Mrs. Jackson’s face was quite neutral, but there was a decided frost in the air at her end of the room. Jackson doesn’t think it is Miss Gaskell.
“Who else then, Jackson? Come on, tell me your theory, I can tell you have one.” She laughed at her housekeeper’s determination always to remain circumspect and never to thrust an opinion forward until she was good and sure of herself.
“Far be it for me to comment, m’lady, but I do not favor Miss Gaskell as the culprit. I agree she had the time and the opportunity. But I am not sure whether she is capable of murder. I find her to be timid, and the method of murder was so brutal…” She almost wrinkled her nose. “And required close physical proximity.”
Mrs. Jackson went on to describe finding the torn photograph in Miss Gaskell’s wastepaper basket. “If there had been an understanding between them, his death certainly crushed her hopes for the future, but I do not see her killing him in that way.”
“He jilted her?” Clementine put in, and then she nodded encouragement for Mrs. Jackson to continue with her train of thought.
“He might not, m’lady. They might have planned to marry, which would explain her grief. If you saw Miss Gaskell at this moment, m’lady, I think you would agree that her behavior is one of despair, rather than fear that she might be caught as a murderess … it’s just a feeling I have. She has been brought low by Sir Reginald’s death.”
Clementine decided that strong black coffee had only made her headache worse. “Right, Jackson, I’m with you so far. But don’t let’s forget: hell hath no fury … and all of that, and what about the photograph torn in two! If you are grieving for a lost fiancé you don’t tear up the only image you have of him. Sir Reginald throws her to one side, and she kills him. As she lies in bed stricken with fear at being discovered, she takes the photograph of Sir Reginald out of the frame, tears it up, and throws it away.”
“Yes, m’lady, if you say so, but she threw it in her wastepaper basket for the maids or anyone to discover. She could have thrown it on the fire…” Frost was gathering again.
“A good point. So she was angry with him for throwing her over, hence the torn photograph, but not bold or angry enough to kill him. But I think it is important we continue to discover more about her relationship with Sir Reginald.
“But didn’t you say Matron told you that Adelaide was out for any of the men in the house. What about Mr. Tricklebank? Miss Kingsley is immensely rich and Mr. Tricklebank will inherit the lot, unless he misbehaves and his aunt leaves it all to the Chimney Sweep Boys. And that’s been done before by elderly spinsters, think about all those well-endowed cats’ homes in Surrey.
“So perhaps Miss Gaskell was involved with Mr. Tricklebank. Together they eliminated Sir Reginald to clear the way for Mr. Tricklebank to step into a plum position with the charity and an increased allowance from his aunt.” Clementine felt a surge of energy overtake her precarious stomach.
“But Miss Gaskell did not have a photograph under her pillow of Mr. Tricklebank, m’lady. And I think Miss Kingsley would disinherit her nephew if he were to marry her paid companion. He is expected to marry Miss Wells-Thornton.” Mrs. Jackson’s tone was without emphasis, but she straightened in her chair, her back determinedly defending her position. And Clementine wisely rushed in to agree with her, mindful that she must be respectful of her housekeeper’s opinion after she had so definitely asked for it. Mrs. Jackson’s hunches had been spot-on in the past, she reminded herself.
“Let’s concentrate on Mr. Tricklebank as a solo suspect, because of his lie. I wonder where he went after he left Chester Square. You said that he didn’t get to his club until one o’clock. That leaves two full hours unaccounted for. Oh good heavens, I just remembered that the window in the dining room was unlocked, and I am wondering if it could have been unlocked by Mr. Tricklebank. I think Mr. Tricklebank might easily have returned to the house after he left, through the dining-room window. He is tall and quite athletic enough to stand on the portico balustrade by the front door and get onto the window ledge from there. He leaves the house with Jennifer Wells-Thornton, having said they are going on to another party. Off she goes, leaving him to reenter the house from the dining-room window, unnoticed.”
Quite pleased with herself, Clementine got up and walked to the drawing-room window and looked out onto the street, trying to gauge the distance from the sill to the railings on the edge of the pavement, headache quite forgotten.
“Yes, the gap between the pavement and window sill is too far to breach, but not from the front door to the windowsill. Will you please check that, Jackson? Will you see if you can measure the distance from the portico balustrade to the windowsill at Chester Square and see if it’s possible?” She turned from the window and looked down at the floor in concentration.
“Mr. Tricklebank was living above his means. If Sir Reginald was out of the way, he could step in to his place on the board, to a greater annuity from his aunt. I think we’re onto something, Jackson, I really do! If you will check the dining-room windowsill in relationship to the front door, I will go further into the alibis of the other two men who were downstairs at the crucial time: Mr. Greenberg and Captain Vetiver. And you will hopefully find out where the servants were then, and keep tabs on Miss Gaskell. Is there anything else we should talk about, have we covered all points?”
“Yes, we have, m’lady.” Clementine was relieved that Mrs. Jackson’s enthusiasm had returned during the last few moments; she evidently approved of Mr. Tricklebank as the chief suspect. But now she noticed that her housekeeper was looking regretful, an expression she had become familiar with over the twenty years she had been in her service.
“There is something else I feel I must tell you, m’lady, and it’s not about Chester Square. It’s about Montfort House.” Clementine experienced a sinking feeling and it wasn’t from a hangover. “I am rather surprised that the new cook makes such elaborate meals for the servants. I know they are not hard-pressed in the kitchen, as you and his lordship have been dining out so often. But it’s not right in my opinion for a cook to serve up Coquilles Saint Jacques for a servants’-hall supper, even if, as she says, they would have gone off and had to be thrown out. It seems an unsuitable way of doing things, to my mind.
Blurs the lines of propriety and causes confusion.”
Clementine closed her eyes. On no, she thought, not after months of interviews and dissatisfactory meals prepared by talentless kitchen maids. If there was one thing her husband would not forgive, it was bland and unappetizing food. In her mind she saw Montfort House up for lease, and that would never do.
“Well, Jackson, better keep an eye on things down there. Quite frankly, I am not too concerned if Cook is being a little overgenerous with our food. Lord Montfort thinks her cooking is superb and that’s all I am concerned about for the time being. Did you speak to White and the footmen about helping out at Miss Kingsley’s charity evening?”
“Yes, m’lady, he is happy to be of help.”
“Good, and let’s hope that we can sort out this Ginger business in a satisfactory way before we all go back to Iyntwood.” She had thoughtlessly referred to the cook by her sobriquet and it was pounced on.
“‘Ginger,’ m’lady?” Mrs. Jackson’s face for the first time in their many years together betrayed not just surprise but outrage.
“Yes, that’s what she likes to be called. Didn’t you know?”
“I most certainly did not, m’lady. I am genuinely shocked by such indecorous behavior.”
“Pettigrew puts it down to her being a Londoner.” Clementine wished she had not brought up the subject.
“The cook is from Lancashire, like myself, your ladyship. I can’t imagine what she thinks she’s playing at. ‘Ginger’ indeed.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was a particularly fine early-winter morning; the sky was the palest of blues, a light frost spangled the grass, and the air smelled like freshly washed laundry. It was, thought Clementine as Herne drove her over to the Knightsbridge Barracks, a perfect day for a ride and the kind of weather that makes high-spirited horses friskier. She prayed the mount Lady Ryderwood had for her was well behaved and not some overwrought young mare that had not been out for days.