by C. S. Harris
“Liv Irving?”
“Daughter of them took over Maplethorpe Hall.”
“Oh?”
McBroom lowered his pen, his lips working silently over his teeth, the impulse to continue punishing the Viscount for his earlier snub warring with the urge to divulge the lurid past of one he obviously disliked.
The lure of the lurid won.
The main house had still been standing in those days, explained the innkeeper. It was a grand Palladian villa dating to the early eighteenth century, and the Irvings were unabashedly proud of their fine new estate. From the very beginning, they took to throwing large house parties to which they invited as many representatives of old or titled families as they could entice to come. The origins of the family’s wealth were in trade, but they were determined to erase the stigma of having earned rather than inherited their fortune.
As a cousin of Lord Weston of Somersfield Park, the handsome young major was enthusiastically welcomed to the Irvings’ endless round of dinners, rout parties, picnics, and balls. So eager were the Irvings to cultivate the well-bred and well-connected young officer that they failed to inquire too closely into his antecedents. By the time they discovered that the handsome young major’s kinship to Lord Weston was distant and his father no more than an impoverished country vicar, the major had convinced sixteen-year-old Liv to elope. It was nearly a week before the couple returned, at which point the girl was hopelessly ruined.
There was nothing the Irvings could do at that point except put a brave face on it and hope for the best.
The Dower House lay at the end of a short drive that wound away from the main Ludlow road just beyond the crossroads. Built in 1789 for the late Mr. Irving’s widowed mother, it was of moderate size, with symmetrically placed windows, a paneled central door, dentil-work cornices, and a dormered, hipped roof. The garden was small but exquisite, with both a formal section enclosed by a high yew hedge and a more natural area given over to wild roses and Leucojums and Camassias. When Sebastian reined in his chestnuts before the steps, he could see the blackened brick chimneys of Maplethorpe Hall itself just visible above the tops of the trees in a small spinney.
He dropped to the ground. “See if you can find a talkative groom,” he told Tom. “I’d be interested to hear the servants’ opinion of their master.”
Tom grinned. “Aye, gov’nor!”
The front door opened, and Sebastian turned to find the major himself bounding down the shallow front steps toward him.
“Lord Devlin? It is Lord Devlin, yes?”
He was dressed quite nattily in a striped silk waistcoat, fine doeskin breeches, gleaming high-top boots, and a well-cut navy blue coat. He still sported a flowing, military-style mustache, although its once rich auburn was now beginning to fade to gray. In one hand he carried a crop, as if he had been on the verge of going out riding.
“Major?” said Sebastian with a bow.
“Yes, yes.” The major bowed low and flashed a wide smile that displayed even white teeth. “I was just on my way into the village to see you. Heard you’re helping young Rawlins. He’s a promising lad, but there’s no denying this sort of thing is beyond his capabilities. Far, far beyond.”
The major was smaller than Sebastian had expected, the top of his head barely reaching Sebastian’s chin, and of a narrow frame, with most of his weight tending to settle about his middle.
“Rawlins was clever enough to suspect that Emma Chance hadn’t committed suicide,” said Sebastian.
“Yes, well . . .” Weston brought up one hand to cover an unconvincing cough and glanced significantly toward the house. “What say we take a turn about the garden, eh? I’m afraid Mrs. Weston’s a bit overset by all this.”
“Of course.”
They turned their steps down an allée of cordoned pear and apple trees, the green fruit just beginning to swell toward ripeness. “Why did you want to see me?” asked Sebastian.
Weston looked startled. “I beg your pardon?”
“You said you were on your way into the village to see me.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Just seemed the thing to do, what? Let you know that if you need anything, you’ve only to ask. Only too happy to be of service.”
“You met Mrs. Chance, I understand?”
“Oh, yes, several times.”
“Why?”
“You mean, why did I meet her? She was interested in Maplethorpe Hall. Wanted to sketch what’s left of it and very appropriately approached me to ask permission. Naturally I said yes.”
“When was this?”
“That she spoke to me?” Weston frowned, his eyes narrowing against the brightness of the sun. “Let’s see. . . . It must have been Sunday. Yes, it was—after church services. So definitely Sunday.”
“And did she sketch the house?”
“She did. That very afternoon. I know because I saw her there.”
“Sunday afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Did you speak with her then?”
“Yes, of course. Seemed only polite, eh?” Weston’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips, his hazel green eyes crinkling with a smile that might once have been charming but now came off as faintly lecherous.
“What did you talk about?”
“Oh, this and that. She wanted to know more about the house—the way it used to be. She expressed interest in the Irvings’ tradition of hosting extravagant entertainments, and I recall telling her about one grand hunting party we had in the autumn of 1791, at the beginning of partridge season. As it happens, I had particularly good luck that year. Bagged more than anyone nearly every time we went out.”
“Did she ask about anything else?”
“Not so’s I recall, no.”
Weston stared out over the carefully tended borders, a faint smile of remembrance still warming his plump face. He was the kind of man who could remember with clarity everything he himself had said and done, but little else, for his focus was always firmly planted on himself.
“When did Maplethorpe Hall burn?”
Weston sucked on his back molars as if the answer required a moment’s thought. “Must be ten—no, fifteen years ago now. Caught fire in the middle of the night. Mrs. Weston and I barely escaped the flames with our lives. Afraid m’wife’s father was not so fortunate. He was bedridden, you see, and there was no getting to him in time.”
Sebastian glanced back at the brick Dower House with its tall, white-painted windows and neat green shutters. The house was both charming and spacious, yet nothing, surely, to compare to the hall. So why hadn’t Maplethorpe been rebuilt? Why had a man obviously as ambitious and as enamored of wealth and all its trappings as Weston retreated to life on such a reduced scale?
“We talked about rebuilding,” said Weston, as if following the train of Sebastian’s thoughts. “But somehow we never got around to it. In the end, we realized this place suits us fine. We were never blessed with children, you see.” He smiled sadly when he said it, and Sebastian had the feeling it was an explanation he trotted out often: endearingly self-deprecating, faintly tragic, and patently false.
“I’m sorry.”
Weston shrugged. “My wife keeps busy with the gardens, both here and at the ruins of the old house. It’s her passion.” He wafted one hand in an expansive arc that took in the exquisite borders backed by towering dark yew hedges. “This is all her work.”
“It’s lovely. She has a real talent.”
Again, the self-deprecating smile—although this time it hid a venomous barb directed at his wife. “So I’m told. I’m afraid it’s all just shrubs and flowers to me.”
“When was the last time you saw Emma Chance?”
The abrupt change in topic appeared to disconcert him. “Why—that afternoon. Sunday.”
“Did you know she drew your portrait?”
A
faint, inexplicable hint of color tinged the major’s cheeks. “No; did she indeed? Well, well, well.”
“Did you happen to notice if she had one sketchbook with her, or two?”
“I only recall seeing one. But then, she had a canvas satchel with her, so I suppose she could’ve had another in there. Why?”
“We haven’t been able to find the sketchbook she used for buildings and landscapes.”
“No? That’s odd.”
They’d reached the spinney now, a thick stand of young oaks and field maple underplanted with hazel and dog roses and eglantine.
Sebastian said, “Who do you think killed her?”
It was a question he tended to ask essentially everyone he spoke with. But the major’s reaction was definitely curious.
“Me?” Weston stared blankly at him, jaw slack. “Good God; how would I know? She was a pretty little thing. You’re certain someone didn’t try to have his way with her and simply carried things too far?”
It struck Sebastian as an unpleasantly euphemistic way to describe an act of attempted of rape leading to murder. “Why? Have there been instances of that sort around here in the past?”
Weston gave an odd, forced laugh. “Not to my knowledge, no.”
“Mind if I take a look around the grounds of the old hall?”
Weston’s smile faded away into something almost pained. “Whatever for?”
“It might help.” Sebastian studied the other man’s florid, sweat-slicked face. “Why? Is there a problem?”
Weston gave another of his oddly nervous laughs. “No, no, of course not. There’s a gardener named Silas—Silas Madden. Lives in the old grooms’ quarters over the stables and also functions as a sort of caretaker. He might try to run you off, but just tell him we spoke.” He hesitated a moment, then smiled again as what looked like genuine amusement flooded his face. “They say it’s haunted, you know. The old house, I mean.”
“By your wife’s father?”
“No, from before that. The daughter of the previous owners, the Baldwyns. Threw herself off the roof. She was their only child, and they died themselves not long afterward, of grief. Or at least, that’s the way the story goes.”
“Why? Why did she do it?”
“The usual: unrequited love.” Weston rolled the last word off his tongue, lingering on the “l” and vowel sounds in a way that made a mockery of both the word and the emotion it stood for.
Sebastian felt his skin crawl. “What does the ghost do?”
The major’s smile altered, became something faintly derisive. “Flits across the empty windows. Trails her icy fingers down your cheek. Alternately shrieks with laughter or sobs hysterically. Or so they say. I wouldn’t know: I’ve neither seen nor heard her. There are those who say she started the fire—knocked over a candle left unattended.”
“So how did the fire actually start?”
Weston stretched out his upper lip as he used a splayed thumb and forefinger to smooth his flowing mustache. “Oh, it was an untended candle, all right—knocked over by a windblown drape when the window was carelessly left open. But the ghost makes a much better story, don’t you think?” And he smiled again, as untroubled by the thought of a grief-stricken girl plunging to her death as by the memory of his dying father-in-law’s frantic shrieks on a wild, storm-tossed night.
Chapter 17
Major Weston was still standing in his drive, smiling faintly after them, when Sebastian drove away.
“So what did you learn?” Sebastian asked Tom.
Tom let out a scornful snort; in his own way, the tiger could be quite the snob. “It’s a right shabby establishment, that one. Ain’t but one groom, two ’acks, a showy ’unter that probably ain’t got no bottom, and a mare t’pull the gig.”
Sebastian turned the chestnuts onto the narrow, overgrown track that curled around the spinney toward the ruins of Maplethorpe Hall. “In other words, Major and Mrs. Weston are living in considerably reduced circumstances.”
“Ain’t they just. According to Andrew—’e’s the groom there—the only reason they ain’t in the poor’ouse is because Mrs. Weston got her da to change ’is will right afore he died. Seems ’e left everythin’ tied up so’s the major can’t touch none of it. It’s Mrs. Weston what controls things now.”
“Interesting.”
“Andrew says the major don’t like it at all, though there ain’t nothin’ ’e can do about it. ’E don’t cotton to all the ready she wastes on her gardens, neither. Andrew says they’ve ’ad some right royal rows ’bout it.”
“Her gardens are lovely.”
“Andrew says the Dower ’Ouse ain’t nothing compared t’what she’s done with the old hall.”
At that moment, the gardens of the main house opened up on the far side of the spinney and Sebastian drew up for a moment as the glory of Liv Weston’s creation spread out before them. It had become the fashion in recent decades to use ruins as decorative accents in gardens. Those without the good fortune to possess an authentic ruin on their estate simply built them—everything from imitation Greek temples to picturesque re-creations of romantic Crusader towers and crumbling medieval chapels. But Mrs. Weston possessed the real thing at the center of her gardens, and she had used it magnificently.
The hall might date back only to the early eighteenth century, but in its ruined state it looked much older, the ivy-hung walls looming over a Renaissance-inspired knot garden with arbors and turf seats and honeysuckle-draped pergolas. There was an Italian garden with a long canal flanked by tall, dark evergreens, and a medicinal herb garden, and a romantic, wild-looking nuttery and orchard underplanted with campanulas and daisies and poppies.
A stocky man pushing a wheelbarrow full of hedge clippings down a grass path paused to watch through narrowed eyes as Sebastian brought the curricle to a halt before the ruined house. The gardener wore a faded blue smock and wide-brimmed straw hat and held the stem of an unlit clay pipe clenched between his rear molars. He shifted the pipe thoughtfully with his tongue as he watched Sebastian hop down to the gravel.
“You must be Silas,” said Sebastian, advancing on him. “Major Weston said you’d show me about the old hall.”
The gardener’s heavily featured face remained impassive. “He did, did he? And who might you be?”
“I’m Devlin.”
Silas turned his head and spat. His skin was dark and coarse and deeply scored with lines from his years of work in the sun, although his sandy hair showed only the faintest touches of gray. He had a short but powerful build, with thickly muscled arms and legs, and was probably somewhere between forty and fifty. “I take it yer that grand London lord what’s lookin’ into the death of the lady?”
“That’s right. I understand she was here Sunday afternoon, sketching the ruins. Did you see her?”
“Course I seen her. I’m here ev’ry day, all day, aren’t I?”
“Did you speak with her?”
“’Spose I did.”
Sebastian was remembering Hannibal Pierce’s comment, that Emma Chance had been asking the villagers an unusual number of questions. “What about?”
“’Bout the garden and the house. What ye think?”
Sebastian stared out over the ripe summer borders of lavender and lilies, agapanthus and late-flowering clematis. “It’s a lovely garden.”
“Miss Liv done it all herself.”
Miss Liv, Sebastian noticed; not Mrs. Weston.
“She’s very talented,” said Sebastian.
The muscles in the caretaker’s face contracted in a grimace. “Better’n that prancing foreigner the previous Lord Seaton brought in to do the grounds of Northcott Abbey some years back. She’s helpin’ the young Squire with the gardens at the Grange now. Ye seen it?”
“Not yet.”
“Course, she only started there this spring, so it’l
l be a while before everythin’ grows up the way it’s supposed t’. Gardens take time. Time, and a vision for how it’ll all look someday.”
Sebastian nodded to the nearby row of orange trees in tubs. “How long has she been working on the gardens here?”
“Since the fire. Changed it all around from when Mr. and Mrs. Irving was alive, she did.”
“The fire must have been a terrible tragedy.”
“A tragedy? Yeah, I guess ye could call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
Silas shrugged and scratched a mosquito bite on his cheek with broken, dirt-encrusted nails.
Sebastian said, “Did Emma Chance ask about the fire?”
“Not so much. She wanted t’hear about the days when the Irvings was still alive. ’Bout the grand parties they used t’have.”
“Oh?” Weston had also mentioned house parties—although his focus had been entirely on himself.
“She was partic’larly interested in the house party they had the year them Frogs nabbed their King and Queen and stuck ’em in prison.”
Seventeen ninety-one again, thought Sebastian. He smiled encouragingly. “It must have been grand.”
“Oh, aye; was it ever. They had more’n thirty guests that year, including titled lords and ladies from as far away as Worcestershire and Herefordshire. The gentlemen would go out shootin’ ev’ry mornin’, while the ladies strolled the gardens or did whatever it is ladies do with their days. And every night, there was such a big, fancy dinner they had t’ hire near every woman and girl in the hamlet to help. And then at the end there was a masked ball, the likes of which ain’t never been seen around here before or since.”
“Were you also gardener here under the Baldwyns?”
“Aye. I was a young lad in those days, I was.”