M. C. Beaton is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, several Regency romance series and a stand-alone murder mystery, The Skeleton in the Closet – all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit www.mcbeatonbooks.co.uk for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter: @mc_beaton.
Titles by M. C. Beaton
The Poor Relation
Lady Fortescue Steps Out • Miss Tonks Turns to Crime • Mrs Budley Falls from Grace Sir Philip’s Folly • Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue • Back in Society
A House for the Season
The Miser of Mayfair • Plain Jane • The Wicked Godmother
Rake’s Progress • The Adventuress • Rainbird’s Revenge
The Six Sisters
Minerva • The Taming of Annabelle • Deirdre and Desire
Daphne • Diana the Huntress • Frederica in Fashion
Edwardian Murder Mysteries
Snobbery with Violence • Hasty Death • Sick of Shadows
Our Lady of Pain
The Travelling Matchmaker
Emily Goes to Exeter • Belinda Goes to Bath • Penelope Goes to Portsmouth
Beatrice Goes to Brighton • Deborah Goes to Dover • Yvonne Goes to York
Agatha Raisin
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener • Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage • Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam • Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate • Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance • Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison • Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body • Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns
Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers • Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble
Hamish Macbeth
Death of a Gossip • Death of a Cad • Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife • Death of a Hussy • Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster • Death of a Glutton • Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man • Death of a Nag • Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist • Death of a Scriptwriter • Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas • Death of a Dustman • Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village • Death of a Poison Pen • Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer • Death of a Maid • Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch • Death of a Valentine • Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher • Death of Yesterday
The Skeleton in the Closet
Also available
The Agatha Raisin Companion
Annabelle
M. C. Beaton
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First electronic edition published 2011
by RosettaBooks LLC, New York
This edition published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013
Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1980
The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47210-127-3 (ebook)
Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson
For Harry Scott Gibbons
and Charles David Bravos Gibbons,
with all my love.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Mr. James Quennell, the rector of Hazeldean, looked thoughtfully across the room at his eldest daughter, Annabelle, and wished for the hundredth time that he had not allowed himself to be coerced into sending the girl to London. This was to be Annabelle’s last evening at home before her departure for the South in the morning.
If only they weren’t so grindingly poor, if only he hadn’t three other daughters to support, if only his good wife was not—well, why not admit it?—such a forceful and pushing woman.
And if only Annabelle were not so strikingly beautiful.
The soft light from the oil lamp in the shabby parlor of Hazeldean rectory cast a warm glow over Annabelle’s features as she bent her head over her mending. She wore a simple round gown of cambric which had seen much wear, but even the shabby dress could not detract from the beauty of her voluptuous figure or take away an ounce of the startling effect of her creamy skin and masses of curly red-gold hair.
His other daughters, Mary, Susan, and Lisbeth, were all grouped around her. But they were as dark haired as their mother and had also inherited her sallow skin. The rector had timidly put forward the idea that one of the younger girls should go since Annabelle’s beauty might prove to be more of a curse than a blessing, but his energetic wife had pooh-poohed the idea.
Mrs. Quennell had said in her usual strident manner, “The only thing we have in the bank is one beautiful daughter, and she should be used to the best advantage. Why send one of the others when you know they would not take?” This was all said with Mrs. Quennell’s usual insensitivity to the feelings of her other, less-favored daughters.
The rector, as always, bowed to his wife’s stronger will. Annabelle was to visit her godmother—a remote aristocratic connection on her mother’s side of the family—and have a Season in London. She must catch a rich husband, or she would not be doing her duty as a Christian. Annabelle had meekly agreed to all plans for her future as she had meekly agreed to her mother’s dictates from the day she was born. Even in the surrounding neighborhood, girls were married off every day to “suitable” gentlemen, and never once did the question of love or mutual esteem arise.
The only thing to raise doubts of any kind in Annabelle’s eighteen-year-old mind was the fact that her mother shied away from any discussion about Annabelle’s godmother—an unusual attitude in one so generally forthright. Go
dmother was Lady Emmeline, Dowager Marchioness of Eversley. What was she like? Mrs. Quennell had looked positively furtive. She couldn’t remember. She had not seen the Dowager Marchioness in years.
Annabelle’s last evening at home seemed like any other. Very few of her belongings had been packed since her godmother had written to say that a new wardrobe would be furnished.
And apart from the fact that her trunks were lying corded upstairs, no one would have guessed that one of the family was about to make a long and adventurous journey on the morrow.
Annabelle longed to have someone—anyone—to listen to her fears. What if she did not get married? What if her godmother should take her in dislike? But her sisters had banded together in their usual mutual envy of her beauty, and her mother had called her missish when she had tried to voice some of her doubts. Her father had merely pointed out that God would protect the innocent, leaving poor Annabelle to worry the more. Would He lean down from far above the clouds to protect a young girl during her first Season? Surely He had more important things to take care of than mere frivolities.
Annabelle looked round the shabby, cluttered parlor, at her three sisters tranquilly sure that life would be the same tomorrow as it was today, and her eyes misted with tears. The wind sighed in the old trees outside, and the grandfather clock in the corner seemed to tick away the seconds, faster and faster and faster, carrying her along on its racing heartbeats into the unknown tomorrow.
The Squire, Mr. Ralston, had kindly offered the use of his ancient and cumbersome travelling carriage and one of his wife’s maids as chaperone.
That much, at least, was known. But what of the long miles to London? What of London itself? And what of her mysterious godmother?
Her detailed measurements and one of her old gowns had been posted to London months ago so that her wardrobe would be ready for her on her arrival. What her mother had written about her, Annabelle did not know, but in one of her letters of reply, the Dowager Marchioness had expressed her relief that the girl was “not an antidote.”
The hollow chimes of the clock striking the hour roused Annabelle from her troubled thoughts. Her sisters were gathering up their sewing and yawning and stretching.
Mrs. Quennell indicated that it was time for bed but signalled to Annabelle to remain after her sisters had gone upstairs.
She then fixed her daughter with her rather protruding stare. “This is the last chance I shall have to talk to you for some time, Annabelle,” she began. “I must make sure that you understand the honor that is being done you. You must—it is imperative that you marry well. God has given you the advantage of beauty, and it must be put to use for the benefit of the family. You will obey your godmother implicity since she has assured me if you do exactly as she says, then you will be affianced by the end of the Season. I trust you have not filled your head with nonsense from romances and expect a young and handsome gentleman to fall in love with you. That is not the way of the world. Often girls of your age are comfortably married to men much older. Believe me, love fades when there is no money.”
A look of pain passed over the gentle features of the rector. “And did your love fade?” he asked quietly, but his wife paid him not the smallest attention.
Annabelle shifted restlessly on her seat. She was used to lectures on her duty and young enough to look upon the task of marrying some man despite his age or manner as simply another kind of household chore. But she could not help wondering if her stern mother had ever felt any of the gentler passions. Often when her mother was lecturing her, Annabelle’s mind slid away onto some more pleasant topic, seeing her mother silently forming the words as if on the other side of a thick pane of glass. As usual her brain blocked out the words of the lecture, but this time she studied Mrs. Quennell as if looking at a stranger.
A middle-aged woman with a trim figure, she wore her black hair tucked neatly away under a towering cap of starched muslin. Her pale weak eyes of washed-out blue must once have been as vivid a color as Annabelle’s own before long evenings poring over the household accounts had faded them. Her mouth was thin and had a disappointed droop at the corners. She was not at all ill-favored for her years, but her rasping, bullying voice dominated all else. Annabelle looked over at her father and caught the look of hurt and distress on his features. He was essaying to speak—to find some loophole in the barrage of words.
“Father is trying to say something,” interrupted Annabelle loudly in her clear, gentle voice. Never had anyone dared to interrupt Mrs. Quennell before, and she paused in amazement with her mouth open. The rector seized his opportunity.
“My dear,” he said firmly, “let us make one thing quite clear. Annabelle is under no obligation to enter into any marriage contract distasteful to her. We shall contrive, come what may. There will always be a home here for her. I think we would be better employed in praying to God that our beloved daughter has a safe journey.”
He bent his head in prayer, and his seething wife reluctantly followed his example. And while her husband’s gentle words of prayer echoed round the parlor, Mrs. Quennell made an unchristian vow to herself that before her eldest daughter departed on her journey South, Miss Annabelle Quennell would be made to realise that no welcome whatsoever would be offered by her mother an’ she should return unwed. As the rector voiced the “amen,” Mrs. Quennell suddenly thought of the dangers of half-pay captains and other impoverished rattles in scarlet coats and would have reopened her lecture, but she opened her eyes to find that Annabelle had fled.
EARLY in the morning Annabelle slipped from the rectory with a long cloak wrapped round her. She wished to say good-bye to her home at a time of day when her mother’s angry voice and her sisters’ envy were stilled with sleep.
The house looked large and graceful from the outside, more like the home of a country gentleman than what it was—a country rectory with small dark inconvenient rooms, bitterly cold in winter and stuffy and airless in summer. It was a low square building of mellow Georgian brick with a pillared entrance. The straggling, unkempt garden was shining under a white coating of freakish late spring frost, sparkling like rubies and diamonds under the red fire of the early morning sun. Smoke was beginning to rise lazily from the nearby village of Hazeldean which consisted of a row of houses on either side of an undragged byroad to York. The squat majesty of the Squire’s Queen Anne mansion was at one end and the square Norman tower of her father’s church was at the other.
Annabelle had a sudden wish to stay exactly where she was, frozen in place and time, neither going forwards nor backwards.
But London waited for her. London with its glittering Season, its mysterious godmother, and its possible suitor.
Annabelle was not much given to daydreaming, but she could not help hoping that perhaps she might meet some amiable gentleman on the road South from Yorkshire. That way she would not have to endure the terrors of a Season. He would be gentle and kind with a pleasant strong square face and not a terrifying aristocrat but one of the gentry like herself.
She was about to go in when her eye was arrested by what looked like an animated bundle of rags creeping along beside the hedge. She watched fascinated until the rags reared up and appeared to grow a head on top. It was Mad Meg from the gypsy encampment outside the town. She was feared and respected by the people of the village because of the uncanny accuracy of her predictions. But Annabelle knew that Meg’s predictions came from assiduous news gathering rather than any supernatural psychic ability. She shrewdly guessed that Meg had heard of the proposed journey South and had come to go through the motions of reading her palm and telling her what she, Annabelle, and everyone else already knew. But Annabelle would no more have thought of spoiling Meg’s act than she would of booing the village choir.
Meg came bustling up the weedy drive, her filthy features mercifully obliterated by the steam from her breath. She smelled overwhelmingly of woodsmoke, tar, cooked rabbit, and something else that a young lady such as Annabelle did not put a name t
o. “I have news for you, missie,” cackled Meg, rolling her eyes wildly, every muscle on her face seen to be twitching as she got to very uncomfortable close quarters. Annabelle had once spied Meg in the middle of the gypsy encampment, happily dishing round the stew and behaving in a very normal manner. Her “madness” was all part of her routine.
“What is it, Meg. Tell me quickly!” said Annabelle, kindly feigning an excitement she did not feel and holding out her small work-roughened hand.
“What do I get?” asked Meg, suddenly stopping her twitching and eye rolling.
Annabelle felt in the pocket of her apron, and her fingers closed over a shilling. It was a lot of money to pay the old faker … but still … it was the last day. She held up the coin which Meg grabbed eagerly and stowed away somewhere in her rags. She bent her filthy head over Annabelle’s hand.
“I see,” she began to croon, “a long journey.” She looked up suspiciously as something like a sigh came from Annabelle, but Annabelle stared back at her with a limpid expression.
“I see a long journey and at the end of it I see a rich world full of lords and dukes, and I see a handsome man waiting for you, missie.” Again Meg glanced up. The gypsy was grateful for the shilling and suddenly felt an urge to do the job properly. She bent over the hand, concentrated on all the lore she had ever leaned of palm reading, and was about to describe the tall, dark, and handsome suitor when something very strange happened.
The gypsy’s grip on Annabelle’s hand tightened painfully, and she raised her head again. But this time her eyes seemed to be turned inwards, horribly blind, and her old skin seemed to be stretched over her brittle bones to breaking point.
Her voice was high and thin, unlike her usual robust tones, and seemed to come from very, very far away. “There is terrible danger to your life from someone,” moaned Meg, swaying back and forth. “First someone near to you…then you. Death by air, by fire, by water. All black death. But…”
“Annabelle!”
Mrs. Quennell’s voice cut through the still frosty air. Annabelle pulled her hand away. She felt shaken and terribly cold.
Annabelle Page 1