An Unmourned Man (Lady C. Investigates Book 1)

by Issy Brooke

  “It is a burden, a drain on my finances.”

  “It is my finances that you want, is it not? At the moment of engagement, all my wealth becomes yours.”

  “I admire you, Cordelia,” he said, taking on a wheedling tone. Suddenly, he let go of her. “Come. This … discussion … is thirsty work. Let us sit, and take a drink, and explore this further.”

  “There is nothing to explore,” she said stubbornly, but she followed his pointing arm to the wing-back chairs that stood either side of the empty fireplace. He went to a decanter and poured a sherry for her, and a strong brandy for himself.

  They sat for a moment. She thought about his proposition. Marry him, and keep Clarfields.

  He watched her. “You are considering it, are you not?”

  She would be foolish not to mull it over.

  She said, “You’re a gambling man, are you not?”

  “Do you mean to say, that you think I wish to marry you only to pay off my debts?”

  Indeed so. She inclined her head.

  “I do not,” he said. “Unlike foolish Ewatt, I set my limits. I may wager high but I can walk away. I often do. You have seen that yourself, Cordelia.”

  It was true, and she allowed herself a smile. They had bet for small things, trifles, in their evening card games. She had usually beaten him, and he had never been goaded into more and more games to recoup his losses. She admired that about him.

  “I have,” she conceded. “I mean only to say, perhaps this is something that cannot be solved by talking…”

  He narrowed his eyes and took a deep slurp of his drink. “No.”

  “Hugo, perhaps–”

  “I know what you propose, Cordelia. No. I shall not put Clarfields on the outcome of a game of cards! Marry me if you wish to stay there. Reject me to wander, rootless, a discarded widow, as your beauty fades. You are running out of time, Cordelia, and soon you will be without prospects. No man can gain a title by marrying you, and it will die with you. Estate-less. Landless. Your stocks and shares, yes, they will give you a living. But society will not have you. No one shall have you. Marriage will give you everything that you want. Not a game of cards.”

  It would not be that simple. He would have demands of her. Expectations. And even then, he might still sell Clarfields. He did want her wealth. She would have no say in the matter.

  She stood up in a rush, and said, “No. I will leave, tonight.”

  He stood up to match her. “You will not.”

  “You cannot–”

  “We have guests. Ewatt will be here. He is returned from town; he went only to Cambridge, not London. I had word earlier. And also the coroner, John Barron, is joining us for dinner.”

  It was news to her, but then, why would she be consulted in matters of his household. “Then you shall entertain them alone.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Barron has information about the case, no doubt.”

  “So?”

  “And it is to be roast pork.”

  “So?”

  “And perhaps cards afterwards…”

  “I will leave in the morning,” she snapped, and stormed from the room.

  * * *

  “It will be a mixed card game, will it not?” Ruby demanded, later, when Cordelia went to the kitchens to talk to Mrs Unsworth about the cancellation of the grand cheese quest.

  “I shall be there, so yes, of course. It will be entirely respectable.”

  Mrs Unsworth sat heavily on a stool, her face grey but her nose strangely pink. She narrowed her eyes but did not speak.

  “Well, quite,” Cordelia said into the silence. “And we are to leave. We must get back to Clarfields and … and … make preparations.” She could not go on. She would deal with that when she returned. Falsely bright, she turned to Mrs Unsworth. “So, there is no sign of the cheese?”

  “None at all,” Mrs Unsworth said shortly.

  “Right. Ruby, I shall need you upstairs. We have much to do.”

  “My lady.”

  * * *

  But the evening was not respectable at all. At dinner, there were too many bottles of wine on the table and too few that were left full by the time they left the room. John Barron was a corpulent man who refused to discuss the murder at all, at least while they ate. Ewatt was the most garrulous, and he kept them entertained for minutes at a time with his stories and jokes.

  Afterwards, Cordelia withdrew to let the men smoke for a short time. Now she was alone in the drawing room, and wandered between the chairs and tables, feeling a pent-up rage build within. Tomorrow, Clarfields. Next week, next month … what? Where?

  Hugo called for her, loudly, his voice thick with intoxication. She came back through, and he took her arm firmly. They wandered a circuitous course, followed by John Barron and Ewatt, towards a large room beyond the library and behind his study. In his bachelor rut, he had rooms that defied categorisation and convention; this was ostensibly his “games room” but there were a few comfortable sofas, card tables, a drinks cabinet, a shelf of books, a globe of the known world and a small clockwork model of a screw-propeller ocean-going liner. It was a comfortable but very male space. It smelled of wood and cigars with the faint tinge of unwashed socks.

  She felt that she ought not be there.

  The room was on the ground floor, and they had to cross the mouth of the passageway that ran to the kitchens at the back. Cordelia turned her head as they went across the cold, draughty opening, the green baize door standing brazenly open. At the far end of the corridor, defiantly in her domain, stood Mrs Unsworth. She gave Cordelia a long, hard stare, and Cordelia felt her wine-reddened cheeks deepen with a blush of shame.

  It ought to be Mrs Unsworth who hung her head in deference and sadness, Cordelia thought, and snatched her gaze away. She was in no mood to be challenged by a servant with delusions of grandeur.

  Hugo had not noticed a thing. He bounced off the wall and ricocheted back which took him neatly into the games room, where he flung himself onto a sofa.

  Ewatt grabbed a bottle of brandy, and began to pour. Barron’s fat face was shiny and he eased himself into an over-stuffed chair.

  Three men, and her.

  She had to choose. Leave and meet propriety’s standards – or stay, and get very drunk.

  “Have you any wine?” she asked.

  * * *

  Ewatt had just returned from town, and he produced an expensive bottle of vintage wine from the carpet bag at his feet that the butler delivered to him when he called for it. Cordelia wondered if he had literally just stepped down from the carriage and had not even visited his house.

  The men began to talk as if she were not there. Barron ploughed through the brandy quickly. Ewatt and Hugo indulged in a loud competition about the most expensive bottle of wine they had ever opened, and Ewatt bragged about the quails’ eggs he had eaten that morning. Cordelia blatantly yawned and rolled her eyes. In between games of loo, they drank and they talked. Sometimes they paired off to play whist. Cordelia relaxed. It was her final night. The die was cast. She got drunk, and nothing mattered so much anymore.

  All in all, it became a dreadful, disorderly and unbecoming evening of great fun.

  But it began to fade, as all things do. Tiredness crept upon them all. The talk turned to darker things, and the matter of the murder in particular.

  “They must charge Mrs Hurrell, and hang her, and there is an end of it!” Hugo said impatiently. “I do not see why they are dragging their feet over it. Barron, you know the process. What is going on?”

  “I am the coroner, not the magistrate,” he said. “I can tell you the death was suspicious. That is all. No one is bringing a prosecution, as far as I know.”

  “There was murder! They must not have enough evidence,” Cordelia said. “And I for one would count it a grave injustice, for Mrs Hurrell is innocent.”

  “Poppycock! She was there at the scene,” Ewatt said.

  “But the murderer escaped out through the back
,” she said. “And they climbed the wall, and was away. Would not Mrs Hurrell have fled, too, if she had done the deed?”

  “I can imagine someone getting into a fight with the lad in a beerhouse or inn,” Hugo said, pointing his finger randomly around. “But why would someone seek this boy out and kill him? That is premeditated, is it not? That takes planning. Now, Mrs Hurrell was there, so I can imagine a fight. But for someone else to come into the house, and kill him? No. The lad was not so interesting that anyone could be bothered to go to the effort, surely.”

  Hugo sat back, then sat forward, belched and got unsteadily to his feet. “Excuse me, please. One moment. I must call to nature. No, a call of nature. That too.”

  “There are ladies present!” Ewatt admonished him.

  “Plural? Cordelia and … well, you must speak of yourself,” he said, and punched his friend on the shoulder as he passed on the way to leave the room.

  Grown men, when drunk, regressed to young lads once more, she thought, then giggled, feeling rather schoolgirlish herself as the wine burbled through her body.

  Barron rolled his eyes and picked up the now-empty brandy bottle. “Damn him,” he said. “He ought to have called for more.” He got to his feet and stumbled out into the corridor.

  “I have to thank you,” Ewatt said as soon as they were alone. His face was glazed with the sweat of an evening of too much drink and food and laughter, but his eyes were fairly focused. “For your information about our good doctor Arnall.”

  “My information? Whatever do you mean?”

  “That he was writing to Liverpool. You raised my suspicions. I had … I obtained … I took a chance to … well, Cordelia, Cordelia, I have discovered the most alarming thing about our doctor. He was married before!”

  She overlooked his personal use of her first name. “Many people are married more than once.”

  “But what happened to his first wife?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Exactly! Back in Liverpool, he was tied to an unhappy woman. Oh, he killed her, and I have seen the evidence, I have! And here he is, but the blood lust is upon him still, and he has killed again.”

  “Oh, come now. Why would he kill the lad?”

  “They had argued. That is common knowledge. And once a man has killed, once a man has felt the thrill of his primal power, then of course, he will seek to do it again and again!”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is!” Ewatt assured her. “Much like hunting, I suppose. And wine. Once one has the taste for any power, it is in them. Deep inside them!” He slapped his own chest, and somehow managed to unbalance himself. He was clinging to the edge of the sofa when Hugo re-entered.

  “Am I missing some circus tricks?” he said, and with a push of his hand he toppled Ewatt over entirely.

  Barron was soon behind Hugo, and looked down on the prone figure of Ewatt with some distaste. Barron, for all his consumption, was not as drunk as the unfortunate banker.

  Cordelia thought, why has Ewatt not revealed these suspicions about the doctor? Why tell only me? He is drunk, of course. And not in seriousness.

  But she could not let the matter lie, whether Ewatt had jested or not. “Ewatt,” she said, and that jolted him alert. He smiled as he regained his feet. “Tell me again about your thoughts on the doctor.”

  He waved his hand in the air. “Enough about this tedious murder! Who cares about that boy?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “No one does, but we must.”

  “I shall tell you what I care about. More wine. More brandy. More cards.” He took one step to the table and stumbled.

  Hugo grabbed him and hauled him upright. “Ewatt, you sozzled old sot, you can’t even see, never mind play. I’ll call for you to be taken home.”

  “No, no, Huuuugo…” Ewatt lapsed into song as Hugo dragged him to the door and called for assistance.

  There was an awkward few moments as Cordelia and John Barron were left alone. She took her seat and played with her half-empty glass. It was time, she knew, to retire. The coroner made it very clear he was not going to converse with her. The door was left open, and soon Hugo returned. She rose as he re-entered the room.

  “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said.

  “You are not going!”

  “Of course. I must. I need sleep, and tomorrow I…”

  “Tomorrow you leave for good. You are quite set upon this, then? You shall break my heart and your own … for spite?”

  “I do not act out of spite! And I am not breaking your heart any more than you are breaking mine.”

  “But I do break yours,” he said, more quietly, “for I take your house from you.”

  “You beast.”

  John Barron coughed politely but Cordelia ignored him. She clenched her fists and stared at Hugo, feeling hot and uncomfortably sweaty.

  Hugo walked to the card table and picked up a deck, riffling through them casually. His steady was a surprise to her. He, too, had not drunk as much as Ewatt. He was still in control.

  She did not feel in control at all.

  “I want Clarfields,” she said, quietly. He was going to take it from her.

  “Marry me, then,” he said.

  “Never. Play me at cards. Let me have the chance of winning my home back.”

  Barron interrupted. “I have no idea what this is all about, but the good lady is challenging you to a card game, Hawke. Why not, eh?”

  Hugo fanned the cards out and then scooped them up with a flourish. “She will beat me,” he said. “The match would not be fair.”

  “She is good at whist. Try poker.”

  “No.” Hugo cocked his head and regarded her, a cunning smile coming onto his face. “You really do care about this murdered boy, don’t you?”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” she said.

  Both Barron and Hugo snorted. Hugo said, “So, here’s a wager more to my liking.”

  A cold hand seemed to settle on the back of her neck. “Go on.”

  “Solve the murder yourself. Bring the killer to justice. Prove it was – or wasn’t – Mrs Hurrell. If it wasn’t, find out who it was.”

  “And then?”

  “You keep Clarfields.”

  Barron was shaking his head but he clicked his fingers at Hugo. “Fetch me some paper, man. Let’s do this thing properly.”

  Cordelia stood in a daze as a contract was drawn up by the coroner. Within minutes, there it stood: the agreement that Clarfields would pass to her, in its entirety, should she solve the case.

  “How long do I have?” she asked.

  “I go north for the hunting in two weeks’ time,” Hugo said.

  Barron looked up at her, his pen poised to witness their signatures. “Better get on with it, Lady Cornbrook,” he said, and smiled.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ruby was singing.

  Cordelia pulled the rich cotton sheets up and burrowed low in the wide, soft bed. The heavy curtains were pulled closed across the window, and the room was dark, but still the burgeoning day intruded into her thick and muzzy head.

  She kept herself muffled up in the sheets and covers when she heard the bedroom door open. Take the hint, take the hint, she thought. Go away.

  She couldn’t hear footsteps on the luxurious carpets but she knew Ruby had come to the bedside by the clink of a tray being set down on the table. “Mr Peeble’s Salts,” Ruby said. “And some water, and some fruit, and a little bread. My lady. I understand we are not to be leaving after all. I have things in hand.”

  She heard the rustle of skirts and the door clicked closed.

  And then, distant singing once more.

  The naughty maid. Cordelia struggled into a sitting position and looked at the tray, and allowed herself a smile. Ruby had potential, after all.

  * * *

  She spent the morning with her notebook and deep in introspection. The cookery book project? A mere trifle, just as they had all said.

  No, the
real business was now on. The murder!

  By midday, Cordelia was back to her usual perky self, though there had been no sign of Hugo. She enquired after his health with his house steward, who remained perfectly impassive and professional and merely replied, “I shall pass on your good wishes.” She hadn’t actually wished him anything, good or bad, but it was clear that the man was not going to reveal the state of his master.