by Issy Brooke
But it also meant staying here with Hugo Hawke so that she might enjoy – or at least, endure – his hospitality for a little longer. He sprang out of his study as she came onto the landing, and his flushed face spoke of not a little drink.
“He’s only gone and left me already,” he said, referring to the company he had enjoyed earlier. “And I was just getting started. Don’t suppose you want to come in and play a hand? Take your mind off this murder business. Let’s not act as enemies, Cordelia.”
She smiled through gritted teeth. She did not want to offend him too much, in case he cast her out. All he had to stick to was the strict terms of the wager – there was nothing in there to say he had to accommodate her while she investigated. “Of course. Though if I might ring for a cup of tea, that would be perfect.”
“I cannot tempt you to a little glass of something?”
“I am afraid not.” She was not risking drunkenness again.
He leaned on the doorframe and cocked his head to one side, grinning wolfishly. “But I can tempt you into my room, though…”
Oh, this was tiresome.
“I rather think it is the offer of a game of cards which I find so alluring,” she said breezily and stepped past him, letting her skirts swish against his leather boots.
He made a growling noise in his throat and followed her into the room.
He looked serious and intent. She shook her conscience clear. It was all a game, was it not?
And she didn’t mean the cards.
“I shall deal,” she told him, and took defiant charge.
Chapter Twenty-two
Two days later, Freda unexpectedly called on Cordelia. She had been in the library, reading about the different methods of lighting a fire and how the fuel used would impact on what could be cooked. It was fascinating stuff. She had actually gone to the library to think about connections between Ewatt and Mrs Hurrell and the doctor, but she had grown tired and distractible. It was infuriating, waiting for Stanley to return. She had had no word from him. In the meantime, she talked with Ruby, avoided Hugo, and watched Ralph Goody from afar. She still had her suspicions there.
But Freda would be a welcome diversion. Cordelia descended the stairs and met Freda in the hallway. She searched the banker’s wife for signs of what might be intoxicating her this particular day.
Freda smiled warmly. Her hands were not twitching, but nor was she yawning or indolent. Could she be simply unfettered today? Or maybe, Cordelia thought, she had aligned her drug and alcohol use into a better balance.
“Cordelia,” she said, continuing with her uninvited liberty of first name terms. “How lovely to find you at home. I wonder, are you free today?”
That was interesting. Cordelia said, “I am. What did you intend?”
Freda clapped her hands like a little girl. “How wonderful! It is such a fine day. And Ewatt is still away again.” She gave an affected little pout at that. “So, I thought we might travel into Cambridge.”
“By carriage?”
“Mine is outside and the horses are fresh. It is only mid-morning and we should be there by lunchtime. Oh, do say you will come! I long for company.”
Cordelia didn’t care much for the quality of company, but the potential for gossip was unrivalled, so she quickly agreed, and went back upstairs to change.
* * *
Cordelia learned a little more about how to manage Freda on the long journey to Cambridge. The carriage was better maintained than the Carter-Hall’s house, and though they rocked and had to raise their voices to be heard, it was not an unpleasant journey. She began to treat her firmly, with simple instructions and constant re-focussing, as if Freda was an unruly school girl. She seemed to respond to the almost patronising tone with relief.
Freda wanted direction, Cordelia realised. The poor young woman.
Cordelia probed away, digging for information about Thomas Bains, and in particular, what might be known of his family. She had not been able to discover much from the servants at the manor – not much that they were willing to impart, at any rate.
It turned out to be a subject Freda could expand upon.
“He had done jobs at our house,” she said. “Didn’t he have a loud voice, though?”
“I never met him.”
“No, of course not!” Freda covered her mouth in pretend horror. “Oh goodness, yes, you never did. Well. He was a nice young man, I thought, but he didn’t do himself any favours, you know?”
“In what way?” It could be tortuous, prodding Freda towards the right information.
“Oh, that I thought he was a pleasant young man, really, and I do think he was a good man, but he sounded like he was not, if you catch my meaning. He talked a lot about things he knew nothing of. I mean, of course, we all do that, but he was so loud about it all. Yet I do think he had a golden heart.” Freda smiled winningly. “Oh, do you like that phrase? I do. A golden heart. How lovely. A golden heart. I should have liked to have been a poet.”
“Indeed.” Cordelia smiled through her gritted teeth. It matched with what she’d heard before: he’d talked himself up, but his deeds had been kind. “And what of a sweetheart? Had he set his cap at anyone?”
That was exactly the sort of thing that Freda loved to talk about, be they rich or poor. Other people’s lives were as stories to her. “No!” she exclaimed. “None at all that I heard about! Poor man.”
“Oh.” Cordelia was disappointed. But just because Freda did not know, it did not follow that there was no sweetheart. There would be a lot that happened amongst the people of the town that Freda would not be privy to. Young couples would conceal who they favoured from the gossips for as long as they could.
“I expected that he would marry soon after his father died,” Freda continued. “But maybe his arguments put the girls off.”
“Maybe so. And what of his mother?”
“I do not rightly know,” Freda said. “I heard rumours that she had run off. But then his father was a drinker, so who can blame her? Oh! Look, there.” She began to point through the window.
All that Cordelia could see was a loose horse, its reins flapping as it was pursued over a field by a fat man. Then they were past the scene, but Freda was laughing. Such small things delighted the woman, and now she was telling Cordelia all about the pony she had had as a child, and the naughty things that the pony did. Cordelia smiled politely as she listened.
* * *
Cambridge was a vibrant town, replete with tourists and students and rich and poor alike. They found an elegant hotel which could serve them a very fine midday meal, which they took in a private booth. When it came to pay for the food and service, Freda began to fret and fumble with her purse so Cordelia stepped in to cover the bill. Freda, blushing furiously, began to insist that she pay Cordelia back. It made an unseemly scene and Cordelia hushed her angrily.
For a few minutes Freda sulked silently, until Cordelia realised she had to relent and “make it up to her” even though she did not see that it was her own fault. Falsely bright, she said, “Come, now, Freda. Let us walk and gaze through the shop windows!”
Freda perked up instantly.
But it was soon apparent that it was not enough to simply window-shop. Not for Freda, at least. She darted into shop after shop, and positively plagued the assistants with her demands to see fabrics and furs, hats and ribbons, elegant spoons and ingenious carvings, imported clocks and curious ornaments. There wasn’t a mechanical tin soldier in the town that she had not cooed over.
And she bought things, too, but never paid for a solitary item herself; it was all to be added to Ewatt’s accounts, or the bills to be sent on to their house.
It was a dangerous game, Cordelia thought. Freda could accrue no debts of her own, of course, as a married woman; Ewatt would be liable for all of this.
“Might you show a little restraint?” Cordelia said as Freda suddenly grasped her hand and pulled Cordelia towards the open doors of an inn.
�
��Life is short,” Freda shot back airily. “We have but few pleasures in life. Mine is to be a connoisseur of fine things!”
Cordelia thought that Freda didn’t really understand what she was saying. There was no chance to remonstrate with her. The inn had large bills tacked up on either side of the doors; a public auction was in progress, and Freda could not wait to enter.
Cordelia followed, with a sinking feeling in her heart.
* * *
That sinking feeling proved to have been entirely justified.
“But I cannot simply take it away this instant!” Freda wailed.
Cordelia took one more step backwards and surveyed the unfortunate scene from a distance. They were standing in the courtyard at the back of the inn, and the auction inside was still progressing. However, the yard was alive with people coming and going. Carts jostled against each other, their axles catching, and the horses baulking. Men in rough brown clothes shouted and cursed as they loaded and unloaded furniture and sundries.
From what Cordelia could make out, a rich businessman on the far side of Cambridge, one Isaac Withington, had gone suddenly bankrupt – well, not he himself, but his businesses had folded, one by one, the collapse of the first sparking a whole chain of slow and inevitable disaster. Now his entire estate was being sold off, and his creditors circled, waiting to seize upon the spoils.
It was said that he had attempted to run for parliamentary office, simply to try and evade being arrested for his debts; no one engaged on political business could be stopped and taken. But that had failed, as he had misunderstood the details of that exclusion, and now he was ruined.
His primary business had been banking, and Freda had gloated in particular about that. “Oh, my Ewatt is such a clever man!” she had repeatedly crowed while in the auction hall, suddenly proud of her husband.
Freda was not showing much pride now they were in the courtyard. In fact, Cordelia could see that the mercurial woman’s lightning moods had swiftly become full of fear.
“It will not fit in our carriage! Oh, what am I to do?” She pressed her hands to her throat and her eyes were shining with genuine tears.
The porter was unaffected. He rested his hand on the sideboard. It was of solid teak, and stood five feet high and seven feet wide. “You are to take it, madam, that is what you are to do. For you have bought it.”
“I cannot!” She turned to petulance, and stamped her foot. “I shall leave it here.”
“That, madam, would be littering, of a most monumental nature.”
Cordelia caught the eye of another porter who was standing to one side to watch the show. “Might we engage a carter to deliver it?” she said to him.
“Of course,” the man said. “It would be sensible, would it not?”
“Sense, alas, I fear is lacking.” Cordelia stepped forward with a heavy sigh, and began to arrange for the sideboard’s delivery.
* * *
In spite of Cordelia’s direction, Freda then proceeded to cry all the way home. Whatever substances she took to balance her mood were either wearing off, or building up. Cordelia could not tell which. But the result was that Freda sobbed and wailed about what Ewatt was going to say to her when he returned from his trip.
“He ought not to let you out of the house if you cannot be trusted,” Cordelia muttered in exasperation, and that triggered a fresh bout of hysterics.
“He usually does not let me out,” Freda sniffed. “I have been quite locked up before now! I promised him most faithfully that this time I would behave. Oh, oh, he will be so dreadfully disappointed in me. He hates me to fritter away his hard-earned money.”
Cordelia was starting to dislike Ewatt and Freda both. After all, she reflected, he was frittering his money away on his women and his lovers and his trips; the least he could do would be to staff his house better, and treat his wife with more care. She could not quite determine with whom the greater fault rested.
When they rolled up to the front entrance of Hugo’s house so that Cordelia could alight, Freda grabbed Cordelia’s hands and held them tight. Her eyes were red and her face quite blotchy.
“Do not tell him,” she said, imploringly.
Cordelia tried to ease her way to the open door of the carriage. Freda would not let go. Cordelia ended up standing on the gravel, reaching up and over the step awkwardly to where Freda leaned out of the carriage. Geoffrey stood behind Cordelia, muttering under his breath, while waiting to escort her up the steps to the doors.
“I never betray a confidence,” Cordelia said. She was not sure what Freda wanted concealing. She was hardly going to be able to hide a sideboard.
“Do not tell him … anything,” Freda said, and she gulped in a sob and flung herself back into the carriage, pulling the door closed with a slam.
Cordelia turned, and Geoffrey gave her a long, appraising look before he led her up the stone steps into Hugo’s house.
Chapter Twenty-three
Cordelia sat in the glass-walled garden room at the back of the house. Rain was pattering incessantly on the roof and against one side. The running water over the glass made the gardens blur into a soft mass of greens with splashes of unidentified colour at intervals. It was a pleasing effect.
Or at least, it had been a pleasing effect for the first hour or so.
Now she was sick of it.
It had been many days since she had sent Stanley north to seek out information about the doctor. She had less than a week left before Hugo went north to join the autumn hunts, and she would lose her house.
When she was in Hugo’s company, he was as perfectly attentive as any woman could wish. But the undercurrent of the wager was like a chasm between them. How could he speak with her, flirt with her even, as if nothing had happened? It was as if he thought she’d crumble and accept his offer of marriage.
She would not.
He mentioned her sad loneliness, and her uncertain future, and the security of his estates, with regularity.
He did not, at any point, attempt to compromise her, by word or by deed, and that was his one saving grace. She did not feel vulnerable in his presence.
But she had, at last, received a letter from Stanley.
Cordelia held it now in her hands. Ruby was sitting opposite, making a half-hearted attempt to sew the seams flat in the French manner on a new nightdress.
“My lady? May I ask, what does the letter say? I know it is from the daft boy.”
“You didn’t read it?” Her duplicity was surprisingly lacking. Cordelia assumed she had no secrets from her maid. “Well, then. He confirmed that he had seen, with his own eyes, the marriage register of Clara to the doctor. And then the tales of how she had fled from him!”
“And then what happened to her?”
“I do not know. Perhaps she lives still, and that means his marriage now is a sham? He is a petty bigamist. Or perhaps he pursued her, and killed her. That’s Ewatt’s insinuation.”
“And you think this means he killed Thomas Bains, also? For what ends?” Ruby said, her brows lowered in concentration.
“The doctor is an awfully good man on the outside,” Cordelia said. “But listen. Let us go over this. He had argued with Thomas, and refused to see him. What does that say? There is more. Freda Carter-Hall has a sick child but she does not call the doctor. Why? Perhaps they, too, have argued. Or maybe he has refused to see them, too, but she has covered for him!”
“Were not both Carter-Hall and the doctor at the dinner party that was held here?”
“Yes,” Cordelia said. “But they spoke not at all. In fact the doctor kept himself to himself. His wife did not attend. I feel that he was simply making up the numbers.”
“We did see him on the day of the murder.”
“Indeed we did. And remember, he was riding away, and he was agitated. When he came in, he was wet – oh, the bathing in rivers is an excuse, do you see? He was washing the blood from his body, his hands.”
“Oh!”
“You begi
n to follow my reasoning,” Cordelia said. “It seems clear that–”
The door to the hallway opened and Cordelia froze as footsteps clacked over the parquet flooring.
It was Hugo’s housekeeper. “My lady; your boy, Stanley, is returned. Shall I send him to you?”
“Where is he?”
“Currently in the kitchens, eating all the bread.”
“I shall come down.”
“But–”
“Thank you,” Cordelia said. She rose and nodded to Ruby, who followed behind.