An Unmourned Man (Lady C. Investigates Book 1)

by Issy Brooke

  Cordelia riffled through the letters that had been addressed to her care of the manor house. There was one advantage to being a lady writer, failed or not; her agent and others were most amenable to playing along with her whims and demands. After all, they were not the ones who were out of pocket with her ventures.

  Ruby sat quietly while Cordelia read through the notes. Most were of no use. They started with three paragraphs of social platitudes, then remarked that no information could be found, and followed that up with a further four paragraphs of meaningless society gossip.

  But there were a few gems in amongst it all. She sat back.

  “You are smiling, my lady…” Ruby said, not able to hide her own grin of curiosity. “Do tell.”

  “It mostly concerns our mysterious Mrs Hurrell,” Cordelia said. “A woman with a past.”

  “The most interesting sort of woman,” Ruby said.

  “Indeed. Though I would counsel you to avoid Mrs Hurrell’s particular way of becoming interesting; you know, I think, that she ran a house of ill-repute in London?”

  “I did. I remember we thought no more of it.”

  “But there is more,” Cordelia said. “This confirms it. She served a sentence of several months’ imprisonment for it. Hard labour, no less. And then she came here, to start afresh.”

  “Commendable.”

  It was similar to the newspaper article she had read that had been hidden in the sideboard. A different woman; the same outcome. Crime, then punishment.

  “The past has a horrid way of catching up with us,” Cordelia said sadly. She shook herself free of that, and ploughed on. “Anyway. So, Mrs Hurrell came here. And that had got me to thinking. Why here, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Why anywhere?”

  “I think that I know,” Cordelia said. “Ewatt Carter-Hall was one of her many clients in London. He is a man with appetites, and he made no secret of that to me. She had an especial talent for finding innocent girls who had recently arrived in the city seeking their fortune. Alas, they found something quite the opposite. And it is suggested that she came here with a small sum of money that Ewatt gave her to start her lodging house. And there is more. Who owns that house?”

  “I am guessing that it is not Mrs Hurrell…”

  “Indeed not. Mr Carter-Hall owns it, as Mrs Kale told us.”

  Ruby chewed her lip reflectively. “So they are linked.”

  “They are, in more ways than I had thought.”

  Both lapsed into silence for a while. From time to time, Ruby made a suggestion – “Mrs Hurrell did it” or “Mr Carter-Hall and his wife did it” or even “could it have been a passing vagrant and we are but fools?”

  Cordelia dismissed it all, saying, “We must find the why and from there we find the who.”

  The meditation was broken by the arrival of Stanley. He stammered out the information he had heard in the servants’ halls around the town.

  “Mrs Hurrell had been targeted before,” he said. “By a burglar, I mean.”

  “What happened?”

  “N-nothing, my lady. She surprised him and he ran off.”

  “He?”

  “An unknown man. Skinny, rough-voiced, and very tall.”

  Cordelia tapped her fingers on her now-empty cup. “So. There is something in Mrs Hurrell’s possession that another wants.”

  “Was it only a burglary gone wrong?” Ruby asked. She sounded almost disappointed.

  “We saw nothing in her house. Perhaps the burglar was successful. However, I rather think that the burglary was but a part of the whole.”

  “And what of the doctor?” Ruby said. “Is he no longer a suspect? Was that all a dead-end?”

  Cordelia smiled. “I suspect him of a few things,” she said. “Let us unravel this all. There is to be a ball tomorrow night, in Cambridge, is there not?”

  Stanley and Ruby looked at one another and shrugged.

  “Well, there is,” Cordelia went on. “It is marking the end of the summer, but it will be a more impressive thing than Hugo’s little gathering. Many will be returning to London for the opening of Parliament; others will be heading for the hunting, as Hugo will. Ruby, fetch my writing desk and open it on that table there. Stanley, wait one moment; I have another task for you. A message will need delivering to Mr Carter-Hall. Oh, and I wish to speak to Mrs Unsworth too. She needs to go into town for me.”

  She strode to her portable writing desk and bent to her task. Mrs Unsworth announced her presence by heavy breathing as she stood at the door. Eventually Cordelia was ready. She pressed a list of items into Mrs Unsworth’s hand. “You are to go shopping,” she told her. “And take Ruby, for I value her good taste.”

  Then she turned to Stanley. “This note, you must put directly into Ewatt Carter-Hall’s hand. Not his post box, not onto the tray in his hall, not into the hand of the housekeeper or a steward or a butler. The man himself. Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes my lady.”

  “Good.”

  There was a moment of stillness.

  “Go on, be about it!” she said, and ushered them all from the room.

  Now, she waited.

  She seemed to be doing quite a lot of that recently. But it was a waiting that was filled with potential.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Sir William Elkesley’s Cambridge residence was on a grand scale. Cordelia liked to think of herself as above being impressed by worldly show and extravagance, but it would be a hard heart indeed that was not amazed by the vast rooms, high ceilings, crowded paintings in deep gilt frames, and every manner of sculpture and decoration throughout.

  The butler greeted them impassively and nodded.

  Cordelia’s mouth was dry.

  The announcement was made. “Ewatt Carter-Hall and–” There was just a slight pause. “–and Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook.”

  Heads turned. Perhaps not everyone knew of the scandal that had led to her being expelled from Hugo Hawke’s manor, but certainly enough people did know that a ripple of low conversation spread in expanding circles from knots of people who were standing around.

  Ewatt’s hand was steady. He led her forwards and bent to whisper in her ear. “Fear not, dear Cordelia. As your escort, I shall aid you to navigate these choppy waters. Your bravery astounds me; I am delighted to be prevailed upon to help you brazen this out.”

  “Thank you so much,” she murmured back to him.

  Indeed, he had sent a reply to her message by instant return; nothing would give him greater pleasure, he had said, than to accompany her to this grand ball. Obtaining invitations to it would be simple for a man such as himself.

  And everyone from the great and the good would be present, she knew. And so, the trap was set. She stood tall and cast her eye about. Many people reddened and looked away hastily. A few met her gaze with a steady look, unfazed by her actions. One or two winked, and she felt a few fellow sympathisers lend her strength in their nods and slight smiles.

  There was the coroner, of course, and his short, mousey wife.

  “Is the sheriff here, do you know?” she asked Ewatt.

  “No idea,” he answered brusquely. “I think he favours Huntingdonshire, to be truthful. We are just a little too … rural, perhaps, for his tastes.”

  She craned her neck. She hoped that Geoffrey had done his work and got the constables in place. She had sent him to seek out the watch committee though they seemed far more interested in trying to make the university contribute to the payment of watchmen. Stanley had had his tasks, too; he assured her that he had passed messages on to the coroner and the sheriff. But neither had sent any reply to her.

  There was Doctor Donald Arnall and his wife. He was not looking her way, and for that she was glad. Knowing what she knew about him now made her uncomfortable. She was not sure what to do with that knowledge.

  A tug on her arm reminded her that the initial source for that knowledge, Ewatt himself, was waiting.

  She smiled at hi
m. He had followed her gaze. “I am amazed that man is here so blatantly,” he muttered.

  Cordelia had sent an entreaty to Hetty, via Ruby. She was not sure what had had the most persuasive effect; her letter or Ruby herself. She was happy to see it had worked, and that Hetty had brought her husband along.

  Her letter had contained the words, “Some revelations may be painful but I can assure you that it is all in the name of justice.” Perhaps that had done the trick.

  “My dear, are you quite all right?” Ewatt said.

  “I am sorry. Do forgive me.” Cordelia had been standing still and taking it all in, running through events in her mind. “Please. Shall we mingle?”

  “Allow me.” He led her into the throng of people, and they began to smile and chat with anyone who would not melt away in embarrassment.

  * * *

  She was waiting for her moment. Her heart had been thudding in her chest for so long now that she wondered how much more it could take. Perhaps she should have just written her suspicions out to the sheriff; but then, she reminded herself, she would not see justice done.

  No, her revelations had to be made in public. The coroner must know of it, and Clarfields would be saved. All the parties involved must be present.

  Almost all the parties involved.

  She could see no way to bring Mrs Hurrell from London to witness this, though the events concerned her most of all.

  Still, the other principle players were present. And as she still lacked some essential proof – beyond her own gut feelings – she needed to make the revelations in front of the guilty party and hope that their reactions would seal their fate.

  Now she needed to orchestrate them all together, and her palms were slippery with sweat in her fine white gloves.

  She was enclosed by people. The music from the quartet in an adjoining room seemed to grow louder and louder. The more she concentrated, the more overwhelmed she began to feel. A woman’s braying laugh scored fingernails through her mind. A man turned, his eyes huge, his mouth wet and his lips hanging loosely. She almost swooned, such was the intensity.

  Ewatt’s hand gripped her upper arm, and she staggered.

  “I have you,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you need to sit? Here – well, here is the doctor. He may as well be of some use.”

  And there he was, the lean, lithe Doctor Arnall, approaching with his wife at his side. She peered at Cordelia with curiosity, and not a little apprehension.

  It was falling into place. Cordelia dragged a deep breath into her lungs and straightened up. She stared past Doctor Arnall. “Is that the sheriff?”

  At hearing his title, the whiskered man turned his head in her direction. He was old but hale, a hearty man who had ridden hard in his youth and retained his fitness even in his advancing years. His hearing, too, was as undimmed as his sight, and his perception that something was potentially amiss.

  He approached the little group.

  Now was the moment.

  Now was the time.

  Cordelia put her own hand over Ewatt’s where it rested on her upper arm. And she held on.

  “Sheriff,” she said. “May I present to you the murderer of Thomas Bains.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  She was expecting a sudden hush.

  What she got was laughter.

  It was stilted at first, nervous, hesitant.

  Then the sheriff began to laugh, and others followed suit.

  Cordelia wanted to curl up and cry.

  But then she noticed that in spite of the laughter, people were curious. They were gathering around. Ewatt’s hand on her arm was digging in, now, almost to the point of discomfort. His knuckles were white. That was her proof. This was exactly the moment she had been working towards, she told herself.

  She inclined her head towards Ewatt, and said, “How goes your banking business, Ewatt?”

  The laughter faded as people strove to hear what was being said. The sudden change of direction grabbed everyone’s attention.

  “It rumbles along quite nicely,” he said. There was a flat, dangerous light in his eyes. He did not want to speak of it.

  “Does it?” she said. “You would not be the first owner of a small local bank to raise loans in London against your supposed stock – loans that you know can never be repaid.”

  “What nonsense,” Ewatt said. “You know nothing of the financial world.”

  “The world of fake money, of false investments, of illusory projects? I know enough. You had to maintain a face so that your investors would not get edgy and pull out. But your bank was nothing more than a name on a door, Ewatt, and still you raised money, planning to flee abroad with it.”

  “You know nothing,” he repeated.

  “I know enough to know that you were in deep financial trouble,” she said. “There were signs. You never called the doctor to your sick children.”

  His face paled. “Do not accuse me of neglect, madam! How dare you throw our private grief into such a foul slander.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that you failed to call the doctor because of lack of funds to pay him. For I know that the doctor – notwithstanding some foolish decisions he has made in the past – the doctor is a good man and would not suffer to see a child die if he could in any wise prevent it, money or not. No, you let your babes die so that you could collect on the insurance.”

  There was a collective gasp.

  “Madam! I–”

  “No,” she said, cutting him off. “It is a common practise, I understand, amongst the lower orders. My maid reminded me of that. There are death clubs and burial clubs, where money is put aside for the costs of a funeral. But in your case, Ewatt, you let the children wither and fade rather than even try to save them! You had utterly divorced yourself, in your mind, from family life. You thought only of your plans to escape. No wonder your wife flirts with madness and despair.”

  “This is insanity!” he spluttered. “And you have no evidence.”

  “Only what I saw with my own eyes,” she said. “But I would urge that auditors go to your bank and see for themselves. For it is the sad decline of your fortunes that has put everything else into motion.”

  Ewatt puffed out his cheeks and thought furiously, his emotions chasing over his red face. “Well – well,” he said. “Though my bank’s dealings do rise and sometimes fall, as do all businesses, yet I cannot see how you can possibly link that to anything else, least of all the death of some man.”

  “It is very much linked,” she said. “You owned the house that Mrs Hurrell rented, and she sub-let that back room. You wanted to put her rent up. Yet you did not. You could not.”

  “Of course I could. It is a balance,” he said, trying to sound calm and reasonable once more. “If I raise my rents too high, my tenants will leave. So…”

  “No,” she said, stopping him. “She had information about you, Ewatt, and she threatened to expose you. Her rent was low, and it was to remain so, because you could not risk raising it! And more than that. You wanted to get that information back. So you sent a man to rob her, but he was surprised in the execution of it. So you went yourself, did you not?”

  “What utter rot.”

  The sheriff had been listening and now he spoke. “But it was a young man who was killed,” he said. “I fail to see the connection with rents and robberies.”

  “Thomas Bains rented the back room,” Cordelia said. “And though he was a loud sort of man, he was also, in his own strange way, a good one. A man’s actions speak louder than words, do they not? However loud one’s words might be. I heard so many examples of things that Thomas had done – he gave his coat to a beggar, he helped others in small ways – that I got a sense of him being, in his own way, a moral being.”

  Everyone was shaking their heads, unconvinced. Cordelia stormed on with her explanation. “No, it is true. And it was Thomas who fitted the post box to Ewatt’s house, and Thomas who began to learn of the bank�
�s problems and his need for secrecy in this matter.”

  “So why did Thomas not make this public?” the sheriff asked. He still didn’t look as if he believed a word of it.

  “He tried.” Cordelia pointed through the crowd around her, and her object was the doctor. “He sought out the one man in the town that he thought he could trust. The one person who had a social standing, but who was not part of the corrupt ring of players. Doctor Donald Arnall.”

  The doctor shook his head. “He did not.”