by Joan Smith
“That will be very dear!” Corinne warned, when she heard what he had in mind.
“It’s customary to give one’s host a gift on parting,” Prance explained. “The robes will be my gift. And by the by, what are you and Luten giving him?” He didn’t want to be outshone by Luten.
“Luten bought some rare old manuscript of Alexander Pope’s in London. Byron quite dotes on Pope. The manuscript is from both of us, though Luten paid most of the money.”
“Ah, an excellent choice!” Prance wished he had thought of it himself. What could be more appropriate from one poet to another than a work of poetry? And, though one wouldn’t think it, Byron was particularly fond of Pope. He asked to have the linen sent to Mrs. Addams, and went from the drapery shop to the modiste to deliver the sketch of the robes he wished to have made.
Mrs. Addams was tending to one customer and had another waiting, which he took as a good sign of her ability. When she finished with the first customer, she said a word to the other and tended to Corinne and Sir Reginald. The other woman didn’t appear to take offence. She sat listening with wide eyes, as if she were at the theater, while Corinne introduced Prance.
“I hope the shawls were to your satisfaction, milady?” the modiste asked with a worried look.
“Oh, more than satisfactory, Mrs. Addams. Very fine stitching.”
“I was surprised to see Lady Richardson pick them up for you.”
“She kindly offered, to save me a trip.”
“So she said. She was stopping by in any case to collect her new riding habit.”
Corinne blinked in surprise and looked at Prance, whose eyebrows had risen an inch. “I see you’re kept busy,” she said.
“I am, and no mistake. The Christmas assembly — the ladies all want a bit of new finery for that. And what can I do for you, milady?” Prance stepped forward to make the request, in great detail as to the fullness of the robes and the time constraint.
“Oh dear!” She said, clapping her palms against her cheeks. “Eight robes! I doubt I can have them ready before Christmas. Really, it’s a great deal of work.”
“But the sewing is simple,” he said persuasively. “Just straight lines. I could arrange a little bonus ... Do you have anyone who could help you, with your keen eye watching over them?”
She pinched her chin to aid thinking. “I daresay my sister would welcome the money. I wouldn’t trust her with setting in a sleeve, but for a straight seam she’s well enough. And there’s Miss Challoner, who sets a dainty stitch. She can always use a little extra money. She makes do with giving lessons on the pianoforte, but the other folks in the house don’t like the racket.” She firmed her shoulders and said, pink in cheek at her daring in accepting the chore, “Yes, I think I can promise you the robes by the twenty-third.”
Prance grabbed her two hands and squeezed them. “You’re an angel! And I am a the most selfish beast in Christendom to place such a burden on you.”
“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Addams, who was not used to such superlatives. She blushed pink as a peony and darted a quick, proud glance to her other waiting customer, who looked as if she wanted to clap.
Prance and Corinne left. “That’s odd,” she said, as they went out to the High Street.
“You’re referring to Lady Richardson having a riding habit made up there.”
“She said she never uses Mrs. Addams. A riding habit is a very complicated thing, Reg. You don’t ask just anyone to make a riding habit. You choose the best modiste you can find.”
“She wanted to give you the notion she has a more stylish modiste. She mentioned that the woman in Mansfield is French, n’est-ce pas?”
“Yes, she called her Madame something.”
“And I seem to recall she asked you if your modiste in London was French. Her aim was to let you know she was every bit as stylish as you. C’est tout. “
“Yes, I expect that’s it, though actually riding habits are one area where the English modistes excel. Many French ladies send to London to have theirs made.”
He gave a dismissing smile. “You could hardly expect a provincial to know that.”
They continued on to examine the wares in a few more shops before going to the Flying Horse. Prance adored shopping nearly as much as Corinne did. In an antique shop he found an etching of a dog gnawing on a bone which he was convinced could only be the work of Dürer and bought it, to have transported to his country estate. The subject matter didn’t go with the dainty Watteaus and Fragonards in his London home.
Before it seemed possible it was twelve o’clock, and they hurried on to the Flying Horse.
* * *
Chapter 17
The tantalizing aroma of roast beef and freshly baked bread wafted toward them as they entered the Flying Horse. The proprietor, recognizing Byron’s guests by their style, rushed forward to personally escort them through the busy entrance hall to the parlor where Byron was waiting for them. It was an unpretentious room, paneled in dark wood, with a window on to the bustling street beyond. The snapping logs in the grate cast a warm glow that was welcome after the raw wind of a December morning. Byron had ordered wine and was sipping a glass while waiting for them. He rose to welcome them and help Corinne with her pelisse.
“Did you hire the musicians?” was Prance’s first question.
“Yes, it’s all arranged. A cello, piano player and two fiddles. Don’t expect waltzes or minuets or actually carrying a tune from them. They favor lively country airs, scraped out with more enthusiasm than talent. You got the linen you were after?”
“We did, and have already arranged with the modiste to run the robes up.”
“I hope you’re having the bill sent to me.”
Prance just smiled. “What had Eggars to say?”
“He’s coming out to the abbey to have a look about, not that it will do any good. But the strangest thing, Prance, Vulch was there.”
“Vulch!” Prance cried, just as Corinne asked, “That’s odd. Was he arrested?”
“No, you haven’t heard the cream of it. It gets odder,” Byron said.
They were interrupted by the arrival of the waiter and before he left, Luten came hurrying in. He was happy to see Byron hadn’t contrived to get Corinne to himself. “Just in time, I see. A beefsteak for me,” he said to the waiter.
Byron asked for the same, Corinne ordered roast chicken and after much discussion Prance felt he could manage a little broth, and peck at a small chicken leg. He wondered if he dare ask for the left leg, as Brummell used to do, claiming it was used less for scratching, and was therefore more tender. But he was afraid of being laughed at and didn’t specify which leg.
“Did I hear the name Vulch as I came in?” Luten asked, taking a seat and accepting a glass of wine. “Has Eggars caught the culprit who vandalized your archives last night, Byron?”
“You heard the name, but not in that context,” Byron said. “Eggars is somewhat like the mills of the gods. He grinds exceeding slow, but not, I fear, quite so small.” He outlined his visit to Eggars. “Eggars is convinced, but I don’t believe that body was Minnie Vulch’s, missing molar or no.”
“Why on earth would he lie about something that could prove troublesome to himself?” Corinne asked. “Doesn’t the body found so close to where Vulch lives suggest that he killed her?”
Byron gave a frowning shrug. “It would be demmed difficult to prove it after all this time. Innocent until proven guilty. And with the gypsies to blame it on, the scoundrel will get away with it.”
Luten listened and said, “A gypsy might have got hold of a gun.”
Prance considered it and said, “But surely the body being wrapped in a sheet suggests a more bourgeois mentality. If it was to be passed off as a gypsy murder, why not use a shawl, like the gypsy women use?”
“He didn’t think the body would ever by discovered,” Corinne suggested.
“If you don’t think the body is Minnie’s, Byron,” Luten said, “what is Vulch getting awa
y with? The murder of some other girl?”
“Damme, I don’t know,” Byron said, tossing up his hands in frustration. “I just feel in my bones he’s lying. He kept twirling his hat around in his hands in a nervous way, and making patently insincere remarks about how sorry he was and wanting to give her a proper burial. That’s money out of his own pocket, which don’t sound like Vulch.Not that he can’t afford it with all that gold he’s got stashed away. I’d give a monkey to know where that came from.”
Luten studied him as he spoke, and thought he was genuinely confused, which didn’t look as if the gold came from Byron. What could be in that letter he had taken from Vulch’s shack? He knew he should ask, but knew as well it would ruin his chance of getting Byron into the shadow cabinet.
The food arrived and they all fell silent a moment. When the waiter left, Luten said, “The obvious explanation is that he’s pretending — for a price I assume — that the body in the grave is his wife’s, to hide the true identity of the victim, and whoever murdered her.”
“He already had the money before he claimed the body is Minnie’s,” Corinne pointed out. “And isn’t there a danger that Minnie will resurface if she isn’t dead? Is there anyone in the neighborhood she might have written to?”
“Murray tells me her parents and uncle are dead,” Byron said. “He doesn’t believe she had any brothers or siblings. If she had any close friends, I wouldn’t know who they would be. I doubt she’d write in any case, lest Vulch found out where she’d gone.”
They mulled this over a moment, then Luten said, “If the body is his wife’s as Eggars thinks and neither Vulch nor a gypsy killed her, who did?”
“As she was found on my island, I fancy that directs suspicion on me,” Byron said. “That’s why I want you all to try to help me solve this.” He turned to Luten. “I’ll be no good to the party if I come trailing clouds of suspicion behind me. The Berkeley Brigade has solved harder puzzles than this.”
“We have no intention of giving up on it,” Luten said. Byron’s request certainly wasn’t that of a guilty man. Whatever was behind his business with Vulch, at least it wasn’t murder.
After a hearty lunch and much discussion, the only conclusion they came to was that they didn’t trust Vulch an inch. If the body was his wife’s, someone had paid him to admit it, and if it wasn’t, then someone had paid him to pretend it was.
* * * *
Coffen had returned from his search for clues and was snuggled up in front of the grate with a glass of wine when the others returned to the Abbey. “They got your window fixed, Byron, and patched up that busted door lock in the library. Any news?” he asked, and was told the tale of Vulch’s visit to Eggars.
After much head scratching and ear pulling, Coffen admitted, “I can’t make heads or tails of that. It must be true. When things don’t make sense, they usually are. I had a word with Tess. She says Vulch was at the Green Man last night, left well before midnight, which would give him plenty of time to ransack the library. Of course that don’t mean he did it, but just that he could have, except that his feet are so big.” When this elicited blank stares, he said, “Didn’t Corrie tell you about the footprint I found on one of the papers in the library?” He drew from his pocket the carefully folded print he’d cut from the paper.
“Sorry about that, Byron,” he said, “but I kept the rest of the page and can glue it back together later. Nothing important, is it?”
Byron glanced at the page. “Only a letter from Oliver Cromwell,” he said in a thin voice. Prance held his hand to his forehead and moaned.
“Good. I wouldn’t want to cut up anything valuable,” Coffen said. “But you can see for yourself that this ain’t Vulch’s or any man’s footprint. Is there any lady in the parish dashing enough to have pulled off this stunt, Byron? Someone you ditched, and she’s having a bit of sport with you?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Byron said stiffly. “I wonder if the man who broke in had a helper inside the house? One of my own maids.”
“Then he wouldn’t have had to pry open the door, would he?” Coffen asked.
Luten said, “He might have done it to direct suspicion away from his inside helper.”
“If that’s a maid’s footprint, it means she stepped outside for some reason,” Coffen said. “Not impossible, I suppose, maybe calling him to let him know it was safe to go in. It don’t seem like a lady’s work, somehow, prying the door open and messing about with old papers, but helping from the inside, I can see that.”
It occurred to Prance that Grace might have done it for money. She had asked him that morning if he wanted to do any more ghost hunting. He disliked to admit he had been paying her, however, and said nothing. He soon became bored with the conversation and led Corinne away to practice the Christmas carols, while Coffen roamed the house, finding excuses to talk to the maids and measure by eye the size of their feet. Other than the cook, who had feet bigger than his own, he felt any one of the girls might have made the mark on the paper.
The other excitement of the day was a visit from the Richardsons. They had been out riding and dropped in to offer condolences to Byron on his break-in. Word of it had spread by the usual country grapevine. Corinne was surprised Lady Richardson wasn’t wearing her new scarlet riding habit to impress the visitors. Not that there was anything amiss with the blue one she had on. The hat she wore with it was tall and black, like an officer’s shako, and would have looked stylish with the scarlet habit. In fact, such an outfit had been featured in a recent lady’s magazine.
“It’s appalling. Just appalling,” she declared, accepting a glass of wine and setting it aside. “I had William call in the locksmith and put new bolts on all the doors. Which probably means they’ll break our windows to get in.” Her voice sounded somehow tense when she asked, “Have you any idea who did it, milord, and what’s behind it?”
“After much consideration we’ve come to the conclusion that it was either pure mischief, or someone’s looking for a clue to where the monks buried their treasure.”
“Ah, the buried treasure!” she cried. “That’s it!”
Sir William shook his head sadly and said, “Folks will do most anything for money.”
“You’ll want to get your servants searching the grounds for signs of someone digging,” his wife advised Byron.
Sir William cleared his throat and said, “We had another reason for calling, actually. You might not have heard, Vulch has identified the body found on your island as his wife. Seems it is not our Nessie after all.”
“It happens we did hear,” Byron said. “Vulch was with Eggars when I stopped in to report the vandalism in the library.”
“We’re so relieved it wasn’t dear Nessie,” Lady Richardson said, drawing out a handkerchief to dab at her eyes. “William now feels the body wasn’t really so very like Nessie. He went to view the remains as I mentioned to you, and thought it might be Nessie. But the hair was coarser and duller. We thought her being buried might account for it. One wants an explanation of things, and we were happy to leap to the conclusion that the body was hers.”
“Happy? Surely death is hardly a consummation devoutly to be wished,” Prance said.
“Oh Sir Reginald. Consummation indeed! I’m sure you shouldn’t use such language in front of a lady,” she said, with a flirtatious eye, dry of tears.
“Actually it was death Shakespeare was speaking of in that passage from Hamlet,” Byron pointed out.
“His own death! Suicide,” Prance added. “Not the murder of an innocent maiden.”
Coffen paid no heed when Prance got off on a literary tangent. He kept to the main point. “What I find hard to understand is why Vulch pitched himself into a murder case by admitting the body is his wife,” he said. “Have you any idea about that, Sir William?”
“A change of heart, perhaps,” he said, shaking his head and looking into the grate with his sad, hound dog eyes. “Guilt at having wronged her when she was alive. It would gnaw at
him later.”
“Rubbish!” Lady Richardson exclaimed angrily. “If you want my opinion, he wants to marry Tess, at the tavern, and can’t do it while his wife is alive, so he’s preten— that is, admitting that the corpse is Minnie. And it puts the cottage in his name as well. It belonged to the wife, you know.”
Coffen slapped his knee in satisfaction. “That explains it,” he said. “He’s pretending the body is his wife’s. Very likely it is Nessie.”
“No, no!” Lady Richardson said. “I’m sure it’s Minnie. She was carrying on with that handsome gypsy who was here at that time. That’s when she disappeared.”
“That could be why Vulch killed her,” Coffen said.
“And don’t forget the missing tooth! Nessie had all her teeth.”
“You’re right. I was forgetting that.”
Sir William soon arose and directed a look at his wife, who immediately stood up and said, “We have a man coming to see about selling us a pony for Willie. High time he got his leg over a mount.”
“No hurry, surely,” Sir William said, then he bowed all around and led her out.
Corinne watched them as they left. “I can’t make out who wears the trousers in that family,” she said. “The wife does nine-tenths of the talking, yet when the husband does utter a word, she obeys like a well-trained filly.”
“I fancy Sir William’s not much of a talker,” Coffen said. “He lets her rattle on, but he rules the roost. What I was wondering is how they found out about Vulch’s trip to Eggars so soon.”
“News travels fast in the country,” Prance replied. “Didn’t you say Vulch was seeing Richardson’s maid?”
“So he is, but I shouldn’t think he’d visit her during the day time.”