by Joan Smith
“I do feel nervous, fearful for her. Does anyone know she’s here, Black?”
“We stopped in the village to pick up some groceries. She spoke to a few people there. I didn’t realize the woman was in any danger.”
“Then the whole neighborhood knows,” Coffen said.
“Not likely she’s in any danger now that Vulch is dead,” said Prance with a shrug.
“If Corrie has a feeling, then she shouldn’t be left alone,” Coffen decreed. “Somebody killed Vulch, remember.”
Black said, “I suggested she have someone in to stay with her. She didn’t think it was necessary.”
Byron turned to Corinne. “If you’re really worried, I’ll ask her to stay here for a few days.”
“Would it be a wretched imposition?” she asked, feeling she was turning the Abbey into a hotel, for of course Black would stay there as well.
“Not at all,” he said promptly.
Prance made a moue of disapproval. “Will she expect to be treated as a guest?”
“She’d be more comfortable eating in the kitchen, if that’s what you mean,” sensible Coffen said. “Who’ll go fetch her?”
Black volunteered. Byron offered the use of his carriage, and it was settled. Black found a moment alone with his beloved before leaving and said in a low voice, “I couldn’t like to say it with them all there, milady, but Minnie said one strange thing. She said Lord Byron would be happy to hear of Vulch’s murder.”
“Byron?” she said, frowning.
“That’s about the first thing she said. I couldn’t get any more out of her. Just thought I’d mention it. He was pretty eager with his offer. Do you think it’s safe to bring her here?”
“Oh certainly. I expect Byron had some minor run-in with Vulch. He was pretty universally despised hereabouts. But you did the right thing to tell me, Black. I’m sorry you had this trip. You should have used my carriage.” She put her hand on his wrist and said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I can always depend on you, you’re so sensible.”
“Sensible” was not an adjective to make Lord Blackwell’s heart sing, but the way she said it filled him with a tender devotion and the fierce protectiveness of a liege knight for his lady in days gone by.
“It’s my pleasure to serve you. I’ll just nip along and get Minnie,” He floated off on a cloud of bliss to serve his mistress.
Traveling in state in Lord Byron’s carriage added to his sense of being none other than Lord Blackwell, Black’s alter ego in his daydreams, as he was jolted along to Minnie Vulch’s little cottage. He considered how he would entice her to Newstead, if she was of a mind to refuse. Surely any local commoner would be delighted to get her toe in the door of the abbey — and as practically a guest. He knew from Minnie’s coy behavior in the carriage that her chastity was easily breached. In fact, she had seemed not only surprised but offended when he hired two rooms at the inn during their trip. Very likely Lord Byron’s reputation alone would be enough to get her moving.
As the carriage turned from the main road up the lane to the cottage, he espied an orange light at a window. It was not much of a cottage, for all the boasting Minnie had done of her “uncle’s house”. Like a gentleman, he waited for the coachman to come and open his door and put down the step before alighting.
“Wait here. This shouldn’t take long,” he said, and strode to the door. His first tap wasn’t answered. He tapped again, harder. When there was still no reply, he hesitated.
She wouldn’t have gone out and left lamps burning. With a memory of the bottle of gin, he feared she had drunk herself into a stupor. He ought to just step in and see if she was all right. She had left the door unlocked. He opened it and stepped into a dark hallway, lit only by a feeble illumination from the parlor doorway. He called, “Mrs. Vulch. It’s me, Black.” No answer. He called again, more loudly. Still no response.
He took the two steps that led him to the parlor door and looked in. There she was, drunk as a Dane, sprawled on her back on the sofa with her mouth open. The gin bottle, half empty, and a glass tipped over on the table told the tale. He went forward and shook her shoulder. “Mrs. Vulch. Minnie!” Her shoulder felt strangely stiff. He looked more closely at her face and saw the stiffness in the open mouth, the unflickering eyelids. She wasn’t breathing! He emitted a light gasp and stepped back. His heart felt as if it had turned to a block of ice in his chest.
For a moment he stood, staring, with a strange ringing in his ears. She was dead! Minnie Vulch was stone cold dead. He sniffed the bottle of gin, and below its strong aroma, he detected a more bitter odor. Some poison, no doubt. It would take more than a half bottle to kill Minnie. He thought for a moment, then rushed out to speak to the groom.
“Hightail it back to the abbey as fast as a you can and tell them Minnie Vulch has been murdered,” he said. “I’ll stay here.”
If he expected any show of astonishment, he was disappointed. This was Lord Byron’s servant after all. No doubt he had seen and heard worse.
“There’s a pistol in the side pocket of the coach if you’d like to have it.”
“I would, thank you.”
The groom darted off and returned with the pistol, darted back to the driver’s seat and flicked his switch over the team’s head. He had already turned the rig around. It clattered down the lane at a breakneck speed. Black cocked the pistol, looked all around, then went reluctantly back into the cottage.
He didn’t see how Byron could have done the woman in. He hadn’t left the abbey since he heard she was back. It was someone who saw her in the village and feared she would tell something she had learned from Vulch. He was humiliated at his failure to have discovered what it was she knew, before she was murdered. And wracked with guilt, too, to know that if he hadn’t brought her home, she would still be alive. He consoled himself that she would have come soon in any case to claim her house. He had merely sped her on her way into the arms of death.
* * *
Chapter 25
“They’re back!” Coffen cried, when he heard the carriage rattling at breakneck speed into the forecourt. “That didn’t take long. I wonder if she came.” He hurried to the window to peer into the shadows, where the team was being drawn to a halt. By the light of a gibbous moon he saw the coachman leap from his seat and dart toward the house, with his coattails billowing behind him. Everything was done at a feverish pace. When the coachman didn’t stop to open the carriage door, Coffen knew something was amiss and ran out to see for himself.
“This way, lad,” he called. “Did you bring them back? Is someone hurt?”
“She’s dead. Murdered!” the man gasped. “Black stayed with her. He said to tell you.”
“Good lord, another one!” He stood a moment, stunned, while he digested this awful news. “You’d best step inside and tell us all about it. Don’t stable the rig. We’ll be needing it.”
Lady deCoventry took one look at the coachman’s white face and staring eyes, rose from her seat and said in a weak, disbelieving voice, “She’s dead! I knew it!”
“She is, your ladyship,” the coachman said. “Murdered. I was sent to tell you. The gentleman stayed with her.”
“How terrible!” she said in a soft, wan voice. Luten went to her and put an arm around her. Only Prance and Mrs. Ballard noticed that Black had been elevated to a gentleman. She bridled, Prance pursed his lips in amusement. That would please the old blackguard, if he knew.
There was a moment’s confusion of raised voices and exclamations. Presently Luten said, “How was it done? Was she shot?”
“I didn’t see her. The gentleman came to the door and told me to rush here at once and tell you she was murdered.”
“You didn’t see anyone about the place?”
“No, sir, but I left his lordship’s pistol for Mr. Black just in case.”
“Well done,” Luten said grimly. You’ll have to send for Eggars — again, Byron.”
Byron sat rubbing his forehead as if to erase wha
t he had just heard. His face was ghastly pale. “Yes, before the body finds its way here,” he said with a sigh, and went to the doorway to give his butler the order.
Coffen was already at the doorway, pulling on his greatcoat. “Who’s coming with me?” he asked.
After a hasty discussion, it was decided that Byron and Luten would go, Prance and Corinne remain at home. Prance was becoming impatient with the tardy arrangement of the Christmas party. Those boughs still sat in a wagon in the barn, to the best of his knowledge. Nor was the choir coming along as he could wish. No chance of getting any help from Corinne. She sat staring into the grate as if Minnie Vulch had been her best friend. Was he becoming unnaturally hard, as a result of all these murder the Berkeley Brigade had been involved in?
One was sorry for her death, of course, but as he had never laid eyes on the woman, it would be hypocritical to say his heart was touched. As to his gothic novel, the real life horrors were eclipsing it at every turn, though some of them might be put to use in his book. When Corinne continued staring mutely into the fireplace with that ever-present mauve shawl yanked around her shoulders, he almost wished he had gone with the others. Her posture, her attitude, bore a marked resemblance to Mrs. Ballard, who sat beside her.
“What is the body count up to now?” he asked.
“Three,” she said. “The girl on the island, Vulch, and Minnie Vulch.”
“Let us hope this is the end of it.”
“They do say these tragedies come in three’s,” Mrs. Ballard said, with more hope than conviction.
Corinne said, “If Minnie knew anything, I’m sure Black would have got it out of her. She was murdered just in case she knew something she hadn’t told. What could be so important that someone murdered three people over it, Reg?”
“Some act so heinous that someone murdered three people to conceal it?” he said vaguely. “Fear and money — those would be at the top of my list of motives. My own feeling is that the girl on the island is the crux of it all. It was to conceal her murderer that Vulch and wife were killed. That is the likeliest explanation, don’t you think?”
She pondered over it for a moment, then agreed. “If the body is Nessie Lander’s, which we don’t actually know, then who would have any reason to kill her?”
“As you said, we don’t actually know who was buried on that island. Despite the famous nose, I still feel that the soi-disant Lady Richardson is an impostor. In the first place, she’s too vulgar to be a real lady, though her living away from England might account for that. But what other theory accounts so neatly for everything else? The identity of the girl on the island, Vulch, who was at Stephen’s Hotel at the time the Richardsons were there and saw Lady Richardson, and who had acquired an unlikely chest full of gold. Then there is the murder of Vulch’s wife, who might have learned the truth from him. And don’t forget the intruder in the study, and Coffen’s footprint, to say nothing of those too short gowns Lady Richardson was wearing when she arrived here, and her efforts to keep you from hearing of them.”
“You think she and Sir William killed his wife and the impostor stepped into her shoes?” Mrs. Ballard emitted a light gasp and directed an accusing stare at her mistress, as if to say, “I told you so!”
“There is a great deal of money involved,” Prance said. “Redley Hall to begin with, and whatever income it earns — five figures she mentioned — along with the money from selling the plantation in Jamaica. And if the real wife was a simpleton — well, one can see how Sir William’s affections might have strayed to the wife’s keeper.”
“It’s all hypothesis, but if that is what happened, then the new wife, the impostor, must be some Redley relation. She looks too much like the Redleys for it to be a coincidence.”
“Perhaps she’s a by-blow,” he said. Mrs. Ballard’s lips tightened. Murder was bad enough, but adultery was almost worse in her view. “Legitimacy is not necessary for the child to inherit the family characteristics,” he continued. “Many a maid bears a child resembling the master of the house.” He stopped speaking and sat, wrinkling his brow. “Have I just been very clever? Just who was this Nessie Landers, faithful servant?”
“Her mama came from England and worked on the plantation. They didn’t know who her papa was,” Corinne said.
“Who is to say her employer didn’t enjoy a tumble between the sheets with his maid? Nessie’s papa, was said to be unknown.”
Mrs. Ballard began to feel she was sinning in listening to such talk and excused herself to scuttle up to her room to read her Bible. One was fairly safe with the Bible, if she stayed away from the Old Testament.
“We’ve scandalized her,” Prance said, but without regret.
“She thinks I shouldn’t have come here. But what you were saying — I can’t see Sir William going along with murdering his own wife. He seems — I don’t know. Too nice for that, and it couldn’t have been done without his connivance.”
“P’raps she has some hold over him. We must devise a plan to smoke them out,” he said, and sat, mentally congratulating himself and scheming until the others returned.
* * * *
Black met them at the door of Minnie’s little cottage wearing the dignified expression of a professional mourner. He showed them inside and pointed to the inert body sprawled on the sofa. “What you see is just the way I found her,” he said. The four men stood a moment in silence, paying homage to death. Neither Luten nor Coffen had ever seen her before, and Byron only knew the woman to see her, but Coffen remembered very well that she had been called a blonde.
“Are you sure that’s her, Byron?” he asked.
“Yes, she’s dyed her hair orange,” he said.
Luten felt a wrench of pity for the poor creature. Her clothes, her hair and the little cottage suggested the sort of life she had lived. She was no beauty. Her life could not have been pleasant, and to be married to Vulch on top of it! But whatever it had been, no one had the right to steal it from her. She was still young enough for things to have improved for her, especially with Vulch gone. Three dead now, and they were no closer to finding the murderer than when they started.
After they looked at the body, Black covered it with a blanket he had brought from the bedroom. He handed the bottle of gin to Luten. “I haven’t moved anything. I believe the gin’s been poisoned. Have a whiff.”
Luten took a sniff and said, “Laudanum. That on top of gin would soon do the trick. She might have taken it herself to ensure a good night’s sleep, and misjudged the amount. Have a look around for anything that could have held laudanum.” A quick look about told them there was nothing in the parlor. “Have you seen her reticule?”
“It was a liver-shaped embroidered bag,” Black said. “Plus she carried a bandbox with her.” They made a hasty search and found the reticule in the kitchen, where Minnie had gone to fetch a glass for her gin. There was a bottle of laudanum in the reticule, unopened and filled to the top. No other bottle or packet was found. Common sense told them that if she had wanted laudanum, she would surely have used her own bottle.
“So her caller brought it,” Coffen said. “Wonder if he left any clues.”
“Her bandbox is in the bedroom. I had a look around whilst I was waiting,” Black said, and went into the bedroom to show him. He noticed that Byron followed closely after them. The bandbox lay open on the unmade bed, with the contents strewn over the blankets. “It was already emptied like that when I saw it.” A gaudy array of silk scarf in peacock blue, a few handkerchiefs, underclothing, gloves with the fingertips worn and smudged, an assortment of ribbons, combs and cheap brooches, cream, rouge, powder, scent, and various toiletries necessary to keep her in looks lay jumbled together in a pathetic heap.
Byron looked at the sad, tawdry remnants of the woman’s life and felt a pang of sorrow for her, and anger at whoever had done this to her. “The bastard,” he growled.
Black said, “If there was anything of importance here, it’s long gone. My own feeling is that
Minnie wouldn’t have emptied her bag in this careless way. She hadn’t much to work with, but she was tidy about her little place in London. It’s a smallish bandbox, as you can see. I don’t know what could have been in it to take, other than p’raps a letter. She had no money.”
Coffen began pawing through the objects. It was Black who noticed the tip of a piece of paper protruding beneath the peacock scarf, and reached for it. Byron’s hand reached out, then withdrew as Black clamped his fingers on the torn fragment of paper. It was about six inches wide and hardly an inch in length, torn off at an angle. It was the beginning of an undated letter.
He read, with Byron leaning over his shoulder, “Minnie: I can’t send you anything right away. Money’s tight, but if the plan I have in mind for Byron’s island —" That’s all that could be read. The paper was neatly torn away at the word “island”. Black lifted his eyes to Byron, who stood staring at the paper, with his jaw clenched.
“What plan for my island, I wonder?,” Byron said. “There’s nothing there but the fort.”
“You’ve no idea yourself what it means?” Black prodded. “What I’m thinking, there was a body found buried there recently.”
Byron’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils quivered, and his whole body stiffened. “I resent the implication, Black,” he said, and snatched the scrap of paper, which he crumpled in his hand and strode from the room, while Coffen, who had been listening, searched for the remains of the letter amidst the jumble on the bed, then followed him, lest he destroy the bit of letter.
Black stayed behind a moment, his mind scampering to figure out the importance of that scrap of letter. It was well worn and yellowing. It must be one Minnie had received before the one she had showed him. She claimed to have no notion what Vulch’s latest plan to make money was, and he believed her. He felt, however, that Byron knew all about that plan for his island. Was that why there was no love lost between him and Vulch?
When Black returned to the parlor, Byron shot him a warning glare. “We’d like someone to stay here until Eggars arrives,” Byron said. “Pattle will certainly want to stay. We thought you might stay with him, Black, as Eggars will want to speak to you about Minnie and what she told you. I have something private I’d like to discuss with Luten.”