Firebrand

by A. J. Hartley

  He frowned.

  “Sounds a bit vague,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  * * *

  SOCIETY MURDER! BLARED THE headline. I peered quickly at the paper that Willinghouse had flung down on the low-slung coffee table in his tasteful withdrawing room.

  The cream of Bar-Selehm’s social elite were astonished to find that one of their number—Mrs. Agatha Markeson, wife of Thomas Markeson, the well-connected shipping magnate—was brutally beaten to death within the confines of one of the city’s most exclusive clubs.

  Sureyna’s work, and more lurid than I would have liked.

  “How did they find out so quickly?” Willinghouse asked.

  “They keep watch on the police stations,” said Inspector Andrews sagely. “Come snooping around the moment officers are dispatched.”

  I said nothing. Willinghouse had been his usual taciturn self since my arrival. He had scowled thoughtfully at the news that Markeson had been the sponsor of the assassin calling himself Barrington-Smythe, but the death of the industrialist’s wife—and the speed with which it had made the paper—clearly muddied the waters, as far as he was concerned.

  “You shouldn’t have slipped away like that,” he said. “It looks suspicious.”

  “What would you have had me do?” I protested. “I couldn’t be interviewed as Lady Misrai, could I?”

  “It would have been awkward,” agreed Andrews. He had arrived at almost the same instant I had, and Dahria had come down moments later, agog to hear all that had transpired. “The investigating officer is Inspector Walter Defries: a good man in his way, but absolutely by the book,” Andrews continued. “When I left, he was looking for a contact address for Lady Misrai. He knows she—which is to say, you—couldn’t have killed Mrs. Markeson, but he wants to talk to you about why you left.”

  “Sooner or later, he’s going to show up at the Istilian embassy,” said Willinghouse, squeezing his eyes shut till the hooklike scar on his cheek blanched, “who will say that they’ve never heard of such a person. It’s a mess, and if we’re not careful, it will lead back to us.”

  “Do you not know anyone at the embassy who might—” I began.

  “Derail a murder investigation?” snapped Willinghouse. “No, I bloody don’t.”

  “Language, Josiah,” Andrews scolded. “There are ladies present.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Willinghouse returned, pointing at Dahria and me in turn. “She’s my incorrigible sister, and she’s a Lani steeplejack.”

  We both stared at him.

  “Which just means they’ve heard worse,” Willinghouse added hastily. “I didn’t mean they weren’t … you know … ladies.”

  His embarrassment, even in the circumstances, was almost funny, but I glared at him anyway. Dahria yawned.

  “I apologize,” he said curtly. “I am frustrated. This was a great deal of effort and expense for so little reward.”

  “It’s a start,” I said, then turned to Andrews. “Has Inspector Defries spoken to Violet Farthingale?”

  “The Markesons’ governess?” said Dahria. “Pretty girl? Breasts like the snow-capped peaks of Mount Zana?”

  I grinned at her.

  “He got her details, but I don’t believe he asked her anything particularly probing,” said Andrews, tearing his stunned gaze from Dahria. “Why?”

  “He should,” I said.

  “Governess?” asked Willinghouse.

  “Lady Agatha had a child late in life,” said Dahria. “A boy, I think. Or a girl. I don’t really care.”

  Andrews checked his note book, “A girl called Hyacinth,” he said, “twelve years old.”

  “Hyacinth,” echoed Dahria, making a sour face. “See? I was better not knowing.”

  Andrews ignored her.

  “Violet Farthingale is employed to teach the girl music, needlepoint, Feldish,” he said. “The usual. Why would Defries particularly want to interview her?”

  “Because she was having an affair with Thomas Markeson,” I said. “Or people thought she was.”

  “Good God, how on earth do you know that?” exclaimed Dahria.

  “Gossip,” I said, “and a slightly embarrassing incident before dinner.”

  “How delicious!” said Dahria. “And, now that I think of Markeson, repulsive. Oh, that poor girl!”

  Andrews looked at her in surprise.

  “If there is even a hint that she has any connection to the murder, however indirect,” said Dahria, “our upstanding society friends will cut her dead.”

  “Meaning?” I challenged.

  “They won’t speak to her or acknowledge her in any way.”

  I rolled my eyes, but Dahria cut me off.

  “No, for one used to evading killer street gangs by climbing up chimneys, that might not sound like much,” she said. “But she will lose her position, her friends, her connections, and that means she will not find similar employment in the city. Ever. Whatever training or schooling or expertise she has will cease to have any value for those who might give her work. She will either have to leave Bar-Selehm entirely, or—since she will probably not be employable as a servant by any respectable household—she will have to find employment in a factory. You see, my dear steeplejack, the mere whisper of scandal just made her working class, and her aspirations for the future should now be calculated as if she were a black woman from the terraces of Morgessa. And no, brother, that was not a criticism of their worth, but an assessment of their opportunities.”

  Humbled, I said nothing. Willinghouse, however, was undaunted.

  “So this may all be a nasty little family squabble, and nothing to do with the stolen plans after all?” he said, even more dissatisfied.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said, thinking about what Sureyna had said about the oddity of coincidence where Elitus was concerned. “I doubt Violet Farthingale beat Agatha to death, even if they were rivals for Thomas Markeson’s affections, something which is—frankly—hard to believe.”

  “Hard to believe?” Andrews prompted.

  Dahria and I looked at him.

  “Markeson is a rich and respected man,” said Willinghouse. “Those are powerful attractions to young women.”

  “Know a lot about what attracts young women, do you?” I asked.

  He flushed.

  “Markeson looks like a newly spitted pig,” said Dahria. “If Violet Farthingale was having any kind of relationship with him, it was to feather her own nest. More likely the great shipping magnate wanted to dock one of his barges in her—”

  “Dahria!” exclaimed Willinghouse, genuinely shocked.

  I bit back a laugh. Dahria was unabashed.

  “It’s true,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t impugn other ladies with your sour attitude to the male sex,” muttered Willinghouse.

  “It’s not my attitude that’s sour,” said Dahria, her lips pouting in a moue of distaste.

  “Perhaps if you were a little more accommodating,” said Willinghouse, nettled, “you’d have more suitors.”

  “Then God keep me less accommodating,” said Dahria.

  In the circumstances, I was surprised that Willinghouse allowed himself to be drawn into so private a spat in our presence, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  “I swear, Dahria, that you delight in tormenting men,” he sputtered.

  “If so,” she said, “it is well deserved. But no, dear brother, the torment is all mine.” She smiled privately, mischievously, as if at some secret joke, and as she lowered her face, her eyes met mine and held them. Her hazel eyes twinkled significantly, though I was far from clear what she meant and was almost relieved when Andrews pulled us back to the matter at hand.

  “Miss Farthingale would never admit to any involvement with Markeson, actual or imagined,” said Andrews. “Not to the police. It would destroy her reputation either way.”

  “Maybe she would talk to Dahria?” suggested Willingh
ouse. “Assuming my sister could keep a decent tongue in her head.”

  “Confess her indiscretions to a fellow society lady?” Dahria scoffed. “One from whom the very existence of Merita has been carefully kept secret? I swear, Joss, I wonder sometimes what world you actually live in.”

  I considered her. She had made light of the discovery that Elitus had a secret sister institution, but it made certain truths about Bar-Selehm society uncomfortably clear, and I felt sure she was, in her own way, upset by it.

  “Violet might speak to me,” I said.

  The others stared at me.

  “You?” asked Willinghouse.

  “Not Anglet Sutonga,” I said, “but Lady Ki Misrai, an esteemed person who witnessed her humiliation but is not part of Bar-Selehm society.”

  “I thought that identity had gone down the river?” said Dahria.

  “It will,” I said, “but it will take time for the police to get to the embassy and more time for whatever they learn to become public knowledge. If I change now, and Inspector Andrews were to take me—”

  “Go,” said Willinghouse.

  CHAPTER

  18

  VIOLET FARTHINGALE HAD ROOMS above a draper’s shop on Saint Helbrin Street in sight of the statue of King Randolph II on his charger. It was a pleasant street lined with tantu trees, where hornbills and fire-eyed grackles called to each other. The apartment itself was compact, elegant if a little old-fashioned, and scrupulously clean: good, white, middle-class housing, modest in its way but safe and comfortable, the kind of place in which few of the city’s black or Lani population could ever realistically expect to live. The curtains and chairs looked older than the lady herself, so I guessed the place came prefurnished. Violet Farthingale had been reluctant to speak to Andrews and had kept him at the door, claiming to be too busy to see him, till he said that he had not come on police business.

  “I have brought a lady who wishes to speak with you,” he said, carefully hiding any doubts he had about what we were doing.

  The young woman was clad in a simple and uncorsetted tea gown of soft mauve, which made her look, if anything, even lovelier than she had the night before, though her eyes were shadowed and still showed signs of weeping. She had cracked the door open a little, and blinked in surprise at the sight of me standing in my Istilian finery in the hallway. She had let me in more out of bafflement than decision, and I had done my part by giving Andrews a pointed look, till he—reluctantly—stepped back outside.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Inspector,” I said, “take the police vehicle around the corner and wait for me there.”

  Andrews opened his mouth to speak, but then just nodded stiffly and left. Violet looked relieved.

  “Would you care for tea, my lady?” she asked, nervous and confused. She was perhaps five or six years older than me, but looked suddenly like a child, hesitating in front of the bay window and watching the police coach roll away. Its departure seemed to calm her nerves, and she turned back to me, gesturing to a chair.

  “No tea, thank you,” I said, in my Istilian lilt. “I will not be staying long.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve caught me rather … I mean, I did not expect visitors.…”

  “There is no reason you should,” I said as kindly as I could. Whatever her crime, I doubted she deserved the crippling malice of Bar-Selehm’s high society as Dahria had painted it. Unless, of course, she really was involved in Agatha’s murder. “I wanted to speak to you about what happened last night.”

  “Why?” she asked. She had a small girlish mouth without makeup.

  “Partly my own curiosity,” I said, “and because I suspect that you are being badly treated in ways you do not deserve.”

  “Whether that is so or not,” she said, clasping her hands together in her lap, “I do not believe there is anything you can do about it, though your kindness is appreciated.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “But then the support of a lady such as myself … Well, you know best.”

  An unworthy trick, playing on the woman’s hope and despair, particularly when I knew my status in Bar-Selehm society would likely evaporate within the hour, but a part of me wanted the idea that I could help her to be true and I privately vowed to make it so. For it to work, I had to play the thing through. I got to my feet.

  “You are upset, and I am intruding,” I said. “I will leave you to your thoughts.”

  I took one step toward the door. Another. Then she spoke.

  “Wait,” she said, looking at her hands. “What is it you wish to know?”

  I sat down again and smiled at her.

  “Did you like Mrs. Markeson?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she shot back, a quick, thoughtless answer given in fear. A moment later, she shook her head sadly. “Not really.”

  “She seemed quite a forceful woman,” I said. “Opinionated.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, softer this time.

  “Probably quite hard to please.”

  “Sometimes,” said Violet. “But she was fair. Mostly.”

  I took a fractional pause to digest that last word.

  “Mostly?” I prompted.

  “She was quite strict with Hyacinth, her daughter. As well as me. In what I taught Hyacinth, I mean. She always wanted to see the girl work, hear her play.”

  “Is Hyacinth an agreeable child? Talented?”

  “Oh, most agreeable,” she answered, smiling suddenly in ways that lit up the little room. “Not, perhaps, the most academic of children, but exceedingly pleasant and good-natured.”

  “Was that enough for Mrs. Markeson?”

  Violet looked at her hands again. “I think she would have liked her to have more obvious gifts. She was very critical of her piano playing and said I did not push the child hard enough.”

  “She was a good player herself?”

  “Not at all!” said Violet, indignation pinking her cheek. “She could not play a note.”

  “I see,” I said. “Sometimes it is the faults that parents see in themselves that they most want to correct in their children.”

  “Indeed,” said Violet. “That is very true.”

  “So Mrs. Markeson was strict with you too?”

  “Not at first,” said Violet. “But in the last few months, she became quite hard on me.”

  “Why was that, do you think?” I said, still taking it slowly.

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  That was, I thought, her second lie, and it was more an evasion than a flat-out untruth.

  “Mr. Markeson continued to value your contribution to the household, I take it?”

  “Yes,” she said, and something of the smile was back, though it flickered and died like a spent candle.

  “Perhaps Mrs. Markeson resented his support of you,” I said as if I was merely thinking aloud.

  Violet nodded fervently.

  “Once, when Hyacinth had painted a charming watercolor of the flowers on her windowsill and Mr. Thomas was admiring it, Mrs. Markeson came in and began to say quite unpleasant things about the picture so that Hyacinth began to cry. When Mr. Thomas said she was being too hard on the girl, Mrs. Markeson became very angry indeed and accused her husband of terrible things.”

  She broke off, her eyes bright with tears. I waited for a moment, nodding thoughtfully.

  “Things about you,” I said.

  The woman’s tears spilled down her cheeks, and she hung her head.

  “There was nothing to any of it,” she said between her sobs. “Sometimes older gentlemen take a fatherly interest in younger women. It was all quite harmless if a little silly, but nothing ever … ever happened.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Tell me about the shawl.”

  She looked up at that, surprised, and it took her a moment to realize what I was talking about.

  “Did she say something after I had gone?” she said.

  “No, but I surmised.”

  “Well, it’s true,” she said with weary resolv
e. “I had only been to Merita once before. Mrs. Markeson did not approve, but Mr. Thomas said he thought it was good for me to mix with ladies of my own station. They weren’t, of course, but it was kind of him, and after our first visit, he said I needed some new finery so that no one would sneer at me. That was how he put it. I being merely a governess and all. You see, Mrs. Markeson had already said things, scandalous things, about me, and most of the other ladies had not been very welcoming.”

  I nodded and let her finish, though I fancied I knew what she was going to say.

  “So yesterday evening as I was putting Hyacinth to bed, Mr. Thomas came and said he had a gift for me. ‘Something to make them all jealous,’ he said.”

  “The shawl.”

  “Exactly. It was quite beautiful. I had never seen anything like it.”

  “But Mrs. Markeson took it from you,” I said. “Didn’t she?”

  Violet put her hand to her mouth and began to sob again. She nodded, speechless for a moment, then managed to say, “She was so angry. I had never seen her in such a rage. She snatched it off me and asked how I dared parade the fruit of my … my strumpeting in polite society! I protested, of course, but she would hear nothing of it, and for once, Mr. Markeson did not dare to contradict her. So she wore the shawl, and showed it off, and I could not abide to be in the room and—”

  She broke off.

  “There, there,” I said. “I understand. Where did you go?”

  “Outside at first. I needed some air. Then, once the fireworks began, I went to the Markesons’ withdrawing room on the second floor, three doors down from yours.”

  “You knew which one mine was?”

  “Everyone did. One of the maids told us before you arrived. Everyone was so excited to meet you, even the ones who usually…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, some of the ladies have few good things to say about people who are different from them.”

  “But not you.”

  “No. I am, as they like to remind me, not one of them, and there are many things on which we do not agree.”

  I took in this note of solidarity without comment.