Dulcie Bligh

by Maggie MacKeever

  “What would you know of thief-takers, Primrose? Have I been misled in your character?”

  “It was a misunderstanding.” Ruthlessly, Livvy blackened her reputation, spotless prior to acquaintance with Lady Bligh. “The Runner who apprehended me soon realized his error.”

  “Light-fingered, are you?” inquired Luisa. “Things disappear with damned regularity in this house, but I’ll know where to look the next time.”

  “I have never,” Livvy protested indignantly, “done anything improper in all my life!” Or, she amended silently, not until recently.

  “Sweet Christ! What a dull stick you are. I could almost pity you, Primrose, you’ve no notion of what you’ve missed!” Luisa reminded herself to look into her companion’s past. ““So Bow Street has finally decided to make inquiries into Arabella’s death. But you know all about that, eh? Arabella’s name will be on every tongue.”

  “It must have been a severe blow for Sir William.” Livvy oozed false sympathy. “And for you, to lose your daughter-in-law so tragically.”

  Luisa snorted. “Balderdash! Bow Street has the wrong sow by the ear. If I was of a mind, I could sing sweeter than any canary.” Livvy, with a pang of homesickness, wondered how Calypso fared in her absence.

  Madame Arbuthnot cackled with malicious glee. “Dulcie Bligh has trouble aplenty in store! Bow Street will soon enough learn that Arabella was trysting, on the night of her death, with Dulcie’s rough diamond of a nephew!” She scrutinized Livvy severely. “What do you think of that, Primrose?”

  “Shocking, ma’am.” Livvy was wooden. “I am unacquainted with the gentleman.”

  “Best make haste,” Luisa advised, “for he’ll be the jailer’s meat ‘ere long!” The bottle was raised once again. “I’m not in my dotage yet, and I shall say no more! Poke your curious nose elsewhere, Primrose. You’ll learn nothing more from me.”

  Livvy bowed her head. She knew that a display of either curiosity or offense would arouse Luisa’s suspicions. For one so addicted to the bottle, Madame Arbuthnot was at times remarkably astute.

  Luisa, her brief gregariousness exhausted, relapsed into snores. There was only one course open to Livvy now, unless she was to reveal herself as a pigeon-hearted creature unable to fulfill her mission. With a heartfelt sigh, Livvy braced herself for Sir William, and a task that was both unpalatable and plain. As stealthy as a woodsman, she stole from the room.

  Chapter 7

  They were gathered in Dulcie’s private sitting room, more commonly known as The Hymeneal, created by the fifth Baron for his wife upon their return from a honeymoon spent in Greece and Rome. Lord and Lady Bligh were still remembered in those fair isles, most particularly for the occasion when the Baroness had, on a dare, splashed gaily nude through a fountain of antiquity. The Hymeneal, octagonal in form, was done in shades of black and white and gray. The ceiling was domed, with a fan design; dancing nymphs, winged sphinxes, gryphons and fantastic foliated beasts cavorted on wall panels framed in light moldings.

  The Baroness sat at a writing desk with a rising top and fitted side trays. Two drawers were inset with Wedgwood plaques representing the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, and a Sacrifice to Hymen. Scattered sheets of paper, crossed with bold writing, were piled upon the desk and strewn about the floor. Thoughtfully, Dulcie nibbled at her quill.

  “Arabella’s jewels,” she mused, “have not made a reappearance. Why is that, Gibbon?”

  The butler, dressed in the customary black that accentuated his pallor, stood as far as possible from the mischievous maidservant Mary. “If the thief has a glimmer of sense, he’ll lay low. All a chap has to do is flash those sparklers and he’d be hobbled straightaway.”

  “Hobbled, Gibbon?” inquired Lady Bligh.

  “Taken up and committed for trial, my lady.” Gibbon was pleased to thus display his expertise. Mary listened attentively, while Culpepper looked both disapproving and resigned.

  “Were you the thief, Gibbon, what would you do?” The Baroness rose to pace the marble floor. “Let us attempt to reason out this situation.”

  “I’d hop the twig and keep dubber mum’d until the heat died down,” replied the butler promptly. He observed his employer’s bewilderment. “I mean, my lady, that I’d depart the vicinity and keep my mouth shut until I could safely dispose of the contraband. Lady Arabella’s jewels won’t be easy to fence; they’re widely known, and Bow Street is too interested in their whereabouts.”

  “More and more curious.” Lady Bligh toyed with a chess set in jasper ware, the opposing sides black and white, which depicted famous actors playing Macbeth. Charles Kemble as Duncan, and Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, were the royals. “Are receivers of stolen goods so wary of thief-takers?”

  Gibbon grimaced. “Fences, my lady, are afraid of no man, but they’ll only give a fraction of what something is worth at the best of times, and with Bow Street keeping such a sharp watch it becomes a chancy thing. The stones have to be reset and the metal melted down before the baubles can be resold.”

  “I see,” murmured Dulcie. “Then no immediate profit would accrue from the theft. Great risk was taken, it seems, for little gain.”

  “If the thief was unfamiliar with the game,” Gibbon added, his own brow wrinkled in thought, “it may be he didn’t know he’d have to hold on to the gems. Fences will seldom purchase from a new hand without a proper introduction, for fear of a plant.”

  “My!” cooed Mary. “Ain’t you the knowing one!” Gibbon cleared his throat and eyed her nervously.

  “Since you are so eager to put in your ha’penny’s worth, you may be next, miss.” The baroness seated herself in a massive chair, dark wood ornately carved and upholstered in silver gray Italian velvet that matched the window hangings. The scrolled chair arms terminated in satyr masks, the legs in cloven feet. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

  The girl’s freckled face was unusually serious. “Not much, my lady, except that Sir William and Lady Arabella quarreled mightily on the night she died.”

  “Did you ascertain what this argument was about?”

  “I did. Sir William had learned that his wife had bedded down with Master Dickon— seems to me he must be a proper slow top not to have known it sooner! Lady Arabella made no bones about her partiality.”

  “Did I ask for your opinion?” inquired the Baroness.

  “No, ma’am.” Mary remained uncowed. “He—Sir William—demanded that she end the relationship, and Lady Arabella laughed in his face. Then he threatened drastic measures, and she said she’d leave him.”

  “I wonder where she meant to go.” Dulcie gazed blankly upon a massive side table with a heavy black-veined marble top found in Titus’s Baths in Rome. “Not to Dickon, surely, for he would speedily have sent her to the rightabout.”

  “That’s not all.” Mary’s freckled cheeks were flushed with excitement. “Sir William said that before he let her leave him, he’d see her dead.”

  This announcement did not elicit the response that Mary had foreseen. Gibbon tsk’d with disapproval at such behavior, Culpepper grew even more severe, and Lady Bligh reflectively twisted a silver curl, careless of her elaborate hairdo.

  “He did see her dead!” Mary burst forth repressively. “Though the servants aren’t sure that he did the thing, being one whose bark is worse than his bite, as they say.”

  “Barking dogs. They do bite, you know.” Briskly, the Baroness rose. “Very good, Mary. You’ve been a great help. Keep your ears open and report to me anything else you may hear.” With a poorly executed curtsey and a saucy wink at Gibbon, Mary left the room.

  Dulcie moved to the writing desk and began to fill yet another sheet of foolscap with her large untidy scrawl. “Culpepper! How progresses your romance?”

  “I suppose you’d call it satisfactory.” A dull red spread over the abigail’s features as she recalled hours passed as the only female customer at the tavern across from Bow Street headquarters. It was an old building constructed par
tly of brick, now beginning to powder and flake, where the heavy smell of tobacco hung in the motionless blue gray air. When Culpepper closed her eyes to sleep at night, those drab walls appeared to haunt her, with their vast array of ancient advertisements for soap, cure-all pills and physics, snuff, combs, and pomades. “Myself, I hope to never look another oyster in the face.” This sentiment extended to the besotted night watchman, whose growing infatuation rendered him no more agreeable.

  “Nonetheless, you will.” The Baroness could be ruthless. “What have you learned?”

  “There is a rumor,” replied Culpepper, immolated on the altar of duty, “that Sir William didn’t spend the entire evening of his wife’s death at the Cyprians Ball.”

  “Aha!” Dulcie ignored the abigail’s Friday face. “We progress. How long was he absent, and where did he go?”

  “It is gossip only; no one knows.” Culpepper’s frigid tone indicated her sentiments regarding tale bearing. “There is also speculation that the robbery was well-planned since there was no evidence of forced entry. Perhaps the thief was admitted by someone already in Arbuthnot House.”

  Cross-eyed with concentration, the Baroness ran thoughtless fingers through her hair. Culpepper moaned and moved to right the damage. “Gibbon!” said Lady Bligh. “What are the usual means of gaining access to a house that one means to burgle?”

  Gibbon twitched with pleasure at this opportunity to further display his knowledge. “A good cracksman, my lady, has a regular arsenal of tools—a crowbar and centre-bit, keys and picklocks, prussic acid or nux vomica.”

  “Good heavens!” Lady Bligh jerked away from Culpepper’s ministering hands. “It’s a wonder we all aren’t murdered in our beds. What, pray, is nux vomica?”

  “Hog’s vomit, my lady.” Gibbon ignored Culpepper’s consternation. “It’s used to destroy animals.”

  “Well it might!” Dulcie frowned. “I see that I am a veritable innocent. How are these various tools utilized?”

  “I speak from hearsay only,” Gibbon offered cautiously. “Not from direct experience, you understand.”

  “Quite.”

  “A crowbar is applied when noise doesn’t matter, to wrench open a door. A centre bit is used to bore holes along the edge of the doorsill, close to the head of the panel. Then a pocketknife is run from hole to hole and the panel is removed.”

  “Thus is the entrance effected. Fascinating!” Dulcie winced as Culpepper dug a hairpin into her scalp. “This begins to look extremely odd. It is unlikely that the servants would neglect to secure the windows, even at Arbuthnot House.” Dulcie’s attendants awaited further observations, but she irritably waved them away.

  Left alone, Lady Bligh rose and once more paced the floor, pausing to survey herself intently in a silvered looking glass, as if the mirror might speak. She wore a flowing gown of midnight shade, with long sleeves drawn tight in several places, and a large silken Paisley shawl.

  The looking glass remained inarticulate and Dulcie turned away. She walked to the fireplace and idly touched an exquisite porcelain figurine of a beautiful lady, attended by a blackamoor page, sitting in an ornate chair with an infinitesimal tea table, complete with chocolate pot and cups, by her side.

  “Bother!” said the Baroness, returning the figurine to its resting place on the mantelpiece. “I simply cannot make sense of this thing.” She gathered her scattered papers and locked them inside the writing desk, then seated herself again in the satyr-headed chair, from which vantage point she studied the portrait of her spouse.

  Maximilian Bonaventure Bligh, as depicted in this painted likeness, was a tall man with strong features weathered by long exposure to the elements. Beneath strongly marked brows glittered seductive, heavy-lidded eyes. It was a strikingly handsome face with an aquiline nose and a sensuous mouth that was disguised by neither moustache nor beard. The raven hair, streaked heavily with gray, was worn unfashionably long. The Baron was shown in burgundy velvet and a frilled shirt open at the throat to reveal a chest as bronzed as his arrogant face—a costume that had led his wife to inquire whether he conducted his adventures half nude. The Baron’s reply was not recorded for posterity.

  “Bat,” Dulcie remarked conversationally, “there are times when I heartily deplore your wanderlust.” She studied her eccentric helpmeet’s painted likeness. “Not that you’d be of any practical assistance if you were here, you wretch, for you’d only say that we should leave it to Dickon to extricate himself from this mess.” A familiar voice floated down the hall, prompting her to glower most uncordially at the Baron, who was currently off exploring Rosetta, Egypt, famous for its gardens and its fleas.

  “Don’t bother to announce us,” came Hubert’s languid drawl. “I daresay my aunt knows our names well enough, although I fear the poor old thing’s grown shockingly shatterbrained.” This sally was greeted by Gwyneth’s high-pitched laughter. Lady Bligh made a hideous face as Hubert minced into the room. “Dulcie, you are all alone! It is an ill omen to be caught talking to yourself, dear aunt. A sure sign of approaching senility.”

  “Coxcomb!” retorted the Baroness, without removing her dark eyes from the portrait.

  Hubert, too, gazed upon the Baron’s likeness, unappreciatively; Bat was the only living being of whom Hubert stood in awe. The Baron’s acerbic manner made his waspish nephew appear a mere novice in the fine art of effrontery. “I shall never understand how Uncle Max manages to look simultaneously like a haughty aristocrat and a blood-thirsty buccaneer.”

  “It is quite simple,” the Baroness replied kindly. “Unlike you. Bat doesn’t try to look like anything.”

  Gwyneth was not so interested in the Baron’s appearance as in the huge blood ruby that flashed from one painted hand, an item even more magnificent than the black opals that the Baroness wore in profusion. Gwyneth positioned herself in a massive chair, the arms of which terminated in an eagle’s head with a sharp, savage beak. It was a motif that predominated in the room, appearing yet again in a marble-topped console supported by a fierce bird with outstretched wings, and atop the silvered mirror. It seemed to Gwyneth that the birds bore a startling resemblance to the Baron’s predatory visage.

  Hubert seated himself with great consideration for the skirts of his incomparable coat. “An incredible likeness.”

  “Is it not?” Lady Bligh gazed, with marked distaste, upon the rouge that colored her nephew’s cheeks. “You do not approve, Hubert? You think Bat should instead have been portrayed for later generations in the robes of a peer of the realm?”

  “I fear,” lamented Hubert, leaning his gold-tasseled cane against the arm of his lion-headed chair, “that no one could mistake dear Uncle Max for a perfect gentleman.”

  “No, indeed.” Dulcie smiled, a reminiscent gleam in one dark eye. “He fits my notion of a perfect husband, however—when I’m speaking to him.”

  Gwyneth had been too long unheard. She shivered delicately. “How like you to put a brave face on it. I know better! I, too, was doomed to spend a portion of my life married to a reprobate.”

  Lady Bligh laughed aloud. “Do you picture me imbibing wormwood and gall? Silly chit! I have no quarrel with Bat’s intemperance. Why should I?” The reminiscent gleam briefly reappeared, even more pronounced. “I have always admired a rake. They make life so interesting.” Gwyneth bridled, but bit back the sharp retort that rose to her tongue. Quarrelling with the Baroness would not advance her cause.

  Hubert’s superior gaze travelled, pained, around the room. Each time the Baron returned from one of his countless voyages, he refurnished a chamber in the Bligh mansion in an appropriate, albeit fanciful, style. “My uncle’s taste never fails to amaze me. I shudder to think what may come of his journey to the Holy Land.”

  “Why should you?” inquired the Baroness. “You are not required to live among these rooms. You are not even required to visit them.”

  “I would not neglect you, aunt; how can you think such a thing?” Hubert fixed his quizzing-glass in the
socket of one eye and regarded Dulcie’s silver curls with awe equal to that which he accorded her surroundings. “All the same, the worthy Bligh ancestors would rise from their graves if they knew what Uncle Max had wrought in their respectable town mansion.”

  “It is a compelling argument against the possibility of an afterlife.” Dulcie tapped bejewelled fingers against the arm of her chair. “Why this great concern, Humbug? Do you fear that Bat will run through the Bligh fortune?”

  “That unworthy thought,” Hubert protested, “has never crossed my mind!”

  “It shouldn’t: you’ll never see a penny of it.” The Baroness selected a copy of the Morning Post from a pile of newspapers that also contained the Imperial Weekly Journal, Times, Evening Mail and Pilot; and, for some odd reason, the provincial Ipswich Journal and Chester Chronicle. “Nonetheless, you may set your fears at rest. Bat is rich enough to buy an abbey.”

  “And, in fact,” murmured Hubert maliciously, “has been barely restrained from doing so.”

  Gwyneth, reminded of the purpose of -their visit, hastily intervened. “We have come upon a matter of the gravest importance, dear Baroness, a matter of great delicacy.”

  “You have.” Hubert smoothed a flawless sleeve. “I merely agreed to lend you countenance.”

  Gwyneth was tempted to quarrel with this unchivalrous attitude, but Dulcie gave her no time. “Out with it,” advised the Baroness. “What is this matter of such great import?”

  A lady less stalwart, or less devious, might have been dismayed by this unsympathetic attitude, but Gwyneth plunged bravely on. “I must see Austin!” Her hands were clasped devoutly in her lap. “Surely it is a mother’s privilege to visit her only son? I beg that you will intervene with Dickon on my behalf.”

  “You waste your time.” Unimpressed, Lady Bligh opened the Post. “It is my policy never to interfere.”

  Hubert looked as though he might challenge this remark. Gwyneth’s green eyes flashed wrathfully. “You are very anxious to court scandal. I have already consulted a barrister concerning Dickon’s treatment of Austin.”