Behold, a Mystery!

by Joan Smith

  “So there is. I shan’t keep you, Anita,” I said, looking at the letter-paper and lifting the pen.

  She ignored my hints. “Have you made any arrangement for someone to replace me?” she asked. “I cannot stay buried in the country forever.”

  “That is something I wish to discuss with my advisers. I intend to hire a respectable older lady as soon as possible.”

  “If I am to stay past tomorrow, I must ask to be reimbursed,” she said. “I have been put to considerable trouble and expense coming here.”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Rampling. In fact, I prefer it that way. Shall we say ten pounds?”

  She looked pleased with this, and left with a smile on her sly face. I was relieved to make Mrs. Rampling an employee; it removed the onus of treating her like a friend. I assumed Gregory would return to London with her. I did not think Croton would prevent them from leaving. He took his duties lightly.

  With Felix and Gregory and Anita gone, that would leave only the Farrs, and I had no intention of being alone in the house with them, with only an elderly lady for companion. If Croton would not install a guard, I would hire one until the Farrs left.

  And when they left, I would be virtually alone at Downsview. The aftermath of the annual New Year’s visit was always a particularly dreary time. This year, I would not even have Hettie and Mrs. Manner to help alleviate the gloom.

  I finished my letters and gave them to Juteclaw to have delivered by a footman. My mind had been full of memories of Hettie and Mrs. Manner as I wrote. I felt tears stinging at the back of my eyes, and decided to go to my room to mourn in private. I also had to do some deep planning about the rest of my life. I could not stay alone at Downsview for a whole year. No one could take so much solitude and retain her sanity.

  I must get away, meet people, make new friends. I thought of Bath. It had always shone like a beacon to me. What I ought to do was look for a companion willing to accompany me to Bath. Eventually I would meet some gentleman who could love me for myself, and marry him, and we would set up a house of our own.

  None of this could be undertaken until the mystery at Downsview was settled, however. Yet I knew everyone was eager to get away, and I could not count on Croton to detain them. How was anything to be settled if all the suspects dispersed? A man who has killed twice was not likely to cease his efforts only because I had removed to Bath. I would never know around what corner danger lurked. A shot from a doorway, poison put into my food, a sudden push in front of a moving carriage ... The means of murder were infinite. Until the year was up, I could not call my life my own.

  “You are wishing your life away,” Hettie used to say, when I expressed a wish that some hovering event would hurry up and arrive. I would gladly have given away one year of it to find peace and safety.

  I closed the study door behind me and went up the beautiful curved staircase to my room. The brass of the banister beneath my fingers was cold; the steps were grooved by the tread of my predecessors. As I turned towards the east wing, I saw Otto just coming out of my bedchamber. A tide of anger swelled up at his impertinence. I strode briskly along to the door and demanded in a voice of fury what he thought he was doing.

  "Trying to save your life,” he growled.

  “Indeed! And how is your spying around my room to accomplish that? For that matter, how did you get in? I had locked the door.”

  He held up a key. “With this,” he said. “It is the key to my own bedroom. It fits yours as well. The same key opens all the bedchambers.”

  “A pity you had not known that last night, when you were outside my door,” I said. Anger robbed me of discretion. “Yes, I heard you. If you had tried to get in, I would have raised such an outcry you would have been caught before you could stick a knife between my ribs.”

  He looked as if I had struck him. His mouth flew open and he stared in disbelief. “Well, upon my word! That is the thanks I get for losing a night’s sleep trying to protect you! I did know last night that my key fit your door. I could have entered had I wished. And so could the murderer. I advise you to push a dresser in front of your door, until you remove to Cleremont.”

  “I have no intention of removing to Cleremont.”

  "Then you are extremely foolish.”

  “If you already knew that key fit my door, what is your excuse for being here now?”

  "There is more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to enter a lady’s bedchamber. As the situation now stands, it is possible your room will be broken into from outside the house. I was investigating the window.”

  “No one is likely to climb up a steep wall and break in via the window.”

  His nostrils pinched in annoyance. “You have heard of the ladder? Your window has no lock.” The lower portion of the arched windows opened like a double door. The upper, arched part, was stationary.

  Such spurious concern for the security of my room told me that any attempt from Otto was not likely to come while I was there. That left the rest of the huge house—and the rest of England, for that matter.

  “It has a catch on the inside.” I went to examine the window, with Otto following me.

  “The catch is quite loose,” he said, jiggling it. It did not strike me as impossible that he could shake it open. “Only to be expected in an old house.” He reached over my shoulder, pulled two newly cut pieces of wood from between the windows and the bottom of the frames and opened the windows. “The pins are on the outside,” he said, pointing to them. “All he has to do is quietly remove a pin and lift out the window while you sleep. He could get in with no trouble.”

  “It seems to me he would have the trouble of holding a large window while he balanced on a ladder. He could hardly drop it without raising the dead.”

  Otto was unhappy with this display of common sense from a mere female. “He could quietly set the window on the floor inside. It would help if you had been fed a drink of laudanum first, of course. There would inevitably be a little noise.”

  “What were those pieces of wood you removed before opening the window?”

  He held them up. “I made them to stop the window. The windows open inwards. With that loose lock, it seemed a sensible precaution. I am not entirely happy they are stout enough to do the job. Metal would be better.”

  “What is the point of that, if he could lift the window from the hinges?”

  “Removing the window would be a last resort. I am not even sure it could be done. I merely pointed it out as a precaution. Let it not be said I have been lacking in my efforts to save your life.”

  “And who do you imagine plans to get at me through the window, Otto, when those who would benefit from my death are already in the house?”

  “I would not like to accuse anyone without more proof than I have managed to collect thus far.”

  “I doubt it is Horatio you have in mind.”

  His black slash of eyebrows rose in irritation. “He was never mechanically inclined,” he replied.

  "That only leaves one man, does it not? I am assuming you exclude yourself.”

  “That, at least, is a safe assumption. Safer than some of the others you are making.”

  “I am not making any assumptions, Otto. I realize there is also a lady who might be involved. I keep an open mind and a sharp eye on all my guests at all times.”

  “You are not watching them while they are away.”

  Was he suggesting Gregory and Anita were up to some mischief at Littlehorn? I don’t know why, but the idea of an abduction popped into my head.

  I accompanied him to the door. He seemed inclined to linger. “How is the accounting going?” he asked in a friendlier tone.

  “I have not got started on it.”

  “You realize I must return to London very soon. When the Prince honours one with a lawsuit, it would be poor manners to fail to appear in court.”

  “I am sure Croton will have no objection to your leaving. He let Felix go to make his speech.”

  “It w
as not Croton’s objection I was hoping to hear of, but yours, Jess. Don’t let this come between us.”

  He used his honeyed courting voice. His eyes glowed with passion as they moved about my face, lingering on my lips. If I did not know better, I might easily be led to believe he was serious.

  I replied in a mocking voice that showed my opinion of his performance. “Naturally the Prince of Wales must take precedence.”

  He left with a snort of annoyance, and I closed and locked my door. I thought of all that Otto had said. “Let it not be said I have been lacking in my efforts to save your life.” That was what people would say, if I was killed. Otto would point to the pieces of wood in the window and shake his head, telling the others he had told me to lock my door. Obviously the man who was taking so many pains on my behalf would be above suspicion. Otto was always the clever one.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The interview with Otto had one beneficial effect. It lifted me out of the mournful mood that had caused the trip to my bedroom. I no longer wanted to cry; I wanted to strike someone, or throw a vase against the wall, or break a window.

  How dare Otto, or anyone, create such a dreadful situation! To take two human lives, and turn my own into this hell of frustration. He would not get away with it. The next time death came calling, I would be ready for it. I would not eat one bite that did not come directly from the kitchen, and be poisoned like Hettie. I would not leave the house alone, and be struck down like poor Mrs. Manner, I would have a locksmith change the lock on my bedchamber door, and I would carry a weapon on me at all times.

  Not one of Horatio’s dangerous guns with the hair-trigger. What, then? A knife. A good, sharp knife of a size that fit into the pocket of my skirt. I did not bother locking my door when I left. What was the point? I went down to the kitchen and borrowed a small vegetable paring knife from Cook, under the pretext that I required it to remove some hardened mud from my slippers. I did not want to alarm the servants.

  Next I went to Juteclaw and asked him to send for the locksmith to bring a stout lock and install it on my bedchamber door that very day. He must have sensed the new iron in my voice. He said, “Yes, Miss Greenwood.” I would wait a little to become “madam.”

  When Hettie’s man of business called—an eminently sensible man of middle years and neat appearance—he dealt not with an uncertain miss, but a lady determined to take the reins.

  “I shall require a mature lady of sterling reputation to bear me company for the next year, Mr. Walgrave,” I said. “Not too old, mind. Somewhere between forty and fifty. It is possible I shall be spending some time in Bath. Will you advertise, check the references, and bring me such replies as you deem suitable?”

  We discussed the lady’s remuneration and working conditions. After the terms of employment were clear, he mentioned he had a widowed sister living in Bath whom he would like me to meet. If we rubbed along, my problem might be solved. “She is just turned fifty. She has lived in Bath for three decades. She knows the place well by now.”

  Walgrave was not only sensible but good-natured. If his sister was like him, she was just what I required. Before he left, it was arranged that she would pay him a visit next week, and he would bring her to tea at Downsview, for us to meet.

  “Better than hiring a stranger,” he said. “Letters of reference can be forged, and if the ex-mistress is dead, there is no way of corroborating them. I always have a suspicion when the ex-employer has passed on.”

  “Your sister sounds suitable. If she is wise as yourself, Mr. Walgrave, my problem is solved.”

  As I was seeing him out the door, Gregory and Anita returned from their drive. Gregory asked if he might see me alone in the study for a moment. There was no avoiding it, and we had a brief, rather unpleasant conversation.

  “You know Hettie was planning to give me five hundred, Jessica,” he said.

  “Yes, to avoid cutting that stand of oaks that is already cut,” I reminded him. “You systematically lied to her and in a way cheated her for over a decade, Gregory. I do not think it fair to give you five hundred and give the others nothing.”

  The murderous expression that leaped to his face was enough to make me reach for my knife. I did not draw it out, but it felt good to know it was there.

  “She meant for us to have the lot,” he said, growing red. “You know perfectly well she thought you would marry me.”

  “Perhaps, but she never for one moment imagined we would set up a ménage a trois with your mistress.”

  “Demme, it is Hettie’s money! I was always her favourite.”

  “Actually it is her late husband’s money. Farr money, in other words. She did feel genuine affection for you, and you deceived her at every turn. I am sorry, I cannot give you five hundred, but I will give you half that sum, provided you return the small objects you have stolen since arriving. It is true you had a special place in her affections.”

  "Two-fifty?” he asked. He did not even have the grace to blush at being called a liar and a thief. “Done!” he said, and jumped up with alacrity. “I shall put back the gewgaws, but Aldous’s watch was meant for me. She did not put it in her will, but she always said so.”

  I had not realized he had rummaged through the box of mementoes in Hettie’s toilet-table. Really, the man was unconscionable. His foraging might account for the light I saw in Hettie’s room the afternoon Mary and I found Mrs. Manner in the park. “You may keep the watch,” I said.

  He was all smiles when he left. “Very kind of you, Cousin. About the wine cellar, if you want to sell it off before the end of the year, I know a chap in London who will give you top price for it.”

  “I don’t believe Hettie meant for me to pillage her estate. We shall each get our fifth at the end of the year.”

  “Then you have definitely decided not to marry?” he asked eagerly.

  “Let us say I have not definitely decided to marry.”

  “It is the same thing—oh, I see.”

  He frowned when he had worked out the difference. At the door he stopped and turned back. “Do you happen to know where Otto has gone? I saw him driving out of Littlehorn—heading away from Downsview, not towards it.”

  “No, I have no idea.”

  “Odd. He is not escaping to London, for he only had two horses, and he came with four. Oh well, probably courting some lady. You know Otto.”

  He gave a debonair laugh and left. I sat on alone, wondering what Otto could be doing on the far side of Littlehorn. No reason occurred to me, unless he did indeed know a charmer there. I also wondered why Gregory had told me. Gregory was certainly not a subtle man. He had blurted out about seeing Otto right after I told him I had not definitely decided to marry.

  Was he afraid I might succumb to Otto’s blandishments, and was trying to blacken his character? This seemed the sort of petty thing Gregory would do. He was petty in both is behaviour and his desires. Two hundred and fifty pounds had put a smile on his face. It occurred to me that he was not the sort of big thinker to envisage a scheme to get the whole of Hettie’s fortune. I realized it must have been Anita who had tried to push him into marrying me. Slipping gewgaws into his pocket was more his style. He was petty even in his sins.

  The locksmith arrived quite promptly. I accompanied him upstairs and showed him which door was to get the new lock. Within half an hour I was called to approve it. It looked very stout and safe. He gave me the two keys and I put them in my pocket with my knife.

  It kept nagging at me, what Otto was doing on the far side of Littlehorn. I decided to see if he had confided in Horatio. I ran Horatio to ground in his favourite spot, the armaments-room. He was not admiring the war toys, but sitting at the window holding a telescope to his eye, and gazing out at the park.

  “I am afraid we are not entertaining you very well, Horatio,” I said, advancing towards him.

  “Nothing of the sort,” he smiled. “I have been having a dandy time. A fox has got into the park. Don’t I wish Hettie kept
a pack of hounds and we could hunt Reynard. If we had brought our hunters, that is to say.”

  I noticed he had had another bottle of the Madeira brought up from the cellar. He noticed me noticing it, and blushed. “Don’t worry, I ain’t foxed. I never have more than a glass or two, though the last bottle I had here disappeared on me.”

  “I wonder who took it,” I said, hoping he might know.

  "The servants,” he said vaguely. “I must keep an eye on—on Reynard.” I felt he had been about to say something else. He lifted the telescope and turned it towards the park.

  “Is that all you are watching?” I looked out the window. There was nothing to see except empty parkland. Weldon’s place was beyond the park, but not visible from here.

  “I am keeping an eye out for Weldon’s dog as well. Otto tells me he has sold that brute of a Jackson again, to the butcher in Littlehorn. I thought I might see him fetching him home. He is little better than a thief, with his selling the beast over and over.”

  “He would not be bringing Jackson home through the park but by the road, Horatio.”

  “True.” He set down his glass and looked sheepish. “I was chatting to Greg. Told me about the two-fifty.”

  “I plan to give you two-fifty as well. Sorry I could not make it the five hundred you need.”

  “Very kind of you. I feel like a dashed beggar.”

  “Please don’t. The money belongs to us all.”

  “It is yours, for a year.”

  “Did Otto happen to tell you where he is going this afternoon?” I asked, making it sound as casual as I could.

  “Eh?” A guilty look came over his face. “Otto? He went out, I believe.”

  “Gregory saw him leaving Littlehorn, driving away from Downsview, not towards it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “He did not tell you where he is going, then?”

  “Ah! Matter of fact, he did say something about having a word with the local M.P.—Skelling, is it? For the Clarion, you know. That could be it.”