“For now,” Ashok murmured, too softly for his cousin to hear. Aloud he said, “Will the jewels bring you closer to your destiny, Jahal?”
Jahal leaned forward and tapped his cousin on the knee. “Someday, Ashok, we shall stand with England, and then, cousin, then …!”
Together they followed the horsecar that carried Mr. Dodgson and Dr. Doyle toward the commercial center of Southsea. In their wake, the two seamen crossed the road and approached Treasure House as the crowd dispersed.
CHAPTER 14
As the morbid sightseers left the vicinity of Treasure House, Amelia returned to the sitting room and sat on the sofa, stunned. Bedelia, on the other hand, was fascinated by the attention Treasure House was getting.
“The Rajah and Mr. Ram are driving off,” she reported to her sister, from her post at the window seat. “Mr. Dodgson and Dr. Doyle took the horsecars. Why did you send Mrs. Doyle away? She and Mrs. Hawkins could have taken charge of Jenny and seen to luncheon.”
“Bedelia!”
The girl turned to face her irate sister. “Well, somebody has to look after things, now that Emma is gone.”
Amelia nodded, but made no move to rise.
Bedelia went on cheerfully, “When are we going to bury Papa?”
“I still have to speak with Mr. Lindsay-Young,” Amelia reminded her. “He is very cross with us.”
“About the séance? What is that to do with anything?” Bedelia asked pertly.
“Mr. Lindsay-Young has preached against Spiritualism,” Amelia stated. “He was most offended that we should attend a séance at all, and that Emma should have died during one may very well be viewed as a divine judgment against her. However, in Papa’s case, he may be persuaded to officiate at the burial, because we are members of St. Margaret’s Parish, and I attend divine service regularly. It is only a matter of making sure of the time. And I must consult with him as to what to do about Emma.”
“Couldn’t we do them both together?” Bedelia asked innocently.
“Baby Bee! What a thought!” Amelia’s tone sharpened. “Besides, we don’t know when the police will let us have Emma’s, um, remains. After all, Bedelia, it’s not as if Emma were our mama. She was a servant. Always remember that.”
Bedelia nodded gravely. “Of course, she was just a servant, but she did take care of me when I was little, and she went on calls with you. She even paid calls without you sometimes, when you and Papa were in his study together. She would take her little basket when she met me after school.”
“Indeed.” Amelia’s ears caught the sound of the door-knocker, vigorously applied, and Jenny’s sturdy tramp in the hall.
The maid put her head in at the sitting room door. “Miss Amelia, there’s a man at the door—”
The visitor decided not to stand on ceremony. He strode past Jenny and stood in the center of the room, looking at Amelia.
Amelia gasped out, “Jack!”
He was tall enough to have to bend when he entered the door, with thinning fair hair, blue eyes, and a day’s growth of reddish beard on his sunburned cheeks. Behind his back, Jenny waved her hands about, to indicate that there was nothing she could do to stop him from entering.
“I told him you wasn’t at home, Miss Amelia, but he would come in!”
Amelia swallowed hard. “No matter, Jenny,” she finally said. “Perhaps you should see to luncheon.”
“There’s nobbut cold meat and the end of last night’s loaf in the house,” Jenny objected.
“Then you must find something else,” Amelia said, fighting the desire to scream.
“But—”
“Go!” Amelia fairly shouted. Jenny bolted for the kitchen, where her mother waited.
Jenny’s mother, a small and wiry woman whose gray-streaked curls were tucked into a cap, frowned at her errant daughter when she heard of the latest visitor to Treasure House.
“I don’t like your staying on here, and that’s a fact,” Mum Watkins stated, as Jenny scrabbled around in the almost-empty larder for something to place before the two bereaved sisters. “It’s not nice, having the police and all those nasty Indians about.”
“But Mum,” Jenny argued. “They’re all alone in the world, now that Mrs. Cavanaugh’s gone.”
“That Emma!” Mum nearly spat into the stove, then thought better of it. “Well, stay on if you must, Jenny, but you make sure you gets your wages.”
In the sitting room, Bedelia watched from her favorite spot in the window seat. Amelia and the strange seaman stared at each other wordlessly for what seemed like an eternity. Amelia’s eyes were blank, more pebblelike than ever. She looked beyond the man standing there, as if she could see something else … a moonlit beach, a profusion of fragrant flowers, a stucco-covered house …
She had thought this man dead, drowned in the turbulent waters off the coast of Chile. Papa had begun proceedings to declare him dead. Yet here he stood, in his pea jacket and Captain’s cap, staring down at her, his eyes very blue in his sunburned face.
Then the man broke the silence. “What’s this bilge I hear about Jethro Arkwright? And what’s become of my Emma?”
Amelia came out of her trance. “For that matter, Jack Cavanaugh,” she retorted, “where have you been these seven years? This is the nineteenth century, you know. There are means of communication. Letters? Telegraph? Surely you have not been on a deserted island, like Robinson Crusoe?”
Captain Cavanaugh reddened under his sunburn. “Where I’ve been is nobody’s business but my own. What I want to know is, what happened to Jethro? And what’s this about Emma being poisoned?”
“Papa died,” Bedelia piped up.
“So I heard from that young sawbones on the horsecars, but how? That’s what I want to know!” He stared down at Amelia, ignoring the interruption.
“The police said he died of natural causes,” Amelia said, drawing attention away from the girl. “Papa was not well these last two years. He had dropsy and the gout, and his heart was failing him. Captain—”
“It was Jack before,” he said with a sudden grin.
Amelia was not to be cajoled. “That was a very long time ago,” she said stiffly, looking away from the man before her. “I prefer to call you Captain Cavanaugh now.”
“Captain Cavanaugh!” he echoed. “And whose doing was that, eh? Jethro, to be sure!”
“Oh, did Papa make you a Captain?” Bedelia asked.
Cavanaugh’s grin turned to a grimace at the memory. “Aye, that he did. Even gave me my own ship, which was named after his lady, the Eleanora. Oh, Jethro was the one. He’d take a whelp off the Liverpool docks, lead him on, take him into the officers’ mess, teach him navigation and all the rest, make him First Officer, even train him for his Captain’s papers, but when it came to his daughter, then I wasn’t good enough!” Cavanaugh’s voice raised to a shout.
Amelia cast an anguished glance at Bedelia, who was listening to this tirade with wide-open blue eyes.
“What do you mean?” Bedelia asked.
“I cared for ’im, got ’im back to England, and then ’e saw to it that I never ’ad a week ashore. I took on his cargoes, and carried ’em around the Horn, and what did ’e do when I went down?” Cavanaugh’s eyes never left Amelia’s face.
“We heard the Eleanora went down off the coast of Chile,” Amelia said quietly. “We assumed you went down with her.”
“So you never made a push to find out?” Cavanaugh snarled. “I can just see Emma in her blacks.”
“Emma always said you were still alive,” Bedelia put in. “When we tried to make contact, she said she couldn’t find you. Papa said that was all nonsense ….”
“And what’s all this about Emma talking to spirits?” Cavanaugh snapped out. “I knew she had fanciful notions, but I never thought she’d play that game.”
“It wasn’t a game,” Bedelia said, defending her late mentor. “Emma knew things. She found out about people and wrote it all down in her little book.”
&nb
sp; Cavanaugh looked around to see who was constantly interrupting him. His eyes narrowed as he took in Bedelia’s blond curls, rounded face, blue eyes and rosebud mouth. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “Baby Bee?”
“I am Bedelia, if that’s what you mean,” she said with adolescent dignity.
“Well, now, look at you! Last time I was in port, you was a mucky little thing, playing in the garden dirt.” Cavanaugh’s grin widened. “You’ve improved some.”
“Emma said I would take the shine out of anyone in London,” Bedelia responded, simpering smugly.
“Did she, now? She may be right, but she’s not around to get the benefit of it, is she?” Cavanaugh turned back to Amelia. “What happened to her, Amy-girl?”
Amelia’s pebble-gray eyes met his blue ones. “I do not know, Captain. Dr. Doyle thinks there may have been … foul play. He insists she was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” His grin turned to a frown. “How?”
Amelia shook her head. “I have no idea. He was here just now, shouting something about a handkerchief, and then he left with Mr. Dodgson for General Drayson’s house.”
“A handkerchief?” Bedelia echoed. “What was that all about?”
Amelia shook her head. “You have seen Dr. Doyle when one of his enthusiastic fits comes upon him. He took poor Mr. Dodgson, and off he went.”
“Went where?” Captain Cavanaugh jammed his hat on his head. “I want to have a word with this Doyle.”
“His dispensary is next to the Bush Hotel,” Bedelia told him helpfully. “He might have gone there before he ran to General Drayson’s house on Ashburton Road.”
“Bush Hotel, is it? I’m staying there myself,” Cavanaugh said. “I’ll be back, Amy-girl, when all this is done. There’s a matter of something Jethro left me. It’s mine now, and I want it!”
“If you mean the treasure, no one knows where it is,” Bedelia told him.
“Maybe, maybe not. Good-bye, Amy-girl. Once I settle with this Doyle, I’ll be back, and we can take up where we left off.”
Amelia glared at her irrepressible sister as the Captain strode out of Treasure House. “What do you think you are doing?” she hissed.
“You didn’t want him to stay to luncheon, did you?” Bedelia replied. “Now he’ll go chasing after Dr. Doyle and stay away from us. I wish I could remember more about him. And where do you suppose he has been all these years, that he couldn’t even send a letter or a telegram?”
“South America, I expect,” Amelia said wearily. “Baby Bee, I must go out this afternoon, right after luncheon. I must buy something for tonight’s dinner, and I must see Mr. Lindsay-Young and Mr. Dilbert at the undertakers’ establishment, and arrange for Papa’s funeral. As for you …” Amelia gathered her skirts and rose from the sofa. Bedelia followed her into the gloomy dining room, where Jenny had set out the meager remains of the previous night’s dinner.
“You will write notes, thanking everyone who sent cards of condolence,” Amelia ordered, as Bedelia took her place.
“Why?” Bedelia buttered a slice of bread, bit into it, and made a face. “This loaf is stale. Why may we not have fresh bread?”
“The baker won’t deliver until he’s paid,” Jenny informed them. “And my mum says I’m not to stay on unless I get paid, too.”
“Jenny, you can’t leave us!” Amelia blurted out. “Tomorrow Papa’s will will be read, and Mr. Simms will be able to arrange things. Please …?”
Jenny looked at the two women: one barely into her teens, the other over thirty, and neither of them capable of existing on their own. “Very well, ma’am,” she said.
Bedelia waited for Jenny to close the door to the kitchen before bursting out, “Amelia! I thought you told me never to say ‘please’ to servants.”
“In this case,” Amelia said with dignity, “it was necessary.”
“And I don’t see why I have to answer a lot of letters from people who never liked Papa and are glad he’s dead,” Bedelia went on pettishly.
“That is not true,” Amelia said. “Papa could be difficult at times—”
“He never let me have friends, and he wouldn’t have let you pay calls if Emma hadn’t insisted,” Bedelia pointed out. “The only reason he let you come with him to the meetings of the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society was so that you could help him in and out of the carriage, and carry his papers and notebooks.”
Amelia closed her eyes, then opened them. “Bedelia, if you wish to enter Society, you must learn to live by Society’s rules,” she said slowly. “One of those rules is that cards of condolence must be answered with a brief note. Now you will do as I tell you, and sit down and write those notes, in your best hand, while I deal with Papa’s funeral.”
Amelia left her sister fuming at the luncheon table. She retrieved her hat, picked up her reticule, and started down Elm Grove, head held high. She would not let Jack Cavanaugh’s sudden reappearance shake her determination to do what had to be done for Bedelia. Emma was gone; Papa was gone; Bedelia was all she had left.
From her bedroom window at Treasure House, Bedelia watched her sister’s progress down the street. She frowned sulkily at the pile of notepaper in front of her, and the cards that had to be answered. She allowed herself to daydream a little … in London she would have a secretary, who would answer all her correspondence for her, while she was fitted for beautiful gowns and ate fresh bread for her luncheon.
She briefly considered whether Dr. Doyle and his scholarly friend might find out anything that would make life difficult for her, then discarded the notion. It was more important to find Emma’s accounting-book. Mrs. Doyle had been in Emma’s room; it was possible that she now held this all-important document, with its secrets neatly tallied up in Emma’s private code. Bedelia forgot to dip her pen, as she revolved plans in her mind to retrieve that notebook from Mrs. Doyle.
In the kitchen, Jenny and her mother consulted. “Miss Amelia’s that upset, I can’t leave her now,” Jenny said. “And Miss Bedelia’s too willful for her own good.”
“I don’t like it,” Mrs. Watkins said. “I never liked your being here. If it hadn’t been for Emma Cavanaugh and her nasty tongue …”
“All she said was, she’d find me a place, and say nothing about our Peter and his little trouble,” Jenny pointed out. “Still, it’s not nice, having the police in, and two deaths in a week is unlucky.”
“Unlucky for them what’s dead,” Mum agreed, “but I’m a Christian, and if those two are as gormless as you say, it’s only right for you to stand by them. I’ll be in to do the rough with you. You’ll need a hand with the funeral, I don’t doubt.”
Jenny kissed her mother’s wrinkled cheek. “Thank ye, Mum,” she said. “I only wish them two ladies had a mother like you to show ’em how to get on.”
“And if they had,” her mother said, as she prepared to get back to her own lodgings in Portsmouth, “their lives would have been a lot easier.”
CHAPTER 15
Unaware of the storms brewing at Treasure House, Mr. Dodgson trotted after his host, holding on to his hat with one hand. He had not known Dr. Doyle for very long, but he had learned that there was no way of stopping him once he was on the track of a mystery. He was the sleuth-hound, who would not be deterred, least of all by an elderly scholar. The best Mr. Dodgson could do was follow where Dr. Doyle led, and hope to throw some light onto what was becoming an increasingly murky problem.
The horsecar left the pair where Ashburton Place met Elm Grove. Behind them, Inspectors Fletcher and O’Ferrall in their police brougham watched Dr. Doyle as he loped along until he reached Number Ten. General Drayson and Major Hackaby were on the steps leading up to the front door, dressed for business, the Major in his undress uniform, the General in gray trousers and morning coat.
“General!” Dr. Doyle hallooed, waving his arms madly.
“Eh?” General Drayson stared at his young friend. “What’s the matter, Doyle? You look quite demented.” Noti
cing Mr. Dodgson coming up the stairs in Doyle’s wake, the general politely tipped his hat. “Good morning, sir. A brisk day for a walk.”
Mr. Dodgson followed Dr. Doyle past the two military men on the steps. “Good morning, General. My friend, Dr. Doyle, has discovered—”
He was interrupted by Dr. Doyle, breathing heavily, but no less impassioned. “I must speak with your housemaids at once!” he managed to get out.
By this time, the police brougham had stopped in front of Number Ten and Inspectors O’Ferrall and Fletcher had joined the group on the steps, drawing the attention of the rest of the residents of Ashburton Road.
General Drayson looked at his protégé with concern. “You wish to question my servants?” he repeated. “Whatever for?”
“I have discovered what the poison was, and how the poison was administered to Mrs. Cavanaugh,” Dr. Doyle said between gasps.
“Have you, now!” Inspector O’Ferrall commented. “Still looking for your fatal handkerchief?”
“I am certain of it,” Dr. Doyle told him. He turned to General Drayson. “Have the rooms been cleaned yet?”
General Drayson shrugged. “I have no idea. The policeman on duty told Hetty—that is, Mrs. Drayson—not to let the servants clean the room until Inspector O’Ferrall examined it in daylight. I assume those orders were carried out.”
“And I’ll have the constable’s hide if they weren’t,” O’Ferrall growled. “There’s a good deal that can’t be seen by gaslight.”
“Then perhaps we are not too late,” Dr. Doyle said. “General, this is most important. Was a handkerchief found in your drawing room or your study?”
“A handkerchief?” General Drayson looked perplexed. “I have no idea!”
“It is imperative that we find that handkerchief!” Dr. Doyle nodded vigorously to the two policemen.
“Then let us question the maids.” General Drayson knocked at the door, then turned to Inspectors O’Ferrall and Fletcher. “I am glad you are here, Inspectors. If you have any further questions for me or my servants, you may make them, and then Major Hackaby and I can get on with our business in Portsmouth.”
The Problem of the Spiteful Spiritualist Page 16