Down To The Abbey (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 12)

by Frank Howell Evans

  “You’re acting like a reasonable man for once in your life,” he said.

  “You think so. A thousand curses on that idiotic habit of yours of putting on paper not only your own secrets, but those of others.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” the other said. “Had you not killed your brother-in-law, it would not have appeared in my diary.”

  Chilled to the bone and quivering like a leaf, Felicia had listened to every word. There was a hidden crime in her father’s past life.

  Again the count spoke. “There is no use in recrimination. I promise you, on my honor, that this day I will write to Ingoldmells and tell him this marriage must be given up.”

  The excess of joy was too much for Reigate and murmuring, “Too much breakfast,” he sank back, fainting on the sofa.

  Ever since Berrick’s visit, Count Burgh le Marsh had been in a deplorable state of mind. Forgetting the injury to his foot, he stood up and paced up and down the salon, racking his brains for some means of breaking the net in which he was entangled. He knew the necessity for immediate action, because he felt sure that this demand would only be the forerunner of numerous others of a similar character. He had almost decided to go to the authorities and come clean, then the idea of placing the affair in the hands of a private detective occurred to him, but the more he deliberated, the more he realized the strength of the cord that bound him. Mr. Burgh le Marsh hardly took heed of his wife entering the room.

  “What’s annoying you, Bernard?” she asked. “Surely, not Mr. Reigate’s attack of indigestion?”

  For many years the count had been accustomed to that taunting and sarcastic voice, but this joke at such a moment was more than he could endure.

  “Shut up!” he said angrily.

  “What is the matter? Are you not well?”

  “Lady!”

  “Will you tell me what has taken place?”

  Coming to a halt before the chair in which the countess was lounging, his eyes blazing with hate and anger, he screamed, “Ingoldmells will not marry our daughter.”

  Countess Burgh le Marsh was delighted at this reply, but she began at once to object, because a woman’s way is always at first to oppose what she most desires.

  “You’re kidding me, surely!” she said. “Where can we find so good a match again?”

  “You need not be afraid,” answered the count, with a sneer. “You will have another son-in-law.”

  “Of what other son-in-law are you speaking?” she asked cautiously. “Do you intend to decide my child’s future without consulting me?”

  “I do, lady!”

  A contemptuous smile crossed the face of the countess, which goaded the count to fury.

  “Am I not the master here?” he screamed in intense rage. “Am I not driven to the exercise of my power by a pack of villains, who found out about a murder committed by me? Yes, I murdered Lord Dulverton.”

  The countess sprang up and extended her hands, as though to guard herself from some coming danger.

  “This is horrible, horrible!” murmured Countess Burgh le Marsh faintly.

  “Ah, but you don’t know why I killed him. It was because my sister’s husband had dared to tell me that the wife I adored was unfaithful to me.”

  Words of denial came to the lips of the countess, but her husband went on coldly, “And it was all true. Poor Lord Dulverton! My sister became a widow, because of you.”

  “Have mercy, Bernard.”

  “After his death, she lived alone. When she died, she died alone and unloved. Because of you she never had what you had, but never appreciated, a husband and a child.”

  The count felt a certain kind of savage pleasure in venting the rage, which for years had been suppressed, on the shrinking woman before him. “You failed in your duties of wife and mother.”

  “It is false,” murmured the countess. “You’ve been deceived.”

  Mr. Burgh le Marsh laughed a grim and terrible laugh.

  “Not so,” he answered, “You’ve always looked at me as one of those foolish husbands that may be duped without suspicion on their parts. I kept silent, because I knew that on the day I said the truth you would be entirely lost to me. I could have killed you, I had every right to do so, but I could not live apart from you. When I kissed you, I could not but think that your lips were dirty with the kisses of other men and I could hardly keep my hands from grabbing your neck until life was extinct.”

  “Have mercy, Bernard! Have mercy!” pleaded the unhappy woman.

  He looked at her with eyes in which the pent-up anger of twenty years blazed. “And you? I had to save what remains of our property, because your insatiable extravagance swallowed up all like a bottomless abyss. At last your trades-people, believing me to be ruined, refused you credit and this saved me. I have my daughter to think of and yet…” he hesitated and stopped speaking for a moment.

  “And yet,” repeated Countess Burgh le Marsh weakly, fearing what he would say.

  “I have never embraced her,” he burst forth with a fresh and terrible explosion of wrath, “without feeling a doubt as to whether she was really my child.”

  This was more than the countess could endure.

  “Enough!” she cried. “Enough! I have been guilty, Bernard, but not so guilty as you have convinced yourself I am.”

  “Why do you venture to defend yourself?” asked the count, exasperated.

  “Because it is my duty to guard our daughter.”

  “You should have thought of that earlier,” answered the count with a sneer.

  In the deepest agitation the countess answered, “Oh, Bernard, why did you not talk to me sooner? Why wait twenty years?”

  “Spare us both,” the count said coldly.

  Feeling that all hope had gone, Countess Burgh le Marsh fell back on the sofa, crying, while Felicia, unable to listen to any more terrible revelations, had fled to her own room. The count was about to leave the salon, when a servant entered, carrying a letter on a silver platter. Burgh le Marsh tore it open. It was from Mr. Ingoldmells, asking to be released from his engagement to Felicia Burgh le Marsh. This last stroke was almost too much for the count’s nerves, because in this act he saw the far-reaching arm of his mortal enemy, but before he could collect his thoughts, his daughter’s maid came into the room crying with all her might, “Help, help, my poor mistress is dying!”

  Walter Pitstone lived in a magnificent house on Pavilion Road. The bank was on the ground floor, while his private rooms were in the story above. Though he didn’t do business in a very large way, he was a most respectable man and his business was mainly with the smaller trades-people, who seemed to live a strange kind of hand-to-mouth existence and who might be happy were it not for the constant reappearance of bills to be met.

  In the morning the banker was never to be seen. He was a big man, bald, his face was clean shaved and his little grey eyes twinkled incessantly. His manner was charmingly courteous. He didn’t despise those little pleasures, which enabled him to sustain life’s tortuous journey. He liked a good dinner and had always a smile ready for a young and attractive face. The banker always did his business on foot, for the sake of his health, as he said. He was a widower and all his love was concentrated on his daughter. Miss Rhiannon would one day come into millions.

  On the day after Rhiannon and Will Platts had met at Richard Blake’s shop, Mr. Walter Pitstone was talking with one of his female clients. She was young, very pretty and dressed with simple elegance, but the expression on her face was deeply sad. Her eyes were overflowing with tears, which she tried in vain to restrain.

  “If you refuse to renew our bill, sir, we are ruined,” she said, moving her red lips slowly and deliberately. “My husband and I could meet it in three months. I have sold all my trinkets.”

  “Poor little thing!” interrupted the banker.

  Her hopes grew under these words of pity.

  She continued, glancing at him under her long eyelashes, “Business has never been so br
isk. New customers are constantly coming in and though our profits are small, the sales are growing.”

  “That is all very well,” the banker said and accompanied these words with so meaning a look, that the poor woman blushed scarlet and almost lost her nerve. He broke off abruptly, because Rhiannon’s maid entered the room without knocking.

  “Sir,” she said, “my mistress wants to see you at once.”

  The banker stood up immediately. Taking the hand of his client, he led her to the door, repeating, “Don’t worry yourself. We can work it out. You and I.”

  The young woman left hastily. The banker smiled at the games men and women play.

  Rhiannon had summoned her father to show him a new dress, which had just been sent to her by Richard Blake and which pleased her greatly. Rhiannon’s dress was a masterpiece of fashionable bad taste. Standing in the middle of the room, she was so dainty and pretty that even the dress was unable to spoil her appearance. As she turned around, she caught sight of her father in a mirror, panting with the haste he had made in running upstairs.

  “What a time you’ve been!” she said pettishly.

  “I was with a client,” he answered apologetically.

  “Never mind that. Look at me and tell me plainly what you think of me.”

  She did not have to ask the question, because the most intense admiration beamed from his face.

  “Heavenly!” he answered.

  Rhiannon, accustomed as she was to her father’s compliments, was highly delighted. “Then you think that he will like me?” she asked.

  She was talking about Will Platts. The banker sighed as he replied, “Is it possible that any human being exists that you cannot please?”

  “Ah!” she thought. “If it were anyone but he, I would have no doubts.”

  Walter Pitstone took a seat near the fire and pulling his daughter to him, pressed a fond kiss on her forehead.

  “Suppose, after all, that he would not like me,” she murmured. “I would die of grief.”

  “Do you like him then? So soon?” he asked. She paused for a moment and he added, “More than you like me?”

  Rhiannon embraced her father and answered with a musical laugh, “How silly you are, papa! I love you.”

  “And why do you like him?” he asked.

  “Because,” stammered the young woman, “well, I can’t say, but I do.”

  Her father sighed.

  Rhiannon caught the expression on his face and burst into a fit of laughter.

  “I really believe that you’re jealous,” she said, as if she were speaking to a spoiled child. “That is very naughty of you.”

  Walter Pitstone raised his eyes to the ceiling.

  “You don’t understand me,” went on Rhiannon, suddenly serious. “Had I a mother, she would comprehend me better.”

  The banker frowned. He touched her face gently. “All will be as you desire, Rhiannon and the man you love will be your husband.”

  The young woman was almost beside herself with joy and throwing her arms around his neck, pressed kiss on kiss on his cheeks and forehead.

  “Papa,” she said, “I love you for this more than for anything that you’ve given me in my life.”

  The banker sighed and said inaudibly, “That’s right little girl. He’s made to order for you.”

  Rhiannon, shaking her little fist at him, screamed, “What are you murmuring there, sir? Do you by any chance regret your promise?”

  A benevolent smile passed over her father’s face as he answered insincerely, “But he is not the sort of husband that I intended for you. He’s a composer.”

  “So?” screamed Rhiannon angrily. “He’s a genius. He will compose an opera and I will share all his glory. Why, perhaps, he may even sing his songs to me alone.”

  Her father noticed her state of feverish excitement and looked at her sadly. “Rhiannon, you’re the poem in my heart. Never stop. Never change.”

  She smiled at him.

  “By heavens,” he cried, bursting into a sudden fit of anger, “if ever he ill-treats you, he’s a dead man.”

  The young woman was startled at the sudden anger.

  “What have I done to make you angry?” she asked.

  The banker answered, “This man has robbed me of my child’s heart and you will be happier with him than you are with your poor old father.”

  Rhiannon did not reply and her father took her closer to him.

  “Listen to me, my child,” he said. “You will never have a better friend than I am. You know that I would shed every drop of blood in my veins for you. Remember that your happiness is in your own hands now, so be careful and hide your feelings and don’t let him find out how deep your love is for him. Men’s minds are weak…”

  He paused, because the doorbell rang. Rhiannon’s heart gave a bound of intense joy.

  “He’s here!” she gasped and fled from the salon through one door as the other door opened, but it was not Will, who made his appearance, but some other guests.

  For this evening the banker had issued invitations to twenty of his friends, so among them Will would scarcely be noticed. Dr. Willoughby had volunteered to introduce Will into good society. Willoughby, rich and careless, seemed the incarnation of happiness and contributed greatly to stifle the voice of Will’s conscience. He would, however, perhaps have hesitated had he known what the locket contained that dangled so ostentatiously from the doctor’s watch chain.

  Before they reached the banker’s door, driven in the doctor’s elegant car, the young man’s mentor spoke.

  “Dear boy, do you know what an heiress really is?”

  “Well I…”

  “Allow me to continue. An heiress and more so if she is an only child, is generally a very unpleasant person, headstrong and spoiled by the flattery to which she has been accustomed from her earliest years.”

  “Ah!” answered Will, a little discomfited.

  Dr. Willoughby and his young friend entered the house in Pavilion Road, where they were cordially greeted by the butler. The banker was called away on urgent business.

  Will glanced around, but there were no signs of Rhiannon, nor did she make her appearance until five minutes before dinner. Her eye rested on Will and he bowed ceremoniously. Rhiannon had taken the banker’s advice to heart and when seated at table abstained from casting a glance in Will’s direction. When dinner was over and many of the guests sat down to play whist, Rhiannon approached Will and in a soft voice, which shook a little in spite of her efforts, said, “Will you not play me one of your own compositions, Mr. Platts?”

  Will was a good performer and Rhiannon seemed in seventh heaven. Dr. Willoughby who had taken his seat not far away, watched the young couple.

  Rhiannon followed her father’s advice so well, that at the end of the evening Will didn’t know whether he had made an impression on her or not.

  Captain Haven was in the habit of putting on his very best clothes, when Berrick called a general meeting of his associates. Early in the morning he had been compelled to make up the accounts of two cooks, who having obtained positions, were leaving the servants’ lodging-house. When this matter was completed, he met Menlowe, who was bringing in his daily report.

  “I’m not putting up with this anymore!”

  Haven was surprised at the insubordination.

  “Not anymore?” he echoed.

  “Do you think as how I’m going to work like a horse and not get a wink of sleep, just for a “thank ye, Menlowe?”

  Haven flew into a rage.

  “You’re an ungrateful young man to talk like this after all the kindness your employer has shown you.”

  Menlowe gave a sarcastic laugh.

  “What is it you want?”

  “Come, don’t get shifty! All I asks is a small rise of salary. Only say either yes or no and if you say no, why, I sends in my resignation.”

  “Mr. Berrick won’t accept that. He’ll send you packing and where will you be then?” Haven said.

/>   “If old Berrick interferes, I’ll shut up his mouth pretty fast. I’m sick of you both. Don’t you think I’m up to you? When you make me follow someone for a week at a time, it isn’t to do ‘em a kindness, I reckon. If things turn out badly, I have only to go before a judge and speak up.”

  Haven had just left the army when Berrick had given him a position in his company. London at the time was full of you men returning from the war on the Continent and work was hard to come by. Berrick had been good to him.

  He thought it best to adopt a more conciliating demeanor towards the young man.

  “How much do you want?” he asked.

  “I wants one hundred shilling down on the nail.”

  “One hundred shilling,” echoed Haven, scandalized at such a demand.

  “Yes, my gentleman, that and no less.”

  Old Man Davidson suddenly made his appearance.

  “Tut, tut, never quarrel with the door open.”

  Haven thanked Providence for sending this sudden reinforcement to his aid and began in a tone of indignation, “Menlowe wants…”

  “I heard every word,” interjected Old Man Davidson.

  On hearing this, Menlowe felt sick, because he hardly knew Berrick and despised Captain Haven, but he trembled before Old Man Davidson, because in him he recognized a man, who would stand for no nonsense. He therefore began in an apologetic tone, “Just let me speak, sir. I only want…”

  “Money! Come, Haven, hand this worthy young man the hundred shilling that he has so politely asked for.”

  Haven was stupefied, but couldn’t object to one of his employer’s partner’s orders. He took out his wallet, extracted a banknote and offered it to the lad. Menlowe glanced at the banknote then at the faces of the two men, but was obviously afraid to take the money.

  “Take the money, my boy.” said Old Man Davidson. “Good! Now come into the office, where we will not be disturbed.”

  Old Man Davidson sat down on a chair and glancing at Menlowe, who stood before him twirling his cap uncomfortably, he said, “What issue do you have?”

  The young man had by this time recovered his normal audacity.