Death by Silver

by Melissa Scott

  “Yes, I’d better.” Ned stood back as Victor unlocked the room.

  “We’ve had it shut up since the police were here.” Victor pocketed the simple skeleton key again. Ned expected everyone in the house had access to a copy; for that matter, Julian could have picked the lock within seconds using a pen nib, although not everyone had Julian’s particular complement of dubious skills.

  Ned stepped in, a little reluctantly, although there was nothing to show that anything untoward had happened in the room. It was a small study, lined with shelves of books, with a desk and chair against one wall and two small leather armchairs crowded up near the fireplace on the opposite wall.

  There was a strikingly bare spot on a high shelf of the bookcase above the desk. Ned crossed to look, not touching the shelf. “This is where the candlestick sat?”

  “Just there.”

  He withdrew his wand from his bag and traced a couple of experimental sigils over the polished walnut of the shelf, but it showed no sign of any previous enchantment. “He was sitting here, then?”

  “That’s where he always sat,” Victor said.

  “And he fell out of the chair when he was struck…this way?” He gestured to the right of the chair, where a rug that looked too small for its place was lying; it was a bright figured bottle green as well, when the rest of the room was in greens so dark as to be almost black.

  “As far as anyone can figure. That’s where he was lying when the girl found him. That’s not the carpet that was there. The police took that one off with them. It was…it wasn’t fit to be used, anyway.” He shook his head. “I suppose there’s no chance it could have been an accident?”

  “No chance, I’m afraid. That curse was deliberate.” There was nothing else on the shelves above the desk that could have fallen with enough force to kill a man, and while he felt he ought to check the books for any traces of enchantments, that would take some time. “Why don’t you show me up to your mother?”

  “No point in putting it off.” Victor led Ned out and up the stairs. On the first floor above, the door to the front parlor stood open, and Ned could hear the murmur of voices stop as the came up the stairs.

  “My mother has the back bedroom on this floor, and my father had the front one,” Victor said, nodding to the rooms across the hall. “The rest of us are upstairs.” It was a generously large house for town, but even so there couldn’t have been a spare bedroom in the place, unless there was one perched under the eaves with the servants’ quarters.

  Victor turned and stepped into the parlor, with Ned following at a polite distance. “Mother, here’s Mr Mathey, the metaphysician I told you about.”

  Mrs Nevett nodded without rising. She was too pale for her widow’s weeds to suit her, although her black dress was well-tailored and her figure under the layers of trailing crepe still slim; her white widow’s cap, trimmed with black ribbons, showed up the threads of gray in her pale hair. Her gray eyes were clear and observant, though, searching him as if taking his measure.

  “How do you do?” Ned said. He couldn’t help notice that although there was a black handkerchief folded on her lap, she didn’t look at all as if she’d been crying.

  Victor glanced at the man sitting primly on the other end of the sofa, disdain in Victor’s face. “The Reverend Mr Ellis, Mr Mathey.”

  “Mr Mathey,” Ellis said. He frowned over the metal rim of his spectacles, looking as forbidding as possible for a weedy little man with thinning hair and a clerical collar. “Is all this really necessary? I hate to see Mrs Nevett put through more harrowing questions at such a difficult time.”

  “I’ll try not to ask unnecessary ones,” Ned said, with his most conciliatory smile. He sat down in the nearest chair and extracted a memorandum-book and pencil from his working case, setting the book on his knee. “But the sooner we can sort this out, the less I’ll have to impose on your grief.”

  “I think it’s the best thing,” Victor said, still standing himself. “At least it’s not the police.”

  “Even so…” Ellis began, but Mrs Nevett put out one hand to still him.

  “If we must,” she said.

  “Tell me, if you would, what happened the day of the sad event. From breakfast on, if you would.”

  “We had breakfast at the usual hour,” Mrs Nevett said.

  “All of you were there, I take it?”

  “Freddie didn’t come down to breakfast,” Victor said.

  “Frederick has always been delicate,” Mrs Nevett said. “He found Oxford to be a great strain on his nerves. He’s still convalescing.”

  Victor made a noise that might have been either clearing his throat or snorting, but didn’t actually speak.

  “But the rest of you were there? Mr Nevett, Mr and Mrs Victor Nevett, Mr Reginald Nevett, and yourself?”

  “Reginald spent the night at his club, as he often does,” Mrs Nevett said, her lips tightening. “There were only the four of us at breakfast.”

  “And after breakfast?”

  “I left for Hoare’s,” Victor says. “And my father went out as well. He said he was going to his club, and then to his stockbroker’s. And to the estate agent. He was looking into properties in town he felt I should consider.” His tone suggested the help wasn’t necessarily appreciated.

  “Alice went out. Shopping, I believe,” Mrs Nevett said, sounding a bit disapproving. “I spend the morning reading an improving text.”

  “May I ask what it was?” Ned asked.

  Her gray eyes lifted to his. “An account of missionary work in India.”

  “You’ve a particular interest in the cause?”

  “In charitable works in general. There are so many unfortunates who ought to have something made of them.”

  “My own work is very much along those lines,” Ellis said. “Training children who’ve had no advantages for an honest life in service –”

  “Yes, it’s very commendable,” Victor said.

  “In the afternoon, Alice went to visit Mr Ellis’s mission in Limehouse. I was obliged myself to return a number of calls. Mrs Satterthwaite was at home, and I stopped there for tea. I came home in time to see that everything was properly prepared for dinner. We had dinner guests, and some of the girls haven’t been in service long.”

  “Of course they’ve had suitable training,” Ellis said. “But they’re not experienced when they leave us.”

  “I was here for dinner,” Victor said, “my mother and Mrs Nevett of course, Mr and Mrs Boies, and Mr Ellis. Freddie was here for dinner, but he went out afterwards. Said he had an engagement. And Reggie…” Victor trailed off at his mother’s frown.

  “It’s a pity when parents and children disagree,” Ellis added as the pause dragged out. He wiped his glasses on a handkerchief. “I had hoped to speak to Reginald, to see if I could provide him with some guidance in his relations with Mr Nevett, but we never found the occasion to talk.”

  “Funny, that,” Victor said. It was just short of mockery, but it seemed to go over Ellis’s head, or at least he gave the impression that it did. “He’ll have to hear about it, Mater. Reggie was here that afternoon, but he and my father had some words before dinner. The old man said…well, he wasn’t in the mood for dinner, and he took himself off to his club.”

  “Not that any of us would have intruded,” Ellis said, perching his glasses atop his long nose once more.. “But the downstairs parlor is adjacent to Mr Nevett’s study, you see. Not, of course, that we could hear anything specific.”

  “You were already here, then?”

  “The Reverend Mr Ellis was kind enough to escort Alice back from his establishment,” Mrs Nevett said. “It was nearly dinnertime when they came in. Mr Ellis sat with me in the parlor while we waited for Mr and Mrs Boies to arrive, and Alice went up to dress.”

  And a blazing row in Nevett’s study could certainly not have been missed by anyone sitting in the parlor. Ned considered his chances of getting someone to admit to having eavesdropped; it wo
uld have been barely possible not to, under the circumstances. Perhaps if he could get one of them alone later, he could draw them out enough to elicit at least the general topic of the quarrel.

  “Reggie didn’t stay for dinner either, he went out to his club directly after Father, and slept there,” Victor said. “The rest of us went to bed at a decent hour, so I don’t know when my father came in, or for that matter when Freddie did. He was here in the morning, anyway, when we found my father dead.”

  “Did you…” There was no tactful way to ask whether Mrs Nevett would have expected her husband to wake her for any reason when he came in. “On an ordinary night, would you have heard your husband coming upstairs?”

  “Certainly not,” Mrs Nevett said. “I am a sound sleeper.”

  “Thank you,” Ned said, as it became clear that no one had anything to add. “That’s very helpful.”

  Mrs Nevett looked for the first time as though she were repressing a smile. “I find that a bit surprising.”

  Ned considered her. “Mrs Nevett, forgive my boldness, but who do you believe killed your husband?”

  “I expect he brought it on himself,” she said, rather to Ned’s surprise. “The way he bragged about his silver and that ridiculous curse practically invited burglary.”

  “And the accursed candlestick?”

  “Probably smuggled into the house to ensure that Mr Nevett wouldn’t prevent the burglary. You’d be surprised, Mr Mathey, at the ingeniousness of the criminal classes.”

  There was everything in the world wrong with that explanation, but Mrs Nevett’s expression didn’t suggest she was willing to entertain any other ones.

  “The trick, if I may say so, or ‘catch,’ is of course to divert such misused talents into more wholesome pursuits,” Ellis said.

  “I expect you can tell Mr Mathey all about it sometime,” Victor said briskly, “but he’d better hear Reggie and Freddie before one of them loses patience. It’s been all I could do to keep them both here this long.”

  “I’m sure neither of them would dream of going out at such a time,” Mrs Nevett said, folding her black handkerchief over the back of one hand. “This is after all a house of mourning.”

  “And I’ve intruded long enough. Thank you, Mrs Nevett, Mr Ellis.”

  Ned rose, and followed Victor out into the hallway. Victor shut the door behind him, and the murmur of voices from the parlor became inaudible.

  “Never mind what the mater says, Freddie’s no more delicate than I am,” Victor said under his breath as he led Ned around the stairs to the back parlor door. “He just doesn’t like getting up before noon. Well, who does? But the rest of us can’t idle.”

  Ned was a cheerfully early riser by nature, but he made a noncommittal noise that he was sure Victor took for agreement.

  Over the course of the afternoon, Julian worked his way through the rest of the staff without hearing much new. Miller, Mrs Nevett’s maid, sniffed at the idea of a curse – you’d expect something more dramatic than a kitchenmaid with a twisted ankle – but gave the details of Mrs Nevett’s social round without much prompting. She denied having heard Mr Nevett and Mr Reginald arguing, but admitted that such wasn’t uncommon, and certainly neither man had stayed to dinner. Though that wasn’t uncommon, either, as Mr Reginald spent most of his time at his club. It was hard on a young man to have to live at home, particularly when he was of an age to be setting up his household.

  On the other hand, Jane Pugh, the senior housemaid who also served as Mrs Victor’s maid, believed whole-heartedly in the curse, and was sure it must have had something to do with Nevett’s death.

  “Not that I don’t think Mr Mathey did his job,” she added hastily, “for I could feel the whole house lighter once he was done, but it’s hard to think it hadn’t drawn a burglar already.”

  “It’s possible,” Julian said – and it would have been, had there in fact been a curse – and took her through the events of the day.

  She, too, had seen nothing out of the ordinary. Even the break in her routine was familiar: Mrs Victor had spent part of the afternoon at Ellis’s mission, and he had brought them back again in his carriage.

  “Which I know Mrs Victor was grateful for,” Jane said, “and so was I, to be honest. It’s a fine place, as such things go, and the girls that come from there are honest and willing, but – I’m nervous every time we have to go there, and that’s a fact.”

  Mrs Rule, dragged reluctantly from her range, stood scowling, but recognized quickly enough that the best way to get back to work was to answer his questions. She’d been skeptical about the curse, but it was true that Mogs – Margaret – had hurt herself the very first time she’d been allowed to clean the forks, and in general she was a neat-footed girl, very handy. And Mr Nevett had looked thoughtful rather than angry, which to her mind meant he knew something they didn’t.

  Other than that, the day had been much like any other. She hadn’t had to make tea for the family, bar Mr Frederick, who took his tea in his room because he had the headache, but there had been guests to dinner, and even if they were almost family, she had her pride to consider.

  “Did Mr Nevett plan to stop to dinner?” Julian asked.

  Mrs Rule pursed her lips. “I’d thought so,” she said, carefully. “Mrs Nevett ordered lamb chops with peas the way he likes – liked – them, so I assumed he was. But then she told me he wouldn’t stay, nor Mr Reggie neither.”

  “Do you know what they quarreled about?” Julian asked again, and watched her bridle.

  “I do not.”

  “But you heard them at it,” he said.

  She nodded reluctantly. “They did raise their voices, yes. Though it’s nothing new, fathers and sons don’t always get along, the more so when the sons are grown.”

  “And it’s not easy having two mistresses in a house,” Julian said.

  “Easier than you’d think,” Mrs Rule retorted. “Mrs Victor’s a lady, and she knows her place. And Mrs Nevett is as gracious as may be.”

  And that summed up the household neatly enough, Julian thought. He was beginning to feel rather sorry for Victor’s wife.

  Margaret Jones the kitchenmaid – she looked more like a Mogs than a Margaret, a skinny active girl with a frizz of red-brown hair and freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks – admitted to having twisted her ankle the very day she’d been told off to help Larkin and Sarah clean the silver after another dinner party.

  “Mind you, I didn’t notice anything when I was polishing it,” she said scrupulously. “I rather liked it, actually. It’s pretty, all curlicues, and it’s not hard work to get it shining. Mr Larkin said I did a good job. But then I was running out the areaway, and I missed the step there where it’s cracked, and down I went. Mrs Victor sent for the doctor and there was a fuss, and I had to spend half a day in bed. And Mr Larkin said Mr Nevett said it was because of the silver.”

  So Nevett had suggested the curse. Julian nodded, and led her through the events of the day of the murder. She’d seen nothing out of the ordinary, either, and less than the others, being stuck in the kitchen for most of her work. But her room was in the attic, where she shared with Sarah and Jane Pugh, so she’d known nothing about the burglary until Sarah came downstairs screaming.

  “And well she might,” Mogs said. “I saw him myself when the police came. Cor, it was ugly, his head bashed in and blood everywhere. I saw a man get run over by a brewer’s dray, and he didn’t look no worse.”

  “Nasty for you,” Julian said, though she seemed to have coped well enough. “Tell me about the day before. Was there anything out of the ordinary?”

  Nothing, she said, and proved it by a quick rundown of her day’s work. She’d been in the kitchen most of the day, except when she was sent to the shops just before noon because the butter was off, and then there’d been nothing but washing and scraping and chopping things until Mr Reggie came storming down the stairs and out the garden gate.

  “He’d been fightin
g with Mr Nevett,” she said, and stopped abruptly. “Which, please, sir, you shouldn’t take notice of. They argued all the time, him and Mr Nevett. It didn’t mean nothing.”

  “But they neither one stayed to dinner?” Julian asked.

  Mogs shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “The police said that back gate was found open,” Julian said, without much hope, and she gave him a sharp glance.

  “It was. They said the burglar must have got out that way.”

  “Do you know if it was locked after Mr Reginald left?” he asked, and Mogs shrugged.

  “Mrs Rule locks it every evening, and she’s not one to forget.”

  That wasn’t exactly an answer, and he thought Mogs knew it, but before he could question her more closely, he saw a figure in the doorway. She took his glance as an invitation and came to join them, a neat and handsome figure in precisely calculated blacks.

  “That’ll be all for now, Margaret,” Julian said, and came to his feet. “Mrs Nevett?”

  “Mrs Victor Nevett,” she said, and held out her hand. “And you are Mr Lynes. Pugh said you’d been entirely reasonable, but I wanted be sure the staff didn’t feel bullied. You’ll forgive my being blunt, I’m sure.”

  “Of course,” Julian said. She was pretty enough, with pleasant features and an ivory complexion, but her looks were marred by a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. From the look of them, she was only moderately near-sighted, could probably manage quite well without them, and it said something about her character that she preferred clear sight to fashion. He wondered why in the world she’d ever married Victor. “After having the police in the house, I’m sure everything is upset.”

  “A death is bad enough,” she said. “But this –” She stopped as though she couldn’t bring herself to call it murder. “My mother-in-law and I are particularly concerned about some of the younger members of the staff. They have been hired through Mr Ellis’s mission, and they already suffer a certain stigma on that account. I want to assure you that they are all honest girls, and very reliable. Mr Ellis would not have placed them with us had they been otherwise.”