“Open those doors at once and summon the staff, Finnley.” He’d never seen her so imbued with power.
He took a step toward her. “Alicia, I wish to talk with you.”
His pocket watch chimed the hour of one.
She smiled, an enigmatic expression that frightened him and yet made him proud of her. “That time has passed, Finnley.”
“I want to explain myself.”
She looked him squarely in the eye. “No need, Mr. Finnley. Get me the staff. Everyone. Now.”
He turned on his heel, pride of her and despair that he’d lost her mixing in his guts. She would not let him into her private thoughts and justly so. Failure to please those he loved was nothing new. He’d always been able to cope with those inadequacies. Failure to please his irrational father had been a badge of honor. Disappointing his mother had been the hallmark of his youth. Disappointing himself with his mission to marry Alicia as her brother Jerome wanted was another. This inability to declare how he loved Alicia was different. Worse. Raw as an open wound.
Whirling away, he headed below stairs at a crisp walk, anger at himself consuming him.
Down in the kitchen, he summoned Sweeting and the scullery maid. Preston he found polishing Alicia’s half boots in the boot room. Grimes and Connor stood talking in the stables.
“Seven minutes,” he told each one. “Her ladyship wants you in the front drawing room.”
“Has she got the new title?” each one asked in so many words.
Finnley doubted the Lords of Chancery sat on Sundays, especially not this day after the king’s death. “Assemble in the drawing room. Her ladyship will tell us.”
When they all were assembled, lined up neat as could be in a straight line, fidgeting and smiling in expectation, Finnley joined them at the far end.
Alicia surveyed them like a general reviewing her troops.
“This morning I attended church services most of which marked the passing our dear king. That gave me time to reflect on certain issues.”
Finnley smarted. What was she about?
“As you surely know I am soon to receive word of whether or not the Lords of Chancery have designated me the new baroness of Bentham.”
“Oh, ma’am,” Sweeting declared, her hands clasped together. “We’re hoping for you.”
“Yes, we are, my lady,” Preston said.
The others offered their own expectations.
“You are kind. I am grateful.” She sniffed and walked to the mantel.
Finnley frowned. What was coming was not good news.
“I want to thank each of you for your service to me. Many of you have been here for years and worked commendably for me and my departed husband. I want you to know that my appreciation will come in the form of a bonus paid to you at the end of this month.”
Finnley didn’t want money from her. Not a bonus. Not anything but her sweet person in his arms. He bit his tongue to refrain from blurting that out here and now.
She paced before the fire. “We must observe a few traditions of mourning. Please see to a large bunting placed above the door, Grimes. Mrs. Gordon, please buy enough black cotton and make for each of the staff suitable black armbands. You shall need to wear them for a few months, I do believe. I’m not certain how long that might be. But I’ll ask about and let you know.”
“Will you wear your black again each day, ma’am?” Preston asked.
“I will. Bring all of it out of the back closet, Preston. I foresee the need for full mourning for me. I am not of noble lineage. Nonetheless, I think it fitting for my station that I wear weeds for a few weeks in honor of George’s passing.”
She took stock of each of them, Finnley at the last. Her gaze lingered in his.
“By the end of the month, I shall close this house.”
No.
The others gasped.
“I will retire to the Ranford country house in Kent. There I will take staff. Preston, I’d like you to come with me. Mabel too. Mrs. Sweeting, do tell me if you wish to move and bring the scullery maid Dora with you. Grimes and Connor, the same. Mrs. Gordon please do come with us if you like or I will give you a character reference. Mr. Finnley?”
“Yes, my lady?” He could predict her next action. She was going to sack him.
“The house in Kent is very small. I will have no need for a butler. Of course, I will give you a wonderful reference and ask about town to learn of any vacancies.” She gave them a warm smile, all except Finnley. For him, she had a blank expression. “Thank you. You may return to work.”
He stood his ground.
When the others had gone, he strode to the door and closed it.
“Finnley, that is all. You may go.”
“You cannot dismiss me so easily.”
“Of course I can, sir.”
He walked to her, took her hands and pulled her against him. “Don’t Alicia. Let me stay with you.”
Tears sprang to her large luminous eyes. “Why? There is no future for us. I now agree with you. You should be relieved.”
A pain sharp as a knife cut through his head. Anger blossomed and he was shocked at it. Could nightshade heighten his anger? He suppressed it and focused on Alicia. “My dear, how can I leave when I care for you?”
She struggled backward from his embrace. “I cannot indulge myself any longer in the illusion of that. You were the one who told me you could not remain forever as my butler. And I? I did not realize—“
In the depths of her violet eyes, sorrow loomed.
He shook with despair. “What did you not realize?”
“That any scandal would hurt you too. I’m sorry. I thought too much of myself and not of you at all. How selfish of me.” She walked to the far end of the room. “You fear for your livelihood. I understand.”
“No, no!” Alarmed, he strode after her. “I fear for your life!”
She laughed, incredulity on her face. “Ridiculous.”
He was appalled at what he’d revealed. Now she would fear for her safety and without him present, she’d have no one to protect her. “You must let me come with you. Wherever you go.”
“Dear Wallace,” she said, melancholy in her voice. “Leave me. Today, tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest, whenever you are most prepared. I will have a reference waiting for you.”
“I care not for any reference, Alicia.”
“But I do. You shall have your due.”
“I beg you—“
She put up a hand. “Do not. My mind is made up.”
She set her jaw. It was as if she’d aged from woman to matron in one breath. The sour determination in her eyes astonished him.
She was her own authority.
And he knew he could not move her.
Only with the truth. The evidence. The name of the murderer in her house.
He had to learn that. Quickly.
He’d learn what Preston did on her day off. That would be a start.
So when he stood on the corner of Wapping High Street and watched Preston enter an old and decaying wooden house, he was astonished at the address. And speculated on the reason she visited this particular den of iniquity.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, Finnley excused himself from the house, telling Mrs. Gordon that he had to pay a personal call. She didn’t ask for details as it was not her wont to be intrusive and he escaped the house after breakfast.
Well out of sight of the Crescent, he hailed a hack and requested he go to the Home Office. There, Finnley asked for Lord Winston.
“You’re here early, Beaumont.” His supervisor looked tired this Monday morning. Winston was in his sixties and worked far too many hours. “Do sit. Have news, do you?”
“Some.” Finnley accepted a cup of tea from Winston’s hand. “Two matters, both about the two servants we discussed last week.”
“The footman and the lady’s maid?” Winston took his chair near the fire.
“The same, yes. Grimes the footman told me he came from Maidenhead straight to London in August. But he’s told a maid next door that he comes from Kent.”
“And what have you to report about Lady Ranford’s maid, Cybil Preston?”
Finnley put down his cup and saucer on the nearby table. “She followed me yesterday morning to the house next door. I had a conversation with the butler of that establishment and it seems she might have overheard me.”
Winston’s mouth curled in a wry smile. “Servants who snoop are the norm.”
“No. But it made me wonder what you might have learned about either one of them. I’m in a rush to solve this mystery one way or another.”
“Urgent, eh? Have you business elsewhere?”
Finnley nodded. Why not tell Winston? Over the years, the man had served as a model figure of a man. Finnley certainly had no example of any repute from his father. “I consider leaving the force.”
Winston’s bushy brows rose. “Intriguing. Is there a prime mover?”
“You could say so, yes.”
“When you began with us, Beaumont, it was because you were so damned good at tracking thieves of Army supplies. We needed your expertise with the Marine Thames force, certainly to train our recruits. You alone cut losses on cargo stolen from the London docks by thousands of pounds. Westminster, China traders and the West India merchants will be forever grateful.”
“And prosperous.” Finnley smoothed the fabric of his breeches.
“So then. Don’t want to catch gangers on the docks any longer? A change of heart, is it?”
Of a sort I never thought to have. “You might say I’m growing older, thinking of going home to Beaumont Hall.”
“A worthy endeavor.”
“Is it? I haven’t been in so many years, the tenants might faint at the sight of me.”
“Or welcome you with open arms. Despite your failure to grace them with your presence, you have ensured that your estate manager helped them prosper.”
“It was the least I could do, given how my father never noticed nor cared for them.”
“He was more interested in gambling on the success of shipping ventures.” Winston sighed. “But that is in the past. You have a new future that I expected you would one day embrace, willingly or not. But you are now your uncle’s heir. Sad about his son.”
“Yes, I like him tremendously. My uncle adored the boy. But all of us in the family knew he would not live to a ripe age.” Newport’s only child, dead two years ago, had never advanced into normal maturity. Edward had passed away at twenty, but had acted forever six years old, brash and childish but happy. “I realize that as my uncle progresses in years he will need me by his side to learn how to manage his estate. I accept that. In fact,” Finnley said, smiling because he’d come to love Alicia, he recognized it as true, “I welcome the opportunity.”
“Well!” Winston slapped his hands on his knees. “Sounds splendid to me.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“All the more reason to get to the bottom of this mystery in the house.”
Finnley agreed. “Did you learn anything from your men about Grimes or Preston?”
“I did. You will not like it.”
“Tell me.”
“Grimes did live in Maidenhead but left three years ago for Kent. Dover to be precise, where he worked in the port as a gangman. A year ago he was run off for stealing cargo. He returned to Maidenhead, worked as a footman for a few months, got the reference and came to London. Here, he quickly got a job in the household of Number Ten Dudley Crescent.”
Finnley snorted. “Any idea of what he stole?”
Winston shook his head. “None. Is that important?”
“I’m not certain.” Depends on whether he is connected to what I learned about where I saw Preston go yesterday afternoon on her jaunt. “What news do you have about Preston?”
“A less attractive picture, I’m afraid.”
“How would I have suspected?” Finnley said with sarcasm.
“She did attend a servants training school and yes, she did go straight away to work for your Lady Ranford after that lady’s marriage to Lord Ranford.”
“I sense a negative statement.”
“Indeed. Prior to that, Preston lived in a house near Wapping High Street hard by the West India docks.”
“The West India docks is a squalid part of town.” Finnley rubbed a hand over his mouth and considered what he’d seen the maid do yesterday. “She went there yesterday afternoon. Walked over to Oxford Street and hailed a hackney. She climbed down in front of a ramshackle house yards from the river. I don’t know who owns the house or why would she go there. Do you?”
Winston shifted in his chair. “One Lord Ranford visited often to meet with those shippers to whom he’d given money. We know the man who lives there is Chinese and and a smuggler.”
“Preston would go there for no good,” Finnley said.
“Well, Beaumont, we always thought Ranford went there because he kept a woman there as his doxy. Thanks to you we now know her to be Cybil Preston. But asking around neighbors, it seems she is not that at all.”
Finnley frowned. “What then?”
“His daughter.”
“Dear lord.”
“Born on the wrong side of the sheets to a West Indies woman of no family or wealth. But Ranford’s daughter, nonetheless. And she has quite an array of friends who would make you hide your purse as she passed.”
Finnley licked his lips. No wonder the woman was cold to one and all. Except Alicia. Why? Simply to keep her job? “Does she seem to have any income from Ranford?”
“Not that we can find. He left her no allowance in his will.”
“Which means her position as lady’s maid would be important.”
“Except for one thing.”
Finnley stiffened. “What’s that?”
“Her special friend who lives in the house. He is half Chinese and half English, an exotic breed of cutthroat. He was a renegade cohong in Canton until he escaped decapitation by their magistrates six years ago. With a band of henchmen, he came here to live and, yes, he still trades in stolen goods.”
“On our docks,” Finnley concluded.
“Right you are. William Wan-Li is his name and he’s been living in that house on the docks ever since Lord Ranford died.”
“Ranford gave him the house?”
“Ranford’s name is still on the books as owner.”
“And Preston?”
“Visits him each Sunday on her half day,” Winston said. “Afterward, she goes with him along the docks and into the Rookery to sell a certain white powder.”
Finnley’s head reeled. Preston had access to opium. And opium was debilitating, addicting and caused headaches. “Opium. By god. The substance can be deadly.”
“And it is legal to buy it,” Winston scoffed. “One day that must change.”
“But won’t any time soon. The free traders will not permit it.” Finnley mulled over the mounting evidence that the symptoms he himself experienced might be those of opium poisoning. Should he be looking for opium poisoning instead of nightshade?
Was Preston dosing him with it? Addicting him?
He got to his feet. “I must go home.”
“Be very careful. Preston is in the Radford house for no good reason. Revenge on her late father, perhaps?”
“And the butler for knowing too much? Other than that, she sounds as if she cares for Lady Ranford.” Finnley had been inclined to believe her. “And she just wants a fine house in which to lay her head at night.”
“Watch what she does. Where she goes. What her routine is.”
Finnley agreed. He had only two days to do that. “Thank you, Winston, for all of this. I’ll discover what she’s doing.”
“Please do. And while you’re at it, get a few witnesses to the act, will you? I’d love to cart her off to gaol.”
That afternoon, Finnley claimed a headache all in an effort to watch Preston take up her tea time duties in the kitchen.
She seemed eager, happy, humming a ditty under her breath as she checked what Sweeting had laid out for her to deliver to Alicia. But he saw no white powder in her hands. No slight of hand. No odd occurrence.
If Preston had been adding opium to his tea, he had no evidence of it.
But since they were alone, he took the opportunity to speak with her.
“Preston, I have thought about your words the other day. And I appreciate your concerns. I have my own and wonder if you would tell me what you thought of Lord Ranford’s valet.”
“Devoted to his lordship.”
“But not to the house?”
She pursed her lips, frowning. “He’d served Ranford for so many years that I doubt he knew any other kind of loyalty.”
“Why run off without a word? Or his salary? It’s strange.”
She locked her gaze on his. “I agree. But he was an odd bird. Kept to himself. Ate with us but that was all. Never visited. If you’re asking if he had odd habits, I’d say no. He didn’t drink or smoke or—“ She waved a hand. “He was here. Ever here at Ranford’s beck and call. When he disappeared, we put it down to his grief.”
“And Norden the butler?” He died of a broken neck. “Did you like him?”
“He ran a good house. Yes, sir. I liked him. But he was, as we say, strict. I didn’t mind.”
“Did anyone else?” Finnley had to know what she thought of others on the staff.
Preston glanced toward the kitchen, her gaze straying back to his. “Two did.”
He inclined his head toward the kitchen. “In there?” he whispered.
She nodded, her eyes dead. “Excuse me, will you, sir? I must take this to my lady.”
He watched her go. His time in the house was short and alarmed at what Preston had intimated, he decided to write to Winston to ask him to trace the cook and her scullery maid.
He retired to his rooms, wrote it in haste and sought out Grimes. He found him in the boot room, talking with Dora the scullery maid. He summoned him into the hall for a private conversation.
Her Beguiling Butler Page 12