A Murdered Earl

by Marina Oliver

  'No, Joseph's been here longer. Besides, he's getting plump, he looks more the part, and underneath that wig he's going bald.'

  'So that's why he likes wearing it, is it?'

  'I'm not sure I'd have the job for twice the money. Didn't you know the butler is always to blame for most of what goes wrong? I wouldn't thank him for it. We can only hope he'll spend all his time out until the Countess has found another cook.'

  The Earl wanted to be woken at nine, so Luke once more crept into the room and waited for the church clock to sound. The Earl was unusually silent, and took his cup of chocolate without the customary complaint that it was either too hot or too cold. Luke busied himself laying out the clothes for the day, and was selecting the waistcoat he thought would be most acceptable, when there was a gasping, choking sound from the bed, and the china cup fell to the floor and smashed into tiny fragments. Luke ran to the bed, to see the Earl writhing in agony, clutching at his throat, his eyes bulging and his tongue protruding from his mouth. Had he scalded himself? What was the matter? As Luke reached for the carafe of water the Earl gave another groan and collapsed back on the pillows. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and his hands fell limply to his sides. The saucer slid slowly down the hillock made by his paunch, and fell to the floor, where it rolled drunkenly to come to a shuddering rest a pace away from the door.

  ***

  Chapter 4

  The man in the soldier's uniform stood nervously in front of the drawing room fireplace. He hadn't relished this task in the first place, and the delay had made it a hundred times worse. Now he was about to confront a real live countess. He'd tried to insist that his business was with the Earl, but the footman who had asked him what he wanted when he'd knocked on the kitchen door had first of all left him in the kitchen. This was more like Bedlam than a nobleman's household, and could do with some army discipline to sort out what seemed like hundreds of servants milling around, jabbering away and doing nothing useful. As he tried to keep out of the way the footman came back and led him, protesting, through the baize-covered door into the front part of the house and up the first flight of stairs. He seemed oddly oblivious of his duties.

  'Where's the butler? Surely you have one,' the soldier tried to bluster. A butler would have proper authority. He wouldn't be hopping round like a scalded cat and shoving a fellow where he didn't want to go.

  'Drummond? He left earlier,' the footman said. The soldier noticed, without undue surprise, that his white stockings were rather grubby, and his hair less neat than it might have been, the ends escaping from the ribbon which held them tied at his neck.

  'I must see his lordship.'

  'You can't. He's never to be disturbed before noon. His chocolate has only just been taken up.'

  'And it takes him three hours to get dressed?' He was incredulous. No wonder this household was less well run than the smallest army outpost. 'Then I'll have to see her ladyship. Unless it takes her several hours to have her hair brushed,' he added, by now uncaring whether he offended or not. He just wanted to get the whole business over, and then he could go to his own home, where his wife and children awaited him.

  'She's having her own breakfast. I'll go and ask whether she'll see you.'

  The soldier had already been waiting for half an hour, and his earlier timidity was being overtaken by annoyance. When the door opened he turned round with a frown. It wasn't the footman he was expecting, but a short dumpy woman wearing a much beribboned loose gown, with several rings on her fingers, the stones flashing fit to dazzle him. 'Without them I'd have taken her for a servant. She were more like the cook at the big house than a Countess,' he told his wife later.

  'Well, you say you have a message? Why you could not have given it to Drummond I don’t know. But it's typical, I suppose the world's getting more like France every day, even the groom thinks he's as good as his masters.'

  'I – I'm just 'ome from the Indies. The West Indies, that is. Barbados, ter be exact,' he stammered, nervous despite himself at being in the presence of the wife of the owner of this big house. A mansion, he supposed, and in the best part of town too.

  He had caught her attention. She sank onto a chair but didn't ask him to sit. 'Barbados? And you have a message from my son? The Honourable Percy Redditch?' she snapped. 'I had a letter from him only a few days ago. Did you come on the same ship?'

  'Er, no. That is, I doubts it. Another ship left a couple o' weeks or more before the one I was on. They just caught us in time.'

  'Who caught you? Can't you be plainer, man, and say what you've come about? Have you another letter from my son?'

  'No. I never met 'im. It was his sergeant came to the ship, and grabbed me just as I was boarding. And don't I wish 'e 'adn't!' he added gloomily.

  'Well?'

  He gulped, and twisted his hat. 'I'm sorry,' he muttered, suddenly pitying the old woman. 'Your son, the Hon – Honourable Percy, that is, well, 'e fell sick. Yellow fever, it were. So they told me. Catches folk quick, it do.'

  'He's ill?' She stared at him with suddenly narrowed eyes, and half rose from the chair. 'How bad is he?'

  'He's dead. Died the day after 'e fell ill, they said. So 'e couldn't have suffered much,' he babbled, seeing her turn white and collapse back onto the chair, clutching at her throat. He felt sorry for her. He knew what it was to lose a child.

  Suddenly she let out a wail of such ear-piercing anguish he jumped back in alarm. To his relief, as the Countess tried to rise, and then fell to the floor, kicking and rolling about in uncontrollable hysterics, the footman and a maidservant burst into the room.

  'What 'ave yer done to 'er?' the maid gasped, and ran to wave her apron in front of the Countess's face. 'Fetch Miss Armitage, Sam,' she ordered the footman, who was hovering beside the door. 'It's a seizure, that's what it is! She'll know what ter do.'

  The soldier longed to make his escape, but he had been reared to do his duty. He stayed. A few moments later several people crowded in, and a much older woman, the Countess's dresser, he presumed, took charge. She knelt down and waved a small bottle under the afflicted lady's nose, and sprayed orders all round.

  'Joseph, get some feathers from the kitchen. Betty, go and get some hartshorn and a glass. Sam, come and help me lift her ladyship onto the sopha. You, my good fellow, tell me what brought this on. I presume it was your doing that she fell into the vapours?'

  'No it weren't!' he protested indignantly. 'I couldn't 'elp it. I just come ter give a message, that's all.'

  'What message?'

  He wished he'd kept quiet, or at least asked again to speak to the Earl. Somehow he found himself answering her fixed stare. She reminded him of his first sergeant-major, he told his wife afterwards, impossible to resist.

  'It's her son, the Honourable Percy,' he muttered, hoping that the Countess, who was slowly recovering her colour under the administrations of several people, couldn't hear him. 'He died, see, out in Barbados. Yellow fever, it were. An' as I was coming 'ome they asked me ter come an' break the news.'

  Before she could reply a young man entered. He wore an elaborate dressing gown, but his hair was neatly brushed, and the soldier saw that he was dressed in breeches and a sparkling white shirt. His expression was peevish, a deep frown marring his white brow.

  'What the devil's the matter?' he demanded. 'Why is Mama having hysterics?'

  'She's had bad news, your lordship,' Miss Armitage said briskly. 'Sam, take this man into the library while I get her to bed. The Earl will want to see him when he gets up.'

  'Look, I oughta be going. It's took me nearly a week since we docked in Bristol, traipsin' all over the country, and I've a family of me own out Hatfield way. If I don't go soon I'll not reach there tonight, and no one's offered ter pay me fares or me lodgings yet,' he added. The one measly guinea they'd given him for his expenses was gone long since.

  He found his arm gripped tightly and he was almost dragged from the room. Outside they were about to descend the wide flight of stairs
towards the hall when another man came running along the corridor opposite. He decided it was the nearest thing to Bedlam that he ever wanted to see, and once more cursed all the gentry, the nobility, the officers, and most of all the Honourable Percy for dying so inconsiderately.

  ***

  After the few seconds of shock Luke knew the Earl was dead. Apart from the one he'd been trying to forget for two years, the only dead bodies he'd seen previously had been hacked about by disaffected revolutionaries, too impatient to wait for the guillotine to do the job. And those had been without their heads, but he swiftly banished that image from his mind. There could be no doubt that the man on the bed, his skin an odd blue colour, and foam drying on his lips, had breathed his last. Yet, even now, might a doctor save him?

  On the thought Luke sprang to the door. He flung it open, kicking the saucer out of the way, and ran towards the stairs. Sam was coming out of the drawing room with his hand holding on to a soldier's arm, but Luke paid the soldier no heed.

  'Sam, I need a doctor! For his lordship. Quick, man, go yourself and fetch the nearest.'

  'What? Why, what's up?'

  'His lordship. He's had a seizure of some kind. Sam, don't waste time! You know where doctors are to be found, I don't!'

  Sam nodded and raced down the stairs, flinging himself out of the front door and leaving it swinging open. The soldier leaned back against the bannisters, whistling soundlessly.

  'It's the Countess havin' a fit in the drawin' room, and the Earl somewhere else,' he muttered to himself. 'Is this 'ow the quality normally behaves?'

  Luke, about to descend in search of help in the kitchens, looked at him, suddenly alert. 'What did you say?'

  The soldier gestured over his shoulder. 'She's in a fit of 'ysterics,' he said briefly.

  'Why?'

  'It weren't my fault. I came ter tell 'em about the son. Percy, that is. In Barbados. Died o' yellow fever, sudden like. Just because I was on me way 'ome, they asked me ter break the news. There'll be an official letter by the next ship, and don't I wish it had come already. Might as well, the time it's taken me ter get from Bristol and Oxford and somewhere up north, Leek way.'

  Luke stared at him, aghast. 'The boy as well? Look, you'd better wait in the hall. I must see if anyone can help, though I doubt it.'

  He went on down the stairs, and found the kitchen in uproar. Betty, banished from the drawing room, was gabbling excitedly to an avid audience consisting of two housemaids, a laundry maid, the boot boy, a groom, a butcher's boy and two or three more people who did not, Luke was sure, belong to the household. Several pans boiled away on the range, and smoke was rising from a forgotten frying pan which contained several lumps of charcoal. As Luke grabbed a cloth and rescued it from the fire he identified them as sausages.

  'Luke, 'ave you heard?' Jenny demanded. 'Percy's dead, and 'is ma's 'ad a fit, poor woman. Foamin' at the mouth, she were, so Betty says.'

  Luke winced, thinking about the Earl. There was no one here who might help, and in his heart of hearts he knew that no help could make any difference.

  'Aye, and ever such a funny colour she were,' Betty said eagerly. 'Not even Miss Armitage could stop 'er screamin' an' yellin'.'

  'Where's Mrs Grimbsy?' he asked. With Drummond gone the housekeeper was the most senior servant left, and, he judged, had always been the most sensible.

  'Well, Mr Drummond and the cook left a bit ago, an' she went to 'ire another cook and butler. Gone to one of the agencies, she said,' Jenny replied. 'Why d'yer want her?'

  He shook his head and went away. To announce at this moment that the Earl was dead would throw the household into even more turmoil. Feeling a coward, he decided someone else could stir up that particular brew.

  He went to the front door, and saw Sam running across the Square, followed by a much older man clutching a doctor's bag.

  'Found him visiting another patient in Brook Street,' Sam gasped as he ran up the steps.

  The doctor was puffing, but still able to speak.

  'Where?' he panted, and Luke jerked his head and turned to lead him to the Earl's bedroom.

  'It happened just after he'd had his chocolate,' he said as they reached the first landing. 'He choked, grabbed his throat, and then it was all over. I don't think you can do anything.'

  The doctor, breathing heavily, and with Sam hot on his heels, followed him into the Earl's bedroom. He took one look at the Earl and shook his head. 'No chance,' he said quietly, but he stepped to the bed and held the Earl's wrist while he bent over to listen for a heartbeat. Then he stood and looked down at the Earl consideringly. Suddenly he bent and sniffed at the dried foam on the Earl's lips.

  'It's true, it does smell of bitter almonds,' he murmured. 'I haven’t seen a case like this before, but I've read about it, and it seems clear enough.'

  'Bitter almonds?' Luke asked. 'What have they to do with it? He didn’t have any almonds!'

  'He'd had a cup of chocolate, though?' the doctor demanded, straightening up and looking at the splashes on the sheets, then glancing down at the shattered cup. 'You gave it to him?'

  'Yes. He'd just finished it, and before I could take the cup he dropped it. The whole thing happened unbelievably fast. Was it a seizure of some kind?'

  'No. I'm of the opinion it was poison. The Earl, young man, seems to have been murdered.'

  ***

  Sam was the first to recover his voice. 'Murdered?' he whispered. 'But how, and who?'

  'How I can guess, but who is something else. I must see the poor Countess. And the Viscount. Where are they?'

  Sam cast an anguished look at Luke, who took a deep breath.

  'The Countess is in the drawing room,' Luke began to explain. 'It seems she is – was having a fit of the hysterics.'

  'Then she knew? How? I understood from this young man it had only just happened before he came running to find me.'

  'It wasn't that. She didn't know about her husband. It seems there was news, earlier, about her son. The younger one. He's just died in Barbados, and a soldier came to tell her. I think he's downstairs, waiting in the hall.'

  'No one was there when I came in,' Sam said, shaking his head. 'Must have scarpered while I was gone. I don't blame him. Just wish I could.'

  'I'd better go to her. Please can you make sure nothing here is disturbed. I'll come back as soon as I can.'

  'Poisoned!' Luke said disbelievingly as the doctor ushered them out of the room and took himself off towards the drawing room. In the silence Luke heard strangled sobs and raised voices. 'But how?'

  'At least we'll not have to tell her. Poor lady,' Sam added perfunctorily. 'How did it happen?'

  'He was perfectly all right before he had his chocolate. It must have been that. But it was so sudden!'

  'And how did any poison get into it?'

  Luke stared at him, and slowly shook his head. 'Not many people have the chance of slipping something into the cup. So far as I know as soon as it's made Jenny brings it up, and waits outside with it until the old – until he's ready for it.'

  'The cook's gone. They're at sixes and sevens this morning in the kitchen. Someone else must have made the chocolate.'

  'Yes, I saw things weren't normal.' Luke thought hard. 'There were other people there too, delivery boys, I thought. No one seemed to be bothered about them. Can anyone just wander in?'

  'From the mews, yes. There's all sorts of people coming and going. But how would they know it was his chocolate?'

  'But it must be someone from outside!'

  'Not necessarily.'

  'None of the servants would dare. And none of the family – oh God! – there's only his wife and son here. They wouldn't, they couldn't go into the kitchens.'

  'But they were both at outs with him.'

  'You don't kill people just because you've had a row with them,' Luke protested.

  'Over in France they kill strangers just because they own a bit of land or a big house, or don't agree with what they pesky Jacobins ar
e doing.'

  'The Jacobins aren't so powerful now Hébert and Danton have been executed,' Luke said absently. 'And how could he be so sure it was poison? It could have been some sort of seizure.'

  'It might have been,' Sam said slowly. 'He said he'd never seen a case like it before, didn't he?'

  'Then he might be mistaken. What will happen now?'

  'Depends. He might send for another doctor.'

  'Or he might send for the constable. If he thinks it's murder, he'll do that, won’t he?'

  'I wish I'd upped and gone with Drummond,' Sam muttered. 'This place'll be unbearable, especially now young Augustus is the Earl. The old one was bad enough, but when he gets into the saddle the Lord knows what will happen.'

  ***

  The Viscount looked up as the doctor entered the drawing room. 'About time, too!' he snapped. 'My mother needs something to calm her nerves. She's just heard about my brother's death, and in a most insensitive manner. I'll have something to say to that clumsy oaf who blurted it out to her!'

  The doctor went across to the Countess, lying on the sopha. She was surrounded by her dresser urging her to drink from a glass, the footman Joseph looking as if he didn't know what to do with the smoking feathers he was holding above her head, and a parlourmaid who kept thrusting a smelling bottle under the Countess's nose. It was no time to announce further disaster. He set about soothing his living patient.

  Ten minutes later he had calmed her sufficiently to persuade her that she needed to rest in bed. 'Miss Armitage, you and this lass can take her up to her room. Don't let her talk to anyone, put her to bed, and she might fall asleep if you don't fuss her,' he added, glaring at the feathers and the smelling bottle. 'Get rid of those things,' he added fretfully.

  The Countess sat up. 'All my hopes have died with my precious Percy,' she quavered. 'My baby! My little one! He was the only one who truly loved me!'

  'Here, I say, Mama,' the Viscount protested. 'You were always complaining how expensive he was, and how little he cared to go to the other side of the world and leave you.'

  'And see what's come of it! I knew it would be a disaster. Don't talk to me, you've never appreciated him as he deserved! Oh, who's going to tell his father?'