Death Is the Cure

by Slade, Nicola

  ‘No it’s not,’ Charlotte urged her. ‘You’ve told me about it and I can promise you that Ma – Molly – would have been so happy to know that you didn’t abandon her. She would have loved you. Yes, really,’ as the older lady raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘She was like that, never bearing a grudge and loving everyone. And everyone loved her, so dearly.’ She gulped and mopped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘But please, I don’t understand why you came here in the first place. The nurse thought that you must have “made a mistake”, that’s how she put it, but she knew you had already had a child and that you had all the hallmarks of a lady in high society. Is that what happened?’ She put the question very tentatively. In spite of the intimacy induced by this revelation she felt a distinct unease at making such a delicate enquiry.

  ‘Yes, or rather no, as it turns out.’ Lady Buckwell’s voice had regained its strength but now carried a suggestion of uncertainty, very foreign to her usual manner. ‘We lived a very rackety life, you see. My first husband was an army officer and a great gambler and we lived from hand to mouth, dodging creditors all the time. At first it was a great game, but then we had a little boy and the game became less amusing and in the end I was forced to take measures that I regret now though at the time it seemed the sensible thing to do.’

  She fell silent for a moment and Charlotte waited, still kneeling beside her, her thoughts in a turmoil, but above it all she felt a surge of triumphant homecoming. I have a grandmother, she thought, I have a family of my own! And hard upon that thought came a moment’s great relief: thank God it isn’t Mrs Montgomery. Or Mrs Attwell.…

  Lady Buckwell continued, speaking very low, ‘I was much admired, you know. Men liked my saucy ways and my sharp wit, but I was always careful to draw the line, until Lord St—’ Again she sighed. ‘No, better keep quiet about him, even now. All you need to know is that there was a man who kept us solvent, handing out money to pay the rent, money to pay for food – all of the best quality, of course – and all for no apparent return.

  ‘I thought I could handle him.’ She pouted and gave a slight toss of her head. ‘But I was a fool. My husband was away at the time and had barely returned by the time I realized I was with child again.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have pretended the baby was your husband’s?’ asked Charlotte, enthralled. ‘It’s hardly unusual, after all.’

  She was amused at the initial expression of surprise on the lady’s face, but they exchanged smiles of wry sympathy.

  ‘Perhaps, but I chose to go away. It could have been managed satisfactorily; I could pretend I’d had a premature child as long as nobody actually saw the baby, but there were, I thought, at least six weeks to be accounted for, possibly more, though I was never sure of my dates. Unlikely as it might seem, I had scruples about cuckolding my husband. Besides, shortly afterwards my husband was sent abroad for several months so I took my son down to his aunt and uncle’s home in Hampshire … What?’ She had spotted Charlotte’s look of eager surprise and upon hearing that ‘home’ to Charlotte was now also in Hampshire, she bit her lip. ‘Oh well, later on, perhaps, when we have come to know each other better. Then I’ll tell you the whole story.’

  Charlotte’s curiosity was roused but she kept her tongue between her teeth until a look of weariness crossed the older lady’s face.

  ‘May I get you a glass of wine, ma’am? Or brandy?’ She rose and, at Lady Buckwell’s nod, crossed over to the double doors to the dining-room and Mrs Montgomery’s precious array of bottles. ‘Here we are, I’ve poured us both a large brandy.’ She grinned at her newly discovered grandmother in whom she now recognized a fleeting likeness to Molly in the liveliness of her expression, the twinkle in her eyes and the shape of her face. ‘I don’t know about you, ma’am, but I’m sadly in need of a restorative after all this revelation and emotion.’

  An answering light danced in the green eyes and Lady Buckwell raised her glass in a toast to her granddaughter. For a few minutes the two women sat peaceably side by side on the cushioned window seat, drinking their brandy and openly assessing each other. Charlotte suddenly remembered something that had puzzled her.

  ‘Why did you look at me so strangely, ma’am?’ she asked tentatively. ‘When we were first introduced?’

  ‘Did I? Oh yes, I do recall that. Why? Because, my dear, you have a distinct resemblance to … to my first husband.’ She frowned and slid her fingers up and down the stem of her brandy glass before setting it down on the wide window sill. ‘It unsettled me, but now I begin to think … to wonder …’ She glanced at Charlotte, looking up from under her carefully darkened lashes. ‘You see, Molly …’ She looked uncharacteristically timid as she came out with the name. ‘The baby was late in arriving; in fact she was three weeks overdue, calculating from the time that I.…’

  ‘I understand, I believe.’ Charlotte reached out a gentle hand. ‘You began to suspect, perhaps to hope, that the child might be your husband’s after all?’

  The hand she held began to tremble violently and she realized that Lady Buckwell was shaken by a storm of tears, wrenched from inside herself.

  ‘Dear God.’ The whisper was almost inaudible. ‘I have done so many things in my life and regretted so very few of them, but this … believe me, Charlotte, this is the one action of mine for which I have never … can never forgive myself.’

  Half an hour later Charlotte let herself quietly into her room, feeling shattered by all that had happened lately. She had seen Lady Buckwell to her room and into the hands of her competent maid, with a promise that they would talk again the next morning. Fortunately there had been no sound from Mrs Montgomery’s sitting-room as Charlotte passed it on her way to bed though she shivered at the thought that her hostess might have caught a glimpse of Charlotte hastening into the drawing-room.

  Dear God, what a day, she sighed as she took down her hair and unbuttoned her dress. To think I came to Bath hoping for some peace and quiet away from Dora and Melicent and here I am, not only trapped in the same house as the pair of them, but with so much else happening that I can barely catch my breath. Bodies and blackmail; now a grandmother and my mother’s history; blackmail and bodies; tall tales and short shrift.

  As she folded the Chinese shawl that had, yet again, proved a catalyst in her life, and prepared to lay it on the small table, her gaze fell upon the two letters she had dropped there before dinner. I’ll read them in bed, she decided and clambered wearily into the comfortable half-tester bed with a sigh of relief.

  The first letter was from her sister-in-law, Lily, now complacently settled as Lady of the Manor of Finchbourne and contained, besides several pages of local gossip, a request that Charlotte visit the Bath shops in pursuit of patterns for new curtains, particularly for the drawing-room at home. I have heard that Her Majesty has introduced tartans and plaids and that they are all the rage in London, wrote Lily. Pray look out particularly for these, Char.

  A simple enough request, she decided, and something she would be glad enough to undertake. To be sure, the notion of tartan curtains and hangings draped around the drawing-room at Finchbourne was not a happy one, but with any luck Lily would soon be darting off on another tack. And in any case, she nodded complacently, I shan’t have to live with it.

  She folded the letter and set it to one side as she reached for the other one. Sleepily she slit open the envelope and started to scan the contents. After a moment she sat up, her attention arrested.

  My dear Mr Tibbins

  Report on subject: Montgomery, as requested.…

  Tibbins? Montgomery? She turned over the envelope and read: Mr Jonas Tibbins, Waterloo House.… After a moment’s bemused contemplation of the letter the explanation struck her. The maid must have delivered the letter by accident, caught up perhaps with the communication from Lily Richmond, in Hampshire. There was no address and no signature, which accorded only too well with the detective’s cautious habits.

  So, dear Meg? And Will? Do we have any precepts from the past a
bout reading correspondence wrongly delivered into our hands? She pursed her lips and stared at the envelope. No, she decided; I don’t think there was anything in my youthful training that precludes me from taking a look at this and, if anything, they would be urging me not to be so missish and to read it. Besides, Mr Tibbins is dead so who can possibly object? In fact, she concluded, Mr Tibbins would certainly expect her to read this letter and find out anything that might lead her to discover his assassin.

  The letter was brief and to the point, containing as it did a list of addresses at which the ‘subject under enquiry, Letitia Montgomery,’ had served either as housekeeper or companion to a varied assortment of elderly ladies and gentlemen. The detective’s agent had done his work well, she told herself. Dates, names, streets, counties, they were all there together with the dates of death of the various employers and, far more interestingly, the particulars of their wills. She gave a low whistle as she read the list and then read it through once more.

  My word, she thought, Mrs Montgomery has been busy. And fortunate. There were at least fifteen different names and directions on the list, spread over the last thirty years, and the latest of these mentioned an elderly lady who had lived in Brighton. According to Mr Tibbins’s correspondent, Mrs Montgomery had been named the major beneficiary in her will and by the time the lady’s disaffected relatives realized what was afoot, their quarry had removed herself from Brighton, together with her sizeable inheritance, and no forwarding address.

  Charlotte opened her eyes wide as she read the final paragraph in which the agent reported that as Mr Tibbins was already aware, there were rumours afoot that, like many of her predecessors, the old lady had been helped on her way to Paradise by the ministrations of her faithful housekeeper, Letitia Montgomery, but that nothing concrete had ever come to light.

  Oh Lord, she sighed. Too much has happened to me today; too many snippets of information have come into my possession; too many people have confided in me. Now I’m weary and confused, but I know only too well that I’ll never sleep until I have considered all of this.

  First of all, she counted off on her fingers, there is this astonishing revelation from Lady Buckwell. She refused to dwell too deeply on her own emotions, time enough for that, she decided, when I have an hour or so of peace, but underneath the tears and shock and surprise of it all, Charlotte was aware of a feeling of deep and joyful satisfaction bubbling away within her. Lady Buckwell was an adventuress, there could be no two minds about that, but does that matter, Charlotte asked herself? The response was instant: of course not, we are alike, she and I, although I suspect we have differing moral standards. I have lied, I have stolen, I have run away, I have chosen the course of expedience. But I have never deceived a man and since arriving in Hampshire I have striven to deal honestly with everyone I encounter.

  So, a grandmother after my own heart, to a degree, she pondered.

  Chuckling, she turned her thoughts from her newly discovered relative and considered the situation she found herself in at Waterloo House. The detective was gone but in his place reigned Letitia Montgomery who, it seemed reasonable to deduce from the conversation Charlotte had overheard, was dabbling in a spot of blackmail on her own account which must indicate that she now possessed some of Mr Tibbins’s information. Surely, Charlotte reasoned, it must have been Mrs Montgomery who slipped that anonymous letter under my door. To be sure she did not answer M. Armel when he accused her of such, but she did not deny it either. And if that is the case, am I in some kind of danger? And is that even more the case if I was observed eavesdropping this evening?

  Physical danger was a consideration indeed, but Charlotte was getting on for forty years younger than her hostess and was, besides, a strong, healthy young woman. No, there were other kinds of danger, the threat of exposure – that was what frightened Charlotte. If, somehow, Mrs Montgomery should come into possession of any hint of Charlotte’s history, Charlotte’s recent happiness and comfort would be destroyed. Certainly Elaine Knightley knew a good deal about that history and Charlotte was sure that Kit Knightley, as well as her brother-in-law, Barnard Richmond, would see no reason to treat her differently. But the rest of the family? Barnard’s wife, Lily, would be horrified, excited and gleeful and ultimately would use it as a lever to try to make Charlotte her slave. The rest of the family would suffer from an intolerable degree of exposure and humiliation.

  Hmm, she yawned. Even though Mr Tibbins had not possessed this proof of Mrs Montgomery’s misdemeanours, even the hint of a rumour would be enough to have her on the defensive if it threatened her standing and livelihood here in Bath. Is that what the detective did? Dropped hints, mentioned friends in Brighton? (Yes, he had, hadn’t he?) Just enough to unsettle her?

  There was no further information in the letter, but it was enough to give Charlotte food for thought. If Mr Tibbins was employed by someone who entertained suspicions of Mrs Montgomery, what did he know about the other guests? M. de Kersac had certainly looked uneasy in the detective’s presence, as had Mr Chettle and Captain Penbury. And there was surely some uneasy connection between him and the Attwells, mother and son.

  But … she tried to stay awake. Jonas Tibbins was dead now but there was still that sense of unease in the house and it seemed to emanate from Mrs Montgomery. Had she somehow come into possession of some of his secrets? For she was the person causing the unrest, that much was sure, although what hints Charlotte had overheard sounded harmless enough to the untutored ear. I must tread even more warily, she resolved; no more questions about the lady’s travels and sojourns in other towns. And when she exhibits yet another of her treasured heirlooms I must make sure to ooh and aah as admiringly as everyone else.

  Her own brief and tantalizing conversations with the detective came back to her. He had certainly not been blackmailing anyone at Waterloo House, not as such, but he had indubitably been playing on their nerves in an attempt to trap them – but into what? Some admission of guilt of some kind? Presumably Mr Tibbins would have waited until he had definite proof of whatever he was after and would then have contacted his principals to ascertain their instructions.

  But, she pursed her lips. If he had played such a game with me, wouldn’t I have taken it that he was blackmailing me? That it was a veiled demand for money? That he would expose me if money was not forthcoming? And if I had no money, or refused to consider paying this suppositious blackmailer, what then would I do, if I were desperate?

  The answer, cold and stark, slipped into her mind. I might warn him off, she sighed; throw a brick at him as a warning shot and then, when he still persisted in his nods and hints and smiles, I might very well let loose a heavy cart in his direction and if it killed him, so much the better, but if it missed, well then – that would be another warning.

  And if all else failed to make him leave me alone and my secret weighed heavily on me, I might very well come upon him unexpectedly and stab him with his own sword.

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘Dearest Char,’ Elaine’s voice bore an unusual note of diffidence. ‘If we were to cut short our visit to Bath, would it distress you greatly?’ As Charlotte opened her mouth to respond, Elaine went on, ‘I have to confess that although I have truly derived some benefit from this electrical treatment I’m bored to tears with being away from home. Oh don’t pout at me like that, my dear; you know perfectly well I don’t refer to you, but there are so many things I could and should be attending to at home. I’m not at all certain I’ve persuaded Kit he must not come rushing to Bath until after the harvest is in, which would never do. And besides’ – her smile was rueful – ‘I miss Kit so much.’

  ‘Then we must go home at once,’ was Charlotte’s prompt reply, accompanied by a sympathetic grin. ‘Shall I run down to the station now and buy tickets, or will you allow me have my breakfast first?’

  ‘Foolish girl.’ There was a suspicion of relief in Elaine’s answering laugh. ‘The day after tomorrow will give us ample time. I’ll give our notic
e to Mrs Montgomery, write to Kit to meet us at Salisbury Station and arrange for me to have two more sessions with Mr Radnor so that I can prove to Kit that I have taken every advantage of the electrical Faradism. And it will afford you two more days, including this one, to go on a final expedition to explore the city.’

  Before making her way to the breakfast table Charlotte slipped once more into her room to compose herself. So soon … It would, she admitted, remove her from the temptation of probing and spying and putting her in Mrs Montgomery’s way, but how frustrating if she should have to leave Bath without finding out what it was all about. There is no use disguising it, she sighed, as she pinned her godmother’s golden acanthus leaf brooch to the collar of her morning dress in golden-brown poplin. The fact is that I am the most inquisitive of creatures and I shall be wondering what happens next.

  An idea occurred to her. I suppose I could confide in Lady Buckwell? She is a strong-minded old lady who must have relished a thousand intrigues in her time; perhaps she would let me know the end of the story? If there is an end at all. There was no doubt in her mind that she and this newly discovered grandmother would remain in touch, there was a spark of kinship between them that would see to that.

  ‘Here you are, Mrs Richmond, here you are.’ Captain Penbury was in splendid form this morning, loud and cheerful and beaming at all and sundry as he bounded around the table to settle Charlotte into her place. ‘Will this do, my dear? Opposite Mr Attwell and next to Mounseer Armel, lucky dogs that they are, hey?’

  Charlotte blinked at this laboured pleasantry and accorded the clergyman a polite nod but greeted the younger Breton much more warmly. Decimus Attwell’s gingery brows beetled hopefully at her, but on finding her politely unresponsive he growled and reddened, and addressed the plate of beef steak in front of him. That’s right, Mr Attwell, she chuckled to herself, remembering Mrs Attwell’s remarks about his little mishaps; be sure to take plenty of red meat to keep up your strength for your parochial duties. She bit her lip and turned hastily to Armel de Kersac.