Death of a Radical

by Rebecca Jenkins

  “Gentleman to see you,” the servant said. “M’um,” she added as an afterthought and withdrew with her slapping step.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” demanded Miss Lippett.

  “Miss Lippett. Good morning. I come on official business, I regret—” began the colonel.

  “Sit down then!” interrupted his hostess. Colonel Ison looked about him. The sofa and wing chair were drawn together. The two remaining straight-backed seats stood between the windows in the cold outreaches of the room. The sofa was quite large enough to accommodate two persons with propriety, but the second place was occupied by a large tortoiseshell cat that faced Miss Lippett as if it were party to the conversation. The animal turned round yellow eyes on Jarrett and twitched its ears. Jarrett bowed.

  “Miss Lippett, Miss Lonsdale. Good morning.” The day and the occasion, he thought, were just too odd for convention. The cat made a protesting mew as he scooped it up and sat down in its place. Miss Lippett bristled.

  “Mrs. Pussypaws does not like to be handled by strangers!” Jarrett scratched the cat’s head, lost for words at Miss Lippett’s choice of so arch a name. Truly, she was a most unexpected person. The animal purred, rubbing itself against him as it reached up to his caressing hand. Tiplady wouldn’t thank him for the hairs it was transferring to his coat. “Why are you here?” his hostess demanded, sitting forward in her seat as if she might spring up and forcibly reclaim her pet.

  “I am at a loss, ma’am. The colonel has not confided in me.” Jarrett looked over at the magistrate who remained standing by the door. “I believe he is in search of Mr. Adley’s murderer,” he said conversationally. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Miss Lonsdale go white.

  “Mr. Adley? Murdered!” she exclaimed. Jarrett instantly regretted his flippant demeanor. He wasn’t himself. This business had made him mad. The cased clock in the corner gave the hour as just past two. Grub hadn’t been dead a day yet.

  “I do beg your pardon, Miss Lonsdale. I thought you knew …” She looked at him so directly he felt the impact in his chest.

  “I am so sorry.” Her compassion almost unmanned him. “What … how did it happen? He was at the play last night. I saw him.” She blinked back tears. The damn cat on his lap made him feel a fool. Mrs. Pussypaws jumped to the floor and scuttled under the sofa as the colonel stepped forward to reclaim their attention.

  “Last night Mr. Adley, the marquess’s young cousin, was foully murdered on Quarry Fell,” he projected. His voice was too loud for the room. The man was enjoying himself. A surge of anger caught Jarrett unawares. For a second he saw himself leaping up from the sofa and his hands closing around the colonel’s throat … He encountered Miss Lippett’s eyes. They were bashful.

  “I am sorry the young man is dead,” she said gruffly. “You have my condolences, Mr. Jarrett.” Picking up the piece of linen in her lap she began to set workmanlike stitches in a seam. The colonel raised his voice.

  “I regret Miss Josephine, but I have received information that implicates a man I understand you have in your employ here at Grateley Manor.” The flashing needle stilled but Miss Lippett did not raise her head. “One Jonas Farr.” Miss Lippett looked up. The colonel expanded with satisfaction. He settled his weight on his heels and lifted his chin. His voice took on a narrative lilt. “Some time ago I was informed that a known conspirator had infiltrated our neighborhood.”

  “A conspirator, colonel?” repeated Henrietta Lonsdale with a little gasp. Colonel Ison favored her with a paternal glance. He thought Miss Lonsdale a comely and ladylike woman.

  “A dangerous man, ma’am, known to the authorities,” he assured her.

  “And you’ve decided that this Jonas Farr is that man,” Jarrett cut in. The colonel gave him a look of pure distaste.

  “I have information.”

  “Information!” Jarrett repeated. The colonel adjusted his position to address the ladies.

  “Jonas Farr,” he announced, “is the grandson of one Thomas William Farr—a known Jacobin, twice imprisoned for distributing seditious literature.” Colonel Ison straightened his neck and bowed out his chest, well satisfied with the effect of his pronouncement. Jarrett thought of the open-faced singer in the Red Angel and the self-sufficient servant standing against the wall while Miss Lippett laid her complaint before the Reverend Prattman. His impression had been of a decent, respectable man and he was a good judge of character—wasn’t he?

  “Why should you suspect Farr of Mr. Adley’s murder?” he demanded.

  “I have learned that Farr was expected at a clandestine meeting on Quarry Fell last night while the town was at the play,” replied the colonel complacently. “He did not arrive. It is my conjecture that Mr. Adley discovered the wretch’s secret and threatened to expose him.”

  “More information from your anonymous informant?”

  Colonel Ison smiled at the duke’s agent. “Your trouble, Mr. Jarrett,” he declared almost jovially, “is that you cannot bear for me to be in the right!”

  That was uncommonly perceptive of the man, conceded Jarrett to himself. He had worked with spies half his life. He, of all men, knew better than to take a person for his outward appearance. He considered the colonel. Someone among the Red Angel circle must be feeding information to the authorities. If Jonas Farr were the man the colonel thought him, and Farr suspected as much, he might well light on Grub as a likely informant. Might not such a suspicion lead to murder? The weakness in that line of reasoning was that it failed to take into account Grub’s compassion for the working man. Even if Farr was this radical agitator, he had spent time in Adley’s company. He would have known that Grub was a sympathizer, not an enemy. Jonas Farr had no need to kill Favian Adley. And besides, there was Pritchard, the wool buyer. That murder had been calculated and cold-blooded in its execution. He had sensed nothing in Jonas Farr’s manner that hinted at a nature capable of such an act.

  Miss Lippett was sitting very straight in her wing chair. With the family crest hovering by her head, she was the picture of the proud descendant of an ancient line. Her expression was haughty outrage.

  “I do not believe it,” she stated.

  “What?” queried the colonel, confused.

  “Farr’s grandfather! And what’s that to the purpose? I had a great-aunt on my mother’s side who was quite mad. Does that mean I should be assigned to the madhouse?”

  Jarrett stared. He had taken the spinster for a country Tory, the kind for whom the very whisper of “Jacobin” was enough to light the torches and call out the dogs. What was she doing defending a virtual stranger from such a charge? It was not as if Jonas Farr were an old family servant. Miss Lippett’s color changed from pale to rose pink.

  “Nonsense! I know my servant to be a good, sober man,” she declared. “Young Farr is thoughtful. He reads.”

  “That in itself,” Jarrett suggested mildly, “is not necessarily a persuasive argument against his being the man Colonel Ison describes.”

  “But I,” stated Miss Josephine loftily, “am a good judge of character!”

  And he, apparently, reflected Jarrett, was not. The woman had surprised him again. He looked over at Miss Lonsdale. Her eyes were fixed on her friend with a faintly abstracted air.

  “I will not believe it,” Miss Lippett repeated. She stared at the colonel, daring him to challenge her.

  There was a smart rap on the door and Lieutenant Roberts appeared. He saluted his superior and bowed briefly to the ladies.

  “Do you have him?” snapped the colonel.

  “No sir. There is no sign. The cook says he left for town with his mistress yesterday and must have returned later—she cannot say when. He sleeps in the barn, she says, not in the house. But she saw him leave early this morning as she was laying the fires; she swears to that.”

  “Have a description?” The lieutenant consulted a pocket book. His buttons gleamed; his coat fitted to perfection; not a hair was out of place. His manner toward his superior officer w
as so very correct, Jarrett (who had some experience of military men) wondered whether behind his perfect bearing Roberts despised his colonel.

  “Farr—forename Jonas; twenty years of age or thereabouts,” read the lieutenant. “Brown hair, average size, wearing a serge coat, brown corduroy breeches and a soft hat.” Over by the fireplace Jarrett thought he saw a tinge of complacency in Miss Lippett’s expression. She caught him looking at her and glared.

  “Have bills posted,” ordered the colonel. “Farr will be arrested,” he informed the company. “He won’t get far.” He heard the absurdity of the repetition and harrumphed.

  “My man has gone into town,” Miss Lippett insisted loudly. “I sent him. He will return and you will discover that you are mistaken in these absurd accusations.”

  The interview broke up the ladies’ tea party. Miss Lonsdale rose with the gentlemen and said her farewells. The colonel, having made his exit from his hostess’s immediate presence, wished to depart in form. Jarrett found himself lingering at Miss Lonsdale’s side as the troop rode out in parade-ground order.

  “You are well acquainted with Miss Lippett, are you not?” he asked privately.

  “I have known her most of my life, Mr. Jarrett. I count her my friend.”

  The duke’s agent watched the troopers as they trotted down the hill. He was not a conventionally handsome man, Henrietta thought. His skin was neither pale nor fine, and his nose could not be described as classical, but his person was undeniably charming. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Perhaps it was the way he held himself. Her mind brushed the edges of the dreadful news about Mr. Adley. She could not comprehend it. Poor Mr. Jarrett. He was being so brave about it. She wanted to offer some words of comfort but what could one say to a man whose close connection had just been found murdered? He must be so sad. He looked distracted. She was caught unawares by his question.

  “You do not find your friend remarkably adamant on the subject of Farr’s innocence?” he asked. Jarrett was thinking of the moment when young Farr had picked up that country maid’s handkerchief at the fair, and the expression on his mistress’s face. “Could it be, do you think …” He hesitated delicately. How to put this? Ladies could be remarkably sensitive on these subjects. “Does Miss Josephine,” he searched for an appropriate phrase, “have a tender heart?”

  There was a short silence. Miss Lonsdale’s gray-green eyes were fixed on his. He began to fear he had offended her. A hiccup of laughter broke from her lips.

  “Oh no! Mr. Jarrett. That won’t be it at all!” Henrietta clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she said, blushing. “I don’t know what came over me.” She turned away a little, running a hand down the waist of her habit as if straightening it. “Miss Josephine does like to read. Living isolated as she does,” she continued. Her voice quivered. She bit her bottom lip. “I believe she has often felt the lack of company, someone with whom to share her passion. For books, Mr. Jarrett!” she added looking up into his face with an oddly intense sincerity. “For books!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Charles must have near killed his horses. The marquess’s traveling carriage stood in the yard, the crest on its side-panel barely visible under the mud. Through the wide stable door he caught a glimpse of foam-flecked flanks and drooping heads. Jarrett slipped in through the kitchen. Servants were running this way and that. He would change his clothes first. A fresh shirt and a cravat with sharp creases made a man feel better-prepared to meet emotion. As he opened the baize-covered door leading from the back stairs, he heard wailing. Against his better judgment, he followed the noise.

  The door to Grub’s room stood open. A figure was framed by the four-poster bed. It was a woman, dressed head to toe in black. A voluminous veil thrown back from the face fell in a sooty train behind her. He hadn’t seen anything like it since Mrs. Siddons played the faithful widow Isabella in Southerne’s tragedy at Drury Lane. A fragment of a review he had read at that time drifted up: there was scarce a dry eye in the whole house. The woman was pressing Grub’s nightshirt to her lips and sobbing. He took a step forward and saw Charles standing by the desk. He looked nearly as weary as his horses.

  The mourning figure turned her head. Grub’s mother. There was a lack of definition about her features: sandy eyebrows blended into white and pink skin, an insignificant little nose and a fleshy chin. Her eyes were redrimmed and swollen. Mrs. Adley stretched out her arm. She pointed directly at him.

  “I left him in your care,” she declared. Charles jolted forward.

  “In both our cares, madam,” he amended. “Your charge was to me.”

  “My boy is dead!”

  “You cannot say this tragedy is of Raif’s making …” Charles’s protest had a sing-song lilt, as if he had repeated himself more than once.

  “My boy lies murdered!”

  “We don’t know that—it may be he fell … An accident …” Charles appealed to Jarrett. His cousin cleared his throat.

  “I will find who did this.” Jarrett spoke as much for himself as for her.

  Grub’s mother advanced on him, pressing him with her weeds and black cloth.

  “What good is that? I want my boy!” It was as if his presence set her free from restraint. She beat her hands against her breast. They were babyish hands—like a cherub’s in black lace mittens. Jarrett had the ugly feeling she was taking some kind of enjoyment in her grief. He forced himself to look down into the reddened eyes, reminding himself that her loss was genuine.

  “It was you!” she accused him. “Murder follows you! You’re fruit of a poisoned tree. That’s what you are. You should never have come back!”

  “Madam! Mrs. Adley!” Charles exclaimed, outraged. Favian Adley’s mother poked forward her commonplace face with its gaping lips.

  “How could his Grace forgive you for letting his boy die? I never will!” He must have flinched. An odd look of triumph brightened her eyes. “Yes. His poor little Ferdinand,” she hissed. “And now my boy. You should never have come back. Look what you have brought us!”

  “Madam!” Charles’s voice was commanding but still Mrs. Adley did not heed him. Jarrett could feel her hot indignation on his face. There wasn’t enough air in the room. He was suffocating.

  “’Tis you should have died, not my boy!” she cried.

  “Enough!” Charles took her arm and forcibly swung the dumpy little fury away. Still she stared back at Jarrett, her red-rimmed eyes opened wide in the white-floured face.

  “What are you good for?” she spat.

  “Madam!” Charles shouted.

  Mrs. Adley shrank. Hunched over, she sank onto the bed. She buried her face in her son’s nightgown, sobbing with harsh intakes of breath.

  “My little Favian. My sweet boy; my only treasure …” she moaned.

  “With all allowance due your grief, madam,” Charles spoke low to her, “that is past enough. Tiplady,” he called over to the valet who had appeared outside the door, pallid and shaking. “Mrs. Adley is overcome. Be so kind as to take her to the small parlor and fetch tea—and brandy, I think. Be sure there is a good fire.”

  Jarrett felt the weight of Charles’s hand on his sleeve. He was trembling.

  “My dear, do not pay her any mind. It is the grief talking … The woman’s gone mad.”

  Jarrett backed away, waving off Charles’s concern. “Where are you going?” the marquess called after him.

  He wasn’t sure where he was going. He just had to get away. He heard Tiplady and that woman below. He climbed the stairs blindly. He saw a door ajar and emptiness beyond. He went in, pulling the door behind him. He dropped the snicket and heard the brass lock into place. He was alone. Silence.

  Yellow walls, bare windows and an empty chair; he was in the painting room. Grub’s ghostly outline stared out blankly from the canvas on the easel. He leaned back against the door, an echo playing in his head. He had stood over his paint table with Charles at his back.

  “Is it safe to let him
roam like this—full as he is with his new wondrous notions?”

  “A cousin of the mighty Duke of Penrith? What harm can he come to in this neighborhood?”

  The air was dusty. He crossed to the window and flung open the sash. There were ice crystals in the air. They pricked his skin. He was trapped, tethered, cornered. Why had he come back?

  Henrietta closed the door on the soft snoring and stared at the wooden panels. She considered herself a capable woman but this … She had never encountered anything like it. Her heart was racing. A grandfather clock struck the hour in the hall below. The candles had been lit. More than an hour had passed in that room.

  She had ordered the carriage fully expecting to drive into town. The Lonsdales having no male relative to represent them, her aunt had not thought it proper to call. The marquess was so very exalted in relation to their own social standing, and a bachelor besides. Henrietta Lonsdale acknowledged the dictates of propriety. She had errands to perform in Woolbridge—not of a pressing nature, perhaps, but errands nonetheless. Half a mile from home, she found herself stopping the carriage to instruct Hartman, the coachman, to call at the Old Manor instead. Her intention had been to leave a short note expressing her aunt’s condolences, with her own name signed beneath. Mr. Jarrett’s demeanor up at Grateley Manor had awakened her sympathy and she wished to express it. But as soon as the carriage drew up outside the door, the marquess himself had appeared to greet her. She had never seen him so distracted. He appealed to her as a woman. Mrs. Adley, the murdered boy’s mother, was within and quite beside herself. She would have none of the female servants of the house about her and the maid she had brought with her was proving quite useless.

  “She’s French,” my lord informed her, in a flash of his usual manner. “Said to be excellent at dressing hair but quite the wrong temperament in a crisis.”

  Henrietta Lonsdale was a compassionate woman. She liked to be of use. Lord Charles appeared so pitifully harassed, she had felt it impossible to refuse him. And that is how it came to pass that Henrietta Lonsdale, spinster of marriageable age (more or less), found herself unchaperoned in a household of bachelors.