A Stroke of Malice

by Anna Lee Huber

  “It is,” I conceded.

  “Then that’s not proof of anything,” Lord John interjected, his brow furrowing.

  “It’s not proof of identity, no. But it’s also not disproof.” I glanced between them. “You understand, that is the difficulty we are currently working with.”

  Realization flickered over Lady Helmswick’s features, a ripple of shocked distress and then she managed to regain control of her emotions, once more concealing them behind a mask of mild concern.

  I shifted in my hard chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. “What of your husband’s appearance? Was there anything notable about his skin, particularly on his chest?” I voiced hesitantly, the question being somewhat awkward to frame in front of her brother. “Or his teeth?” I hastened to add. “Were they distinctive in any way?”

  Lady Helmswick cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t know what you mean about his chest. In truth, I’m not all that familiar with his body.”

  This wasn’t altogether surprising. Regardless, the markings I’d seen had been faint, and given their lack of intimacy, I’d known it would be unlikely she’d noted them.

  “As for his teeth, you must mean the chip?”

  I straightened, but she shook her head.

  “Ned mentioned it. But he said you believed it had happened when . . . the man . . . was killed.” She fumbled over her words.

  I sank back. “It’s likely. The chip is undoubtedly recent. Something that occurred in the last few weeks of his life. So you were not aware of Lord Helmswick having a chipped tooth?”

  “No.” She glanced almost uncertainly at her brother, who shook his head to convey he wasn’t either.

  “I was here when they arrived at Sunlaws,” he explained to my questioning look.

  “Then you saw Lord Helmswick before he departed for Paris?” I clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “Who else was in residence?”

  “Ned was here,” Lady Helmswick replied, turning to confer with her brother once again.

  “And Hal.” Lord John tipped his head.

  “Oh, and Luc was here, too, wasn’t he?” She shrugged one shoulder negligently. “Our half brother.” She narrowed her eyes in thought. “But he left before Helmswick.”

  “Yes. Back to Edinburgh.”

  I struggled with how to phrase my next question, even though they seemed perfectly resigned to the existence of their father’s by-blows. But of course, they were rumored to be bastards, as well, though to the duchess. “Do your father’s other children often visit Sunlaws?”

  “A few of them,” Lady Helmswick said, fidgeting with the gold bracelet on her wrist as she pondered. “Luc and Colin. And Lilias is married to a barrister just over in Peebles. But not all.” Her gaze took in my tentative demeanor, before she pensively added, “You must think us a very odd family.”

  I allowed a gentle smile to curl my lips. “My opinion doesn’t matter. But . . . I was actually thinking how wonderful it is that you don’t hold the circumstances of their births against them.”

  “Why should we when we were all born on the same side of the blanket?” she stated bluntly. “Well, all of us except Traquair and Richard. But they’ve never held that against us either.”

  “Traquair? Oh no, never. He only mentions it two or three times a year,” Lord John sneered, turning to glare across the room at a ficus plant.

  “I know he can be insufferable, but just because he rags you about it doesn’t mean he bears a grudge,” his sister argued.

  The look he cast her way dripped with scorn. “Perhaps not against you, but your father is royalty, remember. Mine is a mere explorer.”

  “The rumors are true then?” I murmured, partly to satisfy my own curiosity, and partly to recall them to my presence in the room.

  They both turned to look at me, and as before, it was Lady Helmswick who answered. “Yes. Well . . . most of them,” she amended, though she didn’t specify which ones were not. I supposed she thought the family should retain some mystery.

  “Do any of your father’s other children begrudge you your places in his household?” I asked, harkening back to the earlier point I’d been attempting to make.

  Her brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? Father has never repudiated any of them. He supported them and their mothers when they were children, and once they come of age he makes certain they contract a worthy career or an advantageous marriage.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the same as being raised with all the advantages of being acknowledged as a legitimate child of the duke, at least in the eyes of the law,” Lord John pointed out, catching on to my inference quicker than his sister. So long as the duchess was married to the duke when they were born, and he did not repudiate her, then they were legally the duke’s children.

  “Oh yes, I see what you’re saying.” She frowned, considering the matter. “But I don’t think any of them fault us for that. Do you?” she asked her brother.

  “No,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation.

  “You don’t sound certain of that,” I told him.

  “No. No, I am,” he countered. “That is, I’m certain about the duke’s children who are old enough to carry a grudge. I was thinking of the younger ones whose characters haven’t fully developed.”

  It was a credible excuse, but something in his eyes made me question whether it was the complete truth. Before I could press him on the matter, he countered with a question of his own.

  “Why are you asking about them?” He scowled. “Surely you don’t believe one of them had anything to do with what happened to that man.”

  “I’m simply trying to understand all the people who may have come and gone from Sunlaws. Everyone who might have known about the old abbey’s catacombs, and the tunnel connecting them to the castle.” I folded my hands in my lap. “Did any of your half brothers or sisters know about the tunnel?”

  He eyed me suspiciously before replying. “Luc did. I’m not sure about Colin.”

  “But Luc doesn’t have sandy brown hair?” I clarified.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Lady Helmswick gasped, as if just realizing another reason I would be interested in the duke’s other children. “No, Luc’s hair is as black as coal dust.”

  “And neither does Colin,” Lord John said. “Though he’s with the East India Company army in Bengal, and has been for the past three years. So the body couldn’t be his, regardless.”

  Lady Helmswick’s eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together in a thin line as if she was contemplating something, so I paused, curious to hear what she’d say. “Couldn’t he be one of those tramps and walkers my mother mentioned?” she finally burst forth with. She leaned forward as if she was as eager to convince herself of this as me. “Wouldn’t that make more sense than to assume it’s Helmswick?”

  It was a struggle not to allow my vexation to show. “Firstly, we’re not assuming anything. And second . . .”

  “The man’s clothes were too fine,” a voice said behind me.

  I turned around in my chair to find Lord Edward standing in the doorway. My husband hovered just beyond his shoulder. The duke’s third son looked as if he’d just risen from bed. His thick auburn hair was more tangled than artful in its disarray, and his clothes were wrinkled, as if he’d slept in them. He’d forgone a neckcloth, and his lawn shirt gaped to reveal a strongly corded neck sporting a gold chain. Whatever dangled from it was hidden behind his shirt, but I suspected it was important if he wore it even now. I had to resist the urge to reach up and press my hand to the spot where the amethyst pendant my mother had given me hung beneath the neckline of my gown.

  Lord Edward’s gaze softened as he advanced into the room. “Nell, I know you don’t wish to confront any of this, but ignoring it will not make it go away.” She dipped her head, as if unable to withstand the empathy
shimmering in his eyes, but he pressed on. “Not until we know for certain whether it’s Helmswick or not.”

  “Why are you so certain it is?” Lord John’s face twisted angrily. “Thus far I haven’t heard any evidence to suggest it’s anyone but a gentleman with a similar hair color. And all the while, Helmswick is likely safe and sound in Paris, doing whatever he dashed well pleases. Like he always does.”

  This outburst seemed to surprise not only me, but also his brother and sister. They stared at him in silence as his cheeks flushed with color. It was clear he didn’t think well of his brother-in-law. What was unclear was whether his opinion was unbiased.

  “Well, perhaps this will provide us some clarification,” Gage remarked, stepping forward to display one of the victim’s boots. I noted it was the one found in the corridor. The one that had not recently clung to the leg of a decaying corpse.

  He held the boot out to Lady Helmswick, who accepted it gingerly. Though she didn’t speak, I could tell by the ashen pallor of her skin and the manner in which she swallowed that she recognized the stitching in the black leather.

  “Helmswick had a pair very like it, didn’t he?” Lord Edward prodded gently as he sank down on the settee beside his sister, as if sensing she could not gather the words to confirm it.

  She nodded, swallowing again before she could croak, “Yes.”

  Lord John scowled at the boot as he took it from her hands. “Surely, a number of gentlemen possess a similar boot. You can’t tell me the bootmaker made this style exclusively for him.”

  “No, but how many of those gentlemen visited Sunlaws Castle during the month of December?” Gage countered once again, sitting in the rush-seated chair next to mine.

  “If he was tramping through Ettrick Forest—”

  “—he wouldn’t be wearing clothes as fine as those he was found in,” Gage cut him off.

  “Maybe he didn’t have anything less fine,” he argued, though his expression showed that even he knew he was grasping at straws.

  Gage took the boot, turning it over in his hands to examine the supple leather. “Perhaps ‘fine’ isn’t the right word, but rather ‘appropriate.’ For I certainly wouldn’t wish to make a tramp across open country in the garments this fellow was wearing, no more than I would want to attend a ball in them.”

  I contemplated the boot, as well as Anderley’s earlier questions about the location of Lord Helmswick’s valet. If the body in the wine cellar was indeed Helmswick, then where were all of his traveling trunks? Everyone we’d spoken to claimed that Helmswick had departed Sunlaws Castle after escorting his wife and children here, but was that true? Had he returned for some reason, or had he never left?

  “What of the earl’s belongings?” I asked. “Did he leave anything behind before he left for France?”

  Lady Helmswick looked up from the spot she had been staring at on the floor, seeming to be much struck by this. “I suppose he could have.” She glanced toward the door on her right. “These chambers are kept for us, so that they’re available whenever we should choose to visit.” She dipped her head toward the door. “You’re welcome to search his rooms.”

  I nodded, struggling to mask my confusion, for I had anticipated that her husband’s chamber lay on the opposite side of this room—through the second door leading off the landing. Who occupied that room then? One of her brothers? I’d overheard someone discussing the aptly named bachelors’ tower, which the three unwed brothers inhabited, but that didn’t mean the two married brothers and their wives didn’t utilize that suite.

  “As for your question about which gentlemen have visited the castle in the past month, you could simply consult our hall porter’s ledger,” Lord Edward supplied, sinking deeper into the settee. His sister nodded at this suggestion, but Lord John frowned.

  “Does your porter keep a record of all your visitors?” Gage asked.

  Lord Edward nodded. “And a meticulous one at that. Every arrival and departure of both the family and any overnight guests or callers. It’s kept in the porter’s lodge, just beyond the guardroom. I can instruct Mr. Hislop to allow you access to it, if you like?”

  Gage and I exchanged a speaking glance, both of us silently wondering why no one had mentioned this before. “Yes, that would be tremendously helpful,” he said.

  A visit to the porter’s lodge would also give us a chance to examine the armaments adorning the walls of the guardroom for any potential murder weapon.

  “When you’re ready, then.” Lord Edward tipped his head toward the wall. “I assume you wish to examine Helmswick’s rooms first.”

  He assumed correctly. Gage and I rose from our seats and moved toward the door they’d indicated. It led into Lady Helmswick’s bedchamber, and I allowed my gaze to travel over its feminine contents in curiosity as we crossed toward the door on the other side. So feminine, in fact, were its contents that the stark black stocking draped over the pale pink dressing table stool immediately drew my eye. Knowing that the duke’s children were listening from the other room, I did not remark on it, but followed my husband into the next room.

  Helmswick’s bedchamber was as decidedly masculine as his wife’s was not. Decorated in dark colors and austere furnishings, its empty drawers and bare wardrobe also suggested it was scarcely used. It even smelled vacant, not having absorbed any of the typical scents of inhabitation. While his wife’s chamber next door was permeated by a profusion of fragrances—her perfume and rosehip soap, the bacon and eggs from her breakfast, the must of burning coal, the lavender-scented papers used to pack her gowns in their cedar-lined trunks—Helmswick’s rooms smelled of naught but dust and stale air.

  Gage parted the drapes to allow in a bit of the hazy winter sunshine while I proceeded through the next door into a sitting room proportional to Lady Helmswick’s. It exhibited the same cold signs of vacancy as the bedchamber. The hearth was even swept spotlessly clean and the silver dustbin gleamed.

  Curious where the door on the opposite side of this chamber led, I opened it to discover a narrow corridor lined with several other doors. I suspected many of these led to guest chambers, though if my orientation was correct, the door to the right led into a suite of rooms that occupied the turret above the stunning Amaranth Saloon below. That suite was likely inhabited by the duke’s heir—Lord Traquair—and his wife. Which meant that Lord Richard and his wife must use the rooms on the opposite side of Lady Helmswick’s sitting room. Though once again, whether they were sitting empty in Lord and Lady Richard’s absence or occupied by guests, I didn’t know.

  Returning to Helmswick’s bedchamber, I found Gage standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips, scowling at its contents. Or lack thereof.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said in a low voice. “Either Helmswick rarely, if ever, slept here. Or the duke’s staff did a dashed fine job sweeping away his existence.”

  I understood what he meant. The duke’s servants were undoubtedly thorough, but it required a special kind of diligence to erase the sights and smells of an occupant that soaked into the wallpaper, paint, rugs, fabrics, and even the very woodwork of a space. I knew that Lady Helmswick and her children visited here often. Even if I hadn’t, the condition of her chambers would have told me so. Because of that, I had also assumed Lord Helmswick often stayed at Sunlaws. But his rooms told a different story.

  I had already begun to suspect that their marriage was not the most amicable, but this suggested that their level of estrangement was far greater than I’d imagined. So I couldn’t help but wonder at that gentleman’s black stocking I’d seen on the stool in the countess’s bedchamber. Or stop from feeling a vague stirring of uneasiness upon discovering it had disappeared as we retraced our steps to her sitting room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lord Edward was largely silent as he led me and Gage to the porter’s lodge. Perhaps that was because he had to concentrate i
n order to guide us through the warren of corridors and chambers populating the castle. I certainly would have gotten lost had I been forced to find it on my own. Except the duke’s third son never hesitated or broke his step once, and the furrows between his eyes had already been stamped there when we returned to Lady Helmswick’s sitting room. Whatever the trio had discussed in our absence had angered Lord Edward. However, I couldn’t tell whether that anger was directed at his brother and sister, or at us.

  We turned a corner and finally emerged onto the long landing that overlooked the grand staircase to the ground floor and the guardroom below. Muted sunlight falling into the courtyard filtered through the arched windows at our backs and glinted off the polished oak and delicate iron scrollwork on the banisters before striking the checkered marble floor below. Rounding one of the pillars holding up the vaulted ceiling with its exquisite wooden tracery, we descended toward the two suits of armor standing guard at the turn of the staircase.

  Every visitor, except the servants and tradesmen who used the back entrances, had to pass through this single point of entry to the castle. As such, from a historical perspective, I could understand why the impressive display of weaponry adorning the walls might have been placed there in an effort to discourage any who thought to make trouble or challenge the laird and lord’s authority. As a consequence, it was far from the most welcoming of chambers.

  Tattered remnants of regimental colors hung from the ceiling, brushing the antlers of the mounted animal heads that vied for space alongside rows of muskets and dozens of sabers arranged in the shape of a wheel. Claymores crisscrossed over recesses where flintlock dueling pistols were anchored beside dirks and traditional Highland sgian-dubhs. Suspended between were shields of various designs, and two vicious-looking maces. They were both fashioned with a series of sharp flanges.

  “What of these?” Gage asked, halting beside me as I studied them.

  His question brought Lord Edward’s steps up short, and a moment later I heard the tap of his footsteps crossing the marble back toward us.