Death Wears a Mask

by Ashley Weaver

  A harried-looking maid had shown me to the parlor and disappeared as soon as she had announced me. I had expected shelves of bric-a-brac, an abundance of aspidistra, and at least three cats. I was correct in two of three surmises. The parlor was decorated very much in the Victorian style, with dark flowered wallpaper, heavy golden drapes, lush plants in porcelain pots, and a great deal of ornate furniture crowding the room.

  There were no cats, however. Instead, I found the lady holding court for the two Pomeranians and a fat Pekingese lying before her on silk cushions on the rug. The trio of animals began yipping at me in harmony as I entered.

  “Hush,” she said, and the dogs were immediately silenced. I was rather impressed with their obedience. Then again, I did not find it surprising that the forceful Mrs. Roland should have the same effect on animals as she did on people.

  “Mrs. Ames,” she said, rising to meet me, extending a hand that fairly glittered with assorted rings of all descriptions. “I’m delighted that you’ve come to see me. It’s been much too long! After the events at the Brightwell, you know, I have been thinking how we simply must have tea. In fact, I had just thought this very morning that I should phone you. I’ve been wanting to see you, my dear. I feel that we have so much to discuss!”

  I felt a vague sensation of unease, as though I had been drawn into the spider’s web unawares.

  “And then you rang me up, and now here you are! It must be fate! I’m delighted.”

  “Thank you for having me, Mrs. Roland,” I said, as I took the seat she indicated, an impressive piece with a heavy wooden frame and garish embroidered upholstery.

  Mrs. Roland herself was no less impressive. She was as much known in society for her ostentatious ensembles as she was for being a notorious quidnunc, and today was no exception. Her henna-red hair was swept into an intricate coiffure that served to highlight a gold-beaded headpiece Cleopatra might have envied. If ancient Egypt had inspired her headdress, she must have taken her wardrobe cues from the Greeks, for she was dressed in a long, elaborately draped gown of puce, the folds of which brushed one of the dogs as she swept past and set it to barking again.

  “Ferdinand, be quiet,” she commanded as she settled herself back into her chair. “You must excuse my little ones, Mrs. Ames. They’re very excitable. Have you any dogs?”

  “We’ve some hounds at Thornecrest. Hunters, not house dogs.”

  “Sugar or milk?” she asked, leaning over the silver tea service on the table.

  “Two sugars, please.”

  The beads of her many bracelets clanked against the pot as she poured.

  “Are you fond of dogs?” she asked, handing me my cup.

  “Yes, I suppose I am. We had a mastiff when I was a child. He was called Archibald, and we were the greatest of friends.”

  “You should get a sweet little dog, Mrs. Ames. I find them to be a great comfort.” She said this with a significant look, and I knew that we had already come to the topic I had been hoping to avoid. I felt again the sensation that she had invited me here to question me and not the other way around. “I’m sure, with your husband away as often as he is, you find yourself quite lonely sometimes.”

  It was not a very subtle hint, but I felt disinclined to elaborate on the situation. It was not that I wanted to shield Milo, but neither did I want our personal difficulties to be any more on display than they already were. “Perhaps a puppy would be nice one day.”

  “Of course, dear. But you needn’t put on a brave face with me. We’re old friends, aren’t we? After all, I’m no stranger to philandering husbands. My first husband was a handsome devil, just like Mr. Ames, though perhaps not quite as handsome. He broke my heart more times than I can remember, and many’s the time I thought I couldn’t take it another moment, but love’s not a thing you can turn on and off with a switch, is it? I loved him until that unfortunate accident carried him off.”

  I was beginning to think that I had overestimated my abilities and that coming here was a very bad idea indeed.

  “I know young people don’t like to talk about their problems,” she said sweetly, misinterpreting my bewildered silence for embarrassment, “but if you need a sympathetic ear, you have only to ask. And I’m the soul of discretion, my dear.”

  “Thank you,” I said politely in the face of this tremendous untruth. “I know there have been quite a lot of things printed about my husband lately, but you know how the papers exaggerate things.”

  “Helene Renault is a beautiful woman, naturally, but she’s lacking something. She hasn’t got your elegance, for one thing. Of course, men don’t take much note of such things. It seems that all it takes is the whiff of French perfume and a few garbled syllables to draw them like bees to honey.” She shook her head. “It’s a pity. But I shouldn’t worry much, Mrs. Ames. In the end, I should be very much surprised if she holds his interest for long. After all, your husband is quite mad about you. That much was quite plain to me at the Brightwell. And your other young man, Gil Trent. What has become of him since that wretched hotel business?”

  She was referring to my former fiancé, who had also been involved in the events at the Brightwell Hotel. “I had a letter from him a few weeks back,” I told her. “He’s quite well.”

  “Splendid! You wouldn’t have suited in the long run, I don’t suppose, but one must hope he will find happiness with someone else.”

  “Do you know Mrs. Vivian Garmond?” I asked abruptly, as it had become apparent there was no possible means of politely shifting the conversation in sight.

  “Poor Mrs. Garmond,” Mrs. Roland tut-tutted, diverted from her monologue on my marriage. “Now, that Lord Dunmore is a different matter. He is a scoundrel. He’s handsome enough, I suppose, but I don’t see why it is that women go weak at the knees over him. Vivian Garmond should have known better. She’s a clever girl from a good family, but I suppose even clever girls can lose their heads.”

  “You know her then?”

  “I knew the family. Overton is their name. She went abroad a few years ago … Turkey or Greece or some such place … and came back a widow with an infant son.” She placed definite skeptical emphasis on the word “widow.”

  “Coincidentally,” she continued, “Lord Dunmore had been abroad at about the same time and came back shortly after she did. They immediately took up with one another, so it’s commonly assumed he got her in trouble and refused to marry her. Everyone realizes what’s going on, of course, but she maintains the pretense that her husband was killed and people go on pretending to believe it. However, I, of my own knowledge, have never been able to ascertain exactly when and where her husband seems to have died. After all, that’s the sort of thing one remembers. I remember all my poor husbands’ deaths.”

  I blinked and managed a sympathetic smile. “Yes, Mrs. Roland, I’m sure you do. Surely there must be some record of a Mr. Garmond dying?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose one could find out, if one really cared to. I’m not much acquainted with the Garmonds myself. After all, if they’ve welcomed her into the family, who am I to discourage them? Of course, I don’t know why they care to claim her, the way she runs after Dunmore, despite the parade of women going through his bed.”

  She stopped for breath, and I wondered if I could insert another question into the conversation. She beat me to it, however. “But here I am, running on about Lord Dunmore, and you’ve become acquainted with him yourself. You were at his ball when that murder happened, weren’t you?” There was a sudden sharp look in her gaze, as though she was a predator closing in.

  “Yes,” I answered casually, “but I had injured my ankle and wasn’t there when it occurred. I’m afraid I could be of no help at all.”

  “Poor dear,” she said, and I didn’t know whether she meant my injury or the fact that I had been excluded from the excitement.

  “I suppose it was someone after the jewels?” she asked, trying to draw me out.

  “I’m afraid I really don’t know,”
I said honestly, and she frowned as though I had disappointed her.

  “Poor Serena must be very upset. I haven’t called on her yet, as I imagine she’s busy with preparations.”

  “I wasn’t aware you knew Mrs. Barrington.” I imagined the two of them together and determined they would be a force to be reckoned with indeed.

  “Serena was distantly related to my second husband. We have stayed in contact since his death, though we don’t see each other much.”

  “I believe Mr. Harker’s death has been very hard on her,” I said. “And on Mr. Barrington.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know him well, but I believe he was never terribly fond of the nephew.”

  “Well, it was very sad, all around,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back on course. “I was discussing it with Mrs. Douglas-Hughes only yesterday.” As I had hoped, this set her off again.

  “Mrs. Douglas-Hughes is a fine woman,” she said. “One expects Americans to be a certain way, doesn’t one? But she’s not. She’s quite a refined, lovely girl. I don’t know, if I’d been doing the matching, that I’d have aligned her with Sanderson Douglas-Hughes. He’s a gentleman, of course, but I don’t know how much time he can devote to her when he is so very devoted to his work. Must be difficult for a man to concern himself with domestic life when he’s always got his nose in foreign affairs.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Douglas-Hughes seem quite happy together,” I put in.

  “Yes? Well, I hope so. One wonders if such a creative sort of person can be happy with a solemn gentleman, but opposites have attracted before this, haven’t they?”

  She didn’t seem to need my confirmation, for she charged ahead, picking up steam. “This isn’t his first brush with a mysterious death, I believe. I seem to recall that there was some foreign fellow a while back that was supposed to be working with Mr. Douglas-Hughes in some capacity but died rather unexpectedly. I suppose those things happen when one involves oneself in government. Those Echols girls were there, too, weren’t they? I’m not surprised, for it seems that wherever there’s trouble, Marjorie Echols isn’t far behind. I’ve heard she was after James Harker, though goodness knows why she should want such a dolt … may he rest in peace.”

  “I was given to understand that it was Felicity who cared for Mr. Harker,” I managed to interject.

  “That may very well be. I should think that would only encourage Marjorie.”

  I supposed I might as well go through the list of suspects while she was in full-disclosure mode, so I jumped to the next of them. “I was pleased to have met Mr. Nigel Foster, as I have long been an admirer of his.”

  She hesitated as if searching her rumor reservoir, and I wondered if the gossip mill had actually ceased to grind. She recovered quickly, however. “I don’t know much about Mr. Foster,” she admitted. “Sporting events have never much been my forte. He’s a handsome young man. I believe there was a girl a while back, something about an engagement, I think, but she was in an accident, and then they broke it off. The girl moved to California or some such absurd place.”

  “I see.” I didn’t recall reading any such thing, but Winnelda’s gossip magazines had only extended back a few months.

  “So many interesting people in attendance at the ball. If only I had been there,” she lamented. She picked up a cookie and bit into it contemplatively. “I wasn’t invited, of course, but half the people that attend his parties have not received invitations, so I shouldn’t have let that stop me. Perhaps I’ll attend the next one. I understand he throws them in rapid succession. The family’s always been given to excess. His father was a libertine as well. I suppose he’s still going to have the one this weekend.”

  “Yes, I believe he plans for it to go on as scheduled.”

  “I thought so. Lord Dunmore is not one to let tragedy put a stop to his fun. Well, perhaps I shall make an appearance. Have you seen the diamond?” she asked suddenly.

  “The Dunmore Diamond? No, I haven’t.”

  “It’s a necklace that belonged to his great-grandmother, a monstrous diamond from India, I think. What good it’s doing locked away, I don’t know. I saw it once on Lord Dunmore’s mother. Poor dear, she was much too plain to do it justice. Oh,” she said, bringing her cup to her lips and taking it away again, “somehow my tea’s managed to go cold. I can’t imagine how I let that happen!”

  * * *

  I LEFT MRS. ROLAND’S house a bit exhausted, and not until she had secured a promise from me that I would consider taking a puppy from the next litter of Wilhelmina, the fat Pekingese.

  My own reputation had escaped relatively unscathed, and I had gained some very useful background information. For one thing, it seemed that the cloud that hung over Mrs. Garmond’s past was darker than I had suspected.

  I thought back to what Mrs. Barrington said about James Harker’s always saying things he shouldn’t. Was it possible he might have known something about the elusive Mr. Garmond? Then again, everyone commonly assumed the child was Dunmore’s. Would evidence to the contrary be worth killing for? Perhaps. People clung very hard to the masks they wore.

  The masks … I wondered again. Had it been a coincidence that Mr. Harker and Mr. Foster had worn the same mask? I was sure that Inspector Jones would have investigated that avenue by now. I felt vaguely irritated that he had not yet been in touch. I would have to telephone him tomorrow and find out what he had learned.

  I reached home and promptly gave Winnelda another night off. I had a lot of thinking to do, and I thought it would best be done in silence. She was willing enough, as two of her friends had invited her to the cinema, but when it was time for her to leave she hesitated.

  “You’re certain you’ll be all right, madam?” she asked a bit worriedly. “I won’t leave if you’d rather I didn’t.”

  “Yes, thank you, Winnelda. I’m going to rest for a while. I’m quite tired.”

  My nights of poor sleep were catching up with me. I lay down when she had gone, intending to close my eyes for just a little while. I was surprised when I woke up in a darkened bedroom. I had slept later than I intended.

  I rose and went to make myself a cup of tea. Winnelda had left dinner for me, but I found I wasn’t very hungry. Instead, I made myself some toast and took it with my tea into the parlor.

  As I nibbled on my toast, I mulled over what I knew, which didn’t appear to be much. No one seemed to have a very clear motive for murder. It all seemed to come back to the theft of the jewels, but I still had a hard time believing that any of the suspects would have been desperate enough to commit murder for a bracelet. It had to be more than that. There was something that was missing, some part of the mystery that had not yet come to light. But what? I didn’t know where to look next.

  I was pulled from my musings as I heard the front door open.

  “Is that you, Winnelda?” I called. She was back earlier than I had expected.

  “Not even close,” said Milo, coming into the room. I felt myself tense at his unexpected appearance. I hadn’t prepared myself for his arrival, and felt strangely at a loss. I set my teacup down, and, to my annoyance, it rattled slightly in the saucer.

  If he noticed anything amiss, or if he was feeling any guilt, he gave absolutely no indication of it.

  “I got the brute settled faster than I had imagined. He’s a magnificent animal, but I think he’ll rival Xerxes in terms of surly temperament. I left him in Geoffrey’s capable hands. We’ll have to go back to Thornecrest for a weekend soon.”

  He came to where I sat and leaned to kiss me, but my voice stopped him.

  “I can smell her perfume on your coat, Milo.”

  His eyes met mine, and I could see then that he knew that I knew. The cloying scent of rose hung in the air, as palpable as my anger.

  I stood, unable to bear the pretense of civility any longer. “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

  “Amory…”

  “Good night.”

  I left the room without looking
back, and Milo didn’t come after me.

  15

  ONCE AGAIN, I couldn’t sleep, and I felt much worse in the morning than when I had gone to bed. The mirror clearly reflected the effects of my miserable night. I looked pale and drawn, and I suspected that no amount of makeup was going to help.

  Nevertheless, I bathed and dressed in a becoming black Bruyère suit. Then I walked resolutely from my room, ready to meet Milo, should it even prove necessary.

  I didn’t want to face him, but there was a very good possibility he was still in bed, or perhaps even gone from the flat. I assumed he had slept in the guest room, but for all I knew he had gone back to Mademoiselle Renault. In any event, I didn’t intend to hide from him.

  I sat down at the table and poured myself a cup of coffee, gratified to see that my hands were perfectly steady. I had absolutely no appetite, but I didn’t want Winnelda to know that I was upset. I was fairly certain she could sense something was amiss, however, for she went about on tenterhooks and refrained from her normal morning chatter.

  Milo came into the room a few minutes after I did and sat across from me. Neither of us spoke, and the tension was heavy in the air. Despite his habitual nonchalance, I could tell that he was treading carefully, trying to gauge my mood.

  “Amory…” he began at last.

  I shook my head slowly, not looking up from my coffee. I didn’t want to talk to him, not here and not now. It wasn’t only the possibility that Winnelda might overhear. I simply didn’t feel ready.

  He didn’t press me, and for that I was grateful. I picked at my food, pretending to eat it while my mind raced in a thousand directions. What could I say to him? What was there to say? It was perfectly clear where we stood; the only thing to be determined was where things would go from here.