Death and the Courtesan
Page 18
“Important to whom, Neddy, to you or to me?”
“Well, to me, of course,” he replied. “But if you don’t hear me out now, I shall just keep dogging you until you give in. You know what I’m like.”
Arabella sighed. She did know. “Very well. What is it?”
The child let go his hold of the door and swaggered over to her like a little bantam rooster. He walks just like his father, she thought. He was still in his nightshirt, and Arabella realized, with a start, how early it was.
“I heard Mother telling Sarah-Jane that you refused to lend her five thousand pounds to start up her business. She said you were a tightfisted hussy. I told Mama I was going to tell you what she said unless she gave me a puppy. But she wouldn’t. So I have. That’s the way blackmail works, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Neddy,” said Arabella. “That is exactly how it works. But the decision to reveal incriminating information should always be very carefully considered. For instance, if it is going to hurt you, as well as your victim, you may wish to review your position. In this case, it was ill-bred and extremely stupid to come and tell me this. Why have you done so? And how could you do such a hateful thing, to Polly, of all people?”
Neddy gave a contemptuous snort. “I’m not going to let her off, just because she’s my mother!”
Sometimes, a casual phrase, uttered by a person unconnected with one’s own problems, can illuminate the darkness and reveal the truth to us in a blinding flash.
But first things must come first.
“Fair enough, then,” she said. “Do you enjoy these visits to Lustings?”
Neddy shrugged. “Better here than at home, I reckon. Food’s better.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it will matter that much to you then, but now that you have created bad blood between your mother and me, you shan’t be coming here anymore.”
Perhaps Arabella’s words had as strong an effect upon Neddy as his own had produced upon her a moment before, for the boy suddenly burst into tears, whereupon his aunt, beyond words irritated by his selfishness, stupidity, and wretched, peevish wailing, promptly banished him from her presence.
Once the quiet atmosphere of her boudoir was restored, Arabella considered Neddy’s illuminating remark: “I’m not going to let her off, just because she’s my mother!” If this comment were attributed not to Neddy but to Oliver Wedge, it changed everything. For Arabella, with little experience of the criminal world, had taken it for granted that sons did not murder their mothers. Especially not good Catholics. But Wedge was not a good Catholic. Hadn’t she seen him with her own eyes, eating meat on a Friday? Nor was he a good son, to let Euphemia live in that rattrap when he possessed ample means of getting her out of it. The man was fully capable of murdering his parent! If Neddy, a mere child, made no distinction between his mother and the rest of the world, then why should Wedge?
But just because he could have done it didn’t mean that he had. So what had actually happened? Arabella opened the blue notebook and wrote:
Possible Chain of Events for O.W.
1. offers to publish
2. overspends
3. is double-crossed
4. commits murder
It made sense. Having arranged with Euphemia to publish her memoirs, Wedge had spent lavishly, anticipating huge dividends: a Thomas Lawrence portrait, beautiful clothes, Waterford crystal, and a bigger office at a more fashionable address. But Euphemia had double-crossed him by sending a circular letter to the would-be victims, pledging to destroy her notes on their peculiar personal habits in return for cash. When Wedge discovered how he’d been duped, he had hired a sailor to steal Arabella’s paper knife, and then used it to murder Euphemia.
But how had Arabella come into it? Why would Wedge hire someone to steal her knife, having never met her?
She stared, unseeing, at the denture on the desk in front of her. At the denture. The denture that . . . Arabella grabbed Euphemia’s open ledger: “gold plate—fraudd venturs—alley.” And then, as if a veil had lifted and floated away from her eyes, she saw: “Gold plate—for adventures—Ollie.”
Of course! Wedge had given his gold denture plate to Euphemia as an advance on the memoirs! He . . . went to her room for the manuscript, and she . . . had nothing to give him. She had already spent all her blackmail takings—on gambling, on drink, who knows? Euphemia had a talent for wasting money. So she had made up a dummy manuscript, probably. Tied up some bills or something in brown paper and handed it over. She must have! Because he had given her those teeth. The same teeth he was wearing when Tom Lawrence painted his portrait. The portrait that was still wet when Arabella had been in his office two weeks ago! By the time she had met Oliver Wedge, he was wearing another set, made by somebody else. That was why he had looked different in the portrait: His teeth had been larger, with a gap between the front ones.
Wedge had sworn to her that he had never seen the memoirs. Well, that had been true, because it had never been written. But he had also said he hadn’t seen Euphemia since February. And that had been flatly contradicted by the dental plate’s presence in the elephant box. Oliver Wedge had been lying through his teeth.
Chapter 16
A MAN OF HIS TIME
Revelations and illuminations, in which Mrs.
Molyneux brings home the butter, Arabella goes
fishing, Mr. Kendrick comes through, and a
cunning plan is divulged.
“Mrs. Janks,” said Arabella, coming into the kitchen. “Have we still got the newspapers from two weeks ago?”
“Yes, my dear, some of them,” replied the housekeeper, pulling her spectacles down her nose. (She had been trying to read a receipt book of Mrs. Moly’s, but the French was beyond her.) “They’re on the lower shelf in the pantry, left-hand side. But they aren’t all there; I use ’em as I needs ’em, for wrapping fish scraps, an’ that.”
“Mmm! Fish! How good that sounds! But you . . . don’t have them all, Mrs. Janks?”
“Not there I don’t. But if this has anything to do with your murder case . . .”
“It has everything to do with it!”
“Well, I’ve saved clippings for you, miss, from all the papers as ever wrote about it, since the first day. They’re up in my room, pasted in an album.”
“Oh, Charlotte!” cried Arabella, giving her an affectionate squeeze. “You are a wonder! May I see them tonight?”
“Whenever you wants ’em, miss, they’ll be there for you. I put the word out to all the servants in all the houses as I know, to save them articles for me.”
“Do you have The Tattle-Tale’s, too?”
Mrs. Janks made a face. “Yes, miss. Even them ones.”
“You,” said Arabella, “are quite simply the most indispensable housekeeper in London, and I am doubling your salary, as of today.”
As Mrs. Janks began to protest this, for form’s sake, someone could be heard fumbling with a key at the service entrance. A moment later, Cook entered the kitchen with her market basket and plumped it on the table.
“ ’Allo, Meez Beaumont,” she said. “I ’ave brought beautiful lemons from ze market, and ze freshest buttair we ’ave evair ad!”
“Ooh!” cried Arabella excitedly. “And fresh fish, too, I’ll be bound!”
“Non!” replied the cook. “Zee feeshing boats ’ave not come in. A zquall at sea ’as kept zem far out. Deed you feel like feeshing, yourself, mademoiselle?”
“Hmm, I suppose I could do. In fact, that is a capital idea, Mrs. Moly! I have a sudden fancy for fresh fish!”
But she was checked in the act of retrieving her rod and creel from behind the kitchen door by a loud wolf whistle issuing from Fisto’s cage.
“The gardener’s boy has arrived, ma’am,” said the parlor maid, opening the door from the corridor. Over Fielding’s shoulder, Arabella could see the young rajah, unhooking Fisto’s cage.
“There you are, Moses! Let us go up to the breakfast room. I have taught Fisto a new ver
se for today. The prompt is ‘La Ribbon Hat.’ ”
“. . . is terribly fat,” Fisto chanted, as they all went upstairs.
“And she scarcely has any bone.
So don’t give her that chair,
As fragile as air,
For she weighs at least seventeen stone!”
Moses grinned. “I reckon that bird’s as keen a pattering slang cove as ever came out of a toffkin, ain’t he, miss?”
“Er, yesss . . . ,” said Arabella. “But not half so keen a patterer as I am, you know, for it was me thought up the verses and taught him to say them.”
“. . . And you’re not half so clever as Casanova was,” said Belinda, entering the morning room with a basket full of lupines. “For he was the one who had this idea in the first place! Besides,” she added, arranging the flowers in a tall vase, “Lady Ribbonhat is not fat. She looks something like a raisin.”
“I know, but such women never feel thin enough. Just hearing someone say that she is big makes her worry that she might be.”
“Well, but seventeen stone? That is so outrageous even she won’t believe it.”
“I had to use ‘seventeen,’ or the verse wouldn’t have scanned. Besides, have you ever really looked at her head? It’s enormous! I figure that her head weighs twelve stone all by itself, and then, we’ll figure in another five, for the rest of her . . . that comes out to seventeen. Anyway, I can’t stop to gossip now; I must go out and catch dinner.”
One of the nicest things about Lustings was the stream meandering through its 2.5 acres. Not only was it picturesque—the Beaumont sisters and their artist friends often painted the views to be had from its banks—but it also contained succulent fish, which delighted in the rushing eddies and shady pools and often stopped here on their way downstream.
There was nothing Arabella loved more than to come outside by herself in the summer and think solitary thoughts whilst she angled. On this occasion, she had removed her shoes, propped up her pole within easy reach on an x-shaped block designed for the purpose, and leaned her back against a tree whilst simultaneously smoking a cigar and reading a book.
“Miss Beaumont? Miss Beaumont, are you somewhere hereabouts?”
“Damn!” muttered Arabella, shutting the book and laying aside her cigar. “Yes, Mr. Kendrick! Over here!”
The rector fought his way through the shrubs and bracken, to arrive at last, panting, by her side.
“Do you think it wise to be out in the sun?” he asked her, brushing himself off. “You’ll go brown, you know, if you aren’t careful.”
“But I am careful; I have a large hat on, as you see, and I am sitting in the shade.”
“Pray, do not let me interrupt you; we can talk whilst you fish.”
“Have you ever fished, Mr. Kendrick?”
“No, as a matter of fact. I don’t believe I have.”
“I guessed as much. Fish will not bite during conversations, for they are shy creatures, and highly temperamental. If one should make a noise, or move about, they scatter and hide.”
“Oh, yes?” said Kendrick. His mind being preoccupied with other matters—for he had noticed Arabella’s shoes lying next to the cigar and was furtively admiring her attractive bare feet—the import took some time to sink in, and she waited for the light of comprehension to dawn upon his features.
“Oh! Oh, I say! I am sorry for having interrupted you, Miss Beaumont!”
“That is quite all right, Mr. Kendrick; your assistance with this case means more to me than all the trout in the world. I assume that is why you have come?”
“Yes, it is! . . . Er, does it really?”
“Indubitably.”
She patted the grass beside her, and the rector unhesitatingly joined her there.
“Well,” said she, “what have you discovered? I hope I have not sent you on a wild-goose chase?”
“On the contrary! I took your excellent drawing to Bond Street, where it was at once identified as the mark of Claudius Ash. I had only to cross the road and walk down a few doors to find the very man himself!”
“Well done, Mr. Kendrick! Your efficiency is admirable!”
“I am gratified that you think so, Miss Beaumont. Well, I recalled what you had said about discretion, so I told Mr. Ash that I was thinking of getting a denture made for my elderly mother. I said I heard that he had once made a splendid one for a Mr. . . . Mr. . . . ‘Wedge,’ he said. ‘The Tattle-Tale editor.’ He came to the point very nicely, I thought.”
“He did indeed!”
“I had expected that I would have to draw him out cunningly, but not a bit of it! The man would not stop talking! False teeth is a subject very near to his heart, it seems. He said that Wedge’s plate was just a prototype—his only effort so far, but he thinks he has hit upon a good idea. Gold, you see, is soft—for a metal—and non-corrosive, so it may be more comfortably worn in the mouth than many other materials. He hopes to manufacture them one day. Ash has always been fascinated by what he termed ‘the problem of teeth,’ and when I made the mistake of complimenting him upon Wedge’s plate, which I have not in fact seen, he launched into a description of the porcelain dentitions, and told me how he’d been able to make them so lifelike as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. He’d added a gap because Wedge had told him that his own teeth—which, by the way, were knocked out by a fellow he wronged—had had such a gap. I had a bit of a narrow squeak when Mr. Ash wanted to know all about my ‘mother,’ whether she needed upper and lower replacements or just an upper, because, he said, lower ones were more difficult to make and he hadn’t ever done those before.
“But having already jeopardized my soul by telling one lie, I damned it entirely by telling another. I promised to bring the mater round and let him look inside her mouth, which I don’t think I will, you know, as she died when I was seven. I can’t suppose it would be very pleasant for poor Mr. Ash.”
“Oh, that is capital!” cried Arabella delightedly. “You have done very well indeed, Mr. Kendrick!”
“Have I?” he asked, favoring her with a melting glance and lifting her hand to his lips. “I am . . . as always, your most devoted admirer, ma’am, and inexpressibly happy to have been of service to you.”
“Then perhaps you would like to be in on the capture? I am now almost entirely certain that Oliver Wedge is our murderer.”
“What, that scoundrel?” cried Kendrick. “I might have saved you a great deal of worry, then! If I had known that you suspected him, I should have named him at once as the culprit!”
“You would condemn a man without proof?”
“Such a man as he could not possibly be innocent!”
“It sounds as if you know him quite well.”
“Not in the sense of being his ‘chum,’ if that’s what you mean. But the man is known to me, and as you have already seen, he has made a decidedly ill impression!”
“But why?” asked Arabella. “What has he done?”
“He seduced my brother’s fiancée, a sweet, innocent girl of seventeen summers, a girl so cloistered by her family as to think that babies were bought at the fair, like horses. She knew nothing of this wicked world, Miss Beaumont, nor of men, until she crossed paths with Oliver Wedge.”
At this point, there was a sharp tug upon the fish line, and Arabella grabbed the pole, eventually landing a four-pound bream.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kendrick,” she said, rebaiting her hook. “Pray, continue. How did she meet Mr. Wedge?”
“Well,” said he, “the unfortunate child had been keeping a diary throughout her courtship, filled with all her little maidenly hopes and feelings. It was her intention to present this book to her future groom as a gift, professionally printed and handsomely bound, and she had the great misfortune to take it to Wedge for that purpose.
“Her family always made sure that she was accompanied when out of doors by a chaperone. But a simple, elderly woman is no match for the devil! Wedge was easily able to separate the two females,
and with the old one locked out, he effectively had his way with the young one in a back room.”
“How like him!” sighed Arabella. “I mean,” she said, rousing herself at Kendrick’s expression, “that your story tallies exactly with my own impressions of the fellow. Then what happened?”
“My brother called him out, but Wedge ran away. Hayward chased the scoundrel through the streets, caught up with him at last, and knocked his teeth out. He hurt his own fist quite badly, too.”
“And what of the girl?”
“How do you mean?”
“What happened to her?”
“Lord knows.”
“What! Didn’t your brother marry her, after all?”
“Of course not! He couldn’t after . . . after Wedge had been there before him!”
“Oh, I see. It wasn’t a love match, then.”
“I don’t know whether it was or not. I am not especially close with my brother. But I don’t see that it signifies.”
“Don’t you, Mr. Kendrick? And yet, if I were to renounce my profession this minute, and swear never to have anything to do with it anymore, what would you say?”
“I should ask you to marry me.”
“Have you any idea how many lovers I have had?”
“No! Nor do I want to know! I would ask only that I be the last.”
“Yet your brother’s fiancée had only had a single encounter. You seem to keep one set of standards for yourself, Mr. Kendrick, and quite another for the rest of the world. Tell me, if that unfortunate young woman had been your fiancée, would you still have married her?”
“I suppose so . . . yes, I believe I would have.”
“And yet you never thought to censure your brother for his cruelty toward a blameless girl, who was ruined as the result of finding herself in a dangerous location with poor supervision? If that poor child can be blamed for anything at all, it is only of loving your brother enough to want to give him her diary.”
The rector blushed.