by Robin Paige
“I will go with you,” Bradford said, white-faced. “It is my vehicle.”
“Yes, yes,” Dunstable gabbled. “I must go too. He is my driver.”
White-faced, Dickson put down his sherry. “We will all go,” he said, sounding almost frightened, and there was a loud babble of agreement.
The doctor raised his voice. “Gentlemen,” he said firmly, “my surgery will not accommodate the lot of you, and you can be of no possible assistance in this medical matter. Your hostess has prepared a fine meal. It would be cruelly impolite of you to abandon it.”
Charles came to Kate. “You can manage, my dear?” he asked quietly. “Bradford can take my place as host.”
“Of course we’ll manage,” Kate said, with more assurance than she felt, and watched them leave the room.
There was a long silence, broken at last by Great-aunt Marsden’s loud exhalation. “Well!” she said. “I must say!”
But whatever she had to say, she did not say it. The silence lengthened. Kate knew that she should rise, take Bradford’s arm, and announce that it was time to go to the table, but something—some deep curiosity, some inner conviction that there was something here to learn—held her in her seat, watching the faces in the room.
Dunstable sat, too, as if thunderstruck. “It is beyond belief,” he muttered. “Utterly beyond belief. What the stockholders are going to say—” He bit his lip. “It is all very bad. Very bad, indeed.”
“Oh, blast the stockholders!” Rolls burst out angrily, his dark eyes glittering. “Is that all you can think of, Dunstable? We came here for sport, to test one machine against the others. What did you come for? The publicity only?”
Dunstable looked at him. “Publicity? Yes, that is certainly an angle that should be considered,” he said thoughtfully. “The event will attract plenty of press attention, I am sure. The trick will be to handle it correctly.” He looked around. “Has Sam Holt gone back to London? Where the devil is that journalist when I need him?”
“What bloody nonsense, Harry!” Bradford exclaimed, his voice heavy with disgust and revulsion. “The man you paid to come here from Germany to drive for you is dying—dead already, perhaps—and you talk of publicity!”
“And why should his accident be beyond belief?” Dickson asked, rising to reach for the sherry decanter. “It is not Albrecht’s first crash, is it? Given the speeds at which we travel, motorcar-racing is a dangerous sport.” Nervously, he splashed sherry into his glass, and onto his sleeve.
“Ah, yes,” Ponsonby said, with melodramatic flair. “Death waits at every turn. Accidents can happen everywhere.” He lifted his glass. “Gentlemen, let us drink to a fallen comrade-in-arms.”
“Hear, hear,” Bateman murmured, draining his glass. And Dickson added in a strangled voice, “Indeed.”
There was a moment’s silence. Dunstable raised his head. His eyes were narrowed, and the purplish bruise stood out against the mottled yellow of his face.
“It was no accident,” he said melodramatically. He paused, and then repeated, in a harsh, rasping tone, “I’m sure of it. It was no accident! I shall take this to the law!”
Kate frowned. What did the man have in mind? Was he practicing some sort of sensational gesture that would attract public attention? Would he somehow exploit this unfortunate circumstance to sell more shares of worthless stock? Or did he genuinely believe that—
“I’m not sure I understand you, Mr. Dunstable,” she said. “Surely you can’t think Herr Albrecht would have deliberately endangered his life by crashing Lord Marsden’s motorcar.” She glanced at Bradford, who seemed remarkably composed, under the circumstances.
“Of course I don’t think he did it deliberately,” Dunstable said. “It was murder.” His voice rose. “It was murder, don’t you see?” He was looking directly at Bradford.
Bradford colored. “Are you trying to claim that there was something wrong with my car, and that I—”
“Don’t even bother to answer him, Bradford,” Rolls snapped. “He is behaving like an offensive cad.”
“Ah,” Ponsonby remarked, his tone archly pleasant. “I fear there is dissension in the ranks of the British Motor Car Syndicate. My, my, gentlemen. Is this a wrangle?”
“The syndicate has nothing to do with this affair, Ponsonby,” Rolls said in a dark tone.
“Oh, but it does,” Bateman said, and laughed slyly. “You are such a naive boy, Charlie. The syndicate has everything to do with it. Why don’t you ask your friend Dunstable if he staged Albrecht’s crash himself, for the sake of the publicity? Don’t forget—he was supposed to be in that car, too. If he knew that it was going to crash, is there any wonder he went missing?”
“That is a base canard,” Dunstable said hotly. “I spent the entire day in a dung heap. I had nothing to do with—”
“And Albrecht was driving Marsden’s car, don’t forget,” Ponsonby said in a meaningful aside to Bateman. “Could they have come up with this between the two of them?”
Patsy pulled in her breath and Great-aunt Marsden gasped in horror, fanning herself with her lace handkerchief. “Bradford, can this man—I cannot pay him the compliment of calling him a gentleman—be accusing you of ... of... ?” She apparently could not think what Bradford might be accused of, and sputtered into a helpless silence.
Bradford got to his feet and spoke with a firm authority. “I do not believe we are showing ourselves to best advantage here, gentlemen. The evening is, after all, a social occasion. Lady Kathryn and the other ladies would be entirely justified in censuring our behavior.”
Kate, too, had begun to feel that things were getting out of hand, although she was reluctant to conclude a conflict which offered such promising revelations. But perhaps the dinner hour would open some new view of the subject.
With a bright smile, she stood and turned toward Bradford. “I understand that our dinner is ready at last, my lord. Shall we dine?”
As they went into the dining room, Kate looked questioningly at Mudd, wondering whether he remembered her instructions about the crystal, and what was to be done with it after dinner. He inclined his head slightly, and she understood. Everything else in the household might run on at sixes and sevens, but Beryl Bardwell’s little experiment was proceeding according to plan.
16
Here’s the devil to pay.
—SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Clarissa, 1785
Without speaking, Charles followed Dr. Bassett through the lamp-lit consulting room and into the tiny surgery, more brightly illuminated by hissing gas wall sconces. Albrecht was stretched, gray-faced and motionless, on the examining table, his jacket and shirt pulled open. The room was already crowded: Edward Laken stood stonily at the foot of the table; beside him stood another, younger man, with a pale face and staring eyes and an air of suppressed excitement. A gray-haired, motherly woman with a cloth and a basin was washing Albrecht’s bloodied chest. Charles looked once at the gaping wound, winced, and turned his face away. Just above the wound was a massive bruise. He had known it would be ugly, but not as ugly as this. From the look of it, the tiller had impacted the driver’s chest and snapped. The shaft had pierced the rib cage.
“Hullo, Ned,” the doctor said to Laken, hastily stripping off his coat. He glanced at the other man. “What the devil are you doing here, Jessup? Hot water, please, Hester,” he said to the woman. “And my surgical instruments.” He began to roll up his sleeves.
“Jessup discovered the victim,” Laken said evenly, “in the ravine beneath Devil’s Bridge.”
“The wreckage did not burn?” Charles put in.
“No, surprisingly enough.”
“And fortunate,” the doctor said, looking down at the man on the table. “Looks like the tiller ran him through.”
Laken nodded. “I was summoned, and the two of us brought Albrecht here. I thought Jessup might stay with me until I had the leisure to question him as to the circumstances of his discovery.”
“ ’Twa
s Lord Bradford’s motor the man was drivin’!” Jessup seemed to be near bursting with an inward excitement. “Same as the one that—” He stopped and swallowed, and his eyes, bright with a kind of triumph, went rapidly from Laken to the doctor, and back to the man on the table.
“Same as the one that didn’t kill your father?” Bassett laughed, a harsh, grating laugh. “The devil of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, Laken? The car rumored to have frightened Old Jessup to death is discovered wrecked by Young Jessup. One might almost think there was an invisible hand at work in the affair.” He bent over and put his ear to Albrecht’s chest and listened intently for a moment. “I doubt that there’s anything to be done to save the man,” he said, straightening. “But I must try.”
As if in response, Albrecht gave a deep, despairing groan, and the doctor turned to put a hand on his shoulder. “Steady there, old chap,” he said, in a comforting voice. “I’ll be with you in a moment, and we’ll see about easing your pain.” He looked up. “Take Jessup out of here, will you, Ned? Charles, if you try, you might be able to get something out of our patient. Hester!” He started out of the room. “Hester!”
“How did it happen, Ned?” Charles asked.
“The road leading down to the bridge is steep and treacherous,” Laken said. “The vehicle went off the road and into the ravine. I have instructed Thomas Gaskell, the constable from Lawford, to guard the area until daylight, when I intend to go over it carefully. The car is scattered in pieces, all down the ravine.” He gave Charles a thin smile. “I have learned from you to be vigilant about the scene of what might be a crime. No one will disturb it.”
Charles looked at Jessup, hearing in Laken’s words the constable’s suspicion that the crash had not been an accident. Jessup averted his eyes, as if he feared something in them might give him away, and began nervously twisting a button on his coat. Charles thought of the new gig he had seen the man driving, and of the rumors that had been flying around the servant hall. But Laken—whom Charles knew to be more competent than most Scotland Yard men—could be counted on to uncover any secrets Jessup might wish to conceal. He could leave the interrogation in his friend’s capable hands, although his assistance might be wanted at the crash scene.
“I shall be glad to help in the investigation, Ned,” he offered, “with photographs, too, if you like.”
Laken nodded. “Shortly after daybreak, then, at Devil’s Bridge. I think you know the spot.”
“I do,” Charles said. Devil’s Hill was the steepest in the entire area. He would not have chanced driving a motorcar down its treacherous slope. But then, he knew the area. Albrecht could not have known that the road was so steep.
Laken clapped his hand on Jessup’s shoulder. “Come along, then, Jessup. It’s time we had a talk.” The two men left the room.
Albrecht groaned again, a horrible, bubbling sound, and Charles turned back to the table. He bent over the driver and caught a fleeting phrase.
“No accident,” Albrecht said in a guttural whisper. He was racked by a hard cough that shook his entire body. “Brake ... tampered...” He coughed again, and clutched at his chest with one hand. The other came up and Charles grasped it.
“You’re saying that the brake failed because it had been tampered with?”
Albrecht’s nod, if it was a nod, was barely perceptible. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, his lips blue. The only color in his face was the froth of bright red blood and sputum that bubbled from his lips.
“The hill is steep,” Charles said, and thought about the braking mechanism, a block of wood faced with leather, designed to rub against the turning tire. “Perhaps the brake simply could not hold the vehicle.”
With an enormous effort, Albrecht turned his head from side to side. “Brake slip ...” he said, and began to cough. “Left brake slippery...” He lifted his left hand, and Charles saw that the fingertips bore traces of a greasy substance.
Albrecht shuddered. Grasping Charles’s hand, he half-raised himself, opened his eyes wide, and gasped out something unintelligible. Then, with a long, rattling groan, he fell back.
The doctor came hurrying into the room, carrying another lamp. Behind him was his nurse, with a cloth-covered tray. “You will probably want to leave, Charles,” he said, putting the lamp on the shelf above the examining table. “This will be a bloody business, and—”
“The bloody business is ended,” Charles said, and straightened. He placed Albrecht’s hand on his chest and closed the man’s eyes with his fingers. “He is dead.”
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Kate said simply. She rose from the sofa and poured Charles’s favorite whisky, neat, as he liked it. As she returned to him, she touched his shoulder, loving the strong set of his jaw and the unruliness of his thick brown hair, and noticing the weariness around his eyes. It was after eleven, and the day had been very long and difficult-more for him than for her. He had endured a dangerous balloon flight which might have ended tragically, and had watched a man die. She had had only to manage Rolls’s Peugeot, and dinner, and their guests.
Charles took the glass with a heavy sigh, leaned back in his leather chair and put his feet on the ottoman. “A sad thing,” he said, and sipped his whisky. “Gruesome, too. I admire Brax’s coolness, Kate. How he can cut into a human body—” He shuddered. “I was not made for a surgeon.”
Kate sat on the ottoman and pulled Charles’s boots off. “So he autopsied poor Herr Albrecht, then?”
“It seemed the prudential thing to do, especially since the body was already on the examining table. I also sent word to the coroner, mentioning that there might be some concern about the nature of this accident Harry is to meet us at the scene of the crash after daybreak.” He stretched his toes, and Kate took his stockinged feet into her lap. “Given the spot where it happened, there is very little that can be done tonight, except to guard the scene from intruders, of course. Ned has taken care of that.”
“And the cause of death?” Kate prompted gently, massaging his instep. This was the evening ritual she loved most: Charles in his chair, she rubbing his shoulders or his feet. Beryl Bardwell (modern woman that she was) might well sniff at the wifeliness of it, but Kate found it enormously satisfying—almost as satisfying as when, later, Charles returned the favor.
“The tiller snapped off in the impact and the shaft was thrust through his chest. One lung was punctured and had totally collapsed by the time he was found. It is nothing short of a miracle that he lasted as long as he did—nearly twelve hours.” Charles frowned. “He managed to get out a few words, with almost his last breath. He said it was no accident, Kate.”
Kate was startled. “Those were Dunstable’s words too, Charles! ‘No accident,’ he said, over and over again.” And she told him what had transpired in the drawing room between Dunstable and the others. “I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they hadn’t ended by accusing one another of murder,” she said earnestly. “There is something going on here, Charles. This is not as straightfoward as it might seem.”
“It isn’t straightforward at all,” Charles replied. “I have not yet seen the crash scene, but Ned suspects foul play. It was Young Jessup who discovered the wreckage, you see. I didn’t get an opportunity to talk with Ned because it was urgent that I get what I could from Albrecht. But when I left the surgery, there was a light in the jail. Ned was still interrogating Jessup.”
Kate regarded him soberly. Jessup? Yes, she could see that logic. The young man had been loud in his claims, for a time, at least, that Bradford’s Daimler was responsible for his father’s death—the very same Daimler that now lay in the ravine beneath Devil’s Bridge. If foul play were involved, it was logical to think of Jessup first. Perhaps he had only professed to accept the coroner’s ruling of death by natural causes and had been waiting to exact revenge in a craftier, more cunning way, by arranging for the motorcar to be involved in an accident, in a spot where a crash was sure to end in serious injury or death for the driver. An
d that would not be hard to do, Kate thought, reflecting on her own wild ride in the Peugeot. If a pedestrian had stepped into her path, and she had swerved or tried to brake, the motorcar would certainly have tipped over and crashed. The crime would have been nearly perfect, for someone on foot would have left no evidence at the scene.
But as she massaged Charles’s heels and began to sort through the myriad images of the evening, Kate could not escape the conviction that Jessup was not the only one who might harbor a guilty secret. To judge from their behavior, her guests—more than one of them—had been hiding something, some individual or shared knowledge. It might not have to do with the wreck of the Daimler, but then again it might.
And Albrecht’s death wasn’t the only mystery afoot. There was the assault on Dunstable, for instance. According to his report, two men had jumped on him in the alley, hit him over the head, and buried him in the dung heap. Or was that account a clever fabrication, contrived to explain an otherwise inexplicable absence? And there was that mysterious business of the grapnel’s removal, which could so easily have resulted in two more deaths. If the balloonists had died, would those fatalities have been thought accidental?
Charles gave her a crooked smile. “And you, my love? How did you superintend that unruly crew through dinner?”
“Swiftly,” Kate said with a little laugh, putting her troublesome thoughts aside. “No one seemed to have much of an appetite, so I asked Mudd to see that the plates were removed and the next course brought as quickly as possible. We romped through dinner with very little conversation other than the snapping and snarling among the men. And then the ladies and I adjourned—gratefully, I must say—to take our coffee in the drawing room. That was the moment at which Lady Henrietta put in her startling appearance and—”
“What?” Charles sat bolt upright. “The Marsdens have come back?”