The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  The urge to unburden himself warred with the habit of discretion.

  Lucien contented himself with saying, “I have been making inquiries into matters about which people might rather I not inquire.”

  Miss Fitzhugh was having none of it. With excessive politeness, she inquired, “What matter of matters might these matters be?”

  Lucien felt a reluctant grin lift the corners of his lips. “You’re going to think it sounds mad. I think it sounds mad.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Miss Fitzhugh reassuringly. “I have a very high tolerance for insanity. It runs in my family.”

  Was that meant to be reassuring? Not that he had anything to crow about. He, after all, was the one with a family curse. And, apparently, dead chickens. “Do you know anything about my parents?”

  Miss Fitzhugh perked up. “They died?”

  “They were murdered.”

  “Oh.” The blunt words made Miss Fitzhugh’s eyes widen. Surprise was followed by speculation, and, then, something else entirely. She leaned forward and rested her hand on the arm of his chair. “Poor old thing. You haven’t had an easy time of it, have you?”

  Lucien didn’t know what to say. He’d expected shock, yes. Repulsion. Or ghoulish curiosity. Those were the usual reactions. But not sympathy.

  Clearing a throat that felt suddenly tight, Lucien shrugged. “I wouldn’t recommend it as an experience.” He looked up at Miss Fitzhugh. “Where are your parents?”

  “Not dead,” she said promptly, and then grimaced, as if she realized how that sounded. “They’re quite innocently occupied in Norfolk. My mother doesn’t like town.”

  “Then this house—”

  “Belongs to my brother, Turnip,” she said easily. She wrinkled her nose at the drapes. “He had it all redecorated a few years ago in an Egypto–Pink Carnation theme. I was rather hoping Arabella would take it all in hand, but then there was Parsnip, and—here we are.”

  She sighed, with a put-upon air, but there was no mistaking the depth of affection behind it, or the pride in her voice when she mentioned Parsnip.

  Lucien’s chest tightened. He could remember, dimly, a time when his own family had been like that.

  Recovering himself, he said, “Turnip . . . Parsnip . . . Is everyone in your family named for a vegetable?”

  “Turnip is really Reginald. And Parsnip is Jane. But Reggie’s friends got in the habit of calling him Turnip. And then when little Jane was born . . .”

  Miss Fitzhugh glanced up at the portrait over the mantelpiece, a little smile curving her lips.

  As Lucien watched, the smile turned wistful around the edges. Straightening her shoulders, she turned back to Lucien and said brightly, “Well, it all seemed rather inevitable, really.”

  Lucien found himself watching her closely, trying to get a hint of what lay beneath that confident exterior. “No one has taken to calling you Carrot? Or Rutabaga?”

  “No,” said Miss Fitzhugh quellingly. “But we weren’t meant to be speaking of me. We were meant to be determining who is trying to secure your demise.”

  “I wish you would stop saying that,” murmured Lucien.

  “Ignoring unpleasantness seldom makes it go away.” Miss Fitzhugh considered for a moment. “Except in the case of history compositions, which really isn’t at all applicable in this instance. So, you see, you would do better to tell me.”

  There was something lacking in that logic, but the urge to confide was too strong to split hairs.

  “I was told yesterday that my mother—” Lucien had trouble getting his lips around the words. He forced himself to spit it out. “That my mother was engaged in funneling secrets to the French. That she was a spy.”

  “They do get in everywhere, don’t they?” said Miss Fitzhugh soothingly. As Lucien gaped at her, she added, in measured tones, “Spies, I mean. Really, they’re worse than moths. We had a terrible problem with them at my school.”

  “Moths?”

  “Spies. They were smuggling messages in— Never mind all that.” Miss Fitzhugh sat back on the settee and folded her hands in her lap. “As you see, I am not without experience in these matters.”

  Lucien shook his head. He supposed it shouldn’t have surprised him. Nothing about Miss Fitzhugh was as he had thought it would be. “You make it all sound so . . . commonplace.”

  “Every situation is unique, of course,” Miss Fitzhugh said airily. She leaned forward, looking at him searchingly. “Do you believe your mother was a spy?”

  In his gut? No. But he was learning that his gut wasn’t a very reliable organ when it came to making large life decisions. Uncle Henry was right about one thing: there was far more to his parents’ lives than his twelve-year-old self had known. While he had been blissfully roaming the woods at Hullingden, they might have pursued intrigues of which he knew nothing.

  “It is not an impossibility,” Lucien said stiffly. And then, “My uncle believes her contact killed her, and my father, too, all those years ago.”

  Miss Fitzhugh’s head came up. “There’s a rather large flaw in that theory. Why would her contact kill her? It does seem rather imprudent to dispatch the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

  Lucien brushed that aside. “He might have learned all he needed to know.” His face darkened. “Or he might have feared that my mother might unmask him.”

  “I see.” Miss Fitzhugh gnawed on her lower lip, nodding thoughtfully. “And if you were to begin to poke around in the circumstances surrounding her death . . . Yes, I can see why someone might want to put a stop to that.”

  “Yes.” Now that the barrier had been breached, the words poured out. “That woman last night. Those weren’t daisies in her hand. Those were manzanilla flowers.”

  Miss Fitzhugh looked at him blankly.

  Sometimes he forgot that not everyone knew. He had been over it so many times that he had every detail memorized.

  Lucien said bleakly, “That was what killed them. Manzanilla bark in their tea.”

  He didn’t need to explain further. “That was the message.” Miss Fitzhugh gave a little shiver. “She was the message.”

  Lucien nodded, his lips tight. “A warning to me not to inquire further.”

  Miss Fitzhugh pressed her fingers to her temples. “Rather hard on that poor woman, I should think. Why her? Why kill her in particular?”

  Lucien looked at her helplessly. “I wasn’t lying. I haven’t any idea who she was.” Other than the superficial resemblance to his mother, an illusion created by the long black curls. “I can’t stop wondering. Did she have something to tell me? Was that why she was killed? Whoever she was.”

  “It’s not impossible, I suppose.” Miss Fitzhugh was silent, her brow furrowed. “When I saw her, with those flowers, for a moment, I thought I recognized— But, no. It’s gone.” She looked up at Lucien. “This is all a little . . . unreal, isn’t it?”

  Lucien made a feeble attempt at humor. “I thought you were accustomed to spies.”

  Miss Fitzhugh tossed her hair. “Spies, yes. Dead bodies, no. Unless . . . there is another possibility. What if this had nothing to do with you at all? What if someone wanted that woman dead?”

  Lucien looked at her askance. “Then why summon me?”

  Miss Fitzhugh pursed her lips, considering. “You do make a convenient scapegoat. It would be rather clever, really. Everyone would be so busy attending to you that they would never bother to ask about her.”

  Which was precisely what they had been doing.

  Lucien felt a sudden lightness. It would make him feel considerably less guilty to know that this woman’s death, though still tragic, wasn’t on his conscience.

  Then Lucien felt the weight of reality descend on him, depressing his spirits. “It won’t work,” he said. “Why deck her with manzanilla flowers? And my father’s snuffbox . . .”


  “Which might well have been your snuffbox,” Miss Fitzhugh pointed out. “It had the Belliston coat of arms on it. That was all anyone would have noticed.”

  It was a tempting theory. “Her hair,” said Lucien. Long black curls. “Her hair had been arranged to look like my mother’s.”

  Miss Fitzhugh sat up straighter in her chair. “That wasn’t her hair. That was a wig. Didn’t you notice? Under it, her hair was lighter. Reddish. I suppose,” she added doubtfully, “that she might have worn the wig herself, to disguise her identity.”

  “Or the killer brought it for her. Along with the other things.” Lucien remembered the girl on the balcony, so carefully arranged on that marble bench, with the improbably red roses on either side, his father’s snuffbox by her foot. The thought of it filled him with disgust. He pushed himself off his chair and paced rapidly towards the fireplace. “It’s sick—that’s what it is. Not just to kill her, but then to arrange her. Arrange her and stage her . . .”

  Miss Fitzhugh looked at him sharply. “What did you say?”

  Lucien looked down at her, startled. “I said it’s sick.”

  “No, after that.” Miss Fitzhugh rose from the settee, her skirt rustling. In the sudden silence, a piece of coal broke on the grate. “What did you say after that?”

  Lucien hardly remembered. “Something about arranging her?”

  “Staging her.” Miss Fitzhugh was staring at him like a medieval peasant confronted with a conjurer. She turned in an agitated circle, murmuring, “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts. . . .”

  “Are you quite all right?” Perhaps that comment about insanity in the family hadn’t been in jest after all. Lucien looked over his shoulder at the doorway. Should he call Mrs. Fitzhugh? The nurse?

  Miss Fitzhugh looked at him, her eyes blazing, two spots of color high on her cheeks. She looked remarkably handsome, if slightly demented.

  “Ha!” she crowed. She gave a little dance of triumph, her skirts swishing around her legs. “I knew I had remembered that for a reason!”

  “Hamlet?” inquired Lucien cautiously.

  “No, Ophelia.” Miss Fitzhugh lifted her head and looked him directly in the eye, her expression more than a little bit smug. “I know who she was.”

  The Pudding Lane Theatre was located in a cul-de-sac not far from Covent Garden. As the crow flew, it wasn’t terribly far from Brook Street. Via narrow streets clogged with the usual traffic of carts and carriages, the journey was considerably longer.

  Sally leaned over the edge of the phaeton. “Are you sure you shouldn’t have taken the lane to the left? If you’d like, I could—”

  “I’m not letting you drive,” said the duke, moving the reins to his other hand.

  Well, then. “I’m really quite an excellent whip,” Sally informed him. “I can drive to an inch.”

  Or, if not to an inch, at least to two or three inches. There had been only one little incident with that farm cart back in Norfolk, and, really, if people insisted on driving smack in the center of the road, what could they expect?

  “Besides,” Sally added, moving to firmer ground, “who discovered that woman’s identity?”

  “Presumed identity,” the duke corrected her. He looked at her sideways. “I shouldn’t have let you come with me, should I?”

  Let? Hmph. “There is nothing the least bit improper about taking a drive with a gentleman in an open carriage,” said Sally loftily.

  The duke maneuvered competently around a hansom cab. “Then why did you tell your butler that you were going shopping for laces with—?”

  “Lizzy,” provided Sally.

  The duke raised a brow.

  Sally looked at the duke with wide, innocent eyes. “I might be buying laces with Lizzy.”

  It had seemed like a good excuse at the time. She had needed something to tell Quimby as she dashed out the door behind the duke and she doubted that “chasing murderers with the Duke of Belliston” would have quite the same soothing effect on her sister-in-law.

  “But you’re not,” said the duke, betraying a dampening tendency towards literality.

  “A mere technicality. All I said was that I would be buying laces with Lizzy.” The duke failed to register comprehension. Sally sighed. “I have no doubt that at some point in the future, I will buy laces, most likely in the company of Lizzy. Even if she does tend, regrettably, to have rather unfortunate tastes when it comes to trim.” Sally made a show of readjusting her kid leather driving gloves. “I never made any representations that the buying of lace would occur today.”

  “I believe the word for that,” said the duke, “is lying.”

  “Nonsense. It’s merely misdirection.”

  Sally could have sworn she saw a little smile lurking around the corner of the duke’s mouth. “Which is another word for . . .”

  Some people had no gratitude.

  Some people had also missed the proper turn. “There,” said Sally, pointing. “There’s Pudding Lane. You’ll have to circle around and go back.”

  “Hmm,” said the duke. He looked at her from under the curly brim of his hat. “Misdirection, you said?”

  Yes, that was definitely a smile. Despite herself, Sally found herself smiling back, struck by how the duke’s whole face changed when he smiled.

  The duke reined the horses in. The smile faded from his eyes. “It’s not too late, you know. I can still bring you back home.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Sally. “I didn’t come all this way simply for the pleasure of a drive in the rain.”

  The duke regarded her seriously. “If I had any decency, I wouldn’t embroil you in this.”

  “I’m already embroiled,” said Sally simply. She had been embroiled from the moment she had stepped out onto that balcony. No, before that. She had been embroiled from the moment she had heard Agnes call the duke a vampire. What blue-blooded English girl could resist a challenge like that? “Everyone knows I found the body.”

  “Which I deeply regret,” said the duke. He turned to look at her more fully, resting his hand on the backboard behind her shoulder. “If I had had the wit last night to send you back inside . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” said Sally impatiently. “That’s all very chivalrous. But I’m certainly not going to let you tackle a killer alone. In a manner of speaking,” she added quickly. “I am happy to leave all physical exertion to you.”

  Fisticuffs were both undignified and hard on one’s wardrobe. Several years ago, thinking it seemed rather romantic, Sally had badgered Turnip to instruct her in the use of an épée, but had discarded the exercise after discovering that it was, indeed, exercise.

  The duke seemed to be having trouble controlling his emotion. “How very generous of you.”

  Sally suspected she was being mocked. “Do I seem like the sort of person who would let a killer run free?”

  The duke regained control of his face. “If I were a murderer,” he said gravely, “I would make sure to confine my murderous activities to regions far from your vicinity.”

  “Hmph,” said Sally. Since she wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted, she decided to ignore the comment entirely. “That’s the theater, there,” she said unnecessarily.

  In the gray afternoon light, it looked much smaller and shabbier than it had at night, with the flambeaux blazing on either side and the cul-de-sac crowded with the carriages and sedan chairs of the fashionable. The neoclassical facade had a rather down-in-the-mouth air, the marble weathered and chipped. The theater had opened only three years before, as a rival to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, but, despite a brief fad the previous year, it had enjoyed only modest success.

  The duke came around to hand her down. His hand closed firmly around hers. “No second thoughts?”

  “What
can possibly be the harm in inquiring into an actress?” Sally replied airily. “If I’m wrong, there’s no harm done.”

  And if she was right . . .

  Sensing that the duke was about to muster that objection, Sally added hastily, “Besides, I’ve always rather wanted to see what a theater looks like during the day.”

  The answer to that appeared to be “unimpressive.” The lobby seemed smaller, somehow, without the usual crowd of people. Only a handful of candles blazed in the great chandeliers, just enough to alleviate the worst of the gloom. It was chilly, too, with a cold that seeped through the stones.

  “Oh, my prophetic soul!” rumbled a voice that seemed to echo off the grimed giltwork on the ceiling.

  “Yes, yes,” said another voice, in more prosaic tones. “That’s all very well, but it’s the wrong play. Bother it, Kenyan, can’t you wait until after rehearsal to hit the bottle?”

  The duke’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds like . . .”

  “A rehearsal in progress,” said Sally with satisfaction, following after the duke as he pushed through the velvet curtains separating the lobby from the pit.

  Sure enough, on the abandoned stage stood two actors. Sally recognized the leading man as Hamlet in Hamlet and Mr. Sleazle in The Tutelage of Scandal. The actress was unknown to her, gaily dressed in a frock that lurched at fashion but missed by about three flounces too many.

  Seen up close, without the usual distractions of the other theatergoers, the theater was, Sally concluded critically, not all that much more sophisticated a setup than Miss Climpson’s annual amateur theatricals.

  To be fair, the sets leaning against the back of the stage, awaiting proper deployment, did seem to be somewhat sturdier. At Miss Climpson’s, the actors had labored under constant danger of toppling scenery. Abigail Dimsdale had spent a week in the infirmary after being lobbed in the head by Juliet’s tower, which, it turned out, was not designed to be taken topically.