by Joan Smith
“How did you come to end up here at Granhurst?” Sir Ludwig managed to slip in when he stopped for breath.
“I was over to Shaftesbury yesterday again looking for Mr. Uxbridge, and find he’s broken up housekeeping. The old malkin at the door wasn’t the same housekeeper he had before, which made me suspect something amiss. I stuck around and got in after dark by means sometimes employed in my trade, to find him gone for good. All his personal effects taken away, so I doubt he means to return. There wasn’t so much as a shoe in the closet, nor a shirt in the drawers.”
I saw Sir Ludwig’s mind was working. He too had been there yesterday, but as it was his first visit, he had assumed the housekeeper was Mr. Uxbridge’s regular one. She must have been paid to keep quiet I suppose. I had little time to think of it as Williker was off again, and I didn’t mean to miss a word.
“I learned in the village Uxbridge regularly employs a couple called the Dobbles, a rough and ready pair they are by all accounts, as popular as smallpox. I figure the affair with Sir Geoffrey tipped him the clue he was hot, and Mr. Morley tells me as well there was a woman at his place asking pretty hard questions. With one thing and another, he’s tipped us the double. Flown the coop, as you might say. Morley told me yesterday evening of your visit, and I thought I’d stop to have a word with yourself on my way back to London. The housekeeper there tells me you were mighty interested in this Miss Smith woman.” It was Sir Ludwig’s turn to have his soul burned by the gimlet eyes of Mr. Williker. He outlined my history, which I think was no revelation to Williker, as he nodded in a way that indicated he had heard it all before. “It’s a rum set-up surely, such a brace of Misses Smith and people dabbling in the arts, and vanishing under our noses. All part and parcel of the Grafton case when we get to the bottom of it,” he told us.
“If we ever do,” I said wearily.
“Never you fret your head about that, miss. I haven’t but one unsolved case in my files, and that one never will be solved, for it’s Lord . . . it’s a lord that stole the necklace, and those lads stick together worse than gypsies.”
“I don’t see how we will solve it unless we get a line on Uxbridge,” Sir Ludwig mentioned.
“Aye, he’s the bird at the bottom of it sure as I’m a homo sapiens, but I’ve a fair notion where he’s to be found right enough. Spoke many a time to Mr. Morley about some three-pronged picture he wanted him to buy, and it was a Mrs. Knightsbridge in Scotland that had one corner of it. Morley had another. A regular ugly thing it was. Beats old Nick why anyone would want it, but it was old you see, and age is a wonderful thing in art. The older it is, the better the collectors like it. I investigated Mrs. Knightsbridge, and she’s his sort of a victim. A rich woman left a bunch of pictures by some relatives, and handling the whole herself. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear our Mr. Uxbridge has nipped up to Edinburgh to try his luck with her.”
I sat, trying to catch Sir Ludwig’s eye when this familiar name and locale arose. He steadfastly refused to look at me, thus giving me absolutely no clue as to whether we were to mention our knowledge of the woman. Why did I feel that spurt of dislike of her every time I heard her name?
“It is Mrs. Knightsbridge who was Miss Smith’s last employer. Did Morley happen to mention that to you?” Kessler decided to ask.
“Aye, so he did. The suspicion arises as to whether Miss Smith wasn’t a cohort of Mr. Uxbridge’s, of course. In former times he worked alone, but it is certainly possible he took up with Miss Smith at some point, and got her to come along to Grafton’s. I can’t think why he’d do it, when the woman was held in such almighty high esteem by Mrs. Knightsbridge. Seems to me the woman would have been easy plucking between the two of them. But happen he wanted too much a few more pictures from Grafton before heading up north. Don’t see why he’d have Miss Smith come down, but then in affairs of the heart the head will oftimes be overruled. They say she was a fair-looking woman, Miss Smith.”
“Do you consider him a dangerous man? I mean, would he be likely to kill Miss Grafton?” Kessler asked.
“Kidnapping and killing haven’t been his way till the present. Still, a fellow as would steal can’t have an overpowering conscience, and if the rewards were great enough, I fancy he’d turn his hand to kidnapping or murder without too much hesitation. Or if the danger were great enough, for he don’t actually stand to make anything out of kidnapping the girl as he hasn’t demanded a ransom. She must have caught him dead to rights, poor girl.”
Mr. Williker then turned his attention to me, giving me a severe catechism regarding all my recent history. I answered him as well as I could. He nodded, then mentioned, “I believe I saw you out in the parks yesterday on my way to Shaftesbury. I heard your story in Wickey, and took the opportunity to have a look around the place. Idle curiosity you might say.”
“Was it you who hit me?” I asked.
“Eh?” he asked, completely stunned.
He was enchanted with my story. This at least was a new bit of information for him. He assured me he had not descended from his gig. Had done no more than drive up to the door, turn around and proceed to Shaftesbury. He had planned to stop off here today even without hearing from Morley that Sir Ludwig had been there yesterday, on the off chance that my turning up on December the second might hold some key in the Grafton case.
“So someone is after you, too,” he said, with a considering frown on his face. “That surprises me,” he confessed. It hurt him to have to admit it. He looked physically pained. He ran over the pertinent points a few more times, ending up by turning an accusing eye on me and saying, “I do believe I was wrong about you. I can’t see you’re necessary in the case at all. You don’t belong. I wonder if you’re not a red herring.” I waited for him to proclaim me a scarlet woman as well, but I wore the navy bombazine and looked respectable that day.
Sir Ludwig’s eyes flickered to me, and his lips were unsteady. Mr. Williker was aware of no opprobrium in the description. It was all business with him. “Yes sir, you’re not in the case at all. It could be all coincidence. Oh, I see you shaking your head at me, Sir Ludwig, but the fact of the matter is coincidence is an amazing creature. I had a case over in Devonshire where no less than three ladies had sapphire rings they couldn’t account for, all close enough alike to be the one was lifted from a vault. Coincidence!” he said, lifting his shoulders and indicting me with the word.
I had the distinct sensation I had been pushed well to the rear of his mind. Not forgotten, he was too much the bulldog for that, but shunted aside.
“What do you plan to do then?” Kessler inquired.
“It’ll be a jaunter up north for me. Bad time of the year for it, but then no time of the year is the right time for such a trip. Dr. Johnson, Dr. Samuel Johnson I mean, had the right saying for it. ‘The best road a Scotsman will ever see is the road south.’”
‘‘We would appreciate hearing what you learn there,” Kessler told him.
“We’ll keep in touch certainly. I’d appreciate your letting me know if you solve the young lady’s riddle as well,” Williker replied, quite clearly implying my fate was in no way interwoven with his case.
“Have you any suggestions as to how we might solve it?” Ludwig asked.
“Best to let the runners handle it,” he was told with a touch of professional condescension. “However, as you ask, I would suggest you keep a sharp eye on the little lady. There’s some mystery to do with her. I’ll take a look into it when I get back from Scotland, if you haven’t got it sorted out for yourself by then,” he offered just before leaving.
When he was gone, we sat looking at each other rather stupidly. “I wonder if he’s right and I am no more than a red herring in all this serious business. Nothing else but a runaway governess who has lost her memory.” Of course I mentioned nothing about my other possible identity.
“Who would be bothered skulking in my garden to tap a runaway governess on the head?” he pointed out reasonably. “No, Rose, it’s poss
ible you have no corner in the Grafton business. I don’t believe it myself, but you’re no runaway governess. I’ll bet my boots on that. Williker is right about one thing. There’s not much we can do. We’ll just have to sit tight and wait to hear how he makes out in Scotland. And of course keep a sharp eye on our red herring. Meanwhile, as you dislike the notion of advertising we shall amuse ourselves here in the interim with our New Year’s party, and tearing the Saloon to pieces for refurbishing.”
And that, with one little exception, is exactly what we did.
Chapter Ten
The exception in our routine was as follows. The next morning I received a note from Miss Wickey asking me to drop in to see her next time I was in the village. There seemed no urgency to it, and I thought little of it, but that there was another enclosure in the envelope. It had been sent out by Mulliner’s footboy, who did not await a reply. The note said: “Miss Smith: I am most eager to discuss with you our unfinished business. I shall be at the inn till noon, and expect to see you there, alone. For your own convenience, I know you would prefer it thus. Sincerely, Mr. Smith.” That’s all. I read it through a couple of times, with my hand trembling. It sounded perfectly menacing, yet as I reread it, there was nothing worse mentioned than ‘unfinished business’ which could be innocent. And why should innocence require no observers? I would prefer that we meet alone. It was impossible not to wonder if Mr. Smith were my last patron. Lover, in other words. If this were the case, he was correct in thinking I would prefer to meet him alone. Yet someone had undertaken to strike me on the head, and if not Mr. Smith, who else? If this was the manner in which Mr. Smith behaved when we were alone, I understood very well why I had fled him, and knew as well I would not meet him alone. My wish was not to meet him at all, but my curiosity had something to say in the matter. Folly to ignore the note altogether. To crumple it up and burn it, as darted into my head. I think all the same I might have done just that if Sir Ludwig had not strolled into the hallway to see who had come to the door. He took one look at my stricken face, then lifted my note from my fingers.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“He mentions my going alone,” I pointed out.
“He says you might prefer to go alone. Do you, in sight of your last meeting with Mr. Smith?”
“No, of course not,” I answered. Oh, but I didn’t want him to go with me!
There was no getting out of it. My bonnet was squashed on my head and my cape flung over my shoulders while I stood thinking of ways of being rid of him, and before I knew what to do, we were off. I haven’t a single idea what he said along the way. I have some vague recollection of his never being still a moment, prattling on excitedly about what the ‘unfinished business’ might be, in a perfectly cheerful way. When we got to the inn, Sir Ludwig went in and made enquiries, but there was no Mr. Smith registered, no message left for me.
He came out, hunched his shoulders and raised his brows. “A hoax,” he said. “No, hardly that I suppose. Mr. Smith didn’t wish to show his face when he saw you came accompanied. Another effort to get at you, in other words. I hope this makes you realize, Rose, that this is a serious business. The man means to harm you, or kidnap you. A good thing you didn’t go jauntering off to that inn alone. Be sure to let me know if he gets any more messages to you. What should we do now? I wonder if there’s any point poking around town, trying to find him?”
“Let’s go home,” I said. If Mr. Smith were at all eager to recover me, he’d find a way. I can’t say I was eager to return to a nondescript gentleman with a nasty habit of striking me. We were halfway back to Granhurst before I remembered Miss Wickey’s note, and mentioned it.
“Too bad,” he said. “I’ll ask her who gave her the note to include with hers, but I’ll take you home first. You look like the very devil.”
“Thank you.”
“Peaky is what I mean.”
He didn’t bother stabling the carriage, but left me at the door and returned straight to the village. Miss Wickey was no help. The note had been shoved under her door, with another note requesting that it be delivered to me. She hadn’t read it, of course, my note, but knowing my anxiety to discover who I was, had it sent off to me directly, and merely asked me to drop by and see her when I was in the village, as she often thought of me. It was a dead end, but it did serve to make me realize someone knew who I was, and was eager to speak with me. How aggravating to know the answer to my riddle was within five miles of me, and couldn’t be reached. I could only sit and wait for another message, but in the ensuing days, none came.
I redeemed some shred of decency in my own eyes very soon. Any slight resemblance to a governess I had previously borne was completely vanished. I behaved and was treated more like the mistress of the place, and a fairly demanding mistress I was, too. I don’t know how a party was managed at Granhurst in other years when I was not there to oversee it. This year it was left entirely in my hands. Or would it be more correct to say my hands grasped out and seized the opportunity? At least they were capable hands. Surely no mere mistress knew so well how to execute a polite party. This gave me some slight hope for my character.
After a good deal of rummaging through drawers, Abbie turned up a list two years old which we used as a basis for this year’s list. She helped me direct the cards, but in such an unformed hand that I surreptitiously rewrote hers when she was out of the room. My own penmanship was good, a trifle overly florid perhaps, with dainty loops and swirls, but a lady’s hand, not a streetwalker’s. ‘Artistic,’ Abbie called it, while Annie was kind enough to say it was ‘illegible,’ and she would teach me to write as I had forgotten. The chore had a keen sense of familiarity to it. I felt I had addressed many such a card in times gone by. Almost I could see myself at a desk with a stack of gold-edged cards by me, but no matter how hard I tried to discover what name was on the card as sender, it evaded me. I was happy for such a respectable memory all the same.
Refreshments, decorations, everything but the musicians was left to me. Abbie blinked her eyes in delighted astonishment when I mentioned champagne and lobster patties, and a host of other delicacies, whose names fell from my lips unbidden. Orgeat and fruit punch were banned as beneath us. This was how a party was managed; I knew no other way, but I seemed to know this lavish way very well.
Redeemed to respectability by my knowledge of a polite party, I blossomed. If I felt a liking for Sir Ludwig, it was hardly a new thing in the world after all, a mutual attraction between the sexes. Sir Ludwig remained docile throughout, by judicious doses of the indecent bordeaux gown. He was so embarrassed to be caught ogling my bosoms one evening that I even got permission to remove a particularly revolting glass cage of stuffed animals from a corner of the entrance hall and replace it on the table with a very nice Sèvres vase from an upstairs room. Two squirrels and a badger I believe the animals were, with a stuffed owl on a tree branch staring at them with huge glass eyes. Annie claimed the thing for her over-crowded chamber. It was as much as your life was worth to enter that room of hers. Stuffed to the rafters with all manner of junk, not one piece of which was allowed to be even moved, much less thrown out.
I knew how much food and wine were required for the party of one hundred guests, knew we would require extra help from the village, and all the spare pots and pans scoured up for duty, ordered without hesitation the hay for the stables. I had the spare rooms turned out and aired, oversaw the polishing of the lovely crystal chandeliers in the ballroom. The rags came away brown; the chandeliers could not have been properly cleaned in two years. I was in my element getting at last a shine on the fine furnishings that had been allowed to dull through indifference. The smell of beeswax and turpentine hung on the air, bringing peace and satisfaction to me. I had been wanting to have an excuse for this clean-up since my arrival.
I was not encouraged to go about outside the house, but guarded by the whole family, I did make the trip to Wickey for the ordering of the curtain material very early in the week, and to
see that they didn’t order up another salmon-pink carpet with wine roses. I talked Annie out of peach draperies by telling her quietly aside that if she insisted on pink, Sir Ludwig would dig in his heels and buy green again. She soon found herself enraptured with a much prettier shade of dusky rose. The carpet had to be ordered from a London catalogue. Wickey did not every day have an order for an Aubusson carpet. Abbie, bless her soul, fell in love with an elegant carpet of Aubusson design, an ivory ground wrought with deep blue pattern. A very few hints made Sir Ludwig aware how ill these new fineries would suit his ugly green plush sofas. He agreed to let us make the choice of new covering, in his eagerness to get out of the shop. I’m sure we could have gotten permission to rehang every window in the house, for he was champing at the bit to leave. He just said ‘Yes’ and ‘That’s fine’ to everything, with hardly a glance at it, or the price ticket, either. A little haggling would certainly have lowered the price on such a quantity of items. We ‘accidentally’ ordered sufficient extra material to cover a few cushions while we were about it. The house was inundated with noisy and uncouth workmen the next few days. We spent the week sitting on hardbacked chairs while the sofas were out being recovered, but were so busy stitching up the cushions and rooting through the treasure trove of an attic that we hadn’t much time to complain. Sir Ludwig found plenty of time to do it for us. He was the sort of a gentleman who was happier with the shabby familiar objects than having his peace disturbed with strangers coming and going in his home. I wondered, every time I saw him take a deep breath and frown when the bell rang how he had adjusted so quickly to my troublesome presence.