The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  The inspector got down from the bed, feeling shaken. “It’s a mercy you thought to ask me to close that window, my lady. This here bed’s a death trap. What’s the matter with good old-fashioned ticking? Well, Mr. Jones, that’s that. An accidental death if ever there was one.”

  Bertram Jones closed his notebook and an almost sulky look crept over his moonlike face. He had had visions of standing in the dock at the Old Bailey, giving evidence in one of the most sensational murder trials of this century or the last.

  Susie rose to her feet, looking white and ill.

  “You’ve had a rough time, my lady,” said Inspector Disher sympathetically, middle-class speaking to middle-class. “Don’t let these here servants push you around. It’s a pity the roads are so bad. You need your ma and pa.”

  Susie suddenly thought of the safe girlhood world of Camberwell and gulped.

  “We’d best be going,” the inspector went on. “I’ll just have a word with his lordship, and then we’ll be off.”

  The two policemen found Giles pacing the hall at the foot of the stairs. “Well?” he demanded.

  “Innocent as a newborn babe,” said the inspector. “And very much in need of a bit of loving kindness. I went through a reconstruction of the accident and, believe me, my lord, that’s all it was—an accident.”

  “Thank you very much, Inspector,” said Giles, noting, however, the gloomy look on the village constable’s face. Had Susie’s mock innocent appeal tricked the fatherly inspector?

  Giles still believed Susie to be an ex-actress, and unfortunately the inspector said nothing to enlighten him.

  And so it was when Giles entered the rose chamber a half an hour later and found Susie sitting meekly by the fire, he found himself becoming angry and suspicious.

  Nonetheless he said politely, “It must be a great relief to you that the matter of my uncle’s death has been cleared up.”

  “Indeed, yes,” said Susie in a flat, dull voice, as if she did not care much one way or another. Enclosed by the heavy walls of the keep, she felt as if she were living in some medieval nightmare from which she would shortly wake to find herself safely back in her bed in Camberwell.

  “And do you feel sorrow over your husband’s death?” pursued Giles with an edge to his voice.

  “Oh, y-yes,” lied Susie, “I miss him very much,” her voice sounding thin and false in her ears.

  The nervous strain of the past few days mounted to breaking point in Giles’s brain. Her false innocence combined with that immature sensuous body maddened him.

  “If there’s one thing I cannot bear, it’s people who say one thing and think another. But with your training, you must be used to it.”

  “My training?” Susie looked at him all wide-eyed bewilderment.

  He walked impatiently across the room to where she sat by the fire and looked down at her. “You may fool a lot of people, Lady Blackhall, but you do not fool me. I’m wise to you. So let us drop this farce.”

  Susie got to her feet. “I do not know what you are talking about, my lord,” she said, still in that expressionless voice. “But I have stood enough this day. I am going to my room.”

  He caught hold of her arms in a painful grip, moved by some impulse he couldn’t begin to fathom. She looked up at him with those enormous eyes, and her childish mouth trembled.

  He pulled her close and bent his head, and his mouth closed savagely over hers. A wave of passion broke over the pair of them, and they kissed and kissed and kissed as if they could never stop, while the winter wind moaned around the old castle and the three wives of the late earl stared down with their painted eyes.

  He suddenly shoved her roughly away from him.

  “You tart!” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I must be mad!”

  It was the final straw for poor Susie. She collapsed into the armchair by the fire and, covering her face with her hands, she wept bitterly for a youth and innocence that had seemed to have been snatched from her, from fear at the ever-encompassing walls of this gothic nightmare.

  “Dr. and Mrs. Burke,” announced Thomson, the butler, from the doorway.

  Giles stared at the middle-aged couple, who stared back. They looked the epitome of suburban respectability. There was a long silence. A log crackled in the grate, and the tapestries moved gently on the walls, making the embroidered green and gold figures of the huntsmen seem to come to life.

  Then Thomson gave a discreet cough. “My lady’s parents, my lord.”

  Then the tableau sprang to life.

  “Mama!” cried Susie pathetically, rushing into that lady’s arms.

  “My lord?” Dr. Burke strutted pompously forward. “This is a sad blow to our little girl. We were unable to get here sooner. The roads, you know.”

  In one blinding, awful moment Giles realized that all that his uncle had told him about Susie was a complete fabrication. The girl was as innocent as she looked.

  He numbly rang for the housekeeper and told Mrs. Wight to prepare rooms for the unexpected guests. He watched the still-weeping Susie being led off by her mother and turned his suddenly weary attention to Dr. Burke.

  “Allow me to offer you a brandy, Doctor,” he said. “You must be cold after your journey.”

  “Very kind of you, my lord,” said Dr. Burke, beaming. “Very kind, my lord. Such thoughtfulness, my lord.”

  Snob, thought Giles, but no blackmailer. Oh, dear!

  Upstairs, Mrs. Burke was in her element, sending servants flying hither and thither to fetch every comfort for her daughter, from stone hot water bottles to put at her feet to ice packs to put on her head.

  The servants were inclined to be condescending, but got short shrift from Mrs. Burke. It was not for nothing that she had broken in several gauche parlormaids and a recalcitrant Camberwell cook-housekeeper. Bursting with energy despite her fatiguing journey, she lectured the sullen servants on the Christian duties of obedience and threatened them with the everlasting torments of hellfire should they disobey.

  Felicity’s acid lady’s maid, who had nosed into Susie’s bedroom out of curiosity, was roundly told to take her insolent face away and to take some powders for her liver, which was obviously disordered. Mrs. Burke was vulgar in the extreme, but she was magnificent, and Susie lay gratefully back against the cool, fresh linen of the pillows and let it all wash over her.

  Eventually, after boring Giles with a long list of platitudes, Dr. Burke dropped in to say good night.

  Downstairs, Giles paced nervously up and down with a replenished glass of brandy in his hand. Giles was no saint. He was a normal, healthy British aristocrat. Therefore he reacted normally to the discovery that he had behaved like a cad and that Susie’s parents were respectable after all.

  It was all the spineless girl’s fault, he decided. Couldn’t she have opened her silly mouth and told him something? How could she, mocked his conscience, when her mouth was so efficiently covered by your own?

  “I am going abroad, that’s what.” said Giles, stamping on his conscience. “And I shall not return home until those middle-class morons have taken their leave. When I return, I shall suggest that dear Susie should set up residence elsewhere, preferably as far away as possible, where she can sit out her widowhood and eventually marry some young fool who likes colorless little girls.”

  Then he wondered why he felt so depressed.

  Upstairs, Susie pretended to fall asleep so that she could escape from the attentions of her parents. She was glad her mother was bullying the servants—both deserved the other. Over her seemingly sleeping body, the Burkes sat at either side of the bed and congratulated each other on how clever they had been. To hear them, one would think they had planned the earl’s death and subsequent will.

  “Our dear little girl—a widowed countess,” sighed Mrs. Burke.

  “Every cloud has a silver lining,” agreed Dr. Burke. “You know, my dear, I feel it is our duty to stay with Susie as long as possible, until she gets over h
er shock.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed,” said his wife complacently. “Just think! Susie is so rich. She will be able to travel, give balls and parties, be presented to His Majesty. Thus does God reward His followers.”

  Rich? thought Susie, turning this news over in her brain. Money!

  “We shall go everywhere with her, of course,” said Dr. Burke. “After all, it’s thanks to us that she has had this good fortune.”

  Good fortune! thought Susie dismally. To have been frightened out of my wits. To have been sick with fear. To know that I cannot face society with such parents. Don’t they know what these people are like? Giles, who kisses and mocks and torments and insults. Felicity, who bullies. I cannot trust my parents. If there is an ugly, senile, old lord somewhere, they will have me married as soon as ever I’m out of my widow’s weeds.

  The ordeal she had just gone through might have given a more wordly girl brain fever. But to Susie’s still-immature mind, they were all actors in some strange gothic play from which she might awake if she could escape them all. The tragedy of the earl’s death and the subsequent investigation by the police had left her brain and feelings singularly untouched.

  She was young and strong and healthy, and tomorrow was another day. She had forgotten her strange passion when Giles had kissed her. It had been wiped from her memory by his subsequent insult. She would be glad if she never saw him again.

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” said Dr. Burke, rising to his feet and unconsciously echoing his daughter’s thoughts. “Yes, I think we shall be at Blackhall Castle for quite a long time, my dear. Yes, yes, quite a long time.”

  But the doctor and his wife had reckoned without Felicity. She had arrived back late after visiting a neighbor who lived a mere thousand or so acres away. She was informed by Thomson of the arrival of Susie’s parents, and learned that they were not low blackmailers but a respectable doctor and his overly religious wife.

  She moved into battle first thing in the morning, and the poor Burkes fell before her first attack. For although Dr. and Mrs. Burke were snobs, Lady Felicity was an archsnob and had honed the art of snubbing and cutting in the best drawing rooms in London, where competition was fierce. After all, being at the top of the social tree does not stop one from being a frightful snob. There is, after all, no fun in being at the top if you cannot make sure that no one else gets there, especially a pushing couple of Camberwell suburbanites.

  The Burkes pleaded that their daughter needed them. Lady Felicity pointed out that Susie’s manners were deplorably common, and that it was for her own good that she be severed from her parents’ low-class influence.

  Mrs. Burke hinted at hellfire. Felicity retorted with a word that Mrs. Burke had up till then only seen written on walls and had often wondered about, but now she felt she knew what it meant.

  Routed at last, chivied and hounded and humiliated, the Burkes were driven to the station after a mere three days visit.

  Giles could have eased their humiliation, for he was not in the least afraid of Felicity and had always had a soft spot for the underdog. But Giles had left for France after persuading himself to take a well-earned holiday.

  Had he stayed, Felicity and Susie would not have been left together, and the shocking tragedy would not have occurred.

  But he was not clairvoyant. He was merely a handsome young man with a guilty conscience, who wanted to put as much mileage between himself and Susie as possible.

  Chapter 5

  Winter held a firm grip on the south of England. A brief thaw in February had melted the snow. Then the wind had turned, hurling icy gales in from the sea; dry, frozen gales that whistled and sang through the hard, dry grass.

  Like a sleeping princess, Susie remained immured in the strong walls of the keep, escaping occasionally from Felicity’s harsh social training to lie on her bed and weave endless fantasies about that homely young man who would one day ride up to the castle walls to rescue her.

  Dominated by Felicity’s iron will, Susie never contemplated escaping by herself. Her late husband’s man of business had paid her a visit and had taught her how to write checks for “pin money,” and had advised her to charge everything else and have the bills sent to him.

  Susie longed to buy some pretty dresses, but it was unthinkable that she should wear anything but black until at least a year of mourning had passed. She had been allowed to visit the local town of Barminster, draped in a heavy black crepe veil and accompanied by Felicity. She had been allowed to draw a small sum of money from the bank but had been unable to spend any of it, since Felicity found all her choices, such as a pretty fan or a smart black plush hat, “utterly common and frivolous.”

  Everything seems to be damned as “utterly common,” thought poor Susie. Oh, that I had stayed in Camberwell and maybe had married someone comfortable like the grocer’s boy.

  But she hadn’t, and she had therefore gained Lady Felicity as a mother-in-law.

  Little did Susie know that Felicity had reluctantly to admit that Susie was coming along very nicely indeed. She still said “theeter” instead of theater, “blouse” instead of bloose, and “chariot” instead of charrot. But she had stopped saying “ever so” and pronouncing really, “reelly.” Obscurely alarmed that she might no longer have anything to bully Susie about, Felicity started on about the servants one cold, bleak day when both women were warming their feet at the fire in the rose chamber.

  “I could order them to treat you with respect, of course,” said Felicity grimly. “But respect from servants is something that must be earned.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Susie hesitantly, “they feel they are following your example.”

  “What do you mean, girl?”

  “I—I m-mean,” stuttered Susie, “I know you have my best interests at heart, b-but the s-servants hear you ordering me about, and therefore—just perhaps, you know—that makes them think that I am not a person to be treated with respect.”

  “Balderdash!” said Lady Felicity vehemently, and then quickly changed the subject, for she privately felt that there might be some truth in what Susie had said. “We will continue your education in good vintages,” said Felicity. “Go down to the cellar and bring back a bottle of good vintage claret.”

  “Very well,” said Susie meekly, all the fight going out of her.

  She left the room only to return some minutes later.

  “The cellar door is locked,” she said, “and I can’t find the key anywhere. I can’t find Thomson or any of the servants.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Felicity, striding over to an old escritoire in the corner and jerking open the drawer. “I keep a few spare keys here. Ah, this is the one. Don’t lose it.”

  Susie took the huge key, which weighed a ton, and wondered how anyone could be supposed to lose a monster like that.

  She then went back through the hall and along a stone passage leading off the far corner until she came to the cellar door. It took all her strength to turn the huge key in the lock, but at last the door swung silently open on well-oiled hinges.

  Susie went silently down the stairs and paused in amazement halfway down. The cellar was ablaze with candles burning in various empty bottles. On the far wall a wine rack had been pushed aside to reveal an open door with steps leading downward. The cellar was full of the thud and boom of the sea. It was also full of every servant of Blackhall Castle and five rough-looking seamen who were rolling barrels into the center of the floor while Thomson, the butler, ticked off various items in a notebook.

  Now, to a more sophisticated young lady, Thomson would simply have been checking a consignment of brandy from the wine merchants, which was being delivered by a hitherto-unsuspected door.

  But to Susie, who lived more between the pages of romances and in her own fantasies these days than she did in the real world, the explanation was simple.

  “Smugglers!” she cried, clapping her hands in childish delight.

  The servants stood frozen with shock. Thomso
n’s face was ashen.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Thomson,” said Susie, “but perhaps you could find me a good bottle of vintage claret. I’m supposed to pick it myself, but perhaps, this once, you could do it for me and not tell Lady Felicity.”

  “No, indeed, my lady,” said Thomson, galvanized into action. He seized a bottle of Chateau Lafite less tenderly than he should and presented it to Susie.

  “My lady,” he said desperately. “My lady, please…that is…I mean to say…we should be most grateful if you did not mention this to Lady Felicity.”

  “Oh, no,” said Susie innocently. “Smuggling is so very secret, is it not? I shall say nothing to anyone.”

  She tripped lightly up the stairs, swinging the bottle by the neck as if it were lemon squash.

  The servants and smugglers waited in silence until she had gone.

  “Well, I never,” said Mrs. Wight, the housekeeper, collapsing onto a barrel.

  “That was a close one,” said Thomson, mopping his brow.

  “Think she’ll keep mum?” grated one of the smugglers.

  “Yes, God bless ’er,” said Thomson fervently. “She won’t tell. She’s no more than a babe who thinks we’re playing games.

  “We’ve been a bit rough on her,” he added slowly. “Reckon as how us ought to be extra polite to her. For she’s not always going to think smuggling’s a game like Hunt the Slipper or Forfeits.”

  And so it was that a very gratified Susie and a much-surprised Lady Felicity noticed the servants’ change of demeanor. Lady Felicity’s grim lady’s maid, Carter, knocked at Susie’s door before dinner and begged most humbly to be allowed to arrange Susie’s hair and help her with her dress. Susie duly presented herself in the dining room, looking as elegant as a fashion plate and as beautiful as a spring day. Lady Felicity felt quite ill just looking at her. But it was the behavior of the servants that really made Lady Felicity jealous—a jealousy that was indirectly to lead to her death.

  The servants were simply fawning on Susie, she thought sourly, so Felicity tried to think of some new way to make Susie feel inferior.