by Blythe Baker
“Do not touch me,” the old woman screamed, her voice hoarse and raw. Dark circles were gathering under her eyes, and I could tell even from across the party that her hands were the pale white of fresh snow. “I am capable of caring for myself.”
Lady Harwood grabbed her cane, having left her usual wheelchair inside the house, and took several steps towards where Dr. Shaw was backing away from Aunt Augusta, his hands in the air. “There is no shame in asking for help, my dear woman.”
“I am not your ‘dear’ anything,” Augusta claimed. “The only person here I care about remotely is my grandson, and he is the one who helps me. I do not need you or your doctor.”
Lady Harwood’s lips pursed, and she placed a hand to her chest. “I have never been treated so for offering someone assistance. I am only keeping an eye on you because your grandson seems more interested in the young women at this party than with your wellbeing.”
Nicholas laid his plate on the table, nodded his head to me in apology, and crossed the grass to assist his grandmother. When he reached her, he ran a soothing hand along her back and then pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. He whispered something to her I could not hear, and she smiled up at him. She truly did like him better than anyone else.
“Mr. Whitlock did nothing to deserve this unkindness,” Vivian Barry said, stepping forward to defend him since he showed no signs of defending himself.
“He did not,” Lady Harwood agreed. “Which is why it is not an unkindness. It is the truth. Mrs. Whitlock should consider hiring professional help before her grandson leaves her to flirt with half the country.
“Lady Harwood,” Charles Cresswell said. “I know you are upset, but please let’s try and stay calm.”
Suddenly, Charles Barry entered the scene, as well, stepping in front of Charles Cresswell to speak with Lady Harwood. “There is no need to attack any of the other guests. You did your duty by offering help to a woman in need, and it is no fault of yours if she is too stubborn to accept it.”
“Watch your words,” Nicholas warned, finally offering some kind of defense. “My grandmother does not owe anyone here an explanation for her actions. Especially you.”
“Especially me?” Charles Barry asked, chin tucked in, eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“It means she could buy your home and ten homes around it without hesitation,” Nicholas said.
Mr. Barry’s eyes narrowed, but before he could say anything, Charles Cresswell stepped between the two men. “I am sorry, gentleman, but I cannot allow you to hash out this fight here. My fiancée is distressed enough as it is. Please do not add to it.”
“I would never do anything to upset Catherine,” Charles Barry said, straightening his bow tie and stepping away with one last glare in Nicholas Whitlock’s direction.
Charles walked back towards where his sister was standing stonily with Alice, but as he reached her, she rushed past him to get to Nicholas and his grandmother. She said something to Aunt Augusta, but the words were drowned out in a loud, violent coughing fit. Nicholas patted his grandmother’s back gently, massaging soothing circles across her back and shoulders. Vivian hurried away to fetch the old woman a drink of water.
“She is acting like a servant to impress him,” Alice whispered to me. I hadn’t realized she’d walked over to stand next to me, so I jumped as she spoke. She laughed. “Everyone is very on edge. Catherine looks like she might scream at any moment.”
I wished I could be as calm as Alice was. She seemed to treat everyone and everything—save for Nicholas Whitlock—at the wedding as a joke. She showed no concern for her sister’s wedding ceremony or her mother’s wellbeing as Lady Ashton hurried back and forth between Lady Harwood and Aunt Augusta to see if either of the old women needed anything. The stress of the last several days and nonstop company in the form of Alice had finally begun to take its toll on me.
“At least Vivian Barry is trying to help,” I said sharply. “It is better to be a servant than a spoiled daughter of wealthy parents who does nothing other than relentlessly tease those around her.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were unforgivable by Alice’s standards, but it was too late. Her pink lips puckered into an angry knot, and before I could apologize or explain, she stomped away in the direction of the house.
As if things were not in chaos enough, just as Alice stomped into the house, the doors to the kitchen opened and the head chef came through the doors with a two-layer fruit cake in his hands. “Congratulations to the happy couple.”
Charles Cresswell hurried over to stand next to Catherine as the cake was placed in the center of the table, and the rest of the guests—including a fuming Lady Harwood and her humble physician, Vivian Barry who tried and failed to escort Aunt Augusta forward, and Charles Barry with a noticeably overflowing glass of wine—stepped forward, clapping and doing their best to pretend they cared about the upcoming wedding in any way.
Lord Ashton didn’t even do that much. He was standing over by the pond where Aunt Augusta had been a few minutes before, staring down into the water like he wanted to jump in. Lady Ashton hurried over to pull him into the party, but he shrugged away her efforts. When my aunt turned around and met my eyes, I tried to quickly focus my attention on the cake, so she would not know I had seen, but I knew I’d been caught. For days, I and everyone else had tried to convince Catherine that everything was going well. That her wedding would not be a failure and it would go off without a hitch. However, just in the small group of people in front of me, I spotted several hitches. It didn’t appear as though things could get worse.
Once the cake was sliced and handed out, the guests were busy enough eating that no one was fighting, and I thought it would be a good time to go inside and try to find Alice. She had been such a help to me over the last few days, ensuring I didn’t make a fool of myself in front of family members and old friends I could not remember, and I’d rewarded her by insulting her character. Even if Alice was in need of some reprimanding, it should not have come from me, and it was only right that I should go apologize. So, I refused a slice of cake from a servant and smoothed my sweaty hands down the beaded tulle of my dress. It was midday and already hot enough that I was uncomfortable. I could not begin to imagine how Aunt Augusta was enduring it in her usual velvet gown.
Just as the old woman crossed my mind, I heard a scream from the garden behind me. When I turned around, the guests were descending towards a table in the center. Lady Harwood was screaming for Dr. Shaw and Lady Ashton was waving her arms, trying to keep everyone away. I could not see Catherine or Charles, though I could see Vivian and Charles Barry standing off to the side, twin expressions of horror on their faces.
As I got closer, quickening my pace to figure out what had happened, Aunt Ruth and her three daughters moved to the right, and I saw a pale, blue-veined leg lying in the grass.
“Grandmother!” Nicholas Whitlock’s voice rose over the commotion. I moved around Aunt Ruth and saw him kneeling in the grass, his hand on the back of his grandmother’s neck, trying to lift her up. “Grandmother, can you hear me?”
Dr. Shaw was on the other side of Aunt Augusta, running his fingers under the sleeve of her gown to feel at her pulse. He probed in several different locations, pausing each time and staring up at the sky. Finally, he lowered his hand and shook his head.
“What happened?” I asked, trying to understand how everything could have fallen apart when I’d only been gone for half a minute.
Dr. Shaw stood up and brushed mud from the knees of his pants. He looked at me and then scanned the rest of the guests. “Augusta Whitlock is dead.”
9
“This is my fault. I killed her,” Nicholas said again, his face buried in his hands.
Charles Cresswell patted the grieving man’s back. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Nicholas. It was an accident.”
Nicholas lifted his head and shook it, his lips pinched together, trying not to cry.
Then, suddenly, he struck out, his fist slamming onto the table. “I should have been taking better care of her. It was my duty to watch her, and I didn’t do it. If I had stayed closer to her, I may have noticed her growing more ill.”
I set down a cup of tea in front of him, pushing it towards him. He needed to eat or drink something. It had been hours since the party, and he hadn’t done anything other than blame himself.
“We all saw her, Nicholas. No one noticed her acting unusual,” I said. Though, this wasn’t entirely true. I had noticed her color changing dramatically throughout the last few days, and everyone had seen her stumble and become dizzy. Though, I, like everyone else, associated this with her normal behavior. She was an old woman. Failing health was expected at a certain age.
He pushed the tea away and stood up, pacing across the sitting room. “I should have noticed. It was my duty to notice. She asked me to care for her, and I allowed myself to be distracted. I allowed her to be cared for by a thief.” Suddenly, he raised a finger in the air, eyes wide. “The stress of that confrontation probably played a part in her downfall. She slept all afternoon after Miss Brown was dismissed.”
Miss Brown had already been accused of theft, so it seemed wrong to also pin Aunt Augusta’s death on her. Besides, Aunt Augusta seemed to live her life in constant confrontation. I doubted whether one argument with a servant could have played any role in her demise, however Nicholas was not in a place to hear reason, so I decided to simply listen.
“I cannot believe this,” Catherine said, sipping on her fourth cup of tea. She grabbed her fiancé’s hand and pulled him closer to her, twining her fingers through his. “What are the chances?”
I knew what she meant. Another death at Ridgewick. The death of Mr. Matcham had been weighing heavily on the minds of those who had been at the last gathering at Ridgewick Hall, but no one thought it could possibly happen again. Yet, here we were, once again waiting inside while the police collected a body.
Suddenly, the door to the terrace opened, and everyone turned as Dr. Shaw, Lady Ashton, and Lord Ashton walked inside.
“How did she die?” Lady Harwood and Alice asked at the same time.
Alice had not spoken to me once since the party. It seemed even the death of a wedding guest was not enough of a distraction for her to forgive me for what I’d said.
“Is it contagious?” Lady Harwood asked, rubbing her hands together as though she was washing them.
Nicholas looked up at the trio in clear agony. His handsome features were twisted in grief.
“No one has any reason to worry,” Lady Ashton said, collapsing into an open seat at the end of the sofa. “Aunt Augusta died of natural causes.”
“Is that true?” Lady Harwood asked her personal physician, not trusting Lady Ashton’s assessment.
Dr. Shaw had his black medical bag at his side—the same bag I’d once searched for signs of a poison vial. He lowered it to the ground and ran the back of his hand across his forehead, clearing away a sheen of sweat. “It is true. The poor woman was old and in ill-health. There is no reason to think her death was caused by anything other than a failing body.”
Lady Harwood sighed with relief, but Nicholas Whitlock sagged in his chair and lowered his head into his lap. His shoulders shook with sobs.
Vivian Barry stepped forward to comfort him, but before she could reach him, Alice slid into place at his side, laying an arm over his shoulders. Vivian wrinkled her brow, but stepped away. Despite all of the horrible circumstances, I found myself smiling at Alice’s determination. I had to bite back the smile to keep from looking inconsiderate.
“So, natural causes?” Charles Barry asked from the back of the room. Since Augusta’s death, he had taken to drinking even more, and his voice was now slurred. “We do not need to worry about a plague?”
Lady Harwood gasped and began rubbing her hands together nervously again, as though just the mention of the word ‘plague’ would bring one into being.
“Natural causes,” Dr. Shaw reiterated.
As he said the words, the memory of him making a similar announcement came back to me. It had been in regards to the death of Mr. Matcham. His death was also believed to have been natural. Until I proved otherwise.
However, Aunt Augusta was not Mr. Matcham, I reminded myself. She was an elderly woman in ill-health. It was not unusual for elderly women in ill-health to die suddenly. Though, a point could be made that women who came from such wealth did not die so suddenly. They were attended to by nurses and physicians. They died quietly in their beds, surrounded by loved ones. Not in the middle of a tea party after fighting with the guests.
Nicholas’ sobs pulled me from my thoughts, and I realized something else unusual. Nicholas had inherited a good deal of his grandmother’s wealth. Within just a few hours, Nicholas Whitlock had become the wealthiest person in the room.
10
Aunt Augusta’s body had been removed from the grass and taken back to the police station, but everyone seemed keen to avoid the back garden, anyway. Guests sat on the front porch or paced along the path in front of Ridgewick Hall, but most of them remained indoors entirely. The house, which the day before had been filled with talk and laughter, felt eerily silent.
“This death is going to cast a shadow over the entire event,” Catherine said.
Lord and Lady Ashton, Catherine and Charles, and Alice and I had all gathered in one of the sitting rooms. As soon as I arrived, Lady Ashton asked a servant to pull the doors shut and leave so we could discuss matters. I didn’t know what there was to discuss until I saw Catherine’s face, her red, puffy eyes and damp cheeks.
“Everything is ruined,” she said, squeezing Charles’ hand until I thought he would cry out in pain. “This was supposed to be a celebration, and now it is a wake.”
“It is not a wake,” Lady Ashton insisted. “Most of our guests didn’t even know Aunt Augusta. And those who did didn’t know her well enough to mourn. Nicholas Whitlock is the only exception.”
Catherine snorted through a sob. “The most important exception. He hasn’t stopped crying for hours.”
“The wound is fresh,” Alice said, defending him. “He lost someone very close to him.”
Catherine wiped her hands across her cheeks and sniffled, sitting tall. She had never been an overly emotional woman, but it seemed the stress of the last few days had finally become overwhelming. I could not blame her.
“I understand that,” Catherine said. “But that does not mean I want his time of mourning to interfere with my wedding day.”
“There are more important things than your wedding, Catherine.” Alice said her sister’s name like an insult.
“Girls,” Lady Ashton warned before the argument could escalate. She turned briefly to Lord Ashton, but he was staring out the window, seemingly lost in thought. She sighed and looked back to her daughters. “Emotions are high right now, but I truly believe things will calm down and the wedding will carry on unscathed.”
“How?” Catherine asked. “A woman died.”
“A woman no one cared for to begin with,” Alice said, momentarily switching sides to comfort her sister.
Lady Ashton frowned and shook her head at Alice, though she did not disagree with her. It was hard to deny the truth of her statement. Aunt Augusta had made little effort to socialize or be friendly towards the other wedding guests. Even her own family knew very little about her beyond the fact that she was a wealthy shut-in who often accused others of thievery.
“That may be true, but there are other problems beyond the death,” Catherine said.
“Such as?” Lady Ashton asked.
Catherine twisted her lips to the side in thought and then pointed to her fiancé. “Charles Barry will not stop trying to insult Charles. I have not spoken to him in almost a year, but he acts like he is moments away from calling a duel for my honor.”
“I am not concerned about Mr. Barry,” Charles said, smoothing a hand down Catherine’s arm. “Do n
ot worry yourself about him on my account.”
“What of Vivian?” Alice offered, drawing a warning glare from Lady Ashton. The last thing Catherine needed was more problems to worry about. “She has been throwing herself at Nicholas Whitlock at every opportunity. At this rate, our guests may wonder whether we’ve invited a lady of the night.”
Lady Ashton gasped. “Alice Beckingham.”
“That is cruel, Alice,” Catherine said, shaking her head.
Alice shrugged and my aunt closed her eyes and sighed. “We just need to remain positive. Though Augusta’s death was unforeseen, it has done nothing to upset our schedule or our planning. We can still move forward with the wedding, and isn’t that the most important thing?”
“Yes,” Alice agreed. “Plus, now that Aunt Augusta does not need her room, Rose and I will not have to share.”
She didn’t look at me as she spoke, though it felt like a small victory that she even said my name.
“You are going to stay in the dead woman’s room, Alice?” Catherine asked, eyebrow raised.
Alice’s eyes went wide, but before she could say anything, I cleared my throat. “I am happy to move into her room, Alice. You may have my room.”
My youngest cousin still would not look at me, but I saw her shoulders relax slightly.
“That is very kind of you, Rose,” Lady Ashton said, smiling gratefully. Then, she turned back to the room. “See? Everything is going just fine.”
As she spoke, there was a knock at the sitting room doors. Then, the doors pushed open and Aunt Ruth stepped inside, hands folded behind her back. “Do you all have a moment?”
“Of course,” Lord Ashton said. “You are family.”