by C. J. Archer
After a dutiful period of time, his lordship changed the subject. “We must be boring the ladies.”
My uncle blinked at his daughter then me as if he’d just noticed us. He looked disappointed.
“Not at all,” I said. “I enjoy hearing about the hotel’s plans for the future. I can see how a public restaurant, positioned facing the street, will attract a new clientele and not just hotel guests. This room can then be turned into a permanent ballroom.”
“All the best hotels have a restaurant for non-guests,” Flossy pointed out.
“But ours will be different,” Floyd told her.
“How?” Lord Rumford asked.
Floyd glanced at his father.
Uncle Ronald picked up his wine glass and saluted us with it. “Because it will be better.”
I watched Lord Rumford over the course of dinner. He was polite and listened attentively, even when my uncle talked incessantly about the hotel. He always gave an opinion when obliged to do so and drew Flossy and me into the conversation when possible. Indeed, because my uncle tended to ignore his children and me, and address only his guest, it was rather noticeable when Lord Rumford spoke to us.
Despite his politeness, he seemed lackluster. It was as if he were keeping up his side of the conversation merely because it was expected. Not knowing him from before Pearl died, I wasn’t sure if he was always like this in polite company or if it was something new and a result of her death. It must be hard to pretend to be cheerful when he’d just lost someone he cared about.
He made his excuses immediately after the dessert course. He bowed to Flossy and me then went on his way. Uncle Ronald also departed, but only from the table. He drifted around the dining room, greeting guests and stopping to talk to those who dined alone.
Floyd finished his dessert wine and rose too. I thought he’d follow in his father’s wake and greet guests, but he bade us goodnight then hurried out of the dining room. He eyed Uncle Ronald all the way, but with his back to us and the door, Uncle Ronald didn’t notice.
Flossy moved to sit next to me. She hailed one of the waiters and ordered tea. “Now, Cleo,” she began as he walked off. “We need to talk. Just because the position of his mistress is available, doesn’t mean you should fill it.”
I stared at her. Then I burst out laughing.
She pouted. “What’s so amusing?”
“You thinking I’m interested in Lord Rumford in that way.”
“I’m not the only one thinking it. I saw the look on Father’s face, and Floyd’s. They think it too.”
“That’s absurd. Why would you assume I’d want to be his mistress?”
“You came in on his arm which means you clearly know one another already. You have also declared that you’re not interested in marrying anyone, so the family thinks you want to be a kept woman, like Pearl Westwood. Not Mother, of course. She still has hopes that you’ll marry. I assumed Father thought that way too, but now I’m not sure.”
I followed her gaze to where her father sat at a table with a gentleman. “Do you all talk about me?”
The waiter arrived with a pot of tea and two cups. Flossy poured the tea and milk and added a lump of sugar to a cup before handing it to me. “Shall we go shopping tomorrow, Cleo?”
Goliath, Peter and Frank were calling on the other luxury hotels tomorrow to find out if Lady Rumford was staying at one of them. Until I could think of a way to discover Lord and Lady Wrexham’s movements on the day of Pearl’s death, I had nothing to do, and I would just be twiddling my thumbs waiting for their return. I might as well go out. But I didn’t want to go shopping.
“I thought I’d visit the British Museum tomorrow,” I said.
“But you dragged me there last week. Why do you want to go again?”
“Because I haven’t seen everything yet. You don’t have to come.”
She eyed me over the rim of her cup. “You’ll go alone? I’m not sure Mother would approve.”
“Flossy, I’m twenty-three and not an heiress. While I’m appreciative of everything your parents have done for me, I am free to do as I please. Besides, it’s just the museum.”
“But men can go there.”
“Scandalous, isn’t it?”
She gave me a withering glare. “There’s no need to be prickly.” She sighed. “Very well, I’ll come with you. At least the British Museum is better than the Natural History Museum where one can’t turn without bumping into a dead creature.”
The last person I wanted with me in any museum was Flossy. The last time, she’d been completely disinterested in any of the exhibitions and continuously asked when we were leaving. I’d rushed through my visit just to be rid of her. I liked her, but our interests were not aligned. “You don’t have to come,” I told her again.
She sipped her tea.
“Flossy, I am not going there to meet Lord Rumford or any other man. I give you my word.”
She lowered her cup. “Very well. You can go alone, and I’ll go shopping. But if Mother asks, we both went to the museum.”
It was my turn to narrow my gaze. Perhaps she was going to meet a man. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried or not. Unlike me, Flossy was an heiress. She was also quite unworldly. If a man was after her money, she might not be able to tell.
My walk around the museum not only proved to be educational, it was also cathartic. It gave me time to think as I wandered around the collections. By the time I arrived back at the hotel in the mid-afternoon I’d decided to be upfront with the Wrexhams and ask them what they were doing on the day of Pearl’s death, and also the reason why she called on Lord Wrexham. I would not tell them who I worked for, however. Indeed, by the time I arrived home, I realized I would have to lie if I were to get any answers. Lying for good reason was acceptable and this was a very good reason.
Or so I told myself.
Terence from the post desk waved me over when I entered the hotel and handed me a letter. “It’s from Harmony,” he said.
“Should you be reading my messages, Terry?”
“It wasn’t sealed,” he said defensively. “If Harmony didn’t want me reading it, she would have sealed it. She knows I read everything that isn’t sealed.”
I must remember to seal all my letters before giving them to Terence to send.
I unfolded the letter and read. Harmony asked me to meet her at the Aerated Bread Company’s Oxford Circus teashop at three-thirty. I glanced past Terence at the clock.
“You’d best get a move on if you want to make it on time,” he said. I suspected he wanted to know why I was meeting Harmony away from the hotel. If she hadn’t told him then I wouldn’t either. The fewer people who knew about my investigating, the better.
The ABC’s tea shop near Oxford Circus was a busy place filled with mostly women chatting and drinking tea at the tables, and four men. Three of those men were with Harmony. They looked like they’d rather be in a pub.
I sat and welcomed the cup of tea Harmony poured for me from the pot. The woman behind me bumped my chair as she got up to leave and some of my tea sloshed over the sides of the cup. “Next time we should meet at the Roma Café. It’s much quieter and the coffee is excellent.”
“I know the place,” Peter said. “But I’ve never been inside.”
“I don’t like coffee in the afternoons,” Harmony said.
I wiped the cup’s sides with a napkin. “I’m sure Luigi will make you a pot of tea.”
She managed to instill both a question and disapproval into the arch of her brow. “Luigi?”
I chose to ignore her and concentrate on the task at hand. “How are your inquiries going at the hotels?”
“No luck,” Goliath said. “We all spoke to one or more staff, but no one recalled seeing Lady Rumford.”
“Cost me a copper to get the doorman to talk,” Frank grumbled. “And then he had nothing useful to tell me.”
I reached for my purse. “Let me compensate you for your trouble.” I handed out coins,
hoping it covered their expenses.
Harmony handed hers back without a word. “I’m convinced the sighting of Lady Rumford was false.”
“It would seem so.”
Goliath picked up the teacup in one giant hand, the delicate handle pointing away from him. “So what’re you going to do now, Miss Fox?”
“I’ve decided to confront Lord and Lady Wrexham. I can see no other course forward.” I told them what Mr. Armitage and I had learned from the Wrexham servants and the theories we’d developed. “I think Pearl asked Wrexham for money to pay off her blackmailer. But I don’t know why she’d go to him when Rumford was her current lover. It doesn’t make sense.”
“She asked Wrexham first, right?” Peter pointed out. “She only asked Rumford when Wrexham wouldn’t cough up.”
“But why ask Wrexham at all?”
Harmony sat up a little straighter. “Perhaps the blackmailer had proof of her relationship with Wrexham but not Rumford, and threatened to expose it. Even if their relationship ended some time ago, it would be humiliating if it became public.”
It was an excellent theory and I told her so. Harmony sat back, satisfied with herself.
We finished our tea and went our separate ways. Since all four of them had the day off, I was the only one who returned to the hotel. I arrived there at the same time Flossy alighted from a hotel carriage. One of the porters rushed forward to help with her parcels. There were several, proving that she had been shopping, after all, although she still could have met with someone before or after. She’d not taken a maid to act as her chaperone.
“You’re back very late,” Flossy said as we headed for the lift. “You can’t possibly have been at the museum all day.”
“I met some friends for tea afterwards.”
She gasped and stopped me with a hand to my arm. “You have friends here in London? Are they down from Cambridge?”
My heart sank at my error. I couldn’t tell her about meeting the staff. She would be shocked and ask me not to do it again. I didn’t want to start an argument with her although I felt awful for not standing up for my friends, if I could call them that when I hardly knew them. “They’re already heading home again.”
“Next time invite them here for afternoon tea. I’m sure they’d love the Mayfair’s sponge cake.”
I smiled and nodded. I was such a coward.
As much as I was dreading confronting Lord and Lady Wrexham, I was looking forward to finally getting some answers. I felt certain I would today. My tactic couldn’t fail.
Thomas Adams, the footman, answered my knock. His face fell upon seeing me. “Bloody hell. Not you again. What’re you doing here?”
I straightened my shoulders. I didn’t have to answer to him. “Are Lord and Lady Wrexham at home?”
He pressed his lips together, huffed out a breath that smelled of cigarettes, and said, “He is, she isn’t, but he won’t see you. Go away.”
“I’m not leaving until he agrees to see me.” I folded my arms.
The butler appeared by Mr. Adams’s side. I’d met him on my first visit when I’d left him a hotel calling card with my name scrawled on it. “Is there a problem, Thomas?”
“Er. No, sir.”
I gave up on Mr. Adams. It was the butler I had to get past. He looked rather more formidable, however. Mr. Adams might be younger and more physically intimidating, but the butler had an air of command about him. I imagined entire armies would quake in their boots if he looked at them down his nose like he looked at me. I felt like something he’d stepped in and wanted removed from his shoe.
“I’d like to see Lord Wrexham, please. Be so kind as to tell him I’m here.”
“He’s not in.”
“He is, and I’d like to see him.”
The butler’s censorial gaze slid to Mr. Adams. “He’s too busy to see visitors at this moment. Would you like to leave your card again, Miss Fox?”
“He didn’t contact me after I left it last time so I expect this time will be no different. So no, I don’t wish to leave my card. I want to see him.”
The butler’s gloved hand curled into a fist at his side. “And as I said—"
“He’ll want to see me. I have something to tell him about Pearl Westwood. Something that the police would be interested in if they found out.”
The butler remained unmoved except for a flicker of interest in his eyes. Beside him, Mr. Adams crossed his arms, an observer rather than a potential obstacle.
Still, my tactic of mentioning the police did not get results as I had hoped. Time to change course again. “What I have to say is something of a scandalous nature that journalists would delight in reporting.”
The butler’s fingers uncurled and he released a breath. “Thomas, see if his lordship will receive Miss Fox.”
The footman disappeared. The butler blocked my entry until Mr. Adams returned. “He’ll see you in his study, Miss Fox. I’ll show you the way.”
It would seem scandal in the newspapers was more of a threat than the police. Good to know for future reference. I smiled sweetly at the butler. He scowled at me as I passed.
The footman led the way up the marble staircase. Our footfalls were deadened by a thick crimson and gold carpet. A chandelier with dozens upon dozens of crystal teardrop pendants hung in the stairwell, but it wasn’t lit. There was enough light coming through the large front windows that the gas ones weren’t needed. Once we were out of sight of the butler, Mr. Adams glanced at me over his shoulder. “I’m impressed. Would you have followed through on your threat?”
“Of course,” I lied.
He smiled. “Pity you weren’t Victor’s friend back when he and I were conning the toffs. We could have done with a girl like you.”
“This girl is not interested in conning anyone,” I bit off.
“Is that right?” He indicated the door ahead. “Tell that to his lordship after you get the information you want out of him.”
He knocked and Lord Wrexham bade us enter. Mr. Adams announced me then discreetly closed the door again, leaving me staring at a man seated at the desk, writing in an appointment diary. With his head bent I couldn’t see his face. I schooled my features so that when he finally looked up, I showed no shock at the sight of the disfiguring lesions.
Now that I was up close, I could see the red-brown lumps were sores, not warts. Lord Wrexham would have been a handsome middle-aged man without them, despite his receding blonde hair. His eyes were extraordinarily blue and piercing.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“I have a few questions I hope you can answer.”
“I mean what do you want in exchange for not printing your filth?” He opened the top drawer of his desk and removed some bank notes. He smacked them down on the desk. “This is all I have. Take it and go.”
I steeled myself. “I don’t want money. My price is answers. I’m writing about the life and death of Pearl Westwood and I think you can fill in some gaps for me. In exchange I will keep your name out of the article.”
He sat back and settled his clasped hands over his paunch. He regarded me levelly, without a hint of self-consciousness over his appearance. “Hasn’t interest in her waned yet? She was just an actress, for God’s sake.”
“The public’s interest in her life is insatiable, more so now than when she was alive.”
“You’ll be writing entire books about opera singers and actresses next.” Lord Wrexham indicated I should sit then he handed me a piece of paper. “I want an assurance that my name will not appear in any article you write, nor alluded to in any fashion. Is that clear?”
I wrote the statement, signed and dated it.
He read it before setting it aside. “What do you want to know?”
This could be easier than I expected. “You were at Pearl’s funeral. Why?”
He blinked in surprise. “I cared for her once. I wanted to say goodbye.”
“When were you together?”
“We began
seeing one another early ninety-five and the relationship ended nearly two years later.”
“Who ended it?”
“I don’t remember.”
I waited, but he didn’t add to his answer. “When did you last see her?”
“When our liaison ended.”
“That’s not true.”
He bristled. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Pearl Westwood called on you between Christmas and the New Year.”
His nostrils flared but he didn’t deny it.
“What did you talk about?” I asked.
“That’s none of your business!”
I glanced at my handwritten declaration. “We have an agreement.”
His jaw worked in an attempt to stamp down on his rising fury. “We talked about the weather.”
“Did she ask you for money?”
His lips parted with his silent gasp. He was surprised I knew that much. But he didn’t answer.
“Did she tell you that someone is blackmailing her over her relationship with you?”
He gave a humorless laugh. “You are a fool, Miss Fox.”
It was my turn to be surprised. Why would he think that? Then it occurred to me. If someone knew about his relationship with her, they wouldn’t blackmail Pearl; they’d blackmail Lord Wrexham. He had more to lose and more money to pay.
So the blackmailing attempt had nothing to do with her relationship with Wrexham or, for the same reason, with Lord Rumford. Then what was it about?
I couldn’t answer that unless this man admitted she asked him for money. “What was the money for?” I pressed.
“She didn’t come here for money. She came to reminisce.”
I scoffed. “That’s absurd. She visits her former lover in the middle of the day when his wife is at home simply to reminisce with him? I am not that much of a fool, my lord.”
He simply smiled at me. The sores on his face made it look sinister.
I wasn’t going to get an answer about the meeting, and I doubted I would get an answer for my next question, too, but it had to be asked. “Where were you last Monday, the day Pearl died?”