The Viscount's Deadly Game

by Issy Brooke

  “Nothing, of course, no proof and no evidence except the most obvious thing that the police are ignoring – that between them, they get everything and I lose my world, my whole world! They must have conspired together – who else? Who else benefits? Certainly not me!”

  “It is true,” Adelia said. “I am suspicious of them both. But why have you come here? You make yourself look guilty by running away as you did, and you ought to be in York, arguing your case.”

  “I will return and I will argue my case!” Lady Beaconberg said fiercely. “But I cannot very well stand up in court and represent myself, can I? I need to engage good legal help and for that I need money. I am here to sell everything of value that I own. Every fine piece of jewellery, every gem, every pearl that I have.”

  “Why here?”

  Lady Beaconberg looked at Adelia like she was a particularly stupid child. “Because I am too well known in York, and Leeds is too full of industrial types, like Manchester, and who would go north to Newcastle? Lancaster at least has a certain air of refinement about it.”

  Pure snobbery, Adelia thought. But yes, why not? If you had to flee, you should flee to the unexpected place.

  Adelia swished the wine around in her glass, and thought about what she ought to do next, which didn’t include drinking alcohol before midday. Eventually she asked, “Well. So, how much money have you been able to raise?”

  Lady Beaconberg bristled at the impertinent question – though she was happy enough alluding to great wealth, it was very impolite to speak of specifics. Through tight lips, she forced out, “Not nearly enough. I have a few pieces still that I have not sold, but no one will give me a fair price. I am caught between a rock and a hard place, and hardly know what to do.”

  “Let me advise you,” Adelia said. “Return with me to York immediately. Bring what you have but do not sell anything else. You might need to sell more jewellery in the future, but you know you’ll get a much better price if you can do so openly and not under a false name.”

  “If I come back and cannot pay a lawyer, I am doomed. The men will close ranks and I will be the scapegoat, and I shall hang as a murdering wife.”

  “No one can possibly believe that you cut the traces of the carriage and sent him to his doom plunging down a cliff,” Adelia said.

  “A woman has been seen riding about at night,” she said. “I know it is not a ghost and I know it is not Elizabeth because I have been locking her up in her bedroom. They will say it was me, and say that if I can do that, then I can do anything.”

  “No; we all know that it was not you. It was my own daughter, Mary.”

  Lady Beaconberg spluttered on her wine. “What! You are joking with me. Not dear, sweet Mary?” There was her usual mocking tone to her words but there was an undercurrent of affection and genuine horror at the idea, too.

  Adelia nodded. “It is true and she has confessed to it. So you need not feel under any further suspicion for that. Furthermore, you have no motive for the crime, because you have inherited nothing and lost everything. There is nothing that points to you except your current actions. And you have control over that.”

  Lady Beaconberg uttered a curse word which Adelia had never heard fall from the lips of a lady before. She stood still in the centre of the room, the now-empty glass in her hand, her fingers curled around it so tightly that Adelia feared it would break. She could see that Lady Beaconberg was running through all her options in her head.

  But of course – she had no options.

  And finally she capitulated, as Adelia knew she would.

  “Very well. Let us return to York. I have lost everything and if it all goes against me, what of it?”

  Adelia wanted to tell her not to feel defeated, and remind her that there was always hope. But looking at the desolation on Lady Beaconberg’s face, it didn’t seem like it was the right time.

  “I have money,” Adelia told her. “We will leave at once.”

  Twenty-one

  Theodore was beginning to feel as if he wanted to start his relationship with Mary all over again but this time he would see her as an adult, so he said, “Let us walk to the stables.” He had resolved to ignore her frailty as she so obviously did herself.

  And she smiled and said, “In all honesty, papa, we ought to go in a gig or something; that way I can put all my energy into looking around once we get there.”

  “But if you are not well enough to walk there then we ought to not go at all...”

  “Papa!” she said, her voice rising. He stopped and listened to her. “Papa, it is simply that I cannot do everything. I get tired, as you know; so I have to ration out the energy for the day, that is all. I can sneak out at night and ride a horse – and then lie in bed all the next day, and have people fuss around me, and that is how it is. I made a choice to take a risk and I know there is always a payment to be made, afterwards. So today if I choose to be able to walk around the stables and be observant and look and listen, then I must accept I have to be driven there in a carriage. Don’t you see? Every moment of my life is weighed upon a set of scales.”

  He did see, and it was so perfectly obvious he should have seen it before. So he agreed and he drove them in a light open-topped carriage the short distance to the stables. She didn’t talk as they travelled. He wondered about Adelia, who had looked worried as he had seen her off at the station earlier that day. He was glad she was in the company of Smith and Roberts. He hated to see concern on her face because he felt so helpless with her gone. He tried to imagine what she would actually do when or if she found Lady Beaconberg. She would have to alert the police as soon as she arrived in Lancaster, he decided, and he knew that she would do that because she was a sensible woman and he knew her very well.

  “Lady Beaconberg is not guilty, is she? I personally don’t think so,” Mary said suddenly as they rolled into the stables. “We’re looking for evidence against Sir Arthur, aren’t we?”

  “That’s not how it works,” he told her, speaking in a rapid low voice before the grooms reached them. “We must be impartial and not look to find what we expect to find – we only look for the truth, untainted by our own opinions.”

  “Hmm.” But she couldn’t say anything else because Douglas Mackie had taken the horse by its bridle and was holding him steady as they dismounted from the carriage.

  Someone else must have alerted Sir Arthur because he soon emerged from his small office, jacketless and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up. His face was sheened with sweat and he bluffly barked out some apologies with laughter, knowing that neither of them were particularly offended by his appearance.

  “Hallo! What a pleasure to see you both, as always. What can I do for you?”

  “My daughter is awfully interested in Golden Meadow,” Theodore said.

  Sir Arthur’s face flickered, his smile becoming momentarily fixed. “Why? You, too, Lord Calaway, have been quite taken with the colt but I am beginning to think that his win was a passing fluke. We were lucky, dashed lucky, but I fear we will not see a repeat performance.”

  “I should love to see him, all the same,” said Mary with a plaintive and wheedling tone in her voice that took Theodore right back to when she had been a child. He grinned to himself. It had often worked on him, though strangely never with the same success when Mary tried it on Adelia.

  “I do truly hate to disappoint you, Mrs Parker-Grey, but unfortunately I am unable to satisfy you this time. Golden Meadow has gone away for a time.”

  “He’s really injured then?”

  “No – yes. Sadly yes, though only lightly, but enough for me to be concerned.”

  “Why could he not stay here, then?” Theodore asked.

  Sir Arthur would not be drawn any further. Abruptly his attention was caught by something happening on the other side of the stables. “Oh! Do excuse me for one moment. Business, you know. It never ends! Ha! Ha!” He strode across the yard to begin berating one of the grooms who, to Theodore’s eyes, had been doing no
thing wrong and who looked very confused at Sir Arthur’s sudden intervention.

  “You’re right, papa,” Mary whispered to him. “There is something very odd going on here. How can Golden Meadow be linked to Lord Beaconberg’s death, though? Do you think that they are?”

  “They could be,” Theodore replied, though he was at a loss to make any reasonable connection. “There is something amiss in this horse’s history and if Sir Arthur won’t tell us, perhaps someone else will.” He looked around and spotted Douglas Mackie who seemed, for all the world, to be deliberately lurking in a corner to watch them. He was definitely hiding something. While Sir Arthur was engaged elsewhere, Theodore took the chance to walk briskly across the yard to where Mackie was now looking startled and uncomfortable at being cornered. He picked up a nearby broom and clutched it awkwardly.

  “Mackie, I’m glad to see you again. You know my daughter? Mrs Parker-Grey? Good, good. How are you, lad?”

  Mackie made a half-hearted effort to sweep a patch of ground between them but he was fooling nobody. “Busy, sir,” he said.

  “I won’t keep you long.” Theodore dropped his voice. “We’d like to have a quick glimpse of Golden Meadow, you know.”

  “Why?” the young man said in alarm.

  “Well, why not? Why would that be so strange a request? He’s quite the hero locally – a prize-winner!”

  “You’ve seen him already though, have you not, sir?”

  “I have, but my daughter loves horses and is simply dying to clap her eyes on him. You couldn’t refuse a lady, could you?”

  But apparently he could and he would. He scowled in a most unbecoming manner and said, “You’ll need to ask Sir Arthur, my lord – sorry.”

  “Sir Arthur is busy so we thought...”

  “No, sir,” Mackie said, looking past them. “Here he comes now.” He raised his voice as Sir Arthur approached. “They want to see Golden Meadow, sir. I told them to speak to you.”

  Now Sir Arthur was scowling to match Mackie. “I’ve already told you, Calaway, that he’s not here at the moment – now let’s not make a scene in front of your daughter.” He smiled in a humourless way. “Mackie, go about your work. Now!” Sir Arthur nearly roared that last order and Mackie scurried away.

  “Don’t take it out on the lad,” Theodore said. “He was only following orders.”

  “Something he needs to learn to do a little better,” Sir Arthur muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” Sir Arthur returned to his brisk matter of fact manner. “Now, as you can see, we are all rather busy and the object of your visit is not here so if I can possibly beg your leave...”

  “Hmm.” Theodore was about to walk away but Mary spoke up.

  “Oh, Sir Arthur, you must have heard the dreadful news about Lady Beaconberg!”

  “What now?” he asked in alarm.

  “She has gone missing!”

  “Oh – that was yesterday, wasn’t it? Yes, I had heard that. So they have not found her yet?”

  “No. What were you expecting?”

  “That she had been found and that circumstances were...” He tailed off.

  Theodore said, “What do you know about the circumstances?”

  “I know nothing of Lady Beaconberg’s circumstances! Everyone knows that she and I did not get on. It is fair to say, in fact, that she loathed me and as for me – well, I was indifferent to her, one way or another.”

  “You use the past tense.”

  “She has gone! Good God, sir! What are you accusing me of? Do you suspect foul play and are you insinuating that I have had anything to do with it? You’ll be laying the death of Talbot at my feet next. Well, if you are so sure, you call the police here, right now!”

  “I might just do that,” Theodore said experimentally.

  Sir Arthur’s face had changed from purple to very, very white, a strange greyish cast showing through the thinner skin around his eyes. His nostrils flared. “How dare you. How dare you, sir! Don’t forget they have already been here once and found nothing, not a thing. He was my friend and my business partner, sir; I am grieving! You have solved one case, just one, and now think you are a gentleman-detective? I have read of your exploits. You are no gentleman, sir, if this is how you speak to people.” Sir Arthur’s control returned to him, bit by bit, as his words slowed and his breathing steadied. “And to think that I considered you a friend.”

  Theodore found he could watch it all play out with rather a passionless air. Sir Arthur was furious, it was true, but there was a staged element to his carefully chosen words. Men in a true fury didn’t speak in such considered sentences. Their speech was ragged and disjointed. Something else was influencing Sir Arthur and he hoped that Mary was going to prove as observant as her mother.

  “My truest friends are only truth and justice,” Theodore replied and for some reason that made Sir Arthur snort with hollow laughter.

  “Then run off and join them,” Sir Arthur said. He seemed to suddenly remember Mary’s presence and turned to her with a genuinely awkward air. “My dear Mrs Parker-Grey, I do humbly beg your forgiveness at this shameful display of ill manners – from both of us.”

  She inclined her head with grace. “No apology is needed, Sir Arthur. Thank you for your time today. And thanks are due also to Mr Mackie,” she added, which surprised Theodore.

  It stung Sir Arthur too, and Theodore realised then that it had been her intention to rattle him. “That lad deserves nothing.” He looked around to see where Mackie was, and they all saw that he was still lurking, listening and watching. As soon as attention focused on him, he disappeared abruptly, his head vanishing around a corner of a loose box.

  “Have nothing to do with him,” Sir Arthur warned. “He is not as he seems and if the police do return, they would do well to look hard at him.”

  He spun on his heel and stalked back to his office. The door slammed. Mary was smiled a little as they made their way back to the carriage and drove away.

  They didn’t speak until they had returned to the Grey House and the horse was being seen to by a groom. Theodore said, “What did you make of all that?”

  “Mackie is guilty of something and Sir Arthur knows it. I wonder if he has only just discovered Mackie’s secret and is regretting making him the heir to the stables? His attitude is markedly different to how I expected it. And Golden Meadow was there because when we asked Mackie, he did not say straight away that he had gone.”

  “I agree. And the change in how Sir Arthur treats Mackie is abrupt. As to the will that leaves it all to the lad, Sir Arthur can always change it.”

  “He can and it will be interesting to see if he does. If he does not, then we must ask, what does Mackie know about Sir Arthur? Does he know something that ensures Sir Arthur’s complicity? Did Lord Beaconberg transgress, or threaten exposure? And now Sir Arthur is locked in a similar battle. For they are tightly bound together now, those two, and not by friendship.”

  “You are astute and I think you are right,” said Theodore. “Well done. You shall soon rival your mother in detective skills.”

  At the mention of her mother, Mary’s face stilled and her smile faded. “I hope she is all right, papa. Perhaps you shouldn’t have let her go.”

  “After all you have been teaching me about choosing one’s risks? And anyway, have I ever been able to forbid your mother to do anything? Three weeks after we were married I suggested she might want to water her wine a little at dinner and let me tell you, I lived in utter misery for half a year.”

  “Papa, you exaggerate!”

  “I am telling you the truth. We had chicken liver pâté every night for months.”

  “You hate pâté.”

  “Exactly.”

  They both laughed and walked around the house to the main entrance where Theodore stopped. “Are you not coming in?” Mary asked.

  “No. I am going to take a horse out and have a ride,” he said. “And I think I shall ride into Yor
k and have a chat with Inspector Benn.”

  Twenty-two

  Theodore had a very interesting talk with Inspector Benn and the policeman agreed that both Sir Arthur and Douglas Mackie looked suspicious. “I’ve had my eye on Sir Arthur all this time,” Inspector Benn confessed. “But I’ve not found the evidence to justify me moving against him. You yourself saw him at the club that night and he could not have caught Lord Beaconberg up on foot. He might not have remained on foot but we have no indication he took a cab or rode or anything. However, if we add Mackie into the situation, then it all becomes clear. Mackie could have been lying in wait up ahead.”

  “Indeed,” said Theodore. “I would not be surprised if the lad did the deed under Sir Arthur’s direction. If that is the case, what are the chances of bringing justice to them both?”

  Inspector Benn bristled at the mere suggestion that Sir Arthur would escape justice based on his title. “If both are guilty, both will go before the judge. And both will hang.”

  “And Lady Beaconberg?”

  “She is a conundrum and her flight has confirmed she is guilty of something,” Inspector Benn said. “I’ve never liked the woman, if I am allowed to have such opinions, which I am not, but my policeman’s nose is not to be overlooked, as it were. One way or another, she knows something and she will not escape what is coming to her, either.”

  That made Theodore just a little uncomfortable. He asked if any word had been heard regarding her whereabouts, and was relieved when Inspector Benn said no.

  “Well, I shall leave you to get on with your duties,” Theodore said at last, and bid him good day.

  He walked out into the crowded York streets, all narrow and winding and cobbled, and paused in a patch of sunlight that managed to slice its way through the tall houses of the Shambles area. Golden Meadow was still niggling at him. It was an itch he was unable to scratch. The horse was not what he seemed to be.