by Eliza Casey
“Did Mrs. Solent know anything about the Prices, then?”
Cecilia picked up a ribbon to dangle for Jack, who pounced and rolled on the scrap of blue silk. “Sort of. Mrs. Price belongs to her club, and the Winters live just down the street. Not that they’re Aunt Maggie’s sort of people; they’re too conventional and worried about their status. Aunt Maggie said Mr. Winter was ‘po-faced,’ which sounds about right from what I’ve seen.”
“Are all English widows like Mrs. Solent, then? So—free and happy? The lady I worked for in New Jersey was rich, but she liked to sit around complaining about the lapse in morality these days and never went out. But then, she was old.”
“Not many English ladies are like Aunt Maggie, no. Mama has been friends with her since they were schoolgirls, and Mama says Maggie always went her own way, followed her own calling. I think maybe Mama admires that, deep down inside, and wants to be friends with Aunt Maggie to be a vicarious part of her adventures! Aunt Maggie fell into a terrible mourning when Mr. Solent died so young, but travel seems to have revived her spirits entirely.” Cecilia trailed the ribbon for Jack, thinking of how things must have been when her mother and Aunt Maggie were girls, how they were now. “I do wonder how my own daughters might live. I’m sure the world will be very different for them.”
Jane gave her a teasing smile as she handed her a flannel for her face. “Are you going to have lots of daughters, then, my lady? With Mr. Brown, maybe?”
Cecilia laughed and pretended she was going to give Jane an indignant swipe. “Then they would have to be properly behaved vicarage children, wouldn’t they? I can’t quite picture it . . .”
She went to the window and studied the scene outside in the gathering darkness, the flare of gaslights, the cars and carriages rattling past. It was never still here, never quiet. Always something happening.
“Would you want to live in London, then? Like Mrs. Solent?” Jane asked as she picked up the discarded dinner dress and shook it out.
Jack rubbed against Cecilia’s foot, and she picked him up to cuddle his warm, purring body close. “It would be exciting to have my own house, I think. And to see the world, as Aunt Maggie does. But I like the country, too. One can’t get in a real gallop here, even in Hyde Park, and the air always has the most appalling smells.”
“I’m not sure the country is any safer than the city these days,” Jane said.
Not with so many murders happening near Danby. Cecilia sighed. “Quite so. But surely the seeds of whatever happened to Mrs. Price were planted here.”
“So where do we look first here in London?”
“Aunt Maggie says Mrs. Trentworth is having a dance party; she might know some of the gossip. She is famous for her bohemian salon. And since Mrs. Price was also a member of Aunt Maggie’s club, we can ask around there. We don’t have much time, of course, but a visit to the Union headquarters seems in order, and a stop at Mr. Winter’s place of employment. I want to find out why he’s really looking for a position in Danby Village of all places.”
“Maybe I could find an excuse to talk to the servants at the Winter house, since it’s just down the street? They’re still safely away.”
“Good thinking, Jane!”
“And you’ll have to find a dress, or won’t your mother wonder what you were doing here?”
Cecilia sighed. “You’re right. Very well, then. Mrs. Trentworth’s dance, Mr. Winter’s office, Union headquarters. And the modiste. Madame Handley is sure to have something ready to go soon. And we’ll ask around to anyone who might have known Mrs. Price at all.”
“Just be careful, my lady,” Jane said with a frown.
“Careful?”
Jane shook her head. “Someone killed once, yes? I doubt they’d worry about doing it again.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mrs. Trentworth’s house was in the Bloomsbury neighborhood, one Cecilia never had the opportunity to visit with her parents but which she knew was filled with artistic and literary sorts, and she had always been curious to venture there. She felt a tiny bit disappointed to see it looked just like any other respectable neighborhood, with rows of tidy houses, small gardens, nannies pushing prams along the walkways for one last evening airing.
The Trentworth residence was tucked back on a small, quiet lane, Barbon Close, a narrow, tall, dark redbrick home. The windows and the open door radiated a warm, glowing golden light that silhouetted the laughing crowd making its way up the polished stone steps. Cecilia glimpsed bright cashmere shawls, loose-fitting frocks in Liberty-patterned cottons, velvet jackets on the men, all that she had imagined.
She smoothed the skirt of her coral-colored silk dress, trimmed with fluttering sleeves of dark-gold lace, and hoped she might look quite artistic enough for such a crowd. She certainly knew she didn’t compare with Aunt Maggie, who wore the latest French fashion from Patou of pale-rose chiffon and satin harem pants below a bodice banded in silver-and-gold embroidery. The shawl tossed over her shoulders was a turquoise-blue cashmere from India. Even Annabel, in her usual ultrafashionable style with amber velvet and tulle, looked a bit fusty in comparison.
“I do think we must do some shopping while we’re here,” Annabel whispered. “Just look at that gown over there!”
Cecilia looked and had to agree that the Ballets Russes–inspired tunic gown of various shades of green, from deepest emerald to palest seafoam, was amazing. The lady who wore it tossed back her head of auburn curls and laughed with her companions as if she hadn’t a care in the world. And standing next to her was a man so beautiful that Cecilia couldn’t help but stop and gawk just a bit. He was tall, lithe, golden haired, a veritable Apollo. Did people look like that in real life?
The inside of the house was no less impressive. It could have been a perfectly conventional foyer, with a parquet floor and a staircase winding up to the noise and light of a drawing room, but it was hung with antique tapestries of a Tudor hunting party and lined with blue-and-white Chinese vases on marble plinths. The scent of incense hung in the air, smoky and sweet, and two sinuous Italian greyhounds greeted the guests with a twinkle of their beaded collars. As they made their way up that staircase, she saw the blue silk–papered wall was lined with bright, vivid French paintings, all bold brushstrokes and movement, and Cecilia began to think that Jane’s suggestion of a life as an independent, modern London lady would not be so terrible at all. A house like this, voyages to Italy and Greece, Egypt once in a while, sounded quite enticing. All she needed now was an independent income like Aunt Maggie’s.
“Maggie, darling! I was so happy you had returned to Town just in time for my little soiree,” a lady cried from the head of the stairs. She was tall and very thin, in a draped caftan of green-and-blue peacock-like silk, a matching feathered turban on her head. She held a dog under her arm, a snapping Pomeranian with an amber-and-topaz collar to match the lady’s earrings.
“Mariah, I could never miss it,” Maggie answered. She exchanged air-kisses with the lady, who left a cloud of some spring-sweet, exotic perfume in the air.
“Mariah, this is my goddaughter, Lady Cecilia Bates, and Miss Annabel Clarke. They’re visiting me for a few days. I do hope you don’t mind my bringing them,” Maggie said.
“Certainly not! The more the merrier, especially when they are such beauties,” Mariah Trentworth said with a loud laugh, leaning down to kiss Cecilia and Annabel in turn. She put the dog down before it could bite anyone, and it scampered off. “Bates, Bates—are you from the Danby Hall Bateses, by any chance, my dear?”
“Yes, Lord and Lady Avebury are my parents,” Cecilia answered. “And Miss Clarke is our guest at Danby, all the way from America.”
“America! Oh, how thrilling.” Mrs. Trentworth fitted a cigarette into an amber holder, and one of the passing gentlemen guests lit it for her. She exhaled a silvery plume of smoke and smiled. “Do you know how to round up cattle, Mi
ss Clarke? Or have you ever lived in a teepee? I would so like to try that myself.”
Annabel frowned. “Not at all, I’m afraid, Mrs. Trentworth. My father is one of the richest men in San Francisco, quite a large city. I’m too enamored of hot running water in the bath to try a teepee.”
Mrs. Trentworth squinted through the smoke. “Oh? What a pity. I did have so many questions about buffalo.” She took another inhalation. “Wait a minute, my darlings—isn’t there something quite shocking going on at Danby now? A cold-blooded murder or some such thing.”
“I am afraid that is true, Mrs. Trentworth,” Cecilia answered. “Mrs. Amelia Price, the suffragette, just died in the village.”
“Of course! That was it. Appalling. Mrs. Price was so extraordinary; she’ll be much missed. One does think of the countryside as being all verdant silence, but one can be thought safe nowhere these days.”
“Are you a member of the Women’s Suffrage Union, then, Mrs. Trentworth?” Annabel asked.
Mrs. Trentworth gave a pealing laugh. “Oh no, I am much too busy with my own Theosophical and artistic pursuits.”
“You are a spirit medium?” Cecilia said, thinking of Cora Black’s ghostly interests.
Mrs. Trentworth’s expression turned solemn. “I am not so gifted myself. My place is to seek out and assist those who are, as well as finding talented artists and musicians who just need a soupçon of help to find their audience.” A new crowd flowed up the stairs, and she waved them through. “Oh, but do go into the drawing room, my dears, and enjoy yourselves! Dance, my darlings, dance, dance—it is what youth is for, I say.”
As Mrs. Trentworth greeted more newcomers, Aunt Maggie led them through a narrow passage, the walls painted sea green and lined with more paintings almost from floor to ceiling. More French landscapes, a few portraits, and strange images of brightly colored shapes and squiggles that seemed to portray nothing at all. Cecilia thought they were fascinating.
“What an interesting woman,” Annabel mused. “Can one really make a career in England of finding new artists and sponsoring spirit mediums?”
“And poets and playwrights. Mariah isn’t choosy about her patronages,” Maggie said with a laugh. “Of course, one can make a career of anything one likes, Miss Clarke, as long as a lady has an inheritance first. Mrs. Trentworth’s father was the head of a large shipbuilding firm in Belfast, and her husband invented some kind of electric heater contraption.”
Cecilia was impressed. How fast the world was changing! When she was a child, she would never have met anyone artistic or in “trade.” She wasn’t really sure her mother would approve of it now, but it was all terribly fascinating.
They emerged at the end of the corridor into a large drawing room, crowded with people. The tall windows were open, letting the breeze catch at the silk and gauze curtains. The furniture of white-painted chintz and brocade upholstered chairs and sofas was pushed against the flower-papered walls to make room for a dance floor in the middle of the space and a long table laden with refreshments and bottles of wine. A phonograph played a waltz for the couples who already circled the floor, and the air smelled even more of incense and expensive perfumes.
“How marvelous it all is,” Cecilia breathed.
“Indeed,” Annabel said, smiling at a handsome young man nearby, who blushed at her gaze. He reached for her hand, quite without being properly introduced, and whirled her into the dance. They soon disappeared into the kaleidoscope of ever-shifting color and light and movement.
Aunt Maggie led Cecilia to the refreshment table, where they took two silver Turkish goblets of punch. “Now, do go slowly, Cec dear,” she said. “Knowing Mariah, there could be almost anything in there.”
Cecilia took a sip. It seemed light, fruity, sweet, but her tongue immediately went numb and her head swam. “Yes, I see what you mean. You do know the most fascinating people, Aunt Maggie.”
Maggie laughed. “Just don’t tell Emmaline I brought you here. She would never let you out of Danby without a guard again.”
Cecilia shuddered to think of it. The world’s door just now seemed to be creaking open for her. She couldn’t bear for it to slam closed again.
She studied the crowd over the silver rim of her cup, the daring fashions, the laughter, the free chatter. “Do you really think any of these people knew Mrs. Price?”
“I’m sure they must have,” Aunt Maggie answered. “Suffrage and other radical political ideas often go hand in hand with artistic experimentation, and Mariah is famous for her painters and sculptors and poets, you know.” She studied the swirling dancers with narrowed eyes. “You may want to talk to Lady Stonely over there. I think her son used to be a law clerk for Henry Price before he decided to be an artist of social protest collages instead.”
“Mr. Price makes collages?” Cecilia gasped, unable to hear very well with the noise of the room.
Aunt Maggie laughed. “Of course not, though a little artistic expression might do his stuffy heart some good. Lady Stonely’s son. I think he lives in Pigalle in Paris now, but his mother might know some gossip from his old job. Or Miss Reade, the young lady in the eau de Nil tunic gown. She used to go about with Mary Winter, before that lady was married.”
“Margaret, my love!” a man in an aubergine velvet jacket called, and Maggie disappeared with him into the crowd.
Cecilia got a refill of the punch, which was indeed a titch heady but quite delicious, and made her way around the edge of the room, listening to snatches of conversation about new paintings, the narrow-mindedness of the Royal Academy, the state of upheaval in Russia, Parisian ballet. At last she glimpsed Lady Stonely, the mother of the law clerk turned artist, sitting on an emerald velvet settee near the windows. Plump and silver haired in her bronze-colored silk, she looked like every other matron Cecilia saw at London parties, but her smile was kind.
“Would you mind terribly if I joined you?” Cecilia asked.
“Not at all!” Lady Stonely said with a wider smile, and patted the space next to her. “Dear Mariah’s parties are entirely delightful, but one’s feet do get weary of dancing. I’m Lady Stonely.”
“Thank you. I’m Lady Cecilia Bates. I’m visiting my godmother, Margaret Solent.”
“Oh yes, dear Maggie. I am quite aching to hear all about her latest journey. Are you a traveler yourself, Lady Cecilia?”
“Not yet, I’m afraid. Just a little country mouse. My home is at Danby Hall in Yorkshire.”
“Danby, Danby. Now why does that sound so familiar?” She fluttered her lace fan faster, as if it would help her thoughts. “Oh yes. Oh, dear me. Didn’t Amelia Price recently meet a most unfortunate end near there?”
Scandalous news did travel far and fast. “Yes, sadly. In the village. I had just attended her rally and found it very inspirational.”
Lady Stonely clucked in sympathy. “And you had to escape to London to leave the sadness behind. You poor dear.”
They sat in silence for a moment, watching the whirl of the dancers as the music grew louder. Cecilia glimpsed Annabel at the refreshment table, surrounded by three admirers. “I understand your son worked with Mr. Price?”
Lady Stonely’s serene smile flickered. “Only for a short time. It was my dear late husband’s wish that Samuel might pursue a career in the law. He obtained the position for Samuel, you see, but Sammie always wanted to be an artist. He has quite an extraordinary talent. When Lord Stonely died, Samuel left Mr. Price’s office and went to stay in Paris. Dear Mariah has purchased several of his works.”
“Was it only the love of art that drove your son away from that office, then?”
Lady Stonely shook her head sadly. “My dear, how perceptive you are. Are you one of Mariah’s spiritual adepts, then?”
Cecilia smiled. “I fear not. Just a nosy parker.”
Lady Stonely laughed and fluttered her fan faster. “Well, you are
correct. It was not merely art, though law would never have made Sammie happy. I rather wonder if a more sympathetic employer would have made the work less an anathema to him. Mr. Price, though quite esteemed in the profession, was—well, rather set in his ways. He ruled with an iron fist. And since his son-in-law was working with him then, there was not much room for anyone else to advance. Though I did hear that Mr. Winter left his father-in-law to take a position elsewhere. Most strange.”
Cecilia did like Lady Stonely; she seemed so open and friendly. “And do you think Mr. Price ruled his family with just such an iron fist?”
Lady Stonely sighed and shrugged. She took drinks from a passing footman’s tray and handed one to Cecilia. “Don’t so many men do that, my dear? Such insistence on being sole master of their house. My own dear Stonely was kind but had the same tendencies at times. I can’t imagine a man like Henry Price would even bother with the kindness. If he wouldn’t even help his son-in-law in the end . . .”
“Perhaps Mr. Winter was unsatisfactory at his work?”
“Or stole from the till. One does hear of such things happening.” She leaned closer to whisper to Cecilia, “Henry Price is a rich man, with the highest caliber of clients. Yet they do say he may have had some financial reverses lately.”
Cecilia whispered back, “What sort of reverses?”
“Some unfortunate investments. And, of course, his wife leaving him to be a suffragette—that couldn’t have done his professional reputation any good. The gossip has been thick as the fog about that, I tell you, my dear! Thick. And things might be changing in a house like this one, but a man like Mr. Price . . .”
A man like Henry Price wouldn’t take kindly to his wife making a laughingstock of him. Or an embezzling son-in-law. The Price family drama just grew larger and larger. But could Henry Price have been in Danby Village on the night his wife died?
“I do beg your pardon,” a low, rich voice said. “I know this is terribly bold, but would you do me the honor of a dance?”