by Lynn Messina
If Mrs. Otley felt any embarrassment at having the butler examine her lover for signs of life, it was subordinate to her anger over her daughter’s criticism, which she deemed unfair. “I was made overwrought by Mr. Wilson’s suffering, yes, but you didn’t like him.”
Emily sighed deeply and said with enduring weariness. “I did not know Mr. Wilson well enough to like him or not like him. What I did not like was my mother conducting an adulterous affair with my father’s steward. As the man was in my father’s employ and owed him some loyalty, I did find his behavior to be treacherous as well. That is all. But even if I did loathe him with every fiber of my being, I still would find no value in pretending he was dead when he was very much alive. There isn’t any claim I can think of that would be easier to verify than someone’s continued well-being. All it requires to see that is a little bit of logic, which my mother appears to lack.”
Mrs. Otley sniffed loudly at this jab at her intelligence and added that it required only a little bit of logic to see that her daughter was the obvious suspect.
Emily stood up, and although it appeared as if she was prepared to storm out, she calmly remained in place as she said, “Given your so-called little white lie about your relationship with Mr. Wilson, I had no idea you were still involved with him, which means I had no cause to harm him. Furthermore, I didn’t even know he was in our house. So please do try to keep your ridiculous notions to yourself, Mama.” She turned to their guest. “Bea, if you are ready, I will show you to the room now so you can examine the scene for yourself.”
Bea reviewed the information she had been able to gather from Mrs. Otley, which was really very little, and decided that, yes, she was ready to move on to the next stage of her investigation. Hopefully, the scene itself would be more illuminating.
Calmly, she placed her teacup on the table, thanked Mrs. Otley for her time and followed Emily out of the room. As soon as they were clear of the threshold, the girl leaned against the wall, closed her eyes and sighed heavily.
“I’m sorry you had to witness that,” she said after a moment, the exhaustion more pronounced now that she was out of her mother’s presence. “It has been daggers drawn between us ever since our visit to Lakeview Hall. My anger and disappointment are completely justified, for I had the misfortune of discovering that neither of my parents is whom I thought them to be. But I can’t understand why she is so angry at me. It’s true what she said—I have been coddled for much of my life—but I didn’t force her to cosset me. I did not come out of her womb with a gun pointed at her head insisting on indulgence. She did it because I am so beautiful and she knew my beauty reflected well on her and that she could use it to achieve certain material success she had been unable to accomplish for herself. It was never about me as a person, so why is she so resentful now? I confess I am baffled by the situation.”
“Could it be grief over your father’s death? Perhaps a little guilt?” Bea asked, knowing both could be destructive emotions.
Emily shrugged. “It’s possible. Andrew says she is jealous of me.”
Another destructive emotion, Bea thought, sparing a moment of gratitude that her own mean-spirited relation was merely thoughtlessly cruel rather than intentionally malevolent. Even after twenty years, Aunt Vera still seemed surprised that providence had handed her a little girl to raise and that she could not contrive some way to escape the responsibility. Mrs. Otley, on the other hand, appeared to nurture a genuine resentment of her daughter, which was surprising, given Emily had accomplished precisely what her parents had asked of her. She was to be married to a future baronet and restore the family fortune.
“Not my beauty,” Emily rushed to add, “which is what I originally thought he meant because I am breathtaking to behold and that must be difficult for plainer women, but my youth. I am starting my life while she is ending hers. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but I do know it doesn’t really matter. I will marry Andrew and be free of her forever.”
So much about the Incomparable had changed since the last time Bea had seen her that she was perversely relieved to observe that her towering self-regard had been preserved. Five months ago her vanity had struck Bea as the would-be cause of her inevitable downfall, and yet now it appeared to be her saving grace. Bea didn’t know why the other woman had viciously turned on her daughter, but she imagined Mr. Skeffington’s estimation was not far off the mark. She openly resented many of the decisions she’d made in life and now held the one person who had nothing to do with the making of them responsible.
Thinking of the young man now, she said, “I was surprised to hear of your engagement to Mr. Skeffington. I must congratulate you.”
Emily twisted her lips into a wry smile as she led Bea down the hallway to the staircase, which would take them to the next floor. “No doubt you are recalling my horrifying speech during our walk to the folly where I disparaged his lowly status and declared myself unwilling to settle for anything less than a dukedom,” she said with a disquieting amount of contempt.
“You’re being unduly harsh on yourself,” Bea said, striving for the right mix of kindness and veracity, “for you were open-minded enough to consider a marquessate.”
“And that is exactly what I mean,” Emily said with a laugh. “I was insufferable—and probably would be insufferable still if you hadn’t orchestrated that awful scene in the drawing room wherein all my family’s secrets were revealed. It’s very humbling to discover the comforts you take for granted were bought with funds swindled from unsuspecting, decent people. If you are surprised I’m engaged to Andrew, it’s nothing compared with my astonishment. He’s so good and kind and understanding. I saw no hint of it during our stay, for he and Amersham had struck me as particularly immature, but I also wasn’t looking for it.”
“I don’t think it was there,” Bea said frankly. “The scene in the drawing room appears to have matured him muchly, just as it appears to have matured you. Truly, I’m happy for the both of you.”
Emily threaded her arm through Bea’s as they climbed the stairs and squeezed affectionately. “You are so kind, and I know you know I don’t deserve it. You haven’t said anything, but you must resent me horribly for breaking your confidence in the Lake District. You poured your heart out about your disappointment with Mr. Davies, and I told everyone about it. And the only reason I did was I thought it was vastly diverting that a woman of your advanced years and uninteresting demeanor had found love with a dreary little law clerk.” She shuddered at the memory. “Andrew says our parents are monsters, but I worry that I’m the true monster.”
Bea, who considered herself too hardened a cynic to be shocked by anyone’s opinion of her, found herself so taken aback by this admission, she missed a step and had to be righted by Emily. She’d known, of course, that the girl’s indiscretion had not been motivated by kindness, but she had attributed the transgression to the general lack of thoughtfulness of nineteen-year-old Incomparables. It had never occurred to her that she had acted intentionally or out of cruelty. And yet it made perfect sense, for the idea of a plain spinster so desperate for love she would look among the clerks at the Chancery was quite diverting indeed.
Inevitably, she thought of the Duke of Kesgrave, for he had been one of the people Miss Otley had entertained with her tale at Lakeview Hall. Like she, he’d recognized the inherent ridiculousness of the story, but he’d had enough sense to realize it was all a hum. Bea had learned of his opinion weeks ago, and yet somehow the mortification felt fresh. It was, she supposed, the first time she’d looked at it fully aware of her feelings for him.
Fearing a self-pitying slide into sentiment, Bea reminded herself that she was investigating a murder, precisely the thing Kesgrave had ordered her not to do. He might be the most handsome and coveted lord in all of England, but he could not control her behavior or get everything he wanted simply because he wanted it. She’d succeeded in overcoming him in a battle of wits, she told herself with a wry smile.
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p; And yet she knew it was a meaningless victory because Kesgrave wasn’t engaged in the skirmish. It was an entirely one-sided struggle, which only made the whole situation worse.
Although Bea’s stumbling on the stairs did not make Emily aware of her faux pas, her silence did. Undoubtedly, the Incomparable had expected Bea to assure her she wasn’t a monster at all, and when the expected assertion did not come, she realized her honesty had created a problem. As they approached the top of the stairs, she apologized with surprising effusiveness and did not spare herself the recriminations she knew herself fully to have earned. “You see, I am a monster, and I deserve a mother as unpleasant as my own. But I really don’t think I deserve this,” she said, opening the door and there, amid the yellow damask curtains of her mother’s mahogany poster bed, was the pallid corpse of Mr. Wilson.
CHAPTER FIVE
The second Bea fixed her gaze on Mr. Wilson’s pale face—the white chin, with its off-center dimple and the beginnings of a beard; the long bridge of a nose ending in a point; the broad cheekbones; the high forehead—she realized her plan was as foolish as it was impractical. There she was, in the Mayfair residence of a young woman whom she barely knew preparing to examine the formerly pain-racked body of her mother’s dead lover.
How had this happened?
It was all the duke’s fault, she thought, with his prohibition against further investigations. How dare he forbid her anything! He wasn’t her family. He wasn’t her husband. He wasn’t even her friend. He was merely a peer with a perverse interest in her activities that he himself could not explain. Why should she conform to his expectations? Because she hoped to earn his approval?
For shame!
She could think of no surer way to undermine her self-respect.
Angered by this presumption, she had fixated on his directive and resolved to do the opposite.
And look where it had gotten her, she thought wildly, staring at Mr. Wilson’s feet where they hung lifelessly over the edge of the mattress.
Kesgrave had so much to answer for!
Yet even as she railed at the duke in silent dismay, she knew she was being neither fair nor truthful. His attempt to control her was maddening, oh, yes, but it certainly wasn’t the source of the misguided self-confidence that had brought her to Mrs. Otley’s bedchamber.
No, that sin could be laid only at her own door.
It had started with the successful identification of Mr. Otley’s killer, which had convinced Bea she was clever. Then, when she figured out who murdered Lord Fazeley, she grew to believe she had a particular talent for comprehending the machinations behind mysterious deaths.
Spending three quiet weeks in virtual isolation while her family maintained a busy social schedule had provided her with too much time to appreciate her own ingenuity. With only books as a distraction, her mind wandered frequently to what she considered her two greatest accomplishments: the moment she realized how unsurprised Lady Skeffington was by her son’s revelations and the instance she recalled the meaning of a sea turtle tattoo on Mr. Cornyn’s forearm. Slowly, over the course of almost a month, she’d inflated her opinion of herself until it rivaled Miss Otley’s own mortifying self-regard.
And now she had taken that hubris and brought it to Park Street to identify the person responsible for Mr. Wilson’s pallid corpse.
Beatrice felt an unaccountable desire to laugh.
Oh, but it wasn’t funny, for she had led Mr. Skeffington and Emily to believe she could somehow mitigate their desperate situation. Despite her inexperience, she’d committed her expertise to solving a problem so complex she could barely grasp it as she stood on the threshold of Mrs. Otley’s bedchamber.
I must get out of here, she thought.
Emily would understand, wouldn’t she? Surely, she’d believed the scheme was farcical from the very beginning. She probably only agreed to appease her worried fiancé, who had felt compelled to do something to address the situation.
Straightening her shoulders, Bea turned to look at Emily and said, “I’m beyond embarrassed to admit this—”
But Emily wasn’t listening. She was staring at Mr. Wilson’s corpse with an expression of horror and murmuring, “Look at him. It’s so much worse than I remember. How is that possible? It was thoroughly appalling before, and yet now it’s somehow worse. Is that the passage of time, do you think? Is it because he’s six hours more dead?” Shaking with distress, she grabbed Bea’s hand and squeezed it hard. “I’m so grateful that you have come. Truly, you cannot imagine the relief I felt when Andrew suggested your name as someone who might be able to help us. My mother is a ludicrous creature in every way, but she is right. With the tale of my father’s demise and the rumors of his swindle circulating about London, our family cannot withstand another scandal, especially one that involves a man in my mother’s bed—a dead man, at that. I wouldn’t mind on my own behalf, for I’ve never dreamed of social success, but Andrew deserves better. He has been through so much already, and I would not have him subjected to even more gossip.”
Although Bea thought it was very unlikely that a girl who had hoped to nab a marquess or better had not expected to conquer the beau monde, she was not peevish enough to say it. Rather, she pondered the obligation Emily’s gratitude imposed. Coming here had been a mistake, and allowing Emily and her fiancé to believe that she could somehow solve their problem was cruel. The kinder thing would be to quickly admit her error so they could come up with another scheme to dispatch the awkwardness and discomfort of Mr. Wilson’s unfortunate death.
Even as she formed the words in her head, she could not bring herself to issue them. Part of her reluctance was a genuine aversion to letting anyone down, but her hesitance ran deeper than that. It was the way Emily was looking at her now, as if she were her only hope, and Bea, whose usefulness to her family had always been of the banal fetching-and-carrying kind, found something profoundly alluring in the appeal. She wanted to be the person Emily saw when she looked at her. It was the same person the Duke of Kesgrave had seen walking next to him on the return from Lady Abercrombie’s house when he insisted that she not search for the memoir Lord Fazeley was purported to be writing. He’d believed her to be a woman of such courage and daring that she would steal into a dead man’s town house and rifle through his belongings.
Oh, to be a woman who stole and rifled!
Confronted with the opportunity now, Bea decided there was nothing to be lost by making the attempt. Emily and Mr. Skeffington’s options were limited, for there were not hordes of people in London who considered themselves capable of identifying a murderer with discretion, and if she failed to make any progress at all, they would be no worse off than they were now.
Indeed, they might even be in a better position, for in a few days, when she admitted she had discovered nothing, their anxiety would most likely have eased and they would be less resistant to contacting the Bow Street Runners.
Her failure would be a favor of sorts.
Bea smiled wryly at the thought, for she was not so prone to self-deception as to actually believe her ineffectualness had a positive aspect. Nevertheless, it amused her enough to propel her forward, and she entered the room with a confident gait she had not imagined possible only a few moments before. She stopped at the foot of the bed and considered Mr. Wilson in his nightclothes.
Emily, hovering in the doorway, coughed lightly and announced that if she was not needed, she would be in her room hiding from her mother until Mr. Skeffington returned from the solicitor’s. Understanding her discomfort, Bea nodded and smiled deprecatingly as the Incomparable scurried down the hallway.
For a moment, standing at the foot of the bed, Bea felt an almost dizzying sense of freedom. In her two previous investigations, she had not been given the opportunity to examine the corpse with impunity. In the library at Lakeview Hall, Kesgrave had loomed protectively over the scene, insisting time and again that her sensibilities were too delicate for her to linger. In order to distract
him long enough to get a satisfying look at Mr. Otley, she’d been forced to affect female helplessness and mild hysterics. With the Earl of Fazeley, who had seemed to deliver himself directly to her for her inspection by falling only inches from her toes, she had no chance at all beyond a passing glance. As they were in the offices of the London Daily Gazette, she had found herself immediately surrounded by reporters and decided it would be prudent to remove herself as quickly and as discreetly as possible.
But now there was nothing to stop her from gleaning all the information she could possibly imagine from the victim, and the prospect filled her at once with excitement and dread. Staring at something openly, wholly, with the full force of one’s attention, was categorically different from glancing at it out of the corner of one’s eye, and she feared suddenly the further revelation of her inadequacy. What if, after casting long, languishing looks at Mr. Otley’s and Lord Fazeley’s corpses, she proved unequal to the duty of studying Mr. Wilson’s?
Knowing there was nothing to be gained from wringing her hands, she pushed her doubts aside and devoted herself to the task before her.
The body.
How still it was now. How oddly pristine as it lay on the bed slack and loose, its awkward arrangement bearing no relation to the repose of sleep.
She was surprised by how little evidence there was of his suffering. Although he was dead, she expected something of his pain to linger in the air, like an echo that repeated several seconds after the words had been spoken. Alas, there was nothing but Mr. Wilson in his nightclothes, his red brocade banyan having ridden up to reveal the top of his calves.
At once, she was struck by what was missing: bodily fluids. There was no vomit or excrement on him, his clothes or the sheets.
Immediately, she knew the poison used to end his life was not arsenic. A student of history, she had read Michael Holborn’s four-volume account of the life of Pope Alexander VI, who, along with his son Cesare Borgia, made regular practice of killing cardinals with the deadly substance to increase their personal wealth. Arsenic mimicked food poisoning in its effects, and the fact that Mr. Wilson had not emptied the contents of his stomach while in the process of dying indicated another toxic element.