by Lynn Messina
Although Bea respected and appreciated the efficiency of a capable servant, she thought clearing a breakfast tray amid the frenzy of a shocking death went well beyond the bounds of duty. “I’m impressed with your presence of mind,” she said honestly.
“Not mine,” Lydia said with an emphatic shake of her head. “The missus insisted I take it away as soon as possible to make sure Miss Emily didn’t see it.”
“But it had only the one cup,” Bea pointed out, confused.
“It’s the teapot, you see,” Mrs. Petrie rushed to explain. “She was afraid Miss Emily would spot the teapot or cup and realize her mother has chocolate every morning. The missus, you see, told her that chocolate is too dear for us to have right now. But she has a pot of it every morning, and she didn’t want Miss Emily to find out. So she asked Lydia to take the tray away before she noticed.”
Having already observed Mrs. Otley’s contempt for her daughter, Bea should not have found this information shocking, and yet somehow the minor deprivation seemed worse than all the scorn she’d heaped on the Incomparable’s head. She wondered if it really was a necessary economy or simply an opportunity to deny her daughter a small pleasure.
As surprised as Bea was by the widow’s pettiness, she was more taken aback by the clarity of mind that allowed her to witness the horrifying spectacle of her lover’s death and then immediately think of her own vulnerability. “She rang for you after Mr. Wilson had expired and requested that you remove it?” she asked, trying to get a better sense of the sequence of events.
“Ring her?” Mrs. Petrie said with a harsh laugh. “We were all there already. Oh, lordy, miss, the caterwauling that filled the house, what from Mr. Wilson’s suffering and Miss Emily’s yelling. She was irate when she saw the man in her mother’s bed, for the missus had sworn to have nothing more to do with him. I was in the room when she made the promise, which she didn’t keep for a single day. The racket was louder than a marching band, and everyone in the household came running. And even though everyone was there watching, Miss Emily kept screaming at her mother about betrayal and poor Mr. Wilson kept shrieking in pain, the poor lamb. And very calmly, as if she were having tea with Prinny, the missus leaned over to tell Lydia to take away the tray in her dressing room before her daughter noticed it.”
Lydia nodded vehemently. “As calm as could be. She wasn’t worried about Mr. Wilson at all.”
“She said he was passing a gallstone,” Mrs. Petrie added. “She said he would be fine just as soon as it came out.”
Bea knew it was entirely possible that Mrs. Otley’s underwhelming response to her lover’s agony was due to a sublime indifference to the pain of dislodging a gallstone. The apathy was certainly in keeping with the woman she had interviewed only an hour before, who had seemed more annoyed by the inconvenience of Mr. Wilson’s death than by the untimely passing itself.
But her detachment could also be attributed to something more nefarious, for Bea had only the widow’s words that events unfolded in the way she’d described. With no method by which to confirm the veracity of Mrs. Otley’s statements, she could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Wilson had risen much earlier than nine and partaken in a cup of poisoned chocolate. It would have been easy enough for her to contaminate the drink before passing it to her lover, who would have had no reason to suspect it had been tainted with nux vomica.
Could Mrs. Otley really be so wicked as to kill the man with whom she was having an affair? Undoubtedly, she felt some affection for him if she persisted in the connection after her daughter had demanded it be severed. And even if she was no longer enamored of him, there were less fraught ways of ending a relationship than murdering one’s lover. If she had administered the poison, then it could have been only because she had either something to gain by his death or something to lose with his life.
The prospect of Mr. Wilson being in possession of a secret that would affect Mrs. Otley’s comfort in either direction struck her as improbable until she recalled that her husband had swindled dozens of respectable people out of thousands of pounds and before that had trafficked in the illegal distribution of opium. Without question, the ground was rife with the potential for blackmail.
“Where is the chocolate now?” Bea asked, hoping that it remained untouched on a sideboard so that she may test its potency by feeding it to a rat or mouse.
“Gone,” Mrs. Petrie said briskly. “Lydia brought the tray to the scullery, where it was immediately cleaned. I run a tight ship, miss, and would never let the morning dishes pile up until dinner.”
Although she had been expecting some variation on this answer, Bea was nevertheless disappointed to hear it. She considered asking to visit the scullery to make sure the ship was as tight as the housekeeper said but decided it was futile when everyone around the table save Annie nodded their heads in confirmation.
The chocolate was gone and so was that avenue of investigation.
So much duplicity, she thought, regretfully.
“Do you think the teacup ruse was necessary?” Bea asked, recalling Emily’s insistence that she could have no hand in his death, as she had no idea the victim was in the house. “Was Miss Otley truly ignorant of her mother’s relationship or could she have figured it out?”
“Truly ignorant, miss,” Mrs. Petrie insisted without hesitation. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Lydia nodded, as did the two other servants at the table. “Miss Otley has a way of letting her feelings be known on any subject, you see, and if she had discovered the truth, everyone would have been made aware of it.”
“Would’ve screamed the house down,” the scullery maid muttered.
Grateful for their strong opinion, for it was a relief to be able to eliminate at least one suspect, Bea thanked the staff for their patience and help. Then she returned to Mrs. Otley’s room to make a thorough search for a jar or canister of a suspicious-looking substance. It seemed unlikely to her that a woman who had never been to India would choose an obscure foreign poison over homegrown laudanum, which would have effectively settled the matter far more discreetly. Nevertheless, she could not dismiss the fact that the widow was capable of great acts of deception, and everything she had done since Mr. Wilson’s death seemed designed to tamper with the evidence.
Determined to inspect every nook and cranny of Mrs. Otley’s rooms, Bea began with the armoire, carefully examining each item of clothing for hidden pockets as well as the dark corners—top and bottom—of the wardrobe. She rifled through the escritoire, emptied the bedside tables, checked under the mattress and padded the curtains to make sure a small storage compartment had not been sewn into them. She gave the dressing room the same thorough scrutiny, and other than discovering that Mrs. Petrie’s high standards did not extend to the living quarters, for there was dust on everything, including now Beatrice, there had been no revelations. She found nothing of interest, not even a packet of letters from Mr. Wilson. Perhaps she had burned the collection just as she’d said.
Brushing a hand down the front of her dress, she wondered if the lack of pristine cleanliness was a result of retrenchment. She had no idea what the family’s financial situation was in the wake of Mr. Otley’s death. She knew from reading his journal during her investigation in the Lake District that he had put the money from the hibiscus scheme into copper mining stocks. According to his reports, the stocks were doing quite well and before his murder he had made a notation to purchase more. Had his widow followed through on his intention? The fact that she remained in possession of the London house indicated that her finances were secure, for she did not have to sell the property to satisfy the creditors.
And yet a much-needed upstairs maid seemed to have been cut from the ranks.
It was impossible to tell the true state of affairs without talking to the lady, and Bea formulated her questions as she descended the stairs. Just as she was about to enter the front parlor, however, the clock within began to sound and she listened in horror as the chimes r
ose to six. Was it really so late?
Aunt Vera would be mortified that she’d lacked the circumspection to excuse herself earlier. Even if these hours in Bea’s presence were the only moments of solace Miss Otley had experienced in five months, her aunt would still deem it indecent to have stayed so long. No doubt she would render the faux pas an egregious breach of etiquette and cite it as proof that her niece wasn’t fit to return to society. At the last affair to which Bea had gone, her family had discovered her on the balcony tormenting a young nobleman who had information about the Earl of Fazeley’s final days. Repulsed by his hypocrisy, she had sought to increase his discomfort by repeatedly and aggressively reminding him of his romantic entanglement with an older woman.
It was a little thing, a minor event, but watching him cringe had given her a modicum of satisfaction.
And then Aunt Vera ruined it all by screeching her name in horror and apologizing to Lord Duncan and dismissing the Duke of Kesgrave before he could provide some ameliorating explanation for her behavior.
Bea had been confined to the house ever since, the terrible bruises she had sustained in pursuit of his lordship’s killer providing Aunt Vera with all the ammunition she needed to keep her inside.
But no more, Bea thought as she sought out Mr. Skeffington and requested he send her home in his carriage. No matter what her aunt contrived, it would prove insufficient in stopping her from attending the Pemberton ball that evening. She had passed three weeks without a glimpse of the duke and could bear it no more. She knew how weak it made her, pining for the sight of him, but there was nothing she could do to spare herself. She was a besotted idiot. So be it.
While Bea waited for her maid to appear, she apprised Emily of her progress, keeping her descriptions vague so as not to alarm the young lady with her suspicions. Although Mrs. Otley had been a perfect beast to the Incomparable, she was still her mother and necessarily the object of some affection.
“I cannot thank you enough for this effort,” Mr. Skeffington said as he helped her into his carriage. “Emily is already calmer knowing you have taken the helm. She has tremendous respect for you.”
At once, Bea recalled the girl’s confession that she had told everyone about Mr. Davies because she thought it was vastly diverting that an aging spinster had developed a tendre for an inappropriate clerk and found it difficult to believe the girl had any respect for her at all. But she saw no reason to cavil and merely promised to do her best.
Mr. Skeffington nodded gravely, closed the carriage door and told his driver to see Miss Hyde-Clare and her maid to Portman Square safely. Alone with Annie, Bea contemplated how to proceed. Clearly, the matter of her unconventional habits had to be addressed, lest it become the topic on everyone’s lips in the servants’ quarters and slowly find its way to the drawing room.
Before she could figure out what to say, Annie commented on the quality of Mrs. Petrie’s raisin scones. “They were delicious. Indeed, they were so delicious I don’t think I will be able to talk about anything else for days.”
Startled, Bea looked at her, unsure she was understanding the other woman correctly. “The scones?”
But she was, for Annie nodded firmly with a conspiratorial gleam in her eye. “Yes, ma’am, the scones. They have swept everything else from my mind.”
Bea did not know what she had done to earn such loyalty, but she was far too grateful to call attention to it or question its origin. “How disappointing, then, that I was not served them in the drawing room during my visit.”
CHAPTER SIX
Despite how thoroughly and consumingly Bea knew Damien Matlock, Duke of Kesgrave, was not smitten with her, she still felt something inside her shrivel and die the moment she observed him waltzing with Lady Victoria.
“Do they not make the most lovely pair?” Aunt Vera asked fondly, her eyes following their graceful figures across the dance floor. “It is quite a coup for her, as she is barely a month into her first season! His mother is quite pleased with the match. I believe she’s the one who originally proposed it, for the Tavistock land marches along the Matlock estate’s northern border. It would be the ideal marriage of elegance, prestige and property.”
Unable to speak—indeed, barely able to breathe—Bea nodded in agreement, for what her aunt said was true. Kesgrave and the Tavistock heiress made a stunning couple. Of course they did. They were two beautiful people of breeding, wealth and status, and seeing them together now as they twirled in each other’s arms, she understood the inevitability of their pairing. Both had been raised to be the best example of their kind, cultivated like orchids in a conservatory to possess only the finest traits of their species. Even their looks, which were opposite in every way, for she was dark and he was light, appeared calculated to promote the match, as if nature itself abhorred too much perfection.
“Mrs. Ralston says we should expect an announcement at any moment,” Aunt Vera continued, “as they have been in each other’s pocket almost continually for the past week.”
Although this information did little to improve Bea’s condition, it did nothing to harm it either. As shocked as she was to find herself staring at Kesgrave’s future, she wasn’t really surprised at all. From the moment she’d met him in the Lake District, she’d had a clear picture of his wife, and even if she hadn’t known the particulars, such as Lady Victoria’s raven hair and her wide-set black eyes, she’d had a firm grasp of the generalities.
He was always going to marry a diamond of the first water—the only question had been which one he would pick—and just because he seemed to get a perverse sort of pleasure out of Bea’s company did not mean he would have reversed five hundred years of flawless domesticity to settle for a plain-faced spinster with little conversation and no grace.
Every step of the way she had known this: while fantasizing about throwing eels à la tartare at his pedantic and unbearably superior head during dinner at Lakeview Hall, while drawing up a list of suspects with him by the fire in her bedchamber, while sitting, battered and bruised, on a Strand sidewalk beside him while he confessed to having an inordinate pride in her astuteness.
No, there was nothing surprising here.
And yet her heart felt as if it had been crushed by a stampede of rampaging horses.
“I wonder if they will marry in London, at St. George’s, or from the family estate in Cambridgeshire. I think country weddings are quite the loveliest,” Aunt Vera said. “Your uncle and I were married from Welldale House by the same rector who had baptized him as a child, which was tremendously meaningful for all of us. It’s about continuity, isn’t it, and perpetuating the family line. Young people think marriage is about the present, about how they feel in the moment, but it’s really about the past and the future.”
On and on she went, happily speculating about the fecundity of the proposed union and the many ways Lady Victoria would uphold the proud history of the Matlock family.
Terrified that her aunt’s thoughtless remarks might shatter what was left of her composure, Bea frantically searched the ballroom for an escape. The refreshment table was on the other side of the dance floor, so fetching a glass of ratafia would only give her a better view of Kesgrave and his intended. Was there a balcony? Assuredly, there was a balcony or a terrace. Yes, but the early-March weather was unseasonably warm and it might be crowded with other society matrons lauding the duke’s sensible choice. As far as she could tell, it was the on-dit of the evening.
Did she have to go to the retiring room to get away from the chatter, she wondered in distress. And then her gaze settled on a fig tree in the corner.
Yes, she thought, that would do nicely.
During the last ball she’d attended, before offending the appalling Lord Duncan, her family had made every effort to bury her in a corner behind a fig tree. On that occasion she’d resisted their efforts, but today she would happily plant herself next to the shrubbery—the more abundant the vegetation the better.
Calmly, she turned to her
aunt, whose conversation, while still centered on the duke, had shifted slightly to the many unfortunate ladies who had set their caps for him and were sure to be desolate at his removal from the Marriage Mart. Although she tried to sound genuinely mournful as she discussed Miss Carson’s dashed hopes, she couldn’t quite smother the hint of triumph, for she considered the girl a rival of her daughter and wished her only minor success. Obviously, Kesgrave would have been far too illustrious a feather in her cap.
“If you do not mind, Aunt Vera, I think I will sit down,” Bea said, interrupting the other woman’s monologue, as waiting for a natural pause was a futile project. “I will be over by that fig tree if you require anything.”
The annoyed expression that had overtaken her aunt’s face at this inconsideration was immediately supplanted by an almost comical look of relief. “Yes, yes, of course, my dear, do go sit in the corner. That is an excellent idea. You will be shown to advantage there, I think, as the blue color of the walls suits your wan complexion.”
Although Aunt Vera frequently lamented her niece’s pallid appearance, Bea was wryly amused to acknowledge that for once the description was overly optimistic. Standing there, next to the dance floor as Kesgrave and Lady Victoria swept by embodying perfection in every graceful line, she felt as if she’d been stripped of every ounce of color she’d ever possessed. All the satisfaction she’d gotten from figuring out the precise poison that felled Mr. Wilson drained from her body so quickly it might never have existed.
It will pass, she assured herself as she made her way to the corner with the fig tree. Although the prospect of an existence entirely free of Kesgrave felt like a tragedy now, the truth was she’d known him for less than six months, which was really only a meager fraction of her life. She’d passed twenty-six mostly content years before him and would no doubt pass twenty-six mostly content years after him.
For some reason, this thought, which had been calculated to put a little steel in her spine, deflated her completely, and as she crossed the floor, she had to resist the urge to drop to her knees and weep like a small child.