by Issy Brooke
She did not let a flicker of a wince cross her face. “I see. I am, however, hampered by my lack of friends in this area. Have you not spoken with Mrs Frankhaus, perhaps, or ... Mrs Smith? As married ladies, they cannot possibly get the wrong idea.”
“Mrs Frankhaus, as you are about to find, is not the sort of society lady who mixes enough to find me a wife. And Mrs Smith is ... I would not demean her by bothering her with this matter.”
Adelia blinked slowly, wondering if he would revisit that insulting sentence.
He did not. He kept his eyes fixed on the horse’s rump ahead of them, and then said, “So you see, if you could possibly ... I should be so very grateful ... thank you.”
She was going to regret asking this but she spoke anyway. “Have you any particular qualities of requirements you wish to see in a wife?”
“Oh! No! No, I make no demands, none at all! As a Christian I welcome all into my heart with love. Of course she’ll be a decent, modest, God-fearing woman. Educated – you know, a good finishing school, not these silly new women’s colleges, of course. There is no need for that sort of thing. She might be a little younger than me, you know, for ... family reasons.” His voice grew softer and more wistful as he went on, and he didn’t turn to look at Adelia at all. “Not too tall but she must be well turned out, and that’s not my own selfish demand, of course, but my bishop will expect her to represent us nicely at events and parties. Pale; no one wants a woman who looks like she has to work in the fields. I am suspicious of dark-haired women, too. There’s a hint of the Italian in them, which makes one worry about Papists and passion and so on. And fair-haired ladies seem to giggle too much, don’t you find?”
He was describing Selina Smith – well-dressed, educated, young, fair-skinned, red-haired and smartly dressed. She felt oddly embarrassed for him, and assured him awkwardly that she would “Make no promises but I shall make some enquiries.”
Then they finally arrived at Pever House and she had never been so glad to disembark from a carriage in her life.
WHEN THEODORE GOT TO the Smith residence, he found that Adelia had not yet arrived. He was greeted enthusiastically by Grayson Smith who swept him into the ramshackle manor house. He was immediately attacked by two large, shaggy grey wolfhounds and a moment later they were rounded up by a small boy of around six years old who was carrying a stick like it was a sword. Grayson ruffled the lad’s hair. There was affection shining on his face, making him look younger. He was rather old for a father, but of course, he was around twenty years older than his wife. Theodore smiled at the boy and challenged him to a duel, brandishing his own stick with a flourish.
It was at that moment Mrs Selina Smith walked in. The atmosphere changed immediately. Mr Smith straightened up and spoke snappily to the boy where a moment ago he had been laughing and joking alongside Theodore. “Tom, go to the schoolroom immediately. What have we told you about romping with the hounds?”
The boy ran away without a backward glance. Mrs Smith didn’t even watch him go. She frowned at her husband and then turned the most brilliant smile on Theodore that he was almost dazzled. She was dressed for lounging in her private rooms, not receiving visitors, with a loose day dress that barely met her ankles, and an embroidered wide-sleeved gown floating and falling open like it was a daring sort of house-coat.
“Oh, Lord Calaway, is it not? What a delightful surprise! Is your good lady wife here? We met yesterday and she was adorable, wasn’t she, Grayson?”
Theodore said, “I had hoped she might be here already. She intends to call, if that is acceptable? Forgive us, but we don’t know which days you might be at home to visitors.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that!” Mrs Smith said, clicking her fingers at a maid who nodded and melted away. “We don’t pay too much mind to the old ways, do we?”
“Yes, we do, actually,” Mr Smith muttered but he went unheard.
Theodore was led into a parlour which was strangely cold, and even Mrs Smith shivered and tutted as they entered. “I do apologise for our rather ungenial surroundings,” she said to Theodore as she fussed around the windows, setting the curtains straight. “This place is Grayson’s ancestral home and he seems to think that history is more important than warm feet.”
Poor Mr Smith protested weakly. “I say, dear wife, I am still here, you know.”
She looked him up and down with disdain. “So I see.” And again, as she turned to Theodore, her face lit up into the brightest smile. “How are you finding our little town? Do you live in London? Oh, I should simply love to live in London. Not all the time, of course. One needs to breathe the Scottish air, too, don’t you find? Are you a hunting man, Lord Calaway? Oh, please do sit down. Mary! The tea, at last. I do apologise for the delay, my lord. Our provincial staff lack some of the finer airs and graces of their metropolitan cousins.”
Theodore could think of nothing to say. He fell back onto the tried and tested rules of etiquette that he had been brought up with. He sipped at the tea, and made some polite comments about the paintings hanging on the walls. He was relieved when the maid announced that Lady Calaway had arrived, and had to stop himself from leaping to his feet when she was shown into the room. He wanted to grab her and stand behind her, letting her shield him from the Smiths.
“How wonderful to see you again!” Mrs Smith gushed at Adelia, leading them all to sit down again. Mr Smith hesitated awkwardly, and Theodore felt his pain. He clearly wanted to leave the ladies to socialise, but as he had been present when they had all arrived, he would now need a very convincing excuse to be able to leave so soon. He had to make polite conversation for a good few minutes more yet.
“Thank you. I am to very grateful to everyone for being so kind and welcoming.”
“Have you been paying calls?”
“Yes, to the handful of people that I have met or been introduced to. I must say, the only topic of conversation is Sir Phileas and yesterday’s funeral.”
Mrs Smith looked pained. “How frightfully dreary. You must think that nothing else interesting happens out here. Although,” she added, shooting a look at her husband, “You’d be right to think that. Grayson, darling, when are we going to London?”
“We are needed here,” he said flatly. He turned to Adelia and Theodore. “I can’t stand the place,” he told them. “London, I mean. I see no need to crowd ones’ self into a tight space with dozens of other people that you don’t like, paying far more for things that are never quite fresh, with constant noise and the threat of disease simply hovering in the air. Out here, one is safe.”
“Sir Phileas wasn’t safe,” Theodore said, trying to steer the conversation back to the death. He knew it wasn’t strictly polite but he needed to somehow get everyone to reveal if they had alibis or not.
He was beaten to it by Adelia, who asked almost directly. She softened her questions by leaning forward and speaking in a low, conspiratorial way. “It really is strange, isn’t it, how he fell from the tower that morning! It wasn’t a Sunday, so he had no reason to be at the church at all. Was he found straight away? I imagine it was a shock when word got out. Where were you when you heard about it?”
“Oh!” said Mrs Smith, her eyes widening. She copied Adelia, leaning towards her. “I heard about it almost immediately. I was with Mrs Frankhaus all morning, you see, and we’d been discussing how she could improve some of the rooms at Pever House. We were looking at wallpaper. She’s ever so artistic, is Lily, but don’t mention it to her husband because he doesn’t understand that sort of thing.” Again, that sentence was accompanied by a fierce look at her own husband. “So a boy came running up as I was leaving, and told us there and then. I had to come straight home and have a stiff drink!”
Adelia cooed in sympathy. Theodore looked at Mr Smith, expecting him to take his turn in the recount. He flared his nostrils and said, shortly, “I have no idea what that man was doing up on the tower and frankly it is a mystery why he was anywhere near the church. He never went. As
for me, I was travelling back from Aylesbury where I’d been on business and I didn’t hear a thing about it until I got into Peverham just after midday. The barman at the Gilbert Arms told me when I went in for my lunch.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go there, dear,” Mrs Smith said, smiling thinly. “You could have come straight home and had lunch here.”
Mr Smith returned her smile through gritted teeth. “I knew that you weren’t expecting me until much later in the day, and I didn’t want to disturb your plans.”
“How very thoughtful of you,” she said.
“I try.”
Adelia smoothed her dress and stood up in one movement. The tea had been drunk and she refused the offer of a second. In fact, to Theodore’s eyes, she seemed very keen to leave and she rejected Mrs Smith’s suggestion that they all walk around the gardens.
Once they got outside and were heading, on foot, back to the vicarage, Theodore found out exactly why she was so agitated.
ADELIA WALKED VERY quickly, her skirts rustling, holding them out of the way of her ankles as she tried to get away from the Smiths’ house. Theodore scampered along beside her, breathing a little heavily. She didn’t speak to him until they were definitely out of earshot and sight of the grounds. Then she stopped and faced him.
“She is lying! Or Lily Frankhaus is lying!”
“Ah, so you saw Mrs Frankhaus? What did she say?”
“She is a nice lady, very correct and proper. Rather reserved, but Mrs Smith is right about Mrs Frankhaus’s artistic tendencies. The house is lovely, very tastefully done. I didn’t see the Vice Admiral so I can’t vouch for his thoughts on the matter. Anyway, we spoke about Sir Phileas’s death, of course. At least, I tried to. She was somewhat evasive about the whole thing which I initially took to be polite sensibilities. But she refused to be drawn at all about where she was that morning, and something in her manner made me wonder what she was hiding. I put it down to some kind of embarrassment.”
“Embarrassment?” Theodore scoffed. “What can women do in their own time that they cannot talk about plainly?”
She rolled her eyes briefly, shaking her head at a cloud that was passing overhead. “All manner of things from curling one’s hair, helping one’s maid to darn some unmentionables, bathing, simply lying in the garden reading an unsuitable novel, walking...”
“Walking?”
“From everything I have heard about the Vice Admiral, he has fixed ideas and likes to be in charge. If he is the sort of man to forbid his wife the freedom to walk about the parish, but she desires to do so anyway, she will do it secretly and will, therefore, not wish to speak about it. Do you see?”
He nodded. But Adelia knew that he did not see, not really, for such restrictions had never affected his life. Still, he tried to understand, and for that she was grateful.
“Does this mean that Mrs Lily Frankhaus is a potential suspect?” Theodore said after a moment’s thought. “I suppose that it must, but you have met the lady. What did you think?”
Adelia laughed. “She is no more likely to have pushed a man off a tower than I am.”
He frowned.
She slapped at his hand. “Theodore! You know that I am not capable of an act like that, and nor is she. Yet...”
“Yet. Indeed.”
She nodded. “In certain circumstances, I agree, anyone could have done the deed. So, yes, she is a suspect. A deeply unlikely one, but she has certainly obscured some facts, if not lied, and so we cannot trust her.”
“And Mrs Smith? I will confess that I find both Mrs Smith and her husband to be strange and uncomfortable people.”
“You are too polite in your assessment. They are rude, crass, and utterly lacking breeding. She is worse than her husband. He thinks that having a long family history excuses him from the expected behaviours of society but there is no excuse for the way they speak with one another in company.”
“They are certainly ill-suited to one another.”
“They are ill-suited to society,” she said, feeling rather annoyed. She had liked Mrs Smith yesterday but now that she had seen how she behaved with her husband, in front of guests, she had lost all respect for her. If Mrs Smith got her way and went to London she would quickly find that the initial flurry of dinner invitations would not continue. “Anyway, did you find any useful information when you went to the church tower?”
“Yes. It was almost certainly not an accident,” he told her, describing the layout of the walkway and the height of the wall around the outside.
“Interesting. So, of the people who were open enemies of Sir Phileas, Mr Smith has no alibi – he says he was travelling back from Aylesbury but we cannot check that. Mrs Smith claims to have been with Lily Frankhaus but Mrs Frankhaus has evaded the question utterly and claimed nothing. Vice Admiral Frankhaus is still unaccounted for. I think we need to go back to Pever House, don’t you?”
“Will it not look odd for you to call twice in one day?” Theodore asked as they spun around and retraced their steps along the quiet road.
“Perhaps, but I am finding that certain rules are relaxed out here in the countryside. Furthermore, if I upset local convention, it hardly matters. We shall be gone from here very soon. And finally, although I have called upon Mrs Frankhaus, you have not paid a visit to her husband yet, and it is on that pretext we shall return.”
Five
Adelia was a little worried but she kept her concerns to herself. They were famous now, in their own small way, after all. They had solved a few murders and Theodore’s name had been in the newspapers. Luckily, the stories written about them had been small and had quickly been overtaken by other news. Yet it was a constant surprise to Adelia just how many people had heard of their exploits – in particular, Theodore’s exploits. Her own name had mostly been kept out of the picture although readers who knew how to read between the lines had quickly realised that she must have had a hand in matters too.
So it was perfectly within reason that the locals would grow suspicious about Theodore and Adelia’s presence in the local area. Yes, Theodore and the reverend were old school friends. However, Theodore had never visited Shale in Peverham before and they could never have been called close. She knew that they had to work fast, and if that meant ruffling some feathers while they were doing so, then it was necessary.
Ordinarily she would never have paid a repeat call upon someone else in the same day – a week’s interval would have been far better. But she marched her way up the long drive of Pever House as if she were behaving perfectly normally. As they went, they heard the rapid tapping of hooves behind them, and they turned to see Vice Admiral Frankhaus sitting atop a huge chestnut mare. He pulled her up somewhat dramatically, and boomed a greeting at them.
Theodore presented Adelia to him, and he slapped his own belly before jumping down and landing with a crunch. He bowed with a flourish, and then took her hand. She had no choice but to smile thinly as he pressed his lips to the back of her glove like he was some courtier from France. He seemed very pleased to see them both, and insisted they walk with him up to the house. He threw the reins at a stable boy who emerged from the side of the buildings.
“Bet you couldn’t wait to get out of Shale’s house!” he boomed at Adelia and Theodore as they went up the steps. “Horrible little man. Friend of yours? Really? We haven’t see you here before.”
“He invited us to stay and so we did not feel we could refuse,” Adelia said.
“I would have. You could have said you were ill. Plague. Anything. Lily!” He began to bellow loudly as they entered the wide, airy spaces of Pever House. Theodore looked around himself and breathed out slowly.
“You like the old place?” Vice Admiral Frankhaus said. “Partial to it myself. Like being up on the hill, looking down on the old fuddy-duddies of Peverham. You’ll have met Grayson Smith already?”
“Yes, we have,” said Adelia.
“Ha! Tell you what, have you noticed how he always introduces himself as G
rayson Smith?”
“It is his name.”
“Ha! Ha! I’ll tell you what that’s about. He hates being Smith. Just Smith, like any old commoner. So he goes around dropping Grayson in front so people think he’s double-barrelled, that’s what it is! Lily! LILY! We have guests.” He slapped his thighs in exasperation. “So sorry. My wife is something of a delicate flower. She’s probably in her room having a fit of the vapours or whatever it is you ladies do.”
Theodore laughed. “I doubt my own dear wife has had an attack of the vapours in her life. I rather think that the vapours are scared of having an attack of her, ha!”
Adelia glared at him but quickly turned it to a smile before Frankhaus could see her. She’d have some stern words with Theodore later. Clearly, being in the presence of Mr and Mrs Smith had worn off on Theodore, and Frankhaus’s loud manner didn’t help.
But then, she knew that Theodore didn’t feel comfortable in social situations especially with new people, and his usual defence was to simply copy the mannerisms of the people around him. She decided it was best if she spoke with Lily Frankhaus again alone; if she came down to mix with the men, Adelia thought she’d never get to confess to what she was hiding. So she excused herself and made a self-deprecating joke about ladies in chambers, and left before either of the men could stop her. She accosted a maid as she crossed the hall, and asked to be announced to Mrs Frankhaus again – “with my deepest apologies but do explain my husband is here with her husband, and I wondered if she might be available to join me? If not,” she added in a quiet voice, “simply put me in a side room alone until the men are finished. I shall be quite all right.”
She added it as a sop to propriety but she knew that Lily Frankhaus would not leave her to sit on her own in a room. And she was right. A few minutes after she had been installed in a pleasant parlour, Mrs Frankhaus slipped in, her eyes wide.