by Issy Brooke
“How lovely to see you again – so soon,” she said. From another person, that comment would have been a barbed dig at the repeat visit. But Mrs Frankhaus’s face seemed free of any such malice. It was a nice change, given that everyone else Adelia had met in Peverham seemed to be out to get someone else.
Adelia made the requisite apologies for her presence and Mrs Frankhaus waved them away. She stood at the window, looking out over the lawns.
“Would you like to take a turn in the gardens?” Adelia asked.
“Oh, no – if it’s all the same to you, I prefer to stay indoors. I was only thinking of the colours of the roses. Do you take an interest in flowers?”
“A little, though it is my husband who is the keen gardener in our house. I can see that you have an artistic eye.”
“Me? Oh, no,” she said, turning her head away so that Adelia could only see the side of her cheek. Her skin had gone pink.
“I do apologise. But I noticed before that your house is so very tastefully furnished, so I imagined that it was your skill at work here.”
Mrs Frankhaus’s cheek rounded as if she were smiling at the compliment. “Thank you. Yes, I have paid as much attention as possible to the colours and harmonies and so on.” She sighed, her shoulders slowly rising and falling.
“What is it?” Adelia asked.
“Oh – nothing, nothing. It’s silly, really. But very well, as you have asked me, I will confess that I do harbour a secret love of art. A deep love. It goes beyond matching a cushion to a carpet. I long for galleries, for exhibitions, for news about painters and sculptors, for private shows and daring viewings, for all the passion and challenge that artists bring to our otherwise dull lives!” She snapped her mouth shut as her voice rose, and shook her head, as if berating herself. A moment later, in a much calmer and quieter voice, she said, “Oh, please don’t mention that to my husband. He would much rather I ... didn’t.”
“Didn’t what? Take an interest in cultural matters?”
She turned at last to Adelia and cast her eyes downwards, smiling to herself. “The problem is that looking at art leads to other things, I find.”
Adelia was momentarily horrified. After all, galleries were full of paintings of buxom ladies in various states of undress. What on earth could this demure, reserved woman actually mean? “Er...” she squeaked out.
“Yes,” Mrs Frankhaus went on, still looking shyly at the floor between them. “I confess that I, too ... have begun to paint.”
Then Mrs Frankhaus told Adelia exactly where she’d been that morning, and Adelia understood immediately why it had been a secret.
THEODORE WAS PERSUADED by Frankhaus to indulge in a glass of brandy, and before long he was dragged up to Frankhaus’s study to admire his collection of naval pistols and other memorabilia from his days at sea. Most of the objects were either brass, or involved complicated knots of ropework, and their purposes were generally obscure or highly specific. The carved walrus tooth which unscrewed to reveal a tot of rum was the most useful thing that Theodore spotted in amongst the maritime compasses, sextants, pointless lengths of bell-rope and racy scrimshaw carvings of naked mermaids.
“What do you think about the – death?” Theodore asked, stopping himself just before he accidentally said “murder.” That brandy had been a bad idea.
“What, Phileas? Bloody fool if you ask me. What was he doing on the church tower anyway?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Theodore said. “He was not known for his church attendance.”
“He was known for his other attendances, if you get my meaning. Ha!”
“No, I am afraid I don’t.”
“Prude, are you?”
“Oh, you mean women?”
“Yes, I mean women!”
“His wife had left him, I understand.”
“Quite, quite. So you can hardly blame the chap for looking around for some comfort, of course.”
“Anyone of note?”
“Oh, I could not possibly name any names.”
Theodore tried to speak heartily. “Have another brandy and tell me everything!” But he didn’t quite get the tone of his voice right, and Frankhaus just looked at him strangely.
“We’re a small community, don’t forget,” Frankhaus said, warningly. “Can’t do to gossip. Phileas was probably up there with one of his lady-friends or maybe he was trying to hide from one of them and went there to be safe.”
“And fell?”
“And fell.”
“I’ve been up there. Seems awfully hard to fall.”
Frankhaus glowered at him now. “What are you, a detective? Oh! You think you are, don’t you!”
Theodore had to admit that he was somewhat taken aback by Frankhaus’s direct and almost bullying manner. As an earl, a high-ranking aristocrat and member of the peerage, he was used to people being deferential at the very least, and often fawning. But Frankhaus was a man who was used to being in command, and seemed to pay no heed at all to Theodore’s title.
“I was simply curious,” Theodore stammered out.
“Curious? Bloody nosey if you ask me. Which you shouldn’t. Ask me, I mean. You’ll be asking me where I was when the chap died next, and I will tell you now, I won’t answer. Simply shan’t. Bloody insulting. Am not going to explain myself to you. Come along. Where’s that wife of yours?” Frankhaus headed to the door of this study and wrenched it open. “Probably interrogating my wife, and I won’t have it. I won’t!”
Within the space of five minutes, Adelia had been rounded up from the parlour, and the pair of them had been firmly ejected from Pever House. They walked away with as much dignity as they could muster, heads held high, and an urgency in their steps.
“Well,” said Theodore as they left the house far behind. “A reaction like that tells you something, doesn’t it?”
Adelia nodded and risked a glance behind them. “I also know exactly where Lily Frankhaus was,” she told him. “I need to check her alibi, but she does have one. And it’s not Mrs Selina Smith.”
“Interesting,” said Theodore.
“And complicated,” Adelia replied.
“Interesting,” he repeated, with a grin, and she grinned back.
The chase was getting faster.
Six
Adelia watched Theodore’s mouth actually drop open momentarily when she told him about Mrs Lily Frankhaus’s secret.
“That is astonishing,” he said at the end. “And no wonder that she kept it from her husband! He would surely not approve.”
“Would you approve of me indulging in such a venture?”
“Well,” he said. “That depends. After all, you are a passable watercolour artist, and furthermore you are going to have to root out this nest of bohemians in Pever Magna, so I find myself in the curious position of having to encourage you to go rather than forbidding you.”
She grinned. He wouldn’t forbid her anything, anyway. Still, it was nice to have permission, of a sort. As she was dressed for walking out, and the day was still young, she allowed Theodore to escort her back to Peverham where he bought her a first class ticket for the next train to Pever Magna.
“I shall be quite safe,” she reassured him through the window as the steam locomotive began to haul itself out of the station. He ran along the platform anyway, like a lover sending their sweetheart to the farthest outposts of the British Empire, until his knees forced him to slow down. She pulled the window closed and sat back in her small compartment. In truth, she always felt a curious thrill of transgression and excitement and just a little fear whenever she travelled on her own. A woman alone was not an unusual sight, especially now that more and more of them had acquired safety bicycles or taken up hearty outdoor pursuits such as golf. Poor women had always travelled wherever they pleased, as long as it was on foot. But in recent years thousands of middle class women were becoming mobile and were often seen out in pairs or even alone, depending on the place and the time of day.
Stil
l, Adelia felt a little conspicuous, being a countess and without any maid to walk nearby and attend to necessary things like buying hot muffins or finding the way for her. She couldn’t have done this sort of thing in London and she would have hesitated before travelling alone in her own locality simply because of the potential gossip.
But the Chilterns were a sleepy, quiet, safe-feeling sort of place and no one knew her here.
And she desperately wanted to get to the large nearby town of Pever Magna, and find this group of painters that Lily Frankhaus claimed to have been with.
Mrs Frankhaus was not only mixing with artistic sorts. She was not only learning to paint.
She had – shockingly, thrillingly, utterly scandalously – been attending a life drawing class with an actual live model.
ONCE MRS FRANKHAUS had started her confession to Adelia, she had spilled every last bit of information and Adelia had no trouble, therefore, in “rooting out the nest of bohemians” as Theodore had put it. Disappointingly, their “workers’ commune” was not a hovel wreathed in the smoke from opium pipes surrounded by beautiful young women dressed as Russian peasants but was merely an ordinary three-storey townhouse. It lay down a pleasant cobbled side street behind the main market street of the town. The door was ajar, and a sign outside invited visitors to freely enter and view the gallery.
At least the man who immediately pounced on her was a little unconventional. He was clearly hankering after the romantic looks of the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti as he had been in his youth, clean-shaven and with long, curling hair and an intense expression. He spoke in a reedy voice that cracked at the ends of words, as if his throat had suffered damage at some point. He was perfectly willing to tell her about their group. He showed her around the joint exhibition space, told her about the communal living spaces where they shared food and chores, and explained that they also offered both private and group classes to the general public. “We are thoroughly modelled on the principles set down by John Ruskin,” he finished, proudly, “Though with our own quirks and idiosyncrasies. Do you paint?”
“I do, a little, but I am here on behalf of my friend. I am visiting the area and when I mentioned to her that I was coming into Pever Magna for the day, she told me to come here as she said she was a regular attendee. She also asked if I might enquire about a glove she thinks she dropped here.”
“Does she have private classes?”
“No – this is somewhat delicate – she was taking part in the closed group session last week, Thursday morning, when I understand there was a live model.”
“What is delicate about that? What can be more natural or healthful than the human body? God’s own creation, indeed?”
“Ah. Um. Well.”
He grinned at her suddenly and said, “I apologise. I have no wish to make you uncomfortable. But the world is not as it was, you know.”
“I am all for rational dress,” she said in a rush. And then she confessed, before she even knew that it was something she felt, “You know, I do rather wish I had been born fifty years later than I was. I would have flung off my corset in a moment. Now, it is too late...”
“My lady, it is never too late!” He extended a hand to her. She stared at it in horror. Where was he going to lead her? Was he about to lure her into a side-room where he would divest her of her formal clothes and clad her in flowing, pre-Raphaelite gowns?
“My dear boy,” she said, stiffly. “I do not think this is appropriate.”
“The room is empty now,” he said. “I only propose that we go to the room used for last week’s class and search for your friend’s glove. What was her name?”
“Mrs Lily French.” Mrs Frankhaus had told Adelia that though she knew that people recognised her, she attended under a pseudonym. Anyone with manners therefore understood that she was there under some secrecy and was not to be talked about.
“Ah. I know her. She is a fine artist. Follow me.”
Adelia took it as a good sign. He didn’t look confused or say she hadn’t been there. They entered a large, airy space and she went through the motions of looking for a glove. After a while she said, with a studied air of confusion, “Perhaps she is mistaken. Maybe she was here on another day, at a class that took place in another room.”
“No,” he replied. “I always like to see her work and I remember her being here all morning last week. She arrives alone and leaves alone, like clockwork. But you are right. The glove is not here. I will ask around, in case it has been tidied away.”
She thanked him profusely and left.
Mrs Lily Frankhaus had her secrets, but Adelia was somewhat relieved that those did not include murder.
Mrs Frankhaus was no longer a suspect.
But Adelia’s suspicions now fell even more strongly on three other people: Grayson Smith, who had no alibi. Vice Admiral Frankhaus, who had reacted angrily to Theodore and refused to give an alibi.
And Selina Smith, who had so obviously lied about her own alibi.
THE DAY HAD BEEN TAKEN up with calling upon at Pever House and a trip to Pever Magna, so Adelia felt quite exhausted when she dressed for dinner that night at the vicarage. Though Reverend Shale had insisted that no one “stand on ceremony” she felt there was an expectation, nevertheless, to appear correct and uphold one’s standards. Theodore agreed and they were glad that they had done, because there were two last-minute additions to the gathering that night. Mr and Mrs Smith were shown in. They were on their best behaviour while in front of the reverend, and Adelia was relieved to see that Selina Smith didn’t indulge in her usual petty carping at her husband.
Conversation remained on very polite topics and no one mentioned the death of Sir Phileas. It wasn’t until after the dessert course, when the two ladies withdrew, that Adelia was able to speak to Mrs Smith about Mrs Frankhaus.
Adelia wished there was another way to go about the forthcoming conversation. She had been through it with Theodore, and in her own head, hunting for a way of broaching the subject with Mrs Smith without revealing Mrs Frankhaus’s secret. Then she reflected that most people must have known of Mrs Frankhaus’s artistic tendencies; Mrs Smith herself had referred to it. Mrs Frankhaus’s use of a false name was a flag to warn people not to gossip about her, but it wouldn’t have prevented anyone from knowing what she was doing. Such a thing would have been impossible in the small and close-knit society around Peverham and Pever Magna.
Indeed, Adelia thought, it was perfectly likely that Mrs Smith knew all about it – and her use of Mrs Frankhaus as an alibi was an oversight on her part.
Unfortunately, it transpired that Mrs Smith hadn’t been aware of a thing.
She stared at Adelia in amazement. “I am so dreadfully sorry, Lady Calaway. I fear that I have misheard you. Did you just say that Mrs Frankhaus was ... is ... actually painting? In a group?”
Well, Adelia could hardly take it all back now. She dropped her voice, even though they were quite alone. “Please do keep it to yourself. I am sure you are not a gossip. It is only that I thought you already knew of her tendencies; otherwise I should never have mentioned it at all.”
“Goodness me! I knew nothing! So, she paints, does she?” Mrs Smith leaned forward, eager to share in the conspiracy. “I knew she had overseen the decoration of the house, and I would not have been surprised if you had said she keeps a little sketchbook of drawings of flowers or butterflies. But this? This? I am hardly surprised that she keeps it quiet. Her husband would not approve. But how does she keep it a secret from him?”
“She goes to Pever Magna,” Adelia told her. “I do not know how she manages it.” Perhaps the servants at Pever House were on her side – that was likely.
“Well, I never!” Mrs Smith sat up and she was beaming with genuine delight. “You know, I simply didn’t know she had it in her! I see our sweet little Mrs Frankhaus in a new light now, mark my words! How perfectly delicious! Classes in town? Mixed classes?”
Adelia decided not to mention the nude model
. That would have a scandalous titbit that Mrs Smith would have struggled to keep to herself. “So I understand, yes. In fact, that was where she was last Thursday morning.”
At first Mrs Smith frowned, not understanding the significance of the comment.
Then her brow cleared and her eyes widened.
“But I...” she said, and stopped, and her cheeks coloured.
Adelia nodded. She smiled sweetly, but said in tones of steel, “So you see, I was awfully surprised when you said that you were with her.”
“Well. Yes.” But it only took a moment for Mrs Smith to rally round. With an artificial brightness, she said, “Oh, you know how it is! Some weeks, all the days run into one – I get quite confused! There’s hardly any routine to my life.”
Adelia nodded, though it was hard to believe that the day a prominent man died had just been like any other day.
Mrs Smith went on, this time with an edge to her voice. “Lady Calaway, it is almost as if you are investigating.”
Adelia remembered that Theodore had been challenged by the Admiral. News would soon ripple around the community. She could hardly hide it, so she nodded and said, “It is true that my husband has felt a certain pull, a kind of curiosity, if you like, about the matter. But of course,” she added, “there is no official suspicion around the case. There is no case at all, I should say.”
“I see.” Mrs Smith glanced over her shoulder rather dramatically and then leaned forward again. She took a moment before she spoke. “I am really not sure how to broach this subject. I know my duty as a wife, of course.”
It was all Adelia could do to keep her face straight at that comment. Somehow, she managed it.
Mrs Smith said, “But I also have a duty to God and to justice, is that not so?”
“Indeed yes.”
“Yet I feel I am caught in a dilemma.”
“Mrs Smith, if you have information about the death, please do speak up. You can never be blamed for speaking the truth.”