Aurora (13 page)

She took a sustaining sip of wine, cleared her throat, and went on. She had an attentive audience. There wasn’t a sound but the scratching of a pen moving rapidly over a page, the scribe taking notes for her to sign. She lowered her eyes modestly, as though ashamed to have to relate such a tale. “I knew nothing more for six months. Kenelm left. I never saw him again from that day, but assumed he had gone abroad. My husband refused to discuss it, or allow me to. ‘He is no longer my son’ was all he would say. As you perhaps know, some six months later my husband was standing at death’s door—it was all too much for him. He was never really well again. His conscience bothered him at the last, and he told me the rest of it, just so I would know, but it is hearsay evidence, you understand. He told me Kenelm demanded money, said he would not leave the house without money, and my husband agreed to give him a certain sum, a thousand pounds he always kept in the family vault. Kenelm demanded more, demanded some other things, jewelry, a note, I don’t know what. My husband refused, and Kenelm, his own son, struck him. Began beating him repeatedly till he feared for his very life. Kenelm was drunk, of course—he would never have done it otherwise. He was not really a
vicious
boy, except when he drank,” she assured her auditors, with a forgiving eye.

“My husband kept a pistol in the safe, a loaded pistol. He managed to get hold of it and shot Kenelm, to protect his own life. It was self-defense. Joe Miller, my husband’s groom and faithful old retainer, took care of the—the burial. I can’t imagine why he chose the uniform. I expect the outfit Kenelm wore was—bloodied,” she said with distaste.

“Out of respect for the dead, I suppose, he chose the uniform. Charles, my husband, wanted his son buried in the family plot, but could not reveal what had happened to him. He was afraid of the scandal—a trial and all the rest of it, and Kenelm disgraced. There was little Charles and the rest of the family to think of. A simple burial seemed to him the best way. One of our servant girls had just given birth to a stillborn child. She was not married, and we said it was the child’s grave. Actually the child was buried in another parish by my husband. He didn’t tell me where, unfortunately, so I cannot tell you that. He was weak at the end, you know, and had trouble telling me even this much. But in this manner my husband managed the last rites of his son with some decency. He was buried with the minister in attendance and so on. Charles told me all this on the night he died, and told me never to tell a soul. I never have, nor intended to. His way of handling the matter was irregular, of course—he may even have broken a law—but he did the charitable thing, what he felt was best for the innocent survivors in the family. This man—” she glared at Kenelm with loathing “—has made it necessary for me to break my word to my husband, and reveal the truth about Kenelm.”

Raiker rose to his feet, his face set in rigid lines of anger. “Hypocrite!” he said to Clare. “I might have forgiven the rest, Clare, but not this. I was only amused at your attempt to cut me out of my rightful inheritance—it was no more than I expected of you—but now you’ve gone too far, to accuse my father of murder, and myself of having the poor taste to want you. I should have told him the truth.” He pushed aside his chair and strode from the room. No one made a move to stop him, nor did his counsel follow him.

“We’ll be wanting a few details,” Cleary said to her in a businesslike tone. “The exact date, name of that feller did the burying, name of the minister who officiated, name of the servant girl who had the . . .”

She obliged him by repeating the name Joe Miller, since dead, and the minister retired to Cornwall, but was unsure of the servant girl’s name. Smith, she thought, or possibly Jones or Brown.

“I’ll speak to the doctor then, and see if we can find out who this corpse
really
is. Horace Rutley, I expect,” he said, and he too took his leave.

Lady Raiker went to her room and locked the door, but within an hour had called for food, so her household concluded when the empty tray was returned to them that she would recover from her ordeal.

Chapter Nine

At the Dower House, Kenelm’s arrival was most eagerly awaited, but all the day long he didn’t come. Mr. Berrigan came and had not relented a whit regarding allowing Lady Raiker to accept a house from her brother-in-law. Nor did he quite screw himself up to an offer, but told Marnie in a backward way that he had no notion of making her stay in the same house as that “dashed dowager,” if that was what she thought. Every half hour Aunt Hennie pulled out her hunter’s watch and demanded to know what was keeping Kennie, and at three-twenty even went so far as to suggest a run over to the Hall to see what was going on, but no one arose to accompany her, and she sat down again to her impatient vigil.

At dinnertime they were no better informed about the exhumation than the lowliest villager. They had heard from the dairy-maid that the body wore a grand uniform and had his hands stuffed with fabulous jools, but they treated this rumour with the contempt they thought it deserved, just wondering ten or twenty times if it was the emerald necklace that was meant. Malone declared that she hoped she knew truth from faction, and waited as eagerly as the others for the bearer of hard news to arrive.

Not till eight p.m. did he present himself at the door, and he was in such a pelter still that they had every hope for a good story from him. Malone might have stayed away, considering the presence of the Gowers, but with such “unpresidented” goings-on to hear, she took up an inconspicuous stand behind Marnie’s chair with her ears flapping, and refused to budge.

“Kenelm, do come in and tell us what happened!” Marnie pleaded. “We have been hearing such strange tales of buried jewels and uniforms that there is no making any sense of it.”

“True—all true!” he said, striding in. He was so angry, so upset, he could not remain seated, but like Malone stood leaning on the back of the chair, Aurora’s chair, from which he took several turns about the room. “There was the corpse—skeleton, really—of a man in a box, and he wore a uniform. It wasn’t even a proper pauper’s coffin, but an old gun box that Papa had received rifles in for the volunteer brigade. They didn’t even give the poor devil a proper wooden box. And he wore
my
uniform.”

“You were never a soldier,” Marnie pointed out.

“I nearly was a volunteer one. I was to be captain of one of the groups of Papa’s volunteers. I had a swanky scarlet tunic and black trousers—unfinished, incidentally. The corpse wore a jacket with the sleeves basted in, and it also wore my rings. You remember, Marnie, my signet ring with the diamond, like Bernard’s, and my ruby. A family heirloom. Now why the deuce did she bury those valuable rings? That doesn’t bear the stamp of Clare. That is unlike her, to allow those two valuable rings to be buried.”

“Was it Rutley, the body?” Malone demanded.

“The height and size seem right. Dr. Ashton figures the man must have been close to six feet. I rode down to talk to him this afternoon, after he’d done his work. What a job! I was under six feet at the time actually, about five feet ten in those days. The teeth are sound and in good repair except for a few small cavities. There’s a wisdom tooth missing on the bottom. I have all mine still.”

“How did she kill him?” Hennie asked, smiling in glee.

“He was killed by a bullet in the back. Nice touch, don’t you think? Can’t you just see Papa shooting me in the back?”

“She never said Charles did it!” Hennie gasped.

“Oh, yes, for conduct on my part too reprehensible to repeat. Beating him up. But there were extenuating circumstances. I was drunk at the time. I was always a little vicious when drunk, it seems.”

“Oh Ken, she didn’t say that!” Marnie asked, her eyes round with disbelief. “You used to be so
silly
when you drank a little too much. You used quite dreadful language, but were not
vicious.”

“It was after I had much too much that I became vicious. And beating Papa is but the tail end of my conduct on that infamous night. Had I done a half or a quarter of what she accused me of, I would have deserved the bullet. By God, I won’t stand still for this.”

“You was raping her, I suppose?” Hennie asked greedily.

Kenelm glanced at her and scowled, in a repressive way. “There’s more. I demanded a reward for my performance. A thousand pounds was not enough—I wanted jewels and a note as well. She said I struck him and was beating him to a pulp so that he had to kill me in self-defence. The foolishness of it, saying he kept a loaded pistol in the safe. As though anyone would. And how did he get hold of the gun, with me busily taking him apart? It makes no sense. No one could believe such a story.”

“Did
they believe it?” Rorie asked him.

“I don't know. No one tried to stop me when I left, and I haven’t had a constable at my heels all day.”

“What accounts for the uniform?” Malone asked.

“Just to add a touch of respectability. Papa—no, it was Joe Miller, since conveniently dead, you know. I knew it must be a dead man who performed the act—disliked to bury me in a bloody jacket, and chose for my shroud an uncompleted uniform. I don’t know why Joe should have decided to rifle my jewelry box and stick those two rings on my fingers. That will always remain a mystery, I fear.”

“What did Clare say about that?” Marnie asked.

“She says it is all hearsay, a deathbed confession from Papa, and she knows only what he told her with his last gasp. That leaves her free to be ignorant of any details she hasn’t figured out an explanation for. Oh, and there is more. Not a stitch under the uniform. Naked as a needle but for the jacket and trousers, Ashton says. And boots. I was buried in my boots. Corpses never are, you know. I don’t understand. I just can’t make any sense of it. I’ve been cudgelling my brains all day. I thought at first someone was wearing the outfit for a masquerade party, but then the jacket would have a bullet hole, and it doesn’t. It is in good condition except for the mildew and a little rot, and of course the basted sleeves. It wouldn’t have been worn unfinished. Besides, something would have been worn under it. It was put on after the death—call it murder, a shot in the back.”

“Swimming!” Malone suggested. “The man could have been swimming and been shot when he was naked. Maybe they didn’t have the clothes when it was time to bury him, and just grabbed up the uniform as the handiest outfit in a hurry.”

Raiker considered this with interest. “Yes, but why would they also grab up those two valuable rings?” he asked. There was no answer.

After a moment, Rorie got an idea. “Did you wear the rings every day?”

“No, I had done no more than try them on. They were in my jewelry box.”

“Maybe it was to be said you had taken them with you. Family heirlooms, items of sentimental value—you might have taken them away,” Rorie said.

“I might have, but I didn’t, and that doesn’t explain why they’re buried. I can see Clare taking them and selling them and telling Papa I had taken them away. That I would believe with no trouble, but not burying them. Not without a damned good reason.”

“The best reason in the world,” Hennie advised him. “The fact that they’re buried makes us all doubt Clare was the one who had the overseeing of the burial. What they call a red herring, isn’t it?”

“That would only make sense if she thought the body would ever be dug up.
Did
she think so, I wonder?”

“I begin to wonder if poor Clare had a thing to do with it,” Alfred was obtuse enough to say aloud.

“Be quiet, Alfred,” his wife ordered. “If you have nothing sensible to say, keep still.” He obediently fell silent, which allowed her to proceed to the next item.

“Why were you really sent off, Kennie? You’ve been mute as an oyster on that score, and we mean to hear it, so brace yourself to tell us.”

“Leave me some privacy. It was a misunderstanding. You may be sure I was neither drunk nor beating my father, nor demanding money from him.”

“Very cool, but what the deuce
was
you doing that he ordered you from the house? Caught with your hands on your stepmama I warrant,” she answered herself when he remained stubbornly silent.

Raiker, pacing from fireplace to chair at the time, glanced at Aurora and frowned. She looked swiftly away, and felt herself blush. Now why should
she
blush because
he
had been caught with his father’s wife? She was angry with herself and with him, him because she believed this was the act that had caused him to be turned off.

“If my hands had been on her, it would have been in anger,” he replied fiercely, which sent Rorie wondering if he had been striking her. This, bad as it was, was more acceptable than making love to her.

“In self-defence more likely,” Hennie added.
“I
know what she was like with Bernard.”

“That has really nothing to do with it,” Kenelm said, turning the conversation firmly aside from his reason for leaving home. “If the corpse is Rutley—well, it must be, who else could it be?—if it
is,
how did he come to die? Who shot him in the back, and why? And why was he buried in my jacket and rings?”

“She
killed him. No doubt in my mind,” Hennie answered at once. “And if he wasn’t her lover, it’s more than I know. You said she hadn’t any men hanging around at the time, Marnie. That’s why. She’d just murdered Rutley, and hadn’t gotten around to finding a replacement yet.”

“You said the grave was fresh when you came down to my father’s funeral, Marnie?” Kenelm asked. “And Horace Rutley had just disappeared, so it must be him. It is too much coincidence.”

Marnie frowned, trying to remember exactly. “It was newish—the hump was still visible.”

“There’s something wrong here. I remember the Jenkins girl was well along in pregnancy when I left. That I assumed was the unmarried mother whose stillborn child was supposed to have been buried there all these years.”

“Yes, it was new,” Marnie decided. “I remember Clare saying the girl was going to plant flowers. There was nothing there—just freshly turned earth. The time is exactly right for it to be Horace’s grave if he was killed, and didn’t run off at all.”