Axel (24 page)

Axel locked the French doors—lest Shreve think to take the fresh Oxfordshire air of a sudden—then accepted the paper from Abby.

“The date is nearly two weeks before the colonel’s death,” Axel said. “What were you about, Shreve?”

Shreve cleared his throat and put his hands behind his back. He resembled one of Axel’s university scholars preparing to launch into a lengthy, articulate recitation about a reading assignment the boy hadn’t so much as glanced at.

Abby ran a pale finger around the nacre inlay on the gun’s handle. “Mr. Belmont is patient and fair, while I am newly bereaved, and reputed by all and sundry to be nervous and given to dramatics.”

“I respectfully beg madam’s leave to disagree,” Shreve said, rocking forward. “At every turn, we tell those fools at the Weasel that you are the steadiest, kindest, most reasonable mistress, that you are the soul of solicitude and understanding, and—”

“And thus your protestations reinforce their every suspicion to the contrary,” Axel said. “Put your coat on in the presence of a lady, Shreve. Why did you give notice?”

Abigail had latent talent as a thespian, for she aimed the gun in the direction of the French doors and sighted down the barrel, while Shreve fumbled into his jacket.

“The colonel was growing difficult,” Shreve said, when he’d buttoned up with shaking fingers. “Increasingly difficult, and I am not the only staff member to remark this. I’m two years beyond the age at which the colonel had told me I might have my pension, and thus I felt justified in stepping back from my post.”

Plausible
. Abby confirmed that much with a glance, and set the gun down. “Why do you suppose the colonel was becoming difficult?”

“Advancing years? Too much time in the tropical sun as a younger man? His temper was growing shorter, he was forgetful but wouldn’t acknowledge it, and he… One doesn’t want to speak ill of the departed.”

Abby resumed her perusal of Shreve’s letter of resignation. “Does one want to hang by the neck until dead for a murder one didn’t commit?”

Axel had no evidence to tie Shreve directly to the murder, and Shreve had no apparent motive. The butler had also had so much opportunity over the years, that for him to have killed Stoneleigh in the middle of a full house and by means of a loud gunshot made no sense at all.

Nonetheless, Shreve sagged, bracing himself with a hand on the sideboard. “The colonel had begun throwing things. His snuff boxes, even his pipes.”

Abby set the paper aside, as if it had developed a rank odor. “He loved those dratted pipes. The lot of them are willed to Ambers. The snuff boxes were to be yours.”

Were to be… before Shreve had been caught in the grip of felonious impulses.

“I was not stealing, madam. Please believe me. I simply had not been able to locate the combination until today—half days come only once a week, you know—and I wanted you to decide what to do with the safe’s contents if I could get it open.”

Axel believed him, up to a point. A man who’d serve for many uncomplaining years beneath the heel of an arrogant martinet hadn’t the daring necessary for theft. Such a man would, though, be motivated to retrieve his letter of resignation from the safe if he hadn’t found it in more predictable locations first.

“The colonel died a good month ago,” Axel said. “It took you that long to open the safe?”

“I could not find the combination, Mr. Belmont. I fault myself for that, but I could look for it only during the odd hour on the odd day, and I was growing desperate. Mrs. Stoneleigh’s health is reported to be improving, and we hoped she might return to us here. Once that happened, I’d have little opportunity to retrieve—to open the safe.”

“To retrieve your letter of resignation,” Abby said, “because you wouldn’t mind working for me in the colonel’s absence.”

Shreve had the sense to remain silent.

“Where was the combination?” Axel asked.

“Under the colonel’s blotter.”

“I looked under the blotter the night of the murder. Nothing there.” Axel had rifled the entire desk, sorting through papers, two pouches of tobacco, pipe paraphernalia, old letters, and other orts and leavings of a man’s life.

“I do apologize, sir. I meant, on the under
side
of the blotter. Once or twice when I delivered the colonel his nightcap, I caught him writing on the underside of the blotter. Most odd, but I’d forgot about it until the, um, present situation arose.”

Timid, sensible, and diplomatic. “How long have you known about this safe?”

“The colonel said he’d had security measures installed prior to taking possession of the estate,” Shreve replied. “On the subcontinent, one typically had a safe or two, for obvious reasons. Unrest was lamentably common.”

“So you’ve known about this safe all along,” Axel said, “and you kept the information from the magistrate investigating Stoneleigh’s murder—a murder that took place in the very same room as the safe?”

“Mr. Belmont, I mean you no disrespect,” Shreve said, “but Stoneleigh Manor belongs to Mrs. Stoneleigh now. Should the contents of the safe devolve to the discredit of madam’s deceased spouse, then it is for her alone to say how relevant those contents are to your investigation.”

“A lovely sentiment,” Abigail said, “though woefully self-serving, Shreve. Mr. Belmont, I will leave you to examine the contents of the safe, your discretion being utterly trustworthy.”

She rose, while Axel resisted the urge to applaud her performance.

Shreve bowed. “My resignation is, of course, yours to accept, madam.”

“I’m sure Mr. Belmont will have more questions for you, Shreve. Your fate lies in his capable hands.”

Abby moved toward the door, leaving the letter of resignation tucked under the gun on a corner of the desk, and the etched blotter wrong side up, like an unearthed rune stone.

“I’ll be in Gregory’s suite, Mr. Belmont.”

Not by yourself, you won’t.
“Would you object to the company of footmen while you’re about your tasks there?” Axel asked.

He did not dare order this woman to do anything, and his pleading skills were lamentably rusty.

“I’ll need assistance if I’m to box up the colonel’s belongings for the poor. Shreve might help as well, assuming he remains at liberty.”

Shreve nearly collapsed against the sideboard, while Abby made her exit.

“You’ll not hang,” Axel said. “Not for murder, but bear in mind we have more than two hundred capital offenses here in Merry Old England. Why didn’t you tell Mrs. Stoneleigh about the safe when you had the chance? She bided here for a fortnight after the colonel’s death, and you were the fellow who suggested she be removed from the premises.”

A suggestion Axel had been reluctant to heed… at the time.

“I was honest with you then, Mr. Belmont, and I shall be honest with you now,” Shreve said, straightening. “Madam was not doing well. She hadn’t been doing well for some months. Mrs. Jensen saw madam nearly faint any number of times. The chambermaids saw evidence of a bilious stomach. We considered that Mrs. Stoneleigh’s poor health was one of the factors weighing on the colonel’s disposition, in fact.”

Abby had been tired, pale, and underweight when she’d arrived at Candlewick. Weak, not precisely ill.

“What were her symptoms?”

“One doesn’t want to be indelicate.”

Axel took the place Abby had vacated behind the desk. He let silence build, one of Matthew’s first recommendations for conducting a proper interrogation. Silence was the best friend of the king’s man, and Axel had a talent for holding his peace, as it happened.

“Madam appeared to occasionally suffer the bloody flux,” Shreve expostulated, blushing furiously. “She was losing her appetite. We feared a wasting disease, but the colonel was not fond of physicians, and one hesitated to speak up.”

Lest one be pelted with a snuff box and turned off without a character. What a charmer Stoneleigh had been behind the walls of his own castle.

The back of the blotter was covered with tiny, nearly indecipherable figures in tidy columns. In the right-hand corner were two rows of digits separated by dashes.

“Did the colonel even know of his wife’s ailment?”

“One cannot be sure. The colonel and Mrs. Stoneleigh had separate chambers, though to be fair, the colonel was generally solicitous of his wife’s well-being. He fixed her tea at breakfast, he never smoked in her presence, he tolerated no disrespect of her among the staff, not that we would have disrespected her.”

Oh, a damned knight in hunting pinks, was old Gregory. “This is the combination to the safe?” Axel asked, pointing to the top row of figures.

“Indeed. I had some difficulty determining the proper directions, but it’s right-left-right-left, like a platoon embarking on a parade march.”

“Then what’s this second row of figures?”

“I’ve assumed those are the combination to the second safe.”

“What second safe?”

Had Axel Belmont not been on the premises, Abby would still be in the corridor outside the study, shaking with fear. She might have had a heart seizure, she’d been so terrified.

What remained was rage—a great, undifferentiated mass of rage aimed at Gregory Stoneleigh, whose perfidy expanded the longer he was dead.

Beside the rage, choking it tight at the roots, was, incongruously, gratitude.

Axel Belmont
had
been on the premises, only a scream away, and had insisted on accompanying Abby on this errand. His arms around her had made safety real and trustworthy in the space of a moment. She would find the words to convey her gratitude to him, and his dignity would simply have to endure her honesty.

For now, she needed to begin evicting Gregory’s ghost from her house.

“We’ll need boxes,” she told Jeffries, the head footman. “The staff gets first crack at the colonel’s clothing, then everything remaining can go to the church. The same with the boots and shoes and shirts and… all of it.”

Gregory’s chambers still bore the sweet, tobacco stink of his pipes, so Abby had opened a window. Now the air was cold, still cloyingly acrid, but the fresh breeze kept her from being sick.

Jeffries was an attractive blond fellow above middling height, though he and Abby had typically communicated through Shreve. He shifted from foot to foot, refusing to meet Abby’s gaze.

“What?” Abby asked, pausing in her peregrinations around Gregory’s bedroom.

“The colonel wore London tailoring, ma’am,” Jeffries said, maintaining his position near the door. “Fine workmanship, excellent cloth.”

The second footman, another tall, handsome specimen, this one named Heath, ventured to speak without being addressed.

“Much of it’s quite new, Mrs. Stoneleigh. Quite… new.”

They were trying to tell her something, and not simply that they’d had a look inside Gregory’s wardrobe.

“The lot of it is also quite odoriferous,” Abby said. “I can wear none of it, and Mr. Stoneleigh’s immortal soul might benefit from charitable dispersal of his effects. You two look to be nearly the same height as the colonel.”

Heath shot a desperate glance at his superior.

“Nobody would think the worse of you if the clothing were sold, ma’am,” Jeffries said. “Fetch a pretty penny too, and who can’t use some extra coin?”

Abby’s first thought was that they were worried about the solvency of the estate that employed them, but in the next instant, gazing at two earnest expressions, revelation struck.

They were concerned
for her.

“Gentlemen, Stoneleigh Manor is on quite solid footing.” Abby spoke the truth, thanks to a shop girl’s mercantile instincts and her willingness to work hard. “I’m selling off the hounds and horses because I don’t care for fox-hunting, not because we can’t bear the expense. I’m parting with the books in the library because they reek. I’m selling the display of guns and knives because they were purely ornamental.”

Also downright ugly.

“Now, when the hunt season will soon draw to a close,” she went on, “is the time to reduce the size of the stables. Your positions are secure. Please convey the same sentiment to the rest of the staff.”

Relief filled Jeffries’ eyes, while Heath went so far as to smile. “Will do, missus. Shall I fetch those boxes?”

Abby might have said yes, except Axel had asked her to keep the footmen near. Asked her, not ordered, not assumed, not demanded.

“The boxes can wait, but everything in this room will go either to charity or to the staff. The bed hangings will stink for years, the carpets as well, even if we beat them daily for a month. As if the pipes weren’t bad enough, I also detect the odor of canines. One despairs of these rooms ever being habitable.”

And yet, they had the best view of the pastures and the home wood.

“Might I suggest incense?” Jeffries said. “My brother works for Sir Dewey, and sandalwood is frequently burned in Sir Dewey’s library on the theory that it helps deter creeping damp.”

They were deep in a discussion of how best to air out Gregory’s rooms when Shreve appeared in the doorway, looking, small, old, and anxious.

“Mr. Belmont has bid me to make my farewell to you, Mrs. Stoneleigh. He suggests I pay an extended visit to my sister in East Anglia, provided you accept my resignation.”

The footmen’s expressions went blank, while Abby’s relief was enormous.

“I’m sure you miss your sister very much,” she said. “And you can’t depart until we’ve packed up Mr. Stoneleigh’s snuff boxes for you to take along. You’ll want to make your farewells at the Weasel and in the churchyard, and choose a departure day when the weather bids fair.”

She could say that, because when her errands at Stoneleigh Manor were complete, she’d return to Candlewick. She would not have to face Shreve’s sad gaze after today.

“Madam is most generous, but the snuff boxes… I’ve never taken snuff.”

The snuff boxes were valuable, about half of them inlaid with semi-precious stones commonly found in India. The bequest in addition to a pension might be considered extravagant by some.

Extravagant, or intended to buy silence.

Abby never wanted to lay eyes on a snuff box again. “We will make a list of the colonel’s personal effects—cuff-links, cravat pins, watches, anything of value in this room. The staff will each choose items from the list, one at a time, until nothing remains. The snuff boxes will be yours, Shreve. Ambers will have the pipes, but the rest will be shared among the entire staff, right down to the boot boy and the tweenie, as… as mementos of the colonel’s regard for those who served him loyally.”