Death at Daisy's Folly (26 page)

Charles was somber. “The fact that your mutual motives are protected by a mutual alibi might be seen in some quarters as rather too convenient.”

Daisy was jolted by a sudden fear as strong as a powerful electrical shock. The pistol!

Charles was watching her closely. “You've thought of something.”

“Something else is missing from my room,” Daisy said shakily. “From the same drawer that contained the letter.”

“A gun?” Kate asked.

“A small pistol. A present to me from His Highness.”

Charles leaned forward. “It disappeared at the same time as the letter?”

Daisy shook her head. “I saw it in my drawer when I searched on Thursday evening for the letter, and again on Friday. I discovered it missing only this morning, before we left for Chelmsford.”

“But the person who stole the letter knew it was there,” Kate said.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Daisy replied. “The letter was in the top drawer of a leather box filled with recent correspondence. The gun was in the second drawer.”

“Can you describe the weapon?” Charles asked.

“It is a pretty little thing,” Daisy said, “a silver-plated revolver, with mother-of-pearl handles, inlaid with my initials.”

“A thirty-two caliber weapon?”

Daisy nodded, fear knotting her stomach.

“The autopsy surgeon recovered the fatal bullet,” Charles said. “It is a thirty-two caliber.”

Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

“Where were you early yesterday morning?” Charles asked.

“Yesterday morning? Friday?” Friday seemed an eternity ago. “I ... I think I slept rather late. Yes, that's right. My maid came in to wake me and I sent her away so that I could sleep for another hour. Then I dressed and came down for a late breakfast, where I met Kate.” Kate gave a confirming nod.

“And your husband?” Charles persisted.

“Brooke? Up and about, I suppose. He is an early riser.” She frowned, not at all sure where this was going and frightened by the harder edge she could hear in Charles's voice. “Why are you asking about Friday? And what does Brooke have to do with any of this?”

“Charles is asking about Friday because that's when the boy was killed,” Kate said softly.

Daisy's eyes went from one to the other. “And you think that I ... or that Brooke—” Her throat tightened. “That's ridiculous! The boy's death was entirely accidental. None of my guests, and certainly not my husband, had anything to do with it!”

“Wallace was seen leaving the stable about the time of the boy's death,” Charles said. “He may have witnessed it, or even been involved in it.” His glance seemed chilly, unfriendly. “You can't tell us where Lord Warwick was at the time?”

She shook her head wordlessly. Brooke was not a man customarily given to violence, but she had once seen him strike a groom who had been abusing a horse, so severely injuring the man that he lay close to death for some days. Was it possible that he had lost his temper and struck the boy, and that Reggie had witnessed the deed?

But there was more. Brooke had been in her bedroom on Thursday. She had come in from a conference with the housekeeper to find him there, uninvited and unexpected, standing beside the desk where her letter case sat, in plain sight. He could have taken the letter.

But why would he? Brooke had recently begun to object to her entertaining Bertie because their intimacy attracted so much public attention and the Royal visits were so hideously expensive. But that gave him no motive for taking Bertie's letter and hiding it in Reggie's room. Unless, of course, he intended to implicate her, and perhaps Bertie as well, in Reggie's murder.

At the thought, Daisy shivered violently. “No!” she whispered. Brooke would never do such a thing! To embroil her in this mess would be to entangle himself and tarnish the Warwick name. Brooke's sense of decorum and propriety, his concern for the family reputation, would never allow that.

But even as Daisy thought of this, she thought of something else. Brooke knew better than anyone the lengths to which Bertie would go to champion her. He would know that even if the Prince were confronted with the clearest, most incontrovertible proof that she was guilty of murder, he would never permit her to be brought up on charges, let along face trial. Brooke would know that Bertie would cover up her guilt just as he had hushed so many previous scandals, even that unspeakable business about his own son Eddy and the East End brothels. He would know that the only punishment Daisy would ever suffer would be her total and unalterable alienation from the Prince's affection.

Her heart skipped a beat, then another, and her hands felt suddenly icy. To separate her and Bertie forever, to put an end to the corrosive gossip and reduce the ruinous expenses of Royal entertainment—
that
was an outcome Brooke would consider worth his effort. That was an end that might justify any means—even murder.

Charles was looking at her strangely. “Is there something else you want to tell us?”

Bewildered and confused, feeling as if the world she had always controlled had suddenly broken loose from her grasp, Daisy struggled for command.

“No ... no, I think that is all,” she said, in a high, brittle voice. As if to rescue her, the clock whirred, then began to strike the hour. She rose, steadying herself. “My goodness, how late it is! We must dress for tea.”

“Thank you, Daisy,” Charles said quietly. “We may have other questions later.”

She made one more attempt. “The letter? I would so much like to have it back, you know. I am sure you realize the damage it could do in the wrong hands.”

“We must keep it for now,” Charles said. “But don't worry. It will be carefully guarded.”

Daisy tossed her head. “Oh, very well, then,” she said.

Without another word, she lifted her skirts and went before them out of the room and down the corridor, her head high, her back ramrod straight, playing the part she had been born and bred to play. She was Lady Frances, the greatest heiress in England. She was the Countess of Warwick, wife of England's handsomest lord. She was Daisy, lover of the Prince of Wales.

But in her heart there was a terrible hopelessness, for she knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was over. The Prince cared for her, but he was no fool. He would go on to a less hazardous love affair, to a woman of fewer charms, perhaps, but also fewer liabilities. She would have nothing left, only the minor celebrity that inevitably attended a former mistress of the future king, only the indiscreet letters and the expensive gifts, only her memories.

She had had her hour, and it was over.

By indirections find directions out.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet

 

 

A
t teatime, Charles went to the drawing room, which was furnished in Louis XIV style, with frescoed walls and objets
d'art
placed in every niche. The guests were assembled in conversational clusters, several women decoratively arranged on adjoining sofas, a group of men gathered around the Prince at the fireplace talking about racing, others sitting in a corner, discussing Harcourt's reform of the death duties. Without calling attention to himself, Charles quietly detached Sir Thomas Cobb from the death duties group and led him to a curtained alcove at the far end of the room. He would have preferred to have begun his questioning with Lord Warwick, who was in Charles's mind the more logical suspect. But Brooke was talking with the Prince and it would be uncivil to interrupt their conversation.

“You want to speak with me about Reginald's murder, I take it,” the old man said. He had a saber scar across one cheek, and his thick, jutting eyebrows, gray beard, and tanned face gave him the look of a grizzled old pirate.

“Just so,” Charles replied, thinking that Cobb looked older and more haggard than he had just yesterday. The man's steel-gray eyes were red with fatigue and his forehead was deeply furrowed. “I must speak with everyone.” He motioned toward one of the two leather chairs in the alcove and waited until the older man had seated himself before he sat down.

“Ah, but in my case,” Cobb said, “you have a particular reason to speak with me.” A dry smile cracked his old face. “I do not doubt you have talked with Reginald's man Richards.”

“I have.” Charles leaned back in his chair, elbows on the upholstered arms, his fingers tented in front of his mouth.

Cobb took a silver cigar case out of his coat pocket and extracted a cigar. Making a ceremony of rolling and sniffing it, then of lighting it, he said at last, “Well, I won't dissemble, Sheridan, or make your task any more unpleasant than it already is. I was not overly fond of my daughter's husband. Not to mince words, I wished him dead and in hell.” He pulled his bristling brows together. “But, by George, I did not kill him!”

From the other end of the room came the tinkle of Daisy's light laughter, and a hearty echo from the Prince, the men at the fireplace having joined the women on the sofa. A footman approached with two teacups on a tray, set them on the table, and filled them from a silver pot. Cobb frowned. “Brandy,” he said gruffly. The footman nodded and disappeared.

Charles added sugar, stirred, and sipped his tea. “According to Richards, you and Wallace have been at odds for some time.”

Cobb pulled heavily on his cigar. “The man killed my daughter Margaret.” His face grew dark. “I won't trouble you with my reasons for believing so, but simply assure you that my conclusion is unequivocally and unquestionably correct. The wound was inflicted by a blunt instrument, and not suffered in a fall. Ask the Countess. She knows.”

Charles was not surprised that Daisy had withheld that information from him (if it were indeed true). She was privy to so many secrets that she had probably forgotten the greater part of them. “How can you be sure?” he asked.

The footman reappeared with Cobb's brandy in a large snifter. “That, Sheridan, is none of your affair. In any event, I consider Lady Warwick complicitous in the matter. She was Reginald's paramour at the time of my daughter's murder, poor innocent.” He rolled the brandy in the glass, sniffed it, and sipped. “She is as responsible as he. The devil of it is that I can do nothing about it.”

“The police—”

“The local constable, whose family have long been Wallace retainers, investigated and found nothing amiss.” The old man's eyes were bleak and his voice dripped with an acid bitterness. “The coroner's jury—twelve good men and true to their landlord, Wallace—brought in a verdict of accidental death.”

“Then—”

Cobb finished the brandy and set the snifter on the table. “I am a realist, Sheridan. Certain things in life can be altered, certain cannot, and it is the better part of wisdom to know the difference. I decided long ago that I could do nothing to bring either of Margaret's killers to justice. It is my burden to live with—and theirs. But it gave me no small pleasure to remind Reginald frequently and pointedly of his culpability.”

Wallace might have found it easier to stand trial for his wife's death than to be sentenced to the venomous harangues of her angry father, Charles thought. The old man must believe himself to be wronged past enduring. Why then was he here at Easton?

“Given your animosity toward Lady Warwick, I wonder at your willingness to be a guest at her home—especially when the guest list included Wallace.” Perhaps a more interesting question, though, had to do with Wallace's inclusion on the guest list. One of the Warwicks had invited him. Lord Brooke or the Countess? And why?

The other shrugged. “I am here out of respect for the fourth earl of Warwick, Lord Brooke's father, with whom I had the privilege to be closely acquainted. I most emphatically do
not
admire the way young Brooke allows his wife to manage his life for him, nor do I approve of the fact that both of them seem intent on frittering away the Maynard and Warwick fortunes on foolish entertainments. For the sake of Brooke's father, however, I cultivate the son's company, and—for the sake of his father—he tolerates mine. Once each year he invites me to one of these lunatic house parties and once each year I set aside common sense and come.” His mouth twisted in an ugly grimace. “These follies, however, do not amuse me. I am chagrined at the sight of the Queen's heir making a vulgar fool of himself—and risking the monarchy, as well—over a damned foolish woman. How can anyone imagine him competent to rule the Empire when he cannot even rule his own reckless passions?” He snorted. “The Queen would die of mortification if she understood the full extent of her son's folly.”

Cobb was leaving something out, Charles thought. Retaliation was a more likely explanation for his presence than a sentimental affection for an old friend's son. If Daisy felt even a shred of guilt for her affair with Wallace and the subsequent death of Wallace's wife, seeing the old man beetling his brows at her across the tea table must make her damned uncomfortable. And if Cobb had given up all hope of achieving justice through the courts for his daughter's death, to what other extremes might he be moved? Might he have killed Wallace and attempted to implicate Daisy? Censorious as he was of the Prince's behavior, might he even have attempted to implicate him, as well?

Charles drained the sweet dregs of his tea and put down the cup. “Is there anyone who can corroborate your whereabouts last night?”

The old man croaked out a laugh. “Hardly! It has never been my practice to hop from bed to bed at these weekends. I retired to my room at the close of the evening and there I stayed until shortly after sunrise, when I rose and went for a long walk. After all this pretense and posturing, there is nothing like a quick march over field and furrow to restore a man's sense of equilibrium.”