Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman (7 page)

Anxiety had focused Clementine's vigilance to a razor's edge. She noticed Ellis's glance, took it as significant, and felt her body react with panic. It occurred to her as they all walked across the hall toward the long drawing room that their lives in that moment had completely changed. A brutal murder of someone in their family had been committed here, where they lived, and probably by someone they all knew. She wondered how long it would be before they knew who had murdered Teddy and understood with a feeling akin to hopelessness that much would have to happen before that time and at the end of it would be shame and more awfulness. Teddy's very short life had ended as regrettably as it had been lived.

*   *   *

Their guests were waiting for them in the long drawing room, and the group turned expectant eyes on them as they came into the room. Clementine avoided catching anyone's glance
. Is this what happens
? she asked herself.
Do we feel culpable when a member of our family is brutally killed, as if we had done the awful, unimaginable thing ourselves?
But someone
had
done the unimaginable, maybe someone standing close to her in this beautiful room. She must pay attention. Valentine was telling them that Teddy Mallory had been found dead on the estate.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Clementine made herself look around the room at the sea of bewildered faces before her.

Lady Agatha Booth, sitting in a chair in the middle of the room and attended by her daughters, was the first to speak with exclamations and exhortations for something to be done immediately for the “poor dear boy.” Paying no attention to her loud, distracting cries, Clementine noticed that Lady Waterford's head jerked up and that she gripped the arms of her chair, but she was quick to recover her self-possession, and asked if it had been an accident. Lord Booth, in the act of lighting a cigar, seemed almost prepared for the announcement of Teddy's death, as he continued to draw on his cigar, hands steady, eyes speculative as he glanced around the room. Olive Shackleton and Constance Ambrose were clutching each other rather melodramatically. Clementine looked over at Sir Wilfred Shackleton, stiff as a board; he remained absolutely still and let his eyes swivel around the group as he carefully licked his lips, like a cat when it smells something unpleasant.

Jack Ambrose looked altogether far too eager as he cleared his throat. “Are you going to conduct an inquiry into the death, Valentine?” he asked—almost enviously, she thought.

“For the time being,” Valentine answered, and Clementine noticed that he kept his eyes on their faces, as if watching for reactions.

She saw Jack nod and then he asked if it had been some sort of accident, and when he received no answer he said, “Oh, I see, that's bad. I expect you'll want to talk it over with all of us one at a time … right? So we should be prepared to spend a few more days with Ralph?”

“Yes, you will all need to extend your stay here for a couple of days, perhaps more, I am not sure. If you will all wait together here for the rest of afternoon, I will call you when I need to speak with you. I need hardly say, of course, that the less you discuss this among yourselves, the easier my job will be.”

Colonel Valentine's voice is so calm and detached,
thought Clementine who had only met the chief constable at local charities and dinners.
I've never seen him doing his job.

Finally the question that she was waiting for was asked, and it was Lord Booth who asked it: “How did he die?”

“It is hard to be precise about cause of death but it looks like strangulation. More than that I am not prepared to say at the moment.”

Clementine was surprised to hear a loud gasp from Gertrude Waterford, echoed immediately by Constance; Lord Booth looked blandly ahead, puffing out gales of cigar smoke. Olive Shackleton—never blessed with the best of nerves, Clementine afterward remembered—exclaimed, almost shouted, “Good God,” so loudly that Lady Booth burst into tears. Harry and Ellis stood off to the side of the room, looking serious. Oscar seemed as if he might pass out.

Clementine's eyes turned back to Valentine as he stood looking at the group for a few more minutes. He had Lord Montfort's guest list in his hand, which he had been studying, glancing up occasionally before returning his gaze to the list. He finally lifted his head and said, “Lucinda Lambert-Lambert? Where is she? I asked everyone to be called…”

They all looked at one another and around the room, and Lucinda's mother said plaintively, “Lucinda, not here?”

Clementine's eyes went to Pansy and Blanche, who stood behind Lady Booth, their pale-lashed eyes blinking nervously, as everyone turned interrogatory eyes toward them.

“Pansy, Blanche, have you seen Lucinda today?” Lady Booth demanded. They shook their heads, incapable of speech, it seemed. Their mother twisted around as much as she could in her chair.

“Answer!
When
did you last see Lucinda?”

“Last n-night—” Blanche stammered out, “at the ball. Not today, not at all,” and Pansy nodded in agreement. “No, not today…” she murmured.

“I will send Hollyoak to find her. She has to be here somewhere,” said Lord Montfort. “Was she with us for luncheon?”

“Lucinda doesn't often take luncheon if she is studying,” her mother said, but she didn't appear to be reassured by her words. Harriet turned to her husband, and Clementine thought there was something rather accusing in the look she gave him.

“Perhaps in her room?” suggested Clementine.

They waited for an agonizing twenty minutes as Hollyoak was sent to look through the house. He came back and spoke quietly to Lord Montfort.

“Lucinda does not appear to be in the house,” Lord Montfort said, relaying Hollyoak's information. “Perhaps she has gone for a walk.”

“If you would send word to the stables and the gardeners' room to have the grounds checked?” Colonel Valentine had to raise his voice over the excited babble of conjecture and further exclamations that now broke from people who rarely raised their tone above a well-modulated murmur. Hollyoak looked inquiringly at Lord Montfort, who nodded his directions.

Clementine said, “Hollyoak, I am sure tea is ready … please ask James.” She crossed the room to Lady Harriet and Gilbert Lambert-Lambert, who were standing side by side.
How miserable and embarrassed they look. Of course they feel thoroughly in the wrong,
she thought.
Who wouldn't if you didn't know where your daughter was when a dead body has just been discovered in the woods.

“I expect Lucinda has taken herself off for one of her long walks,” she said to Lady Harriet as she reached out a hand toward her friend.

“In this?” Olive, standing next to Lady Harriet, gestured to the window and everyone obediently turned their heads and gazed politely at the summer rain as it poured resolutely down, the lawn soaked and puddles forming on the drive.

“Well quite…” said Constance Ambrose, and speculative eyes turned to Lady Harriet before everyone remembered themselves. The large room became silent as they waited.

Clementine looked around at her friends, such a voluble, chattery group. People she had known for years now sat apart from one another, worried that they might say the wrong thing, and so said nothing. She noticed that all eyes turned continually to Colonel Valentine, who was sitting in the corner, in quiet contemplation of his notebook. After a while he looked up.

“Lady Harriet and Mr. Lambert-Lambert, I take it the three of you all came here together?” He got up and walked to the door.

“Lucinda drove down from Cambridge in her motorcar and met us here,” said Gilbert Lambert-Lambert.

“Then we must send to the wash-down to see if it is still there. Perhaps we should go up to your daughter's room.” Valentine stood aside in the doorway for the Lambert-Lamberts to precede him, giving another glance at the throng before the three of them left the room.

“Did he say
Lucinda's
motorcar?” Lady Booth was already looking for allies in her disbelief and outrage. “Whatever will it be next? Young gells driving themselves about alone in their
own motorcars
.”

“We assume she wasn't naked. What are you implying, Agatha? Many of us drive motors.” Gertrude glanced coldly at Lady Booth before turning to Olive Shackleton with a look of helpless indignation on her face.
Oh dear,
thought Clementine
, I hope these two can manage to be polite; there is so much more to come before we are done.

Hollyoak reappeared at her elbow. His was a busy afternoon, she thought.

“I have sent Dick over to the stable block to find a couple of lads to help him look over the grounds for Miss Lucinda, m'lady, and James and John are bringing tea.” Clementine nodded. Her butler seemed to have endless reserves of people to send on errands hither and thither about the estate. He also appeared to have attained greater height as the afternoon had worn on, and was it her imagination or was he still full of portent?

Clementine, grateful for an occupation, automatically sat down to prepare tea for her guests as Hollyoak bent to speak a private word in her ear. As she listened, she was so startled that she barely managed to avoid pouring hot water into Gertrude's lap. With commendable self-possession she carefully set down the cup and saucer she was holding.

“You are certain?” she said under her breath as she looked up at the butler, convinced that she had misunderstood.

“Yes, m'lady, absolutely certain.”

She had always found Hollyoak to be a master of understatement, but she thought she detected a little tension lapping around the edges of his impassive demeanor.

“Very well then, please meet me in the morning room with Mrs. Jackson, after tea.”

And she turned back to the task of giving her guests a sustaining cup of tea to allay the shock of their afternoon.

 

Chapter Eight

Earlier that day, Mrs. Jackson had taken up a command position in the wide corridor belowstairs that was the arterial route between servants' hall, kitchens, and workrooms. Her head ached and her feet hurt. She had been directing efforts to put the house in order after the ball long before her breakfast, keeping her fellow servants bent to the task of staying on schedule. After the endless hours of preparation for yesterday, culminating in the excitement of arriving guests, dinner, and the ball, she was running on less than three hours of sleep.

The sound of Cook's harsh voice, a continual backdrop to the morning, wore on her nerves as Mrs. Thwaite and the kitchen maids flogged through the last of the preparations for luncheon upstairs. Painfully aware of Cook's grating and shrill glottal stop and her dropped aitches, Mrs. Jackson often found herself wondering how someone as coarse in voice and sensitivity as Mrs. Thwaite could produce food of such delicate subtlety and complex flavor.

Determined to find a quiet spot until it was time for the servants' midday dinner, Mrs. Jackson shut herself away in the china and crystal pantry to inventory all the plates, glasses, and serving dishes that had been used for the ball. As she ticked off the last item of Sevres in the ledger she was thankful to hear that Mrs. Thwaite's voice had become less caustic and her tone a little kinder. She emerged from her pantry and realized with a sinking heart that it was merely because Mrs. Thwaite was indulging herself in her favorite pastime: gossip.

“What's going on with this new maid do you reckon?” she heard Mable Thwaite ask her kitchen maid, Iris White.

“She's all right really, not a bit stuck up for all her father's a schoolmaster.”

Mrs. Jackson cocked a protective ear and walked into the kitchen as they were obviously talking about her new third housemaid, Violet Simkins.

“I didn't say what was wrong with her, I meant what was
up
with her. She looks really miserable all the time. There's something broody about that girl.”

“I dunno, I think she has mood problems or something.”

Mrs. Jackson filled a kettle with cold water and set it to boil on the hob.

“Well I never—mood problems, is it?” Mrs. Thwaite's voice was triumphant. “That's the sort of behavior we expect from upstairs with young girls, not down here. Down here we work through our mood problems and no time to think, neither.”

Mrs. Jackson took a cup and saucer from the pine kitchen dresser and decided she would stay out of it, unless things got too unkind, but Mrs. Thwaite's next remark hit home.

“And where was Miss Violet all afternoon yesterday, off in the rose garden reading a book?” Mrs. Jackson heard a snigger from the listening kitchen maids and decided that things had gone too far.

“Her dad was pulled in to help out with the orchestra last night and Vi was given a half hour off to have a cuppa with him in Mrs. Jackson's parlor, ladyship's instructions,” Iris blundered on.

“Well, I never. A cuppa tea with her dad, whatever will it be next? Mrs. Jackson getting too easy in her ways, is she?”

Mrs. Jackson measured tea leaves into the pot and poured hot water from the kettle, and a woody, astringent aroma lifted up in a pungent cloud of steam. She firmly put the lid on the teapot. It was high time Mable Thwaite's gossip came to an end; the woman was the limit. She came farther into the kitchen so that Mrs. Thwaite could see her.

“In this house we do not speculate on Lady Montfort's orders, or mine, Mrs. Thwaite.” She kept her tone level. “Violet is doing a good job in the house, despite her homesickness.”

“Homesickness?” Mrs. Thwaite tempered a bowl of butter. “Well, we all get homesick, Mrs. Jackson, no doubt about that, but we don't get to sit about with a nice cuppa tea in the middle of the afternoon, taking our ease.”

Using her most repressive voice, she answered, “I would have thought you were too busy right now to waste your time on how the new maid is settling in.”