The Adventuress (24 page)

“Had she followed you?” I asked.

“She had, and at first I thought … er … This is bloody awkward.”

“I can imagine what you thought.”

“I was entirely wrong, however.” His voice was earnest. “She told me that she saw a sadness in my eyes and wanted to make sure I was all right. Now, I may have been tired, but sad I certainly was not, and I began to worry that she might report her perceived melancholia to my friends, so I asked her if she would walk with me. She balked, thinking I was … er…”

“Yes, quite.”

“But of course I wasn't,” he said, the words coming rapidly, “and as soon as we had cleared that up, she agreed to a stroll. We took a turn through the gardens behind the casino and then sat on a bench and talked for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then she left.”

“Where did she go?” I asked.

“I haven't the slightest idea,” he said. “I gave her some money for a cab home, but I would not have been surprised if she went back to the party.”

“She didn't.”

“I know that now.”

“What did you do after that? You didn't turn up at the hotel until nearly five o'clock the next morning, asking for pillows.”

He groaned. “Please refrain from pointing out the absurdity of it to me. I was going to hail a cab and return to the hotel right away—it must have only been a bit after midnight—but instead I decided to walk. And while I walked, I thought about some of the things Hélène said to me. She had asked me if I was married, and I told her a bit about Amity. She said she sounded a capital girl and a great deal more fun than most of the ladies she heard about. The thing is, Em, I never want to disappoint Amity. So rather than going back to the hotel, I walked up and down the beach.”

“All night?”

“More or less.”

“Simply to impress Amity?”

“She would be disappointed if I hadn't stayed out until dawn,” he said. “The party at the casino may have been hosted by her father, but she is the one who planned it.”

“So why the pillows?”

“Around about three o'clock in the morning, after I had paused to speak to some other gentlemen who were in a rather advanced state of intoxication, I grew fatigued. Once I had freed myself from what I must say was a most disappointing conversation—the drunk are never so amusing as they think they are—I started walking again, trying to keep myself awake.”

“Why on earth didn't you just go to bed?”

“And disappoint Amity?”

“This is when you thought she might be in your room? I must say, as I did when you first mentioned this to me, the morning after Mr. Neville's death, that I am most shocked you could have suspected such a thing.”

“It was unseemly and decidedly ungentlemanly of me, but Amity possesses extremely high spirits, and I … I … Well, it struck me that she might … Oh, Em, I hardly know what to say. Will you please allow me to leave the subject altogether? I believed she might be there, and did not think I ought to be alone with her. So I asked for more pillows, knowing that if she were in the room when the maid arrived with them, Amity would be alarmed at having been found by someone other than me and leave. After I asked for them to be sent up, I went back outside, with the idea of waiting for half an hour or so before returning. Instead, I fell dead asleep on a bench.”

“Until ten the next morning when you found us at breakfast?”

He nodded. “And now Hélène is dead, and I have no alibi for the time of her murder.”

“Do you believe you need one?” I asked.

“I may be the last person who saw her alive aside from whoever killed her.”

“Why didn't you tell me all this when we discussed it the morning of Mr. Neville's death?”

“I was embarrassed.”

I believed him. “I think, Jeremy, you need to be honest with Amity, not just about Hélène. You have done nothing wrong and I cannot imagine a girl like Miss Wells is going to balk at your having gone for a little walk with a dancer she had hired for the evening's entertainment. Had your walk taken a different sort of turn…”

He made a sound something like a growl. “Quite.”

“More than that, though, you must tell Amity your true feelings. You may not be the only one pretending to be more debauched than he is.”

“She is not pretending, Em,” he said. “If anything, she is tempering herself. All that time she was begging me not to make that ridiculous swim—I will not tolerate a word of censure from you about it—I could see that, really, she wanted me to do it.”

“Then why would she have tried to stop you?” I asked.

“Perhaps because she knows I am not worthy of her.”

“Oh dear heavens, Jeremy, do not go maudlin over this. I am going to bed.” I started to head back to the hotel, but he grabbed my arm and stopped me.

“You won't tell Hargreaves that I was alone all night after the party?” he asked.

“I do not understand why you didn't tell him,” I said. “I can promise you, Jeremy, he is not a supporter of your dedication to debauchery.”

“He's a bore. I don't know why you married him.” He was pouting now, but stopped short of stamping his foot.

“Don't tease,” I said.

“Oh, bloody hell, I suppose it makes no difference. You might as well tell him. He's not going to spread the word through the gentlemen's clubs of London. But it was you, Em, that I knew I could confide in, not him. Thank you for that, for listening, and for accepting me as I am.”

“Accepting you as you are?” I asked and looked at him, cocking my head. “I am going back to my room to collapse, inconsolable, on my bed, weeping over the revelation that you are quite as ordinary as my own husband.”

“I never said he was ordinary.” He grunted. “No matter what I may claim publicly, I do admire him, even if it is against my own better judgment.”

“I never said he was ordinary either.” I patted him on the cheek and led him back to the hotel.

*   *   *

The next morning I woke before the sun had risen above the horizon, dreading the conversation that Colin and I would have to have with Marie, Violette, and Rose. We met them at the café where Margaret and I had shared rosé with them, and they wept openly when we informed them of Hélène's death. There was nothing more for them to tell us—they could not think of anyone who might have wanted to harm their friend—but they promised to contact us if that changed.

That grim task done, we stopped by the police station to see what the gendarmes had gleaned from Hélène's neighbors. An elderly woman who lived across the street reported having seen someone in a long cloak ring the bell and be admitted to the house, but she could not be certain which bell—that for Hélène's apartment or the one for the Soucy family's—or whether it was Hélène who had opened the door. Monsieur Soucy and his wife were certain they had not received any visitors that day, so the gendarmes thought it reasonable to believe the person had come to see Hélène. The neighbor took note of the incident because the cloaked person had the hood of the garment pulled up, which she took as a sign that the morning was chilly and she, herself, should dress accordingly when she went out.

“So we are looking for a person of indeterminate height and gender who owns a cloak,” Colin said. “How encouraging.”

“I want to question the hotel staff,” I said. “Not the desk clerks, but the maids and anyone else who works behind the scenes, so to speak.”

“Do you believe Bainbridge was candid with you last night?” Colin asked.

“I have no reason to doubt him.”

He made a low, thinking sort of noise. “Something doesn't fit.”

Back at the hotel, we consulted with the manager as to who had been working overnight on the evening in question and started to interview the staff. The night clerk, to whom we had already spoken, did not alter a word of his story. He saw nothing unusual in the English duke requesting pillows in the middle of the night and then going back outside. He was adamant that guests often make strange requests, so it had not stood out to him at the time. Among the rest—the housekeeping maid who discovered Mr. Neville's body, a handyman who slept on property in case there were any emergency repairs needed after hours, and three kitchen maids—only one had anything new to share with us, the second of the kitchen maids.

“She was very, very pretty,” she said. “I only saw her because I had stepped out for a smoke—I know I shouldn't have, so please don't tell—only we were so late that night, finishing up the dishes.”

“Where exactly did you see her?” Colin asked.

“She saw me. I was having my smoke, just out the staff door, and she came to me and asked if I could let her in. She gave me a handful of coins.”

“Did she say where in the hotel she was going?” I asked.

The girl gave me a shrewd look. “It was quite obvious, wasn't it? Dressed the way she was, all fancy, with rouge on her face? That sort don't use the front door, do they?”

“Does this happen with some regularity?” Colin asked.

The girl shrugged. “I suppose it does, often enough. We don't mind. What business of ours is it if the grand people want a little amusement?”

“Is the manager of the hotel aware of this?” I asked.

“I believe, madame, it is not the sort of thing people like you—or the manager—like to discuss.”

“Did you see where, specifically, she went in the hotel?” Colin asked. “Or did she, perhaps, ask you for directions?”

“
Non.
Our conversation was nothing more than a simple transaction.”

No one else reported having seen the person in question, in or out of the hotel, and the kitchen maid's description of her was too imprecise to be of much use. It could have been Hélène, but it could have been any number of other girls. The manager confirmed that he was aware of such things going on—only occasionally, he insisted—in the hotel. This, he promised us, was not the sort of establishment that encourages such happenings, but one could not stop everything.

“So we have next to nothing,” I said. “I suppose the only sensible thing to do now is interrogate every single gentleman who was staying that night. You may need to torture some of them, but I am confident that eventually someone will own up to having hosted a lady of the evening.”

“Quite,” Colin said. “Torture is such a reliable way to get to the truth. Would you object to a spot of tea before I begin?”

 

Amity

Jack was sulking. They were on the hotel's back lawn, playing croquet, a game Amity adored. She admitted freely this was because she so enjoyed the satisfaction that came from sending an opponent's ball far off the court in a savage roquet. Almost more entertaining than the match were Christabel's attempts at flirting with Mr. Fairchild. She was too sweet to be obvious, and, as a result, Mr. Fairchild was rather confused, particularly as Christabel's flirtation primarily consisted of refusing to take roquets when her ball hit Mr. Fairchild's. In Christabel's mind, the earnest smile she flashed at Mr. Fairchild ought to have suggested to him that she was flirting. Instead, he was left with a feeling that she did not entirely understand the rules of the game, and he kept trying to explain them to her. In reply, she asked him if he would teach her the basics of cricket, a sport about which she felt she had in the past been most unkind.

Jack was the only person who suspected something else was afoot, and this was just as Amity had wanted it. Had Christabel possessed better skills in the art of flirtation, she would have had Mr. Fairchild paying court by the end of the afternoon. As she was barely able to handle Jack in a satisfactory manner, she would never have been able to navigate her way out of the mess caused by two suitors, which perfectly suited Amity's plan. Jack was jealous, and that would spur him to further action.

“I do not think this is working,” Christabel whispered when the game had finished and they were being served lemonade. “Captain Sheffield is barely speaking to me.” The pained look on her friend's face told Amity Christabel could no longer bear to take the liberty of calling him by his Christian name.

“Oh, Christabel, you are so naïve! It's charming. Truly, it is,” Amity said. “That merely proves our plan is working. He has been watching you all morning and he is worried. I am confident that within the next day or so—this evening if we are lucky—he will pull me aside and ask if I am aware of you having any romantic attachments.”

“And you will tell him I love him?” Her eyes brightened.

“Of course not. First, because when the time comes for that sort of revelation, you are the one who shall have to make it—”

“I don't know that I could do that.” Christabel wrinkled her nose.

“Do not interrupt. It is exceedingly rude.” Amity laughed and pulled her friend close. “The second reason I will not tell him that you love him is that he must suffer a little longer, otherwise he will feel a rush of relief to learn that his affections are quite safe, and he shall then immediately return to treating you exactly as he did before.”

“Was that so bad?” Christabel asked.

“Had he proposed?”

“No.” Her voice was quiet.

“Had he declared his love to you?”

“No,” came her answer, in the barest whisper.

“Had he begged even a single kiss from you?” Amity asked.

“You know he did nothing of the sort, Amity!” Christabel looked around, embarrassed, afraid that this last question had been spoken so loudly as to have been easily overheard.

“Precisely,” Amity said. “So now our darling Jack must suffer, just for a short while, before we can be guaranteed that you, my friend, will have a happy ending to your fairy tale.”

“I would hardly call it a fairy tale,” Christabel said.