The Runaway McBride (29 page)

They went directly to the church for the service, then to the graveside for the burial. It was a somber occasion, but Faith found it all the more somber because Robert Danvers’s life had been cut short before he’d reached his prime. That he had betrayed her trust and almost certainly stolen Madeline’s diary did not lessen the horror of his death. Someone had willfully and deliberately bludgeoned him to death, someone here, perhaps, someone whose outward appearance gave no indication of the evil that festered inside.

She could not keep her eyes from straying among the mourners. The Egyptology Society was well represented, because, she supposed, Robert’s body had been found on the premises where they were meeting. Sophie Hughes was clothed from head to toe in severe black and, strangely enough, looked quite elegant. Their eyes met, and they exchanged a quick smile. It was amazing, thought Faith, how much Sophie Hughes had improved since the older woman had shown her a little kindness the night Robert was murdered. She didn’t look like mutton dressed as lamb. She looked like a woman who would bloom very nicely if only her husband would pay her a little attention.

Her gaze shifted to take in Mr. Hughes. Her opinion of him was
handsome is as handsome does
. He wasn’t smiling, and Faith wondered whether that was because of the seriousness of the occasion or because his wife had found out about his latest indiscretion and was making him pay for it. Alastair Dobbin stood a little apart from his uncle, silent and unsmiling. They hadn’t spoken since the night they’d discovered Robert’s body. That was the last thing she wanted to talk about. The experience was still to raw, too vivid, to examine in minute detail.

Her gaze shifted to Larry Coltrane. He seemed... withdrawn, almost sad. His sister, on the other hand, looked bored. Jayne Coltrane had made no concession to funeral conventions. She wore a peacock-blue suit with a matching hat that covered her ghastly hair.

Faith winced as the thought occurred to her. This was a solemn occasion. She should be listening to the vicar’s words, not judging people and finding them wanting. Maybe someone here was thinking the same about her.

She looked across the grave to where the chief mourners were standing. Mrs. Danvers’s face was convulsed with grief. She was leaning heavily on her husband’s arm. He, too, looked grief-stricken. Robert Danvers was an only child. Faith could not begin to imagine what his parents must be suffering. It all seemed so senseless and wicked. Her thoughts came full circle. Was it possible that Robert’s murderer was one of the mourners at his funeral?

 

 

Mr. Danvers’s house was in Knightsbridge, and though it was
within walking distance of the church, all the mourners bundled into their carriages for the short drive to where a funeral luncheon would be laid out for them.

Though it was a spacious house, as big as Aunt Mariah’s, the number of mourners made it seem smaller. James knew many of the couples because the husbands belonged to the same clubs as he, or he knew them through business. It was inevitable that he would stop to talk with one then another. Faith played her part with aplomb and was highly amused, so she told herself, at how the wives ogled not only her but James as well. Particularly James. She should have expected it. His looks weren’t as groomed as Larry Coltrane’s, but they were far more potent.

As they moved away, he bent his head to hers. “You’ve been staring at me as though I were a prize piece of horse-flesh you were hoping to buy.”

“The thought may have crossed my mind,” she replied.

He grinned. “And what did you decide? ”

She gave him a straight look. “It wouldn’t be worth my while. Horses are always looking for greener pastures.”

Their eyes clashed and held. Faith swallowed her next breath. They’d set aside their differences, but her resentment still simmered just below the surface. She was his mission, he’d told her. It made her feel like a charity case.

She tore her gaze from his and exhaled a shallow breath. “Shall we mingle?” she said.

 

 

At one point, James excused himself to have a word with Larry
Coltrane. Roderick was supposed to stay with her, but they became separated in the crush. From the corner of her eye, she saw James’s aunt in conversation with Mrs. Danvers, and she began to weave her way toward them when she was stopped by a touch on her arm.

“Faith,” said Lady Cowdray, “I thought I saw you at the graveside. This crush is intolerable. I can’t hear myself think. Let’s go into the dining room. There are only servants there now, setting things out.”

Faith was glad to escape the heat of so many bodies in a confined space. The dark green crepe was making her skin itch. In the dining room, a few of the mourners had wandered in and were helping themselves to the lavish baked meats and sandwiches that were laid out on a table that could have seated twenty people. But this was not a sit-down luncheon, and Faith felt awkward balancing a small plate in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. How were people expected to eat? She put down the glass of wine.

Lady Cowdray, on the other hand, accepted a glass of wine and ignored the food. “I meant to ask you,” she said, “at the lecture the other night, how you were getting on with Madeline’s diary. But . . . well . . . events overtook us, and the thought was driven out of my mind.”

“I’m afraid it’s much harder to decode than I thought it would be. Have you told anyone about my mother’s diary or that you passed it on to me?”

The question seemed to startle Lady Cowdray. “No one at all. As I told you when I gave it to you, Madeline knew too much for her own good, or she pretended to. I didn’t want anyone to be embarrassed by what she might have written.”

“Yet you gave the diary to me.”

Her ladyship smiled. “But not before I had a chance to take your measure. Within five minutes of meeting you, I knew you were the right person to take charge of the diary. All the same,” she heaved a sigh, “I sometimes wonder if I should have destroyed it when I had the chance.”

This last remark started a chain of connected thoughts in Faith’s mind. She said slowly, “Tell me the truth, Lady Cowdray. Why didn’t you find someone to decode Madeline’s diary? Why did you hold on to it all these years?”

Lady Cowdray said, “I told you—” She stopped suddenly, gave Faith a strained smile, and started over. “You’re right. I could have found someone to decode the diary, but I was afraid that he might not be discreet. You see, Faith, I had a love affair, oh, a long time ago, with a man who had a lot to lose if it became known that I was once his mistress. He died some years ago, but his widow died only six months ago. She can’t be hurt if my affair with her husband comes to light now.”

“Why didn’t you destroy the diary? ”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it except to say that it was Madeline’s.”

Faith understood the sentiment. Her loss was greater. It was the nearest she had come to knowing her mother. Now she had lost her again.

She said quietly and truthfully, “There is nothing spiteful or shocking in the few pages I have managed to decode. In fact, they’re rather amusing.”

“What is amusing?” Jayne Coltrane, unseen, had joined them and was helping herself to a glass of wine. “Well? ”

Faith felt her spine stiffen. She did not like this dour-faced woman, not because of anything she had done to Faith, but because she’d made disparaging remarks about Madeline. “Oh, it was a private joke,” she responded, forcing a smile, “and not worth repeating.”

Those unsmiling lips turned down at the corners. “How very like your mother you are.”

“Thank you.” Faith did not force a smile this time.

“Just be careful, Miss McBride, that you don’t make as many enemies.”

“Really, Jayne!” Lady Cowdray protested.

Faith was furious. “What does that mean?”

“It means, Miss McBride, that your mother was a cheat and a troublemaker. She didn’t care whom she hurt. You should know that better than anyone. She abandoned you and your father, did she not? I did not know that she had a husband and a daughter until you suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Madeline Maynard was an unscrupulous wretch who would do or say anything to get her own way.”

Faith was still fumbling for words to annihilate Miss Coltrane, when the lady smiled triumphantly and moved away.

Lady Cowdray made soothing sounds as she patted Faith’s arm. “Jayne was always jealous of your mother,” she said. “They both wrote for the newspapers, you see, but Madeline’s pieces sold for more money, and that galled Jayne.”

Faith made some innocuous reply, but on another level, she was trying to dredge up a cutting rejoinder to Jayne Coltrane’s wounding diatribe. Not that it mattered. Jayne Coltrane was well out of earshot.

More people wandered into the dining room, talking across each other, milling around the table, so she and Lady Cowdray moved away to give them room. By and by, Lady Cowdray excused herself and went to speak to a friend, leaving Faith to wander from one knot of people to another, looking for a face she knew, but no one seemed to notice her. James, she noted, was in conversation with Larry Coltrane. The next time she looked, he was with Alastair Dobbin. She was beginning to feel awkward, when she recognized a young woman who seemed as lost as she.

“Lily!”

She’d raised her voice to get her friend’s attention, and several people turned to stare. Faith cared nothing for that. She hadn’t seen Lily since the day she’d gone to Chalbourne to meet Lady Cowdray, and she’d missed their late night tête-à-têtes. Besides this, the scene with Jayne Coltrane had left her shaken, and Lily’s friendly presence was exactly what she needed to soothe her nerves.

A young girl stepped from behind Lily, and Faith recognized Dora Winslet, but not the Dora whom Faith remembered. She looked ill. Perhaps it was the unrelieved black mourning clothes that drained her face of color, or perhaps it was the trauma of the untimely death of a young man she knew and liked that gave her that pinched look. What Faith could not understand was why Lily had allowed a St. Winnifred’s girl of seventeen years to attend the funeral of someone she was not related to.

Dora nodded in answer to something Lily said, then she went to the table and began to fill a small plate with savories. Lily came on. She started off with a smile on her face, but by the time she fell into Faith’s arms, her cheeks were wet with tears. The sight of Lily’s tears dissolved a hard knot of resentment against Robert Danvers that Faith wasn’t aware, till that moment, had lodged deep inside her. The two girls clung together for long minutes without saying a word.

When they broke apart, Lily said unsteadily, “When I read your letter, I was shocked. I can’t even imagine what you must have suffered, finding his body like that.”

Faith tried to suppress the pictures that were beginning to form in her mind. “I think,” she said, “it was the lowest point of my life. If he had died naturally, or because of an accident, I could have accepted it. But murder!”

Lily produced a handkerchief and blew her nose. “I feel so guilty,” she said. “I wish I had tried to get to know him better. I wish I hadn’t made fun of him. I’m such a nasty-minded person. I don’t like myself at all.”

“The same thoughts have been going through my head. I should have been nicer to him, and now it’s too late.”

After dabbing at her cheeks, Lily said, “You have nothing to regret. I was the one with the acid tongue. You were always nice to Robert.”

Faith shook her head. “Not always.” She meant not always in the privacy of her own mind.

Lily’s gaze was wandering over the crush of people. “James Burnett,” she said, and turned her eyes on Faith.

“He’s here. Is it true, Faith? Are you engaged to marry him? ”

Faith was glad to drop the subject of Robert’s murder. “Everybody tells me that I am,” she said, “so it must be true. However, you don’t see a ring on my finger, do you? ”

A smile twitched at the corners of Lily’s mouth. “I knew it couldn’t be true. You’re too sensible to be taken in by a bounder like Burnett. He’s a wastrel, that one.”

Oddly, Faith did not like to hear those words coming from another person. If anyone was going to tear James Burnett’s character to shreds, it would be she and no one else. Besides, she told herself, she could hardly allow someone to heap scorn upon the man who had saved her life. He wasn’t all bad.

“Things are not always what they seem,” she said. “I know he is not an easy man to get to know, but—”

“Not easy to get to know? I can read him like a book.” People were turning to stare, so Faith grasped Lily’s wrist and pulled her through the doors and into the garden. Undaunted, Lily went on, “Actions speak louder than words, Faith, and I say that his actions toward you were shoddy. Don’t tell me you’re in love with him, because I won’t believe you. Is it his money? Or does the prospect of remaining a spinster frighten you? ”

“Lily,” Faith interjected forcefully, “I didn’t say that I was engaged to him. That’s what people are saying, but it’s only gossip.”

“Then tell me this. Why are you staying with his family? And don’t try to put me off with that fiction about having to stay in London to help the police with their investigation. You could just as easily stay at St. Winnifred’s.”

Faith was taken aback. Lily was her best friend. She’d told her the truth, but Lily didn’t believe her. She was beginning to sense that some mischievous spirit was working against her.

“Oh, Lily,” she said, “not you, too.”

Lily looked intently into Faith’s eyes. After a moment, she said slowly, “Now I don’t know what to believe.”

“Trust me, Lily. I’ve told you the truth. Now, let’s find Dora. What on earth persuaded you to bring her here?”

Lily looked as though she wanted to say more, but evidently Faith’s closed expression warned her that it was time to change the subject. “She insisted,” she said, “because Robert had always been kind to her, and she thought it was the decent thing to do. I tried to dissuade her, but that only upset her more.” Lily shrugged. “We’re the only ones representing the school. Nearly everyone else is on holiday. So, I thought—why not?”