With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (24 page)

“Hmm.” He made a few notes in pencil on a sheet of Gravesend stationery. “How would you describe the state of your marriage, Lady Telford?”

“I assume you have good reason to ask something so intimate.”

“I do. Are you and your husband generally in accord?”

I hesitated. There flashed into my mind the memory of lying in Atticus’s embrace as he kissed me half out of my wits… and then fleeing from him in anger and wounded pride. “Like every married couple, we have occasional differences; but for the most part, yes, we are on good terms.”

“Yet not on good enough terms that you can vouch for his whereabouts on the night that his father died.”

This was so clumsy an attempt to shake me that I almost laughed. “Inspector, my husband’s father was seriously ill—enough to warrant sending a servant out in the middle of the night to fetch the doctor. If you think that in those circumstances a reasonable man would calmly compose himself for sleep at his wife’s side… well, you either underrate the bond of filial loyalty or greatly overrate my charms.”

He did not find my riposte amusing, however. “This kinship you speak of,” he said intently. “Were your husband and his father close, then?”

I knew he would catch me out if I overstated the degree of warmth between Atticus and his father. Feeling my way with caution, I said, “I’m sure you know by now, having spoken to my husband, that he and his father argued from time to time, that they have—
had
—incompatible personalities.”

“I’ve heard something to that effect, yes.”

“The truth is that Lord Telford loved Richard better than Atticus. And perhaps in the years since Richard’s death his father, in his grief, exaggerated Richard’s virtues and turned him into a paragon.” My voice slowed as I realized I might have been describing my own mental processes. “He viewed Atticus’s normal human weaknesses with a more jaundiced and resentful eye, contrasting him always with the son he had loved and lost, whom he had come to look on as impossibly superior.”

As had I, not so long ago now. Unlike Lord Telford, however, I had come to appreciate the man Atticus had become… so much so that the idea that he might be prosecuted for murder struck a terrible cold into my heart. The thought of losing him filled me with something akin to panic.

Strack was watching me closely, and I wondered what my face had revealed to him. Mentally I gave myself a shake. “My husband is the kind of man who feels the obligations of honor and loyalty very deeply,” I said. “He and his father would have had to have been seriously alienated for him not to have had Lord Telford’s welfare uppermost in his mind. Whether he liked his father I cannot say, but he would have died himself it if could have prevented this terrible thing from happening.”

“So even though your husband had gone so far as to throw a peer of the realm out of his house for having indirectly insulted you, he would not have raised his hand against his father for making specific, personal aspersions about your character.”

I knew how weak my argument seemed, but that only made me more desperate—and more stubborn. “He would never have struck his father,” I stated. “Lord Veridian was different; he would have been able to defend himself if there had been any question of a physical altercation.”

“What you are telling me, then,” said the inspector, “is that your husband had neither the motive nor the temperament to kill his father.”

“Exactly,” I said in relief.

“Whereas you, on the other hand, did.”

“But I’ve told you, it was too late—”

He silenced me with a curt gesture. “Even if I grant that it was too late to stop word of your true origins from spreading, that in itself could be powerful motive for murder. Your father-in-law was doing his best to poison your marriage and your place in this house, Lady Telford. It might have been too late to undo the damage he had done, but it would not have been too late for revenge.”

After what I had said, I could not now pretend to be indifferent. Certainly the old baron’s berating of Atticus had roused a primal rage in me. Perhaps I had a streak of the Furies in my character. But if that were so… “Inspector Strack,” I said, “you seem a good judge of character. If I had wanted to avenge myself on my father-in-law, do you think I would have chosen so peaceful a means of dispatching him as smothering?”

Feminine voices rose in the hallway, and Strack’s eyes flicked toward the door, behind me. He must have instructed Birch not to enter without permission, for a knock sounded. I had to repress my now-instinctive response and let Strack answer. It was strange to realize how proprietary I had become after so short a time as Gravesend’s mistress.

It was indeed Birch who opened the door, but it was Genevieve who fairly flew into the room, towing a reluctant-looking Henriette by the hand.

“Inspector Strack?” she demanded. “We must speak with you at once. Henriette has evidence that is vital to your investigation.”

Her attempt to sound serious was undermined by her charming accent and the pretty sight she made even in her mourning dress of sober black. Her blue eyes were bright with determination, her cheeks flushed, and I was not surprised to see an answering flush darken Strack’s cheeks.

Without seeming to be aware of it, he smoothed down his moustache with one knuckle, first one side, then the other, all without removing his eyes from the girl. He had risen upon her entrance, and seemed now to be trying to stand up even taller. Poor man—he little guessed how signally he was failing to impress her. But the flash of sympathy I felt for him suddenly made him feel less like an intruder.

“Miss Genevieve Rowe, I believe?” he said deferentially. “I had intended to speak to you confidentially. If perhaps we could meet alone after Mrs. Blackwood and I are done—”

“I won’t hear of it,” I said sweetly. “Without a chaperone? It would be unseemly. Why not carry out your questioning now?”

Strack shifted his weight from one foot to the other and coughed. “It isn’t how I prefer to conduct an investigation—”

“Listen to me, if you please.” Genevieve’s imperious tone should have been comical, coupled with her frivolous appearance, but she had a trick of tipping her head back and narrowing her eyes that seemed to be quelling the inspector most effectively. I reflected that I should learn how to use the technique myself. “I have come to tell you what Henriette saw. Henriette is my Aunt Clara’s maid, and she is most concerned that she witnessed something important.”

“Why does she not say so herself?”

“Henriette speaks very little English,” I explained. “Of all the household, Genevieve is most fluent in French, so it’s natural that Henriette would go to her with information.” Despite my calm words, I was troubled by this unexpected intrusion. I did not like having no advance warning of what the maid was about to tell Strack.

Strack, too, was troubled, but for a different reason. “I don’t speak French. How can I trust that you’re translating her testimony accurately?”

In response, Genevieve offered up a performance that would have made Sybil Ingram proud. Her lower lip quivered ever so slightly, and her eyes went huge and wounded for an instant before she squeezed them shut and turned her face away as if fighting tears. “I am no liar, Mr. Strack,” she whispered pitifully. “It is true that I want to clear my foster father’s name, but to suggest that I would deliberately tell a falsehood…!” She broke off as if words had failed her, and I rose from my chair to put my arms around her.

“Inspector, you must see that Vivi is incapable of such a thing,” I chided, as she buried her head in my shoulder and gave a long injured sniff. “The sweet girl has been very sheltered, and to accuse her so—!”

“Pray don’t distress yourself so, miss,” he exclaimed, rounding the desk to offer her his handkerchief. “I am a blunt man, and I spoke too roundly. I merely wish to make sure that—”

“That I do not deceive you with false information, like a—a common criminal!” She sniffed again and uttered some broken French phrase. I patted her back and did my best not to smile.

“Not at all, miss, not at all. Nothing could be further from my mind. Please, be seated, and be good enough to forget my words. Lady Telford, do you think we might have some tea brought for the young lady? Or perhaps some spirits of ammonia? Dear me, I never meant…”

“I shall be quite well,” Vivi announced tragically, seating herself in the offered chair and crossing her ankles with a martyred air, “once you have heard Henriette’s testimony. Then we shall trouble you no more.”

Henriette herself had been observing these goings-on with a faint crease between her eyebrows that suggested perplexity, but in all other regards she was so composed as she stood quietly by with her hands folded that I wondered whether Genevieve had prepared her for her theatrics. I had to trust that Genevieve knew what she was doing… and that Henriette’s testimony would not prove dangerous. It was impossible to read anything from her calm demeanor.

“Henriette happened to be crossing the long gallery just after dawn this morning,” Genevieve announced. “As you must know, the late Lord Telford’s chambers are located at the east end of the gallery.”

“Why was she in that vicinity?” asked Strack, seating himself again behind the desk, but with a far less confident air than that with which he had questioned me.

“I shall ask her.” Genevieve directed a question at the maid, and Henriette replied in a calm stream of the same language. “Henriette was on her way to Aunt Clara’s rooms to ready her for the day,” Genevieve told us when Henriette had fallen silent. “She took that route because she knew that I had dropped a glove yesterday and thought that it might have been when Mr. Bertram and I visited the gallery to look at a painting of the first Lady Telford.”

Bertram again, was it? If Genevieve intended to accept him as a suitor, I must begin acting as chaperone. Now was scarcely the time to be distracted by a side issue, however.

“What did she observe when she passed?”

Again Henriette gave her answer and Vivi translated it. “All was quiet. Then the door opened and a man emerged, walking quickly. He did not notice Henriette, for she carried no light, and he quickly crossed the gallery and made for the small servants’ door just before the entrance to the main stair.”

“So he knew his way about the house,” mused Strack. “Can Henriette describe this man?”

For the first time Vivi looked genuinely troubled. She glanced at me and then dropped her eyes to the floor. “Yes,” she said slowly. “She says it was my Uncle Atticus.”

From the sudden alert tension of the inspector’s posture, I knew that this must be a damning statement. “What time did my husband say he left his father’s rooms?” I asked. The words forced themselves out of me.

Strack gave me an even look. “At least a half hour before that,” he said, and let that sink in before continuing to Genevieve: “She had no doubt it was Mr. Blackwood—I should say, Lord Telford?”

Genevieve put the question to Henriette, who shook her head decidedly. “Mr. Blackwood,” she said in heavily accented tones.

“She is positive,” said Genevieve sadly.

“Even without a light? In conditions so dark that he did not even see her?” I objected. “I don’t mean to suggest that Henriette is deliberately misleading us, but I would hate for Mr. Strack to be misled by testimony that isn’t entirely certain.”

Genevieve, to my embarrassment, repeated this in French to the maid, who shook her head again, this time even more stubbornly, as she answered. “She says she is certain,” Genevieve told us.

“This changes matters,” said Mr. Strack, and suddenly he was brisk and almost jaunty as he scribbled notes. “Changes them materially. I believe I’ve detained you ladies long enough, and I’ll need to speak to Lord Telford again.”

“A moment,” I said suddenly. “Was the man carrying anything?”

Genevieve translated the question, and Henriette shook her head with emphasis. That meant the man had used no walking stick. My heart beat just a bit faster as hope swelled in me.

“Henriette said that the man she saw walked
quickly
as he crossed to the door.” I wasn’t certain how to phrase my question without putting the answer in her mouth, and I knew that Strack would be quick to discount the response if I seemed to lead Henriette to it in any way. “Was there anything else that struck her about his—his manner of progress across the hall?” I asked carefully.

After the usual back-and-forth, Genevieve said, “She says no.” Then her eyes widened as if she realized the purpose behind my question, and a smile began to curve her mouth. “I shall ask her to show us,
non?
To give us a demonstration?”

“What is this in aid of?” Strack wanted to know, but I said, “Indulge us just a minute more, and we’ll tell you.”

Henriette gave Genevieve a baffled look when the girl conveyed our request, but then she seemed to reconcile herself to it; this was, after all, probably not the first eccentricity she had encountered during her years in service. After a moment’s thought, she set off across the room to the door with a long, easy, rapid stride. When she reached the door she turned, said,
“Voilà!”
and spread her hands as if to ask if that had satisfied us.

Indeed it had. Vivi and I clutched each other’s hands in delight, and I almost laughed with relief. “Mr. Strack,” I told him, as he stood giving us a long-suffering look, “my husband was born with a club foot. He received treatment for it as a boy, but it still troubles him sometimes. That means that he generally walks with a stick, and a slight limp is still evident under certain circumstances—”

“Such as when he is weary from an evening of dancing followed by attending his deathly ill father all night,” Vivi chimed in. She darted over to Henriette and kissed her on both cheeks. “It was not Uncle Atticus that Henriette saw after all!”

The inspector was not easily convinced, however.

“She said she recognized him,” he pointed out. “I find it difficult to believe that this house contains another man who could be mistaken for someone she is so familiar with.”

“Well, the house
was
full of guests and their servants,” I said, “a great many of them men. They have all departed by now, so it’s impossible for us to ask them to assemble where Henriette can examine the features of all of the men. It’s possible that one of them bears a resemblance to my husband—enough to pass for him in a dim gallery, seen not at all at close quarters, when my husband is the man that Henriette might have reasonably expected to be emerging from his father’s room.”

The look Strack gave me was not at all friendly, but I was too happy and relieved to care. He might glare at me from then until doomsday if it suited him; I knew only that Vivi and Henriette and I had to some degree lessened the suspicion that had hovered over Atticus. “In other words,” he said tonelessly, “you think that one of your house guests murdered his host? Or a servant did so? What possible benefit could such an act be to them?”

I could not keep from smiling. “That’s for you to determine, isn’t it, inspector? A man as ill-tempered and eccentric as my father-in-law may well have made enemies among his neighbors and tenants. I’ll be only too happy to make up a list of all of our guests with their addresses so that you may go interview them all.”

“You are too kind.” The sarcasm fairly dripped from the words, but in my giddiness I let it pass without rebuke.

As much (I suspected) for the sake of appearances as from any real hope of turning up additional evidence, the inspector remained for another few hours, questioning other servants. Brutus he had already spoken to, but he brought him in to examine further. By the time Atticus and I stood arm in arm by the front entrance to see the inspector on his way—Strack having declined rather rudely our offer of hospitality for the night—he looked to be in an ill humor.

My own high spirits had ebbed, if truth be told. Now that I felt Atticus was safe, the knowledge that some unknown person had invaded our home and brutally killed a member of my family finally seemed to be sinking in. I squeezed Atticus’s arm more tightly, and after a swift glance at my face he placed his hand over mine.

“It’s a horrible business,” he said quietly.

I nodded, unable to speak for a moment.

“Don’t worry. He strikes me as a tenacious man, and a just one. He’ll find whoever did it.”

“I hope so,” I whispered.

“You and Vivi should stay together tonight,” he continued. “I’ll tell her to have her maid gather whatever things she needs and take them to your room. And I’ll sleep on a cot in the dressing room so as to be close at hand should anyone try to disturb the two of you. If that won’t be an intrusion,” he added.

I made myself smile. “It seems a very sensible arrangement.” More sensible, probably, than my sharing his room and his bed… as bewitching a prospect as that seemed for the instant before I firmly shut my mind against the idea.

Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I would have been horrified at entertaining such a thought, as betrayed as I had felt. But the irruption of far graver matters had made that long-ago breach of trust seem like a relatively minor transgression, and one that I found I could forgive in view of the countless ways Atticus had shown consideration for me.

Indeed, perhaps it was more than consideration. From what I had overheard his father say during that last argument, it seemed that Atticus might have deliberately misled me with his tale of being rejected as a suitor by all the marriageable women in his circle. If he had truly not sought anyone as a bride in earnest until he approached me, that led me to consider the possibility that he had held me in his heart during all the years after I had left Gravesend. It was a thought of poignant beauty—a thought that humbled me.

Thinking about the cause of our parting, however, reminded me of a more pressing matter. “I must warn you,” I said to him, “that I told Strack all of my history, and all about our agreement. I suspect that word will spread—may already have begun to, in fact. I felt that in so serious a matter I ought to be completely honest, and for my own part I’m not ashamed… but I do hope that you won’t be made to pay a price for my low origins.”

He seemed lost in thought, and I wondered with sinking heart if I had done the wrong thing. The last thing I wanted was for him to suffer because of me.