“No Mr Neate today?” Ran said, as he ushered the gentlemen in.
“He is at the Pig and Whistle,” Edgerton said. “We feel it better to… erm, keep an eye on Mr Michael Chandry.”
“What is he up to now?” Ginny said, with a smile.
“Setting the women sighing, mostly,” Edgerton said. “But also taking as much money as he can from passing travellers foolish enough to accept his challenge at the card table. He is a formidable player, but… how shall I put this? Neate suspects that there is some manipulation of the cards involved.”
She laughed. “He always said it’s not cheating if cards just happen to get bent in a certain way, but Mr Neate need not be concerned. Michael never does so to his own advantage. If he seems to be winning quickly, he cheats a little to prolong the game. He never cheats with Ger, or anyone else who plays well.”
“I shall put this view of the matter to Neate,” Edgerton said gravely. “I must say, Miss Chandry, your brother is a fascinating character, sharp as a needle and full of pluck.”
“Oh, yes, he’s always up for a fight!” Ginny said.
“Game for anything,” Edgerton said. “In fact, I propose to invite him to join in a little venture that I have in mind. Mr Willerton-Forbes, Mr Neate and I have had some small success in the solving of crimes requiring discretion, and it is an enterprise which we greatly enjoy. We are considering creating a business for the purpose. Now, Willerton-Forbes is the son of an earl and therefore far too grand to lend his name officially, and Neate prefers to remain anonymous, but the name Edgerton, Chandry and Associates sounds rather good, do you not think? A discreet establishment with a brass plate beside the door, the best quality Madeira to serve to clients… But we would not wish to do anything which might embarrass you or your family, Miss Chandry, given your friendship with His Grace.”
“There’s some would say that Michael’s been embarrassing his family since the day he was born,” she said with a smile. “If you think you can keep him out of mischief long enough to do some good, then I shall not stand in your way, Captain Edgerton. Michael is free to do as he pleases.”
He bowed to her respectfully. The four gentlemen settled themselves around a circular table, while Ginny found a chair against the wall, somewhat aside from the group. Ran watched Ger anxiously, but although his hands twisted together from time to time, he looked otherwise quite his usual self.
Willerton-Forbes smiled benignly. “Your Grace is most generous in agreeing to see us again, but we do have just a few minor matters to discuss, matters which we did not wish to raise in the immediate aftermath of your return. We wished to do nothing to disturb the celebrations. I trust this is an appropriate moment.” He produced a sheet of paper. “Our function as instructed by the Benefactor was to give the sum of one thousand pounds to every survivor or next of kin of the deceased, in whatever form was desired, and to offer such help as might be needed. Nothing else. When the Minerva sailed, there was a complete list of all those aboard kept at the Dublin shipping office, and that was our starting point to trace the next of kin of all those drowned, as instructed by the Benefactor. With the captain and his crew there was no difficulty, for we had two surviving crewmen and the ship’s owner, who came from Southampton to assist. When the mortal remains of these unfortunates were recovered from the wreckage, therefore, each was readily identified, and the next of kin easily found. All those have received the thousand pounds from the Benefactor.
“Then we came to the paying passengers, seven in cabins, and three travelling steerage. The first name, of course, was that of the Most Noble Gervase Septimus Litherholm, Seventh Duke of Falconbury, returning from three years in America after the death of the Sixth Duke. Mr Herbert Huntly, Esquire, of Willow Place, Hampshire, was returning from a visit to his mother, who lives near Dublin. Mr Abraham Wishaw, a hop merchant of Bursham St Matthew, Hampshire, was returning from visit of business. Mr Philip Kearney, an architect from Liverpool, had been discussing plans for improving Lord Kilrannan’s property. Mr Lethbridge Barantine, a jewel merchant of London, and his partner, Mr David Newbold, were leaving Dublin after selling some pieces of jewellery and buying a quantity of diamonds. There was a Mr Louis Fields of unknown origin and trade. And three travelling steerage — James Crick and Robert Palfreyman, valets to Mr Barantine and Mr Newbold, and one Jonathan Ellsworthy, a clerk seeking employment in Southampton, the only passenger to survive.”
Willerton-Forbes leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his rounded stomach, smiling benignly. “Most of these presented no difficulties at all. They carried card cases or rings or marked clothing, and were identified by relations. The duke himself was identified by the crests on his clothing, by his jewellery and by Lord Randolph.” He smiled at Ger sympathetically. “Or misidentified, I should perhaps say, for which no blame can attach to any person, for the case was most convincing, even to the tattoo on the back of the head. I have no doubt that Your Grace had reasons for such a deception, but you have no need to explain yourself to us. We are satisfied with the truth, that is all.”
“I have no objection to explaining it,” Ger said, although his hands twisted again. “Like Mr Neate, I prefer to be anonymous when I can. When I met Joe Meadows, who looked a little like me and acted the duke a great deal better, it seemed an agreeable solution for both of us. I planned to surprise my brother with the trick at Southampton.”
“An ingenious jest,” Willerton-Forbes said, eyes twinkling. “But at the time, it seemed that the duke was identified, as were most of the other names on our list, and there remained but two mysteries. One was Mr Louis Fields, whom the coroner discovered to be a young woman aged about five and twenty, he estimated. We have been unable to find out anything about her.”
“When I heard there was a woman on board, I wondered if she might be Ger’s wife,” Ran said. “It kept me searching for evidence of a marriage in America for a long time, even when common sense told me it was impossible.”
“It was a reasonable theory,” Willerton-Forbes said. “The poor quality of her clothes suggested otherwise, however. She remains a mystery, poor lady. The other mystery amongst the passengers was Mr Jonathan Ellsworthy, who was identified by the Second Mate, but appeared to be a man with no history. Although he told several people investigating the sinking that he had been raised in an orphanage in Carlisle, the good captain’s rather thorough searches revealed no trace of such a person, nor any record of his birth.”
Ger laughed. “Did you truly go all the way to Carlisle to find out if I was telling the truth?”
“We are nothing if not thorough, Your Grace.”
“But you never mentioned it to me. We met three times, I think, at various times, but you said nothing about it.”
“It is not our place to pry into a man’s secrets,” Willerton-Forbes said. “We had no right to unmask a man who had clearly changed his name at some point. There is nothing illegal in that. You were a survivor of the Minerva, and therefore entitled to your thousand pounds. Beyond that we did not venture. But at that point we were at a standstill. We had everyone on the ship identified and in receipt of one thousand pounds with the single exception of Mr Louis Fields, our mystery lady, and all our enquiries there had proved fruitless. But that is not the only mystery outstanding.”
“You love mysteries, don’t you, Mr Willerton-Forbes?” Ginny said from her perch across the room. “I can see the gleam in your eye even from here.”
“Indeed I do, or rather, a mystery is an irritant, like a splinter in the flesh, that must be worked and pushed and pulled until it reveals itself. Many people wrote to us once word got out that we were handing out a thousand pounds apiece to anyone with a valid claim. A great many people tried to convince us that they had such a claim. Only one interested us. We had a letter from a Mrs Pike, a housekeeper for two ladies in London. She has a brother, Nigel Pike, who grew up with her in an orphanage in Carlisle. Last year, she received a letter from him, written in Dublin.”
He passed across a single sheet of paper, the words scratched in a barely-literate scrawl.
‘Dear lil coming home soon you will not beleev it I am a rich man so much to tell you I bring you a big surpris and I met a real duk yes me mixing with the nobs I am in irland waiting for a special ship brig minerva expect me in to weeks nigel’
“But he was not on the Minerva,” Ginny said. “You read out the names and there was no Pike.”
“Well now, that is the mystery,” Willerton-Forbes said. “When we first saw this, we concluded, as you do, that Nigel Pike was indeed in Dublin, but did not board the Minerva. We could find no trace of Pike in Ireland, but, to our delight, there was a record of him growing up in Carlisle. So now we had Jonathan Ellsworthy, a man with no history, and Nigel Pike, a man with a long history who had vanished. It was not hard to conclude that Jonathan Ellsworthy was Nigel Pike, but naturally we did not suggest such a thing to Mrs Pike. We told her that to the very best of our knowledge he was still alive.”
Ger burst out laughing. “You thought I was this Pike fellow? But I have never heard of him.”
“Yet you franked his letter,” Ran said quietly.
Ger snatched it from his hands. “So I did. Good God! Then he was there, but… I do not understand. The only letters I franked were… oh… it was Joe Meadows. So he changed his name?”
“That is the conclusion we came to as well,” Willerton-Forbes said. “And if Jonathan Ellsworthy was the Duke of Falconbury, then the man wearing his clothes must have been Nigel Pike. She gave us a likeness of her brother to show you, Your Grace. She told us that it was drawn some years but is a good likeness.”
He drew the paper from the pile in front of him and passed it to Ger, who burst out laughing. “That is Joe to the life! Much younger, of course, but I would know him anywhere. So his name was Nigel? Well I never! And he had a sister. He never mentioned her.”
“It will grieve her to know that her brother is indeed dead,” Willerton-Forbes said softly. “Do you have any idea what surprise he had in mind, Duke?”
“I have no idea. He said nothing of it to me.”
“She told us that he had hinted once or twice in his letters that there was a special lady.”
Ger smiled at him. “He did have a lady when I first met him. She was part of the acting group he belonged to but when they all separated she went to her sister in New York. Her name was Louisa Fogg and—”
“Louisa?” Edgerton said. “Louis Fields… Louisa Fogg… It could be.”
“Meadows!” Ginny cried. “Joe Meadows… Louis Fields was Louisa Meadows. She was his wife!”
Willerton-Forbes leaned back in his chair with an expression of satisfaction on his face. “Ah! Splendid. Thank you, Miss Chandry. There now remain only two mysteries to be resolved. One is why a sound ship travelling in good conditions with an experienced captain and crew should be driven onto the rocks of Cornwall. And the other—”
“The other?” Ran said.
“The Benefactor. I have been faithfully carrying out the Benefactor’s instructions for more than a year now, yet I am no nearer to knowing who that reclusive person may be.” He sighed. “I do not suppose we shall ever know, now. How extremely irritating.”
28: The Eve Of The Wedding
There were letters to be written, arrangements to be made, matters to be set right, as far as that was possible, but the first requirement was to set enquiries in motion to determine the truth about Nigel Pike. Had he really married Louisa Fogg, and were there any children resulting?
“This is last year all over again,” Ran said to Max, as he sealed a letter to the agent in Boston. “Marriage records, birth records… everything we have already been through.”
“It is not quite so grievous when it is not your own brother.”
“True. Max, what are we to do with the body in the mausoleum? Should we send it off to London, for Mrs Pike to rebury?”
“Oh, you want my advice now, do you?” Max said, amused. “You never listen to it.”
“You wound me greatly! I always listen most carefully to your advice. I may not always follow it, however.”
Max laughed. “You never follow it, and just as well, in some cases. If you had listened to me and not spoken to Lady Ruth, you would still be unhappy today, instead of looking forward to your wedding day. That is one instance where I am not ashamed to admit that I was utterly wrong, and I am very glad that you disregarded my misguided recommendations. When is your wedding day to be? There is no difficulty, is there?”
“What a worrier you are! Do you imagine Ruth will change her mind again? We await the arrival of her parents, that is all. Then it will be done. There is no rush.”
“The great rush would be to get your bride’s sister away from your brother,” Max said sourly. “She is a dreadful flirt, that one, and now that Crosby has very wisely defected—”
“Susan is harmless, I think. Ger is too sensible to fall for her wiles.”
“I hope you are right, for she would be a disaster as the Duchess of Falconbury, even worse than—” He had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Even worse than Ginny Chandry? A great deal worse,” Ran said evenly. “Ginny has many good qualities, Max. She is very good with Ger, and he would cope better in company if she was with him, I think. I should not object to their marriage at all.”
Max grunted, eyebrows raised in disbelief, but he said nothing more. He had no need to, for Ran knew all the arguments perfectly well. She was barely gentry, let alone nobility, and the jump from the lowest rung of the ladder to almost the highest was a massive one. She had no education to speak of, and no familiarity with the world of the nobility. She might be able to mingle at an evening party with Ger’s family, who were disposed to be kind, but it was hard to see her coping with the high sticklers of the beau monde. She would never be accepted, and then Ger would retreat from society too. He needed a wife accustomed to that life.
And yet… Ran could not deny that Ger was calmer, more amenable when she was with him. He had experienced none of the violent mood swings that had so characterised his younger days. His spirits were still uneven, but instead of veering from high good humour to the depths of despair, now he never descended lower than bored placidity. If he grew restless, as he often did in company, he would take himself off to the instrument and get rid of his fidgets that way, and if that failed he would disappear and find Ginny. She kept him sane, and Ran would do a great deal to ensure that she stayed with Ger, even if it meant accepting her as duchess. It would be a small price to pay to prevent any repeat of those stomach-churning moments of the past, where Ran had had to coax Ger out of a black mood and convince him that life was worth living. He still occasionally woke sweating and terrified, dreaming he was up on the roof again and trying desperately to talk Ger out of jumping to his death. He never, ever wanted to go back to those days.
~~~~~
Ruth received a brief note from her mother to say that they were delayed by some important political matter in Parliament which the duke could not miss. It was difficult to quibble over it when she was very grateful that they were to come at all, but she wished it could all be over. She had moved into her new apartments, her wedding clothes filled the wardrobes in the dressing room and the wedding breakfast was planned, together with a celebratory dinner that evening. Ger and Ginny had moved into the Old Manor. Everything now awaited the arrival of the duke and duchess.
The delay caused another difficulty, too. Ran had carefully refrained from informing anyone of their plans, to avoid the unwanted appearance of hordes of relations. Elizabeth, however, had had no such scruples, industriously writing to every uncle, aunt, sister and cousin to suggest they hurry to Valmont to help celebrate the wedding. A great number of them had decided to do just that. It was not precisely a horde, but enough to terrify Ger into hiding away in the evenings.
Ruth’s own relations were behaving well, for once. Audlyn was happy as a flea, having made the acquai
ntance of Michael Chandry and Captain Edgerton, the three finding much of mutual interest to absorb their energies. They rode together in the mornings, and as often as not spent the evenings at the Pig and Whistle, where the entertainment was less refined than at Valmont, but of a nature to appeal to gentlemen.
As for Susan, she was suspiciously well-behaved, and Elizabeth’s departure meant she was less well chaperoned. The arrival of Ran’s other sisters and a number of aunts alleviated the problem somewhat, for there were now always ladies about in the Queen’s Room or the Spinsters’ Parlour. However, when Ruth went there, she often found that Susan was missing and then she felt obliged to track her down. Sometimes she was harmlessly in her room, or walking in the grounds with her maid, but sometimes she was in the Grand Saloon at the instrument with Ger, quite alone, and that made Ruth uneasy. She had fretted at the close chaperonage she herself had suffered and wished for a little less confinement, but Susan had altogether too much freedom. Neither Aunt Maria nor Cousin Patience had been sent to watch over her, Ruth had other activities to absorb her time and the other ladies could not be relied upon. The sooner Mama arrived the better.
Finally, that day arrived, and the little train of carriages and outriders drew up outside the front door. Ger could not be found, but Ran, Ruth, Audlyn and Susan stood on the top step to greet the arrivals. The duchess was all cordiality, kissing Ruth, patting Susan’s cheek, and smiling benevolently at the two men. They proceeded to the Ante-Chamber, where an array of Litherholms had assembled to greet the ducal party with appropriate ceremony, and to make sure the honour of the host family was upheld by the superiority of their elegance and civility. The duke and duchess, however, had been the most recently in town, and therefore had the triumph of being able to impart the very latest gossip.
Ruth and Ran stood a little apart, watching them. “Tomorrow,” he murmured. “Tomorrow we shall be married.”
His words warmed her from head to toe. “Yes,” she said shyly. “At last.”
The Duke (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 6) Page 28
