by Emma Jameson
“Oh. Um….”
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Dr. Bones, I’ll leave you here while I search for the envelope. I expect I’ll be gone a quarter-hour or more. I should warn you against taking the back passage. From the other side of the door, you could hear everything Juliet and Ethan are saying to one another quite easily. Heaven knows what sort of questions that might clear up. If you put your palm against the left wall,” she repeated, holding his gaze, “and follow it up the stairs.” Smiling, she turned and exited, leaving him alone.
When faced with an ethical dilemma, Ben had a tendency to internally litigate the matter. To draw up a list of pros, cons, alternatives, worst case scenarios, and so on. Often, he did this even when his gut had already told him which choice to make. Had the circumstances been different—had it been Dinah who showed him the door, for example, or Bertha who’d mentioned a chance to shamelessly eavesdrop—he would have been so torn, the window of opportunity might well have closed before he decided. But Lady Victoria was the one who’d all but told him to go and listen at the library door. A chance to finally understand what the devil was going on was too good to squander.
The passage was rather low, which made him feel taller, and the stairs were as steep as Lady Victoria warned. In a minute or so, he knew the library was close, because he could hear Lady Juliet shouting. Or, if not precisely shouting, speaking in a loud and forceful manner.
“… out of the question. I can’t abandon Mother. She’s not a well woman.”
Ethan’s voice was pitched lower. His tone was quite different when he had an audience of one, and that one knew him well. “Only the good die young, which means Victoria will outlive us both. I know it’s been hell for you, playing the lovestruck little wifey. But there isn’t a soul you care about in London. All you’d have to do is appear at my side once or twice and refrain from calling me names.”
“You have no idea how hellish it’s been,” Lady Juliet said. “Now I know why the government skips prison and caning and goes right to hanging. If the penalty wasn’t absolute, no one could go a week without breaking their oath.”
Ethan’s reply was muffled. Ben, too instantly engrossed to give a fig about ethics, was reduced to putting his ear against the door. In terms of self-respect, it wasn’t an action he’d look back on with pride, but it allowed him to pick up the remainder of Ethan’s words.
“… for two weeks hardly constitutes abandonment. Besides, you’re tackling this rift all wrong, if you want my opinion. The way to make a man regret his behavior isn’t to mope about, hoping for an apology. It’s to get on with your life. Have a roaring good time without him.”
“I don’t want your opinion,” Lady Juliet said. “I only mentioned the rift, as you put it, to prove how well I’ve acted my part. I realize falsehood is entirely natural for you. I, however, find it excruciating. I’d never make a spy.”
Ethan replied, but Ben didn’t register the words. He was too busy assuring himself that he’d actually heard everything he’d heard. Much of what came next made little sense, concerning people he didn’t know and vague references to the Ellisson side of Juliet’s family. But after a quarter-hour of listening in, he knew two things for sure. Juliet’s reconciliation with Ethan was entirely for show, and it had been arranged by the blank-faced Mr. Duggin, who was apparently some sort of handler for Ethan’s spy career.
“Yes, Mother?” Juliet called suddenly, startling Ben.
Lady Victoria’s reply was inaudible, coming as it did from the other side of the library’s primary door.
“Yes, of course. Please don’t let him leave,” Lady Juliet said. “I’ll collect the photos and be down directly.”
“Well, I’ll be boiled,” Ethan said. “Perhaps your moping worked better than I thought.”
“This is business. I’m quite sure he’s come only on business.”
“I doubt it,” Ethan said. “Break a leg!”
* * *
Back in the dining room, Ben tried to sit down and wait for Lady Victoria, but kept jumping up and pacing around the table. During the treason trial, the Official Secrets Act had been referenced several times. The penalty for disclosure was execution. He was caught between delight that Lady Juliet, who craved usefulness like a flower craved the sun, had been given such a responsibility, and dismay that she couldn’t talk about it. Swearing her to silence seemed crueler than asking her to feign wedded bliss with her strapping great mooncalf of a husband.
“Dr. Bones,” Lady Victoria said, entering. “You must forgive me. I couldn’t locate the photos. However, Juliet is on her way downstairs with them now. Oh, dear. That will never do.”
Reaching inside the hidden passage, she switched off the lights and closed the door. Now that Ben knew where to look, he saw the tell-tale breaks in the chair rail, and a ridge where the wallpaper had been imperfectly matched. So often it was like that with secrets; once revealed, the truth seemed too obvious to have ever been missed.
“A maid must have left that open,” Lady Victoria said. “It’s just a poky hall leading nowhere. One of Belsham Manor’s eccentricities. I trust you didn’t enter. I certainly didn’t invite you to do so.”
“No,” Ben agreed, cottoning on at last. “I seem to recall you telling me to sit and wait. You wouldn’t condone trespassing.”
“No, indeed.” She gave him one of her radiant smiles. “It really is wonderful you chose this morning to drop by. And—oh. Here’s Juliet.”
“Good afternoon, Dr. Bones,” Lady Juliet said as her mother withdrew. “Cold today.”
“Bitter cold,” Ben agreed automatically. “Bright, though.”
“Oh, yes. Unseasonably cold but wonderfully bright.” She offered a hesitant smile. “I wondered what you’ve been up to. We’ve left the séance lie, haven’t we?”
“We did. Recent experience suggests I might profit from a sharper focus on the mortal coil,” he said, returning her smile. “Patients and Army letters and so forth. I’m not sure what happened in the attic, or if any of that was supernatural. I only know that Lucy wanted me to carry my cane.” He rapped its tip on the floor. “Beyond that, I think life will go smoother if I wait for her to contact me. Will you be riding?” he asked, noting her grass-stained jodhpurs and extraordinarily tall boots. Riding boots usually finished below the knee and had spurs; the ones she wore looked rubberized and came up to mid-thigh. Hip waders, he thought they were called.
“Riding? No. These are a stopgap,” she said, looking down as if only just realizing what she had on. “My best boots are out for repair. Mother is determined to provide fabric to any woman who plans on sewing new clothes for her family next year. I said I would love to help, which she interpreted quite broadly, as it turns out. Today I opened my wardrobe and could have shot a cannon through it. Hence the jodhpurs, which have rips in the knees. Hence the tall boots, for warmth. Because this morning, when I asked Bertha to fetch my coat, I discovered Epona was wearing it.”
“Your horse?”
“Yes. You know Mother and her sewing. It’s eternal, like the tide. I did notice her at work on my erstwhile coat. It’s quite woolly, you know, so I couldn’t have missed it. She took my silence as assent, but the truth is, I thought she was mending a tear. When in fact she was snipping off the sleeves and turning it into a horse blanket.”
Ben couldn’t think of a better use for the horrible coat, but saying so would only add insult to injury. By the same token, something was happening with her hair. Instead of scraped back in a bun, it was loose and fuzzy, as if recently attacked by a potato brush. He valued their friendship too much to inquire why.
“As it’s far too cold to spend the winter coatless,” Juliet said, “Mother and I are off to Plymouth in the next hour. She’s dragging me to the shops, and I’ve promised to behave. In return, I’m permitted some fine dining afterward, and a quiet night in a hotel room. Just the three of us. Me, Mother, and Edith Wharton.”
“What about Ethan?” Ben asked.
Ben nodded. Astonishing how frankly fake those happy-wife sentences sounded, now that he knew the truth. Or now that he evaluated them without… what?
Not jealousy. Dislike of Ethan, perhaps. But not jealousy.
“I don’t want to delay your trip to the station,” Ben said, wondering if she meant to wear her hip waders on the train. “I only want to look over the photos, then give them to Gaston. He tells me the case is closed. Mr. Collins did it.”
“The butler!” Juliet cried. “How marvelous. Remember how he manhandled me? Scurrilous varlet.” Opening the envelope, she spread the photos on the dining room table for Ben’s inspection. “Why did he kill Bobby? Is he quite unhinged? He cast an evil eye at me over that possible blood stain. Perhaps he would have tried to murder me, too?”
It was on Ben’s lips to explain about the theft scheme when he noticed something in a photo. It was one of a series Father Rummage had taken of Bobby on the bed, body contorted by cadaveric spasm.
“What’s that?” he asked, tapping the picture.
“Hm? Probably an artifact.”
“Meaning?”
“A part of the photo accidentally created by the photographer. From a dusty lens, a finger shadow, that sort of thing.”
“Dust would leave a black mark, wouldn’t it? And that isn’t a shadow,” Ben said. “It’s a line on the floor. See? Like a crack of light. I know that’s a wall, but I’ve had secret passages on my mind lately. I’ve even been dreaming about them. You don’t suppose….?”
“Ridiculous. I happen to know a thing or two about secret passages as well as amateur photography, and I can assure you—” She broke off, picking up the photo and studying it more carefully. “Great Scott. I suppose it could be. Parts of Fitchley Park are very old.”
“Someone on staff mentioned strange doings since the days of the Cavaliers,” Ben added, remembering suddenly.
“Does a secret passage figure into it? Now that the murderer has been unmasked?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said, gathering up the photos and envelope. “Enjoy your day out in Plymouth. We’ll talk about it when you get back.”
* * *
St. Gwinnodock’s tower was in sight when Ben realized he’d torn off to Barking without taking two obvious steps. He hadn’t taken the trouble to hunt down Gaston, and he hadn’t formulated a good reason for turning up at Fitchley Park unannounced. Throughout the drive, his thoughts had bounced back and forth like a squash ball, from Juliet’s sham reconciliation to Ethan’s spy career to the secret passage and back again. The passage, if there was one, didn’t call Mr. Collins’s guilt into question; on the contrary, evidence of such a thing would explain how Bobby had died in one place and been quietly conveyed to another.
But Lady Maggart might not appreciate further exploration on the topic, he thought. She’s already under house arrest for her complicity in the theft. If she knew about the passage, and she must have, failure to disclose it might result in more questions. Perhaps additional charges.
He felt sure Mrs. Grundy would permit him entrance, so long as her mistress wasn’t about. Having lived in Fitchley Park all her life, she would know as much about the house’s secrets as Lord and Lady Maggart.
Didn’t Lady Juliet say there was a pub in Barking? When it wasn’t serving as the post office?
Realizing that a pint and a quiet moment would be just the thing, Ben parked on the street and wandered among the cottages until he found the Trentham house. As Lady Juliet had said, both operations were run out of Old Mrs. Trentham’s front room, and fortunately for him, today it was lager on offer, not stamps. The front room offered few concessions to its dual purpose, other than extra chairs and a service counter. Behind the counter sat a wall-eyed woman and a tearful girl.
“Wotcha,” a patron whispered as Ben walked in. All were male and in the vicinity of seventy except for one female, who looked like a man and might have been fifty.
“No crème de menthe here,” she said, guffawing like a man.
“Shut it, Myra.” The wall-eyed woman sounded more than capable of taking on even the rowdiest patron. “This must be Dr. Bones from Birdswing.”
“Birdswinger,” someone muttered.
“Barkers do it better,” another said, and everyone roared.
“I am Dr. Bones,” Ben agreed. “Ex-Londoner, aspiring Birdswinger, and Barking fancier, if you please. I hope to scare up some patients here. But not just now.” To the woman he said, “Pint, please. Your choice.”
“My choice is the only choice. We have one keg on tap today. I’m Hannah Trentham, by the way. That’s my youngest, Shelagh.” She prodded the tearful girl, who seemed poised between regaining her composure and a fresh bout of weeping. “Glass, love.”
The girl, who was unusually pretty in a wide-eyed gamine sort of way, took a glass from the rack and began polishing it with delicate strokes.
“Other fish in the sea, and here’s proof,” Mrs. Trentham said. Her left eye was on her daughter; her right seemed be looking at Ben but probably saw nothing at all. “Shelagh reckons her heart’s broken. Seventeen and it’s all over. Tragic.” Taking the clean glass from her daughter, she put it under the tap. “As if my little lady couldn’t do better than that. Shelagh’s got a certain something, Doctor. Not just beauty, though she has that in spades. A genteel nature, that’s what I call it. If I could scrape together the pennies, I’d send her to one of those finishing schools on the Continent. Not that she needs it. Even weeps like a duchess.”
Shelagh sighed and dabbed at her eyes. “Bobby said I was a proper lady.”
“Bobby said all sorts of things, and I’ll not miss the sound of his voice,” Mrs. Trentham replied. As she handed Ben his pint, her right eye fixed on him and her left eye slid toward the wall, going temporarily sightless. It was a recognized phenomenon, but Ben would have needed his books to identify it.
“Folks put about you’re a widower,” Mrs. Trentham said.
He nodded absently, studying Shelagh.
“I’ll just check on Granddad,” Mrs. Trentham announced, and disappeared into the house.
“Shelagh. I’m sorry for your loss,” Ben said. “I suppose news of Mr. Collins’s arrest reopened the wound.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, clearly starved for sympathy. “I don’t know why he killed Bobby. I’ve known Mr. Collins all my life. He could be cross with people but never violent.”
“Had you fixed a date?”
Shelagh shook her head. “We hoped for spring, but it was no use planning. Not till his divorce went through.”
Here’s Bobby’s intended second wife, Ben thought. Not Lady Maggart or Kitty. Out of all his women, Shelagh’s the one Bobby wanted so much, he finally asked Helen for a divorce. If he had a lover at Fitchley Park, I wonder what she made of it? Of finding out she was good enough to sleep with but not good enough to marry?
“Hey! You haven’t touched your pint,” Shelagh said as Ben tossed a coin on the counter.
“Sorry. Something just occurred to me,” Ben said, hurrying toward the door.
“Birdswingers,” someone whispered as he left.
Inside the Cavalier Room
A maid he’d never seen admitted him into Fitchley Park. She was older than Lady Maggart’s usual range of preference, with crooked teeth and a prominent mole on her forehead. After taking his hat and coat, she directed him to the great room. There he found not Lord or Lady Maggart but Mrs. Grundy, sitting in her master’s chair.
“Thank you, Louisa,” she told the maid. Something about her comfortable position before the fire reminded Ben of Lady Maggart in her boudoir. Mrs. Grundy wore her usual black uniform rather than a dressing gown, but she had the same
book—Rebecca—on her lap. That surprised Ben, as Lady Maggart didn’t strike him as the sort who would share, particularly with someone she regarded as a social inferior.
“I see you’ve taken on new staff.”
“Yes, indeed, Dr. Bones,” Mrs. Grundy said, rising. “And of my own choosing, for the first time since her ladyship was a bride. Lord Maggart has full confidence in my abilities.” A smile softened her exaggerated features. “As for Louisa,” she said, without apparent regard for whether the new maid or anyone else might hear, “Beauty is only skin deep, but a willingness to serve goes straight to the marrow. Poor Louisa has had difficulty finding a place. Too homely. Bad figure. That mole. Most employers would rather have a pretty idiot. But I’m sure she’ll be a credit to Fitchley Park.”
“I hope so,” Ben said. “Where is Lady Maggart?”
“She’s not at home. Which is to say, upstairs,” Mrs. Grundy replied. “Perhaps you’ve heard of our troubles and come to offer condolences?”
“In part. How is she? I imagine the arrest of Mr. Collins and the others must have come as a terrible shock.”
“Not really,” Mrs. Grundy said calmly. “The fact he murdered Mr. Archer made an impact, insofar as no one likes the idea of a killer close at hand. It’s put her ghost nonsense into perspective. Otherwise the arrests haven’t touched her ladyship at all. She’s too busy contemplating the possibility of her own incarceration.”
“Yes, well. Speaking of that.” Ben cleared his throat. “I understand she’s not at liberty to leave the premises.”
“Under an order of house arrest, they call it. A pair of London solicitors will come next week to try and sort it out. I hope it can be resolved without further sullying the reputation of this house.”
“Of course. Getting back to her ladyship—may I ask a rather indelicate question? I danced around it before. Now I’d like to be direct.”
