Lady Anne and the Menacing Mystic

by Victoria Hamilton

  Mrs. Venables turned and her gaze met Anne’s. She approached, both women nodding, the bare minimum of acknowledgment. “How lovely to see you on such a grim day, my lady! Attendance is so thin I was forced into conversation with Mrs. Noakes, who I know only slightly.”

  “An acrimonious conversation, if it is to be judged from afar,” Anne said, lessening the boldness of the accusation with a smile.

  “Acrimonious? How so?”

  “You seemed at odds.”

  “Oh, I suppose from a distance . . .” She nodded and then, with a hardening expression, said, “I’ll admit it; I reacted badly to something she said, something she likely did not mean as I took it.”

  “What was that?”

  “She . . .” Mrs. Venables compressed her lips and looked away. “I heard that she was . . . was spreading a rumor around about my cousin. You know the rumor of which I speak. Bertie is dear to me, and I will not hear him maligned, not by anyone, certainly not by the likes of her, who is not fit to touch his hem.”

  Anne felt a twinge of remorse for suspicions she had been entertaining. Any defender of Bertie was a friend of hers. “I have heard no rumors other than from Mr. Roger Basenstoke, as I told you the other day,” she said.

  “Maybe no one else will either, now.”

  “What did she say that was upsetting?”

  “I won’t be one to gossip; it’s not important.” She took the sting out of her words with a smile. “Now when I think about it,” Mrs. Venables said, “I probably overreacted and mistook something she said to someone, something about that poor fellow Mr. Lonsdale and his demise in my cousin’s home. You know how concerned we all are that his passing is seen as what it was, a brief sudden illness that hastened death.”

  “I hope it was a mistake, if Mrs. Noakes is gossiping about that. I would not for the world see Bertie or Alethea injured. If it helps, I had thought Mrs. Noakes rather stupid, but not vicious.”

  She nodded swiftly. “Good, good. That was my own thought. I hope I didn’t overreact,” she fretted. “I would injure no one’s feelings. Do you think I should apologize?” She looked across the Pump Room to where Mrs. Noakes was clinging to Mr. Doyne’s arm.

  “I wouldn’t,” Anne advised. “You’ll make it worse by giving the possible rumor more weight than it should have.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” Baron Kattenby entered and slowly made his way to the pump attendant. “I had better join him,” she said. “Excuse me, Lady Anne.”

  Mrs. Venables met her fiancé, he took his glass of mineral water, drank it down, and they slowly headed to the door, though they were stopped occasionally by people, likely for congratulations and questions. Nothing like an impending marriage to make one popular, Anne thought, reminded that she would soon be the one fending off invitations to dine and attend parties when she and Darkefell announced their engagement.

  Mr. Thomas Graeme sauntered back in but appeared tense, his eyes underlined with the purple shadows of someone who hadn’t been sleeping. He glanced at the older couple, but then swiftly looked away. Anne wished to speak with him. His blackmailing letters troubled her deeply. That he could treat Lonsdale so, when they had been so intimate . . . it was dastardly. She had questions, too, about his matchmaking and his familial connection to the mystic. What would he say if she asked him why recent grooms had passed swiftly and unexpectedly after their marriages? She fretted, uncertain about whether to approach him alone. She had sent Osei an early request to join her and hoped he would be there before she confronted the young man, but if Graeme departed, her questions would stay unanswered.

  She couldn’t wait. He spoke to a Pump Room attendant and slipped him a coin; the fellow nodded and slipped away. “Wretched weather we’re having. How do I find you today, sir, well, I hope?” she said brightly.

  He started and slowly turned, an arid blankness in his expression. He traded it quickly for his public face, the cheery veneer of a friendly fellow. “Good day, my lady!” he cried, his face wreathed in a broad artificial smile. “How surprising to find you here on such a raw and unfortunate day. Bath is generally blessed with good weather, but as you say, it is not the case today, is it?”

  “The weather today is unfortunate,” she said, examining him, interested in the public mask he donned so easily. It appeared his natural expression was one of detachment, and perhaps reflected an inner cruelty that had been revealed in his letters. “I was just speaking with Mrs. Bella Venables. Do you know her well?”

  He shrugged. “Does anyone really know anyone, my lady?”

  “Of course we do, Mr. Graeme. I have met her but a few times, and yet I feel I know her moderately well: her history; her sufferings; her feelings for her cousin.”

  “Perhaps.” He glanced around and moved restlessly. Attendance in the Pump Room had thinned even more. “I’ll warrant you don’t know the lady as well as you think,” he said, still glancing around with a restless air. “I doubt even Mr. Birkenhead knows her as well as he thinks.”

  “Whatever do you mean by that? She is his cousin, the intimate of his youthful years!”

  “Who knows the real Mrs. Venables?” he muttered.

  She stared at him, perplexed.

  “For that matter, who knows the real Lady Anne?” He met her gaze and smiled, sweeping his golden hair from his high forehead. “Please do me the very great kindness of ignoring my ill temper, my lady,” he went on, his voice once again unctuous. “You find me out of sorts, and I would not have you think ill of me for the world. I fear I am affected by the weather today, beset with gloom.”

  “Perhaps you are affected more deeply than you expected by the unfortunate death of Mr. Lonsdale. It was a grave tragedy, and you knew him well. Very well, I believe.”

  He was silent, but watchful, his eyes narrowing.

  “Mrs. Venables said she has had to speak out against rumors that his death was unnatural. What say you to that?”

  He appeared agitated. “What is it to me?”

  “You were his particular friend. Come, admit it; you do care that his manner of death is discovered, do you not? He deserves that much, doesn’t he? I knew him only slightly, and yet I am concerned. It would defang the gossipmongers if the truth could be found. Gossip thrives on uncertainty. As Mr. Birkenhead’s cousin, Mrs. Venables is alarmed that he will suffer by the rumors surrounding Mr. Lonsdale’s death.”

  “It is not my affair. It is an unfortunate event, but nothing to do with me.”

  This was getting her nowhere. Time to be more blunt. She took a deep breath, stiffened her backbone and said, “Mr. Graeme, I have found you an interesting subject to study.”

  “Have you indeed, my lady?” he said. “I am flattered, indeed, to be the object of such fascination to you.”

  Her anger rose, and with it her recklessness. “Don’t be flattered, sir; I have decided you are a likely candidate to have murdered Mr. Alfred Lonsdale.”

  She had expected him to threaten her or bluster. She did not expect him to flinch, a bead of sweat popping out on his forehead.

  “What say you, sir?” she prodded when he stayed silent, glancing back and forth hastily, as if looking for an avenue of escape.

  “I say you are out of your mind,” he said, finally finding his bluster.

  “I know he saw you that day, and I know where. You had the best opportunity to kill him, and you did it. I imagine he discovered your scheme,” she said.

  “Scheme?” His wide smile had died, replaced by a look of uneasy vigilance.

  “Your matchmaking and swift dispatching scheme, cooked up with the aid of your grandmother, that so-called Mystic of Bath!”

  He stared, blinking and blanching. She noticed his sweat-slicked brow, the rapid increase of his breath, a vein popping on his forehead, and his eyes bulging slightly.

  “You go t-too far, my lady, too far indeed. Your imagination has taken flight.” He wiped his brow with one shaking hand.

  Had she flushed the partridge, and wo
uld he now fly away? It was too late to go back. “What a tidy plot: discover wealthy widows and widowers looking for a last chance at marriage, tailor-make a spouse, using your grandmama’s mystical maunderings, set them up to meet, get them wed, and poison them. I can only imagine you are somehow finding a way to profit.” Putting it into words sped her mind. “Ah, of course,” she cried. “You charge the made-to-order spouses to set them up. Or do you take a portion of their inheritance, perhaps, after all is done?”

  He backed away from her, then surged forward, thrusting his face close to hers, his face transformed by fear and anger. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he hissed, tears trembling in his blond lashes. “How dare you?”

  She could feel his spittle on her face. “I say only what I see.”

  “I didn’t . . . I introduce people, that’s all I do and you can’t prove a thing otherwise.”

  “But Alfred Lonsdale, your close confidant, suspected,” she continued, staring into his eyes as she wiped the dampness from her cheek. She recalled the letters in which Graeme complained about Lonsdale considering him wicked, though she doubted the vicar knew the whole story. Graeme quivered but he didn’t reply. His gaze darted right and left. Anne said, pressing her advantage, “You had something on Mr. Lonsdale—I know what it was, sir—and were blackmailing him, all the while ensuring that he would say nothing, even after he had figured out part of your scheme.”

  “You’re mad! No one will believe you . . . no one!”

  “I would bet a garden of tulips that I am right.”

  He gasped and staggered back, then whirled and stomped away without another word. She sighed in frustration. She had hoped to bait him into revealing all, to panic him into saying something incriminating, but she had overplayed her hand. Time to go; where, she had not decided. Perhaps to the Birkenheads’, to test her theory on Alethea, or hopefully Bertie. With all the benefits of being a man, Bertie could summon the magistrates and raise the alarm in time to prevent Graeme from having someone else poisoned, or keep him from fleeing Bath to reinvent himself elsewhere, as he had threatened to Lonsdale.

  The weather, as seen out the big windows of the Pump Room, appeared to be getting worse, rain sheeting against the glass intermittently. She headed to the passage toward the door, hoping to find an attendant to get her a chair. There was a sudden uproar behind her in the Pump Room, calls of She’s fainted! reaching her. In the normal course of events she would go back and see who had swooned, as were others heading to where the commotion was. But it was likely just Mrs. Noakes, who had feigned ill health at the party to evade an unpleasant situation. A faint was one way to avoid unpleasantness. Anne had things to work out in her head, so she slowly walked toward the doors as others hurried in the other direction to view the tumult. Someone was loudly asking if there was a doctor present, for Mrs. Noakes had collapsed. She smiled grimly to herself; her guess had been correct. There would be a doctor there in a trice. One could not throw a stone in Bath without hitting a physician who catered to the wealthy infirm.

  Near the doors she saw Mr. Graeme. He was beckoning to Mrs. Venables behind the baron’s back, as the gentleman stood just inside the doors. Anne shrank back, brows knit in puzzlement; it was terribly familiar of him to beckon to the lady. It implied a close connection, one she had not suspected before this moment.

  Anne peeked back out. Mrs. Venables said something to the baron, who was tapping his cane impatiently as he strode toward the doors to the street. He nodded and continued out, looking, probably, for a Pump Room attendant, who would order a carriage for them. Mrs. Venables followed Graeme to a pillar, slipping around it out of sight of the doors.

  Anne’s curiosity enlivened, she slipped along the wall to the other side of the pillar, hoping to listen in. She could not understand what they were saying at first. He mumbled, his tone urgent but incoherent. She hissed something back, and then Anne heard loud and clear what he said next.

  “But Mother, what if she knows even more than she is saying? What if she has proof?”

  Mother? Anne put her gloved hand over her mouth to keep herself from exclaiming out loud. What did he mean, what—In her astonishment she had lost some of the conversation that followed. She took a deep, quiet breath and settled herself.

  “Go back in and find her,” Mrs. Venables muttered urgently. “Discover what she knows and don’t talk to me until you do.”

  “She kept talking about you. She knows enough,” he whined. “I was never so frightened, Mother—”

  “Stop calling me that! I’ll whip you until you bleed, you little blighter.”

  Anne blinked, eyes wide, at the suddenly harsh tone in the genteel Bella Venables’s voice.

  “Mama, please . . . Granny an’ me can go off to Brighton or Lyme Regis or Tunbridge Wells and you can follow when you can. I’ve made money before, I can do it again.”

  “From what, smuggling? This is as good as it gets, Tommy, and you’ll stick with it. If I have to make up to those sodomites and sapphists I’ll do it, and if you have to find a way to shut up high-an’-mighty Lady Anne then you will.”

  “Can’t you do ’er like ya did the other?”

  “I stepped in to protect you, idiot. You chose the wrong feller to blackmail, didn’t you? Who knew Lonsdale would have iron bollocks and fancy himself some savior? You wouldn’t do ’im in, so I had to.”

  Anne swallowed back a cry. Bella Venables had been the fatal instrument in Lonsdale’s death? How could it be?

  “But Mama, Alf woulda come round. I had ’im, I did,” Graeme whined, his careful accent degrading with emotion. “He cared fer me!”

  “He was about to turn you in to the magistrate even if he ’ad to swing on Tyburn’s gibbet for sodomy.” Her accent coarsened, her precise diction faltering too.

  “There ain’t no Tyburn gibbet no more,” he muttered mulishly.

  “You listen to me, you puling idiot; you start pullin’ your weight or I’ll make sure the hangman’s noose is round your neck. I don’t care how you do it, just shut her mouth. We aren’t ready to be done yet. Your granny is too old to be shunted round the countryside. She’s got a soft billet, cooing into idiots’ ears about love and health and money.”

  “But Mama—”

  “Just do it. I promise it’ll be all right,” she said more softly. “Come, Tommy . . . do what I say, take care of that woman and we’ll leave off for a while, sit pretty until after I get myself settled. I have my own task, to make sure the baron stays on the hook.”

  “But why’d you ’ave to kill Alf? He was kind to me,” Thomas said, his tone sullen.

  “Shut it and be off! Lonsdale was a threat. I’ll not go back to jail, Tommy, lad. I’ll see you dead first, my son, and don’t you forget it,” she said, her tone venomous with a hard edge. “That Spanish jail was enough to do me for a lifetime. Now go! Before my old fool waddles back and sees us talking.”

  Heart pounding, Anne slid around the column as Graeme trotted past. She waited a moment, but there was no way she could go past Bella Venables and the baron. If she was faced with Bella now she would betray her knowledge, she was certain. Instead she retraced her steps, hastening back into the Pump Room, her stomach roiling and her mouth flooding with the bitter taste of bile. Her mind was whirling with all she had heard. It was far too much to take in all at once. How was it possible that Bella Venables had a son? Bertie had never said anything about his cousin and her husband having a child, and especially not Thomas Graeme. And jail, in Spain? It was incomprehensible.

  She reached the Pump Room and tried to compose herself. Thomas Graeme approached her immediately, though, before she got herself under control.

  “My lady, do you need an attendant?” he said, his tone back to a soft respectability. “You don’t look at all well, if it is ever permissible to say that to a lady. Shall I fetch you a glass of the mineral wa—”

  “No!” she yelped, putting out one hand, unable to stop the exclamation. She was not going to
drink anything this fellow brought her. Huffing with exertion and anxiety, she backed away from him. She needed to get away and think. All of this was too much. She had settled her mind that Graeme was the killer, but Bella Venables had confessed, in so many words.

  Graeme examined her face, noting how out of breath she was and that she was shivering. His expression went dark, the light fading from his eyes, and his gaze chilled. “You follered me, didn’t you? You follered me out and—”

  “Overheard you, yes. You . . . and your mother!” She put one hand over her stomach. “Leave me alone or I will scream.”

  “As you wish, my lady,” he said with a mocking bow.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Anne stumbled from the Pump Room into a narrow passage, one of the hallways to the hot baths, where there was little traffic on a day of such wretched weather. She had to think. She leaned up against the stone wall, heated to warmth by the hot springs that bubbled beneath them, as her mind whirled. All of her ideas of guilt and innocence were upset.

  Mrs. Venables had appeared the picture of an upright and virtuous woman. But she had lied about so much. How could she have a son? How could Bertie have a young cousin in Thomas Graeme he didn’t even know about? She’d think of that later. Right now she had other worries. Given what she had overheard she was alarmed at the baron’s increasing illness, and what it could mean. Mrs. Venables had been pressuring him to wed before his son could arrive. Perhaps she feared the baron’s son would sniff a fraud? Did she dread that the assurance of love would not be so easy to counterfeit in the seeking gaze of a younger man whose inheritance depended on his father not spending it frivolously on an unworthy woman?

  If there was one family she had to warn about Bella Venables, it was the Birkenheads. She had to find Quin: sensible, intelligent, calm Quin. From Crabbe she knew he was at the Cross Bath with his doctor. She must seek out Quin and Dr. Fothergill and return, with them, to the Birkenhead home.

  Bella would have departed with the baron by now, and she suspected Graeme would follow, needing to speak with his mother about what Anne knew. She pulled her shawl more closely about her shoulders and left the Pump Room, walking swiftly down Stall Street, then onto Bath Street. The day darkened and the rain returned, a thin, cold drizzle that quickly soaked her cloak. She pulled the hood up carefully over her hair and tried to shield her face. She should have ordered a sedan chair. What was she thinking?