Fall From Lace

by Emily Claire

  Satisfaction settled in Lydia’s stomach.

  “That was me,” she said.

  Mr. Pemberton raised his eyebrows, and she smiled up at him.

  “Knitting needles. You don’t think I’d have ridden in a carriage with a murderer unarmed?”

  He stared at her. “You’re a frightening woman, Miss Shrewsbury.”

  It sounded distinctly like a compliment.

  He heaved a detached wheel from atop the horse. This final restraint gone, the still-nervous beast skittered up and to its feet, then took off at a trot before sheltering itself under some trees. It watched them, one eye gleaming in the moonlight, caution all over its long face.

  “We’ll leave her here for now,” Mr. Pemberton said. “We’ll send a groom to bring her back once she’s calmed down.”

  “What if she runs off? She must be terribly valuable.”

  “Not as valuable as your health,” Mr. Pemberton said fervently. “I’ve got the chocolates. We’d best get you back to Hollybrook House. Can you climb atop my horse with help?”

  Lydia held out a hand and allowed him to assist her to stand. Once there, her head spun; whatever the crash had done to her body seemed worse than she’d first thought.

  “With a good deal of help, yes.” She winced. “If you’ll be kind enough to take me, the vicarage is closer, and I’d much rather go home.” She glanced back at Mr. Buxton, who was glaring daggers at her from under what seemed to be a promising black eye. “After that, I’d be grateful if you’d fetch the constable. Mr. Buxton told me some things I would be very glad to repeat.”

  27

  Lydia sipped at her third cup of strong tea. Her mother seemed to have decided she required enormous quantities of tea to aid her recovery, so Lydia kept sipping, more to soothe her mother’s nerves than because she wanted the drink.

  The doctor straightened after checking her pulse for what felt like the fifteenth time.

  “She’s in robust health,” Mr. McIntosh said. “Her injuries will heal, but for now she is quite competent to speak with the constable. I’ll bandage your hands while you speak with him, Miss Shrewsbury, if I may.”

  Lydia consented with a nod, and the tension visible in Mr. Pemberton’s shoulders abruptly gave way. He strode from the vicarage sitting room and ushered the constable in a moment later.

  Mr. Gibbs looked as though he had been wrested rather unwillingly from his bed; his cravat was badly tied, and his thin hair flopped haphazardly over his forehead. Despite all this, his eyes took Lydia in with impressive sharpness.

  “Please, sit,” she said, gesturing to the sofa nearest her chair.

  “The hour is late, and the situation is urgent,” he said. “You’ll forgive me if I skip past pleasantries.”

  “I hope you will,” she said. “I’d like this business over and done with.”

  “Mr. Pemberton tells me you have apprehended a murderer.”

  Lydia nodded. Mrs. Shrewsbury forced a cup of tea on the constable, and he sipped at it absently.

  “You concluded after the curate’s murder that he was killed by a burglar,” Lydia said. “We have discovered this to be false. Mr. Pemberton?”

  “I examined the scene after Mr. Stewart was killed, while the Wycliffes were summoning you and the doctor. I sketched the scene in detail, and in so doing observed that there was no indication that anyone had entered the room via anything but the door.”

  “A window was unlatched, if I recall,” Mr. Gibbs said with a nod.

  “It was, but that was not a point of entry,” Lydia said.

  Her mother tilted her head slightly, looking on with apparent surprise. Lydia rarely spoke so directly to guests, let alone on matters such as this.

  “Mr. Pemberton noticed there was no mud on the carpet, which would have been inevitable had someone crept in through the window,” Lydia said, her voice steady. “Mr. Stewart’s murder was preceded by several cold, wet days, and the ground just outside those particular windows would have been a veritable swamp.”

  “Was a veritable swamp,” Mr. Pemberton said. “I took the liberty of confirming it that evening after everyone had gone to bed.”

  She shot him an admiring glance.

  “Perhaps you overlooked something,” Mr. Gibbs suggested.

  “The carpet in that room is pale yellow,” Lydia said. “Mud would have been apparent even to someone who wasn’t looking for it. Moreover, the Wycliffes kept a music box in that room on the mantelpiece. It’s a beautiful, valuable piece, and I cannot imagine a burglar failing to steal it on his way out.”

  Mr. McIntosh gently took one of Lydia’s hands and began cleaning it with a damp cloth. She winced at the pain and gritted her teeth.

  “The circumstances of Mr. Stewart’s murder also provided valuable information,” Mr. Pemberton said quickly, as if eager to distract them all from Lydia’s pain. “His body bore several injuries, including a bloody nose and several stab wounds. Miss Shrewsbury was able to obtain a confession from the Wycliffes’ butler, Mr. Cooper, that he had caused the injury to the curate’s nose.”

  Mrs. Shrewsbury’s hand flew to her heart, and Mr. Shrewsbury put a comforting arm around his wife’s shoulder from his seat next to her. His eyes, however, stayed fixed on Lydia, and she wished her hands were well enough that she could offer them to her father. The concern on his face was nearly enough to break her heart. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks that her parents had not received worse news tonight.

  “A personal disagreement that resulted in the blow, the details of which are best left in confidence, as they had no bearing on the murder,” Mr. Pemberton explained. “Cooper insisted he did nothing more than hit Mr. Stewart, and we believe him for reasons which will become apparent.”

  The doctor finished cleaning Lydia’s palm and smeared a sharp-smelling balm across the scrapes.

  “It was unlikely he or any of the other servants could have killed Mr. Stewart,” she said, picking up the thread of the story where Mr. Pemberton had left off. “Many of them were able to account for one another’s whereabouts, and besides, there were others in the house with far more reason to want Mr. Stewart dead. One of these was Lady Huntington.”

  Her mother gasped audibly, either at the accusation or at the sheer bravado of making an accusation against the wife of a knight.

  Lydia cast an apologetic look toward her parents. “Mr. Pemberton had learned from the director of the girls’ asylum that Mr. Stewart had been stealing money from that charity,” she said. The words still tasted bitter. “As she was so deeply invested in the asylum, she could have been angry enough to want him hurt. They had certainly argued in the sitting room not long before the curate was killed. She claimed to be in her room at the time but was seen by Mr. Cooper, shortly before his altercation with the curate. The only other person to have access to Mr. Stewart in private was Mr. Pemberton—or so I thought.”

  The doctor finished bandaging her hand and moved to clean the other one. She inhaled through her teeth and nodded at Mr. Pemberton to continue.

  “I had reason to be displeased with Mr. Stewart, as he owed me money,” Mr. Pemberton said. “The curate seemed to have particular weaknesses on that front.”

  “With both money and women, which will soon become relevant,” Lydia added. She glanced at her father. This news could not be pleasant to him, but he only pressed his lips together and listened.

  For a moment, she longed for the doctor and constable to leave so she could be alone with her parents. She’d had several days to come to terms with her knowledge of the curate’s many betrayals, but they were learning it all now, and all at once. She yearned to comfort them.

  Mr. Pemberton agreed with her assessment of the curate with a nod. “I had no one to attest that I was in my room when the curate was killed, and Lady Huntington was in a similar situation and had clearly omitted at least some truth from her account by claiming to be reading when, in fact, she was confronting Mr. Stewart in the sitting room. Consequentl
y, Miss Shrewsbury found us the likeliest suspects.”

  “Sir Charles Wycliffe and Miss Wycliffe were absolved of all suspicion as they were in the Rose Room already,” Lydia explained. “Miss Diana and I were in her room with her lady’s maid, and Lady Wycliffe and Mr. Buxton were together in the library.”

  Mr. Gibbs’s graying eyebrows drew together. “To what purpose? I take from your tone that they were not reading.”

  “Indeed, they were not.” Lydia glanced over at her mother, who looked prepared to be scandalized. “They were engaged in nothing illicit,” she continued hurriedly. “They were working on a Valentine together, intending for Mr. Buxton to give it to Miss Diana after the Valentine’s dinner that was to happen the next evening.”

  She took a deep breath and fixed her attention on the constable.

  “Mr. Buxton truly cares for Miss Diana, which will inform the actions I am about to relate. Miss Diana expressed the truth of the curate’s behavior to me in confidence, and I would appreciate your discretion in this matter.”

  Mr. Gibbs nodded.

  “The curate had been pestering Diana for some time,” she said quietly. “He intended to marry her, and her own inclinations seemed to play very little into his plans. He at one point threatened to coerce her into a compromising position that would all but force them to marry, and she lived in fear that if she let her guard down, he would carry through on his threat.”

  Mrs. Shrewsbury let out a small cry and clutched her handkerchief to her mouth. “That cannot be true!”

  Mr. Shrewsbury only frowned, his eyebrows knitting together.

  Forgetting the pain for a moment, Lydia held her bandaged hand out to her mother, who took it gingerly.

  “I am sorry to relate the truth of his character,” she said. It was not her responsibility to apologize for the scoundrel, but her mother’s stricken frown twisted her heart. “He seemed a very different person depending on the company he was in. Mr. Pemberton can attest to it.”

  “I encountered him at private gaming tables,” Mr. Pemberton said with a grave nod. “He was not the pious man of God he pretended to be.”

  “Diana confessed the truth of the curate’s behavior to Mr. Buxton, who had been courting her in earnest with her family’s blessing,” Lydia said quickly, eager to get the conversation over with so she could tend to the shattered expressions on her parents’ faces. “At one point in the afternoon, he left the library and went to the sitting room to collect a piece of lace he knew Diana had been knitting. He intended to put the lace on her Valentine.”

  “Along with some verses about how he intended to also steal her heart,” Mr. Pemberton added dryly.

  “He came across Mr. Stewart in the sitting room, where we presume he had gone to speak privately with Lady Huntington,” Lydia said. “I suspect he let himself in after nobody answered the door. The servants were in a state of confusion, as several had been taken sick,” she added. “It’s also possible that Lady Huntington accosted him for an argument before he could be led to the Rose Room and took him to the yellow sitting room for a private conversation. The details on that point are unclear. What is clear is that once Mr. Buxton and Mr. Stewart were alone, they came to blows. Mr. Buxton, furious at the curate’s treatment of Miss Diana, stabbed the curate with the knitting needles I had left on a side table earlier that afternoon. Once the curate was dead, he took Miss Diana’s lace and returned to the library with no one any the wiser. He left Mr. Stewart’s body there, where it was discovered hours later by the ladies as we withdrew after dinner.”

  The doctor finished bandaging Lydia’s other hand and frowned at her. “I take it you believe he poisoned Mr. Pemberton, then?” he asked.

  “He did, though unwittingly,” she said. “The poison was intended for me.”

  “My sweet girl!” Mrs. Shrewsbury cried. She hurried to refill Lydia’s still-full teacup, as though more tea might somehow dilute the effects of a poison that had never so much as touched her lips.

  Lydia took a long sip, though the cup’s delicate handle was difficult to manage with her bandaged hands. Mr. Pemberton hastily sat next to her, looking prepared to catch the cup should it fall.

  “What reason could Mr. Buxton have for wanting to kill you?” Mr. Gibbs asked, all business.

  “I wasn’t satisfied with the burglary explanation,” Lydia replied. “I began investigating the murder, trying to determine what had really happened. Mr. Buxton overheard me questioning Mr. Cooper, and I wasn’t exactly discreet with my suspicions when in the company of my intimate friends—including Miss Wycliffe and Miss Diana, who were, of course, on close terms with Mr. Buxton. It isn’t impossible that one of them let slip to him that I was trying to figure out who had really killed the curate.” She set her teacup down and fixed Mr. Gibbs with her gaze. “I beg of you to please not mention any of that to Miss Diana. She’ll be upset enough to learn Mr. Buxton is a murderer without being burdened with unnecessary guilt.”

  “You have my discretion,” Mr. Gibbs assured her.

  “Mr. Buxton meant to poison me, but it was his bad luck that I didn’t arrive in time for breakfast that morning as planned. I tripped into a mud puddle and soiled my shoes. Although luck wouldn’t have affected things,” she added pensively. “I’m fond of sweets, which I’m certain Diana mentioned to him, but I abstain from sweets where I can during Lent and wouldn’t have had the chocolate anyway.”

  Mr. Shrewsbury let out a relieved sigh.

  “Instead, Mr. Pemberton was the unlucky one to reach for the chocolate first.” She glanced at him, and couldn't stop the corner of her mouth from twitching. “Unlucky and unrighteous.”

  His mouth opened, no doubt to fire off a rejoinder, but he quickly schooled his features and said solemnly, “It was a valuable reminder to me not to take my religious observations so lightly.”

  Lydia sipped at her tea to hide her smile. “The poison was enough to make him terribly ill,” she continued after a moment. “Mr. Buxton told me he miscalculated the poison necessary—or perhaps he calculated correctly for a woman of my size but not for a man of Mr. Pemberton’s.”

  Mr. Gibbs’s eyebrows flew up, and he half-stood. “He told you?”

  Lydia glanced over at Mr. Pemberton. The corners of his eyes crinkled. She resisted the urge to throw her teacup at him and his charming, insufferable face.

  “I suppose I forgot to mention the most important part of all this,” she said with careful nonchalance. This part of the tale would upset her parents the most, and there was little she could do to soften the truth. “Mr. Buxton confessed everything. He told me while I was in his phaeton this evening, once he was convinced I wouldn’t live to repeat his crimes. Perhaps he felt the need to unburden his soul. He attempted to give me poisoned candy—I threw it over the edge when he wasn’t looking—and overturned his phaeton so the crash would look like the reason for my death.”

  At this, Mrs. Shrewsbury burst into tears.

  “It’s perfectly all right, Mama,” Lydia said. “I’m alive and well, and Mr. Buxton is tied up in Papa’s study. He can’t harm anyone there.”

  Mr. Gibbs got to his feet, sloshing tea on the rug. “Mr. Pemberton, do you believe and agree with everything this lady claims?”

  Mr. Pemberton fixed him with a severe frown. “I would not presume to question Miss Shrewsbury’s conclusions,” he said. “Based upon Mr. Buxton’s confession, portions of which he repeated to me tonight in quite colorful language as I was attempting to free him from his destroyed phaeton, I believe her assessment of the situation to be correct in every respect. Moreover,” he added, reaching into his pocket for the small, smashed box of chocolates, “if you care to test these on some household vermin, I believe you’ll find adequate proof of Mr. Buxton’s guilt.”

  The constable stared at him for a long moment, then set his tea down and straightened his waistcoat.

  “It seems incumbent upon me to move the gentleman to the jail, then,” he said. He glanced at the clock. �
��Late as it is, we can do no more tonight. I’ll inform Sir Charles of the situation in the morning.”

  “I’ll join you,” Mr. Pemberton said. “I’ll be glad to fill in any gaps.”

  Mr. Gibbs’s mouth twisted a little, but he answered with a courteous nod. “Mr. Shrewsbury, if you’ll show me to your study?”

  Slowly, Lydia’s father stood, resting heavily on his cane. He gazed at her for a long moment through his spectacles, seeming equal parts astonished and relieved, and led the constable out of the sitting room at a slow hobble.

  Mr. McIntosh watched them go, then shook his head as if trying to startle a fly.

  “You’ll want to change these dressings twice a day until your hands heal, Miss Shrewsbury.” He closed the clasps on his bag. “Keep weight off your ankle as much as you’re able. The rest will patch itself up with time.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Did he really crash his phaeton just to try to kill you?”

  “The chocolate was meant to kill me,” she said with a small smile. “The phaeton accident was meant to trick you.”

  He shook his head a little, muttered “Remarkable,” and picked up his bag.

  Mrs. Shrewsbury rose to show him out, leaving Lydia and Mr. Pemberton alone.

  A long silence settled between them.

  “That proceeded well,” Mr. Pemberton said after a while.

  Lydia’s tongue felt too big inside her mouth. She swallowed. He was standing very close.

  “Will you think me an outrageous flirt if I admit I’m glad you weren’t killed tonight?” he asked.

  Lydia laughed, then immediately regretted it as the movement sent stabs of pain through her body. “I should think you cold-hearted if you felt anything but relief.”

  “A good deal more than relief, if you’ll permit my saying so.” He crossed in front of her and sat on the edge of one of the couch cushions, close enough that she could touch him if she reached out.