The Bellingham Bloodbath

by Harris, Gregory

  “Madam?!” her houseman managed to say.

  “It’s my fault,” Colin piped up again, a hint of grayness having overtaken his features. “I cannot apologize enough. We shall see ourselves out.” He looked at me and nodded in an odd way, one of his eyebrows curling up, and then started to leave. That’s when I caught sight of the tail of Lady Priscilla’s blanket hanging provocatively from the back of the valise. And just as I knew he’d intended, Buster Brown saw it too.

  The dog charged back to his feet and scurried after Colin before I could even stand up, and it wasn’t until Colin had reached the staircase that Miss Easterbrooke realized what was happening.

  “Get the dog, Alvin . . . ,” she hissed as I moved to beat him there.

  “What?” he muttered, clearly shaken from the scream that had brought him up here in the first place.

  “Get the blasted dog!” she snapped, any sense of delicacy having clearly deserted her.

  I plunged down the staircase first, willing the portly beast to make it to the bottom quickly, as I gingerly picked my way down, gripping the banister on both sides, as I knew poor Alvin would never presume to push past me. Even so, I could feel him on my heels.

  Buster Brown reached the first floor and crossed out of my view, and I hoped that whatever Colin was after was happening, because the instant my feet hit the foyer the houseman took advantage of the extra space to sweep past me even though neither Colin nor the dog was in sight. A swinging door off to one side was the only demarcation of their course, which was all the corpulent man needed as he flew with uncanny vigor and disappeared behind it.

  I followed right on his heels, shoving the door open and finding myself in a huge kitchen resplendent with a crackling hearth fire and the scent of fresh-cut lemon and Earl Grey tea. Across the room, however, was a very peculiar scene. Colin was standing in front of a door from which the mortified houseman was dragging a highly perturbed Buster Brown. Even as Colin’s feigned apologies oozed like honey I could see that he was well satisfied. Not a moment later Edwina Easterbrooke burst into the room, bellowing for her dog in a voice that was as shrill as it seemed out of character.

  “Buster Brown, you get over here this instant!” she screeched.

  The effect was instantaneous. The rebuked dog dropped low, flattening his ears against his head. The ample houseman took that moment to place himself in front of the door as though we might forget having seen it were he to remain there long enough.

  “I am mortified,” Colin said in a tone I found overwrought. He stalked back across the kitchen, overtaking poor Buster Brown, who had only just begun to skulk toward his mistress. “I have created an inexcusable fuss. You must forgive me.” He smiled chastely, his dimples unwilling to be contained. “I appear to have gotten him riled up in search of a treat. I assume you keep his treats in the cellar?”

  “Yes, of course,” Miss Easterbrooke answered too quickly, sounding rather ill as she reached out and grabbed the dog by the collar the second he came within striking distance. “We cannot have him chewing those terrible things up here.”

  “Wouldn’t be proper.” Colin smiled as he glanced at me. “Shall we?”

  I nodded, offering hurried good-byes with some measure of discomfort, as it felt as though we had surely caught the entire household in some sort of compromising situation. Even so, barring breaking into the basement ourselves, a possibility that had not escaped me, it seemed it would take a bit more time to see just how compromised they had been. As I followed Colin outside, watching while he casually slid an ever-ready crown out of his pocket and began flicking it across the back of his hand, I could see that he was well pleased indeed.

  CHAPTER 24

  The same silver crown and the promise of that much more at the end of the evening was enough to buy us the observational services of two rapacious lads. Colin wanted to be alerted if anybody arrived at or left the Easterbrooke flat and promised to pay extra for any detailed information the scrawny urchins could provide should anyone do so. He had produced the crown and sent it careening swiftly between the fingers of his right hand before palming it and making it seem to reappear from beneath the collar of the taller boy. Colin’s antics earned him squeals of delight from both of them, though I was certain their interest in such sleight of hand was due to the use it could provide them in their future pickpocketing endeavors.

  In the lengthening gloom of the waning day, Colin and I headed back home. It was time to cut our driver loose, as we weren’t due back at Lady Stuart’s for another hour yet. I had considered suggesting we fetch my things from the Devonshire, but as Colin kept absently stroking his chin, lost to some thought, I decided that task could wait.

  The moment we stepped into our flat I was struck by the florid aroma of freshly brewed jasmine tea. We poked our heads into the kitchen and saw an open biscuit tin, the bulk of its contents missing. As I scanned the meticulous little room I noticed that our silver tea set had also vanished from atop the sideboard. “It appears . . . ,” Colin said before I could, “that we have company.”

  “I hope it’s not another case. I could not tolerate a third.”

  He waved me off. “Stop fretting. We’ll have both of these resolved tomorrow. A new one would be ideal.”

  I kept quiet as I followed him upstairs, hoping he had good reason for such optimism. As we reached the landing I spied a cascade of wavy black hair tucked up beneath a small, square ivory-colored hat and realized at once that it was Lady Dahlia Stuart.

  “What a pleasant surprise!” Colin beamed as we entered the room. “And thank you for playing hostess in our absence, Mrs. Behmoth.” He nodded at her, gesturing with his chin toward the door.

  She frowned as she got up. “Was ’appy ta get off me dogs fer a minute. Ya let me know if ya need more tea.” And then she turned to Lady Stuart and gave an awkward sort of bow before saying, “Was nice speakin’ to ya.”

  “It was a pleasure.” Lady Stuart smiled easily, her faultless complexion glowing in the receding sunlight filtering in through the windows.

  The moment Mrs. Behmoth left, Colin refreshed Lady Stuart’s tea and poured some for us, handing a cup over to me. “Your father is impressive in his protection of you,” he said. “He stuck by your story with notable determination.”

  “My father is a selfish man who understands that as I go, so goes he.” Her words were neither harsh nor accusing but spoken with the easy assurance of truth. She was continuing to prove herself an unexpected woman. “Whatever you took to be a representation of loyalty on his part was nothing more than an act of self-preservation. My mother died in childbirth, you see, and my father has never let me forget that fact. He likes me to remember that I am beholden to him.” She smiled. “But I cannot imagine you want to hear my petty grievances against him. How dull we should all be to spend a lifetime castigating our parents.”

  “Indeed.” Colin smiled tightly. “Besides, my hope is that you have come to tell the truth. I should very much like to hear that.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’ve earned it,” she answered, settling back on the settee.

  “Please . . .” Colin too settled back as he watched her warily. “Tell us something of the Lady Dahlia Stuart.”

  Her dark eyes drifted toward the ceiling. “Ah . . . ,” she began after another moment, “. . . the Lady Dahlia Stuart. . . .” She could not keep another smile from curling the edges of her lips. “I suppose the truth is that she doesn’t really exist. She is the concoction of a girl born in a village outside of Bucharest whose father was a swindler, disappearing off to the city for days at a time to sell tonics that were nothing more than water and bitter roots. Magdala Genovesse”—she nodded by way of introduction—“that is who the Lady Dahlia Stuart is.”

  “And what of her?” Colin prodded.

  A deep sigh escaped as she stared back at us. “It’s all so sordid.”

  “We all of us have something we wish to hide,” he said, and I felt myself flush at the truth of hi
s words.

  “You must share one day.” She grinned, but there was little pleasure behind it. “I spent most of my childhood starving to death, as my father had greater love for alcohol than me. So when I was eight, I ran off to a neighboring farm and begged the woman there to take me to my aunt in the city. She had told me stories of my mother’s sister, and while she was hesitant at first, the pitiful sight of me was enough to finally get her to agree.

  “She took me all the way into Bucharest that very night and delivered me to a grand building the likes of which I had never seen. The whole city was like a fairy tale, multistoried buildings of brick and mortar with façades that looked as though they had been drizzled by candy makers. Streets of stone, not dirt and mud, and walls that rose straight and true like the hand of God had set them upright. There wasn’t a stick of thatch to be found anywhere.” She chuckled.

  I leaned forward to pour more tea and accidentally knocked the teapot to the floor in a great screech of shattering china. Colin leapt up as the flying pieces skittered away, but it was Lady Stuart who was the first to kneel down and begin mopping up the mess.

  “Ya need more tea?” Mrs. Behmoth hollered.

  “No,” Colin called back as I quickly gathered the broken pieces and wiped up the mess. “We’re fine. If we need anything further I shall come down and fetch it myself.”

  “I ’ope ta live long enough ta see that day,” her reply drifted up.

  I could see Lady Stuart suppressing a smirk as we settled in again.

  “I’ve been to Bucharest.” Colin gently guided us back to the topic. “When I was in school.”

  “Then you must understand something of how I felt when I arrived.”

  “I can only imagine, since I’m no good at divination,” he tossed back.

  She immediately laughed, the sound as elegant as a wind chime. “Ah, Mr. Pendragon. Apparently you have managed to ferret out much about me, including my scandalous livelihood. I wonder if you know whether I am any good at it?”

  “If you didn’t give the illusion of accuracy then you would never be able to woo the grande dames. For that reason I would conclude you must be good enough. What I can’t fathom is how you learned such a trade.”

  “That is the question then, isn’t it? How does one go from being an illiterate Carpathian farm girl to a London society sage?” She gave that ephemeral laugh again and I knew she could tell we were in her thrall. “It was my maternal aunt.”

  “So it was to your aunt’s home that you were brought that night in Bucharest?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not.” She glanced at me with sadness clouding her eyes. “Yours would make a better tale, but it is not mine. My aunt didn’t live in that grand palace, though she stayed there from time to time at the owner’s whim. He was a man well stationed in the court of King Carol, who, back then, was little more than an impatient prince.

  “My aunt was an extraordinary beauty and clever. A powerful combination. The two of us shuttled back and forth from the palace to my aunt’s tiny cottage on the outskirts of the city. She tutored me, teaching me to read and write, but when we stayed at the palace I was allowed to attend studies with the court children. It was a magnificent time, but as with all things, it could not last. By the time I was twelve my aunt had grown frail with disease and before I turned thirteen she had died.

  “Thinking to do me a kindness, my aunt’s patron sent for my father. He arrived in Bucharest with the clothes on his back and a demeanor soured by continuing years of drink. It didn’t take long before his behavior got us exiled. We were sent to Prague with nothing but what we had arrived with: tattered clothing and a handful of coins.” She shook her head. “It was a terrible time. We begged on the streets and slept in a cemetery at night. And that’s when my father met Darius Stuart.

  “Darius was an old man who loved his spirits every bit as much as my father. He had been born to money but had squandered most of it during a long life in which his only goal had apparently been to exist beyond a means he could afford. He called himself Lord Stuart but had earned no such title. Still, no one in Prague questioned his claim. As long as he paid his bills his façade was tolerated, and in Prague his meager funds went further than they could in England. It was the very reason he had gone to Prague.” She laughed again. “Thinking him a wealthy patron, my father forced me to lie in Darius’s bed to try and procure the use of his name and questionable title. But I never actually married that drunken grizzled old toad.”

  “You never married him?”

  “I didn’t need to.” She smiled coyly. “While we were staying with him I met an old woman at the vegetable market on Charles Bridge. She caught my eye because, like me, she was always alone. I watched her for weeks as she went about her business, noticing that everyone either shied from her or shunned her altogether. She would go to a stall and the customers would drift away, and they would stay away until she had bought her goods and left. The first time I tried to talk to her she paid me no mind. But the next time I saw her, she approached me. She behaved with kindness, but proceeded to tell me all manner of things about myself she could not possibly have known: my name, where I lived, and the circumstances under which I lived there. She even knew that I had come from Bucharest with my father and that my mother had died during my birth. It was astonishing. And do you know how she did it, Mr. Pendragon?”

  He pursed his lips and gazed up at the ceiling. “Your name and residence are simple; she either followed you or had someone else do so. The circumstances under which you lived in Darius Stuart’s home could easily be garnered from your clothing and the fact that you were out shopping in the market. Your city of origin would be gleaned from your accent. But I cannot do anything but speculate as to how she learned the details of your birth.”

  “Please.” Her smile widened as her dark eyes fastened on Colin with curiosity. “Let us hear your speculation.”

  “Given your father’s predilection to torment you regarding your mother’s unfortunate death, I would suppose he was not averse to sharing his prejudice against you with others, most particularly when he was drinking. Anyone who sought him out in a pub would surely have been able to entice him to speak freely if they plied him with drink. Am I close?”

  “You are spot-on. So tell me, Mr. Pendragon, have you ever studied spiritualism?”

  “Only to dismiss it. I’m afraid I find the field wholly populated by charlatans. I find nature quite diligent in upholding her laws, which leaves little room for sages and soothsayers. But”—he flashed a slim sort of grin at her—“perhaps you will prove me wrong?”

  “You have no worries from me. I’ll not be the one to dismantle your skepticism. As for the old woman, she taught me that I needn’t rely on anyone else to take care of me. A heady bit of freedom for a girl of not quite fifteen. But most of all”—she leaned forward, an impish sparkle in her eyes—“she taught me about people.”

  “Of course.” He nodded. “You cannot expect to dispense accurate prognostications unless you learn how to interpret the clues your quarry inadvertently reveals.”

  “Precisely. Not only did I learn about the tarot deck, but how every gesture, frown, smile, grimace, and sigh from a client reveals whether or not I am heading in the right direction. The spectre of a sick person would become a mother, father, lover, brother, or friend based on a tic or halting inhalation of breath. The cards could be misleading or the vibrations difficult to interpret until the moment the client, believing I was on the verge of some great truth, would suddenly prattle off a history that would blessedly provide the remainder of my prediction.” She grinned mischievously. “I learned that if I kept at it—health, money, love, acrimony, deceit, revenge—there inevitably came that unconscious flick or quiver that told me I had hit the very crux of the reason I had been sought out.”

  “Extraordinary . . . ,” I muttered.

  “Hardly.” She chuckled. “Haven’t you ever watched someone prattle on in their own defense and noticed thei
r eyes flicking about the room, and known they were lying?” I nodded. “Then you are every bit the seer that I am.” She laughed. “It didn’t take me long to become adept at it. So the night Darius died, I knew the chance had come to strike out on my own.”

  “A young woman on her own?” Colin said. “I should hardly think so.”

  “And now you sound like my father,” she scolded him. “Before the dawn came my father forged a marriage certificate and last will that bequeathed all of Darius’s holdings to me, and thus was born the Lady Stuart.

  “We sold the house, taking a meager price from a man who asked no questions, and took what little money Darius had saved and went to England. My father was convinced that was where the bulk of Darius’s estate would be. I changed my name to Dahlia during the crossing of the Channel, hoping it would give me an air of sophistication that Magdala did not, and my father agreed to play my houseman, something every decent lady would have. But when we arrived it was to discover that the only thing Darius had left here was debt.”

  “So why didn’t you return to the Continent?”

  “You think too little of me, Mr. Pendragon. I was done running. I had a title and a provenance. So I bought my little house on Lancaster Gate and set out to repay the outstanding bills of my late husband. And it was those very debts that offered my first introduction to London society. You see, I was the exotic noble widow who made good for her errant spouse.

  “The noble ladies rallied around me and I began to pretend to suffer public visions about one or the other until I finally piqued their intrigue enough that I was forced to feign lightheadedness just to get them to stop peppering me with questions about their lives, husbands, children, and households. After that, establishing my business was easy, and the payment sublime.” She smirked. “I was able to settle Darius’s bills in little more than two years, and the fact of my having accomplished such a feat only further propelled my reputation as a just and honest woman. The woman before you.”