by M C Beaton
“Two days later when you called, I was … upset … by your presence and there was a peculiar smell in the room. I raised the lid of the chest and saw Gotobed … dead … with a great wound in his chest. That is—that is why I kissed you. I did not want you to see the body. I feared it had something to do with Grandmama.
“I went to her room after you had left and she said it was all nonsense. She told me to go and lie down. Alexander brought me a glass of wine. I drank it and immediately fell asleep. When I awoke, Grandmama told me to go to the drawing room and look in the chest. I would find, she said, that I had been imagining the whole thing. There was nothing in the chest but a heap of curtains and a carnival mask. Grandmama told me that the upsetting nature of my father’s death, combined with the brutality of my upbringing, must have overset my mind. I believed her. I fell asleep this afternoon and had terrible dreams. When I awoke, it was to the realization that I had actually seen what I first thought I saw. I did see the dead body of Gotobed.”
“If his body had been in the chest,” said the marquess carefully, “then it would have to have been removed and the mask and curtains substituted. Your grandmother, Lady Lemmington, has not the strength to lift the body of a man and take it anywhere. She would need help.”
“Yes,” said Lucinda quietly. “And there was Alexander—Alexander who so mysteriously tried to attack Grandmama for one hundred pounds. One of the footmen told me that Grandmama had sent him to the bank to draw two thousand pounds, but that she sent another footman after him to say that the sum had to be changed to one hundred pounds. Do you see what worries me? Two thousand pounds might be sufficient to enroll Alexander as an accomplice to murder. But not one hundred pounds. You see, if she had decided to get rid of Alexander and make it look like theft, she would not need two thousand pounds. It was most odd to ask a butler to accompany us instead of one of the footmen.”
“If Gotobed was killed and put in that chest, there may still be bloodstains,” said the marquess. “What I suggest is this. Send a note upstairs to your grandmother saying you are ill and have gone home. That will give us time to examine the chest before she returns.”
“I must be mistaken,” whispered Lucinda.
“Probably,” he agreed. “But if you found the chest clean, and if you also found there were no signs of it having been recently scrubbed, it would put your mind at rest.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lucinda fervently. “And I would so much like my mind to be at rest.”
Upstairs in the supper room, Sir Percival was talking earnestly to an odd companion. The man facing him across the small table in the corner of the room was heavyset, boorish, middle-aged, and plainly dressed.
“So you see, Mr. Webster,” complained Sir Percival, “I have done my best, but I fear she will have none of me.”
Mr. Harry Webster picked at his teeth with a goose quill and said nastily, “Don’t surprise me a bit.”
“But if she does not marry me—or anyone else,” said Sir Percival, “you won’t get the Sotheran money.”
“And you won’t get the half of it as arranged,” said Mr. Webster. “You’ll need to force her to marry you.”
“I cannot see how I can achieve that,” said Sir Percival.
“No, I don’t suppose you can,” said Mr. Harry Webster brutally. “Look, we’ll do something like this. We’ll call on them latish one evening. I’ll drug the old girl’s drink. You force Lucinda up to her bedroom at gunpoint and do what’s necessary. I suppose you do know how to go about it? Then she’ll be glad to marry you.”
“But violence!” exclaimed Sir Percival. “I detest violence.”
“But you like money,” Mr. Webster pointed out. “If you have a better idea, let me know.”
They put their heads together and began to talk long and seriously as the orchestra moved back downstairs and the dance commenced again.
Lucinda had addressed her note to the Countess of Lemmington instead of to the Dowager Countess of Lemmington. The footman, therefore, handed her letter to Lady Lemmington. Her aunt read the note, murmured, “Poor Lucinda,” and resolved to call at Berkeley Square the following afternoon. In a corner of the supper room, the dowager countess slept on. She had fallen asleep directly after eating a heavy meal. She had not been worried about Lucinda. There was one thing about Lucinda’s fear of men, thought the old lady, as her eyes had begun to close, it made the life of a chaperone easy.
* * *
Lucinda and the marquess entered the house in Berkeley Square and went into the drawing room. Whitaker, who had been first footman until the disappearance of Alexander and who had been elevated to butler, asked them if he could bring them anything. Lucinda said they did not desire anything and wished to be left alone.
Whitaker was too new to the job and too proud of his position to put it in jeopardy by giving Lady Lucinda a lecture on the folly of being unchaperoned. He bowed and withdrew.
“Now,” said the marquess, taking down a branch of candles from the mantel. Lucinda shivered and looked anxiously toward the chest. He threw back the lid and, setting the candelabrum on the floor, lifted out the carnival mask and then the curtains. He raised the flaring candles again and knelt down.
“Come here,” he said.
Lucinda approached slowly. There would be no signs of violence, she thought. He would consider her a hysterical female who had read too many Gothic romances.
She stood behind him and looked down. He pointed a long finger at the side of the chest where there was a dark brown stain.
“Blood, if I am not mistaken,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. He straightened up and looked down at her compassionately. “If Lady Lemmington had any hand in this,” he said, “she must have been very frightened. Do you think that Gotobed knew something about her and was trying to extort money?”
Lucinda shook her head miserably.
“How did your father die?” he asked.
“He fell through the bannisters of the main staircase at Partletts,” said Lucinda. “The wood was rotten.”
“And where was Lady Lemmington?”
“I heard my father scream and came running. When I arrived, Grandmama was making her way down the stairs. I called out. She turned and told me not to look—but I looked just the same.”
“And where was Gotobed?”
“When I came down he was in the hall bending over the body.”
“Do you know if your grandmother had given him any money?”
“I know she bought him a pig farm. He claimed to have lost his because of something my father did.”
“But was it not the Earl of Lemmington’s, your uncle Charles’s, business to make any reparation?”
“I thought it odd at the time,” said Lucinda. “I mean, Gotobed had not been with us very long. In fact, none of the servants had. I would have thought it more normal to have investigated his claim before giving him any money. He might have been lying. He might have been a bad pig farmer. But if you are suggesting that Grandmama killed my father, her own son, I cannot believe that.”
“I spoke to her this evening. She was very odd. She said she did not think I would live long.”
The marquess rang the bell. “What are you going to do?” asked Lucinda.
“Question the butler.”
“But Grandmama might return!”
“If she is innocent, she has nothing to fear.”
Lucinda looked at him helplessly as Whitaker came into the room.
“When the previous butler was here—Alexander,” said the marquess, “and you were first footman, can you remember if Lady Lemmington sent you to the bank?”
“Yes, my lord, for it was on the day Alexander disappeared. She sent me with a letter to draw two thousand pounds. I remember Alexander asking me where I was going and how much I was to bring back. Then when I was at the bank, the second footman, James, arrived with another letter canceling the first. I was to draw only one hundred pounds. I came back with the money and gave it to her jus
t before she left with Alexander.”
“Tell me, did Alexander have any pressing need of money?”
“Not that I know of, my lord.”
“Was he in any trouble?”
“Well, I don’t suppose there’s any harm talking now that he’s gone. He was rumored to have got one of the kitchen maids in the family way and to have given her some medicine to get rid of the baby. The girl died and her father came around the day before Alexander disappeared, threatening to kill him, and it took four of us to throw him out.”
The marquess took out a guinea and handed it to the butler. “Please do not repeat this conversation. You may go.”
“Not a word shall pass my lips,” said Whitaker, bowing his way out backwards as if before a royal presence.
When he had gone, the marquess said to Lucinda, “Do not look so stricken, nothing has been proved.”
“But if it is proved,” said Lucinda shakily, “what sort of monster does that make me? A murderess for a grandmother and a brute for a father.”
“It leaves you exactly as you are. A beautiful young woman. Many of us have even had parents who died raving mad, but we do not stop to think that makes us mad ourselves.”
“Did your parents die mad?”
“No, they both died of the typhus.”
“Then, there you are!” said Lucinda, exasperated. “You do not know what you are talking about.”
“I have friends with rotten parents. Mr. Flanders’s father is an evil, brutish sot, and yet Tommy Flanders is the soul of kindness. Oh, Lucinda, marry me, and then I can protect you from whatever is going on here.”
“I do not know you, my lord. I do not understand you. You upset me.”“As you upset me, Lucinda. Come kiss me.”
“Sir, how can you even consider love when I am in this frightful coil?”
“I could consider making love to you in the bowels of hell itself. Come here!”
“Grandmama!” said Lucinda as there came the rumble of a carriage’s wheels outside. “She must not find you here.”
“On the contrary, I am going to stand my ground and ask her leave to pay my addresses to you.”
“No!” shrieked Lucinda, clawing at his sleeve. “I must hide you. Come with me.”
So great was her terror that he let her drag him out into the hall and up the stairs. He tried to protest, but all she would gasp was “Quickly. Oh, quickly.”
She pulled him into the bedroom, then slammed and locked the door just as they heard the hall door opening downstairs.
Lucinda motioned him to silence and pressed her ear against the bedroom door. Faintly, she heard her grandmother asking, “Is Lady Lucinda home, Whitaker?”
“Yes, my lady” came the butler’s voice. “I think she has gone to her room. Can I bring you anything?”
“No, Whitaker. Is Yvonne still visiting those Frenchie relatives of hers in Soho?”
“Yes, my lady. I can send one of the housemaids to prepare you for bed.”
“I can take care of myself. Good night, Whitaker.”
“Good night, my lady.”
“It is a good thing her lady’s maid is not at home,” whispered Lucinda. “I had forgotten about her and she would have felt it her duty to tell Grandmama about your visit. Oh, she will surely try to see me and she will be suspicious if she finds my door locked.”
She looked about frantically and then jerked open the double doors of a large William and Mary wardrobe. “In here,” said Lucinda urgently.
“I suppose I must, now that I am really in a compromising position,” he said.
He climbed into the wardrobe among the scented dresses and Lucinda closed the doors on him.
She scrambled out of her clothes and into her nightgown. She unlocked her bedroom door and then dived into bed and shut her eyes tightly.
Inside the wardrobe, the marquess could hear the old countess mounting the stairs.
She swung open Lucinda’s door and stood silhouetted on the threshold, leaning on her cane, a fantastic figure in her antique clothes.
“Lucinda,” she said softly.
Lucinda lay very still, forcing herself to breathe rhythmically. Lady Lemmington approached the bed. It creaked slightly as she sat down on the edge and bent over her granddaughter. “Sleep well,” Lucinda heard her murmur, “and no harm will come to you. Grandmama will see to that. Someone said you left with Sunningburgh. That will never do. He is not to be trusted. He must go.”
She gave a little laugh, and inside the wardrobe the marquess felt his flesh creep.
There was another little creak as the old lady rose from the bed and then her slow, measured footsteps punctuated with the tapping of her cane could be heard as she made her way out. The bedroom door closed and he could hear her tapping her way along the corridor to her own bedroom.
Gently, he opened the wardrobe door and stepped down. Lucinda was sitting up in bed, her face a pale disk in the gloom of the bedroom.
The marquess lit the candle beside her bed and looked down at her. “I think, Lucinda,” he said, “your grandmother means to kill me.”
“She cannot have meant that,” whispered Lucinda. “She only said ‘He must go.’ She could have meant you must go out of my life.”
“I do not think I was meant to go out of your life,” he said, sitting down beside her and gathering her into his arms. “How you shake and tremble. I shall not hurt you.”
“Men hurt women,” said Lucinda. “My father’s doxies told me of what they do in the brothels.”
“Men do many things in love and war. Men of a low type will degrade other men as well as women. Men will torture other men. But there are men like myself who fall in love, and that is another business entirely. I not only want to hold you and make love to you, but to look after you and cherish you as well.”
“I want to believe you,” said Lucinda.
He bent and kissed her, sinking his mouth deep into her own, pressing her back against the pillows, feeling her young breasts pressing against his chest. She lay passive in his arms until, with a little moan in the back of her throat, she wound her arms tightly about him and kissed him back. All at once it seemed safe and warm and secure, a steady world, a world of passion, but peculiarly free from shame.
The very innocence of her passion made her bolder than she might have been had she been more experienced. His breath became ragged and his roving hands above and then below the blankets met with no rejection.
He made a move to his cravat to wrench it off. But he suddenly drew back. “No, Lucinda,” he said softly. “You must marry me first.”
Lucinda drew a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.
“When?”
“I do not know. Grandmama …”
“I am afraid we might have to elope.”
“Yes,” said Lucinda sadly. “I suppose that would be the safest way.”
“Could you tell Lady Lemmington you wish to go to Partletts for a few days? You could tell her the journey would be too fatiguing for her to accompany you.”
“I could try,” said Lucinda cautiously. “I think, you know, I would like to ask Mr. Venables, the curate who was so kind when you kidnapped me.”
“To our wedding?”
“No, here. There is great evil in this house. I feel the need of a clergyman.”
“I shall drive to Baxtable tomorrow and fetch him for you. But I think you should make your escape to Partletts in a week’s time. It might be dangerous to leave it longer. Now, I must go before I forget myself.”
He rose and Lucinda struggled out of bed. “I am coming downstairs with you,” she said. “I want to make sure you leave this house safely.”
She pulled a wrapper about her shoulders. He kissed her long and hard.
Then, with his arm about her waist, they went downstairs together.
The old countess was a light sleeper. She heard the soft steps in the corridor and then the creak of the stairs.
Immediately alert, she climbed out of bed, and,
attired in her voluminous nightgown, she crept out of her room. She went softly to the head of the stairs. There was the murmur of voices in the hall and then the sound of the street door opening.
Whoever it was would be out in the street before the countess got a glimpse of him or her unless she could get there quickly.
She swung one spindly shank over the bannister and slid silently and quickly down its long, shining mahogany rail, appearing to fly through the air like a ghost with her nightgown billowing out about her.
She slid to a stop and fell soundlessly down on the bottom stair, crouched in the darkness, staring at the open doorway.
Lucinda was standing there clasped in the Marquess of Sunningburgh’s arms. His hawklike profile was outlined against the gray light of dawn from the square outside. He said something softly and kissed her, then he went out and Lucinda gently closed the door behind him.
While she was closing the door, the countess crept down into the hall on her hands and knees and scurried crablike behind a chair.
Humming a waltz tune, Lucinda went back up the stairs.
‘Fore George, he’s had her, thought the countess bitterly. The wolf, the sneak. He did it to spite me. Well, my fine buck, enjoy your triumph. You will not live long to enjoy it.
Chapter Nine
Unaware that the countess had seen them, Lucinda and the marquess made matters worse in the old lady’s eyes by studiously avoiding each other when they met at various functions later that week.
The countess was also puzzled by the presence of Mr. Venables, who had arrived two days after the marquess had—as far as the countess knew—spent the night with Lucinda. Lucinda would only say quietly that she was in need of spiritual guidance. With her calm air and solemn, stately manners, Lucinda once more looked like the old-fashioned child she used to be.
Lady Lucinda Esmond was used to living in unusual circumstances. She had been brought up to protect herself from her father’s drunkenness and, as she got older, from sexual attack by his friends. Having a grandmother who was a possible murderess was not a pleasant situation, but then Lucinda had not been used to pleasant situations.
