They halted at Griselda’s house just long enough for Griselda to gather little Megan and her nursemaid, Gloria. Then, in Griselda’s carriage, the three followed Penelope and Violet back to Albemarle Street, where they had arranged to dine with their husbands.
Mostyn admitted them into the front hall. As they divested themselves of their coats and bonnets, Penelope inquired after Oliver, only to have Mostyn say, “The little master’s in the back parlor with Mr. Adair, Mr. Montague, and the inspector, ma’am.” When Penelope, Violet, and Griselda all turned surprised looks on him, Mostyn elaborated, “I understand there have been developments and that they’re waiting to speak with you.”
Penelope exchanged a wide-eyed look with Griselda and Violet, then turned and made for her garden parlor. Likewise intrigued, Violet followed, and—after taking Megan from Gloria and releasing the maid to join Oliver’s nursemaid, Hettie, upstairs—Griselda, with Megan on her hip, brought up the rear.
They walked into the parlor and beheld a scene of unusual domesticity. Montague was sitting on the sofa, leaning forward, his forearms on his knees, a smile wreathing his face as he watched and encouraged Oliver, who was kneeling on the rug before the sofa; assisted by Barnaby and Stokes, both of whom lay sprawled on the rug, Oliver was constructing a multi-towered edifice out of wooden blocks.
Penelope had crept the last little way. The men, talking in their deep, rumbling voices, hadn’t heard her, but Oliver’s sharp ears picked up her familiar footsteps; he saw her and crowed, “M’ma! See!”
Penelope smiled and felt the darkness that had closed about her lift. Walking forward, eyes only for her son, she beamed with proud affection. “Yes, darling.” She crouched on the other side of the structure and dutifully examined it. “What a wonderful building.”
Oliver beamed back and raised his arms. “Up!”
Unable to stop smiling, Penelope closed her hands about his sturdy body and, rising, lifted him up. Reaching out, Oliver closed both chubby hands in her upswept hair and held her face steady so he could lay a smacking kiss on her lips—something he’d recently learned he could do. “M’ma home.”
“Yes, my son. Mama is, indeed, home.” Settling him on her hip, Penelope looked at Barnaby, who was getting to his feet.
Stokes had already scrambled to his and gone to take Megan from Griselda; he was currently throwing his one-year-old daughter into the air and catching her, much to Megan’s shrill delight.
Montague, meanwhile, had gone to greet Violet and kiss her check.
Capturing Penelope’s gaze, Barnaby leaned forward and placed his lips where his son’s had been.
For a moment, Penelope clung to the kiss, savored it.
Straightening, Barnaby smiled. “Welcome home.”
Her lips still curved, Penelope started to smile back, but then her thoughts caught up with her and she felt the expression fade. Her eyes on Barnaby’s, she hugged Oliver a trifle tighter and said, “We have to speak with Monica Galbraith.”
Barnaby frowned. “How did you know?”
Penelope blinked, then frowned back. “Know what?”
The others had all turned; all exchanged glances.
“Let’s take this chronologically,” Barnaby suggested. “This morning, Stokes and I went to see what we could learn at Galbraith House, while Montague worked to learn what he could of any rumors of another exclusive license being offered for a different version of Lady Latimer’s shoes, and Violet and Griselda went off to search for any clues from the crystal suppliers.”
Sitting on the sofa, waving the others to the various chairs, Penelope settled Oliver in her lap. “You and Stokes first. I think we’ve discovered what you ought to have learned by a different route, but tell us anyway.”
Between them, Barnaby and Stokes outlined their findings. “So,” Stokes concluded, his expression turning grim, “we now know that a young shoemaker called at the Galbraiths’ house intending to make some offer regarding shoes, but Lady Galbraith and most of the family were not in residence at the time, except for the youngest daughter, Monica Galbraith, who may have had the opportunity to speak with the shoemaker, but as yet we don’t have any evidence that she did.”
Penelope nodded. “We have such evidence, but as Barnaby said, we should take this step by step.” She looked at Montague. “From what we learned an hour or so ago, you shouldn’t have found anything—no rumors, no whispers of a second source of Lady Latimer’s shoes.”
Sober, Montague nodded. “There was no hint anywhere about a second supplier of those shoes.”
Penelope looked at Griselda and Violet. “You two and your hunt through the crystal suppliers comes next.”
Violet detailed their search, and Griselda filled in the details of what they’d discovered through Mr. Olson of Olson’s Emporium. Griselda bumped Stokes’s shoulder. “We had to invoke your authority to make him see the necessity, but he did, in the end, give us the information we were after—that a young shoemaker of the name of Danny Gibson has been buying the right crystals.”
“In the expected quantities and over the right time frame,” Violet added. “Gibson and Sons is off Long Acre, so we came back to tell Penelope.”
“Meanwhile”—Penelope pushed her glasses back up; Oliver had dislodged them again—“I was wrestling with my Greek scribe’s outpourings when Hartley Galbraith and his intended came to call. They had decided that it was time they dispensed with their veil of secrecy in pursuit of what I was given to understand is their overriding goal.” Meeting the three men’s intensely curious gazes, Penelope explained, “The pair intend to reunite their families—and as Hartley’s intended is Cynthia Latimer, their reasons are self-explanatory.”
“Cynthia Latimer?” Stokes looked faintly stunned. “But…that means she saw…”
“Exactly.” Penelope nodded. “She was the one who saw the shoes of the lady fleeing the terrace most clearly, but as it happens, Cynthia actually saw far more than she’d realized. Courtesy of Griselda’s milliner’s tricks, we discovered several notable points about those shoes—they had a different arrangement of the crystals, a different cut, and had a distinctly different heel to those on the original Lady Latimer’s shoes, meaning all the shoes made for the Latimer ladies. Cynthia’s description, corroborated by the information we subsequently got from Danny Gibson and his grandfather, confirms that the lady fleeing the Fairchild’s terrace immediately after Lady Galbraith was killed could not have been one of the Latimer ladies but was, in fact, Monica Galbraith.”
Barnaby held up a hand. “Griselda and Violet had joined you by this time? All three of you heard this?”
“Yes.” Penelope nodded decisively. “Everything came together in a rush.” She paused, clearly casting her mind back. “Before Violet and Griselda came in, I had questioned Hartley and Cynthia on several matters, but in light of our subsequent discoveries, the only point that remains relevant is that both Hartley and Cynthia believe that Lady Galbraith came out to the side terrace and down onto the path because she was following Hartley, wanting to learn who he was meeting with clandestinely.”
Barnaby arched a cynical brow. “Motherly concern?”
“I gathered from Hartley that his mother had some notion of managing his marriage, a notion he didn’t share.” Penelope frowned. Oliver squirmed and she set him down on the rug. Immediately, Megan wriggled off Griselda’s lap and joined him. “Where was I?”
“When we came in and Griselda got Cynthia to describe the shoes,” Violet supplied.
“Ah, yes. Well,” Penelope went on, “Cynthia described a style of Lady Latimer’s shoes that matched the single pair Danny Gibson later confirmed he’d completed and passed on. Cynthia doesn’t know anything about Danny Gibson, not that he’s making a different version of Lady Latimer’s shoes, let alone their style, so she must be telling us the truth of what she saw. She saw the shoes Danny Gibson had made, and the person to whom Danny Gibson supplied those shoes—one pair made of white satin—is Monica Galbrai
th.”
Penelope looked at Stokes. “Monica did, indeed, race after Danny when he was turned away from the Galbraiths’ house. He knew her only as Miss Galbraith, but he described her accurately. He gave her the shoes in February and, as he understood it, she was going to present them to her mother in the best way to convince Lady Galbraith to give him an exclusive license of the same sort Lady Latimer has with her shoemaker.”
Silence fell as they all revised their constructions of what had happened at the Fairchilds’ ball.
Stokes stirred. “Answer me this—if Monica Galbraith wore these fantastical shoes to the ball, why is it that no one noticed? I thought the point of the shoes was that they attract attention.”
Penelope blinked. She looked at Violet, then Griselda. “I’m not sure…”
“It depends on the length of the gown.” Griselda’s tone indicated that she knew of what she spoke. “Modistes generally set the hems of gowns worn to dance in at ankle level, but if Monica had her hems set lower—”
“She wouldn’t have been dancing,” Penelope said. “She wasn’t out yet, so no dancing, at least not at an event like the Fairchilds’ ball.”
Griselda nodded. “So she could easily have had her hems almost to the ground. And if she didn’t dance, there would be little likelihood of anyone noticing her shoes, not unless she raised her skirts.”
“As she did when she fled the terrace and stepped up into the house.” Penelope looked at Stokes as if asking for his next question.
Stokes grimaced and looked down at Megan, playing with the blocks alongside Oliver.
Montague sighed. “So we now believe that Monica Galbraith followed Lady Galbraith outside.” He looked around the circle of faces. “Do we have any idea why?”
Violet looked at Penelope. “Do you think it might be connected with what Monica told Danny Gibson—that she, Monica, had to pick the right time to present the shoes to her mother? I assume she meant for greatest effect, and she did tell Danny that she would need to wait until late March.”
Head tilting, Penelope considered, then said, “We know Lady Galbraith was beyond keen to have her own Lady Latimer’s shoes, and yes, I agree it’s possible that given the timing—when the family returned to town and the start of the Season—then the Fairchilds’ ball might well have seemed the most obvious choice for Monica’s big revelation. Everyone who was anyone in the ton could be counted on to be there…but I can’t see why Monica didn’t tell Lady Galbraith of the shoes before they reached the ball. Why wait until during the ball?”
Barnaby shifted. “Let’s assume that, for some reason, Monica couldn’t tell her mother about the shoes earlier. Monica then notices Lady Galbraith slipping out of the ballroom and sees an opportunity to speak with her mother alone, and so follows her outside.” His features hard, uncompromising, he went on, “Even if Monica’s reason for following her mother outside was something quite different, it seems we’re certain now that Monica did, indeed, follow Lady Galbraith out onto the terrace, and possibly even down the steps and onto the path.” He paused, then said, “What we don’t know is what happened next.”
After a moment, Stokes said, “But we do know that, within a minute of Lady Galbraith being struck down, Monica fled the terrace, and she has subsequently said nothing at all about that, not even admitting that she had been there.”
Penelope grimaced. “In Hartley and Cynthia’s opinion, there wasn’t sufficient time for someone standing inside the terrace door to have seen someone else drop the ball on Lady Galbraith, then to have rushed to the balustrade, looked over, and fled back to the terrace door before Hartley and Cynthia reached the point of being able to see the terrace.”
“Time is often difficult to judge in such situations,” Barnaby said. “Nevertheless…”
“Nevertheless,” Violet said, “we appear to be dealing with a case of matricide.” She glanced at Montague. “Again.”
Barnaby shook his head. “This isn’t a family like the Halsteads.” The Halstead case was one in which he, Stokes, Penelope, and Griselda had assisted Montague; it was the case that had brought Violet into Montague’s life, and, indeed, all their lives. “The Halstead case was a matricide, but the Halsteads were a distinctly aberrant family. The Galbraiths are entirely normal.” He paused, then dipped his head. “Admittedly, Lady Galbraith had her faults, but they lay well within the norm of a ton matron with a large family.”
“Which,” Stokes said, “brings us back to the critical questions. What happened on the terrace, or on the path below it, between Lady Galbraith and her daughter Monica, and did Monica subsequently kill her mother?”
“Hmm,” Griselda murmured. “I’m still tripping over why Monica didn’t tell her mother, and her sisters, too, about discovering a new source of Lady Latimer’s shoes. In their terms, it was a huge coup.” She looked at Penelope. “Monica is the youngest daughter, isn’t she?”
“Yes…and perhaps that’s relevant.” Penelope paused, then said, “I haven’t yet inquired about how Lady Galbraith got on with her daughters, but it’s certainly true that with all the fuss and excitement of ton balls and the marriage mart, younger daughters do sometimes get short shrift, certainly when it comes to their mothers’ attention.” Penelope arched her brows. “I can’t say I ever felt that way, but then I was never interested in balls and the marriage mart.”
“But Monica most likely is,” Violet said. “Could she have seen the shoes as her opportunity to shine in her mother’s eyes?”
“Very likely,” Penelope returned. “And that fits with her waiting to make her revelation on the evening of the Fairchilds’ ball. For the purpose of focusing not just her mother’s but all of society’s attention on her, that ball was the perfect moment, the most glittering stage, with the crème de la crème of the ton in attendance. In terms of a grand revelation of the sort Monica would have wanted to make, there could have been no better venue.”
After a moment, Stokes sighed. “We’re going around and around, circling the one point we still do not know. Let’s say that Monica followed her mother out onto the terrace to show her the shoes. What happened next? Did Monica kill her mother? And if so, why?”
Barnaby heaved a sigh. He met Penelope’s eyes, then looked at the others. “As far as I can see, the only person who knows the answer to those questions is Monica herself.”
Entirely sober, Penelope nodded. “Which is why we need to speak with her.”
The door opened and Mostyn came in, Hettie and Gloria at his heels. “Dinner is served, ma’am.”
Penelope glanced at the others, then looked at Mostyn. “As ever, your timing is impeccable, Mostyn.”
Relinquishing the children to their nurses to be carried to the nursery and put to bed, the adults rose and, setting aside the disturbing case for later consideration, followed Mostyn to the dining room.
CHAPTER 11
After dinner that evening, Hartley saw his father settled in his favorite armchair by the library hearth with a large glass of brandy within easy reach, then Hartley excused himself and went into the front hall, opened the front door, and stepped outside.
Quietly closing the door, he looked across the darkened park at the house opposite and one door up. In the poor light, he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he glimpsed a curtain shift in one of the upstairs windows.
He paused for an instant. What he and Cynthia were about to embark on was blazoned on the forefront of his brain, snaring every last iota of his attention. Oddly enough, he didn’t feel nervous so much as impatient; they’d been wanting to take this step, had been discussing it for more than a year. Jaw firming, he stepped off the porch and went to meet his fate.
It was past time.
The evening had closed in, unusually dark and almost menacing with heavy black clouds louring, impenetrable and weighty. The scent of rain was pervasive, carried on the chill breeze that snaked through the park, twining through the still-bare branches and setting them creaking.
Ha
rtley strode through the park. At this hour, there was no one else about; this wasn’t a neighborhood in which vagrants curling up under a bush to see out the night were common. As far as he could tell, in that moment he was the only person abroad in that little pocket of London. Reaching the huge old oak that stood at the center of the park, he halted beneath the cage of its outer branches.
A minute later, Cynthia appeared; letting herself out of the side gate of her family’s house, she came to join him. Wrapped in her cloak, with an additional shawl to combat the chill in the air, she walked to meet him with her head high.
She had never, to his eyes, appeared more serenely assured. More confident of herself, and of him. Of them and their way forward.
He was sure, too, but he had never had quite the same clarity of purpose, the same never-wavering resolution that she possessed. Hers was a strength he was man enough, wise enough, to appreciate. And to value.
As she neared, he smiled, in appreciation, in welcome.
In lingering wonder.
She returned the gesture with much the same emotions shining in her eyes.
Barely slowing, she walked into his arms.
Of their own volition, his arms closed around her. When she raised her face to his and offered her lips, he accepted the invitation, bent his head and kissed her.
There, in the middle of the square, for all their world to see.
Even if no one was looking.
It was the statement that counted, a declaration of their intent, and as they surrendered to the kiss and let it deepen, both accepted and rejoiced.
And gave themselves over, once again, committed once again to their direction, their avowed purpose.
And to what the journey to their goal required them to do.
There was no backing away, no retreat. Not in either of them.
Cynthia sensed that, knew that, as his lips moved on hers, as his tongue claimed her mouth and she returned the caress with her own brand of ardor. Her fingers locked in the silk of his hair, her breasts crushed to the hard planes of his chest, she met him and matched him and held fast within the tumult of their swirling passions. Her hips tight against his thighs, his erection cradled against her taut belly, she held to the kiss, to him, to the promise of what would be.
The Curious Case of Lady Latimer's Shoes: A Casebook of Barnaby Adair Novel Page 19
