Murder Most Fair

by Anna Lee Huber

  “Come in,” I called, my eyes still locked with my great-aunt’s, holding her to her pledge.

  When we were not greeted by a flurry of words, I surmised it must be my aunt’s German maid who had entered and not my mother. I turned to find Bauer eyeing her employer with both concern and misgiving. Her countenance was drawn, and I could well imagine the worries consuming her, not only for her employer, but at the possibility of finding herself alone in a strange and hostile country should the worst happen. I sought to reassure her.

  “She says she needs her medicine. Ihre Medizin.”

  She nodded and turned to fetch it from the top of the bureau, measuring and pouring, and then diluting it in a glass of water. I stood aside to allow her to help prop Tante Ilse upright as she drank the medicine, noting the dark tinge of the liquid, and the way her mouth puckered at the taste. The clear vial it had been poured from contained a thick, reddish-brown syrup, and even though it bore no label, I strongly suspected I knew what it was. Laudanum. A tincture of opium more popular in the last century than the present, though still readily available.

  It wasn’t the only medicine my great-aunt took. There were several bottles and vials lined up across the top of the bureau. But it was perhaps the most alarming of possibilities. Was she taking it for pain, or had she begun taking it to cope with the war and become addicted? After all, I had witnessed what a powerful hold opium could have over those who sought its numbing oblivion. I knew more than one society darling who had become addicted to morphine—laudanum’s even darker cousin.

  “Please, won’t you let Freddy take a look at you?” I begged.

  “No, no,” she insisted, sinking back against her pillows. “I simply need to rest.”

  I scrutinized her features, wishing I knew what questions to ask. Wishing she would confide in me without my having to press her. “Well, think about what I said. It will be easier for us to find the second man, or even establish or eliminate the possibility of his being here, if we know what he looks like.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bauer flinch and wondered how much of what I’d said she comprehended. She hadn’t begun working for my great-aunt until later, months after the second deserter’s visit. Otherwise, I might have asked her for a description of the fellow.

  I crossed toward the door, turning to speak to Bauer in German just before I departed. “Send for my brother, Dr. Townsend, if she worsens. He can help.”

  I waited until Bauer nodded jerkily in understanding, and then slipped from the room. As the door latched, I slumped against the wooden trim, nearly overcome with apprehension and fear for my great-aunt. Had Tante Ilse seen the second deserter outside St. Margaret’s or not? Was she ill and in pain or otherwise dependent on laudanum? And why wouldn’t she let Freddy see her?

  I lifted my head to see Freddy rounding the newel post at the top of the stairs, clutching his black medical bag, and hastened into the upper hall to speak with him. “She’s refusing to let you examine her,” I told him, unable to iron out all the distress from my voice.

  His hazel eyes shifted to gaze over my shoulder at her bedchamber door while I took a deep breath, trying to regain control of my frazzled nerves.

  “Her maid gave her a tincture of medicine. One that I’m distinctly certain contains laudanum. And she claims that’s all she needs.”

  Freddy heaved a sigh. “I can’t force her to allow me to examine her.” He tilted his head. “Well . . . I could. But I don’t wish to do that. Not without a compelling reason to do so. And unfortunately, laudanum usage is not a justified reason.”

  I pressed a hand to my forehead, pacing away several steps before turning back and nodding. “I’m worried, Freddy,” I confided, lowering my voice. “She’s not been herself.” I held up my hand to forestall any arguments. “I know she’s seventy-nine, and she’s just endured a horrific war and food deprivation, but I can’t help but feel this goes beyond that.”

  Rather than dispute this less-than-scientific evidence, he surprised me instead by conceding. “I’ve not had long enough to interact with her to make such a judgment, but I’ve never known you to exaggerate matters. Not about something like this. If you think something is wrong, then there probably is.” He reached out a hand to clasp my shoulder. “But we can’t force her to admit it, Pip.”

  I knew he was right. Just as I knew I should mention the confusion and memory lapses I noticed, but I elected to keep those to myself for now. “Just, keep an eye on her, will you? You’re a good doctor, Freddy. I trust you to notice something if there’s cause for alarm.”

  “And how would you know that?” The words were spoken affably, but there was a glint in his eyes that told me the question wasn’t quite as lighthearted as he wished it to seem. “You’ve never witnessed me in my capacity as a surgeon or country doctor.”

  “No, but I know you,” I replied. “For all your incorrigible, high-spirited antics when we were young, you were always the chap with the coolest head when matters turned serious.”

  The corners of his mouth flickered upward in the approximation of a smile. “I seem to recall you weren’t prone to panic either.”

  I shrugged, allowing him to drape an arm around my shoulders and turn me toward the stairs. “That was Tim and Grace. Though, to be fair, they were younger than us, and may have grown out of such behavior.” I hesitated. “And Rob, on occasion.”

  Freddy was silent for a moment—I supposed contemplating the brother born between us—and then began to chuckle. “Do you remember when that haystack in one of Metcalfe’s south fields caught on fire?”

  My mouth quirked. “And Rob singed his hair in his frenzy to put it out. He was dashed lucky he didn’t set his clothes on fire in the process.”

  Freddy laughed harder. “And then he elected to cut his own hair rather than let Mother see the damage he’d done.”

  I smiled more broadly. “It took months for it to grow out long enough to lay flat against his head rather than sticking up like a hedgehog’s quills.”

  My oldest brother nearly doubled over with amusement as we rounded the landing. When he was able to speak again, he shook his head in wonder. “To think, he was the one who joined the Royal Flying Corps. Turns out he had nerves of steel after all.”

  Unfortunately, courage couldn’t save you. Not every time. Not when your luck ran out.

  Freddy fell silent, and a brooding expression fell over his features, I suspect contemplating the same thing I was.

  I didn’t know the details surrounding Rob’s death. I didn’t want to. Not when I’d already heard the horrifying tales of other flyboys—some who had survived, albeit wounded, like Goldy, and some who had not, like Daphne’s brother, Gil. It was enough to know that his aeroplane was shot down over France. To recognize that his being shot dead in the air—before the aeroplane caught fire, before it crashed—was the best I could hope for.

  Although seeing Freddy’s face, the starkness that had entered his eyes, the pain that seemed to tighten the skin across his bones, I had to wonder if he did know the particulars. If he’d asked to know them or been made to confront them. The very idea made something inside me scuttle away, cowering in some recess of my soul that pressed against my diaphragm.

  I forced myself to draw breath into my lungs, to focus on each next step as it creaked beneath our feet, lest I grow weak-kneed like Tante Ilse.

  “How is she?” Mother demanded, standing at the bottom of the staircase to meet us.

  I looked up at her and then beyond at my father. “She . . . she says she’s simply tired. That she wishes to rest.” I glanced at Freddy. “She had her maid give her some medicine, but she’s refusing to let Freddy look at her, even to check her heart.”

  “Well, we can’t force her,” Mother replied uncertainly as she turned to my father, clearly surprised by this.

  But my father evidently wasn’t. “Tante Ilse has always been stubborn and determined to have her way. I daresay she’s merely affronted by the idea
of letting a doctor other than her own examine her, even one who is her great-nephew.”

  “But her physician is back in Germany. He can hardly be called in to attend to her,” Mother countered.

  “Yes, and she’ll come around to understand that in her own time. Meanwhile, we’ll just have to be certain she doesn’t exhaust herself.”

  With this verdict, Father turned and strode down the corridor in the direction of his study. Mother turned as if to follow him, and then changed course, murmuring something about altering the dinner menu as she crossed the hall toward the dining room.

  I lifted my gaze to find Sidney watching me from the doorway to the drawing room. Though he leaned negligently against the door trim with his shoulder, there was an alertness to his features that told me he had noted my distress. Freddy slid past him into the room, where Rachel could be heard crooning to their child, but rather than follow him, I gestured for Sidney to join me across the entry hall in the billiards room.

  I came to a stop next to the table covered in green baize, the red and white balls already racked and ready for their next game. “Did you hear what Tante Ilse said? Outside the church?”

  “The second deserter,” he replied, lowering his voice to match my tone.

  “She claims she saw him in the churchyard.”

  Sidney’s brow furrowed as he glanced toward the door. “Well, that frames the matter rather differently. Could she describe him to you?”

  I moved a step closer. “That’s the thing, she couldn’t.”

  His eyebrows arched in surprise.

  “She kept saying that she didn’t know. Now, whether that’s because she was still too agitated, or she can’t remember, or she didn’t see what she thought she did, I can’t say.” I pulled my cloche from my head and tossed it down on the baize before pressing my hands to the edge of the table and lowering my head. “But I’m hoping once she’s calmer and has had some time to think about it she’ll at least recall something.”

  “Are you afraid this might be another lapse of her memory?”

  I turned my head to meet his gaze.

  “That she might be becoming confused about what she sees or doesn’t see?”

  “Maybe,” I was lulled into admitting by the compassion I saw reflected in his deep blue eyes. “But . . . I also saw someone this morning,” I confessed hesitantly. “A man who seemed intent on not drawing attention to himself as he entered St. Margaret’s. He seemed familiar somehow, but I couldn’t place him.” I searched Sidney’s face, curious what he thought of this disclosure. “I told myself I was jumping at shadows, seeing potential villains where there were none. That he was likely new to the village or a farm laborer, and perhaps I’d seen him or someone like him on the streets of London during the war. Maybe I’d even served him at the canteen outside Victoria Station where I volunteered.”

  I thought of the lines of soldiers. Weary men just returned from the trenches on leave, dirty and disillusioned, but also relieved. Naïve, grinning first-timers, eager to get out to the front and cover themselves with glory. And war-hardened veterans, their shoulders bowed low, lingering over one last hot meal, attempting to delay the inevitable.

  “But now you’re not so certain,” he finished for me.

  “It seems strange that we should both notice someone who seemed out of place and seemed at least vaguely familiar.”

  “I agree. Did you at least get a good look at him?”

  “He was of about medium height with shaggy hair of a straw color.” I shrugged. “I had little more than a glimpse of him, and at a distance.”

  Sidney nodded, lifting his hand to smooth back a tendril of hair that must have become tangled in my earring. “That’s something, at any rate. If nothing else, we can ask around the village, find out if any strangers have been seen about.” The backs of his fingers slid down the length of my jaw. “If it is the second deserter, I assume you think he followed us here, not that he happens to live here.”

  “Wouldn’t that be too great a coincidence?” I turned to lean back against the table, crossing my arms over my chest. “No, I think it would have to mean he followed us. Though I haven’t the foggiest notion why.”

  “Maybe he works for German Intelligence.”

  “And, knowing of my aunt’s connection to me, was sent to track me down?” I shook my head. “Germany’s intelligence agencies entirely fell apart after the war. They’re of no threat to us now.”

  “Maybe not to Britain. But perhaps this particular agent hopes to profit from you individually.”

  His words sent a chill through me.

  “Blackmail?” I murmured.

  “It wouldn’t be difficult to deduce how much damage even the suggestion that you were in contact with German agents and passing them information, perhaps even through your aunt, might do to your reputation. Or that it could prompt an investigation into your activities.”

  There were already men among the intelligence services who would be only too happy to see me investigated for treason. Men like Major Davis, C’s second-in-command; Sir Basil Thomson, the newly appointed Director of Intelligence; and even Lord Ardmore. For certain, there were many who would also defend me, among them C, the chief, and Captain Landau. The trouble was that for many of my forays into German-occupied Belgium, I had been answerable to no one but myself for weeks at a time. I’d been given objectives to complete, as well as any intelligence that might assist me in succeeding, but then it was up to me to figure out how to achieve them. There were simply too many variables that could not be accounted for, making it all but impossible for Landau and others to attempt to formulate the plan for me.

  My ability to adjust, to plan for multiple outcomes and alter my course in a split second, relying on little but my observations and intuition to guide me, had made me a great agent. But it also made it next to impossible to explain the why of each decision I’d made. How could I explain why at times I would veer off my intended course, prolonging my journey and its hardship by several hours purely because my gut told me to? Or why it was better to choose the line at a border check manned by an uncouth lout rather than the reserved, doe-eyed female? Or when to risk requesting shelter from a farmhouse deep in the countryside and when to carry on through the driving rain?

  And that said nothing of the little indignities a female agent was forced to endure at the hands of the occupiers, alongside the rest of the women trapped in Belgium and northeastern France. Indignities that men like Davis and Thomson would seek to use against me as proof of my collusion with the enemy. As if being groped, and pawed, and pestered merely for traveling down a road or taking up space in a shop was a thing to be desired.

  Sidney was right. A German agent, present or former, who knew any information about my activities with the Secret Service could certainly be a threat.

  “Perhaps somehow Ardmore even sent him.”

  I blinked at Sidney in surprise, not having yet made the possible connection to Ardmore’s machinations. “That would imply he was and/or is still involved with German Intelligence on a deep level, and we have no evidence of that.” I frowned. “Besides, if he knew about my aunt and the deserters, he would probably have already had the second man decry me.”

  “And miss the opportunity to beleaguer your conscience? No, Verity. Ardmore is more cunning and vicious than that. You know full well how much he likes toying with you. He would enjoy watching you squirm after he offered you the chance to save yourself as long as you dropped your investigation of him.” Sidney leaned closer. “When has he ever simply outwitted someone when instead he can corrupt and demoralize them?”

  He was right. For Ardmore, the enjoyment wasn’t so much in winning, as in manipulating others into debasing and compromising their own morals. We’d seen that with Max’s father, the late Earl of Ryde, as well as Lord Rockham—to some extent— and Flossie Hawkins, among others. Ardmore delighted in outmaneuvering those who saw themselves as heroic, twisting and exploiting them until they were forc
ed to accept the fact that their motives and actions were not only selfish and tainted, but heinous.

  I clutched my arms tighter around myself as a fear that was different from any I had faced before gripped me. I swallowed the sticky coating of panic flooding the back of my mouth. “If that’s true . . .” My words faltered—I was unable to finish the thought.

  “If it’s true,” Sidney repeated, grasping my upper arms, “and it’s only a possibility, then we’ll confront it when it happens. Together. But you should be prepared, in case you receive a letter or some sort of visit from this fellow.”

  I took a shaky breath, feeling grateful I wasn’t facing the possibility alone. Though I might be less glad if I discovered Ardmore was involved, after I learned just what he was threatening. The thought of exposing my loved ones to his machinations made my blood run cold.

  Sidney’s hands rubbed up and down the silk covering my arms, as if sensing the chill that had settled over me. “Now, what were . . . ?”

  “And just why are you lurkin’ here?” A voice interrupted before Sidney could finish.

  Recognizing that the voice belonged to my mother’s maid, the much-dreaded Matilda, I turned to see her standing before the open doorway leading out into the back corridor that led to the enclosed walkway between the servants’ quarters and the main house. Who she was speaking to wasn’t immediately apparent, until a cowering Bauer stepped into view.

  Matilda loomed over her. “Spyin’, were ye?”

  Bauer’s cheeks flushed a fiery hue. “I was not spying,” she protested in her thick German accent, clearly understanding what the word meant. “I must a question ask.”

  Matilda made a very rude noise. “Then why did ye not knock?” But rather than wait for an answer, she stomped off toward the servants’ wing with a gown draped over her arm. I knew within minutes half the staff would know about Bauer “lurking” outside the billiards room door. Perhaps I needed to have a private word with her.