Murder Most Fair

by Anna Lee Huber

  “What did you wish to ask?” I queried gently.

  Bauer’s hands were clenched into fists at her sides, and I could see the frustration and humiliation cresting over her in the reddening of her skin above the neckline of her simple gown of blue serge. The blush slowly faded as she took a calming breath, stepping into the room. “Frau Vischering has . . . Medizin, and other things, she needs.”

  I comprehended what she meant, but elected to answer in German. “I’m sure my brother, Dr. Townsend, could replenish them for you. Or if you prefer, I’m going into the village tomorrow. Make me a list and I will pick up what she needs from the chemist.” This would also give me a chance to find out exactly what medications my great-aunt was taking.

  However, Bauer surprised me by lifting her chin and replying determinedly in English. “Thank you, but I must go. I must learn to do for myself.”

  “Of course. Then let Mrs. Grainger know. She will be able to tell you when Mr. Kidds will be running any errands in town and can give you a lift. Or you may take one of the bicycles, if you prefer.”

  She nodded and backed out of the room before following in Matilda’s wake toward the servants’ quarters.

  “Brave girl,” Sidney remarked.

  “Yes, especially considering the welcome she’s received.” I frowned, wondering if I should say something to my mother or speak to the staff directly. But would that help or make matters worse?

  “The other servants will come around. Surely they must see that a slip of a maid can’t be blamed for all their troubles any more than an old lady can. It’s not as if she was a soldier aiming a gun across No Man’s Land.”

  That was true, but I knew from experience that a slip of a maid could still be a remarkably effective soldier in the gathering of information. Young women were often dismissed and discounted by the enemy, hence my own success.

  But this wasn’t the war, and there was no intelligence to be gathered in the depths of the Yorkshire Dales.

  My brow furrowed as I glanced back toward the door through which Bauer had retreated. Though perhaps I should be taking my own advice. Bauer may have been hovering outside, waiting to ask a question, but she might also have been listening to our conversation.

  CHAPTER 13

  Some hours later, I reclined on the jonquil-print fainting couch in our bedchamber, with one arm draped over my head as I gazed up at the ceiling. I should have been dressing for dinner. My modest willow-green gown was already aired and pressed, and hanging on the outside of the wardrobe. But I was stalling, rather foolishly attempting to ignore the clock while still finding myself glancing at it every few minutes, noting each passing second more acutely than if I simply got up and got on with it.

  I should have been pleasantly exhausted from the bicycle ride Sidney and I had taken earlier that afternoon, and my muscles certainly registered the day’s exertions, but my mind was as sharp as ever, and as keen with dread. The trouble was that Sunday dinners had always been a family affair, even more so than the rest of the week. And so I knew Rob’s presence would be more keenly missed. While I had been able to blunt my perception and overlook his absence the previous evening, I knew tonight it would be far more difficult.

  The door opened, and Sidney paused on the threshold, obviously surprised to see me still lazing about in the blue serge split skirt I’d worn on our outing, which enabled me to ride a bicycle more easily. He looked at the ormolu clock on the mantel over the fireplace. “Didn’t you say dinner was at a quarter after six?” he asked as he shut the door.

  “Yes,” I said with a sigh.

  “Are you intending to feign illness?” he asked as he removed his leaf-brown Norfolk jacket.

  I shook my head back and forth where it rested against the cushion. “Mother would never allow it.” I arched my eyebrows cynically. “Or she would leap to a conclusion I would rather not address.” Not that I had any hope of avoiding it. At some point during this visit, my mother was bound to raise the issue of us starting our family.

  Sidney paused with his jacket draped over his arm, his gaze dipping to my abdomen. I wondered if he would say something, but then he turned to toss the coat over the back of a chair and reached for his tie. “Is there a particular reason for your reluctance?”

  “Does there need to be?” I quipped, hoping he would leave it at that. But I was not so lucky.

  “It’s Rob, isn’t it?”

  I stared at my stocking-covered toes peeping out from the hem of my skirt, refusing to look at him. I couldn’t. Not if I had any hope of keeping my emotions bottled up inside.

  When I didn’t respond, he moved closer, his tread soft against the Aubusson rug. “Ver, I know this isn’t easy for you. What can I do to help?”

  The weight that had been pressing on my chest all day suddenly felt unbearable, and I sucked in a harsh breath, feeling it rasp against my windpipe. “Didn’t it seem as if nothing had changed?” I remarked with forced lightness. “The fields, the countryside . . . It looked as it ever has. As if five horrible years hadn’t passed as it has elsewhere.”

  But I knew it had. Perhaps its marking couldn’t be seen on the landscape, but the horribleness was still felt in every inhabitant’s breast, in the memory of those forty-nine men and one woman who had been lost.

  I shied away from this thought, for once again it veered toward reminiscences of Rob.

  “Did you recognize that barn we passed?” I asked with a strained smile.

  Sidney sank down beside me, and I could tell by his expression that he wasn’t fooled. That he knew I was still sitting here, racked with dismay because of Rob. But I continued to grin determinedly at him anyway, begging him with the pained stretch of my lips not to press this. Not now.

  He reached out to take my hand, his gaze dipping to where our fingers tangled. “Yes.” One corner of his lips quirked upward roguishly. “How could I forget?”

  My expression softened into one more natural. The barn in question—one of the many such stone structures that dotted the hillsides throughout the dales, providing shelter for the animals out to pasture or temporary storage for crops or equipment—had also proven to be a handy refuge for Sidney and me during a rainstorm that golden summer of 1914. We had been all but inseparable during the months following the Lucases’ spring soiree when we’d shared our first dance, until war was declared and he’d rushed off to enlist, like every other young, hot-blooded Englishman it seemed. But that hour trapped by the deluge inside the stone barn along the road toward Hardraw Beck proved to be a particularly pleasant memory.

  “I thought for a moment you intended to revisit it. Or Hardraw Beck.”

  Where we’d shared our first kiss.

  My gaze slid to the side, my thoughts straying toward the past.

  It was bittersweet now to think of that summer. Of each picnic and stroll over the dales. Of his teaching me to drive his Pierce-Arrow and my beating him at billiards. Of the stolen moments—kissing, caressing, longing for more.

  The trouble was that so many of those memories, and the places where they’d occurred, were also tangled up with other reminiscences. Ones that contained Rob. Of splashing through the waterfall or besting him at darts. Of watching Freddy and him string a rope line from the rafters of one of the stone barns in order to glide down the rigging like the privateer in one of their favorite swashbuckling books. That adventure had ended with a dislocated shoulder.

  As we’d pedaled through the sunlit autumn countryside—the amber fields shorn of most of their crops and the trees nearly stripped of all their burnished leaves—and stood next to the stone wall separating the road from the steep crevice that cradled Hardraw Beck below, I’d struggled with that realization.

  “At least, that’s why I’d hoped you’d chosen that route, and not that you intended for us to ride up over Buttertub Pass, because I would have adamantly balked at such a suggestion. A little exertion is all well and good, but I’ve slogged through quagmires at the front that were easier going
than that climb would have been on a bicycle.”

  While amused at his jest about the road that ascended toward Great Shunner Fell, I was more heartened by the fact he was able to make even a small jest to me about his time in the trenches. “No, I never intended to go that far. Truthfully, I’m not exactly certain why I chose to go in that direction.”

  “Because it holds pleasant memories without Rob,” he replied without having to give the matter a moment’s thought.

  I lifted my gaze to his face, watching the play of light and shadow across his features from the crackling flames in the hearth.

  “Because if you face those memories first, then it will be easier to confront the harder ones.”

  I took a ragged breath scented with wood smoke, my woolen sweater, and a hint of Sidney’s bay rum cologne. “When did you become so wise?” And perceptive.

  His deep blue eyes refused to release mine. “It’s what I would do. It’s what I’ve done.”

  I understood what he meant. There were certain places even in London that I knew he associated with the war, where he refused to go, except when compelled to by the circumstances of our investigations. Places like Victoria Station, where the trains arrived and departed carrying troops bound to and from the coast and the transport ships to France; or the Cheshire Cheese, a restaurant we’d eaten at on more than one of his leaves. He even avoided Kensington Gardens, less because we had walked there upon occasion during those same leaves, and more because of the idealized model of the trenches that had been dug and displayed there for the public during the war. The reality of the trenches had been much more ragged, foul, and grim.

  The creak of the wood flooring and the familiar clump of footsteps alerted us to the fact that we would soon be interrupted before the rap fell on the door. Sidney squeezed my hand before rising to his feet and calling for his valet to enter.

  Nimble poked his head through the gap in the door—to ensure he wasn’t about to stumble into an embarrassing situation, I supposed—before venturing inside. “Your evenin’ clothes, Cap’n.”

  I could see Sidney visibly suppress a sigh. He’d instructed his former batman dozens of times not to call him that anymore, and yet he persisted in doing so. Not intentionally, I suspected, but because he had done so for so long without thinking. “You can hang them there,” Sidney directed. “I’ll dress myself this evening.”

  “Very good, cap—er . . . sir,” he replied, catching himself that time.

  “Nimble, before you go,” I called, swinging my legs over the side of the fainting couch and sitting forward.

  He paused, turning to face me.

  “How is Fräulein Bauer getting on?”

  Nimble shifted his feet uncomfortably.

  “Are the other servants being unkind?” I asked, putting into words what it seemed he was struggling to say.

  He lifted his hand to rub at the scars blistering the left side of his face near his hairline, courtesy of a shell explosion. The same explosion that had taken part of his ear. I noticed he often did this when he was uneasy about something.

  “They don’t like her much.”

  “Yes, I suspected that,” I admitted sadly. “Because she’s German?”

  He nodded.

  I tilted my head, studying his hulking frame and neat appearance, wondering if I’d presumed too much from his easygoing nature. “You don’t dislike her, do you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t really know her. But if ye mean, do I hold her bein’ German against her.” He shook his head. “Naw. She can’t help where she was born. And what could a slip of a girl like her ever ’ve done to harm anyone?”

  I could name half a dozen slip-of-a-girls that would prove that assertion wrong, but I kept that thought to myself.

  “Would you keep an eye on her?”

  Nimble shuffled his feet again, his gaze flicking toward Sidney and then back.

  “Just . . . let me know if anyone is harassing her in particular. If they’re cruel.”

  I’d decided that saying something to the servants would only make matters worse. They tended to resent any interference in such things, and would only take it out on Bauer, but in more subtle ways. However, I also didn’t want to see the girl harmed or mistreated. If the other servants took matters too far, then I would step in.

  He hesitated a moment longer before nodding. As he left, I couldn’t help but wonder at his reticence. Had he worried my intrusion would harm Bauer more? Or did he fear that his intervention would not go unmarked by the other servants and turn their opinions against him? Nimble had not seemed the type to allow such considerations to sway him from doing what was right, but I supposed we all had our vulnerabilities we were afraid to expose.

  My gaze met Sidney’s watchful one, but before he could speak, the reverberating chime of the clock in the entry hall propelled me to my feet. “Dash it!” I exclaimed, reaching for the buttons at the side of my skirt.

  Thanks to the ease of styling my bobbed hair, and Sidney’s nimble fingers on the buttons of my gown, we stepped through the doorway into the drawing room seconds before the quarter hour. My mother gave me a knowing look, but the position of the minute hand prevented her from scolding me outright. In any case, we were not the last to arrive. As I crossed the room toward where Tante Ilse sat conversing with Rachel, I noted Tim’s absence.

  “She looks much better,” I murmured to Freddy, relieved to see our great-aunt’s color had returned and her eyes were lively as she relayed a story to my sister-in-law.

  “Yes, perhaps it was just fatigue,” he replied evenly, though I could tell by the look in his eyes he still reserved judgment.

  “Is Ruthie with Miss Pettigrew?”

  He nodded. “She refused her afternoon nap, so she’s already been put to bed.” He glanced toward the door. “As for Tim, I couldn’t say.” There was a note of disapproval in his voice, but also resignation, which made me wonder how often my younger brother tended to disappear.

  Abbott appeared in the doorway promptly at 6:15, and we all turned to follow Mother and Father from the room. As we crossed the hall, I caught sight of Tim pattering down the last rise of stairs, still adjusting his bow tie. He flashed me a sheepish grin, slipping into line with the rest of us as we filed into the dining room.

  The chamber remained unchanged from my grandmother’s days. It was papered in dark slate-blue toile wallpaper with heavy matching drapes drawn across the large window that offered an expansive view of the dales during daylight. To compensate for the darkness, a gaslit chandelier glinted overhead, and a number of candles were lit down the length of the table as well as on the fireplace mantel. A large mirror above the hearth reflected back the light, as well as giving me a view of the portraits of my great-grandparents gracing the wall behind me.

  I refrained from looking down the table toward the chair where Rob had always sat to my mother’s left, the place where Rachel now settled across from her husband. Tim’s tardiness had spared me a few moments of anxiety, but I could feel it stealing over me again, beating a tattoo in my ears.

  As if conscious of this, Father cast me an encouraging smile as he settled his napkin in his lap. Or perhaps he was merely commiserating. I knew he’d seen the look Mother had cast my way as I entered the drawing room. Across from me, I could see Tim’s shoulders braced for the coming rebuke, but Mother remained silent.

  That is, until after Father uttered grace and the first course of consommé was set before us. Just as Tim was starting to relax, she slipped her spoon into her bowl of soup—barely making a ripple—as cleanly as her barbed voice sliced into my brother.

  “Timothy Harold Townsend, don’t fool yourself into thinking I didn’t notice your tardiness.” Her gaze remained trained on him as she ate a spoonful of soup before continuing in the same level tone that belied its lethal edge. “Nor have I failed to note you didn’t deliver the basket to Mrs. Wild I asked you to.”

  He flushed, and I couldn’t help but wonder just what he’d gott
en up to this afternoon. He had expressed an interest in joining me and Sidney on our bicycle ride, but by the time we’d changed clothes and wheeled the cycles out of the shed in the inner courtyard where they were stored, he was nowhere to be found. We’d assumed he’d been called away to assist Father or Freddy, or had simply changed his mind. But that didn’t seem to be the case.

  “My apologies,” he mumbled. “I forgot. I must have been up too late drinking with Verity and Freddy.”

  One would have thought from his guileless, hangdog expression that this confession had slipped out unheeded, but the darting glances he cast down the table made me suspect differently. One look at Freddy’s tight-lipped face confirmed it. Tim’s heedless words had been no accident. He’d meant to betray us, no doubt to shift attention from himself.

  His pronouncement was met with predictable results.

  After a fleeting look at Freddy, Mother’s icy stare shifted to me. “I see. And after I made it abundantly clear how I feel about imbibing in this house.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to reply that we hadn’t been in the house, but I was no longer seventeen, and such a sarcastic retort would only have brought my father into the argument. Instead I channeled my ire into the glare I aimed at Tim, whose attention remained absorbed with his soup.

  “I raised you to be a lady, and to behave with more decorum than that,” Mother huffed. “Apparently you’ve forgotten that while you’ve been in London, what with the type of establishments you’ve been frequenting and the low company you’ve been keeping.”

  That she was referring to Matilda’s reports when she had still worked for me, and the articles in the scandal rags and newspapers—which still penetrated into the heart of Yorkshire—was obvious. I had begun to feature in them during the midst of the war when I began venturing to the swankiest nightclubs and restaurants, partly as a means to distract myself, and partly in my role with the Secret Service, gathering intelligence. Not that my mother would ever, could ever know about that.