Murder Most Fair

by Anna Lee Huber

  “Mother, you must know those scandal rags exaggerate,” Freddy said.

  I didn’t know why I was surprised by his defending me, except he’d come to London not four months earlier to scold me about the very same thing. In any case, I was grateful, particularly as his remark had earned him a glower from his wife.

  Mother ignored his comment, keeping her focus on me. “What your husband’s family must think, I dare not speculate.”

  “I found her desire to reconnect with her brothers last night quite reasonable, admirable even,” Sidney remarked, lowering his spoon before dabbing his mouth with his napkin. By his carefully controlled movements, I could tell he was restraining himself, but to the others at the table he must have seemed at ease as he flashed me a gentle smile. “I know how much she’s missed them. And given the amount of time they spent outdoors growing up, it seemed perfectly natural for them to converse in the stables. Not to mention polite, so as not to wake anyone.

  “As for my parents, and the rest of my family, they’ve never paid much heed to what is in the society papers.” He reached for my hand, clasping it briefly with his own. “They’ve always adored Verity, and still do.”

  How this could be true, or how he could possibly know it if it was, was doubtful. Sidney’s parents were, in the best of terms, uninvolved. I had spent only a handful of days in their company over the past five years, and one of those had been to discuss my widow’s settlement after we’d received the news of his supposed death, and another to welcome his return to the living. Not for a moment did I doubt they were glad he was alive, but they seemed entirely content to be tangentially aware of his existence. Though we never discussed it, I could sense that Sidney wished there were more to their relationship than the merest formalities.

  However, I would never reveal any of this to my mother. Doing so would feel like a betrayal. And so I returned his smile with a grateful one of my own.

  His words forestalled my mother, but I knew it wouldn’t last long. As if sensing this, my father spoke, asking after Sidney’s parents and his uncles. Since Father had been the one to turn the conversation to more amenable subjects, I knew Mother wouldn’t attempt to return to the subject of my drinking whisky in the barn. But I was not foolish enough to believe that meant the matter was dropped entirely.

  “You’re fortunate your husband is so understanding about your less-than-favorable habits,” she declared the following afternoon as we set off on her round of Monday social calls.

  The motorcar rocked back and forth as we rolled over the rough gouges scored at the end of the drive before turning onto the road proper. I sank back against the plush seats redolent with the scent of new leather and my mother’s familiar eau de cologne, and glanced at the reflection of my parents’ chauffeur in the rearview mirror. I was surprised Mother had spoken thusly in front of him, though he didn’t seem to be paying us any mind. A vague recollection stirred in my brain of her telling me that one of the new servants they’d hired after the war had made it through physically unscathed but for some hearing loss, and I suspected this must be the chap.

  “If you’re talking about my drinking, it’s not a habit, Mother,” I replied evenly, determined to keep my aggravation to myself. “It’s simply what people in society do.”

  Though, not so long ago, I couldn’t have claimed the same thing, for drinking had definitely become part of my ritual. Especially during the dark months I’d believed Sidney to be dead. Then drinking had been a means of survival, of numbing and forgetting. While I still worked for the Secret Service, I’d kept it under control, aware of my limit so that I was still capable of doing my job. But after I was demobbed, there had been no reason to regulate myself. If not for Sidney’s return and that fateful house party in June, who knew where I would be?

  She sniffed. “None of the society I know.”

  I stifled a sigh, refusing to argue this point. She would undoubtedly be shocked by the substances even the most respectable members of society were willing to indulge in. Turning to gaze out the window of the Rolls-Royce, I studied the low ceiling of clouds, which cast a pall over the landscape. Rain didn’t appear to be imminent, but a stiff breeze riffled the tall grasses bordering the road and rattled the branches of the trees. One more blustery storm would finish off the last of the leaves clinging to the oaks and elms.

  “I’m worried about you, Verity.”

  I turned to find her eyeing me with concern, and the sight of that tender emotion did much to soften my irritation with her. “There’s no need, Mother. I’m well. I promise.”

  “So you say, and yet I see all the things they write about you in the papers. These nightclubs with their drinking and dancing and that American music.”

  “It’s called jazz.”

  “And the murders,” she exclaimed before lowering her voice. “How many have you become involved in?”

  “I help to solve them,” I replied sharply, resentful of the way she spoke about them, as if I was partially to blame for the deaths themselves. “And I don’t keep count.”

  This wasn’t strictly true, but I wasn’t about to tout the actual numbers for her. Especially when the delineation between the deaths I could speak of and the deaths that had been part of my Secret Service work that I had to keep silent about was not always clear.

  “That’s my point! You’ve become so involved with them now you actually need to keep a tally to keep track.”

  “There haven’t been so many,” I argued. Though many would say one was already too much. “And besides, you and Aunt Ernestine asked me to investigate the last two.”

  “But not to the degree it seems you did.” Consternation knit her brow as she clasped her handbag tighter between her hands in her lap. “You act as if all of it is nothing but a lark.”

  My voice hardened. “No, I don’t.” I had never treated what I did as a lark. Never.

  “And what of your refusal to come home?” Mother demanded, once again ignoring my response. “It took a threat to make you return.”

  “Imagine that,” I drawled sharply. “I can’t comprehend why I didn’t return earlier to be subjected to such an affectionate interrogation.”

  Her shoulders stiffened and her mouth tightened into an angry moue, but there was a fleeting glint in her eyes that told me that beneath her affronted exterior she was genuinely hurt. “Someday when you have children of your own you’ll understand.” She turned to stare through the windscreen at the road ahead, her composure seeming more brittle to my eyes than it had before I’d seen that flash of pain.

  My hands tightened into fists, my fingernails digging into my palms at the realization that I’d been the one to cause her such heartache. I knew I should apologize for my absence, for my snippy words, but why did she have to make it so difficult? Why was it so hard to tell her that it hadn’t been so much the threat or even Tante Ilse’s arrival in England that had driven me home, but the realization that it was time? That I hadn’t stayed away because I didn’t care—about Rob, about her, about all of them—but because I cared too much.

  I sat smoothing the pleats of my navy-blue botany serge skirt, trying to force the words out, when she turned to look at me sidelong.

  “You aren’t expecting, are you?” she asked as her gaze slid up and down my figure, inspecting it.

  I straightened my already correct posture, uncertain whether I should feel affronted or not. “No.”

  Her eyes lifted to scrutinize my face. “You say that with such certainty.”

  I frowned, vexed that she should press this. “Because I am certain.”

  Her chin suddenly arched. “Tell me you aren’t adhering to the guidance in that woman’s book?”

  “If by ‘that woman’ you mean Marie Stopes, then yes. At least, to some extent,” I hedged, not truly wishing to discuss this topic with my mother, whose advice to me on my wedding night had been very Victorian in nature. Fortunately, Sidney had not expected me to lie still and think of England.

&
nbsp; Stopes was the author of the controversial book Married Love, and a proponent of birth control and family planning, concepts that clearly shocked my mother.

  “Verity, that is both sinful and immoral.”

  The chauffeur glanced at us in the rearview mirror, clearly having heard her outburst, though hopefully not her exact words.

  I leaned toward her, lowering my voice. “Is it so wrong that Sidney and I wish to become reacquainted before we produce a child?” I demanded to know. I refrained from confessing that when he’d first returned from the dead I hadn’t been certain I even wanted to remain married to him, but she was not so oblivious to my thinking as I’d hoped.

  “You would have had at least nine months to become reacquainted,” she sniped, and then her eyes widened. “Verity Alice Townsend Kent, do not tell me you are thinking of divorce.”

  “No. Not now,” I amended for the sake of honesty.

  She shook her head. “After all he’s been through.”

  Fury shot through my veins. “All he’s been through? What about everything he put me through? Letting me believe he was dead for fifteen months.”

  “But for a very good reason.”

  “Maybe so, but that doesn’t wipe away the pain and anguish. . .” I broke off and turned away, unwilling to expose those hurts to her when I could see she felt no sympathy for what I’d endured. “It doesn’t matter,” I said once I’d regained my composure. “What happens in our marriage is between me and Sidney. I just wish . . . I just wish you could show me a bit of empathy once in a while.”

  “You want me to show you empathy?” She scoffed. “And what about mine? Where was my empathy when your brother died? When you refused to come home. I see how much I mean to you. Your own mother.”

  I turned my head to look at her, seeing that same pain I’d witnessed earlier mixed up with the anger that shimmered in her eyes. “I know I hurt you when I didn’t come home. I know I should have returned sooner. But you are not the only one who lost him. And . . .” I nearly choked trying to swallow around the lump that had risen in my throat. “And there is more than one way to grieve.”

  I jerked my head around just as the tear I could feel quivering at the edge of my eye spilled down my cheek, unwilling to let her see it. My heart pounded in my chest and my ears, making me feel sick. I forced myself to take deep, calming breaths while internally I ruthlessly hammered down the lid on the mental container into which I’d poured all my grief over Rob.

  Under the cover of adjusting my smart blue cloche hat, I swiped the wetness from my cheek and risked a glance at my mother’s reflection in the window. From the hollow ache in my breast, I recognized that part of me had hoped she might reach out to me, but instead she sat stiffly, her head turned away. All our words had done nothing to close the gap between us, but instead had only widened it.

  CHAPTER 14

  Purgatory was an afternoon of making social calls with my mother. Somehow, somewhere I must have sinned more egregiously than I’d ever realized, and this was to be my penance. It was brutal. It was agonizing. And it was all administered at the mercy—or lack thereof—of my mother’s hands.

  The same conversation topics were repeated at every home, served with the same tea and tiny sandwiches. The same questions were put to me, the only variation being how strenuously I was probed. Mrs. Redmayne had seemed prepared to bring out the thumbscrews, while Mrs. Wild had delicately hinted around the more sensitive issues, such as the deaths of so many of the young men who had been my friends and neighbors. Part of me wondered whether my mother had orchestrated matters, all in an effort to break me, but my mind balked at the notion that she could be so cruel.

  Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded reminiscing with Mrs. Wild about her son, Henry. Perhaps because I knew she wasn’t trying to coerce a reaction, and the fact that her tone was comforting and consoling. It wasn’t that I wished to avoid talking about our lost boys all together, but I resented the topic being forced upon me, and my emotions being poked and prodded as if to examine their authenticity. Did I grieve too much or too little? Was I too cold or maudlin? Their expectations were as exhausting as my own efforts to maintain my composure.

  Our final visit of the afternoon was to the Hardcastles, who lived in a pretty stone cottage near the river, its walls covered in ivy. Mrs. Hardcastle was a slim, wizened widow of about fifty. She had always been a bit of a hypochondriac, and Freddy had warned me that the war had only made it worse. It was difficult to tell whether there was something to her claims of poor health or not, but she could expound on the subject for hours if you let her. Mother, thankfully, did not. But that didn’t mean Mrs. Hardcastle didn’t craftily try to bring the topic of conversation back around to it time and again.

  “Mrs. Kent, you look the picture of health,” she declared as she settled in her chair before the partially opened window, draping enough blankets around her shoulders to nearly smother herself. The table at her elbow was covered in all manner of jars and unguents, and likely responsible for the scent of camphor and mint that filled the room along with wood smoke. She shook a finger at me. “You’re incredibly lucky. Don’t take that for granted.”

  “Yes, Verity has always been vulgarly healthy,” my mother replied, drawing a frown from me. “She even avoided catching the Spanish influenza, when we all know how it rampaged through London.”

  I barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Both women had been born to a generation that prized feminine delicacy. In their minds, too hearty a constitution was seen as unladylike and a decided blight against a female. Not that they wished for me to suffer and die, but I should at least have the decency to succumb to some deficiency of health. Ironically, the fact that the Spanish influenza, which had raged throughout the world through 1918 and early 1919, had disproportionately infected and killed those who were in the prime of their lives and at the peak of their health seemed to reinforce their mindset. Better to be delicate and live than alarmingly healthy and die.

  “I was terrified my Isaac would catch it, you know,” Mrs. Hardcastle confided. “What, with his asthma, hay fever, and all. But by the Lord’s will, he came through unscathed.”

  I hated that phrase. By the Lord’s will. Why was it that the people using it were usually the ones who had come out the better in the end? I’d heard it spouted far too often these past five years. It was recited to comfort the grieving—though it truly only consoled the speaker—and offered as an explanation to the unexplainable. I refused to believe the slaughter of so many lives for so little cause had been the Lord’s will. No, that was all man’s doing.

  “Ah, here he is now,” she exclaimed as her son entered the room, oblivious to my thoughts.

  I was, of course, acquainted with Isaac Hardcastle, having grown up in Hawes, but not as well as with many of the other boys. Isaac had not been allowed to play with the rest of us very often, his asthma and breathing issues often becoming inflamed from time outdoors. I remembered him as a short, scrawny fellow who stood no taller than me in my stocking feet, but apparently he was a late bloomer.

  My eyes widened in surprise, for some time in the last five years he had not only grown a good six or eight inches taller, but also packed on several stone of weight. Now his figure was far more round than emaciated.

  His eyes crinkled with good humor. “I look a bit different than the last time you saw me, don’t I?”

  I gave a startled laugh at his addressing the issue so forthrightly. “Yes, you do. How are you?”

  He sank into the chair his mother indicated. “Very well. I can’t complain.”

  Yes, I remembered that about him. While his mother voiced more complaints than the entire village, he rarely ever grumbled, even when his face was red and his breath was wheezing in and out of his chest from climbing a small hill.

  “Isaac is on the parish council,” Mrs. Hardcastle declared proudly, as well she might be, for the councilmen were usually older gentlemen. “And he was an administrator for the lo
cal Volunteer Training Corps.”

  The VTCs had served as home defense militias, their ranks filled with men over military age or prevented from volunteering to the armed services for various reasons. They were usually geographically based, but not always. I remembered hearing about one unit of deaf and mute volunteers who had drilled using sign language.

  “He couldn’t enlist, of course, because of his health.” She reached over to pat his hand where it rested on the arm of his chair. “And he was needed here.”

  Isaac offered her a tight smile in response, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it bothered him that he hadn’t been able to serve like most of the other men his age. It was true his asthma would have made it all but impossible. No one who knew him doubted that. But that didn’t mean he was pleased to have escaped military service.

  “Was that your husband’s Pierce-Arrow I saw on the road from Garsdale Head two days ago?” he asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

  “Yes,” I replied. “He’s incredibly fond of that motorcar.”

  “And well he should be. Quite the goer.”

  “Sidney was awarded the Victoria Cross, you know,” Mother said, slipping that in as she had to every conversation that day, even though I suspected most of the people had already heard this bit of news.

  Then they would turn to me as Mrs. Hardcastle did. “You must be very proud.”

  And I would smile and say, “Yes, very proud.” Which was true. I was proud. But my feelings over his receiving a medal for valor were much more complicated than that. Especially knowing how Sidney himself felt about the honor. I knew he would despise the fact that my mother was bandying it about the village repeatedly.

  “I heard rumors you would be returning for the holidays,” Isaac stated, redirecting the conversation yet again. “But I said I would believe it when I saw it.”

  “Good heavens,” I laughed with forced cheer. “Don’t tell me the entire village has been talking about it?” I glanced at my mother, knowing that if they had, she had been the cause of it.