Much as he would have liked to, Sir John could not argue with this statement. Gibbon cast him a sympathetic glance.
Dulcie returned her attention to the Halliday solicitor. “To continue, Mr. Crossthwaite: do you or do you not mean to substantiate Barbary’s claim? Should you verify her credentials, what will she gain? You may not be aware, John, that there is no tangible evidence that Cade Halliday is dead. Interesting, is it not? Were Cade with us, he would be a strong contender for the villain of this piece; who better to play the part of a man’s ghost than the man himself? Ah, I see you have overlooked that minor detail.”
“I’ve overlooked nothing.” If his character was unimpeachable, Bow Street’s Chief Magistrate was not above an occasional fib. “Speak up, Crossthwaite! Have you some suspicion that Cade Halliday may be alive?”
“I can’t say one way or another.” The solicitor pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his brow. “Never in all my practice of the law have I encountered a situation such as this. There seems little real doubt Cade Halliday perished in that accident, but the bodies of the two men who went out in the boat with him were recovered, whereas his was not.”
“I read about that accident.” Dulcie rose and took a turn around the little room. “Odd that the men took out the boat in such unsuitable weather, don’t you think? As I recall, the identity of the third man was never revealed.”
Mr. Crossthwaite looked unhappy. “Mrs. Halliday tells me she did not wish to distress the family. Her husband had been using a different surname.”
“Mrs. Halliday shows rather more consideration for her husband’s relatives than they show for her,” Dulcie remarked drily. “About Sir Wesley’s will, Mr. Crossthwaite: you did not draw it up?”
“Would that I had.” The solicitor folded his handkerchief and tucked it away. “Sir Wesley presented the document to me with strict instructions that it wasn’t to be opened until after his death. I assumed I knew the contents. He had made no secret of his wishes. As it turns out, my assumptions were incorrect.”
The Patent Warm-Air Stove proving almost too efficient, Sir John shrugged off his heavy overcoat. “You suspect a forgery?”
Mr. Crossthwaite shook his head. “The will is legal, air-tight, and a wretchedly constructed thing, but the signature on it is unquestionably his. I cannot help but conclude that Sir Wesley doubted my discretion. Honestly, I don’t know why he should have.”
“Had Sir Wesley doubted you, Mr. Crossthwaite, he would have taken all his business elsewhere.” Lady Bligh excelled at smoothing ruffled feathers when by such an act her own ends might be achieved. “You locked the document away, I credit, and had the only key? Anyone seeking to learn the disposition of the Halliday estate upon the event of Sir Wesley’s death would be misled by the erroneous information with which he had made free. I do not mean to suggest that you spoke out of turn, Mr. Crossthwaite, but it might be interesting to learn if your employees are equally circumspect.”
The solicitor protested that his employees were honest as the day was long. Sir John, whom experience had made a skeptic, doubted that was the case. “Obviously, if inquiries are made about a man’s will prior to his death, then that death becomes a highly questionable event. You are convinced that Janthina Halliday is no longer alive?”
Even though the Baroness remained standing, Mr. Crossthwaite sank into a chair. “We searched for her, put discreet advertisements in all the major newspapers, but found no trace. Even going on the assumption that she, too, used a different name after leaving Greenwood, she could hardly disappear into thin air.”
“Perhaps she never left Greenwood,” said Dulcie. “Amazing, the ease with which the local people disappear.”
Even more amazing, though it should not have been, was the ease with which the Baroness had inserted herself into another Bow Street matter. Sir John heard a door open, smelled tobacco smoke. He turned his back on Lady Bligh.
Crump stood in the middle of the taproom, his hat pushed back jauntily upon his head, a pipe in one hand. He beamed at sight of his Chief Magistrate. “Well met, sir!” he said.
The day had grown increasingly gloomy; a storm was due; it was not at all the sort of weather in which one wished to be scouring the countryside; and therefore ‘well met’ was hardly an appropriate phrase. So Sir John announced. Then he irritably demanded to be told just what business his Runner had been about.
“Yes, do tell us, dear Crump!” said Dulcie, who had followed Sir John into the taproom, Gibbon and Mr. Crossthwaite trailing scant paces behind. The innkeeper, drawn by the voices, offered everyone a glass of his finest ale.
“I’ve been pursuing inquiries about a certain horse,” explained Crump. As Sir John struggled with his annoyance, which was all the greater for having found himself in the wrong, the Runner turned to Abel and requested a concoction made of warm porter and moist sugar, gin and nutmeg, known as a dog’s nose. “Inquiries,” Crump added mysteriously, “that have most handsomely paid off.”
“That horseshoe has been puzzling me.” Dulcie lowered herself into a chair. “As has the circumstance that Connor’s horse returned so tardily to its stall, and in a lathered state. If the murderer’s horse did throw a shoe at a most inconvenient moment, he might have appropriated Connor’s horse and led his own mount home, wherever ‘home’ may have been. Alternately, Connor’s horse may have taken fright at the gunshot and of its own accord gone galloping around the countryside, in which case the horseshoe may be of no importance at all. If dumb beasts could talk, how much further ahead we would be.”
In Crump’s opinion, he would be a great deal further ahead if a certain meddlesome Baroness was not allowed to interfere with his investigation. He cleared his throat, thereby drawing the attention of his superior, who acidly inquired why, if Crump’s inquiries had paid off, he had failed to present himself at the Castle and make a report. Crump fixed a cautious eye on the Chief Magistrate’s irate countenance and pointed out that Sir John wasn’t at the Castle, but here at the Four Nuns. “In any event, to be barging in on the Quality isn’t my place,” he added, conveniently overlooking how many times he’d done that very thing.
Sir John squelched an improper suggestion as to where Crump’s place might be, and an even more improper suggestion that Crump take himself there. Instead, he requested an accounting of the Runner’s day.
Abel Bagshot hurried across the room with Crump’s concoction. The Runner sampled it and gave an approving nod. “It turns out that on the morning the fountain in Lady Margaret’s Garden started up again, a silk scarf was found at the scene. Subsequently, and after a visit by Master Gibbon here, that same scarf disappeared.”
Sir John turned a stern eye on the butler, who was inching ever closer to the outer door. “How the deuce did you get onto that?” he demanded of Crump.
“Lady Halliday let it slip, sir, when I last spoke with her. ‘Twas she who found the scarf. Queer that she should have forgotten to mention it before, but the human mind is a wondrous thing.”
First Sir John was sent wandering about a forest until his bones nigh froze; then he was so provoked and pulled-about that his blood fair boiled in his veins. All this aggravation was hardly healthy for a man his age.
All the same, aggravated he was, and had little hope he might become less so at any time in the near future. The Chief Magistrate requested he be told, without philosophical observations, what a silk scarf had to do with anything.
“Crump has concluded that the scarf belongs to Giuseppe,” explained Dulcie, before the Runner had a chance to speak. “Interesting, how everyone is so determined to crucify that poor man. Pray tell me, what had Giuseppe to gain from Connor’s death?”
“For that matter,” Sir John retorted, “what had anybody to gain, save the missing Janthina? And on the word of Mr. Crossthwaite, she couldn’t have known about the will. At least, she couldn’t have learned of it from him. It’s possible that Sir Wesley may have been in touch with her himself. He may even have told
her he meant to leave her a handsome inheritance.”
“I believe that I have remarked before,” Dulcie chided him, “upon this tendency to go about clutching at straws. If Mr. Crossthwaite could not trace Janthina, why should Sir Wesley have had any greater success?”
“Mayhap she got in touch with him.” Crump puffed on his pipe. “One thing’s certain; Janthina didn’t go off with Cade. Or if she did, he rid himself of her before marrying that Barbary. Unless Barbary is Janthina, wearing some disguise. In which case they couldn’t have been married. Being as marrying one’s half-sister is against the law.”
Sir John did not care to pursue this topic, particularly in the present company; save for his little weakness concerning Lady Bligh, Sir John was a conventional gentleman, and he was shocked to the depths of his rather puritanical soul by the suggestion of familial improprieties.
Crump had noted and misread the Chief Magistrate’s expression. “We’ll find her, sir, all in good time. She’s had twenty years to hide her tracks.”
Abel Bagshot, embarked on a sudden bout of taproom-cleaning, grew so fascinated with the conversation that he felt compelled to put in his tuppence. “Janthina did come back once. Some two years after she left. She tried to see Sir Wesley, but Connor drove her off.”
“Is that so, laddie?” Contemplatively, Crump chewed his pipe stem. “I’m mighty curious as to why no one has mentioned this before.”
“It could be that no one considered it important.” Dulcie warmed her hands at the Patent Warm-Air Stove. “Being as whatever happened, happened eighteen years ago. Now about that horse—”
Sir John suspected that he was missing something. Maybe several somethings. “What horse?” he snapped.
“The horse with a trick of chucking a fore-shoe halfway up in its owner’s face,” Crump reminded him. “A roan with white stockings and a white blaze, seventeen hands high and five years old.”
Mr. Bagshot, upon hearing this detailed description, decided to try and remove himself from his taproom. He had retreated only a few steps when a hand grasped his jacket collar and pulled him to a halt.
“Tsk!” said Lady Bligh. “Gibbon, fetch him here. Really, Mr. Bagshot. You might bear in mind that it was not curiosity that killed the cat, but greed.”
Definitely, he was missing several somethings. “What in blazes,” thundered Sir John, “is this all about?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you, sir,” Crump said patiently. “I’ve found the roan.”
“Where?”
“In Abel Bagshot’s stable, munching on his oats.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Not being an escape artist, Mr. Bagshot couldn’t wriggle out of the tight fix in which he found himself, but he could and did prove most evasive on the subject of a certain roan. In short, he disavowed all knowledge, despite the fact his head groom swore the animal had been in Abel’s stable for over a week. Who owned the horse, the groom couldn’t say, it not being his place to question the pedigrees of the animals placed under his care. And yes, when the roan first appeared, it had been missing a front shoe. The groom had thought little of the matter. His free time being taken up with courting a lass in a neighboring village, he paid little heed to local events.
To say that the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street was unhappy with this development would be to gravely understate the case. What the devil, he inquired of his hostess, as he climbed into her carriage, was he to make of this bloody horse? How came it to be in Abel Bagshot’s stable when Abel Bagshot disavowed all knowledge of the beast? And why, if it had been all this time in Abel Bagshot’s stable, had Crump not discovered it before?
Perhaps, the Baroness suggested, Crump had failed to examine his back doorstep.
More likely, the Chief Magistrate retorted, Crump had allowed the wool to be pulled over his eyes. And, speaking of being hoodwinked, Sir John did not appreciate being sent into the forest with a bogus map. “What’s your interest in this business, Dulcie? I’ll have the truth without further roundaboutation, do you understand?”
Dulcie snuggled deeper into her ermine-trimmed coat. “All truths are easy to understand, once they are discovered. The point is to discover them. Now, hush and let me think.”
Sir John was tempted, briefly, to demand he be let down from the carriage. A recollection of the weather overcame the impulse and he subsided into sulks.
Things were little more cheerful at the Castle. The family had gathered in the solar. Dickon and Hubert were engaged in an acrimonious game of chess; Jael was instructing Austen in the fine art of card-sharping; Ned was enlightening his companions about the French indifference to death, which was so great that corpses had been carefully preserved for sightseers to view at Montmartre.
Unnoticed by the others, Livvy slipped away. She wrapped up warmly in a heavy coat, called for a horse to be saddled, cast a wary eye at the grey sky, and set out for the Hall. Amanda plagued her like a sore tooth. Livvy could not refrain from prodding at the tender spot.
She found Lady Halliday seated in her drawing room, staring gloomily at the painted pheasants. Upon being informed she had a caller, Amanda sprang up. “How glad I am you’ve come! I’ve longed to see a friendly face.”
Livvy wasn’t feeling especially friendly. “Your ankle is better?” she asked.
“It is becoming so.” Amanda poked her foot out from beneath the hem of her dark gown. “There is always something to be grateful for, or so I tell myself. Sometimes I feel that when I married Sir Wesley I crossed the Rubicon — It is the Rubicon, isn’t it? Or have I muddled that up, too? — and unwittingly burned my boats. You will think me a poor-spirited creature, to be so continually out of frame. But it is difficult to be cheerful when Rosamond is being beastly, and Barbary cold, while Ned— Nonetheless, I should be able to exhibit some fortitude. I vow I am all out of patience with myself.”
Livvy almost sympathized. She was acquainted with the frustration attendant upon having serious differences with oneself.
Amanda drew Livvy down beside her on the duchesse. “Let us be frank with one another. I am not such a block — whatever Rosamond may think — that I believe this is a simple social call.”
Livvy felt a stab of guilt. “I need to speak with you.”
Amanda folded her hands in her lap. “You mean that we should lay our cards on the table, then?”
Did she? Livvy supposed she did.
“As you wish!” said Amanda. “To behave in a hugger-mugger fashion is not at all what I can like. I see you don’t believe me. You are thinking that I met clandestinely with Ned. Well, and so I did, and so I will — or I will if he will — and I do hope you don’t mean to try and throw a rub in my way.”
“Do you fear I mean to meddle in your business?” asked Livvy, startled. “I promise I do not.”
“I didn’t mean to accuse you of interfering,” Amanda assured her. “But your husband must surely have told you, or you would not have come to me.”
What was Dickon supposed to have told her? About his passion for this pretty featherhead? Livvy concluded that things were in an even worse case than she had feared. “It is imperative,” Amanda went on, “that I speak with Ned. I must tell him that—”
“Lady Dorset,” came a voice from behind them. “The butler told me you were here. We have not been formally introduced. I am Barbary Halliday.”
Not a pretty woman, decided Livvy, as she rose; but Barbary Halliday was not unattractive either, with her honey-blonde hair and amber eyes. She murmured a polite response, wondering how much of their conversation had been overheard. Amanda might have been wondering the same thing. She was regarding her daughter-in-law with profound distrust.
There was nothing in Barbary’s manner to indicate an awareness of interrupted confidences. “I’m sorry to have startled you,” she said, as she lowered herself into a shield-back chair. “I wished to inquire if Bow Street has made any further progress.”
“I can tell you little,” Livvy replied, with p
erfect truth. “The missing horse has been found in Abel Bagshot’s stable, but no one seems willing to admit who left it there.”
“I’d wager on Gypsy Joe,” ventured Amanda. “But in that case, where is he?”
The door abruptly opened. Jenks, in a state of most unbutler-like agitation, stepped into the room. “Forgive me, my lady!” he gasped. Hard on his heels followed a gentleman in travel-stained riding clothes. His auburn hair was unkempt, his chin stubbled with days-old beard.
Amanda’s jaw dropped open. Barbary stirred, as if rousing from a trance. “Not dead!” she whispered, then flew across the room.
Said the gentleman into whose arms she flung herself, “Barbary?”
She clung to him as if she were drowning and he her life raft. “I had to come. You must see that.”
He set her away from him. “Your presence does add a nice touch to the prodigal’s return.”
“The prodigal?” echoed Livvy. “Whatever does this mean?”
Amanda was staring at the newcomer. “I daresay it doesn’t mean that we should start believing in ghosts. This must be Cade, of course. Unless there was yet another brother? I had not perfectly understood how much they look alike.”
Barbary grasped the man’s arm again. “All these months, you allowed me to believe you drowned!”
He scowled at her. “We will discuss this later. When we are alone.”
Amanda stepped forward, bravely placing herself between the newcomer and the doorway. “I think you must explain now, sir. What manner of person would allow his family to think him dead?”
His glance flicked over her, dismissively. “A blow to the head, a loss of memory— I have but recently returned to my senses. And now, that conversation, wife?”
Amanda refused to step aside. “Perhaps you are not aware of recent events.”
Again that cool glance rebuffed her. “I am aware that Connor is dead and the estate is meant to pass to Janthina. I wish her joy of it.”
The Ghosts of Greenwood Page 15
