“I’m in complete agreement,” said Mrs. Malone. “It’s only prudent to decline to attend. We must be mindful of public opinion. Dora is yet unmarried, and we wouldn’t want to damage Mr. Baxter’s opinion of her.” She put her hand maternally on Dora’s. Dora started in shock before casting a wary glance at Mrs. Malone and nodding once in acknowledgement.
Chloe felt her cheeks flush hot at the thought of her brilliant and vivacious friend going unmourned because she was murdered outdoors instead of dying respectably in her own bed. She took a breath to steady herself before speaking.
“Doesn’t everyone take a walk on the moor occasionally?”
“We do. But we aren’t assaulted when we go out,” said Mrs. Malone, fixing her with a bright blue gaze. “And we always go in daylight. She must have been involved in something dreadful to be attacked in such a way. Perhaps she was keeping company with an unsuitable person.” Her last two words were spoken with too much force and venom.
“She and I have been in correspondence for three years and I can assure you that she was as upright a person as you would care to meet,” Chloe straightened up and Mrs. Malone’s eyes widened in shock.
“You know nothing about it. How could you? You never even met the woman.”
“I know enough to understand that a good woman has been murdered. It’s unthinkable to deny her a proper and fitting burial.” Chloe felt Ambrose shift uncomfortably in the chair beside her.
“She will have a fitting and proper burial,” said Alexander. His expression was gentle and his tone soothing. “Mrs. Granger was a great favorite in our house. She was a lovely woman and we all liked her.” He looked at Mrs. Malone who leaned back in her chair, glaring. “But I implore you to understand, Mrs. Sullivan. The circumstances of her death prevent us from giving public scandal by attending. For us to be present would be to condone her behavior.”
“But aside from walking, which Mrs. Malone admits that everyone does, what was this behavior?” Chloe kept her eyes on Alexander, knowing that to glance at Mrs. Malone would only anger her further.
Alexander hesitated, opened his mouth and closed it again. Beatrice spoke instead.
“She disappeared five days ago. Everyone presumed she was with another person,” said Beatrice. Another person? Camille had a paramour? Unthinkable. Chloe would not believe it. “Although a few said she had returned to her family in France.”
Chloe’s heart sank. Poor Camille, trapped with an unkind husband. She knew from the letters that Camille was unhappy, but she had no idea that the situation was so bad. To leave her husband would create a scandal, humiliation for both her, her family and her husband. She must have been truly desperate to do such a thing. Her husband must have been a tyrant, a drunkard, or even violent. It was the only explanation that made sense. And if she had been fleeing a violent husband, then she had been forced to it.
But why hadn’t Camille written to her for help? They were friends. She would have been more than welcome to stay with them in London for an extended visit. What fun times they could have had in Chloe’s laboratory. What discoveries they could have made. And perhaps an extended absence could have improved Camille’s conditions at home.
“Well, I do not care,” said Chloe. “I am going to the funeral if I have to attend alone.” She glared at Mrs. Malone and swept the table with a defiant look.
“Chloe, please,” Ambrose said so softly that he was nearly inaudible. Chloe softened and looked down at her plate of cooling lamb and potatoes. She took a bite to keep herself from saying anything further. Conversation at the table gradually resumed.
“—Can’t control a wife half his age,” said a female voice. Chloe looked up to see Beatrice patting her mouth with a napkin. Dora had a catlike look of satisfaction. She was the one who had spoken.
“My husband—” Chloe blazed, then felt Ambrose’s hand on hers beneath the table and stopped. With supreme effort, she placed another bite in her mouth and Ambrose’s hand disappeared.
Ambrose fixed Dora, then Beatrice and Mrs. Malone with a cool look. Chloe was ashamed for rising to their bait. If they found her marriage strange, so be it. The details of her marriage agreement were none of their concern. Her husband was a great deal older than she was. But Ambrose allowed her freedoms that a less mature man would have forbidden. She knew she could be impulsive, and resolved, for the hundredth time, not to shame Ambrose ever again.
At the far end of the table, William glared at Dora and Beatrice, red-faced with fury.
“We are going to the funeral,” he declared, savagely cutting into his lamb. “Mrs. Granger was our friend, and we will mourn her with respect. And if we are the only reputable family in the church, then so be it!”
After a silence during which Dora scowled and Beatrice flushed pink, the conversation returned to the safe topic of wedding preparations. Robert made eye contact with his older brother Ian, who had been mostly silent throughout the entire meal. Robert looked pleased, and a ghost of a smile passed over Ian’s frowning lips.
Chapter 5
Chloe removed two tiny screws, pried off the metal cover panel and squinted as she examined the innards of Beatrice’s mechanical robin. It was an older model, at least three or four years old, and judging from the color and consistency of its lubricants, had never been taken in for service.
The bird’s embroidered cloth plumage lay in a brown and red crumple in a corner of the worktable that had appeared in Ambrose’s study while they were at supper. A gas lamp hissed softly in the other corner, its etched glass globe providing too little light. She absently reached a hand to twist one of the scroll arms and the light flared. She squinted into the bird again.
Beatrice had been vague about the bird’s symptoms, but Chloe had examined it and had a good idea of what was wrong with it. She had already removed most of its casing and she flipped it over and set to work on the five screws that held on its head. Once the outer shell was completely removed, she could see the entire mechanical system. She let her eyes travel over it, easing into a relaxed concentration that allowed her to see the whole and the parts simultaneously.
Chloe held her lower lip between her teeth as she went through each potential failure point, from most likely to least. An hour later, the table was covered in tiny gears and springs.
“It’s time for bed,” said Ambrose in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him open the door.
“Won’t take too much time,” she said, not looking up.
She knew if she stopped now, she would lose her train of thought. The repair was not a terribly complex one, but she was eager to finish it. She was still in a pique over Beatrice and Dora’s comment at supper but, even so, she wanted to make this bird work even better than it had when it was new. She may never excel at parlor conversation, embroidery or other womanly pursuits. But she excelled at this.
Ambrose closed the door behind him and looked curiously over her table. “It looks like it will take a great deal of time. I am glad that Alexander saw to it that you could get a few tools and materials.”
She murmured an acknowledgment.
“It will be better once your own things arrive, I’m sure.”
She ignored him and he turned to his own desk by the window. He was never offended by either her silences or terse words when she was working. He looked over his desk, arranged a few things, selected a book from the shelf and bid her good night.
Hours later, the robin was almost finished, and she was just fitting the chest panel back on when she heard a soft, distant snort. She paused, but there was no other sound. She moved to the window, pulled the heavy curtain aside, and looked out into the slowly swirling mist that had gathered around the house.
Below, moving toward the main road was a horse and rider. If she listened closely, she could hear the muffled crunch of the horse’s hooves on the gravel drive. But had she not been paying attention, she would never have noticed the sound. As the rider passed below her window, she let the curtains fall mostly shut, holding them open j
ust enough to peek out. She was glad that her lamp was across the room so the light would not attract the rider’s attention, should he look up.
She could tell neither the rider’s height nor build as he rode away, presumably toward town. He was in no hurry, though she saw the indistinct shape move to a trot once it reached the main road.
She let the curtains fall shut. There was no clock in the room, so she reached into her little bag beside her work table and pulled out her fob watch. Half-past midnight.
She finished the robin and then fetched the doorway mechanical. She spent a short time lubricating its limbs and making a few minor repairs before sending it downstairs on the dumbwaiter . It was past two o’clock when she went to bed.
Chapter 6
The next morning, Chloe sat at her vanity as Miss Haynes pulled her hair into place. She combed the thick, frizzy tangle with a wide-tooth comb, working carefully so as not to cause her mistress undue pain. She need not have worried. Her mistress’s mind was elsewhere.
“I want to ask you something,” said Chloe.
“Mmm?” Miss Haynes had a mouthful of hair pins, but made brief eye contact with Chloe in the mirror.
“I’d like you to keep your ears open around the house. Last night, when I was working in Ambrose’s study I heard a disturbance outside. When I looked out the window, down below there was a man on a horse. He rode slowly out to the main road, presumably to keep quiet, and then took off at a trot in the direction of town.”
Miss Haynes’s eyebrows bunched together. She pulled the pins from her mouth. “Who was it?”
“I haven’t any idea. I couldn’t tell his build from that distance. It was dreadfully foggy anyway. But it was half-past midnight and, barring the need to fetch a doctor, I can’t imagine any other reason to ride to town at that hour.”
“I’ve been up since five o’clock, and no one called for a doctor at night that I heard. And if he were fetching a doctor, he wouldn’t have been trying to be quiet.”
Chloe would have nodded, but moving her head at all during this stage in the process could mean disaster.
“I’ll see what I can learn,” said Miss Haynes. “You know it won’t be so easy.”
“The other lady’s maids?”
“Yes, mum. Not the friendliest trio of women you ever met, if you know what I mean.”
“They match their employers then,” said Chloe, smiling into the mirror. Miss Haynes looked up and then sighed as tendrils of hair broke free of their confines and fell. A furrow appeared between her brows as she started over on that section of hair.
If Dora, Beatrice and Mrs. Malone’s lady’s maids were not on friendly terms with Miss Haynes, she would be without much in the way of social interaction. If Robert had been young enough to still need a governess, she may have had company. But as it stood, Miss Haynes was in a higher category than scullery maids, chambermaids, bootboys and coachmen. Her only peers would be the housekeeper and the other lady’s maids. It would be inappropriate to keep company with the footmen and butler since they were male.
“I suppose we’ll just have to make do,” said Chloe as Miss Haynes patted the last of her hair into place and handed her the hand mirror to check her handiwork.
“We always do, mum.”
Miss Haynes pulled a cameo necklace from her pocket and fastened it around Chloe’s neck.
“The servants were all abuzz about your friend’s death,” said Miss Haynes. “Many of them think that Mrs. Granger had a paramour in town or a foreign lover who she was going to run off with. But the loudest arguments came from two of the maids who think her husband killed her in a jealous rage and a loud-mouthed footman who thinks it was her mechanical.”
“Her mechanical? You mean her hound?” Chloe remembered seeing the early schematics and descriptions of Camille Granger’s mechanical pet. They had worked on their companion animals roughly at the same time, and Chloe had dearly wanted to see the hound and learn of any possible improvements she could make to Giles.
“Yes. It seems like people around here are much more suspicious of mechanicals than back home. They just don’t like them.”
“But how could a mechanical like Giles kill anyone? Even a larger animal couldn’t. It doesn’t make any sense. Why did the footman think it was the hound?”
“I don’t think he had good reason, aside from having an excuse to argue with the pretty maids. He wasn’t the only one who didn’t like mechanicals, though. Most of the locals seemed to think that anything beyond a household mechanical is dangerous.”
“Did they say anything else? Are they afraid of Giles?”
The cat was resting on the bed and, hearing his name, raised his head and blinked.
“I don’t think so, mum.”
Chloe rose, smoothed the skirt of her gray and white Sunday dress and turned so Miss Haynes could inspect her. The cut of the dress was modest and simple for Sunday morning church, though a tad tight through the waist. She had put on a good half a stone over the past few months. Too many rich desserts back home.
Miss Haynes nodded her approval.
“Now, don’t get in any trouble asking questions,” said Chloe.
“I’ll be discreet.”
Chapter 7
An hour and a half later, Ambrose and Chloe walked into St. George’s church for Sunday services. It stood at the edge of Farnbridge, on the older side of the town. This set it within easy walking distance of the miners and working class people who nodded and touched their hats as the Sullivans descended from the carriage. A second and third carriage rolled up smartly behind them, carrying the Aynesworth family.
The church was a long, gray stone building with a row of round-topped windows along each side. Over the two thick wooden doors, a trio of stone rabbits leaped in an endless circle, nose to tail, beneath a stone cross. An unfenced churchyard stood behind, crumbling and newer tombstones crowded together.
Inside, strange faces peered out from stone greenery on either side of a wooden cross and carved stags leapt over the tops of the windows. The stained glass windows were done in a newer style, all of them depicting saints or scenes from the life of Christ. The largest window, which stood over the altar, depicted St. George, lance outthrust, slaying a roaring dragon.
The building was barely large enough to hold the local congregation, and the Sullivans pressed snugly against the Aynesworths in the narrow family pew. At a rising murmur of voices from the back of the church, heads around them turned and a few people raised their hands in greeting. A man with a leg missing from the knee down hobbled into the church on two shabby crutches. The man’s trouser leg was pinned over the stump, and many people glanced at it as he slid into his seat.
The man’s rough-cheeked wife was behind him, nodding to the well-wishers and ushering their four silent children into the pew. She took a seat, and a younger woman placed her hand on the wife’s shoulder and whispered something, motioning outside. The wife smiled, placed her hand over the other woman’s, and Chloe could see her lips form a thank you.
Chloe gazed curiously around the church. Judging by the parishioners’ clothing, the Aynesworths were one of three wealthy families. The rest of the church was filled with middle and working-class people. Unlike her upper class church in London, St. George’s served the entire town of Farnbridge.
Once the service concluded, the Sullivans bid their family good-bye and two carriages carried the Aynesworths back to their house. Their own carriage waited.
“Do you mind if we spend a few minutes? Rose’s grave is here,” said Ambrose. She took his arm and he took her to the gravestone, now slightly colored from fifteen years of rain and wind. He did not speak, but simply looked at the stone for a minute and then turned back.
They did not head home, but instead headed toward the railway station. They passed parishioners on their way home, and she spotted the injured man, hobbling home with his wife and children. It bothered her.
“You have that look,” said Ambrose.
<
br /> “What look?”
“The one you get when you are concocting an idea.”
“It’s that man, the one with the leg. I was thinking about Camille’s hound, and how she probably could have found a way to make more intelligent mechanicals, ones that could go down into the mines for the most dangerous work. Now it will never happen.”
“Why couldn’t you create them?”
“I can’t even make a mechanical that isn’t moderately dangerous.” She reached under her seat and pulled her satchel, complete with small lump of mechanical cat nestled inside, onto the seat beside her.
“Giles is still new. You will figure him out and make improvements. Though I still don’t know why in the name of heaven you gave him claws.”
“Maybe I could work on it. Maybe in a couple of years. Or if I could get Camille’s notes, I could replicate some of her work, maybe expand upon it. I’m not sure. But if I could, if mechanicals could have decision engines, if they could think, then it could change everything. No more miners caught in rockfalls and explosions. Women in the workhouses could have improved sewing machines. It could eliminate the need for people to run the most dangerous machines in factories.”
“The workers may not thank you for eliminating their livelihoods.”
“They could learn different things—less dangerous things.” Her mind flashed back to the faces of the four children in church.
“And with what money would they do that, if they have no employment?”
“A moment ago, you were encouraging me.”
He sighed and settled himself in his seat. “Your intentions are noble, but I fear it is survival of the most fit. Those who can use their talents to rise will do so, and there will always be those scrambling at the bottom, whether by reason of birth or circumstance.”
Hounds of Autumn Page 4
