by Robin Paige
“And so down-to-earth,” Lady Warwick said. “I did appreciate hearing your ideas and suggestions yesterday, Miss Ardleigh.” She glanced pointedly at Lady Verena, who was avidly forking up deviled kidneys. “There is much to be done, and few who are genuinely concerned about the rural poor.”
Lady Verena’s eyes narrowed. She appeared to have felt the barb, but she made no reply.
“Kate is quite active in poor relief in her parish,” Ellie said, sipping her tea.
“Is that so, Miss Ardleigh?” Lady Warwick asked, interested.
Kate nodded. “But please,” she said, “call me Kate.”
Lady Warwick looked pleased. “Then you must call me Daisy. My given name is Frances,” she added, “but my stepfather, Lord Rosslyn, always called me his fresh little daisy. The name has stayed with me.”
“Thank you, Daisy,” Kate said. “My aunt supported several local charities before her death. I am merely carrying on her work.”
“But you have done much more than that, Kate,” Ellie protested. “You provide blankets and food to the workhouse and sponsor prizes at the local school and—”
Lady Verena rattled her spoon noisily. “As I was saying when we came down to breakfast, my dear Daisy, I rose early this morning, thinking to write a few letters. But I opened the latest issue of Blackwell’s Monthly and chanced on a fiction so engrossing I forgot all about my correspondence. I fear the post has gone without it.”
“I wonder, Verena,” Daisy said, “whether you’re speaking of ‘The Duchess’s Dilemma.’ My sister Blanche recommended the story to me, and I deeply enjoyed it. The author writes with such frank intimacy that I almost feel I know her characters.”
Lady Verena was slathering butter on a roll. “Oh, indeed,” she said. “In fact, the authoress—the name Beryl Bardwell is quite obviously a pseudonym—appears to be writing about people we do know.” The dark-browed footman put a spoonful of strawberry jam on her plate, and she transferred it to her roll. “Some of the details of the story lead me to suspect, Daisy, that she is one of our class. If this is true, we must learn her identity. It is shocking to think that one among us might retail our most intimate secrets. Not that I have anything to hide,” she added. “Or you, my dear. Especially you.” The barb had been returned.
Kate lowered her glance, her cheeks staining. She longed to leave the room, but she could think of no excuse.
“One of us?” Daisy asked, ignoring Lady Verena’s scarcely disguised jab. “Perhaps. But no one of my acquaintance is possessed of Miss Bardwell’s enviable talent. Surely, if she were one of us, some hint of her skill would have surfaced before this.”
Lady Verena agreed, lifting her cup. “As it happens, my husband’s former secretary has some position or another in the publishing house that produces Blackwell’s. I plan to telegraph him this morning. Perhaps he can tell us the real identity of Beryl Bardwell.”
“That’s a splendid idea, Verena,” Daisy replied. “When you find out, I really must know, too.” She looked across the table. “And you, Kate? Or you, Ellie? Have either of you read the story we have been speaking of?”
“I fear not,” Ellie said, “but if you will lend me the magazine, I shall do so this very afternoon.”
Kate made no answer, for she was thrown into an internal chaos. She had no need to wait for a telegram to learn the mysterious writer’s identity. She was Beryl Bardwell, and one of the reasons she could not accept Sir Charles’s offer of marriage—if indeed he intended to make it—was her secret occupation as a writer of detective fictions. It was not an occupation he would wish his wife to pursue. Nor would she give it up, for her writing was a part of her, and she could not imagine her life without it.
“Good,” Daisy said. “Perhaps when you have read it, Ellie, you may have an idea as to the identity of the writer. And you, too, Kate.” She clapped her pretty hands. “We shall make it a project, shall we? We shall discover the authoress in our midst and unmask her!”
Kate desperately hoped Ellie would not read the story, because it was based on an incident that had happened some months before at the home of Ellie’s parents. She would be sure to recognize the setting and characters. Now, when it was far too late to do anything about it, Kate began to wish that she had not drawn her characters quite so true to life, nor portrayed actual events quite so faithfully. She should have realized how dangerous it was to blend fiction and reality.
Before Kate could gather her wits to make an answer, she heard a loud sputtering and metallic clanking outside the window of the breakfast room. Startled by the sound and realizing its meaning, she rose from her chair to go to the window.
Lady Verena waved her hand carelessly. “Oh, don’t be alarmed, Miss Ardleigh. It is only one of those wretchedly noisy motors that the men are so keen on these days. I daresay Lord Marsden has arrived.”
And with him, Kate thought, filled with confusion, was Sir Charles Sheridan.
4
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
—HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL Journal, 1856
“Well, here we are,” Bradford said to Charles. He guided the Daimler off the main park lane and onto the graveled drive that circled Easton Lodge.
Charles took his watch out of his pocket and glanced at it. “The men have no doubt already gone out,” he said, “but we are in time to join the ladies at breakfast.”
Bradford was gratified by their early arrival. They had made the ten-mile run from Braintree to the Lodge in one hour and fifteen minutes, at almost twice the legal maximum speed of four miles an hour and sans the obligatory man with a red flag that—ridiculously—was still supposed to precede them by twenty yards. He had expected to be stopped by a constable and would have welcomed the chance to make a court case of it. But no constable had appeared. The Daimler had ruled the road.
Charles grunted as he looked at the ivy-clad, gray stone building that loomed ahead of them. “Damned impressive place,” he said. “But I for one wouldn’t want the burden of responsibility for it. Can you imagine what it costs to maintain an estate like this?”
“Too much,” Bradford said. “These huge estates are a curse on the heads of those who inherit them.”
The Lodge was approached by a two-mile-long drive through twelve hundred acres of park scattered with giant oaks and grazed by deer—three times the size of Marsden Park, which Bradford stood to inherit upon his father’s death. The three-story, multi-winged mock-Tudor house had hundreds of rooms and must cost a king’s ransom to staff and maintain—a white elephant, in this modern day and age, when the cost of fuel was rising and the new death duties bid fair to impoverish the great estates. In fact, Bradford had heard that falling revenues had forced the Warwicks to close off the main wing of the Easton Lodge—the Countess’s family home—except for weekend house parties, and were preparing to sell off sections of the park. But her financial woes didn’t seem to affect her lavish spending, or her husband’s, either. Bradford had also heard that the Countess had recently constructed a private railway to the Lodge so that the Prince, a frequent guest and her acknowledged lover, could come and go without depending on rail schedules, and that the Earl of Warwick had just lost a substantial sum of money in an ill-fated Mexican mining venture.
Bradford steered the automobile around the looping drive. He and Charles were a day late, to be sure, but Bradford was relieved that they had actually arrived. He was a devout believer in the future of the motorcar, but its present was often trying. It was ten to one against getting anywhere without some accident, such as losing the main drive belt, which mischance had happened late yesterday afternoon. It had been a bit of bad luck, too, for he had not thought to carry a replacement. Exhaustive inquiries in the nearest village had revealed that there was no harness maker who might mend or replace the leather belt, and it wasn’t until Charles suggested that they try the cobbler that they began to make progress. By the time the cobbler was located and put t
o work, however, the sun was setting. After several hours of lantern-lit effort, the man had effected a serviceable repair. But lighting his work had nearly exhausted their supply of the calcium carbide that powered the Daimler’s acetylene headlamps, so Bradford had been forced to agree to staying the night in Braintree. Before they left that morning, he had dispatched his man Lawrence to London by train to acquire another replacement belt, a spare tire, an extra cask of petrol, and a canister of calcium carbide. He did not intend to be caught short again.
They turned the corner behind the Lodge, and Bradford braced himself for the excited crowd that always welcomed the arrival of a motorcar. In a moment, servants and stableboys would be swarming around the vehicle, touching its tires, marveling at the gleaming brass fittings, rubbing the mud off the headlamps with their sleeves. Bradford had owned the car for three months, but the moment of arrival was one he still savored. It came as something of a surprise, then, that when he piloted the automobile onto the gravel apron at the rear of the house, everyone seemed to be running away from them, in the direction of the stables.
“Something seems amiss,” Charles said.
Bradford sounded his electric bell, ostensibly installed to warn pedestrians and horses but really designed to attract attention. But the electric jangle had no effect on the scurrying and shouting. He brought the Daimler to a stop, stepped out of the vehicle, and raised his goggles.
“I say,” he called to one of several servants hurrying toward the stable. “What’s happened?”
“ ‘Is Highness’s groom ’as bin kicked in th’ ’ead,” the young man replied.
At that moment, two men emerged from the stable door, a limp form sagging between them like sacked meal.
“Hold on, there!” Charles cried, jumping down from the automobile and running toward the stable, Bradford at his heels. “He shouldn’t be handled that way, with a head injury. On the ground with him, now!”
The two men, startled, deposited their liveried burden on the ground with a thump. The boy, for that’s what he was, lay unmoving. Charles knelt down beside the inert form.
“I’ll go for a doctor,” Bradford said, pulling his goggles back on and turning toward the motorcar.
“Beggin’ Yer Lordship’s pardon,” one of the men said gruffly, “but th’ doctor’s needed in a ‘urry. Th’ boys is saddlin’ Fiver now, an’ Tom’ll ride over t’ Little Easton by way o’ th’ woods. ’E’ll be there an’ back wi’ th’ doctor afore you can git that contraption turned around an’ ’eaded th’ right way.”
The double stable doors opened and a black, high-stepping hunter was led out of the gloom. Seeing the unfamiliar automobile, the horse reared and whinnied shrilly. Tom, a lanky young man, hoisted himself into the saddle and was off in a headlong dash down the drive, flying hoofs sending a spray of loose gravel clanging against the Daimler’s metal fender.
Charles stood. “Somebody ride after Tom and fetch him back,” he said soberly. “It’s of no use bringing the doctor. The lad’s dead.”
“Too bad,” Bradford said, looking down at the pale young face. The boy looked scarcely fifteen. “How did it happen?”
“Kicked i’ th’ ‘ead, like,” the gruff man said. “Found ’im i’ th’ stall wi’ Paradox, th’ Prince’s ‘unter.” He shook his shaggy head somberly. “ ’E’s a mean ‘un, that ’orse. ‘Ad trouble wi’ ’im meself a time er twa.”
“What’s all this?” The question was asked in a deep, guttural voice with a German accent. “Trouble with Paradox?”
Bradford turned. The portly, bearded man in a Norfolk suit and polished boots was His Royal Highness Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, playboy heir to the throne of his seventy-six-year-old mother, Queen Victoria. He was accompanied by a dark, handsomely mustached man and trailed by a group of seven or eight men.
The gruff man whipped his cap off his shaggy head. “Sad to say, sir,” he said respectfully, “but th’ lad was kicked. ’E was found i’ th’ Royal stall.”
His Highness bent over the still form. “Has someone gone for the doctor?”
Charles spoke. “A doctor would be of no use, Your Highness. The boy’s dead.”
“Ah, Charles.” The Prince straightened and exhaled windily. “Good to see you, good to see you. Of course, you are acquainted with Lord Warwick.” He indicated the erect, mustached man standing at his elbow.
“Good morning, Brooke,” Charles said. He motioned at Bradford. “And you know Bradford Marsden, I’m sure.”
“Oh, indeed,” said the Prince, nodding. “Good you could come, Marsden.” He turned to look at the automobile behind them. “And that is your newly imported Daimler, is it? I trust your delay was not caused by a serious mechanical mischance.”
“No, sir,” Bradford said, wishing there had been no delay. He particularly wanted to impress HRH with the reliability of his machine. “Just a slight problem, easily repaired,” he added offhandedly. “I am looking forward to having you as a passenger tomorrow.”
“Oh?” asked one of the men standing behind the Prince. “Where are you going, sir?”
“All in good time,” the Prince said jovially. “All in good time.” He looked down at the body at his feet. “A sad business, this. The boy was one Princess Alexandra singled out for reward, and she will be sorry to learn that he has died. But it was not Paradox that killed him,” he added with a stem emphasis, “and I don’t want it bruited about that it was.”
“Oh, but it was, Yer ‘Ighness, sir!” the gruff man protested. “Th’ boy was in th’ stall, y’see, an’—”
“Alfred,” Lord Warwick cautioned, “remember to whom you are speaking.”
Alfred licked his lips nervously, twisted his cap in his hands, and amended his tone. “Beg pardon, Yer Royal ‘Ighness, sir. But it ’ad t’ve bin th’ ‘orse wot kicked ’im. We found th’ lad shut i’ th’ stall, wi’ a spilled bucket o’ oats—wot was left, anyway, th’ ‘orse ’avin’ cleaned up most.”
The Prince gestured with a gloved hand. “I understand what you’re saying,” he said impatiently. “But I’ve hunted with Paradox for going on seven years, and a gentler horse never lived. He wouldn’t bring a man down, nor would he put a hoof on him when he was down.”
“Then what?” asked a tall man with sandy hair, beard, and a gold pince-nez. Bradford recognized him as Sir Friedrich Temple, a well-known Conservative and nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury, by the same name. “Accident, d’you suppose? Maybe the lad fell out of the loft.”
“Or fell into an argument with one of his fellows,” another man said, tapping the polished toe of his boot with an ebony stick. “My stableboys are always rowing. Anyway, what does it matter? The lad is dead.” Bradford turned, recognizing the speaker, a burly and heavyset graybeard with steely eyes under thick black eyebrows that jutted out like horns, giving him a look of wily rakishness. Sir Thomas Cobb, retired, of the Royal Grenadiers.
“That’s all well and good, Thomas,” the Prince said. “But unfortunately, however the fellow died, Alix will feel it her duty to tell his family the truth of the matter. So, unless I am willing to give up a fortnight’s peace to Alix’s poking at me for details, the truth must be dug out, and shortly.” He glanced at Charles. “That’s up your line, isn’t it, Charles? Don’t I seem to recall your mucking about in a recent crime or two?”
“I’ve had one or two minor successes in forensic investigation,” Charles admitted, somewhat reluctantly, Bradford thought.
“That’s a fine chap,” the Prince said, clapping Charles on the shoulder. “Be so good as to look into this matter, then. You will give me your report this evening after dinner, and I will pass it along to Alix when I write in the morning.”
Charles agreed readily enough, but Bradford saw him wince. He knew that his friend had planned to pursue other game this weekend—the fair Kate Ardleigh, no doubt, whom Bradford himself would not have hesitated to woo if his mother hadn’t raised a row about it. Poor Charles. In addition to Daisy Warwick�
��s request that he spend tomorrow photographing the mysterious expedition, the Prince had commanded him to spend the afternoon investigating an accident. What rotten luck. But Charles was a man of duty, Bradford reflected. He would resign himself to doing what he must.
Bradford didn’t guess the half of it.
5
No one who stayed at Easton ever forgot their hostess, and most of the men fell hopelessly in love with her. In my long life, spent in so many different countries, and during which I have seen most of the beautiful and famous women of the world, from film-stars to Queens, I have never seen one who was so completely fascinating as Daisy Warwick.
—ELINOR GLYN (The “It” Girl) Romantic Adventure, 1936
It was a warm, bright afternoon, and luncheon was to be served on the terrace behind Stone Hall, Lady Warwick’s Elizabethan folly. The two-story cottage—called Daisy’s Folly by everyone who visited there—was a pleasant stroll from the Lodge, in a shady corner of the Park. It was an old stone-fronted house with a slate roof that the Countess had rebuilt as a two-story Tudor cottage and furnished with valuable antique chairs and tables, tapestried beds, and quaint books. Behind the Folly was a landscaped terrace and a coppice of young trees, each one planted by her special friends—the Prince’s beech trees foremost among them. There, too, was Daisy’s Garden of Friendship, planted with flowers given to her by acquaintances, each identified by the name of the donor.
Following Ellie’s suggestion, Kate had dressed in her blue wool costume with the gored skirt and matching puff-sleeved velvet jacket—a compromise between style and comfort. Amelia had wound her heavy auburn hair high on her head and perched on it a blue velvet toque decorated with three peacock feathers. Glancing in the mirror before she left her room, Kate had felt a glow of satisfaction at her appearance—and nervous anticipation at the thought of seeing Sir Charles at luncheon.
