by Robin Paige
“Wallace was seen leaving the stable about the time of the boy’s death,” Charles said. “He may have witnessed it, or even been involved in it.” His glance seemed chilly, unfriendly. “You can’t tell us where Lord Warwick was at the time?”
She shook her head wordlessly. Brooke was not a man customarily given to violence, but she had once seen him strike a groom who had been abusing a horse, so severely injuring the man that he lay close to death for some days. Was it possible that he had lost his temper and struck the boy, and that Reggie had witnessed the deed?
But there was more. Brooke had been in her bedroom on Thursday. She had come in from a conference with the housekeeper to find him there, uninvited and unexpected, standing beside the desk where her letter case sat, in plain sight. He could have taken the letter.
But why would he? Brooke had recently begun to object to her entertaining Bertie because their intimacy attracted so much public attention and the Royal visits were so hideously expensive. But that gave him no motive for taking Bertie’s letter and hiding it in Reggie’s room. Unless, of course, he intended to implicate her, and perhaps Bertie as well, in Reggie’s murder.
At the thought, Daisy shivered violently. “No!” she whispered. Brooke would never do such a thing! To embroil her in this mess would be to entangle himself and tarnish the Warwick name. Brooke’s sense of decorum and propriety, his concern for the family reputation, would never allow that.
But even as Daisy thought of this, she thought of something else. Brooke knew better than anyone the lengths to which Bertie would go to champion her. He would know that even if the Prince were confronted with the clearest, most incontrovertible proof that she was guilty of murder, he would never permit her to be brought up on charges, let along face trial. Brooke would know that Bertie would cover up her guilt just as he had hushed so many previous scandals, even that unspeakable business about his own son Eddy and the East End brothels. He would know that the only punishment Daisy would ever suffer would be her total and unalterable alienation from the Prince’s affection.
Her heart skipped a beat, then another, and her hands felt suddenly icy. To separate her and Bertie forever, to put an end to the corrosive gossip and reduce the ruinous expenses of Royal entertainment—that was an outcome Brooke would consider worth his effort. That was an end that might justify any means—even murder.
Charles was looking at her strangely. “Is there something else you want to tell us?”
Bewildered and confused, feeling as if the world she had always controlled had suddenly broken loose from her grasp, Daisy struggled for command.
“No ... no, I think that is all,” she said, in a high, brittle voice. As if to rescue her, the clock whirred, then began to strike the hour. She rose, steadying herself. “My goodness, how late it is! We must dress for tea.”
“Thank you, Daisy,” Charles said quietly. “We may have other questions later.”
She made one more attempt. “The letter? I would so much like to have it back, you know. I am sure you realize the damage it could do in the wrong hands.”
“We must keep it for now,” Charles said. “But don’t worry. It will be carefully guarded.”
Daisy tossed her head. “Oh, very well, then,” she said.
Without another word, she lifted her skirts and went before them out of the room and down the corridor, her head high, her back ramrod straight, playing the part she had been born and bred to play. She was Lady Frances, the greatest heiress in England. She was the Countess of Warwick, wife of England’s handsomest lord. She was Daisy, lover of the Prince of Wales.
But in her heart there was a terrible hopelessness, for she knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was over. The Prince cared for her, but he was no fool. He would go on to a less hazardous love affair, to a woman of fewer charms, perhaps, but also fewer liabilities. She would have nothing left, only the minor celebrity that inevitably attended a former mistress of the future king, only the indiscreet letters and the expensive gifts, only her memories.
She had had her hour, and it was over.
23
By indirections find directions out.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Hamlet
At teatime, Charles went to the drawing room, which was furnished in Louis XIV style, with frescoed walls and objets d’art placed in every niche. The guests were assembled in conversational clusters, several women decoratively arranged on adjoining sofas, a group of men gathered around the Prince at the fireplace talking about racing, others sitting in a corner, discussing Harcourt’s reform of the death duties. Without calling attention to himself, Charles quietly detached Sir Thomas Cobb from the death duties group and led him to a curtained alcove at the far end of the room. He would have preferred to have begun his questioning with Lord Warwick, who was in Charles’s mind the more logical suspect. But Brooke was talking with the Prince and it would be uncivil to interrupt their conversation.
“You want to speak with me about Reginald’s murder, I take it,” the old man said. He had a saber scar across one cheek, and his thick, jutting eyebrows, gray beard, and tanned face gave him the look of a grizzled old pirate.
“Just so,” Charles replied, thinking that Cobb looked older and more haggard than he had just yesterday. The man’s steel-gray eyes were red with fatigue and his forehead was deeply furrowed. “I must speak with everyone.” He motioned toward one of the two leather chairs in the alcove and waited until the older man had seated himself before he sat down.
“Ah, but in my case,” Cobb said, “you have a particular reason to speak with me.” A dry smile cracked his old face. “I do not doubt you have talked with Reginald’s man Richards.”
“I have.” Charles leaned back in his chair, elbows on the upholstered arms, his fingers tented in front of his mouth.
Cobb took a silver cigar case out of his coat pocket and extracted a cigar. Making a ceremony of rolling and sniffing it, then of lighting it, he said at last, “Well, I won’t dissemble, Sheridan, or make your task any more unpleasant than it already is. I was not overly fond of my daughter’s husband. Not to mince words, I wished him dead and in hell.” He pulled his bristling brows together. “But, by George, I did not kill him!”
From the other end of the room came the tinkle of Daisy’s light laughter, and a hearty echo from the Prince, the men at the fireplace having joined the women on the sofa. A footman approached with two teacups on a tray, set them on the table, and filled them from a silver pot. Cobb frowned. “Brandy,” he said gruffly. The footman nodded and disappeared.
Charles added sugar, stirred, and sipped his tea. “According to Richards, you and Wallace have been at odds for some time.”
Cobb pulled heavily on his cigar. “The man killed my daughter Margaret.” His face grew dark. “I won’t trouble you with my reasons for believing so, but simply assure you that my conclusion is unequivocally and unquestionably correct. The wound was inflicted by a blunt instrument, and not suffered in a fall. Ask the Countess. She knows.”
Charles was not surprised that Daisy had withheld that information from him (if it were indeed true). She was privy to so many secrets that she had probably forgotten the greater part of them. “How can you be sure?” he asked.
The footman reappeared with Cobb’s brandy in a large snifter. “That, Sheridan, is none of your affair. In any event, I consider Lady Warwick complicitous in the matter. She was Reginald’s paramour at the time of my daughter’s murder, poor innocent.” He rolled the brandy in the glass, sniffed it, and sipped. “She is as responsible as he. The devil of it is that I can do nothing about it.”
“The police—”
“The local constable, whose family have long been Wallace retainers, investigated and found nothing amiss.” The old man’s eyes were bleak and his voice dripped with an acid bitterness. “The coroner’s jury—twelve good men and true to their landlord, Wallace—brought in a verdict of accidental death.”
“Then—”
Cobb
finished the brandy and set the snifter on the table. “I am a realist, Sheridan. Certain things in life can be altered, certain cannot, and it is the better part of wisdom to know the difference. I decided long ago that I could do nothing to bring either of Margaret’s killers to justice. It is my burden to live with—and theirs. But it gave me no small pleasure to remind Reginald frequently and pointedly of his culpability.”
Wallace might have found it easier to stand trial for his wife’s death than to be sentenced to the venomous harangues of her angry father, Charles thought. The old man must believe himself to be wronged past enduring. Why then was he here at Easton?
“Given your animosity toward Lady Warwick, I wonder at your willingness to be a guest at her home—especially when the guest list included Wallace.” Perhaps a more interesting question, though, had to do with Wallace’s inclusion on the guest list. One of the Warwicks had invited him. Lord Brooke or the Countess? And why?
The other shrugged. “I am here out of respect for the fourth earl of Warwick, Lord Brooke’s father, with whom I had the privilege to be closely acquainted. I most emphatically do not admire the way young Brooke allows his wife to manage his life for him, nor do I approve of the fact that both of them seem intent on frittering away the Maynard and Warwick fortunes on foolish entertainments. For the sake of Brooke’s father, however, I cultivate the son’s company, and—for the sake of his father—he tolerates mine. Once each year he invites me to one of these lunatic house parties and once each year I set aside common sense and come.” His mouth twisted in an ugly grimace. “These follies, however, do not amuse me. I am chagrined at the sight of the Queen’s heir making a vulgar fool of himself—and risking the monarchy, as well—over a damned foolish woman. How can anyone imagine him competent to rule the Empire when he cannot even rule his own reckless passions?” He snorted. “The Queen would die of mortification if she understood the full extent of her son’s folly.”
Cobb was leaving something out, Charles thought. Retaliation was a more likely explanation for his presence than a sentimental affection for an old friend’s son. If Daisy felt even a shred of guilt for her affair with Wallace and the subsequent death of Wallace’s wife, seeing the old man beetling his brows at her across the tea table must make her damned uncomfortable. And if Cobb had given up all hope of achieving justice through the courts for his daughter’s death, to what other extremes might he be moved? Might he have killed Wallace and attempted to implicate Daisy? Censorious as he was of the Prince’s behavior, might he even have attempted to implicate him, as well?
Charles drained the sweet dregs of his tea and put down the cup. “Is there anyone who can corroborate your whereabouts last night?”
The old man croaked out a laugh. “Hardly! It has never been my practice to hop from bed to bed at these weekends. I retired to my room at the close of the evening and there I stayed until shortly after sunrise, when I rose and went for a long walk. After all this pretense and posturing, there is nothing like a quick march over field and furrow to restore a man’s sense of equilibrium.”
“Did your quick march take you in the direction of the Folly?”
“As a matter of fact, I went the other way.” Cobb puffed reflectively on his cigar, the smoke rising in a blue haze around his head. “Is there anything else?”
“I wonder,” Charles said, “whether you brought a gun with you—a personal sidearm, that is.”
“Why the devil would I bring a sidearm?” Cobb retorted testily. “Should one care to shoot, one can readily equip oneself from the gun room.” He made as if to rise.
Charles raised his hand. “One thing more, if you don’t mind. You knew Wallace quite well—at least you did at one time. Would you care to hazard a guess as to the identity of his killer?”
“I’ll give you two,” Cobb growled, and stood. “One is Lady Warwick.”
“Her motive?”
“She owed him money, of course, and he was beginning to be tiresome about it. And if he were dead, she could stop feeling guilty about Margaret’s death.”
“I see,” Charles said. But if Wallace were demanding repayment of a debt, why had he been invited to Easton, unless—? Unless Daisy, or Brooke, planned to kill him. “How much money?”
“Ten thousand pounds, more or less. He told me he intended to exact payment this weekend.” The old man gave a quick, hard laugh. “One almost pities the poor fellow, actually. Getting money out of that woman must be like wringing whiskey out of a rock.”
Charles studied Sir Thomas. It appeared that he knew nothing about the Prince’s letter. Had he stolen it and planted it in Wallace’s room, he would certainly have claimed that Wallace was using it to coerce Daisy into repaying the debt. That the old man had mentioned nothing about the letter seemed to Charles to exonerate him from the murder—unless he was being deliberately subtle.
“That’s one guess,” Charles said. “What’s the other?”
A smile flickered. “Anarchists, Sheridan. Anarchists.”
A few moments later, the chair opposite Charles was occupied by Felicia Metcalf. Her hair was laced with a black ribbon, and she had arranged a heavily fringed black silk shawl around the shoulders of her lavender tea gown—tokens, Charles concluded, of mourning for Wallace. But if there were other signs of her grief, they were lost in the grand majesty of her offended dignity.
“I said everything I had to say to Miss Ardleigh.” Felicia’s tone was glacial. “Since she has surely reported my answers to you, Charles, I cannot think why I must respond to still more questions.”
Charles refused to take offense. “I apologize for the intrusion into your privacy, Felicia,” he said softly. “It really is most unforgivable of me, at a time when you are so heavily weighed with grief. Please believe that I would not trouble you if the Prince had not commanded me.” He paused. “Miss Ardleigh tells me that you and Reggie were close friends.”
Some of the ice began to thaw. “We were,” she said sadly. A lacy handkerchief appeared and was dabbed quickly to the eyes. “Quite close.”
“Intimate, I believe,” Charles said with sympathy.
The sigh was heavy. “I cannot deny it.” A blush rose to the cheeks that Charles suspected had already been reddened with a rub of papier poudre.
“Then perhaps you can help me to understand this appalling business.” Charles made a helpless gesture. “I confess to being entirely at sea, without a clue, as it were. Who do you think might have wished poor Reggie dead?”
Lady Metcalf, appeased, sat forward. “I have been giving a great deal of thought to that myself,” she said briskly. “At first—did Miss Ardleigh tell you?—I believed that Reggie and Lillian Forsythe had gone off together. When I learned he was dead, I entertained the possibility that Lillian herself might have killed him.” She simpered. “In a moment of pique, of course, when she learned that while Reggie might briefly respond to another’s physical charms, his heart belonged to me. But now I am given to understand that Lillian and Sir Friedrich spent the night together. She could have had nothing to do with it.”
“I must agree with you, Felicia.” Charles leaned closer. “I wonder,” he said, “whether Reggie mentioned anything to you about a certain ... letter in his possession.”
She pulled in her breath. “A letter?”
“He said something of it to you?”
For a long moment she did not answer. Then she cried, in a low, broken tone, so unlike her affected speech that it startled Charles, “Oh, what a foolish, foolish man! I begged him to be careful. I warned him not to meddle with Daisy, no matter how much money she owed him. And I especially told him not to discuss it with Brooke.”
Charles gave her the same stem look he would have given to a miscreant child. “I see, Felicia, that you have been concealing something of great importance. You must make a clean breast of it.”
She went stiff. There was no mistaking the very real fear in her eyes. Mutely, she shook her head.
He rose from his
chair. “Then I shall be forced to ask His Highness to step over here, and you can tell him that you know nothing that might help us resolve this matter.”
She gnawed her lip. “I’m not sure there’s anything to tell,” she said at last.
He sat down again. “I shall be the judge of that.”
With a reluctant sigh, she yielded. “I only know that it had something to do with a letter of Daisy’s. Reggie meant to speak of it with Brooke.” She swallowed hard. “There. That’s all I know.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Truly it is, Charles.”
“What sort of a letter?” he asked.
“Why, one of their old love letters, I suppose. Daisy and Reggie, I mean.” She made a disgusted face. “When they were lovers, they used to write daily.”
Charles spoke carefully, conscious of the importance of his question. “Exactly what did you think Reggie meant to say to Brooke?”
Fear shadowed her eyes. “Must I?” she whispered.
“You must,” he said emphatically.
Her voice was low and hesitant. “I thought ... I imagined that he planned to offer the letter to Brooke in return for repayment of Daisy’s debt to him. She owed him—close to ten thousand pounds.” She held out her hand in appeal. “He didn’t say that, Charles. It is only what I thought. I could be dreadfully wrong. In fact, I am sure that I am wrong! Reggie would not have stooped to blackmail. And Brooke could not have—” She drew a ragged breath. “No Warwick could have—”
“Could have what?” he prompted.
She swallowed hard. “Have killed him,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide. “Oh, please, Charles! You must not tell Brooke that I have any knowledge ... that I might suspect ... that it might even have crossed my mind for a moment—”
He touched her hand. The Warwicks were among the most powerful families in England. If Brooke or Daisy learned of Felicia’s accusation, guarded as it was, they would view it as slander. She would never be invited to another social event—the kiss of death to anyone in her circumstances.
