The Devious Duchess

by Joan Smith

  “I have made the queries and come to inform you au sujet de la chaise. Sir Nevil, he is not buying no Bath chair. He is buying new cravates, and the lady, she is buying a bonnet with many fruits. Also, the lady is now downstairs at the desk—alone. Sir Nevil, he is going to Fernvale to make talks about the waking tomorrow, and she went with him to the desk. He tells her to go back up the stairs right h’away. Her, she is complaining that her room is smoked from the fireplace.”

  “Let’s go,” Pronto said, and bolted out the door before she should go back to her room.

  Belami wasn’t far behind him. He only stopped long enough to say, “Well done, Réal. Buy yourself a biftek and a bottle of wine. And keep up the friendship with Nevil’s groom."

  Adelaide Pankhurst was just leaving the desk as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Belami hadn’t expected her to appear genteel, as he knew she had been an actress when Dudley met her. He had thought she might have toned down her style somewhat, but her calling was still quite obvious. Her hair was a tangle of black curls, as described. The even coloring and lack of any natural sheen suggested that nature was given a hand by modern chemistry. Her cheeks as well were colored more by artifice than nature, but her figure—full and well curved—appeared to be her own. It was encased in a close-fitting gown of a shocking peacock blue, garnished with many bows, much lace, and three paste brooches. Her eyes were dark and well-fringed, but the crow’s-feet had begun to invade their outer edge, and some puffiness was evident below.

  They met at the bottom of the stairs. Pronto bowed and stood aside to allow her to pass. Always clumsy, he accidentally jostled her arm when they met. She gave an annoyed tsk and said, “Watch where you’re going, you great ox!”

  As she looked up, Belami stepped forward from the shadows, and her expression changed in a flash. The frown between her brows faded, and her ruby lips lifted in a smile. Her teeth were still in decent repair. She didn’t say a word, but there was a warm greeting in her eyes.

  Belami turned to Pronto and said, “You must apologize to the young lady, Pronto. I hope he didn’t hurt you, ma’am.” He leaned forward, dazzling her with his best smile.

  “Didn’t do it on purpose” was Pronto’s apology.

  “He didn’t quite break my bones,” Adelaide admitted.

  “The stairway is narrow and so ill-lit,” Belami mentioned.

  “And if that isn’t bad enough, my room’s full of smoke, till I’m afraid of being kippered,” Adelaide added.

  “Perhaps . . . I hope you wouldn’t consider it an imposition if we asked you to join us in our private parlor for a glass of wine while they tend to your flue,” Belami suggested. Already his hand was on her elbow to turn her gently back to the landing. It met with no opposition.

  “That’s a real gentlemanly idea. I guess one glass wouldn’t make me bosky.”

  A private parlor was arranged, and the three entered to wait for the wine. “We won’t be so farouche as to expect you to drink with strangers,” Belami said, seating her beside the fire. “I am Lord Belami, and this is my friend, Mr. Pilgrim.”

  “Please to meet you,” she answered, her eyes never so much as blinking in Pronto’s direction. “I’m Adelaide Pankhurst! I travel under my professional name,” she explained. “I’m a chanteuse.”

  An expression of well-simulated delight alit on Belami’s face. “Not the Adelaide Pankhurst!” he exclaimed.

  “Is there another?” Pronto asked, frowning from one to the other.

  “The famous chanteuse, Pronto! You’ve heard me sing her praises anytime the past two years,” Belami told him.

  “Oh, that Adelaide Pankhurst.”

  “I was better known before I left London,” Adelaide confided. “What’s keeping that wine? A body could die of thirst around here.”

  “The service is wretched,” Belami agreed. “Are you here on a professional engagement, Miss Pankhurst? I look forward to hearing you perform.”

  The wine came, and while the servant was in the room, Adelaide said nothing. After he left, she slaked her thirst before replying. She composed her face to a very professional expression of sorrow and settled in for a scene of high melodrama. “Alas, ‘tis a sad errand I’ve come on. I was married to an older gentleman when a very girl. We didn’t jog along at all well, he was such a queer nabs, expecting me to live in the wilderness. Jealous as a green cow, he was. He didn’t want me to see nobody. He sent off for me to come and see him just a day ago, and what should happen in the meanwhile but he went and died. Like that.” She snapped her fingers to illustrate the speed of his passing. Then she drew another draft from her glass and held it out for refilling.

  “That’s a very sad story,” Belami said, tilting her out a full glass.

  “Just like a real stage drama,” she agreed.

  “Why do you think he suddenly sent for you?” Belami asked.

  “I’ll never know now, will I? It was to be his birthday, and he wanted to see me."

  “Maybe he was going to give you some blunt,” Pronto suggested.

  “Cut me off is more like it!” Adelaide countered. “He made me an allowance. The fact is, he was a very high-placed gentleman. A lord,” she added, nodding her head in emphasis of this grandeur. “A younger son, you know, but his da was a marquess. Why, I could call myself Lady Dudley if I had any hankering for a title. However, the deal was that I couldn’t use his name or title if I was to get my allowance paid.”

  This struck Belami as the appropriate moment to admit that he knew something of her history, as she would soon learn it from Sir Nevil in any case, and he exclaimed, “You don’t mean you are Lord Dudley Patmore’s widow!”

  “None other. Did you know the old bleater?” she asked. There was a suspicious glint in her black eyes.

  “I never met him, but I am familiar with the family. I had no idea Lord Dudley’s wife was such a young lady.”

  “It was a May-December match,” she admitted, her expression softening. Then she noticed Pronto staring at her and turned her attention to him. “And who are you?”

  “Pronto,” he answered. “Pronto Pilgrim. Belami’s bosom bow.”

  If Adelaide knew of Belami’s connection with Deirdre and the duchess, she kept it to herself. “It was a great shock to me,” she said, and drank some more wine. “I wonder if I’ll lose my allowance. Sir . . . A friend of mine tells me a widow has rights.”

  “That would be Sir Nevil Ryder?” Belami inquired, his tone devoid of any emotion.

  “Yes, the old boy’s nephew. He’s the one will be in the honey now, like as not. That’ll be a change for him.”

  “Where are you living these days, Miss Pankhurst?” Belami asked.

  Pronto opened his lips to give her residence, but Belami stared him down. “At Bath,” she said. “Mind you, if I get any blunt from the old gent, I’ll move on to London. A widow has rights. Would you know anything about that, Lord Belami?”

  “There is generally a dowager’s allowance, and a dower house, if the estate has one. Certainly some provision must be made for the widow, by law.”

  She considered this a moment, then spoke. “Then I’ll buy myself a black outfit and go to the funeral. I don’t own a black gown, or I’d be in mourning now. I’ll do him proud at the funeral, though; see if I don’t. I’d best get out to a modiste first thing in the morning.”

  “I suppose you’ll be attending the wake tomorrow?” Belami asked.

  “My friend says that’s not a good idea. My husband’s sister is a regular Tartar, and no mistake about it. She’d cut me dead. I didn’t come here to be insulted, but I’ll go to the church. She can’t do much there. I would like to see the little girl again—Deirdre was her name. Shy as a flower, she was, and so sweet. Ah, well, she’d be all grown up now, and they’d have set her against me.”

  “No, she is still very sweet,” Belami told her. “1 think she would like to see you.”

  “Not at Fernvale, thank you. Happen we’ll arrange something. Well,
thank you kindly for the wine, Lord Belami. Will you be sticking around for the funeral?”

  “I plan to remain in town for a few days. I hope we meet again, Miss Pankhurst.”

  “I don’t see much difficulty in it, since we’re both putting up here,” she answered. Her black eyes flashed an invitation.

  Belami arose, pulled Pronto to his feet as well, and accompanied Adelaide to the door. After she had left, he carefully closed it. “What do you make of her?” he asked Pronto.

  “Holds her wine well. A pretty fair toper. Looks a bit older in the light than I thought at the first glance. She don’t have to caulk her wrinkles yet, but they’re there.”

  “She says Dudley wanted to see her. I wonder what he had in mind.”

  “Can’t very well ask him.”

  “No, we just have to take her word for it that Dudley wanted to see her. I don’t see any reason why she’d lie about it.’’

  “She certainly didn’t kill him. She didn’t get here till he was long gone.”

  “If she does know anything,” Belami said, “the likeliest person to learn it is Deirdre. I must make some arrangement for the two of them to get together.”

  “You go back to Fernvale and the one arranging things will be me. Your funeral is what I’ll be arranging. And don’t expect me to go to Fernvale for you either. Old Charney will comb my head with her cane. No, Dick, what you’ve got to do is get deducing and figure this thing out.”

  When Pronto saw Belami begin to pace about the room with his hands hooked behind his back, he knew that Dick was heeding his advice. He allowed him to make a few trips back and forth before demanding to know the results of his deductions. “Well, what have you come up with?” he asked.

  “Two excuses for Sir Nevil’s trip to Bath. He told us at Fernvale that he’d gone for a Bath chair, which he didn’t buy. But why invent a pretext when he had a perfectly good reason? Lord Dudley had asked him to bring Adelaide to the Grange.”

  “Killing two birds with one stone. Why would he make two trips to Bath?”

  “Then why didn’t he deliver her to the Grange instead of carrying her here to the inn?”

  “You know the ladies, Dick. Wanted to rouge up her face or put on that new bonnet she bought—the one Réal mentioned.”

  “Adelaide’s worried about money. She wouldn’t waste money on lodgings and meals at an inn when she could stay at the Grange gratis. In fact, she’d been invited. And Sir Nevil’s pockets are usually to let as well, so I don’t think he’s paying the shot.”

  Pronto considered this for a long moment. Then he began rubbing his stomach and finally delivered his conclusion. “Only one thing to do, Dick.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Order dinner. I’m ready for fork work.”

  “You’re not the only one. I’ve been staying at Fernvale. I haven’t had a decent bite in two days.”

  Dinner proved as effective as Deirdre’s fingers in allaying Belami's headache. When he went to his room, he felt wonderfully restored. There was a new clue waiting for him there. Réal had left him a note.

  “Sir Nevil Ryder is returned at the inn. He is renting the room here. C'est étrange, n'est-ce pas?”

  Belami did indeed find it not only strange but highly suspicious that Adelaide and Nevil, neither of them well to grass, should both squander their money on paid lodgings. He got rid of Pronto and spent an hour in deducing from his store of clues before he felt tired enough to retire. But sleep didn’t come. His mind kept going back to the inevitable fact that whatever he might discover about Sir Nevil, it was only the duchess who had at her fingertips the motive, opportunity, and method to murder Lord Dudley. Some more active investigating was necessary, and the wake tomorrow seemed a good time for it. Deirdre would be there, too . . .

  Chapter 8

  “This was to have been Dudley’s birthday, and instead of fêting him, we’ll be attending his wake,” the duchess said as she sat with Deirdre at breakfast the next morning.

  Deirdre observed that the night had not been kind to her aunt. The face across from her had been gaunt and pale for as long as Deirdre could remember, but it hadn’t used to be quite so ravaged. The hollows under the eyes had sunken deeper and were ringed with dark circles. The food in her bowl was untouched.

  “I’ll handle everything for you, Auntie,” Deirdre said. Her voice was hard, not for any lack of sympathy but because the only way she could hold herself together was by stifling all emotion. It was there, just below the surface, waiting to gush forth. “I’ll go over to the Grange this morning and see what’s been done. What do you want to serve the funeral guests? I don’t think a hot, sit-down dinner is necessary. It will be mainly neighbors.”

  “When my husband died, the averil consisted of three courses and four removes” was her grace’s unhelpful reply. “Of course, he had a great many friends, unlike poor Dudley. The government picked up the bill for the whole of it."

  “The girls at the Grange have been baking sweets. I’ll see what Uncle Dudley had in the cellar and perhaps ask Mrs. Bates to roast some mutton.”

  “That will be fine, Deirdre.”

  This easy agreement was the saddest sign of all. The fight had gone out of her aunt. “Eat your porridge,” Deirdre said, and only realized after she said it that these were the exact words that were usually said to her every morning. The duchess lifted her cup and sipped her coffee instead.

  “If you’re going to the Grange, you must find out from Nevil when the inquest is to be held,” the duchess mentioned.

  The inquest! Another horrible ordeal to be got through. “Will we have to attend?” Deirdre asked fearfully.

  “I don’t believe so. Straus has got all the evidence he needs, with Belami’s help. Belami will be the star of the show, I daresay.”

  “Nevil will know all about it,” Deirdre replied. She was so eager to discuss this and other matters with Nevil that she put on her pelisse and went across the meadow as soon as she finished her breakfast.

  She remained there arranging the funeral details till noon, at which time the body arrived. It was placed in state in the saloon and ringed around with candles. Deirdre didn’t even go to see it. She went home and made her mourning toilette, to greet the guests. It was arranged that the duchess would be on hand at the Grange for the early-evening callers, and Deirdre and Nevil would be on duty all afternoon and evening. The visitors were mostly neighbors, who were there from curiosity and a sense of duty. Certainly there was nothing like a moist eye in the room.

  During a lull in the arrivals, Deirdre went upstairs to freshen her toilette. All of the Grange was in an advanced state of decay, and the mirror at which she brushed her hair was similarly afflicted. The silvering on the back of it had tarnished so that it was a grayish, ghostly vision that stared back at her. It helped to conceal the pallor of her cheeks, but she could see that her eyes were heavy from lack of sleep and worry. They glowed dully like two pieces of coal in the snow.

  Her mourning gown of black was relieved only by a silver filigree cross with an onyx inset. With her hair pulled severely back from her face, Deirdre had the strange impression that she was looking at the reflection of a nun. She was glad Dick wouldn’t be there to see her look so unattractive. Through the open door she saw Polly hurry past in the hall and went to call her.

  “Polly, about tonight. If Mrs. Haskell hasn’t returned, I think you and Anna should sleep at Fernvale. We’ll send the butler and some—”

  “Oh, she’s back, miss,” Polly replied. “She just arrived a minute ago and sent me upstairs to fetch clean linen for the table.”

  “Oh, good! I’ll go right down and speak to her,” Deirdre said.

  She found Mrs. Haskell in the kitchen, overseeing the arrangement of platters of food. Mrs. Haskell was a plain country woman with no pretension to either fashion or beauty. Middle-aged, becoming stout, with a set of intelligent green eyes and a sharp tongue, she had already pulled the girls into line and had them b
usy.

  “G’day, Miss Gower,” she said curtly. “I’m very sorry about your uncle. We’ll all miss him.”

  This polite lie was accepted in the same spirit as it was uttered. “What a homecoming for you. You must have been very distraught to receive my aunt’s note. I hope there is nothing serious amiss at home, Mrs. Haskell.”

  “At home? Oh, I wasn’t at home, Miss Gower. I didn’t get any note from the duchess. It was my aunt, Mrs. Sutton, who wrote me. That is . . . well, it was all some sort of a misunderstanding. I certainly had a letter signed with the name Mrs. Sutton asking me to come at once—she had fallen and was completely incapacitated. I wouldn’t have gone, but that she has always been so very kind to me, you know. Raised me like her own daughter.”

  “What was the misunderstanding?” Deirdre asked. “Had she not fallen at all?”

  “She had not, and she hadn’t written either. I showed her the letter, and though it looked like her hand, she never wrote me a word. It was all some sort of prank, we thought. Truth to tell, I laid it at the servants’ door—an effort to have a holiday from me. Now that this has happened to the old gentleman, I wonder . . . Do you think I ought to mention it to Mr. Straus, Miss Gower? I wish I’d brought the note home with me.”

  As this tended to divert suspicion from her aunt, Deirdre urged the woman to do so.

  “I think I should, too,” Mrs. Haskell agreed. “It looks like a trick to get me out of my house and let someone murder Lord Dudley. I feel it’s all my own fault in a way.”

  “You couldn’t possibly have known,” Deirdre consoled her.

  “I shouldn’t have gone, so close to his birthday and all. But I knew you and your aunt would be home, and Sir Nevil, too, would be back. And my aunt, you know, has always hinted she would leave me her house. Aye, whoever wrote that note knew what message would get rid of me.” An angry scowl decorated Mrs. Haskell’s visage as she made this declaration.

  “Yes, you could hardly refuse a summons from Mrs. Sutton,” Deirdre agreed, but already her mind was off in a different direction. Who would know of the special relationship between Mrs. Haskell and her aunt? She asked the housekeeper this question and waited on tenterhooks for the answer.