by M C Beaton
Sally meekly allowed herself to be helped through the snow-covered streets, reflecting that she would have needed his help even if she had been allowed to behave in a manner befitting her real age. The snow had frozen into high, powdery drifts, creating a frozen world, a white, mysterious world, through which they moved silently. The hems of Sally’s dress and mantle were becoming soaked despite the light, powdery snow, and her feet were absolutely frozen.
At last they reached the Pelican, which had been built around the seventeenth century and was full of stairs up and stairs down, Toby jugs, armor, and old-world objects d’art made in Birmingham in the hope of attracting some of those American tourists who were supposed to like that sort of thing. The Pelican was originally a coaching inn, but its trade had been taken away by the railway.
Sally was treated with all the deference given to a duchess, although the landlord, who had been about to offer Her Grace tea, was somewhat startled when the marquess said firmly that his mother would like a bottle of brandy sent up to her room.
The marquess had sent one of the inn servants back to the station to collect their suitcases and suggested they sit in front of the fire until their belongings arrived.
Sally was now feeling sleepy again and nervous at the same time.
The room was very small, shadowed, and cosy, lit by a pair of candles stuck in brass candlesticks on the high velvet-draped mantel. The bed was a four-poster and very small, either having been made in an age when the average Briton was stunted, or when they preferred to sleep bolt upright like the French aristocracy to prevent congestion of the lungs.
Sally slowly swirled the brandy around in her glass, reflecting that she had drunk enough since she left London to last a lifetime.
The brandy on top of all she had had before took immediate effect, and her sleepiness increased, while her nervousness began to ebb a little.
“Where will you sleep, my lord?” asked Sally, staring at the leaping flames of a small coal fire.
“Here, of course.”
“Here! Where? In the chair?”
“Don’t be silly. In bed.”
Well, he was paying for the room, after all. “Then I shall sleep in my chair,” said Sally.
“Aunt Mabel,” he said testily. “I know you are very young at heart, but at times you are ridiculous. I must remind you that you are old enough to be my grandmother, and my intentions toward you are strictly honorable. We shall both share the bed, just as I would do with my own mother, old as I am, if she should find herself in the same predicament.”
“Of course,” said Sally hurriedly. “I didn’t think—didn’t mean—”
“Oh, then what did you think and mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Sally stupidly. “I’m tired.”
The servant arriving with their luggage stopped conversation for a while. Then the marquess rose to his feet. “I shall leave you to change, Aunt Mabel. I shall go downstairs and wander about. Don’t be long.”
When he left the room Sally fairly scrambled out of her clothes and into a long flannel nightgown that buttoned high to the throat and had long tight sleeves.
The heat from the fire did not seem to reach as far as the bed, and the sheets felt icy-cold. Some thoughtful servant had put a stone hot water bottle at the foot of the bed, but it was as red-hot as the bed was icy, and Sally almost burned her feet. She lay staring up at the chintz bed canopy until the marquess returned. He entered the room quietly, without looking at the bed, and blew out the candles. She closed her eyes tightly, hearing the rustle as he undressed.
The bed creaked as he climbed in, and she moved as far to the edge as she could.
“Good night, Aunt Mabel,” came a soft, mocking voice out of the darkness.
“Good night, my lord,” replied Sally miserably. What would Aunt Mabel advise a girl to do in this situation? Sally closed her eyes wearily. If anyone wrote to me about this, she thought, telling me that they had pretended to be an old woman and had, due to inescapable circumstances, ended up in bed with the Marquess of Seudenham, pretending to be his mother, I would simply think some poor girl was deranged and tear it up!
The clock on the mantel gave an asthmatic cough and chimed out four o’clock, and a coal fell on the hearth. But despite her turmoil of emotions, Sally fell asleep, determined to be the first to wake.
However it was the marquess who woke first. He climbed gently from the bed and, walking to the window, opened the curtains. Sun blazed down on a white world. It shone into the little room and onto the face of the sleeping Aunt Mabel.
The marquess looked down at her as she lay sleeping—and then looked closer, his eyes suddenly sharp and suspicious.
The glaring light was shining full on Aunt Mabel’s rubber wrinkles, shining through them, making them transparent, so that underneath them, like a sleeping beauty, lay the young face of Sally Blane.
He bent closer. At the edge of Aunt Mabel’s shaggy eyebrows gleamed a little shining trail.
“Gum arabic,” he muttered. She was very heavily asleep. He gently pushed the white wig and stared at the line of soft nut-brown hair exposed underneath.
All at once he knew he had found his impostor. And yet, in some mad way, he knew she was Aunt Mabel, who answered letters to Home Chats. He suddenly could think of several very enjoyable ways of punishing her for her deception, but he decided to behave himself instead and to go out and assess the state of the roads.
By the time Sally descended timidly to the inn dining room, the marquess cheerfully informed her that he had telephoned the palace for a carriage, as the roads were clear. Sally dropped her eyes before his mocking blue gaze. She had put on a hat with a heavy veil, and he watched with great amusement as she tried to eat her breakfast of bacon and eggs without raising it.
“That’s very decorative,” he said at last.
“What is, my lord?”
“Those fascinating little bits of egg and bacon that are sticking to the edge of your veil. Are you trying to set a new fashion?”
“No,” Sally mumbled, raising her veil and wondering what had put him in this mood. He seemed extremely elated. His eyes were shining and followed her every movement until she became so nervous that her teeth rattled against her teacup.
Several times she opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again.
When the carriage arrived, he tenderly helped her into it, holding her elbow—it seemed to Sally—in an unnecessarily firm grip.
“How long do you plan to stay?” he asked as the carriage lurched over the snowy ruts.
“As short a time as possible,” said Sally. “I mean—I have to get back to London in, say, two days.”
“Two days? After all your ordeal in getting here? How can you bear to tear yourself away from my fascinating company so soon?”
“I don’t know,” mumbled Sally, wondering what had come over him.
Suddenly apprehensive, she fished in her reticule and produced a small steel mirror and studied her reflection. The aged face of Aunt Mabel stared back at her.
“You look very well,” said the marquess. “Quite the thing. No one would guess from your innocent face, Aunt Mabel, that you had just spent the night in bed with me.”
“My lord! Really!” Sally threw him such an outraged glance that he was momentarily taken aback and wondered whether he had made some awful mistake. Then he remembered the nutbrown hair under the wig and smiled at her shocked face.
“You are such a charming, fascinating, and irresistible woman,” he said, “that you quite turn my poor head.”
“You are talking rubbish,” said Sally in her most Aunt Mabelish manner. “I liked you better when you were knitting.”
He smiled at that, but did not make any more remarks, and to Sally’s relief he contented himself with looking out of the window at the passing scene.
Sally snuggled into the carriage rugs, leaned her head back against the squabs, and pretended to go to sleep so as to avoid any further conv
ersation.
But soon pretense became a reality, and she did not awaken until the carriage was crunching over the snowy gravel in front of Banjahar Palace.
Her old room was still there waiting for her. The duchess was mildly glad to see her, but explained that all the problems seemed to have been solved, since Miss Wyndham was not to marry Paul after all. She went on to say that it was such a shame that Aunt Mabel had missed the ball, because Paul had seemed quite smitten with Lady Cecily Trevelyn, who would have been eminently suitable but—alas!—it had come to nothing.
Apart from Sally, the only other house guests this time were the Honorable Freddie and Mrs. Stuart.
Mrs. Stuart was passing through the hall as Sally was following the housekeeper taking Sally up to her room. She bestowed a grotesque wink on Sally, and Sally tried to control a shudder of distaste. The woman was quite mad.
Once in the sanctuary of her sitting room, Sally heaved a sigh of relief. She began to think that she might be able to escape with grace. Instinctively she felt the duchess had lost interest in Aunt Mabel. Even Sally knew that it was quite usual for strange people to be taken up by society. But unless they actually belonged, they were quickly dropped.
The sky outside was turning milky white. Sally looked at it anxiously as she removed her hat. Surely it could not snow again. It was no use staying to be near the marquess when every encounter only made matters worse.
A footman scratched at the door and announced that luncheon was being served in the small dining room.
Sally quickly changed into a depressing gray wool frock with purple embroidery, straightened her wig, and went downstairs with a quickly beating heart.
“My darling,” cried the marquess gaily as she entered the dining room. “Come and sit next to me and hold my hand.”
The duchess dropped her spoon in her soup and stared at her son with her mouth open. The Honorable Freddie let out a snigger, opened his mouth to comment on the marquess’s outlandish behavior on the train, remembered Flossie and Boat Race night, and shut it again.
Sally gingerly sat down next to the marquess, who gently took her hand, turned it over, and pressed a warm kiss into its palm.
“Freud has a name for it,” announced the duke from the other end of the table. “Something about pussycats.”
“Oedipus complex,” snapped Mrs. Stuart.
“I don’t like the Greeks,” said the duchess, feeling on firm ground. “You never know what they’re going to get up to. Now, take Priscilla Forbes-Bennet in Athens in 1902. A waiter! At the Grande Bretagne of all things. Is that what this eddy-thing is about?”
“Not quite,” said Mrs. Stuart nastily. “It means you are either in love with your mother or a woman old enough to be your mother.”
The duchess sat bolt upright in her chair, rigid with shock and disapproval. “The trouble with all this awful nonsense,” she said severely, “is that it appeals to repressed people with minds like sewers. Paul, you are simply behaving like a clown. Aunt Mabel! Drink your soup.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Sally, who had turned quite pink under her wrinkles. She took a hurried mouthful of Brown Windsor soup—and choked. The soup was burning hot.
The marquess patted her on the back.
“Can’t you keep your hands off her?” asked the duke, with interest. “I know what it feels like, dear boy, but it’s neither the time nor place.”
Tears of pain and embarrassment started into Sally’s eyes, and the marquess decided she had suffered enough—for the moment—and turned to his father and began to talk about the latest improvements in synthetic fertilizers.
I don’t care, thought Sally wildly. I’ve got to escape directly after lunch. He’s guessed. Somehow, he’s guessed.
“I say, this soup tastes funny,” said the Honorable Freddie plaintively. “I—”
A startled look came onto his face, and he clutched at his chest while they all stared at him. An amazed look crossed his face, and with a little gurgling sound, he dropped his head in his soup, and his soul rose from the Brown Windsor and departed to the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.
His monocle sprang from his dead eye and rolled across the table, glaring up accusingly at Sally, like another disembodied eye.
Sally gripped the arms of her chair quite tightly.
The marquess quickly went around the table and lifted Freddie’s head out of the soup and, supporting him, felt for his pulse.
“Mrs. Stuart,” he said, “I am afraid Freddie is dead.”
“It’s his heart. I knew it would happen,” said Mrs. Stuart calmly.
Sally was too young to recognize the calm of utter shock and despair. She was outraged. Justice must be done.
The duke rose to his feet. “I’ll call Doctor Barchester,” he said.
“You’ll call the police.”
The duke and duchess, the marquess, and Mrs. Stuart all gazed at Aunt Mabel, aghast.
“What?” demanded the duke stupidly, his high color at its most pronounced.
“That woman,” said Sally, slowly and distinctly and pointing to Mrs. Stuart, “told me that she intended to poison her husband. She said that Doctor Barchester was too old to be efficient and that he would put ‘heart attack’ on the certificate if she told him to. I insist that the police be called and that an autopsy be performed on Mr. Stuart.”
“Come with me,” said the duchess, walking away from the table. Sally followed her out.
The duchess swung around in the hall. “What’s all this nonsense?” she demanded. And so Sally told her.
“Annabelle Stuart has been talking that sort of rubbish for years,” said the duchess coldly. “You have done a terrible thing to add to her shock and grief with your wicked accusations.”
“I believe she poisoned him,” said Sally stubbornly.
The duchess surveyed Aunt Mabel with awful contempt. Then she touched a bell on the wall. When the butler answered the summons, Her Grace said in a voice that dripped acid, “This person is leaving, now. Have her out of here, bag and baggage, as fast as possible.”
Then raking Sally from head to toe with a look of utter disgust, the duchess turned on her heels and marched back into the small dining room, slamming the door behind her.
Sally was more than ever bent on seeing justice done. Her anger against the villainous Mrs. Stuart kept her at top boil, and she startled the duke’s servants by demanding to be set down at the police station in Bath.
Paul, she was sure, had discovered her identity—or rather had recognized under the disguise of Aunt Mabel the girl he had proposed to. He had looked as shocked as the others when she made her accusation. He should discover that she had been right. The police were politely disbelieving, but Aunt Mabel’s fame had spread far and wide and at last they were impressed. Sally said she would stay at the Palace Hotel in Bath until she heard the result of the autopsy.
Nonetheless, the police wanted to spare the ducal family as much embarrassment as possible. The matter was kept out of the inky hands of the press, and the autopsy was rushed through. In a bare twenty-four hours an Inspector Davidson called on Aunt Mabel at the Palace Hotel.
Sally listened in horror as he explained that the autopsy, which had been performed by a famous London surgeon, had revealed that the Honorable Freddie Stuart had died of a heart attack, nothing more.
Sally buried her face in her hands and burned with shame and distress.
His voice softening a little, the inspector pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her.
“Now look here, mum,” he said. “I’ve no doubt that what you told us was all true—that Mrs. Stuart had told you she was going to poison her husband. But these here people have their strange ways, and Mrs. Stuart has been saying the same thing for years. Even her husband knew. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
In despair Sally remembered the conversation in the railway compartment with Freddie, the Marquess blithely asking Freddie if his wife was still trying to pois
on him.
“Someone s-said s-something,” she faltered.
“Ah, well, there you are,” said the inspector. “That’s the aristocracy for you, mum. Why, if some of us behaved like them, they’d have us locked up for sure. Still, it’s not for us to criticize our betters, is it? You’ve done a cruel and very silly thing, but the family has decided to forgive you, since they can understand you being confused by their little ways.”
Little ways! Sally felt she had wandered into a Through the Looking Glass world.
All she wanted to do was to get as far away from the lot of them as possible. She would never get over this shame and disgrace. Never.
After the inspector left, she went downstairs to pay her hotel bill. The bill, said the clerk, smiling, had been sent to the Marquess of Seudenham at his lordship’s request.
Sally eventually climbed onto the Bath train bound for London, feeling as if the coals of fire that had been heaped on her head were burning through her wig.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Have some more tea,” said Miss Fleming soothingly.
Miss Frimp, Miss Fleming, and Sally were seated around the table in their Bloomsbury flat. Sally had cried until she could cry no more, telling them, when she was able, the whole story of her horrible visit.
“You’re well out of it, you know,” said Miss Fleming. “You would be amazed at the things I hear when I go down to the country with Mr. Wingles. At the last house party, they were all talking about old Lord Beech’s little ways. They said he harnesses his wife up to the dogcart and drives her around the estate.”
“Goodness!” screamed Miss Frimp.
“Now, you, Sally,” pursued Miss Fleming, “would be better off married to a nice clean-cut army officer.”
“I want Paul,” said Sally in a dreary voice.
“Well, you can’t have him,” said Miss Fleming testily. “You’re a very lucky girl. You say he recognized you and didn’t expose you? Even after you said all that about Mrs. Stuart? Believe me, you’re very lucky indeed. And only think! You’re writhing in shame and mortification, and all because you accused that old trout, Annabelle Stuart, of killing her husband. Well, if you ask me, you’re not to be blamed. The woman’s raving mad. She’s been going on like Lady Macbeth for so long that someone was bound to take her seriously. She’s got no one to blame but herself. It’s all been very painful, but the best thing you can do, Sally, is to start work in the morning and work and work and work. I find that’s the best cure for any ill.”
