Kitty

by Beaton, M. C.

  M. C. Beaton is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, several Regency romance series and a stand-alone murder mystery, The Skeleton in the Closet – all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit www.agatharaisin.com for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter: @mc_beaton.

  Titles by M. C. Beaton

  The Poor Relation

  Lady Fortescue Steps Out · Miss Tonks Turns to Crime · Mrs Budley Falls from Grace Sir Philip’s Folly · Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue · Back in Society

  A House for the Season

  The Miser of Mayfair · Plain Jane · The Wicked Godmother Rake’s Progress · The Adventuress · Rainbird’s Revenge

  The Six Sisters

  Minerva · The Taming of Annabelle · Deirdre and Desire Daphne · Diana the Huntress · Frederica in Fashion

  Edwardian Murder Mysteries

  Snobbery with Violence · Hasty Death · Sick of Shadows Our Lady of Pain

  The Travelling Matchmaker

  Emily Goes to Exeter · Belinda Goes to Bath · Penelope Goes to Portsmouth Beatrice Goes to Brighton · Deborah Goes to Dover · Yvonne Goes to York

  Agatha Raisin

  Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death · Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener · Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage · Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death · Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden

  Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam · Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came

  Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate · Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance · Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor

  Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye

  Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison · Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body · Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers · Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble

  Hamish Macbeth

  Death of a Gossip · Death of a Cad · Death of an Outsider Death of a Perfect Wife · Death of a Hussy · Death of a Snob Death of a Prankster · Death of a Glutton · Death of a Travelling Man Death of a Charming Man · Death of a Nag · Death of a Macho Man Death of a Dentist · Death of a Scriptwriter · Death of an Addict A Highland Christmas · Death of a Dustman · Death of a Celebrity Death of a Village · Death of a Poison Pen · Death of a Bore Death of a Dreamer · Death of a Maid · Death of a Gentle Lady Death of a Witch · Death of a Valentine · Death of a Sweep Death of a Kingfisher · Death of Yesterday

  The Skeleton in the Closet

  Also available

  The Agatha Raisin Companion

  Kitty

  M. C. Beaton

  Constable & Robinson Ltd.

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First electronic edition published 2011

  by RosettaBooks LLC, New York

  First published in the UK by Canvas,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

  Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1979

  The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-121-1 (ebook)

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Cover design copyright © Constable & Robinson

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sound of the church bells vibrated in the icy air of the bedroom as Kitty struggled awake. She lay burrowed beneath the bedclothes, staring at the frost flowers on the window, and wishing in a most unchristianlike way that it would turn out to be any day other than Sunday.

  Sunday meant church service at St. John’s, standing in the snow on the porch after the service, writhing under the patronizing remarks of Lady Worthing and her daughters while her mama smiled and simpered. Sunday was also Mama’s “visit to the poor” day where, in her turn, she could enjoy her weekly luxury of patronizing her social inferiors. Sunday meant a heavy stolid meal under the glare of her taciturn stockbroker father and then back out into the cold again for evening service.

  With a sigh, she threw back the bedclothes and scurried, shivering, to crack the ice on her pitcher of washing water on the stand. Her little white face overshadowed by an enormous pair of gray eyes, stared back at her from the looking glass over the washstand. Kitty struggled into her camisole and stays, shivering at the bite of the icy whalebone against her body. She pulled on her cotton stockings, twisting them slightly to hide the darns at the heel. Now the one good silk dress, smelling of benzine from overfrequent cleaning. It was of an uncompromising shade of brown with plain tight sleeves and a simple skirt.

  How poor Kitty longed for warm, pretty, and feminine clothes!

  She brushed her fine brown hair till it crackled down to her waist. If only she could wear it up. But mama said she must not put it up until her coming-out, but how and where she was to come out was a mystery since the Harrisons were obviously in very straightened circumstances.

  The house on the edge of Hampstead Heath in North London was of elegant proportions, but the heavy Victorian furniture was old and worn and the curtains and carpets, threadbare. Unlike their wealthier neighbors, the Harrisons only kept a small staff, one general cook-housekeeper, one parlor maid, and a “daily” to do the heavy work.

  Mrs. Harrison was already fussing around the dining room when Kitty made her entrance. She was a thin, angular woman with peculiarly light, colorless eyes. Her heavy iron-gray hair was swept up on top of her head and anchored in place by a battery of ferocious steel pins which were forever escaping from their moorings and rattling to the floor. She wore a long tweed jacket and skirt, more suited to the winter’s day than Kitty’s best silk.

  The meager breakfast was spread among a selection of tarnished silver dishes on the sideboard. Selecting two pieces of kidney and a thin sliver of toast, Mrs. Harrison turned to her shivering daughter. “I do wish we could persuade Mr. Harrison to let you have a length of wool for a winter dress, my dear. But as it is, I am afraid you must wear your silk. We must always remember to keep up appearances in front of Lady Worthing for, although we cannot aspire to her level of society and must always know our place, I know she appreciates our efforts to be always well-dressed.”

  Kitty edged toward the tiny fire in the grate that seemed una
ble to combat the stuffy cold of the overfurnished room with its heavy marble nudes—bought at an auction at Jobson’s in a rare extravagant mood by Mr. Harrison—the heavy red, plush chairs, the draped mantel crowded with photographs and ancient seaside shell mementos, the dining table swathed in three heavy cloths and the massive, threadbare velvet curtains with their dingy bobbles framing the winter’s scene of the Heath. Various oil paintings in need of cleaning decorated the walls with their massive gilt frames. Hot and airless in summer and cold and suffocating in winter, it seemed a fitting room for the massive, heavy Harrison meals of cuts of cheap meat and tired vegetables bought for a few pence at the end of the day, in the stalls of Camden Town market.

  Mrs. Harrison was wont to bemoan the fact that no amount of solid feeding would plump out Kitty’s delicate, slim figure into the rounded hour-glass mold which was so fashionable. Mrs. Harrison had long put away dreams of getting a foot into high society by means of a dazzling marriage for her daughter. In her eyes, Kitty was plain and depressingly timid. The fact that her own overbearing personality had brought about the latter fault never once occurred to her and the more shy Kitty became, the more raucous and bullying her mother grew.

  With a martyred sigh, she finished her breakfast. “Come along, Kitty. Don’t dawdle. Have you got your Bible? Now do remember to smile when Lady Worthing addresses you. It is a most important connection for me. “She hustled Kitty before her and out into the hallway, past the study door where her father sat alone with his mysterious accounts, and then into the freezing air of the winter’s day.

  The frozen trees on the Heath stood mournfully under their coating of hoar frost and raised their twisted limbs up to the leaden sky as if praying hopelessly for spring.

  Mrs. Harrison hurried up the icy road pushing Kitty in front of her like an angry mother hen with a recalcitrant chick. Kitty’s long tweed cape was insufficient to keep out the bite of the wind, sweeping over the frozen ponds on the Heath from Highgate. The way other people dreamt of riches or power, Kitty dreamt simply of warmth. Only listening with half an ear to her mother’s complaining monologue, she conjured up visions of enormous blazing fires burning merrily in bright uncluttered rooms.

  “Kitty, you are not attending.”

  “Yes, Mama. The housekeeper…”

  “Exactly. It is a disgrace. Mrs. Bennet wants 70 pounds a year. Ridiculous, I told her. Servants these days are getting so uppity. I told her there were only three of us to care for and…”

  Kitty went back to warm her hands at her dream fire. Cook-housekeepers came and went—each one more slovenly than the last. Mrs. Harrison always referred to each new addition as “our old retainer.”

  “I would turn her off tomorrow but one must look after old servants,” unaware that everyone knew that the old retainer had been with them only a few months.

  At last they reached the church. Kitty waved to several of her old schoolfriends and got a lecture from her mother. “You must cut these connections, Kitty. Not at all the thing. Miss Bates’s seminary may have been excellent for the money, but do remember these are the daughters of shopkeepers. You must try to get more elegant connections.”

  Kitty bowed her head and followed her mother into the church. The familiar Anglican smell of oil heaters, damp prayer books, and incense greeted her. With a sinking heart, she noticed that Lady Worthing was already ensconced in her pew with her two daughters, Ann and Betty. As usual, she was unseasonably hatted. Her puglike face stared round the church from the shadow of a broad-brimmed straw hat that was topped up with a plethora of shiny, hard, wax fruit. The dead skins of several small ferrety animals hung around her ample bosom, their glass eyes gazing fixedly at the congregation in a ludicrous parody of their owner’s stare.

  The Reverend James Ponsonby-Smythe was reading from the Old Testament and the passage he had selected seemed entirely composed of who begat whom. Kitty sat on in an agony of boredom. Her despised friends were giggling and whispering and passing each other notes. “What fun it would be to be part of it all,” thought poor Kitty. “Must I always be condemned to live in this sort of social isolation—neither belonging to the one class or the other?”

  There was a sudden stir at the back of the church. Heads began to turn and even Lady Worthing’s glassy eyes lit up with a sort of unholy glee. Kitty was about to risk a parental rebuke and turn and stare, when she noticed that her mother was twisted round in the pew, blatantly staring herself.

  The object of all this attention was standing at the back of the church, leaning languidly on his cane. Her first impression of him was that he was extremely handsome. Her second, that he had one of the cruelest and most decadent faces she had seen outside the covers of a history book. Above his long, frogged, beaver coat, his face stood out against the dimness of the church with the translucent whiteness of alabaster. His hooded eyes surveyed the suburban congregation with weary contempt. His black, luxuriant curls were worn slightly longer than the common fashion and in his long white fingers, he carried a pair of lavender gloves. Suddenly, Kitty realized that he was looking straight at her. A mocking light flashed across his pale gray eyes, and he unmistakably winked.

  “Well, really,” said Kitty’s mother, bridling. “Turn round this instant, miss. That man is nothing but a—a—masher.”

  Kitty dutifully turned around. Secretly she was pleased. Mrs. Harrison had dinned into Kitty day and night about how plain she was and how undistinguished. It was nice to get a tiny bit of attention from one of that mysterious opposite sex.

  As they rose to leave the church, Mrs. Harrison drew Kitty close to her to prevent the “masher” from making any further overtures and then stopped on the church porch with a cluck of dismay, for there was that very gentleman being positively beamed upon by Lady Worthing. Kitty tried not to giggle. Lady Worthing was presenting one daughter after another to the gentleman, in feverish rotation. “This is my little Betty. And this is dear Ann. Did I introduce Betty? Now you must meet Ann. Betty have you…”

  She broke off with a frown as she saw Mrs. Harrison approaching and gave a small, imperious wave of her plump hand encased in a dog-skin glove, in an attempt to dismiss the approaching distraction. But Mrs. Harrison was made of sterner stuff.

  “My dear Lady Worthing,” gushed Mrs. Harrison, sailing forward as majestically as King Edward’s yacht at Cowes. “I was just saying to Kitty this morning—was I not, Kitty?—that if my dear Lady Worthing is not in church then somehow Sunday will just not be Sunday.”

  “Indeed,” said Lady Worthing, reluctantly giving Mrs. Harrison two fingers to shake. She then turned her broad back to screen Mrs. Harrison from the gentleman, but he demanded in a lazy drawl, “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Lady Worthing?”

  Lady Worthing turned slowly, her protruding eyes holding an expression which boded ill for Mrs. Harrison’s future social ambitions. “Mrs. Harrison—Lord Chesworth—Lord Chesworth—Mrs. Harrison.” His lordship gave a slight bow and turned his eyes questioningly at Kitty. “Oh, er…” humphed Lady Worthing, “this is her daughter, Kitty. Now as I was saying….” She again presented her back to the Harrisons, but Mrs. Harrison nipped around her and faced Lord Chesworth, smiling and fluttering. “What brings you to our Hampstead church. Lord Chesworth?” gushed Mrs. Harrison while her mind deftly flicked the pages of the peerage. She had got it! Lord Peter Chesworth, third Baron Reamington. Unmarried!

  “I was passing,” said Lord Chesworth, “and felt in need of spiritual guidance.” His eyes raked over Kitty with near insolence, taking in the shabby tweed coat and depressing felt hat. Kitty was suddenly aware of the darns in her gloves and pulled down her sleeves with a jerk.

  Lady Worthing laughed indulgently. “We have a nice little congregation here. Smells a bit of the shop but worthy people for all that.”

  Again the mocking gleam came into Lord Chesworth’s eyes. “I met your late husband a few years ago, Lady Worthing. He gave me a very interesting lecture on the cotton mills of Lan
cashire.”

  Lady Worthing flushed an unlovely shade of red. Sir Jacob Worthing had made his money out of his mills and some unkind people had said that he had bought his knighthood. Since his death the previous year, Lady Worthing had lived with the polite fiction that their money came from “[their] estates in the north.”

  Small, powdery flakes of snow were beginning to fall from the leaden sky. Kitty shivered.

  “We shall all catch pneumonia if we stand here chatting,” said his lordship. “Good day to you, ladies.” With that, his tall figure strode off.

  The ladies watched him mount into a highsprung brougham outside the churchyard gate.

  The coachman cracked his whip, the footman sprang up behind, and the party watched in silence until the erect figure of Lord Chesworth had disappeared around the corner.

  Lady Worthing turned to Mrs. Harrison with a look of undisguised venom. “I never thought that you would be so encroaching, Mrs. Harrison. We have often talked about various types not knowing their place.” And before Mrs. Harrison could reply, she swung her small animals around her thick neck, marshalled her two insipid daughters in front of her, and marched to her carriage.

  It was Mrs. Harrison’s darkest hour. Lady Worthing’s voice had carried around the churchyard. She had been humiliated in front of the very people she despised. Two spots of color burned on her thin, yellowish cheeks and in some obscure way, she felt the fault was Kitty’s.

  “This would never have happened,” she snapped, “if you had not been making sheep’s eyes at his lordship in church.”

  “But I didn’t, Mama,” cried Kitty.

  “Nonsense. Of course you did. A gentleman like that would not take notice of a little girl like you, otherwise. You’re bold, Kitty, that’s what you are.”

  “You said he was a masher,” said Kitty, feeling for the first time a small spark of rebellion.

  “How dare you answer me back!” said Mrs. Harrison, taking Kitty’s arm in a painful grip. “That was before I knew he was a Baron!”