“Such as supplying little titbits of information about Sir Frederick and his household,” I put in.
Sir Frederick roused himself. “Yes, Lady Wellie and I are indeed old friends. I am sure she had much to say.”
“Not that much,” Lady Wellie contradicted swiftly. “Some things were not at all pertinent to this affair.” She looked to me. “That last night, when you left here, you gave me a message that was to be delivered to Sir Hugo in the event you did not return by the following morning. I confess to anticipating your need for him and instructing—suggesting,” she corrected quickly, “that he come to your aid with all expedience. But that is the extent of my involvement.”
I might have believed her had it not been for that little slip. She would not admit it, I realized, not even if I confronted her directly. But I had small doubt she was the puppet master who pulled Sir Hugo’s strings. Why she occupied the role of guide and protector of the royal family, I could not imagine, but her function as éminence grise was indisputable. I flicked a glance to Stoker and saw him watching her closely. Before she noticed, he dropped his gaze to his cup.
“One thing further I must confess,” she said in a tired voice. “I quite thought that Louise was being an hysteric about the whole affair. I never expected there to be an actual murderer on the loose, and I certainly never expected there to be any real danger. At most, I thought dabbling in an investigation would be a way to distract her, to give her a little peace of mind and the drama she so loves.”
“You know,” Stoker said quietly, “there are places in Africa where, when one wants to hunt a lion, one tethers a goat to serve as bait while one lies in wait for the lion to come. I presume one doesn’t tell the goat, but it does seem a trifle unfeeling, doesn’t it?”
She lifted her chin, but something of the fight seemed to have gone out of her. “I deserved that hit, boy. And I will take my lashes. I made a mistake and you nearly died for it.”
Stoker colored quickly. “It was nothing,” he assured her. “A mere scratch.”
“It is a lie,” she returned with a ghost of her usual bravado. “But I appreciate it nonetheless.” She took a deep breath. “That is the extent of my involvement and the enormity of my failure. I am leaving tomorrow for my shooting box in Scotland where I plan to meditate upon my shortcomings.”
“No sackcloth and ashes on my account,” Stoker told her. Her lips twitched as if suppressing some strong emotion, but she said nothing.
Sir Hugo stirred the whiskey into his tea. “The necessary formalities have been concluded,” he told us. “The inquest into the deaths of Julian Gilchrist and Ottilie Ramsforth concluded this morning and the verdicts have been returned.”
I gaped at him. “But Stoker and I were not asked to give evidence. How is it possible that you have held the inquests?”
He gave me a smooth smile. “The evidence was quite incontrovertible. Julian Gilchrist was murdered by Ottilie Ramsforth—who, in an act of contrition for her crimes, took her own life.”
“Took her own life?” My voice was hollow to my ears.
“Yes,” Sir Hugo replied. “There were no witnesses to the contrary.”
“I was there!” I protested.
“Were you? I do not recall seeing you.” He plucked a piece of lint from his trousers before flicking it away.
“Miss Talbot and Mr. Templeton-Vane were both there,” I reminded him.
“Could Miss Talbot swear to what happened in that grotto?” he asked. “Could Mr. Templeton-Vane?”
“Well, no,” I faltered. I turned to both of them in turn. “Miss Talbot? Stoker?”
Emma Talbot shrugged. “I was lying upon the floor. I never saw what happened. I only made the assumption that you killed her. I might have been wrong.”
I gaped, and she smiled at me, the first real smile I had ever seen upon her face. It kindled something quite beautiful in her expression, and I realized that she was, for the first time in the short history of our acquaintance, happy.
I turned my gaze to Stoker. “I was unconscious. I remember nothing of that moment,” he said truthfully. “I could not give evidence.”
“Satisfied, Miss Speedwell?” asked Sir Hugo. “There is no one to give evidence that the blade in Ottilie Ramsforth’s heart was delivered there by any hand but her own.”
“But why—”
“It was necessary,” he said quickly. “I presented in evidence a written confession discovered in her room at Havelock House detailing her crimes and acknowledging her murderous activities. She took responsibility for the deaths of Artemisia and Julian Gilchrist, as well as the intention to see her husband hang.”
“A confession?” Stoker asked.
Sir Frederick spoke at last. “Perhaps the handwriting was a little different to Ottilie’s,” he said in a decidedly neutral tone. “But since I was the one to confirm that it was in her hand, my word was believed.”
“But who—” I began.
Emma Talbot put aside her cup and smoothed her skirts. “One woman’s hand looks very like another.”
“You wrote her confession?” I stared at her in astonishment. From her I looked to Sir Hugo, Sir Frederick, and Lady Wellingtonia. “You conspired to do this, all of you. Why?”
It was Sir Hugo who replied. “Expediency, Miss Speedwell. When I presented a confession in evidence, everything fell into place. Ottilie Ramsforth was condemned for the murderess that she was. Miles Ramsforth has been exonerated fully and will be released this afternoon as soon as the necessary formalities are completed. The ledger has been recovered from Ottilie Ramsforth’s possessions and destroyed. The princess’s property has been returned to her,” he said with a delicate hint at the jewels, “and her name has not been mentioned in connection with the affair.”
Something unpleasant gnawed at me. “I have to know—would she have let him hang? Or would she have come forward and told the truth?”
He spread his hands. “Miles Ramsforth is an incurably optimistic fellow. He put his faith in her, always believing she would repay his loyalty. And she did, after a fashion,” he reminded me. “She brought you and Templeton-Vane into the investigation. That decision, as much as I deplored it, has led to this rather convenient outcome. It is finished to everyone’s satisfaction.”
“Except mine,” I retorted. “It is not the truth.”
“There are many truths,” Lady Wellingtonia said firmly. “And this is as much truth as the public requires. We, all of us in this room, have done what was necessary to bring justice to bear in this case, and she has prevailed.”
I did not like it, but I could not fault her logic. Miss Talbot poured out another measure of whiskey and when it was finished, we began the lengthy task of saying our good-byes. Sir Hugo was the first to leave. “Must get on,” he said, rising and straightening his waistcoat. “Good-bye, Aunt Wellie,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her wrinkled cheek.
When he left, I gave her a piercing look. “Aunt Wellie?”
She waved a hand. “An honorific. I am, in fact, his godmother.”
“Among other things,” I said, sotto voce. Lady Wellie smiled her crocodile’s smile.
I sought out Sir Frederick to shake his hand before Cherry came to claim him. “The girl is a marvel,” he told me. “Quick as a hare and cheerful as a lark. She is fine company. I mean to shut up the house and take her to the seaside. I think a good long rest is just what I require.”
“Thank you for your help,” I told him. “All of it,” I added with a significant lift of the brows.
Sir Frederick smiled. “When did you guess?”
“That you sent the key to help us in our investigations? Not until I found the slippers,” I confessed. “There were numerous possibilities for our anonymous benefactor, but when I found the slippers, it was proof that this foul plot was hatched under your own roof, by your own sister-i
n-law. And I remembered the painting you had done of her, how you captured the violence of her emotion. I wondered then if you suspected her and tried, after a fashion, to guide us.”
He sighed. “Ottilie did not love Miles. She was obsessed with him. You may think these emotions are the same, but they are not, my dear child. They are opposite sides of the same coin, yet one of them will destroy you. I was fortunate. With my Augusta, I had love. We fought and laughed and spent every minute living to the fullest. But Ottilie’s passions were different. I saw it from the first. She became attached to him in a way that no human being should ever be attached to another. She was consumed with him, consumed by him. That is why I painted her as I did. I saw it, even then.”
“That is her tragedy,” I observed.
“And his. Although I suspect this will change him. All of his frivolity, his dissipation, will be burnt away by this experience. He will emerge from prison an altered man.”
“Altered for the better,” Miss Talbot said as she joined us. The happiness I had observed in her still illuminated her face. She looked tired and a little thinner, but the radiance was unmistakable.
She turned to me with a shining countenance. “I have been able to send messages to him and receive them in kind,” she said. “As soon as his liberty is restored we are leaving England.”
Sir Frederick’s heavy brows rose. “You? And Miles?”
Stoker stepped into our little circle as I spoke. “Miss Talbot has always been in love with him, isn’t that right?”
She nodded. “Yes, and hated myself for it. He was everything I despised—devoted to dissipations and changeable as a winter sea. But I could not help myself. Even at his worst, he could be so sweetly good, like a wayward child. There was no malice in him, no real wickedness. He was inconstant as a weather vane, but so ready to believe the best of people, even when they let him down. He always expected everything would be quite all right, no matter the situation. And everyone indulged him, as if it were some great joke that he was less than he ought to have been. I was the only one ever to be angered by it. I thought I concealed my feelings. How did you know?” She slanted me a curious glance.
“Stoker found a sketch of Miles that you drew. We had seen photographs of him in the newspapers, but your sketch was something altogether different. You gave him a nobility we had not seen in him,” I told her with gentle tact.
“I drew him as I wanted him to be, as I knew he could be. I never imagined he would feel the same, but he tells me that he always believed himself unworthy of me,” she said, lifting her chin proudly. “We have vowed to put aside all such barriers. We will leave for Greece as soon as possible. He will want to be away from the newspapers and the gossiping tongues. We will find peace there.”
“You will be missed,” Sir Frederick told her. “And mind you do not neglect your art.”
“There will be time to say good-bye,” she assured him. She bade us farewell, pressing our hands in turn before going to find Cherry.
I turned to Sir Frederick. “Godspeed, Sir Frederick.” Impulsively, I kissed his cheek, and he lifted my hands to his lips.
“If I were a younger man,” he said, a wistful tone to his voice. I turned away sharply and left Stoker to say our farewells.
• • •
There was little more to be said. When everyone else had left that evening and Stoker had whistled up the dogs to make his way slowly to his little temple, I remained behind. I poured a fresh measure of whiskey, waiting until Lady Wellingtonia and I were alone. She came to sit by the fire, taking the chair next to me as Crates and Hipparchia fussed in the corner.
I stared into my glass, watching the sparks in the heart of the crystal as the firelight played over the surface. “So, everything is sorted,” I said. “How very tidily it has all been managed. You must be very proud.”
Something in my tone alerted her ladyship. She gave me a level stare. “We did what we had to do, Miss Speedwell. I regret that Stoker was harmed. But that is not what this is really about, is it, child? You are angry at being kept in the dark.”
“I am angry at being used as a pawn,” I retorted. “I am not your chess piece to move as you see fit, my lady. I was not engaged upon this investigation simply because you wished to amuse Her Royal Highness or make certain Miles Ramsforth didn’t hang. You were testing me.”
She gave me a thin smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “Why on earth should I want to do that?”
“Because when Sir Hugo offered me a pension—their money to keep my silence about who I am—I refused it. And that has made you uneasy. You did not know how far you could trust me, so you took the first opportunity to challenge me.”
“I am old, my girl. I have not many years left, and I must be efficient with them. I took the opportunity to peg two little birds with one well-placed stone. Surely you do not blame me for that.”
“I will not be part of your games,” I told her. “I explained to Sir Hugo that I want nothing from them, and now I am telling you. They are nothing to me, and I am nothing to them. They have made that perfectly clear.” The fact that Louise had accepted the return of her jewels without so much as a line of thanks had angered me beyond reason, but her neglect to follow through on her promise to introduce me to my father had shown me my true worth in her eyes.
“You want your father.” There was no triumph in her voice, but she had thrown a gauntlet. “Child, you try my patience!” she said, bringing her stick down sharply upon the floor. “Who do you think insisted upon this piece of theater that Sir Hugo has played out in the inquest? Who do you think demanded that Ottilie Ramsforth’s confession be written and submitted into evidence?”
Ice numbed my spine. “If I had given evidence, I might have been charged with Ottilie’s death,” I said, groping slowly towards understanding. “He could not take the chance that I would be exposed.”
“He could not stand that his own child would suffer,” she corrected. “He did this for you.”
It was a long moment before I spoke again. “It was considerate of you to look away,” I told her finally as I put aside my handkerchief.
“I do not like maudlin displays,” she said, wiping her own eyes. Her voice was suddenly gentle. “You must understand their limitations. He cannot acknowledge you. He cannot even meet you. But there is not a day goes by that he does not think of you.”
I rose. “I want nothing,” I said, and this time I meant it.
Lady Wellie cocked her head and studied me from hem to head. “If they could see you now, they would clap a tiara on your head and give you a title. Imperious as a duchess, and that is something one cannot be taught.”
“I have no doubt you intend that as a compliment,” I told her. “But I find it hard to take it as one.”
She rose slowly to her feet, using her stick for support. “I know you deplore my methods, Miss Speedwell, but my cause is just. So goes the family, so goes England. And so goes England, so goes the world.”
“I understand that the feelings of one person cannot interfere with what is best for the country,” I said haltingly.
“Then you understand them. Whether you like it or not, your fate is now entwined with theirs,” she told me. And I did not know if that was a threat or a promise.
CHAPTER
29
The next week, Stoker and I sat out in the grounds of Bishop’s Folly, enjoying the last of the sunshine of St. Martin’s summer. Autumn had officially come a fortnight before, but the gardens were warm and bursting with rosehips and turning leaves, apples and quinces weighing the branches of the orchard with ripe promise. Patricia lumbered about in search of late lettuces, and Betony, to everyone’s surprise, was round with a pregnancy that could only have been caused by the lowly Huxley. Quite how he managed it was a subject of much speculation in the house and even a few bawdy wagers on the part of the housemaids. Lady Wellingto
nia, now settled in her shooting box in Scotland with Mr. Baring-Ponsonby, had already claimed a pup as soon as they were weaned.
Stoker and I quarreled happily over tracks that had appeared in the garden—he insisting they were those of a fox while I maintained such a creature would never be so bold as to encroach upon Huxley’s territory—and the sun shone down, gilding the late-afternoon scene to a picture that would have sent Constable scurrying for his brushes.
Another letter had come from Stoker’s family, a rather gentler invitation from his eldest brother, the viscount. I said nothing, but I noticed that this one had not been consigned to the wastepaper basket as quickly as the others. There was a new thoughtfulness about Stoker, and I wondered if perhaps a rapprochement was in the works. I was equally silent upon the subject of Caroline, the name he had uttered when I kissed him in my opium-stoked delirium. Whatever hold his former wife had upon him, she possessed it still, and that knowledge stood between us, unspoken, but a thing unto itself.
Caroline had left her scars and this investigation had left one as well, I reflected as I glanced to his temple. The wound would heal cleanly, but the white streak at his temple would always remind him—and me—that he had thrown himself in front of a revolver for me. Caroline might have her claim upon him, but I had one of my own, I decided. And mine was the stronger because I demanded nothing of him save friendship. His soul was his own.
“You’re pensive today,” he said lazily.
“I am content,” I told him truthfully.
“Veronica.” The word was soft as a prayer. I did not turn my head. I knew it was an invitation to talk, but it was an invitation I could not accept.
“Not yet,” I told him. I knew he had questions about what I had told him the night Ottilie Ramsforth had died, questions about my past and the life I had taken. But I had no answers ready to give. I smiled and repeated what he had told me at the Haymarket. “I have not spoken of it. I may never. But when I do, it will be with you.”
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