by Dave Duncan
Act II
Mystery
13
THE NEW HOTEL IN GREYFRIARS WAS A GLOOMY VICTOrian structure of red brick, a short walk from the High Street, blanked by Robinson & Son Drapers on one side and Wimpole Bros. Chemists on the other. Its prices were reasonable—four shillings and sixpence for bed and breakfast. It was convenient to the station and much favored by commercial travelers. On Bank Holiday weekend, it was as vivacious as the inside of a sealed Comb. No games of auction bridge would liven its Residents’ Lounge this evening. Very few pairs of shoes would be set outside its bedroom doors tonight for Boots to polish before morning.
The entrance hall was dark, but still stuffy from the day’s heat. Permanent odors of yeast and stale cigar smoke lingered amid the aspidistras drooping in the windows and the horsehair sofas banking the dead hearth. Walls and woodwork were a uniform, sad brown; the elaborate plaster ceiling was stained to the color of old tea. As the revolving door hissed to a stop behind her, Alice Prescott mentally prepared for a few hours of dread boredom before she could sleep. Her room would still be hot, and it overlooked the shunting yard. The bed was surely the lumpiest south of the Humber.
The West Country could never be as unbearable as London, but she longed to reach her room and shed a few clothes. Africa had been hotter, but in the Colonies a woman was not required to wrap herself in quite such absurd creations of Oriental silk underskirts and ankle-length cotton voile gowns and broad silk sashes. Or, if she were, then she would not be expected to spend an afternoon trudging around a county town.
Her plumed hat was going to come off before anything else did.
Most Sunday evenings in Greyfriars would offer nothing whatsoever in the way of entertainment except Divine Service at St. Michael and All Angels’. Today, however, there had been an impromptu meeting in the park, which had provided sorry unexpected excitement. Mr. Asquith, God Bless Him, had been three-cheered several times, the Kaiser had been loudly booed. The mayor had spoken a few words about the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets and England Expecting Every Man to Do His Duty. A hastily gathered band from the Boys’ Brigade had played some martial music, and everyone had sung “Land and Hope and Glory” and “God Save the King.” Then the crow had quietly dissolved, slinking away as if ashamed of having displayed emotion in public.
Alice headed for the desk to collect her room key. She could see it dangling on the board with the others, well out of reach. There was no message in her pigeonhole, and no news was good news because the only people who knew where she was staying were the hospital and the police.
She hoped D’Arcy had found the note she had left for him in the sitting room—at times he could be quite astonishingly unperceptive, blind as a mole. She teased him about that. She had left another note on the pillow: “See note on mantelpiece. She wondered what he had done this morning without her. Perhaps this Sunday he had actually gone to church! She would send a telegram to his chambers in the morning. Unless Edward took a grave turn for the worse, she absolutely must get back to town tomorrow.
The clerk was not in evidence. Before she could lift the little brass bell thoughtfully placed on the desk for just such an emergency, a man spoke from the far end of the hall.
“Miss Prescott?”
She jumped and turned.
He must have been sitting in the corner armchair. Now he had risen. He was large, portly, dressed like a banker in his Sunday best, waistcoat and gold watch chain.
“I am she.”
He nodded and walked over to her, taking his time, carrying his bowler. She closed her fingers on the bell. His hair was thinning, his graying mustache turned up in points like the Kaiser’s.
“Inspector Leatherdale of the County Constabulary, Miss Prescott. Wonder if I might have a word with you?”
Alice released the bell. Her heart was behaving disgracefully. “Of course, Inspector. I hope you can inform me what has transpired. I did inquire at the station, but the officer there was most uncommunicative.”
The policeman nodded, as if that was to be expected. He gestured to the heavy sofas by the fireplace. “There are some gentlemen in the Residents’ Lounge, ma’am. This should be private enough.”
She led the way over there and perched carefully on an edge, keeping her back straight as a musket. The cushion sagged so low that her knees tilted uncomfortably to the side. She stood her parasol upright against the arm and removed her gloves. Leatherdale pulled up the creases of his trouser legs at the knees in thrifty middle-class fashion, then settled deeply into the sofa beside hers. He produced a notebook and fountain pen.
He looked annoyingly comfortable. She hoped she appeared more composed than she felt, because she felt like a felon caught red-handed, which was ridiculous. Dear Uncle Roland would consider her sense of guilt very fitting if he knew of it and knew what caused it. He could not know, of course, but absence of evidence would never lead him to doubt. He had been convinced of her depravity as soon as she moved out on her own, and that had been long before she met D’Arcy. Immorality was not a criminal offense. It just felt like it at the moment.
“Now, Inspector! I understand that—”
“Your full name, please, ma’am. For the record.”
He took charge of the conversation so effectively that she found herself waiting in obsequious silence while he wrote down every answer. What did her age have to do with Edward’s accident? Or her address? Or that she had been born in India, raised in British East Africa, was self-supporting, taught piano?
“Edward George Exeter is your first cousin?”
“He is. He is also seriously injured, Inspector. I was told he fell down some stairs, but I have yet to learn—”
The inspector looked up with eyes as cold and penetrating as the iceberg that sank the Titanic. “We do not know how he came to fall down those stairs, Miss Prescott. That is something we hope to establish when he is well enough to answer questions.”
“You mean it was not an accident?”
“What happened to Exeter may or may not have been an accident. The other young man involved was stabbed to death. I can tell you, though, that there seems to have been no one else present at the time. As of this date your cousin has not been charged, but he is an obvious suspect in a clear case of murder.”
The ensuing silence had the impact of bells. Stabbed to death? Murder?
Edward? She felt herself opening and closing her mouth like a fish.
The questions began to roll again. She did not hear them, and yet she could hear her voice answering them.
“Anything I can do to help…caught the first train…uncle’s housekeeper sent me a telegram…very fond, extremely fond of Edward…more like brother and sister…”
It was unbelievable. Edward would never murder anyone! Murder was something that happened in the slums of Limehouse. Murder was Jack the Ripper or Dr. Crippen, not Edward! There had been some horrible mistake.
She must have said so, because the inspector was nodding understandably. “I know how you must feel,” he said, and suddenly he seemed avuncular and less intimidating. “Between ourselves, I am much inclined to agree with you, Miss Prescott. Your cousin seems like a very promising young man, well thought of, of good family…”
He must have asked, or she had volunteered, because she discovered that she was telling him all about their family, and about herself.
“…other sahibs fled town when the cholera arrived. My parents were both doctors, though…sent me away and they stayed…I don’t remember them at all…mother had two brothers. I was sent off to Kenya on the mail boat, like a parcel. Uncle Cameron, Aunt Rona…like parents to me…”
She was telling of Africa, the only childhood she could recall…Why should the policeman care about that? Yet he was still making notes, apparently managing to keep up with the story pouring out of her.
“And you came Home when
exactly?”
“In 1906. Edward followed in ’08, when he was twelve.”
“You do not live with your uncle now, though?”
“I am of age, Inspector.”
“But you have lived on your own for some time?” he asked, watching her shrewdly under bushy gray brows.
She took a deep breath. She knew the conclusions men drew when a woman lived on her own. That those conclusions were now true in her case made them no less unfair. They would have been there had she never met D’Arcy. There had been no one before D’Arcy.
“Uncle Roland is not an easy man to live with.”
“Your cousin shares that opinion?”
To describe Edward’s opinions of Holy Roly could not help, although they were starting to look appallingly accurate. “The relationship is cool on both sides. It was all right at first, but since Aunt Griselda died, my uncle has become…well, difficult.”
The inspector nodded thoughtfully and studied his notebook for a moment. Hooves and wheels clattered past the windows.
“Exeter rarely stayed with his uncle, even in holiday time?”
“My uncle goes out of town a lot. He…He tends to distrust young people. He preferred not to leave us in the care of the servants. I was more fortunate. My father was survived by two elderly maiden aunts. I mostly spent my summers with them in Bournemouth.” The Misses Prescott had been reluctant to put up with their great-niece. They had had no use for an adolescent boy about the house, a boy unrelated to them.
“So he lived year-round at Fallow?”
“Not completely. Friends would often invite him to visit during the holidays. He has been to the Continent several times, France and Germany, staying with families to learn the language. The school arranges such things.”
The more she could tell about Edward the better, surely? Then the police would see how absurd it was to suspect him of anything.
“You know, I don’t believe Edward has ever told a lie in his life, Inspector? He—”
The policeman donned his fatherly smile. “Your family seems to have been very dedicated to the Empire, Miss Prescott. Let me see if I have them pegged correctly. Mr. Cameron Exeter, Edward’s father, was a district officer in British East Africa. Dr. Roland Exeter was a missionary in the South Pacific for the Lighthouse Missionary Society, of which he is now director. Your mother, Mrs. Mildred Prescott, was a doctor in India?”
Alice laughed for the first time. “I think we all have guilty consciences. My great-grandfather was a nabob. He made a fortune in India. Loot, Edward calls it.”
Leatherdale made another note. “Your family has money still, then?”
“Some, Inspector. We are by no means wealthy, though.”
That might be more true than she meant it to be. More and more it looked as if Edward was right and Holy Roly had poured the whole lot into his blessed Missionary Society. She had not seen a penny of her inheritance yet. But surely that scrap of dirty family laundry was irrelevant? Surely this whole family history was irrelevant?
The policeman did not seem to think so. Was he truly on Edward’s side as he had claimed, or was he somehow trying to trap her into saying something she should not? But what on earth could she reveal that would be damaging? Nothing!
“Your uncle, the Reverend Roland Exeter, is an elderly man?”
“In his seventies, yes.”
“Seventy-two, actually,” Leatherdale said offhandedly. “Born in 1842. And your mother?”
Puzzled and oddly uneasy now, Alice said, “I’d have to work it out. She was thirty-eight when I was born. I can’t recall why I know even that much.”
Leatherdale scribbled. “So 1855 or ”56. And Roland in ”42. How about Cameron?”
“I don’t know. I never saw them after I left Africa, remember. But he must have been much younger.”
The bushy brows flickered upward. “According to Who’s Who, your uncle Roland was the second son—meaning Cameron was the oldest child.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m quite sure he wasn’t! I remember how shocked I was at how old Uncle Roland was when I met him. Perhaps it’s a misprint?”
“Possibly.” The inspector seemed to change the subject. “It seems odd that your adoptive parents never came Home on leave. District officers are usually granted leave every two years or so, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I suppose so. Nyagatha is very remote. It was even more remote in those days.” That seemed irrelevant, somehow. All the Empire was remote.
“Your cousin Edward. Last week he was on his way to Crete. When he had to cancel his plans—when he came back to England—why did he come to Greyfriars?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did he get in touch with you?”
Alice shook her head. “He dropped me a postcard on his way through London. I am not on the telephone, you know. He just said the trip was off and he was coming here, to stay with General and Mrs. Bodgley.”
“He did not wish to stay with his uncle,” Leatherdale said. “Why not with you?”
She felt herself blushing, but it would not matter. “I could not put him up!”
“Why not?”
Her cheeks felt warmer yet. “Really, Inspector! If the highly respectable ladies who employ me were to hear that a young man had been seen entering and leaving my flat, then they would never allow me across their doorsteps again! They would not let me near their pianos, let alone their children!”
Which was true, but not the real reason. What if Edward had stumbled on something of D’Arcy’s lying around? His dressing gown, for example? Edward was a romantic. It would kill him.
“You are on good terms, though?”
“Oh, yes! I told you, I regard him as a brother.”
“And what are his feelings toward you?”
She turned and stared at the empty fireplace. “You had best direct that question to him, Inspector.”
“Murder is no respecter of privacy, Miss Prescott!”
She turned to him in horror. “Heavens! You don’t mean I am going to find myself pilloried in the gutter press? The News of the World?” If the reporters ever scented a scandal as well as a murder and dragged D’Arcy in, his career would be completely ruined. His wife was a vindictive bitch.
The big man shrugged. “In normal times I expect you would. I believe the Kaiser will save you in this instance.”
“Well, that is certainly a relief!”
“So will you answer my question, ma’am?”
“My cousin believes he is in love with me.”
“Believes?”
She turned again to the fireplace. “Edward has led a very sheltered life, and in many ways an extremely lonely one. He last saw his parents when he was twelve. They died in very horrible circumstances four years later. I was the only person he could turn to. I am three years older, which is a lot at that age. Some of his letters were heartbreaking!”
And just when the pain was easing, Cameron’s reputation had been stamped into the mud by the board of inquiry. For Edward, that had been a toboggan trip through Hell.
She forced herself to meet the policeman’s steady stare. “I am literally the only girl he knows! Can’t you see? Edward has a romantic Celtic streak to him. He believes he is in love with me. Now he has left school…in a few months…when he has had a chance to meet other girls…”
Edward would not meet many girls if he had to spend those next few months in jail.
14
ABOUT THE ONLY GOOD THING AMBRIA IMPRESARIO EVER found to say about Narsh—and Eleal agreed with her on this—was that it had a very good hostel. True, it was shabby and none too clean, like the rest of the city, but it was located conveniently close to the shearing barn where the plays were performed. It provided innumerable poky rooms, and it was never busy so early in the spring, when th
e troupe needed it. There was no embarrassing pretending to be asleep when the troupe played Narsh.
Snow was starting to pile up in alleys and the light was failing when Eleal at last found her way back there—thinking gloomily that they should all be down in warm Filoby by now, getting ready for the evening’s performance.
She was still very shaky from her narrow escape, but no terrible gods had come after her. Dolm Actor himself might have bled to death, if his rites had failed. He would have been in too much pain to notice any noise she had made in leaving, and the snow had not been lying then, so she should have left no tracks.
Now that she had recovered from her fright, she felt angry, which was strange. Perhaps she should feel sorry for Dolm, who served so terrible a god, but she couldn’t feel sorry. Murdering people was wrong, no matter what old Sister Ahn might say. Dolm had deceived her all her life, and she just felt angry.
She wondered what T’lin Dragontrader would say when she told him about that bizarre performance. He would believe her. To mention it to anyone else was unthinkable—even if Dolm Actor never returned, the troupe would not credit her story. She would be the only one who would ever know what had happened to him.
The hostel was a welcome sight in the dusk. There was no smoke rising from the chimney, though, as she had hoped there would be by now. She found the key in its usual cranny under the step. The door opened into the big communal kitchen that took up most of the ground floor, big enough and high enough to house a family of mammoths. Another door led out to toilets and washrooms; a wooden stair against one wall led up to sleeping rooms above.
She stood for a while, sniffing the familiar smells of ancient cooking and old tallow, listening to wind rattling the casements and whining in the eaves. There seemed to be no one else in the familiar old warren. She decided she would take off her coat first, comb her hair, and then kindle a fire to heat up wash water. She felt limp and sore from a long day. Only a llama should be expected to spend so long inside a heavy fleece.
