by Tessa Arlen
But after the news of Teddy’s death, Clementine didn’t feel particularly fair-minded. She offered no reassurance that all would be well, that Violet would no doubt be found, because nothing looked to her as if all would be well again. Neither did she rush to acknowledge to the butler and her housekeeper the stress the servants had been under for days on end. In fact, she stared at them coldly. They had let her down, her face told them, even if her tone didn’t. She did not wish to be burdened any more than she already was.
When Hollyoak told her that despite’s Dick’s search of the village there was no trace of Violet, Clementine stifled a chirrup of annoyance. How could they have been so careless as to send up an alarm? Now the whole village would be thrumming with speculation and conjecture! God only knew what they were all saying. It didn’t take much to set the village gossips alight, and Teddy’s death would have certainly done that. Now the disappearance of a girl from the village who had barely worked at the house for two months would be like petrol on the flames.
She turned away from her butler and housekeeper and walked to the window to stare bleakly at the rain falling relentlessly from a wall of gray cloud. Her well-regulated, orderly household had disintegrated, replaced by violence and chaos. Within days the Iyntwood murder would be the sensation of the week, which meant newspaper scandal and gossip for months. She turned back to them with a helpless what-are-we-to-do-now expression on her face.
“Was Violet unhappy here, did she run away do you think?” she asked Mrs. Jackson, but it was Hollyoak who answered, no doubt to save face for his fellow servant.
“She was a very grateful young woman, m’lady,” he said diplomatically, “for the opportunity.” Clementine harrumphed until he looked down.
“Well, I had better tell Lord Montfort and Colonel Valentine. Where is Colonel Valentine now, by the way?”
“He is with Lady Harriet and Mr. Lambert-Lambert upstairs in Miss Lucinda’s room, m’lady.”
“Very well then. Hollyoak, will you please ask Lord Montfort to come to me here; and, Jackson, we are going to have to plan menus for the next few days. I will send for you later this evening when I have the time.” She heard herself and disliked her schoolmistressy and hectoring tone, so she quickly added as they left the room that she was sure Violet would be found. After all, she could not have gone far. She noticed the relief on their faces as Hollyoak closed the door.
Grateful to be alone for the first time today, Clementine sat down and stared blankly at the wall as she forced her thoughts into order. Teddy had been murdered, Lucinda had left the house, and Violet had run away. Her mind, while bleakly accepting these facts, would not oblige to venture beyond this understanding. So she sat with questions chattering through her head in a ceaseless, noisy torrent.
She jumped as her husband entered the room but managed to keep her voice level when she told him that Violet Simkins was missing. She was grateful for his stoicism as he received the news. After this nerve-racking day, her husband’s sangfroid was admirable and Clementine was grateful for his ability to deal better the worse things became.
“I’m having difficulty keeping up with all of this,” he said quietly. “They are sure, are they, that Violet hasn’t hidden herself away for a quiet nap somewhere?” Obviously this was what her husband craved at this moment, she thought.
“No, darling, I’m afraid not. No quiet naps for anyone today.”
* * *
Clementine trudged up the graceful, oval sweep of the staircase with her husband. Their footsteps, loud on marble steps, matched the rhythm of her inner interrogations. She struggled for answers but there were none to be had.
She found herself wondering if she might recall this time without the frozen confusion she felt at this moment. The relentless events of this bizarre day had had rather a numbing effect and she was prepared for anything when they swung open the door to Lucinda’s room and entered unnoticed by its occupants.
Her gaze swept over the pretty room, elegantly furnished in soft tones of warm white and rose, well lit by a double pair of windows. The bed was crowned with a rose and cream tester, and there was a small satinwood Hepplewhite writing table by one of the windows. She took in the activities of the occupants with detached interest. Colonel Valentine was going through the drawers of the writing table; Gilbert Lambert-Lambert, standing in the center of the room with his hands on his hips, was frowning at the carpet; and her dear friend was head and shoulders into a large wardrobe that took up the west wall. Lady Harriet’s muffled voice floated out to her.
“I don’t know what she brought with her … her costume from last night is here … an evening dress … and a rather nice afternoon dress she bought from Lucile. She certainly hasn’t left the house…” Lady Harriet stepped back from the wardrobe and sat down on a silk damask chair, looking expectantly at Clementine as if asking for help in understanding the unpredictability of the young.
Clementine stepped aside to allow Constable Dixon into the room and watched as he rather self-consciously announced that the young lady’s motorcar was not in the wash-down. She felt a surge of relief. Lucinda had obviously decided to leave the house early and, with the atrocious manners of a modern girl who had been spoiled all her life, had decided that a formal leave taking was unnecessary.
“Well, there you are!” Gilbert Lambert-Lambert looked triumphant. “She has undoubtedly popped over to Vanbridge for luncheon; she’s a good friend of Barbara.” Gilbert turned to his wife. “It would have been nice if she’d said something, Harriet.” His voice was testy and pompous and Clementine felt active dislike at his lack of sensitivity.
Harriet gave her an I’m-so-terribly-sorry look for her daughter’s inexcusable manners.
But Clementine was interested to see that Valentine, after conferring further with his constable, did not acknowledge the jaunt to Vanbridge.
“Lucinda’s motorcar apparently went very early this morning. A stable lad saw it at half past six when he was pumping water for the horses, and when he left the yard an hour later he noticed it had gone. That would mean your daughter possibly left the house after half past six and before half past seven, or at least her motorcar did; a bit early to drive over to Vanbridge for luncheon.”
“Well of course there’s a sensible explanation for all of this. Perhaps Lucinda was called up to town … or back to Girton…” Gilbert Lambert-Lambert folded his arms and stared Valentine down.
Arrogant ass, thought Clementine. Why would he antagonize the colonel?
“Just because her motorcar is not at the wash-down does not necessarily mean Lucinda drove it away,” Valentine pointed out and turned back to the desk, leaving them all time to adjust to this new thought as he searched through desk drawers. “There seems to be nothing here that belongs to Lucinda. Does she keep a diary?”
“Yes, she did.” It was Gilbert who spoke, and Clementine heard his voice falter. “Yes, she does…”
“Well, there is no diary here, no letters or any personal papers. I don’t know about you, but I usually leave my diary behind when I’m invited to luncheon and plan to return for tea.” Colonel Valentine closed a drawer and opened another.
Lady Harriet crossed to the bed and rummaged among the pillows. “Her nightdress is here.” Her voice was defensive as she bent down and looked under the bed. “And so are her slippers. Her hairbrush, tooth powder, and brush are here, too.” She pointed to the washbasin, and then with faltering conviction: “I’m quite sure she’ll drive up at any moment. Perhaps she had a puncture and has been detained.”
“Possible of course, but not likely,” Valentine replied, causing Clementine to feel even more annoyance. Why were these men being so insensitive to Harriet? Of course everyone blamed mothers when daughters misbehaved.
“You are surely not suggesting that Lucinda had anything to do with Teddy’s death?” Harriet was now extremely worried. Clementine heard her friend’s voice tight with anxiety and felt a wave of irritation. Well done, Colonel, s
he thought. That’s the way to do it, frighten the girl’s mother out of her wits with mere speculation.
“Your daughter’s relationship with Teddy was close. I mean, she was a close friend?” Valentine asked.
“They were childhood friends, nothing more.” Harriet’s voice was low and she averted her face from them all.
“Any bad feeling—?” Valentine continued.
“I hardly think so, there was nothing they held in common,” Gilbert cut in before Valentine could suggest anything improper. Clementine noticed the testy edge in his voice. He evidently resented what he felt were Valentine’s insinuations.
“They did not get along then?” Valentine asked, and Clementine realized that the more evasive Gilbert became, the more Valentine pushed.
This was too quick for Gilbert’s comfort. “They held nothing in common,” he said, and his voice was ice. “Teddy Mallory was a complete reprobate. Lucinda is an intelligent and educated young woman. I’m sorry, but there it is.” She saw him glance apologetically at her husband.
Clementine realized that Gilbert Lambert-Lambert was shaken out of his usual self-importance, as he did not often display the slight chip she knew he nurtured. She had always suspected that it was his humble beginnings that made Gilbert rather a touchy individual. Self-made men usually were, in her opinion. He had built his considerable fortune from his boot-and-shoe manufactory in Northampton and obviously believed he was tolerated within the group because of his marriage to Lady Harriet. It was all rubbish really, Clementine thought, remembering how penniless Lord Squareforth had been when his daughter had married Gilbert. Thanks to Gilbert’s financial support, Squareforth had become a prominent and powerful man in the government. But she knew these things did matter, especially if you were the parvenu and without pedigree. She had heard somewhere last night that Gilbert had actually considered forking out fifty thousand pounds to buy a peerage, an innovation of David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who in her husband’s opinion was himself a rapacious upstart unworthy of his post. She came back to earth as she heard Gilbert bark at Valentine.
“I simply don’t understand how you could conceive there could be a connection between the two incidents. Our daughter left the house this morning. Since then, Teddy Mallory, a perfect lout of a boy, has been found dead. I am assuming he was murdered, though you refuse to reveal this fact. There can be no correlation between the two events.”
She listened to Valentine’s reply, as he spaced out his words. “No one seems to know where Lucinda is, so she is missing from the house at a very critical time. When we locate her, then we can eliminate her from any involvement in Mr. Mallory’s death, either as its perpetrator, or perhaps as another victim.”
Aghast at such tactlessness, Clementine was not surprised to see Lady Harriet’s shoulders slump forward in despair as she openly wept, and Gilbert’s confidence in his daughter’s appointment for luncheon somewhere else melt away.
As Harriet’s sobs became more desperate and Gilbert relinquished his commanding position on center stage, Clementine crossed the room to her friend and helped her to sit down in a chair. She stood between Harriet and Valentine, as if to protect her from any more cruel revelations. She was also relieved when her husband took this lull in the Lambert-Lambert storm to inform Valentine that one of the housemaids had been missing for most of the day. Privacy is obviously a thing of the past, she thought rather sadly. Here we all are blurting out our dreadful little scraps of news.
It was as if Teddy’s murder was to be upstaged by a series of inexplicable and seemingly unrelated events that, because of his ugly death, now took on darker significance, she thought. And as if in confirmation she heard Valentine say, “If either of these two young women”—a snort of disgust from Gilbert as his daughter’s actions were linked to those of a common maid—“do not make their whereabouts known within the next…” he looked at his waistcoat watch, “well, by breakfast time tomorrow morning, then we will have to organize a search for them.”
Chapter Ten
Clementine came downstairs for dinner early. She had taken care over her appearance and had chosen her dress thoughtfully; it was part of her resolution not to let the side down, it was important to keep up appearances at times like these. Her friends gathered together in miserable little huddles throughout the room were a far more introspective and reserved group this evening, compared to the convivial get-together of the preceding night. When she had last seen them during tea, which now felt like years ago, they had known only that Teddy had been killed apparently somewhere on the estate.
Rather cynically, it struck her that within minutes of spending time with their valets and maids they were all now fully apprised with the known facts of Teddy’s last days: his gambling club, his cheating, his expulsion, and how he had been killed. It didn’t matter what the colonel had said about not discussing among themselves what had happened and how often the servants had been told not to gossip. Clementine accepted that human nature always prevailed.
Her mind went to Lucinda’s abrupt departure. No doubt this had caused some ripples among them all, too. She felt almost resentful that her husband’s nephew had been murdered so brutally on the morning following her ball, ensuring his death received maximum attention. She looked around the room at the composed and impassive faces of their friends—all determined not to be seen to gossip, or to give further rise to speculation—going to considerable trouble to exhibit behavior that was normal and everyday. She fervently wished they would all go home.
Hollyoak announced that dinner was ready and they all went into the dining room. She was aware that conversation around her came in short, sharp artificial bursts, with long periods of hesitant silence. She knew there were few among them who genuinely approved of Teddy, if they thought of him at all when he was alive. He had always been a difficult boy, never quite ready to join in, always at odds with his surroundings.
Her greatest concern was for her husband. He had spent the hour before dinner at the dower house with his mother, and Clementine could only imagine how wearing her mother-in-law’s frantic questions and continual need for reassurance had been for him. She remembered that the dowager Lady Montfort had been particularly susceptible to Teddy. She had enjoyed his short, infrequent visits, had been proud of his good looks, his superficial brand of charm, and his willingness to pay attention to her for tips and injections of cash into his bank account. The poor woman’s emotional devastation would have been exhausting and Clementine could see that her husband was coping because he must, but she felt sorrow for the burden he was carrying.
Glancing around the table as she carried on a stilted conversation with Lord Booth on her right, she noticed Oscar Barclay staring rather queasily at the turtle soup on his plate. Ralph had told her that Oscar had spent a good deal of time before dinner closeted in the study with Colonel Valentine. When he had joined them in the red room before dinner she had noticed immediately that he was pale and withdrawn. How many whiskey and sodas had the silly boy had before dinner, she wondered, and how much involvement had Oscar had in Teddy’s gambling club at Oxford?
Sir Wilfred Shackleton, sitting on her left, was gulping down his turtle soup and looking extremely pleased with himself. Why on earth was that? What an odd individual Wilfred was, so hard to fathom at the best of times. This evening he seemed the only one among them who was actually enjoying his dinner.
Her eyes wandered around the table and came to rest on Gertrude, calmly eating tiny spoonfuls of soup and listening passively to Jack Ambrose, who was looking irritable and cantankerous, evidently still suffering from the overindulgence of the night before. Certainly Gertrude was subdued, everyone was, but her lovely ivory skin had a slightly yellow cast to it and her large green eyes were red and tired. Too much champagne and not enough sleep, perhaps? No, there was something else going on there; things were not right with her friend and had not been since before dinner last night. Clementine decided to seek her out late
r this evening.
She thought of the search tomorrow and shuddered and then with renewed determination turned to Sir Wilfred and made him walk her through his plans for the hunting season and whether or not he planned to take on Lord Booth’s mare. It was a game she played to distract herself and a prelude to turning back to Lord Booth on her right and finding out if he actually intended to sell the mare to Sir Wilfred in the first place, or whether he was simply enjoying the power of having a horse so talented in the field she was coveted by everyone.
At the end of dinner, when Clementine stood up from the table to invite her friends to join her for coffee in the music room, there was an audible sigh of relief all around as the women rose from the table to leave the men to their port.
To help alleviate the strain of searching for safe topics of conversation, and to cover stilted small talk and yawning silences, she asked Pansy Booth if she would play for them. Pansy was an accurate if not particularly expressive pianist and Clementine hoped Agatha did not insist on having Blanche sing. Pansy’s performance alone would provide a pleasant distraction; Blanche’s singing would be a punishment no one deserved. An evening of music would provide cover until they could escape to the privacy of their rooms and lay their weary heads down for the night.
