An Unmourned Man (Lady C. Investigates Book 1)

by Issy Brooke

  Goodness, but the man was worse than useless. She kept her face politely impassive and screamed internally, a skill that she imagined was learned by all women of all classes. She went towards the sideboard that ranged along one wall, skirting around the prone figure. The shelves of the upper portion held a mismatched array of crockery and pans, but there were drawers above the lower cupboards. She glanced towards Mrs Hurrell.

  “Madam, might you have any paper upon which the constable could write?” she asked hopefully. “An envelope or some brown parcel paper should do.”

  Mrs Hurrell’s blurry face was crumpled and she hung her head, shaking it dolefully from side to side. “No, ma’am, I fear not.” She rolled her eyes heavenwards. “Why must this have all happened to me?”

  It has actually happened to the young man, Cordelia thought. She let her hand stray towards the nearest drawer, which was partly open. “But I see here, within–”

  “No! You must not touch that!” Mrs Hurrell cried out, rising to her feet. The china cup tumbled from her hand and smashed on the floor, and immediately the laundress was by Mrs Hurrell’s side, and pressing her back to her chair once more. Mrs Hurrell flung up her hands in protest but she submitted. Her face was thunderous and her eyes wide.

  Cordelia withdrew her hand and gave the constable a hard stare, trying to convey to him the importance of Mrs Hurrell’s fiery reaction. The constable was slack-jawed and confused, but he showed a spark of promise by suddenly declaring that he would go out to send a boy to his house to collect his official notebook. In truth he probably wanted to be out of the cottage, and he left before anyone could protest.

  Cordelia rocked on her heels and looked towards the drawer once more, trying to peep at the cream papers within. There was a folded newspaper, its tiny print crammed onto the large sheets in long columns, but she could not determine the name.

  Mrs Hurrell was still in the throes of hysterics where anger and fear warred, and she was jabbering, “I swear, I do swear, before God and all the angels, I had nothing to do with this! I was sent a note and I went out and when I came back, there he was! Dead! And I felt a great heaviness wash over me and I fell, I did, I swear, and all was black and I was crying until Mrs Kale found me.”

  The laundress, now identified as Mrs Kale, tutted. “And why did you not call for help?”

  “Mrs Kale, you know me, you have known me these past eight years that I have lived here! I was quite overcome with the shock. The blood. His arms. His arms, oh, did you not see how he lay? I am not a delicate woman, as you know, but it was too much.”

  Mrs Hurrell was sitting once more in her chair, and bending forward, her back quite straight by virtue of her solid and decent undergarments but her shoulders were sagging and her neck arched over so that her head was clasped in her veined and wrinkled hands. There was still a great strength in her, Cordelia thought as she looked at the women. Not a delicate woman, no. Her neck had the ropes of muscle that belonged to a strong working woman. Her feet were planted squarely apart, and her figure was substantial without being indolent.

  She was, Cordelia thought, as capable as anyone else of landing a blow upon a man’s face, her current aspect of despair notwithstanding. And that despair was shaded with other emotions.

  “How old was Thomas Bains?” Cordelia asked.

  The doctor was engrossed in his work and did not reply. Mrs Hurrell stifled a sob or a groan at the mention of the deceased’s name, and Mrs Kale folded her arms and sniffed. No one seemed willing to speak. Cordelia was aware that her presence was deeply unwelcome but no one had the spirit to tell her to leave.

  “He looks as if he is in his early twenties,” Cordelia prompted.

  “Around that,” Mrs Kale muttered at last.

  “And he lived here with Mrs Hurrell?”

  That insinuation was enough to prompt a sudden flux of information from the curious woman on the seat. “He was my lodger. He took the back room, with his father, God rest his soul. Near on six years they have been there. They had been there.”

  “His late father?”

  “Yes, old Maurice. The pair of them lived there. Till his father’s death, just last year.”

  “And did Thomas work? Had he a trade?” Cordelia insisted.

  Mrs Hurrell dried up. She kept her face hidden. Finally Mrs Kale stepped in. “He was employed from time to time, up at the big house for Mr Hawke, but only in the gardens, on account of…”

  “...on account of…?”

  “Well, he were a nice enough lad and I cannot speak ill of the dead, you know. He did try. But he was the clumsiest man you ever did meet, and his mouth clumsier than his body, if you see what I mean.”

  Cordelia wasn’t sure she did see. “Do you mean to say that he was rude? Tactless, perhaps?”

  “Ahh, he was a loud and boastful sort. The thing is, though, I don’t believe he meant anything by it. He just could not be silent when he did ought to be silent, that was all. If you said to him, sit, he would want to know why.”

  “I see.” Cordelia studied the body where it lay. Clumsy? Had he simply fallen? The reddened mark on his cheek could have been obtained earlier - the previous night, perhaps, in a brawl outside a beerhouse.

  “Doctor,” she said. “Can you tell how old the bruise upon his cheek is?”

  “Not with any great accuracy,” he admitted. “The coroner is expert in these matters. Indeed, I am done here. My skill does not extend to this sort of case.” He began to pack away his things. “I have made notes as to the exact marks upon the body. In the event that the coroner is delayed, he will be able to refer to my notes. But as to any kind of diagnosis, that is not for me to say.” He got to his feet, pulled on his coat, and picked up his leather bag and hat. He turned to her and spoke as if to an equal, as if he addressed a man. “However, I would suggest that the bruise does not look like an old one.”

  “Might it have been inflicted last night?” Cordelia pressed.

  “I would not say so. It has not yet darkened. As time passes, the blood will pool and congeal.”

  “I see,” she said, fascinated. She wanted to ask if that was the same process in a dead body as a live one, but stopped herself. The doctor was making a move to leave, and he paused by the door to look back at her.

  He flipped back to standard social propriety. “Lady Cornbrook, might I escort you to a place more becoming to your station? I would be delighted to take you back to Wallerton Manor. The events of this morning must have been rather traumatic for you.”

  Dashed exciting more like, she thought, and more interesting than needlework, but she didn’t want to scandalise the man. With a polite smile she shook her head. “Have no care for me, doctor,” she said. “But I thank you for your kindness. My maid is somewhere at the back of this house and she will see me to safety, I have no doubt. You have work to do and I would not delay you.”

  She expected a protest and a few minutes of tedious to-and-fro, as society usually demanded, but he nodded and simply left, calling for the constable to return to his post within the cottage as he did so.

  Cordelia was still reluctant to leave. This was the most interesting thing to have happened for many years. She wondered if she could lurk in the shadows even as the coroner and perhaps the sheriff went about their business. Though if they were coming from any great distance, it would be some time before they arrived.

  The constable coughed.

  She ignored him, and went through the door at the back of the room, saying to no one in particular, “I shall go and find my maid.”

  Chapter Five

  “Well, Ruby, I think little of the police authorities in this area,” Cordelia declared.

  Ruby’s shoulders jerked in surprise and she looked up. She was sitting on a wooden box, her back against the rear wall of the small enclosed yard. She was about to get to her feet, but Cordelia waved her down again.

  The back room that she had passed through – the apparent residence of Thomas Bains – had been a
dark and cold abode. It made the front room of the cottage look palatial. There was a long, low bed under the window, covered in a mess of crumpled grey blankets that had hairy, unbound edges and greasy stains. By another wall stood a table and one wooden ladder-back chair with broken rungs. On the table was a lamp and an empty bottle, and on a shelf there ranged a collection of tins and pots; hair cream, a rolled-up pair of braces, and some mustard powder in a yellow packet. The air smelled of turpentine and staleness. She did not linger in the small room, but instead passed through quickly in search of her unwell maid.

  Ruby was looking a little better, and there was colour now in her pale cheeks. “What is going on in there, my lady?” she asked.

  “Foul play, for certain,” Cordelia said, “and regrettably I have little confidence that the man in there, the constable, has any clue what to do about it.”

  “Foul play? Do you mean to say, murder?”

  “That is exactly what I mean,” Cordelia said, a thrill running through her. “But they say they have no county police force here, and instead cling to the old ways, with part time parish constables and watch committees, I suppose, and the like. The man in charge of bringing criminals to justice is nothing but a grey little shoemaker, and even the doctor, good man that I am sure he is, could not speak with certainty about the death.”

  “It will just have been a fight,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “He is a young man. It is a common enough thing, and likely the constable and the doctor have seen it before.”

  “The constable must be new, or have no stomach for it, or something,” Cordelia said. “Or maybe nothing ever happens here. He has not seen the marks of violence like that before, poor man.”

  “Nor have I,” Ruby pointed out. “Nothing quite so … bloody, at any rate.”

  Cordelia felt a sudden pang of responsibility. Still, no one could get through life without seeing a goodly share of death, and she didn’t suppose that it was the first corpse the young woman had seen. The only difference was that this one was not nicely presented in a casket, and had rather a deal more blood scattered about. “The fight was recent,” she said, pensively. “This was no late-night beerhouse brawl. It happened early this morning.”

  Ruby was unimpressed by the deductions of her mistress. “Last night’s arguments can become this morning’s revenge,” she said. “Who was the woman who was crying and shouting? His mother?”

  “No; his landlady. He rents this back room from her. There is suspicion upon her, too, as she was found in the room, lying against the wall rather than seeking help. She is in a strange state, halfway between fear and anger.”

  “That sounds more like self-defence than murder, then,” Ruby said. “We women know that state very well.”

  Cordelia realised what the young woman was suggesting. “Oh. No, I cannot countenance that. He is young, and she is old, after all.”

  Ruby raised one delicate eyebrow. “Now, my lady, if I were to suggest that an older woman could not be attractive to a younger man…”

  Cordelia was surprised at the maid offering such an unsought opinion. It wouldn’t do. But she answered, anyway. “Yes, yes, quite. However, in this case, I feel it is unlikely.”

  “In life, many things are,” Ruby said, pushing her luck. “People do find themselves attracted to the strangest things. In Covent Garden once, I met a man who said that his master liked his mistress to dress as a … ah. Forgive me.” She stuttered and looked down.

  “Oh, discretion be damned,” Cordelia said, her smile wide and unladylike, delighted and scandalised in equal measure. “Tell me. What did this master do?”

  But Ruby had flamed red with embarrassment at having been caught speaking with her mistress almost as a confidante. She shook her head, mutely.

  Cordelia sighed. She had a good imagination. “Without a dynamic constable, this murder will go unpunished,” she said. “I ought to take charge.”

  Ruby stifled a snort of surprise. “My lady, please. You have no experience or qualifications in such matters.”

  “Nor does the shoemaker.”

  “He does,” Ruby said. “For he is a man.”

  That was a truth so obvious it didn’t warrant a reply. Instead, Cordelia paced the few square yards of the walled enclosure. “Oh, Ruby, you are new to my service. But you must understand this about me. I need something to occupy my mind. I read books about this sort of crime, and I know I can discover the truth. I long for a challenge, a new direction, a release. Do you not see? Even if I were to follow the case from the side, as it were, in parallel with the official investigation, that would be something.” Even as she spoke, she felt unladylike enthusiasm rise up and make her skin tingle. “I simply want to know the outcome.”

  “My lady, with respect, I understand that you have had many such projects.” Ruby spoke with a hint of exasperation in her voice. Cordelia added “cheek and back-chat” to her mental list of her maid’s probable deficiencies, though she wasn’t as offended by them as she thought she probably ought to be.

  Ruby was continuing. “I had heard that you tried your hand at writing romances, did you not? And articles for the press, under other names, of course. And then there was local history, and botany, and was there not also a book of manners–”

  “Enough!” Cordelia was shocked that Ruby knew so much of her sad, and failed, activities. But of course, Ruby would have discovered the rooms in the house where the copies of her books were stacked up, printed and bound at her own expense, and where they were now languishing in dusty piles.

  Each one was a symbol of a past enthusiasm that came to nothing as she tried to fill her life with something more meaningful than deciding on dinner choices in a vast and empty house; her home, that would soon not even be her home any longer.

  Ruby cowered back and Cordelia remembered that for all her outspokenness, she was as yet unused to Cordelia’s ways and could not be sure that Cordelia would not take a rod to her, as was her right as Mistress. Cordelia spread her open hands wide and smiled. “Come now, Ruby. I speak harshly; I apologise. Yes, I have dabbled but this is something far more exciting than my poor treatises on the flowering plants of southern England. This is for justice.”

  At least that book about flowers had been ignored, she thought. Her book of manners had been seized upon by the press in a dry season devoid of real news, and for a painful few weeks she had been reviewed, pilloried and generally humiliated for her attempts to draw up a new code of conduct for men and women.

  Enough, she told herself, as she had told Ruby. A widowed woman might be allowed her idiosyncrasies, and all manner of deviations could be expressed in the aftermath of tragedy and grief. Others sought it in gin or opiates or affairs. There was no harm in this.

  Even if, as in her case, her particular past tragedy had had two results and one was that of release.

  “Maybe you are right,” Cordelia said at last. It was nothing to do with her. “It will have been nothing more than a fight, and a sad end to it. Poor man. We should get back. They will have missed us at breakfast, by now.”

  Ruby accepted Cordelia’s outstretched hand and rose to her feet, taking a moment to smooth down her skirts and arrange her bonnet. As she moved away from the wooden box that had served as her seat, something caught Cordelia’s eye.

  “Did you move the box, girl?” she asked.

  Ruby turned to look. “No, it was placed just there when I came out.”

  “Indeed.” Cordelia pointed to the floor of the yard. It was made of bricks, laid in a haphazard manner, many of them cracked and broken by frost and ill-use. Packed down hard on top was dust and dirt, and she imagined that in wet weather, the yard was an unpleasant morass. “Look. The box had originally stood by the back door, where you can see the deep ruts at the corners. But it has been dragged across to the wall.” She pointed to the fresh grooves in the dust.

  “Well, not by me,” Ruby said disdainfully. She wouldn’t move herself if she didn’t have to; dragging a box was we
ll out of her range.

  Cordelia eyed the wall. It was nearly six feet high, she judged. Would a fit man be able to climb such a wall? It was a rough wall of stones and rocks, unplastered, with crannies for potential footholds. She gathered up her skirts and jumped onto the box so that she could peer over the top of the wall. Her petticoats were pushed flat against her thighs and billowed out stiffly behind.

  “I would lay a wager that whoever did the evil deed in there, that they made their escape this way and scaled the wall, using the box to help themselves climb. Perhaps they were short. Perhaps they were simply unused to such exercise. Or hampered in some way. What do you think? Could you climb this wall, Ruby?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Well, I think that I might,” Cordelia said. She raised her arms, and her tight bodice pinched and pulled. But she took a deep breath, found a hand-hold, and hauled hard as she could with her arms.