by V. Penley
“Would anyone care for tea?” He looked at Eugenie. “It might do well to calm us all down.”
“Certainly,” Marchioness Carlyle said. “I was hoping you would ask.”
“Good,” he said once, nodding slightly. “Come along, then.” He took out a key and then led everyone inside.
“My dear,” Marchioness Carlyle whispered to her friend, Mrs. Todderham, as they all trooped into the Grange for tea, “I couldn’t have planned this any better.”
*
Tea was served in the sun room. The group crowded around, finding seats. The Marchioness had taken the Great Chair, with its back to the room’s entrance, while her daughter and Mrs. Todderham sat on a smallish sofa. Around the perimeter sat the two girls and two boys.
The Duke said he would fix the tea. As he explained, all of his house staff, but for his valet, were back in Cranbrook House, the family estate in Clowdon. He intended to hire staff for his school but had yet to get around to it; he and his valet were equal to any tasks thus far. “My valet is a wonderful cook,” Philip said. But the valet wasn’t there presently, having gone into town. “I’ll have the tea in a minute.”
“That is really quite unnecessary,” Marchioness Carlyle said, upon hearing that this gentleman worth, she had estimated, almost one hundred thousand pounds, would prepare their tea and scones. “Have Mrs. Todderham here fix the tea.” She waved at her friend, offering her services.
With a tumble, Mrs. Todderham had attempted to stand, landing somewhere between the sofa and the serving table, causing the girls to giggle.
“Oh that’s quite alright,” the Duke said. “I am used to living alone and thus serving myself. Before I inherited the estate, I lived with several other bachelors in London. Young men are accustomed to serving themselves these days.”
Without looking, he reached down to Mrs. Todderham, who clamped onto his arm with all her life and unsteadily rose to her feet.
When he left, the Marchioness turned to her daughter. “I should say, this is an impressive house for bachelor. Rather drafty. Though with plenty of room.”
Eugenie knew precisely her mother’s ultimate design. But she played along. It was good that her mother had contacted her, even if no murder had in fact been committed. Almost a year had passed since she had last visited, and the presence of the Duke would block the Marchioness from probing Eugenie too much.
When Duke Phillip returned with the tea, Eugenie volunteered to serve everyone.
“No need,” Phillip said, reaching for the tea pot, which Eugenie grabbed first. “Allow me,” she replied firmly.
The Duke smiled and pulled up an ottoman to sit on. Eugenie poured tea for her mother first, and then for the Duke, before serving Mrs. Todderham. She then got herself a cup and nodded for Pippa to come and serve Maisie and the two young gentlemen.
“Tell me more about this school of yours,” Lady Eugenie asked, wedging herself back down beside Mrs. Todderham on the sofa. “Your school for gentlemen detectives.”
“We’ve been running for only a month,” the Duke said. His eyes blazed up; this was clearly a topic he enjoyed. “And thus far we have only two students.”
“You say we,” Eugenie said. “Do you have a partner?”
“Well, only Michaels, my valet. He actually handles quite a bit of the work. We only call him a valet because that’s what my station requires.”
Eugenie nodded. Had she been a Duchess, then Mrs. Cabot would be her lady-in-waiting. Instead, Eugenie was merely a lady and Mrs. Cabot was therefore her cook.
She lifted the cup to her lips but didn’t take a sip. “Why a detective school?”
Phillip pondered as he sipped his tea. “I’m intrigued by mysteries,” he said finally. “Even as a boy. I’ve always wanted to know. It didn’t really matter what I wanted to know. I just always wanted to know what people were talking about. What they were thinking. I think I was the nosiest boy in my castle.”
The Marchioness laughed. A castle: she couldn’t wait to get to Clowdon and see the family Estate.
“But I never had a taste for murder or extreme crime,” Phillip said. “Though that, of course, is often what people contact me for.”
“Murder?” Mrs. Todderham asked.
Duke Phillip nodded gravely.
“Do you practice detection in the field?” Eugenie asked. “In real time?”
Phillip paused. “I suppose I live all my life in real time, the detection as well as the rest.”
Eugenie smiled. “I mean, do you contract with police, to catch a killer, for example? That sort of thing. Or do you solve cases once they’ve become cold.”
“Never cold,” Phillip said. “Though I have yet to tackle a murderer to the ground, if that’s what you mean by ‘hot.’ Essentially, I started solving cases for my friends. Small fry things. Where has my wife spent that inordinate sum of money, it’s gone? Where has my father put the family jewels? Little things like that. Once, when I was travelling with friends in the Riviera, an elderly lady, quite unknown to us, mislaid her Pekingese. I found it, barking and wet, in the alley behind the hotel. It apparently had climbed out of a window she had left open.”
“I’m surprised it hadn’t been eaten,” Marchioness Carlyle said. “The French, you know.”
Eugenie had certainly understood Phillip’s entrance into the field of criminal detection. The first crime she had ever solved was the case of her missing ring. The rapidity with which she had solved the crime had impressed her enormously. “Are you hoping that crimes will bloom here in Barnardshire?” she asked, trying to figure out why he would open a school for detection in such an isolated spot. “London would certainly be a more logical choice.”
The Duke shook his head. “It’s all hush hush, actually. The business.” He held out his cup for more tea. “That’s one of the reasons I had to buy this old cottage, out of the way. If the boys stayed with me in London, then the gig would be up. I have no children, you know. I also don’t want the expense of putting them up in London, though I’m there frequently. If I can, I would like the instruction to be handled by myself and Michaels.”
Unrelated to anything, the Marchioness laughed again. This was truly a delightful house. She could see Eugenie installed in it as its mistress. It could use a woman’s touch. And this chair was so comfortable….
“All my detective work I perform secretly,” Phillip said. “I don’t advertise. My dear mother would find it scandalous. It’s not suitable for a Duke to go around snooping in people’s windows, trying to discover who has a mistress in London, and who merely has an addiction for gambling.”
“Why teach?” Eugenie asked. She had begun teaching out of necessity: available detection work could not pay her bills. Had she inherited anything from either her father’s or her husband’s estates, Eugenie likely would not be teaching in a cold-water flat in London.
Phillip thought for a bit, resting his replenished tea cup and saucer on his knee. He was finely built, Eugenie could not help but notice. Strong yet incredibly at ease, seated like this on an ottoman at a level below his guests. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why he wasn’t married.
“Why teach?” she blurted out again, when she realized that he had caught her appraising him. The corner of his lip curled up just a bit, as if he knew she had been admiring his form.
“For the assistants, really.” He kicked out his legs to stretch. “I figure I can tail people easier if I have assistance. In a sense, these two gentlemen will allow me to be two places at once, you see. I know that eventually they’ll grow up and want to go out on their own. But I reason that if I start training them while they’re young, then I can get a decade of help from them, at the very least. Cecil is ten and Thomas eleven.”
Mrs. Todderham realized she had something to add, and so she drove herself into the conversation. “You were in Parliament. I heard. Or…or…” Suddenly losing confidence, she looked to her friend for support. “I think….”
She
was right. She had indeed heard that—from the Marchioness, on one of her visits to the cottage, hoping to run into the Duke.
Duke Phillip laughed. “The House of Lords, specifically. I served for nearly a year. Unfortunately, it’s not where the action is anymore, so I’ve toyed with resigning my peerage and actually running for office. For the House of Commons.”
“Whatever for?” the Marchioness asked.
Instead of answering her, Phillip answered her daughter, who asked, “Will you really give up your title?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “The House of Lords is now a rump institution. If I’m to make a mark, it will have to be as a commoner. Speaking of mysteries. I never once could figure out how to get a bill passed. Or to get anyone on a committee to pay attention.”
“Lady Eugenie here,” the Marchioness said, nodding toward her daughter, to help focus the Duke’s eyes on Lady Eugenie, “also runs a detective school.”
“Do you really?” He took a quick sip of his tea, and looked curious, absorbed.
Over the rim of her own cup, Eugenie glared at her mother.
“It’s new,” Eugenie said finally. “Not many pupils. But I’m giving it a go. All you can do is try. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.”
“And these must be two of your students,” the Duke said, waving in the direction of Maisie and Pippa. Instantly, Maisie blushed at being recognized. Although she sat like a boy, with her knees far apart, she had been hanging, like a lover, on the Duke’s every word as soon as she had entered the Grange.
“I had thought that they were your daughters,” Phillip said.
“Oh!” Marchioness Carlyle cried out. She had drained her own cup ages ago, and a good thing, too, as she upended it along with the saucer. “Lady Eugenie is quite without children, I can assure you!” And then she dropped her voice, confidentially: “She isn’t married, you know. Quite alone.”
Eugenie couldn’t respond before she heard the horrifying voice of Mrs. Todderham beside her: “But she was married once.”
“Would anyone like more tea!” Eugenie called out, standing with the tea pot. She wanted to get the eyes off herself and move the topic of conversation onto something else. “Maisie, I see your cup is empty.”
“No, ma’—,” Maisie began to say, but bit her tongue at the look Eugenie gave her. Stepping away from the grouping of adults, Eugenie walked to the children and filled up their cups—slowly. She wanted to drag it out forever.
Behind her, the Marchioness Carlyle whispered in the tones of salesperson, “It was a short marriage, quite respectable, before the gentleman died. Through no fault of Lady Eugenie’s, I can attest.”
Actually, Eugenie had married her father’s business partner, a man nearly 25 years her senior. The marriage had been short, childless, but not without affection. Her husband had dropped dead from a heart attack within months of her father’s own death. Eugenie took two deep sighs to steady herself. Her mother would not relent in her pursuit of another appearance at the altar.
When Eugenie returned to the sofa, she pointedly offered to refill everyone’s cup but the Marchioness’. When she sat, she gave a quick glance at the Duke, who sat grasping his knee. His face showed no surprise or any other emotion. Whatever he had heard from the Marchioness had made no impression on him in the least.
Well, good, Eugenie thought. He isn’t interested in me. Surely, her mother could see that. If a man were in the least attracted to her, then he would have been crestfallen to have found out that she had once been married. But the Duke showed no interest whatsoever. Eugenie wanted to put down her cup and wrap her arms around herself, the better to give herself a good shake. The sun room, so warm and golden, had lulled her into believing she were in a dream world.
Silence prevailed. The sun had cleared its apex and had begun to descend, a phenomenon that always brought on moments of reflection. If morning was slow to arise in Barnardshire, dusk was quick to fall. There were several more hours of daylight left, but already shadows had begun to gather in the corners of the room, and the Duke, his back to the windows, had begun to look mysterious.
“I know,” the Duke suddenly said. “Let’s have a game.”
“A game?” Mrs. Todderham repeated. She raised a hand to her head, as if to keep it on her neck.
“A challenge, more like,” he said. He took a quick sip of tea and kept it in his mouth for a second. His eyes were distant; he began to put together the final pieces to a puzzle in his mind. He swallowed and nodded.
“So that your time here won’t be wasted,” he said, “I propose that we have a competition, between our students. Using my hypothetical, of course. The bundle in the grave was only the first clue I had lain for my student detectives,” he said. “There is still the entire hypothetical to run through. I have left the appropriate clues around this cottage. I propose that your lady sleuths and my gentlemen sleuths compete to see who can first solve the mystery.”
“Oh, this won’t end well,” the Marchioness whispered. “Ladies should never compete with gentlemen.”
“I’m not sure I’m up for solving a mystery,” Mrs. Todderham said, stifling a yawn.
The Duke suppressed a smile. “The ladies,” he said, sweeping a hand in the direction of the two girls, Maisie and Pippa.
“Not the spinsters,” the Marchioness called across to her friend. “He means the young girls.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Todderham said, scratching at her scalp.
“And your gentlemen?” Eugenie asked.
“Yes.”
They held eyes. A competition then. To see who was the better professor of detection.
“And you haven’t given them any clues on the ride over?” Eugenie asked. “If this is to be a competition, I want it to be fair.”
“I haven’t said a word,” the Duke said, believably. “In fact, I had planned on the discovery of the body being a surprise. Cecil and Thomas here were to be sent outside, whereupon they would discover the freshly dug grave. From there, I had assumed that they would dig up the body themselves. And then, together, I would have helped them solve the mystery. This way, we can both watch and allow them to solve it themselves.”
Eugenie nodded. “I think my girls are prepared for competition.” Maisie sat on the edge of her seat while Pippa sat poised, ankles crossed, but paying close attention.
“Are there background facts?” Eugenie asked.
“This should be interesting,” the Marchioness said sotto voce. She was not sure that she wanted Eugenie competing with a man that she might marry. What if Eugenie were to lose? Even worse, what if her daughter were to win? Neither seemed desirable.
The Duke turned his ottoman around to address the four children, and Eugenie pulled a second ottoman to sit on, facing Phillip.
Phillip then provided the background information.
Chapter Five: A Loss
With preliminary background facts and ground rules set, the party trundled back outside to look once more at the freshly dug pit.
“We have already pulled out the bundle of clothes, which were secured to look like a body,” Phillip told the crowd. “But it was not a body, obviously. Instead, it was undergarments tied together to approximate a body.”
It was at this moment that Marchioness Carlyle felt her need for a nap, and she asked Eugenie if they could break off the competition and take another tea.
“You can go home,” Eugenie said.
The valet, who had just arrived at Clarendon Grange from town, walked up to the Marchioness. His dark eyes matched the coal black hair, which was neatly parted at the side. He bowed slightly, his arm extended.
The Marchioness would not have felt greater shock had a dining room chair walked up on its hind legs and extended one of its arm. Everyone was silent at this breach of decorum, with the Marchioness particularly aghast.
The valet merely smiled and said, quietly, “I’ll walk you home, ma’am.”
“You will kindly do no such thing!�
� the Marchioness snapped, and, half turning around, extended an arm for the Duke, whom she imagined would walk her across to Mrs. Todderham’s cottage. But the Duke stood with Eugenie, silently laughing.
“Well!” Marchioness Carlyle said, realizing that she was quite alone. She grabbed Mrs. Todderham’s arm and held on for dear life. “WE—,” she said, to the air, to everybody, “will see OURSELVES across!”
And dragging along her dear friend, who promptly tripped over her own feet and fell to the grass, they by degrees began their journey across the lawn.
“To think!” the Marchioness whispered. “A valet offering to escort me.” She shuddered.
“Unusual,” Mrs. Todderham murmured.
Together, the two women glanced back at him, who stood at attention and saluted them when they glanced his way. “And some sort of Irishman at that!”
Left behind, the Duke turned to Lady Eugenie.
“Your mother is…compelling,” he said.
“She finds you doubly so.” Lady Eugenie smiled despite herself. “Or she finds your money compelling.”
“My money?” the Duke asked. “Why?”
“Well…” Eugenie stopped. She never knew how to observe proper decorum herself. But since they were nearly the same age, perhaps they both practiced decorum in the same loose manner. “She’s compelled by your money because of her spinster daughter.” When he didn’t respond, she clarified: “Me.”
“Ah,” the Duke said. “But who needs marriage when they have detection.”
And as if nothing more needed to be said—because detection was always the pinnacle—he then turned to the four children, who were studying the pit. The boys whispered behind their hands back and forth, while Pippa stared down, her mind spinning like a water wheel. Maisie looked as if she wanted to jump into the pit. Physical: always.
When the Duke had described the background information in the sunroom, Eugenie had seen immediately that the hypothetical had been based on a real historical incident: the disappearance of Lady Laura Ashley in 1833.
