by M C Beaton
He had thought and thought since the ball and, in retrospect, it seemed to his agile brain too much of a coincidence that two people looking remarkably like Alice and her friend should have reappeared together.
He made his way along the street, head bent in thought. He felt a sudden brush of air past his cheek and a light mocking laugh sounded in his ear. He whirled this way and that, but, apart from himself the street was deserted.
The Duke made his way into the theater, avoiding the solicitations of the drabs who would do anything for a shilling’s worth of rum. That at least had not changed since his day.
He purchased a ticket for the pit and stood at the entrance, his eyes raking along the row of boxes. At last he saw her, her face partly concealed by the red curtain. Miss Fadden was fast asleep beside her in one chair and Sir Peregrine was in the other.
Alice and Sir Peregrine were paying no attention to the stage but were gazing into each other’s eyes. The Duke wished he had not come, but nonetheless, waited patiently until the end of the play which had only a few minutes to run. All at once, he decided to go back to Manchester Square and await Alice there. He would not spoil a promising courtship.
Feeling very virtuous, he made his way home. Again the clocks clattered in the gloom as he helped himself liberally from the brandy decanter. It was only as the night drew on that he realized he had had nothing to eat and the brandy was rising to his brain in an irritatingly mortal way.
One hour to dawn. Where on earth was she? He felt very injured. Were it not for him, then she would be scrubbing pots in the scullery and no doubt be big with child by that wretch Bessant. And this was all the thanks he got!
Then he heard the rumble of the carriage wheels on the cobbles outside and Alice’s light laugh followed by a hearty masculine guffaw. She had brought Sir Peregrine home! This was the outside of enough. He strode into the hall and wrenched open the street door. Alice and Miss Fadden stood there, looking with startled expressions at his angry face.
“Where is he?” demanded the Duke.
“Who?” replied Alice, trying to move past him into the hall but finding her way barred.
“Don’t be missish! Sir Peregrine.”
“I don’t know,” said Alice pettishly. “We went on to the Hammond party with Sir Peregrine and we have just left there. I should think he is probably still there.”
“Don’t fool me,” snarled the ghost. “I heard a distinctly masculine laugh.”
Alice giggled. “Oh, that was Miss Fadden.”
The ghost stared wrathfully at the companion who looked as faded and meek as ever.
Feeling obscurely that he was making himself ridiculous, the Duke stood aside to allow both ladies to enter. “Miss Fadden,” he said, “leave me alone with my niece, I pray you.”
Miss Fadden curtsied demurely and bade him a whispered “Goodnight” while he stared suspiciously after her retreating figure. Surely such a quiet mouselike creature could not have had a laugh like that.
He walked into the drawing room, holding the doors open for Alice.
“Now, Alice,” he said sternly, “I think you were remiss in not leaving me a note to say you would be so late. It is nearly dawn.”
“It is indeed,” yawned Alice in an indifferent way which made the ghost even angrier. “I danced and danced and danced.”
“No more than twice with Sir Peregrine, I hope,” he said. “We do not give rise to gossip.”
“But we do hope to marry,” said Alice, sitting up straight. “If it makes you feel better, we observed the conventions. Sir Peregrine,” she added with a blush, “is all that is proper.”
“I am overjoyed to hear it,” said the ghost nastily. “But I do not think you should plunge into another engagement so soon. You are too precipitate.”
“The whole point of the exercise,” said Alice hotly, “is to find me a husband. Well, I have found someone kind and charming and… and… young. I think we should deal together extremely well.”
“I hope he will ask me for my permission to pay his addresses,” said the Duke.
“It is not necessary,” said Alice sweetly. “You forget. You arranged for that decision to be mine alone.”
“You must be guided by me…”
Alice was tired and her emotions were mixed and jumbled. He did not want her. Then why was he nagging her in this way?
“Oh, leave life to the living,” she said petulantly.
There was a stunned silence while they stared at each other.
Somewhere, far in the distance, a cock crowed.
He began to shimmer and fade.
Alice wordlessly stretched out her arms to him, a look of intense pleading in her face.
Then he was gone.
She forced herself to think of Sir Peregrine, but somehow could not even visualize his features.
There was a timid scratching at the doors and Miss Fadden crept in, still in her opera gown. “I came to help you to bed, my lady, now that your uncle has gone.”
“And how should you imagine my uncle has gone?” asked Alice sharply.
“Why, because ’tis dawn, my lady,” said Miss Fadden. “Now, you are quite worn to the bone, I can see. Cassandra shall tuck you into bed, my lady, and bring you a posset.”
Alice wanted to ask the companion what she had meant. Why did Miss Fadden not assume that Uncle Gervase had simply retired to bed? But, of course, that is what she had meant. She could not mean anything else.
It was some weeks later and the Duke was again closeted with his memoirs at Wadham. He had not returned to see Alice. He had washed his hands of the ungrateful minx. The living Duke and Duchess and the horrible Bessant were back in residence. Sometimes the ghost remembered that he had not warned Alice against Bessant’s curiosity, but he shrugged it off. He would not admit to himself that Alice had hurt him deeply.
His window was open to the early autumn evening and sounds of music filtered up in the still air. The Duke and Duchess were entertaining again.
The ghost had just finished shaving his head. He had then donned his wig and his original silks and lace and felt much more cheerful than he had done in some time.
He eyed the sheets of quarto lying on the table and then found himself looking up into the mindless, vague eyes of his wife. He studied the portrait with some irritation. He had never liked Agnes, he decided, and he did not even want her painted image now.
With one impatient move, he pulled forward a chair, and standing on it, lifted the portrait down from the wall.
He drifted through the walls and corridors with it and at last left it lying outside the present Duke’s bedroom door. He then decided to float invisibly about the grounds for some air. It was when he was drifting through the great hall just below the level of the ceiling that he looked down and saw a familiar face. Lord Harold Webb—and with him was his weedy friend Mr. Harry Russell. He gently descended to hear what they were saying.
It appeared that the friends were meeting again for the first time since the end of Webb’s engagement to Alice and appeared quite overjoyed to see one another.
“I heard all about the Snapper-business,” Mr. Russell was saying. “Are you leg-shackled yet?”
“Not I,” said Webb cheerfully. “The Snapper’s gone where she can’t cause any trouble.”
“Where?” said Mr. Russell avidly.
“Madhouse,” replied Webb laconically.
“How did you manage that?”
“I didn’t. Father did, God bless ’im. Soon as he had calmed down, he saw the folly of it. Always been fond of me has the old man. Told him that yaller-haired uncle of Alice’s had rigged it. So Pa gets boiling mad and says that Snapper must have gone along with the plot. So a little money here and a hand greased there, and the Snapper was carted off where she couldn’t do any harm. Fortunately Pa don’t ask me how Uncle Gervase could have managed it because I’m blessed if I know. But I tell you this, Harry, no one fools a Webb and gets away with it. Some way, someday, I’ll
fix that Frenchie pair.”
The Duke saw the silent cadaverous figure of Bessant standing a little way away, listening intently to every word, and decided to put an end to the conversation. He slapped Webb hard across his handsome, pompous face.
“Gad’s ’oonds!” gasped his lordship, falling back a pace. “How dare you, Harry!” And with that, he planted a flush hit right on the end of his friend’s pointed nose. Mr. Russell retaliated by kicking Lord Webb in the shins. Webb seized a handful of Mr. Russell’s hair and pulled hard. Mr. Russell scratched Webb’s face.
The Duke drifted off happily into the grounds, leaving them to it.
In a rose arbor, the Duchess of Haversham was walking sedately on the arm of the Bishop of Devizes. With her free hand she was gesticulating to emphasize each boring point of her monologue.
The ghost eyed her with disfavor. She was all he detested in a woman—arrogant, frigid and unkind. Still invisible, he drifted up to the couple and seizing the Duchess’s waving hand, thrust it neatly down the front of the bishop’s knee breeches. The Duchess and the bishop came to an abrupt halt, the Duchess, her face a frozen mask of horror—too horrified to remove her hand. The bishop looked down in surprise and then a slow smile crossed his cherubic features. “Deary me!” he said. “One is never too old after all.”
The ghost fled, chuckling, feeling he had performed enough mischief for one evening. As he reached the boundaries of the demesne he suddenly sobered. Was Alice in danger? His mind worked furiously. He had supplied her with an authentic background. No one would be able to touch her.
But the thought of Miss Snapper languishing in the madhouse chilled him. He must do something about that. But not now. He paced up and down until he had convinced himself that Alice was safe from any mischief.
He decided it was once more time to closet himself with his memoirs. If he did not overhear conversations, then he would not be disturbed. Alice had plenty of money and was supplied with every elegance and comfort. He had only himself to worry about. But his earlier exhilaration vanished. Alice’s pretty, wistful face seemed to float constantly before his eyes.
“What a paradox,” he muttered. “I am a ghost and I am being haunted!”
It was a pity he had resolved not to listen to any further conversations for he would have been alarmed at what took place later that evening.
The portrait had been found and was much exclaimed over. The present Duke marveled over its reappearance and decided to hang the portrait of Agnes, Eighth Duchess of Haversham, in the hall.
The houseguests were asked to attend the small ceremony. Webb and Harry Russell, still smouldering at each other and looking very much the worse for wear, were present if not correct. Bessant was supervising the efforts of two footmen to lift the portrait into place.
Suddenly the Groom of the Chambers drew in his breath in a sharp hiss. His eyes were fastened on the necklace around the lady’s neck in the portrait. In a flash he knew he had seen that necklace before. He had seen it round that so-called French Comtesse’s neck.
He let out his breath in a long sigh. There had been no ghost—any more than there was a Comtesse or a Comte. It was that wretched scullery maid, no better than she should be, tricking the whole of the ton on the arm of her accomplice, and both of them financed by the late Duchess’s jewels. His first impulse was to rush straight to his master and tell him the whole story. But the present Duke, now that he had seen no more of his ghostly ancestor, had become quite proud of the visitation, although he told no one the contents of the ghost’s harangue. Also, there was still a little nagging doubt at the back of Mr. Bessant’s mind.
He could, just could, be wrong. He needed help. But who?
Then he remembered the conversation between Webb and Mr. Russell. He would tell them—and make sure that Lord Harold Webb paid for the information.
So while the ghost immersed himself in his memoirs again in the secret room, Mr. Bessant arranged a meeting with Webb and Mr. Russell for two in the morning when he could be sure all the other guests were in bed. Harold Webb had admittedly stared at him very haughtily, but when he heard that Bessant could supply him with a sure means of revenging himself on that Frenchie pair, he became more cordial and agreed to the interview.
Webb was regretting his decision by two in the morning. His head felt fuzzy with the amount of wine he had drunk and he was a true aristocrat in that he had all those twinges in his bones—inherited from a long line of ancestors—that told him he was about to be asked for money.
He had ungraciously allowed Harry to come along with him since neither of them could really settle on who had hit whom first.
“Damme, if there ain’t a creepy air about this place,” commented Webb sourly as they made their way out into the grounds. They were to meet Mr. Bessant in a rotunda situated on a small knoll above the ornamental lake.
“It’s your liver,” said his friend sourly. “Take rhubarb pills. ’Fore you know it you’ll be seeing folks going through walls again.”
Webb stopped abruptly and turned majestically to stare down at his friend. “You ain’t my friend any longer,” he said grandly. “Go!”
“Shan’t,” said Mr. Russell indifferently. “’Sides, without me you ain’t got any friends. Nobody else can stand you.”
“They are all jealous,” retorted Harold Webb, but nonetheless allowed his friend to follow behind.
Mr. Bessant was already there and waiting for them.
Webb soon found that his bones had not played him false.
“Before I begin,” said Bessant, his cadaverous face oddly lit by a lantern placed on the floor of the rotunda, “I want to make one thing clear, my lord, I wish to be paid for this information.”
“Depends what it is,” said Webb, affecting boredom.
There was a long silence while Bessant chewed his nails and stared at the two men. A full moon rode out from behind a cloud, flooding the rotunda with added light. The rolling parkland of the Wadham estate lay silvered and spread out in front of them through the elegant pillars of the white marble rotunda. On one side loomed the vast bulk of Wadham Hall, its myriad small windowpanes gleaming whitely in the bright moonlight.
“Well, it’s like this,” said Bessant, sitting down on a marble bench while Harold Webb frowned at the servant’s forwardness in seating himself while his betters were still standing, “that there pair, the Comtesse de la Valle-Chenevix and her Uncle Gervase, they’re imposters, see? And worse than that.”
A crafty look marred Webb’s handsome face. “How will I know if you are telling the truth?”
“My story will speak for itself.”
“And how much for this believable story?”
“A monkey.”
“What!” Webb’s face grew quite flushed. “Five hundred pounds is more than a scoundrel like you could earn in his whole life.”
“True,” admitted Bessant. “But your lordship drops more than that at the tables at White’s of a night.”
This was indeed true, as Webb was a notoriously unlucky gambler.
“Give him the money,” said Mr. Russell gleefully. “I always thought there was something shady about that precious pair.” He leaned close to his friend’s ear. “Think on’t,” he whispered. “You lost twice that to Brummell t’other night without so much as turning a hair.”
Harold Webb brooded long and hard. At last he came to a decision.
“Very well,” he said. “A monkey, it is. Speak!”
“Your note of hand, my lord,” cringed Bessant, all mock obsequiousness.
“My word as a gentleman…”
“Your note,” hissed Harry Russell, his eyes gleaming wetly in the moonlight.
“Oh, here it is.” Webb sat down on one of the stone benches and scribbled out a note and handed it to the Groom of the Chambers. “Now…” he said impatiently.
And so Bessant began, talking in a low, hurried, urgent voice while his small audience listened amazed. Lord Webb at one point of the nar
rative found himself overcome with a strange superstitious dread. For some reason that picture of Alice and her accomplice fading through the wall seemed etched on his brain. But he was not normally an imaginative man and his fears were quickly banished as the story went on and his eyes began to gleam with excitement, especially when Bessant culminated his tale by producing an old, yellowed piece of parchment which he had torn out of a book in the library—a list and description of the late Duchess’s jewels.
“We’ll simply turn over this list to Bow Street,” said Webb excitedly when Bessant had at last fallen silent, “and give them a report of our suspicions and let them do the rest.
“By George! I’ll see that shameless couple hang on Tyburn tree yet!”
