Behind the Shattered Glass: A Lady Emily Mystery (Lady Emily Mysteries)

by Tasha Alexander

  “Cedric would never do anything to impugn his friend’s reputation, even after the incident at Oxford. He loved that boy like a brother.”

  “Enough to cover up his wrongdoings?” Colin asked. “Even after what happened at Oxford?”

  “That, Mr. Hargreaves, is precisely why I was concerned enough to want to speak to you in person,” she said. “I don’t know if I should continue.”

  “Do you think your nephew killed Archibald Scolfield?” I asked.

  “I cannot imagine Cedric doing anything so violent,” she said, “but at the same time, I cannot imagine anyone standing by and taking what he had to from someone he thought was his friend.”

  “I appreciate how sensitive this subject is, Mrs. Tindall,” I said, “but Mr. Porter was sent down from Oxford more than four years ago. Why would he have waited so long to lash out?”

  “Because, Lady Emily, his youngest sister had just entered service as a maid at Mr. Scolfield’s parents’ house, and she had written to tell us she would be moving with Mr. Archibald now he’s taken up a residence of his own in London. It did not make sense to any of us that he would take such a junior servant with him, especially one so recently employed by the family, unless he had a particular interest in her.”

  “What does she say?”

  “She insists nothing improper ever happened,” Mrs. Tindall said.

  “Do you believe her?” Colin asked.

  “I am not certain,” she said. “I imagine she is terrified of losing her position if she says anything.”

  “The Scolfields wouldn’t have had to know,” Colin said. “She could have confided in her family, given notice, and found another position. Are they so hard to come by?”

  “The Scolfields are a well-respected family who have a reputation for giving their staff decent conditions in which to live and work. Positions in those circumstances are never easy to come by. But she would never have dared say anything, regardless, Mr. Hargreaves. She knows Cedric would never stand by, silent, if he knew someone had taken advantage of his sister. She knew that well. That is why I want you to talk to her. You might be able to figure out whether she’s telling the truth.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Upstairs, waiting to speak with you. Shall I bring her down?”

  “Please,” I said, astonished that she had gone to such lengths, bringing the girl all the way to Dover.

  When she left the room to fetch her niece, I pressed my palms against my temples. “Have you known anyone to have a more complicated life than Archibald Scolfield?” I asked my husband.

  “He is not so different from many a profligate gentleman,” Colin said. “I doubt he made as many conquests in Dover as is rumored. He may have tried, and been rebuffed, but it’s likely he got nowhere with anyone but Mrs. Tindall’s maid. Such behavior is inherently risky. Archibald would have stuck with his success once he found it and not bothered to look elsewhere.”

  “I wish I’d had a reply from the Scolfields’ housekeeper,” I said. “This is just the sort of thing I was inquiring about.”

  Mrs. Tindall returned with her niece. Miss Porter was a slight girl, with dull, thin hair pulled into a chignon low on her neck. She fidgeted as she sat down, and could not seem to keep still.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Miss Porter,” I said, trying and failing to remember her from when we had interviewed the whole staff at Archibald’s house in London. “I understand you have recently taken a position in service.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Are the Scolfields generous employers?” I asked.

  “I can’t rightly say, madam. I’ve no other experience to compare with.”

  “You know why we are here,” Colin said, “so we may as well ask the hard question. Did Archibald Scolfield make inappropriate advances on you?”

  “Never, sir, never.” Her voice was firm.

  “Did he ever touch you?” Colin asked.

  “Mr. Hargreaves!” Mrs. Tindall blanched.

  “I am sorry, but we must know,” Colin said.

  “It is so important, Miss Porter,” I said, leaning forward and taking her hands in mine. “Did he trifle with you?”

  “He never, ever did, madam. I swear it.” She blinked fast as if she were keeping tears at bay. “No one in the household ever mentioned him doing anything like that. Why would I lie?”

  “To protect a much-loved brother?” Colin suggested.

  Miss Porter frowned. “This is an impossible situation. Lord Montagu never did anything wrong, but you won’t believe me. I can’t tell you anything else.”

  “My dear girl, if Cedric intervened on your behalf it’s better that we know the whole truth,” Mrs. Tindall said. “It’s the only hope he has.”

  “You think he’s guilty, but he’s not,” Miss Porter said. “He had no reason at all to be angry with Lord Montagu.”

  Mrs. Tindall looked at me, her face full of hopelessness. “I do not know what else to say, but I felt it important every possibility be considered. If Cedric is implicated, I do not want there to be any hint of impropriety on our part.”

  This surprised me. I could not decide whether she thought her nephew guilty or was truly concerned about his well-being.

  “Quite right, Mrs. Tindall,” Colin said. “I thank you for your candor. Miss Porter, is there anything further you would like to tell us?”

  “No, sir.” She stared with great intent at the ground.

  “Very well,” Colin said. “Should that change, your aunt knows how to reach us.”

  We had planned to overnight in Dover, but that seemed unnecessary now that Mrs. Tindall hadn’t kept us so long as we had anticipated. Instead, we boarded the next train to London after Colin had wired ahead to alert the skeleton staff we always left in Park Lane that we would be staying over. They would open the house for us, pulling slipcovers off the furniture in the library and our bedroom, the breakfast room, and at least one sitting room. No doubt it was too much for a short visit, but the head footman, left in charge when Davis was in the country with us, insisted on seeing things done properly. If he had his way, he would have readied for us every one of the myriad rooms over all the floors. I often wondered what it was like, staying behind in an enormous London mansion when the family was gone and most of the rooms shut up. I would have been tempted to live like the master of the house, but I doubted very much any servant would dare.

  “Was that not one of the oddest experiences of your life?” I asked as we sped towards the capital city. “Do you think she suspects Mr. Porter of the murder?”

  “My dear, I am at a complete loss,” Colin said. “I do believe it may be simply as she said. If Porter is accused, and it comes out his family had hidden information that could have implicated him, it would make him appear even more guilty.”

  “That I can understand,” I said. “What makes absolutely no sense in the least, however, is that the Porter family would allow their daughter to be employed by the Scolfields after what happened at Oxford.”

  “Unless Archibald was telling the truth all along and Porter did steal the essay,” Colin said.

  “In which case you would not expect the Scolfields to hire a Porter.”

  “Noblesse oblige, my dear,” Colin said. “Although the truth is, they may not have even been aware of the incident. Archibald was not the one sent down, after all. He was the hero of the matter, turning in a cheater. His parents would never have had to get wind of any of it.”

  I dropped my head against the back of the bench behind me. “The Porters would not have allowed their daughter to work for the family that destroyed their son.”

  “The Porters do not consider their son destroyed, Emily. He has a respectable trade and earns a decent living. He has taken a step up from his father, and given the role his father’s landlord played in his son’s education, he no doubt believes great families can do no wrong. If anything, his daughter working for the Scolfields may have seemed like redemption. By accepting he
r into their employ, the family was, in effect, forgiving her brother for what he had done.”

  “There is an unaccountable throbbing in my head,” I said. “I cannot make sense of any of it.” I closed my eyes. Colin was right, of course. I was making matters more complicated than they really were. The relationships between landowners and their tenants had not significantly changed in a thousand years, and what I considered outrageous and unfair was not necessarily universally accepted as such.

  “I do not think Archibald trifled with Porter’s sister,” Colin said. “He would find that too distasteful for a variety of reasons.”

  “So this is nothing more than another dead end?”

  “No,” Colin said. “It has given us further insight into Archibald’s increasingly bad-seeming character, and that is not insignificant. When we have a full picture of the man, we will have a better idea of who may have wanted him dead.”

  “Good heavens,” I said. “You don’t think we will turn up even more people with motive to kill him?”

  Colin patted my hand. “We’ve only three so far: Miss Fitzgerald, Mr. Porter, and Miss Gifford. That’s not so many.”

  “Don’t forget Mr. Gifford,” I said. “Given what happened to his sister, he has ample motive as well. It is not as if travel between England and Germany is difficult.”

  “A fair point, Emily. Four suspects.”

  “We shall know more tomorrow,” I said. “Once we have visited Miss Gifford’s school.”

  “I do hope you are willing to take the lead there, my dear,” Colin said. “If there is one thing I have extremely limited tolerance for, it is the antics of overexuberant schoolgirls.”

  Downstairs

  xii

  Having vowed to remove herself from any danger of becoming overly fond of Mr. Hargreaves’s houseguest, Lily carefully examined the small changes she had made in her routine on his behalf. Since her first conversation with Lord Flyte, she had made a habit of getting up the fire in the cinnamon drawing room at the same time each morning, not too early, not too late. More specifically, within a quarter of an hour of the precise time she had first met Lord Flyte. Today she deliberately deviated from this uncovenable routine and swore she would never again return to the wicked habit. She went there when the kitchen was still quiet. She opened the shutters, before any pink light darted across the dark sky, and set to work. She had come close to finishing with the fire when she heard footsteps. It must be Lord Flyte, but she could hardly believe even he would rise so close to dawn. It took an effort, but she didn’t look up to see him. Instead, she bit back her curiosity with a quick prayer.

  “Lily?” His voice was soft and kind.

  “Sir?” She still didn’t look at him.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all, sir,” she said, and stood up, all business. “Can I do something for you?”

  “I just hoped we could talk,” he said. “I so enjoyed our last conversation. How are you finding your book?”

  Lily wanted to tell him that she, too, had enjoyed the conversation. She wanted to smile at him and to look into his golden brown eyes. She wanted to confide in him that someone had stolen the book and beg him to help her retrieve it. “I’ve lots to do this morning, sir. No time for idle chatter. Mrs. Elliott would have my hide.” She gave the coals a last poke and arranged the tools beside the fireplace before exiting the room. She felt tears pooling in her eyes as she closed the door behind her, but she knew it was the right thing. She steeled herself and went to tend to the fire in the next room.

  *

  Downstairs, Alice filled a bucket with water and soap to clean the marble floor in the great hall. Pru smirked at her as she walked by.

  “Your friend Lily is going to be in a right heap of trouble,” the kitchen maid said.

  “How so?” Alice asked. “No one in this house works harder than Lily.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” Pru said. Alice had never seen anyone else whose smile was like an ugly slash across her face.

  “What do you hear?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Pru asked.

  “Not specially,” Alice said. “I have no use for idle gossip.” She started up the stairs only to be stopped by Mrs. Elliott’s sharp voice.

  “Alice,” she said. “A word in my room, please.”

  13

  Mrs. Chelmsford’s School for Young Ladies reminded me more than a little of a medieval dungeon. I exaggerate a bit, I suppose, and will admit there were no visible instruments of torture, but the dimly lit classrooms with their low ceilings and dirty windows pressed in like the walls of a cell. Mrs. Chelmsford herself would have made an excellent jailer. A large ring of keys hung from her chatelaine, and I envisioned her locking up any girl who dared show the slightest bit of spirit. The schoolmistress’s eyes were narrow and cold, with a streak of meanness in them.

  Her students, wearing gray dresses by way of a uniform, could not have looked more miserable. With not a single eager face among them, they stood behind their desks, reciting in unison some sort of underwhelming poem. In the corner, a solitary girl stood on a chair, her back to the room.

  “She is a very naughty one, that,” Mrs. Chelmsford said, closing the classroom door so that we could no longer peek in. “I take discipline very seriously, Lady Emily, and tolerate no nonsense.”

  “What was her offense?” I asked.

  “She criticized the poem I chose for the girls’ recitation. Impertinence is not a quality gentlemen look for in wives.”

  I knew better than to try to engage her in any sort of reasonable dialogue on the subject. Not now, at least. “I do hope you can tell me all about Fanny Gifford. Did she have a tendency towards impertinence as well?” If she did, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if she had run off to escape this desolate place.

  “No, she was one of the most well-behaved girls I have ever had,” Mrs. Chelmsford said. “Kept her room tidy, never complained—not that my girls have any valid complaints to make—and always did well in her studies.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “As I told the detectives from Scotland Yard, she simply disappeared. We realized she was gone when she didn’t turn up for breakfast.”

  “It was right of you to contact them at once,” I said.

  “I was not about to have her family claiming I had been negligent,” she said. “They searched the whole premises and found nothing. She must have just slipped out in the night.”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked. “Do you believe she was happy here?”

  “Why wouldn’t she be?” Mrs. Chelmsford asked. “I take good care of my girls. You can see that.”

  It took a not inconsiderable effort to resist giving an honest answer to her question. I dodged it altogether, preferring to take the matter entirely into my own hands after I had finished learning all I could about Miss Gifford. “So why, then, would she leave?”

  “Perhaps there was a young man,” Mrs. Chelmsford said, pressing her lips together in a thin line. “That is generally why young ladies leave school.”

  “Surely if there were a young man she would have told her brother, the only family she has.”

  “Who am I to judge?” she said. “Maybe she has no fondness for her brother.”

  I did not think I would get much else out of Mrs. Chelmsford, but I did want to speak with the girl who had shared Miss Gifford’s room. Mrs. Chelmsford did not look happy at my request but agreed to send her to me. I waited for her in the girls’ small bedchamber.

  The room, no bigger than seven feet square, was in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. The sickly color that might once have resembled yellow was now peeling from the walls, and the sparse furniture in the space consisted of two narrow beds, a rickety dresser, but not even a single chair. The blankets on the beds were worn and must have made for exceedingly cold nights. There was no fireplace. I would have wagered my fortune Mrs. Chelmsford kept herself in much greater comfort than she all
owed her students to enjoy, and I vowed to do whatever I could to remedy the situation at the first opportunity.

  Miss Gifford’s roommate was a girl called Helen, a sweet thing, with beautiful dark hair and a pretty face. She was as pallid as her schoolmates, though, and far too thin. I introduced myself and gave her a packet of sweets I had purchased for the occasion. As I had hoped, this served to warm her to me. She smiled as if she hadn’t seen candy in years.

  “I know Mrs. Chelmsford is dreadful,” I said. “Please believe that I will share nothing you tell me with her. You can trust me absolutely.”

  “Is that true, Lady Emily?”

  “You can rely on it.”

  “All right, I shall,” she said.

  “Do you know anything about your roommate’s disappearance?” I asked. “It is crucial that we find her as quickly as possible.”

  “I know she wasn’t happy here,” she said, “but then none of us is.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “I don’t, truly I don’t.”

  “Did she tell you she was leaving?” I asked.

  “No,” Helen said. “She—” Fear filled her eyes. “Are you quite certain it is safe for me to talk to you?”

  “Helen, is it that bad here?” I asked, sitting next to her on the edge of her bed.

  “Worse than you can imagine,” she said. “You get punished for everything. If you are lucky you only have to stand on a chair for an hour, but usually you have a meal taken away. I’m certain it’s to save Mrs. Chelmsford from having to buy food. She’s the stingiest person on earth. That I know beyond doubt. Have you read Mr. Dickens’s story about Ebenezer Scrooge? We all reckon she would be a fine match for him—before he met the ghosts, that is.” She looked at me, her dark eyes almost too big for her face. “You won’t tell her I said that?”

  “Never,” I said. “What do your parents think?”

  “They don’t know,” she said. “Who would they believe? We’re not supposed to complain, are we? Even if we did, Mrs. Chelmsford would tell her side of the story.”

  “What is her side?” I asked.