To Wed an Heiress

by Rosanne E. Lortz

  “Thank you for your time,” he said, shaking the innkeeper’s hand hurriedly, and leaving his tankard of ale on the counter, he dashed outside for one last conversation with the dead woman’s maid.

  Henry had already climbed back into the dogcart, but he looked askance at the red-haired Pevensey and seemed ready to climb down again, probably to shield Mademoiselle Mathilde from any impertinent questions. Pevensey waved him away authoritatively, and the footman set the wagon in motion back towards the house with many a glance behind.

  “Who gave you permission to leave Woldwick?” asked Pevensey, planting himself in front of the French maid. It was very trying when the witnesses for a murder investigation refused to stay at the location of the crime. He thought that the earl and the other members of the family had understood the need for keeping everyone on the premises. Was she departing of her own accord?

  “Monsieur Hastings ordered me to leave.” Mademoiselle Mathilde’s voice was filled with loathing and disdain. She pulled her angular shoulders back, attempting to fill out the bodice of the elegant dress she wore which had clearly been sewn for another.

  Pevensey frowned. This woman was a pivotal witness in the investigation. And ever since his first conversation with her, he had the distinct impression that she was suppressing information. He was not the official magistrate in this part of the country, however, and he hardly had the authority to command her to stay. He decided to take a gamble.

  “How much money did William Hastings pay you to keep the engagement between Miss Hastings and Philippe Bayeux secret?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Do you have possession of any of the letters that passed between them?”

  Her face turned sly. “Perhaps. Do they interest you?”

  They did. Very much so. But Pevensey was not prepared to pay for them. “If I need them, I will let you know. You are bound for London?” He flashed a smile, trying to disarm her.

  “Oui.”

  “Might I have your address there?”

  She hesitated, probably calculating whether such a revelation might prove profitable or perilous. In the end her cupidity won out, and she divulged a direction near St. Paul’s Cathedral where a cousin of hers resided. Pevensey noted it down in his mind, preferring to save the pages of his notebook for more artistic pursuits.

  The post had arrived, and the stable boy was leading out a new team of horses to replace the spent ones. Pevensey expressed his gratitude for Mademoiselle Mathilde’s cooperation by handing up her trunk and was honored by a brief nod of the head.

  He stood outside in the cold as the post carriage rattled away. So, it was certain then that Bayeux and Miss Hastings had been affianced at some point. He must find out when and why the nuptials had been called off. Jealousy was a fertile ground that, in Pevensey’s experience, could breed all manner of mischief.

  ***

  “I thought you believed me,” said Haro, quite loudly, leaning in towards his cousin. If Eda had not known better, she would have thought he was half-sprung. But there was no scent of brandy on his breath, and the wild intensity in his eyes seemed to stem from emotion rather than alcohol.

  “Whatever are you talking about?” asked Eda. The two had been able to keep up appearances in front of Mrs. Alfred, but once they had left the servants’ corridor and returned to the drawing room, the daggers had been drawn afresh.

  “Two days ago. When the murder was first discovered. You asked me in Arabella’s sitting room whether I had done it. I thought you believed me.”

  “What a lot of fustian nonsense, Haro! Of course I believe you. Do you honestly think that I think you killed Arabella?”

  Haro paused. “Yes.” His tone was softer now, gentle, pleading.

  Eda looked into his eyes and saw fear there, and vulnerability. But what was he afraid of? The hangman’s noose or her poor opinion? At this moment, it seemed like it was predominantly the latter.

  “Or at least, that you are unsure.” Haro, it seemed, was not willing to let the question lie. “Well? Are you?”

  “Of course not!” Eda stamped her foot. “The only thing I’ve been trying to do through the whole of this dreadful episode is to clear your name! Why do you keep getting in the way of that?”

  Haro paced over to the window and stared out into the frosty world below. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s because I am afraid that if I am proven innocent, then someone else must be proven guilty. Torin, Uncle Harold…you.”

  “That is preposterous. Listen!” She took his hand, firmly, as one takes a child’s hand to stop him from running out into the street. “Are we such strangers to one another that the swirling circumstances could cause us to doubt one another’s character? You know Torin. You know Uncle Harold. You know me—inside and out. We must believe in each other’s innocence as fervently as we believe in our own. Is that not the essence of love? To bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things?”

  Haro’s grip tightened on her hand. “But if not one of us, then whom are you suggesting? One of the servants?”

  “Nay, not at all. They have been with us for years, and we can vouch for their characters as well. But think! Whose character remains unproven?”

  “I take it you mean the character of our visitors.”

  “Exactly!” Eda pried his fingers loose from hers and settled herself on the sofa. “What do we really know about William Hastings, Mrs. Rollo, or Philippe Bayeux?”

  “Only enough to wish them at Jericho!” Instead of sitting across from her to continue their tête-à-tête, Haro sat down beside her, at very close proximity, and placed his long arm around her shoulders.

  Eda gave him a quizzical look but allowed him this liberty. “As much as I detest William Hastings, I do think it rather unlikely that he would toss away his key to unlocking the peerage. And Mrs. Rollo—that woman has the most masculine hands I’ve ever seen on a female. But she’s so downtrodden and pitiful. I can’t stand the idea of her being a murderess.”

  “I have no opinion on her. Although if she were prepared to own the crime, I would not object to her hanging instead of me.”

  “But don’t forget the architect—Philippe Bayeux!”

  “Oh, him? I feel rather sorry for him—”

  “Good heavens! Why?”

  “Well, if he did have romantic feelings for Arabella, his misery must be as great as, or greater even than that of her father.”

  “Haro!” said Eda, pulling away from his presumptuous arm. “You are too full of the milk of human kindness!”

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Macbeth! The next thing you’ll be saying is that I should have caught the nearest way and done the deed myself—”

  “No, I’m simply saying that it’s a little too…sentimental to feel sorry for Bayeux. To my mind, he’s the most likely candidate for the murder.”

  “But he loved her!”

  “And she was planning to marry someone else.”

  Haro made a fist with one hand and twisted it against the open palm of his other hand. “Wouldn’t it be more logical for him to attempt to kill me?”

  “What does logic have to do with it?” asked Eda, shaking her head. She had wanted to murder Haro when he engaged himself to marry someone else. No doubt Bayeux had felt the same impulse. “You have clearly not read enough novels.”

  “Yes, I must admit it is difficult for me to measure Monsieur Bayeux’s actions by the yardstick of Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroes—”

  “Oh, Haro! Eda! There you are!” The couple’s tête-à-tête was interrupted by Lady Anglesford, who had conquered her nerves enough to descend from her boudoir to the drawing room.

  “I have been thinking, Haro, and I was wondering if it might be best to alter your version of affairs so that Torin went with you to the pond.”

  Haro had risen to his feet as his mother entered the room and now stared at her blankly. “Alter my version of affairs?”

  Eda sat upright on the couch, wonder
ing if the strain of the last few days, or indeed, the last few months, had been too much for her aunt.

  “Yes, my dear. You know, so that you will have someone to vouch for your innocence.”

  “Mother! The investigator already knows that I went there alone. And didn’t you tell him that Torin was with you?”

  “Yes, but I’m sure we could tell him that we remembered it wrong.”

  Haro stared at Eda openmouthed. She rose from the sofa herself and took Lady Anglesford’s small hand in hers.

  “But Aunt Edith, surely you must see that the inspector will only think you are covering up Haro’s guilt. He will know that you are lying.”

  “And I don’t need anyone covering up for me,” said Haro, “since I had nothing to do with it.” He enunciated the last five words very clearly.

  “Yes, dear,” said Lady Anglesford, smiling wanly. “But there’s no harm in looking at it from the perspective of ‘what if?’ It could have been an accident, after all.”

  “I hardly think throttling somebody can be interpreted as an accident.”

  Lady Anglesford winced at the indelicacy of Haro’s statement. “Very well, my dear. If you don’t want me to, then I won’t tell the man that Torin was with you. However, I did assure him that Eda was with me in the drawing room,”—she gave Eda’s hand a motherly squeeze—“so that protects you at least.” She turned towards the door to make her way back upstairs.

  “But, I’ve already told the investigator that I was alone!” said Eda, to her aunt’s retreating figure. “Aunt Edith, what have you done?”

  Eda’s cheeks reddened a little at the realization that she had already told Jacob Pevensey the same kind of lie for which she was rebuking her aunt. She had not been alone that morning—she was simply trying, in her own way, to light the same sort of smoke screen that Lady Anglesford was attempting.

  She looked back at her cousin. Haro shook his head as he watched his mother disappear, and his lips pulled back into an ironic smile. “So much for your eloquent speech on believing in one another. It seems like the woman who has known my character the longest is not at all sure that I didn’t strangle Arabella.”

  “Accidentally, of course,” said Eda, still able, despite her dismay, to see the humor in the situation.

  “Of course,” said Haro. She saw him eyeing her white throat. “I’m in the habit of wrapping my hands around attractive young females’ throats whenever I’m given the opportunity. You don’t mind, do you—?”

  Eda let out a high-pitched noise somewhere in between a laugh and a scream. “Stop it, Haro!” she said, twisting away from him. She ran giggling to the door and stood there leaning against the cherry door frame, flushed and out of breath.

  “But I thought you believed the best of me!”

  “Of course,” said Eda, smoothing down her black hair to make herself presentable, “and that is why I am going to look for Philippe Bayeux and ask him why he killed Arabella Hastings.”

  28

  Pevensey wrinkled his freckled nose as the post rolled away into the frosty fog of the winter afternoon. He had just learned the most excellent motive for murder and discovered the perfect solution to the crime—and yet he was afraid that events would not allow it to hang together.

  So far, Philippe Bayeux’s timetable was all verifiable. He had ridden into the village and arrived for breakfast at the Rose and Thistle sometime after eight o’clock. If Haro Emison had discovered Arabella’s body at the bridge just before nine o’clock, that left very little time for Bayeux to ride back to Woldwick and out to the pond.

  Pevensey began to pace in front of the stable yard while the stable boy looked on with awe. Even if Bayeux had rode hell for leather back along the road, he would have needed to pick his way with care along the narrow and circuitous path to the pond. Could he have arrived at the pond, argued with Arabella, strangled her, and still returned to the village by nine o’clock? Impossible. Pevensey was certain of it.

  He gave a disappointed whistle. Though he tried to maintain impartiality during a case, he could not deny that he liked the earl. There had been a humility about him that was appealing—that, and a courteousness that was utterly lacking in the Frenchman’s demeanor. A pity then that events seemed to place Bayeux away from the crime when it occurred.

  But was it established that Bayeux was present in the village at nine o’clock? Pevensey ceased his pacing. Bayeux had claimed that he had met with the stone mason for an appointment at nine, but that still needed to be verified. Pevensey looked up at the windows of the Rose and Thistle and saw the bald-headed innkeeper—and his wife—watching him. He gave a smile and a salute in their direction.

  “Pardon me,” he said, approaching the stable boy. “Could you point me in the direction of the stone mason’s workshop?”

  Struck speechless at this notice from such a celebrated personage, the stable boy could only stare openmouthed and point down the main street of the village. Pevensey said a thank you and walked, hands in pockets, down the thoroughfare until he came to the sign of a hammer and anvil.

  Pevensey saw steam coming from behind the shop and took the liberty of rounding the corner. A brawny-armed man in a dirty leather apron was holding a pair of tongs, and clasped in their arms was a perfectly symmetrical horseshoe that he had just pulled from the cooling depths of the water barrel. “I’m looking for the stone mason.”

  The blacksmith grunted. “Och aye, ’at will be mah brither. He’s in th’ hoose yonder.”

  “Did he have a visitor two days ago? A Frenchman named Philippe Bayeux?”

  The blacksmith used a thick forearm to wipe his brow and nodded.

  “At what o’clock, do you remember?”

  “In th’ morn, sometime after th’ post had gain by. Ye can ask him yerself about it. Thaur he is.”

  Pevensey saw that another leather-aproned man, nearly the copy of the blacksmith except moderately cleaner and slightly fairer, had emerged from the cottage and was coming toward the forge.

  “Colin,” said the blacksmith, raising his voice, “here’s th’ Runner come tae ask ye about th’ Frenchman!”

  “Och, what dae ye need tae ken?” asked Colin the stone mason.

  “What time did he come see you two days ago?”

  “Nine o’clock. I min’ jist whit happened. He came in an’ said, ‘I’m haur for mah nine o’clock appointment.’”

  “And did you check the time on your pocket watch?”

  Colin rubbed his head as if he had never heard of such a contraption. “Nae.”

  “When did you make this appointment?”

  “A few days afore. He’d bin haur askin’ about limestone. Truth tae tell, it had slipped mah min’ he was comin’ again ‘at day. I was daein’ some carvin’ an’ he came upon me right in th’ middle of it.”

  “But you’re certain he was here at nine o’clock?”

  “Och aye, I’ve already tauld ye as much.” The stone mason yawned. “At first I thought mebbe his cuddie had throon another sheen, but nae, it was me he was haur tae see, nae mah brither Brendan.”

  “Oh?” Pevensey quickly deciphered the meaning of that statement, thanking the Almighty that he had been endowed with the gift of tongues. He turned back to the blacksmith named Brendan. “Had you shoed his horse before?”

  “Aye, a few days since. He came in ridin’ a Woldwick mare, an’ she’d throon a sheen in th’ woods, he said.”

  “Was it strange that he was asking you for a new one and not the Emisons’ stable master?”

  Brendan shrugged. “That’s mair than I ken. Mebbe he was closer tae th’ village when she threw it than he was tae th’ stable.”

  This week-old detail about the horseshoe, though interesting, in no way mitigated the certainty that Bayeux had arrived at the inn on the crucial day at a little after eight and at the mason’s at nine o’clock. “I see. Well, thank you for your time.” Pevensey gave a short nod to both brothers and stepped back into the street.

&nb
sp; He was so annoyed at the destruction of the case against Monsieur Philippe Bayeux that he did not even take out his sketchbook to record the picturesque scene of two brothers, almost alike enough to be twins, standing in front of a heated forge feet apart and arms akimbo, the perfect picture of industrious craftsmen in rural Britain.

  ***

  Haro was glad to see that Eda had decided to vary her approach to confrontation. Instead of racing to Monsieur Bayeux’s room and knocking on his door, she had taken a cue from Queen Esther and was waiting until suppertime to make her accusation. The first footman, Henry, was nowhere to be found, so she sent the second footman, George, with a message to the architect, extending him his hostess’ best wishes and hopes that he would join them at the table that evening.

  Since Lady Anglesford was indisposed, Miss Swanycke would be the hostess, and Haro grimaced just thinking of the conversational topics she had in store. As much as he would enjoy being cleared of suspicion, he could not countenance such rudeness to a guest. One might quibble that the Frenchman was in fact here without an invitation, but Haro took the position that since he had allowed him into the house, the invitation was implicit.

  Eda descended the stairs for dinner dressed in a very becoming shade of midnight blue. It was still dark enough not to occasion comment in a house of mourning, but the color was a more vibrant setting than black for the white perfection of her shoulders and neck. Haro admired the square cut of the dress’ neckline, just low enough to show the beginning swell of its wearer’s bosom. It would be hard to be disapproving of anything she said while she was so attractively clad, but Haro steeled himself to the task. He was an earl, first and foremost. Hospitality must be upheld at all costs.

  Mr. Hastings surprised them all by appearing punctually before the dinner gong had rung. He had not deigned to eat with them since the incident, and Haro noted that he had chosen a particularly unpropitious time to grace them with his presence. Mrs. Rollo, was standing there as well, a silent, black wraith committed to remaining in the background. On the ending tremor of the gong, Torin stepped into the circle, his cravat so loose and poorly tied that the knot barely held together.