by Joan Smith
“Do you recognize it?” she asked the men.
Breslau took it and examined it. “No, but it’s unusual. We might be able to discover in London who made it.” He wrapped it in the shawl. “Where does the spinney lead?”
“Eventually to Norman Quill’s farm,” Nigel replied. “There’s no point thinking he had anything to do with it. He’s one of our most respectable tenants, with a wife and seven kids.”
“The road to Hatfield passes close by the spinney, though,” Pamela pointed out. “Close enough that I’ve often heard carriages passing when I was riding in the woods. Whoever took Fleur could have had a carriage waiting. No one would have seen it in the middle of the night. The thing to do is call the constable.”
“I expect you’re right,” Nigel agreed. “Not that old Perry Penman will be able to make anything of it. He’s only good for locking up drunks and poachers.”
“Then why bother telling him?” Breslau asked. “He knows nothing of Fleur’s friends and enemies, her habits and haunts. We’ll find her ourselves. There’s nothing more to be done here.”
“Are you going to London now?” she asked.
“Not immediately. I want to look into a few more things here before leaving.”
“What are you going to do?” Pamela asked.
“If Fleur was taken away in a carriage, as we think, it must have been waiting at the side of the road for sometime while the owner went to Belmont to get her, and carried her back through the spinney. The unused grave looks as though he was interrupted before he could bury her, and whoever interrupted the burial might have seen the carriage. I assume he didn’t see anything else, or there’d be another body here.”
“Or the constable around asking questions if someone reported peculiar goings on,” Nigel added. “The murderer must have been parked an age. He even dug her grave.” Nigel stared once more into the badger sett.
“There wouldn’t have been much traffic on the road at that hour of the night,” Pamela said.
“Someone returning from the assembly might have seen the carriage. Maxwell, for instance, would have passed that stretch of road on his way home. I’ll have another word with Max.” As he spoke, Breslau drew out the gray glove and fingered it.
“Nigel, you and I can go into Hatfield and see if we can discover what sort of carriage the mysterious stranger drove,” Pamela suggested.
“What mysterious stranger?”
She reminded him of all the details of that gentleman as they returned to Belmont. General Maxwell was driving up as they approached the house.
“This saves me a trip,” Breslau said. His eyes glinted like an eagle’s as he stared at Maxwell. He stepped forward and said, in a quite ordinary voice, “Are you looking for this, General?” and handed him the gray glove.
Maxwell reached for it, his hand sheathed in an identical glove. “Where did you find this? I was sure I lost it in London.”
“It seems you were mistaken. What brings you to Belmont, General? I understand Lady Raleigh is with your mother at the moment.”
“It’s Lady Raleigh’s visit that decided me to come. What’s this about Fleur having left without telling anyone? You didn’t mention that, Breslau. I assumed it was an orderly retreat, not a rout.”
Nigel was too impatient to put up with this game of cat and mouse. “She didn’t retreat, she was murdered, and I should like to know what your glove was doing in her grave!”
“Her grave!” Maxwell’s swarthy face turned to ash, and his eyes stared in disbelief. “What is this puppy talking about?” he demanded of Breslau. If the general was bamming, he was doing an excellent job of it.
“We have no hard evidence that Fleur is dead, but we do suspect she might have been kidnapped,” Breslau admitted.
“Young Raleigh said her grave! What is that you’re holding? Is it Fleur’s shawl?”
Pamela found it suspicious Fleur’s lover didn’t recognize such a familiar object. But then she’d never believed the shawl to be old.
“It’s Fleur’s,” Breslau said. “About her death—the young are inclined to exaggerate,” he added, and outlined the situation with what Pamela found a rather optimistic insistence that Fleur was not dead.
The general had to see the grave cum badger sett for himself. When his first shock had subsided, his old military training came to the fore and he examined everything with a practiced eye. Perhaps this was why Breslau talked down the notion of murder, so that General Max wouldn’t be too upset to help. He did know his business.
Heedless of his buckskins and top boots, he got down on his hands and knees and stared at the footprints in the grave. “There was only one man here. You notice the boot prints are all the same size. He left and went that way,” he said, looking into the spinney. “There’s nothing there but Raleigh’s sheep field and Quill’s farm. He was obviously taking a shortcut to the road. He must have had his carriage waiting.”
“That was our opinion,” Breslau agreed.
“When did you notice Fleur was missing?”
“Shortly after midnight.”
“That long ago!” Max stopped talking and frowned. “My party left the assembly around twelve-thirty. I remember Sis pointing out a carriage stopped by the roadside near the edge of this spinney. I said we should stop to see if the fellow needed help. Mama took a look and said the carriage wasn’t from Hatfield, so we didn’t bother offering to help.”
“What kind of carriage was it?” Breslau asked.
“Just a dark chaise, with four horses. I know there were four, because Mama mentioned that with a team of four they must have enough grooms and riders to tend to the problem themselves. If it had been a gig, we should have stopped.”
“A team of four suggests it was a traveling carriage, something that came from a little distance, I mean,” Pamela mentioned.
“From London, certainly,” Max agreed. “No one from this neighborhood would have any reason to—”
“Someone has!” Nigel reminded him. “We still haven’t heard what your glove was doing in the grave.”
“I’ve no idea. I lost it in London, dropped it at the theater or restaurant. Anyone might have picked it up. You don’t suppose he’s trying to involve me! It would be quite a coincidence if whoever happened to pick it up is the culprit, and wore just one glove. I only lost one.”
“Are you quite sure the glove is yours?” Breslau asked.
Maxwell took the muddied glove from his pocket and examined it, even sliding it on his hand. “It’s mine all right. I have them made to order from a fellow in Bond Street. My hand is broad but not long-fingered. A peasant’s hand, Fleur calls it,” he added, staring wanly at the glove.
As Pamela stood watching, she saw his expression firm to manly determination. “We’ll catch the bleater, whoever he is. I hope you haven’t called in the constable, to make a scandal of it? Penman’s worse than useless.”
“Precisely our opinion,” Breslau nodded. He spoke as a friend, but his glinting eyes suggested suspicions of Maxwell were by no means inactive.
Pamela’s instinct was to exonerate the general. He was more upset than the rest of them put together, and when he went on to place the blame in his own dish, she could accuse him of nothing worse than being a laggard in love.
“It’s all my fault. If I had married her as she wanted, none of this would have happened. She wanted to visit me, you must know. I told her my mother would never permit such a thing. She said, ‘Then I shall visit your closest and most respectable neighbor. Then your mother will see I’m not a lightskirt.’ But the visit only made things worse.”
Nigel decided to take offense at this. “The visit had nothing to do with you. Fleur came to work on her memoirs with me.”
“Those cursed memoirs. I wish she had never decided to write them. It was for the money, of course. She is always short of blunt.”
Yet Pamela knew the marquise was paid the inordinate sum of thirty guineas per performance. The emeralds she wore to th
e party must have been worth thousands of pounds.
“Fleur doesn’t live in a very high style,” Nigel objected. “Only a little apartment with one maid and a butler. Of course she keeps a carriage, but she always uses job horses.”
“Her maid!” Maxwell exclaimed. “Perhaps Maria knows something.”
“She didn’t bring her maid,” Breslau said. “Maria was unwell.”
“That’s odd,” Maxwell said. “She depends totally on Maria. We’re wasting time here. We must get busy and find Fleur. And when we do, I shall put a ring on her finger and march her straight off to the minister. I’ve kowtowed to Mama long enough. Dash it, I’m not a stripling. I have my officer’s half-pay, and a competence from Papa.”
“How are we going to find her, though?” Pamela asked.
“I shall institute an enquiry, Miss Comstock,” Max said with the utmost confidence.
“Here or in London?”
“I shall begin here. No doubt my search will lead me soon to London.”
“I’ll leave you in charge then, and I’ll go on to London immediately,” Breslau said. “I’ll ask questions of her friends there, and have a look around her apartment for clues.”
“Very good. You would know who to talk to better than I. A pity she has no family. Fleur has often said her family is her fellow thespians—speak to the other actors. I’ll look you up and we’ll meet for a conference in London, either this evening or tomorrow. Nigel, I want you to take me to Fleur’s rooms and show me exactly how everything was found.”
“You show him, Pam. I’m off to London with Wes.”
Breslau’s sharp eyes turned to Pamela. She saw, or imagined, a gleam of interest. “Actually Breslau has agreed to take me to London,” she said, making it sound as normal as possible. “I’m stopping off for a visit with the Fosters on the way home.”
“I’m not staying here all by myself,” Nigel objected.
“What of the play, Nigel?” Breslau asked. “And the memoirs? They are still at Belmont. This is an excellent opportunity for you to finish editing them, so that you’ll be free to get on with the play.”
Breslau had swallowed the bitter pill. Nigel would be allowed to write the play. It would be an inspired mediocrity that would appeal to the trite and squalid taste of the masses. He would have to settle for another commercial success.
“But I’ll be missing out on all the excitement.”
“There’ll be plenty of excitement here,” General Max promised. “A great deal of reconnaissance work to be done. I can use an aide-de-camp. I must learn who was driving that carriage and team that was parked by the side of the road. It may have stopped at the stableyard.”
Pamela gave him a description of the mysterious stranger. “I saw the lad ogling Fleur at the assembly,” Maxwell said. “He had a sly air about him. I don’t know his name, but he’s one of the young set of dandies that dangles after the girls at the theater. No particular friend of Fleur, to my knowledge.”
They all returned to Belmont. While Nigel showed General Maxwell the scene of the crime, Pamela dashed off a note to her hostess explaining her early departure, and left it with Sir Aubrey, who remained closed up in his study.
“So you’re leaving us, eh, Pamela?” he said, trying to force a smile. “I’ll tell Dot. Nigel is going along, too, is he?”
“He’s remaining a few days to work on the memoirs.”
Sir Aubrey had a feeling Dot wouldn’t be happy with this arrangement. He was eager to rid his house of company, however, and didn’t try to delay Pamela, but only wished her a safe trip. Within half an hour, she was settled in Breslau’s comfortable carriage, with a hundred vital matters to discuss.
“Do you think General Maxwell did it?” was her first question. “He’s strong enough to have carried Fleur.”
“He didn’t hesitate to claim the glove. That works in his favor.”
“He was truly shocked and sorry. Imagine a grown man, a general, being led by his mother in the choice of a wife. If Fleur turns up alive, some good will have come of this affair.”
“That has already occurred to me,” Breslau murmured.
“No, I was wrong. General Maxwell would never marry a thief. Don’t forget Fleur stole the diamond bracelet.”
“She had the bracelet,” he conceded. “Whether it was stolen is another matter.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Pamela ventured rashly. “Lady Raleigh bribed Fleur to release Nigel.”
“My understanding is that only Sir Aubrey had access to the safe where the bracelet was kept.”
“He had no reason to give it to her. He didn’t know Nigel had actually offered for her, you see.”
A satirical glint in Breslau’s eye gave Pamela the hint she was off course entirely. “The young tend to plant themselves firmly at the center of things. Look a little further afield, Miss Comstock. Nigel’s heinous plan to desert you and marry Fleur isn’t necessarily the cause of this brouhaha.”
“I’m very happy to hear you say so! I couldn’t think of any other reason why the Raleighs would have murdered her. But you are intimating that Sir Aubrey gave her the bracelet, I think. Why would he do such an unprecedented thing?”
Breslau didn’t reply verbally. His eyes spoke of a reason that was best not discussed with a young lady. “You think there’s something between them?” she asked.
“No, was, many years ago, in Brighton. You did overhear the words quarter day when they were fighting in Sir Aubrey’s study, n’est-ce pas? And we all know what happens on quarter day.”
“He didn’t have any cash on hand, so he gave her the bracelet. Is she really so depraved that she’d turn her hand to blackmail, Breslau?”
“It was a suggestion merely. The deepest recesses of the female heart remain a mystery to me.”
“How can you love a woman like that?”
“Love her!” Breslau nearly jumped from his seat.
“Don’t you? Every other man seems to. You stared at her as if you were memorizing her for all eternity. And you looked very sad at the badger sett, when you were holding her shawl.”
“I am fond of Fleur, both as a friend and as my leading lady—onstage, I mean,” he added.
Miss Comstock ignored this telling addendum. “What intrigues me about the whole affair is how her belongings got packed up and removed during the night. Who took away her clothes, and why? That would have been easy for Sir Aubrey. We should have searched the attics before leaving.”
“A corpse doesn’t need a change of clothes,” Breslau mused. “If a murderer had got clean away with his crime, why return and gather up her belongings? If it was only a common thief, he would have taken her money and jewels when he made his first call. Nigel told me last night that Fleur wore her emeralds when he first went to her room.”
“The clues don’t point to common theft. It looks very bad for Sir Aubrey, does it not? He might have hidden her body, and removed her belongings to indicate she had left willingly. He’s strong enough to have carried her corpse, too. A thief, on the other hand, would have taken the money and jewels and left the body.”
“There’s no murder case without a corpse. If the intruder killed her by accident, I can see his spiriting away the body, but the clothes! No, that doesn’t tally with an unknown intruder. And really killing her at Belmont doesn’t point to Aubrey. That would be the last place he’d murder her, if he planned to kill her, I mean. He would have followed her to London and done it there. Disappearance doesn’t necessarily mean murder, of course.”
“But if she’s not dead—if she left peacefully, I mean—why did she leave her belongings behind in the first place? Why all this game of cat and mouse with Nigel, pretending she was asleep?”
“It’s only conjecture, but for what it’s worth, we might consider kidnapping. There was a dismal, cold rain last night. If Fleur fell into a puddle, or was so soaked that her kidnapper feared she might take pneumonia…”
“Yes,” she agreed doubtfull
y. “He wouldn’t want her to die, or he couldn’t collect the ransom. But why not just grab a blanket and wrap her in that? Another flaw in the kidnapping interpretation is that there was no demand for ransom.” After a moment’s consideration she found another flaw. “Who would ransom her? She has no family. Maxwell mentioned that she is chronically short of funds herself. The only person I can think of is—you.” She examined him uncertainly.
“I’m flattered to have become the undisputed focus of your thoughts, Miss Comstock.”
“If that’s it, you shouldn’t have left Belmont.”
“If my role is to ransom Fleur, her kidnapper will soon find me.”
“Or she’ll escape,” Pamela added hopefully.
They discussed the case for another few miles, till they had tried all possible combinations of facts, and a good deal of conjecture. The increasing traffic warned them they were approaching London, and their thoughts turned in that direction.
“I hope I find the Fosters at home,” Pamela mentioned. “They aren’t expecting me till tomorrow.” Her relatives were by no means travelers. It was only the possibility of their being out visiting or shopping that she meant.
“I was a little surprised at your coming unannounced a day early.”
“I shan’t mind if I’m alone with the servants for a few hours, except that I won’t be much help to you.”
Breslau, long inured to young ladies discovering unlikely excuses for his company, felt no sense of imposition on this occasion. Heartened by her sudden show of interest, he said, “Between the two of us, do you not think we might find an excuse for you not to stay with your Aunt Foster?”
Pamela stared, aghast. “Not stay with her! Breslau, what are you suggesting?”
He realized he had misread her, but having made the suggestion, he played it out. “That you stay with me, in my very well chaperoned house in Belgrave Square. Two maiden aunts are visiting me at the moment.”
“How odd it would look! Very singular,” she charged, but added more gently, “would it not?”
“Not at all. How are you going to help me find Fleur if you’re sequestered in some out-of-the-way house where we can’t easily meet and talk?”
