Midnight Masquerade

by Joan Smith

  “We decided we must pretend we had known of the lapsed policy all along, to keep suspicion from ourselves. That is why I made a point to mention it to you, Lord Belami,” Bessler said humbly. “Bidwell had destroyed the copy; there was no way to prove we had stolen it. I had the original here. I planned to sell it for what I could get, and we would still split the profit. We are both in urgent need of funds,” he added with a worried frown at his desk, where he had secreted his bills.

  “Then the storm came along and confined us all to Beaulac,” Belami urged him on.

  “That delay was not too troublesome. It was your announcement that my apartment had burned down that worried me. I envisaged someone’s finding the diamond in the ashes. Disgrace, a trial, possibly hanging . . .”

  His face mirrored these horrors.

  “Quite possibly,” Belami agreed calmly.

  “Not for me!” Bidwell announced triumphantly. “All I took was a chunk of glass. I knew it was glass when I took it. They won’t hang a fellow for that.”

  “Assaulting a duchess, causing her grievous bodily harm—the bruise on her neck, dreadful! To say nothing of collusion with Herr Bessler,” Belami pointed out. “Then there is conspiring to defraud your uncle Carswell of a fortune. You may escape the gibbet, but I’d say you’re looking at twenty or thirty years in prison.”

  “How did you come to suspect our scheme?” Bessler asked with waning interest.

  “Simple deduction,” Belami told him. “Bidwell had the opportunity. He was not in the ballroom when it happened. Neither was there any way of proving he was in Lady Lenore’s dressing room, as he claimed. It was crushing the paste diamond on the hearth that really gave it away. The splinter’s weight told me it was not another wine glass, nor a part of the one you broke at midnight—or was it actually a minute before or after that you called Chamfreys and Lenore? I have not been able to deduce the timing to the second. No matter,” he said when Bidwell proved uncooperative. “Either before or after you lunged down the rope to steal the diamond, you had a drink and broke one of my crystal goblets. When Deirdre discovered the hook that held the diamond to the chain, I took the fantastical notion you had actually stolen the diamond and crushed it, though I couldn’t believe you hated Carswell enough to play such a pointless trick on him.”

  “I do, if you want the truth,” Bidwell interpolated.

  “Oh, I already have the truth. If we had more time, I would tell you about Mohs’ Scale, which proved that the crushed item was not the diamond. The little clasp kept niggling at my mind. A substitution suggested itself—don’t ask how. I get inspired at times. Bessler, with his mesmerism, was the logical person to have done that. If you could convince Lady Lenore she don’t like wine, you could convince the duchess to hand over her diamond. One trembles to think of that unchained power walking the world. Just as well it will soon be locked up.”

  He walked to the window to look for signs of Bow Street and saw Réal and a Runner trotting quickly toward the building. He hastened his speech then. “Once I had the idea of you two working in tandem, the rest was fairly simple. Bidwell was so palpably certain I had not found the diamond when I announced I had that I realized it was not at Beaulac. Where else could it be but in the house of the man who stole it? My story of a fire here confirmed it. I never witnesses such panic, outside of a real fire. It remained only to beat you here by a few moments and find it. And by the by, Doctor, I approve of your hiding place. I didn’t look there first, I promise you. I know that if I were the thief, I would appreciate a compliment from an expert like me.”

  “It was clever, was it not?” Bessler asked, allowing himself a wan, sad smile. “The phrase ‘a diamond of the first water’ suggested the hiding place to me. The duchess herself used the expression. A flawless diamond will disappear entirely in water.”

  “True. It is the very expression that caused me to look for it in the glass of water,” Belami told him with a mischievous twinkle in his black eyes.

  They were interrupted by the sounds of Réal and the Bow Street Runner coming up the stairs.

  “Pierre Réal will show you where are the premises,” the groom was heard to say beyond the door. “Voilà,” he exclaimed, throwing the door wide open.

  Bidwell made one last futile attempt to escape. He bolted for the open door but was stopped by Réal’s outstretched foot. He went sprawling, to be hoisted up by his collar by the Runner.

  “What have we got here, then?” the swarthy man asked.

  “Foolish, Bidwell. Flight is always taken for confirmation of guilt,” Belami told him, shaking his head, “Your best bet is to go to your uncle and sue for mercy. I shall accompany you gentlemen to Bow Street to explain the nature of this crime. Rather complicated, I’m afraid, but I’ll give you every assistance in explaining its intricacies.”

  “I, Pierre Réal, will come to hold a pistol at their heads. You will need assistance to get through the streets. There’s a bit of snow—only a foot or two most places, but to the anglais, even a drop such as that present the problem. Come.”

  “That’s true. We had a powerful bad time getting here,” the Runner said to Belami. “The main streets is shoveled out clean as a whistle, but here in the hinterlands there’s bad drifting yet.”

  “Lead on, Réal ,” Belami said. “Follow the leader,” he added aside to the others, and brought up the rear himself.

  When all the explaining and charging were done, Belami sent his groom home to his London residence, to inform his servants he would dine there and sleep overnight. There was still sufficient daylight to allow a walk along the main thoroughfares and meet a few friends. He spotted a traveling agent’s office, and went in to begin arrangements for his honeymoon. He also arranged for a passage to Paris for two, toward the end of January. In a benevolent mood after the successful completion of the case, he was feeling generous.

  “The very best rooms, at the very best hotel that has anything available,” he told the agent.

  “What name would that be for?” the agent asked, writing down the order.

  “Lady Lenore Belfoi, and, er, Mr. Harvey Belfoi.”

  “This here check says Belami, not Belfoi,” the agent pointed out when he was accepting the advance.

  “Yes, I’m arranging the holiday for friends.”

  The lady waiting behind him perked up her ears at the name of Belami. This would be the dandy old Charney’s niece was said to have nabbed, then. Quite a fine dasher, taking a pre-wedding jaunt with Lady Lenore Belfoi, the fastest woman in London. This would be interesting news for Her Grace, if only she were in town.

  Belami went straight home and spent a quiet evening alone, with only Réal for company. His valet had succeeded with his wench and was off to her parents’ home to arrange the wedding.

  “That’s two of us. You’ll be next, Pierre,” Belami said as he leafed through some travel books of Italy. “Maybe you’ll find yourself a wife in Italy. I hope you mean to accompany us. You won’t care for the climate. No snow. You will not be accustomed to such heat as we’ll get there.”

  “I, Pierre Réal, not accustomed to heat?” the groom asked, staring in amazement. “You think you get heat here, and in Italy? I have fried eggs on rocks at home in Canada. You think we get only snow and winds and ice? Bah, in July we are hotter than the tropics. A hundred degrees: a fine, balmy day. One hundred ten is getting warm. I’ll fry you an egg on a rock when we go to Canada.”

  “We’re not planning to go to Canada. And I don’t like my eggs fried, either. I take ‘em boiled.”

  “You can do that too, in the ponds,” Réal told him, his beady black eyes daring him to contradict this foolishness.

  “Those extremes of temperature have either fried or frozen your brain, my friend. Have a glass of wine to celebrate with me. Not so potent as you are accustomed to in Canada, I expect, but it will have to do.”

  Réal drank it up while considering other imagined marvels with which to impress his employer, who thought
he knew everything. Not accustomed to heat indeed!

  Chapter 16

  At Beaulac, the Duchess of Charney did not descend to breakfast that morning. Comfortably ensconced in her bed and looking through the window to an endless vista of snow, she could see no reason to. She would loll against the pillows instead and summon guests to amuse her. The first guest summoned was her hostess, Lady Belami. With no son on hand to rescue her, Bertie went trotting to the room, already on the fidget.

  “Nasty, inclement weather,” the duchess said in an accusing tone.

  Peering into the dim shadows beneath the canopy, Bertie had the strange feeling she was being addressed by a skeleton in a cap. “Why, the sun is shining, and the snow melting wonderfully well,” she objected brightly. “The road is quite open now, Duchess. Several guests have left—such a relief. You can get on home to Fernvale and take Deirdre with you. I’m sure you must be eager to get home.”

  “Without my diamond?” the duchess asked, her gray brows jumping to meet her gray fringe.

  “But my son found it. Everyone knows that. Don’t tell me you’ve lost it again!” Bertie exclaimed, deeply chagrined.

  “What a bubble head you are, to be sure. Of course he hasn’t found it. It was all a conning trick. Where is Belami? I’ll speak to him and find out what progress he is making.”

  “Dickie is not here. He’s scooted back to London. Oh, dear! I wasn’t supposed to say so. He’s—he’s indisposed. Yes, that’s it. Or was that to be this afternoon? No, he’s gone over to see how the neighbors go on after the storm, and this afternoon he will be indisposed.”

  “Gone back to London, you say?” Charney asked, feeling the delightful shadow of offense descend on her. “Gone back to London without so much as a farewell, after being three days late for his own party? Were we invited here for the express purpose of being insulted, Lady Belami?”

  “Indeed you were not! You weren’t invited at all. You wrote and said you would be happy to come, and you came. Of course I didn’t mean to insult you. I hope I never insult anyone accidentally. Dickie says it is vulgar to do so. You must only give offense intentionally.”

  “Widgeon! Why has he gone to London? And more importantly, when does he plan to return?”

  “Since you know he is gone, there is no point denying it. He said he would return soon. Between you and me and the bedpost, Your Grace, I expect he is giving you and Deirdre a chance to get away to Fernvale, then he will come dancing home fast enough.”

  “Are you telling me he has shagged off on my niece?” Charney asked. As her head darted forth from the shadows she ceased to resemble a skull and looked instead like an angry mare, with her ears pulled back and her nose wearing a strained, snorting look.

  “It has nothing to do with me. He did not speak to me about it, though he did say Deirdre had qualities. I was dreadfully afraid he might actually marry her. But no—he admitted she is cold. That would never do for Dick.”

  “What does he hope to accomplish in London?” the duchess persisted.

  “I’ve no idea. Perhaps Lady Lenore could tell us. Oh, don’t worry that she plans to meet him. She is going east to Dover; I heard her tell Chamfreys so.”

  “Rubbish. You have certainly gotten it wrong. No one goes to Dover,” Charney replied.

  “They do when they plan to go to Paris,” Bertie retaliated. “I always go to Dover when I go to Paris. It is where the ship stops to take you across, you see.”

  “Aha! That explains it. The trollop is going to meet some man in Paris. That will be a relief to her husband, to have her carry on outside the country for a change. Can’t imagine why you asked the woman here at this time.”

  “We had already invited her before you said you would come. One can’t very well ask a guest to stay away, Your Grace. I knew her mama—Cora Eversley before marriage. The world was amazed when she got Lord Pitticombe to marry her, though she was a very nice girl. One can only wonder how Lenore turned out so. Not that she isn’t pretty. Dickie says she looked like a French angel. It’s supposed to be a joke, I believe—or perhaps he said it was a paradox. I wonder if it is Dickie she is meeting in Paris. Surely not!” she exclaimed, frowning.

  “Now it is beginning to make some sense,” Her Grace said. She had more than enough insults to keep her happy. “Leave me, and send my niece up at once,” she commanded.

  “Delighted, my dear duchess. If there is anything you require to be comfortable here in your room, don’t hesitate to ask for it. I will be very happy to supply whatever you need to keep you up here. Where you are better off, I mean! The weather is dreadful downstairs, cold and drafty. I’ll send Deirdre right up to you. Would you care for a book as well? We have lovely books, in all colors. French novels and poetry—oh, and plenty of dull sermons too, if you prefer. Of course you would prefer a sermon. Doctor Donne, the very thing, as dull as ditch water. So very elevating.” She chattered her way out of the room, happy to know she had done as Dick would like her to do, being polite to the duchess. Only it was a pity she had let slip about London.

  Within a very few minutes, Deirdre was mounting the stairs with all the enthusiasm of a victim on her way to the tooth drawer. She knew as soon as she opened her aunt’s door and saw the sharp, wizened face of her aunt, the eyes alight with schemes, that something had offended the dame.

  “You sent for me, Auntie?” she asked, going into the room.

  “Oh, is it you, Deirdre? I hardly recognized you, with your hair streaming over your shoulders like a street walker, and half a dozen ribbons stuck in it. What are you about, eh? Trying to impress Belami, are you? You’ll catch cold at that, my girl. You ain’t his style. His mama was just telling me so. He has gone off to make arrangements to take Lady Lenore to Paris.”

  “Did Bertie say so?” Deirdre asked.

  “She let it slip out, though Belami had instructed her to hide it. And by the by, you will not address your elders by their first names. I have been overly hasty in urging you to accept Belami’s suit, Deirdre. You’re hard up, to be sure, but you ain’t quite desperate. We shall return to London tomorrow and set about finding you another parti. Pity we let Twombley get away.”

  “He will be back tomorrow,” Deirdre said. “I’m sure his mother has it wrong. Let us wait and see.”

  “It takes longer than one day to arrange a trip to Paris, my girl. But in case he does come back for Lady Lenore, we shan’t be here. We shall leave today. I must be in London to arrange the payment for my diamond from his man of business.” This at least brought a smile to her hagged face.

  “But I really don’t wish to leave just yet, Auntie,” Deirdre claimed, her chin jutting forth in unaccustomed opposition.

  “I don’t recall asking what you wished, Deirdre. I shall do what is best. Well, I ain’t a complete tyrant. No doubt Belami will call on us in London. I’ll see he knows we are there.”

  “I’ll tell the servants to start packing,” Deirdre said happily.

  She was upset that Bertie thought Dick was going to Paris with Lady Lenore, but he would have a chance to explain it.

  “Excellent. And Deirdre, perhaps you would just step into the corridor and see if Lady Lenore is up yet. If she is, tell her to drop in to see me.”

  “Lady Lenore?” she asked, astonished that this blue-blooded lightskirt would be allowed to darken the duchess’s door, let alone receive an invitation.

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

  Deirdre tapped on Lenore’s bedroom door and was asked in. The lady sat in bed, surrounded by a sea of pillows, with a breakfast tray before her. Even in the morning before her major toilette, she looked quite lovely. This is how Dick would see her in Paris, with her eyelids heavy from sleep, drooping languorously over her green eyes, with her hair just brushed from her face, to puff in an ebony cloud of waves.

  “Good morning, Miss Gower. To what do I owe the honor of this call?” Lenore asked with a sardonic little smile.

  “My aunt wished to see you, if yo
u were up and dressed. As you are not, I’ll tell her.”

  “What on earth can she want with me?” Lenore asked bluntly.

  “I—I have no idea,” Deirdre said, conscious of the lie but unable to even hint at the truth.

  “This is worth getting up for!” Lenore exclaimed, and popped out of bed. She threw a pink silk dressing gown over her shoulders, tucked a pin in its front to cover her bosoms, and went pattering down the hall, with Deirdre following fast at her heels.

  “You may leave us, Deirdre,” the duchess said, her tone regal, her eyes flashing, her lips pinched into their most condemning scowl at the untidy spectacle before her. “Kind of you to come, Lady Lenore. Have a seat. I wish to speak with you. Run along, Deirdre,” she repeated when Deirdre showed a tendency to dawdle.

  The meeting was brief. Within three minutes, Lenore opened the door and wiggled back to her room, tossing her head in amusement. What a Turk the old lady was, to be sure. But there was no need to truckle to her. She had not corroborated the charge that she was going to Paris, but she wouldn’t satisfy her to deny it either. If they thought to keep Belami on that tight a rein, they were sunk before they were launched.

  “What did she say?” Deirdre asked, running into her aunt’s room as soon as she heard Lenore’s door close.

  “Brazen hussy! She said she saw no reason to discuss her private plans with me. She said if I wished to learn Lord Belami’s plans, I should ask him. She would have denied the charge if it were untrue. She’s going with him certainly. I cannot tolerate this degree of dissolution in our family, Deirdre. Send Lady Belami to me at once.”

  Bertie didn’t know whether she was angry or delighted when she fled the door ten minutes later, with her ears burning. But she knew it would be a wonderful relief to see the last of Her Grace’s strawberry-leafed carriage. She was happy to hear the engagement was terminated, but the manner of it would not please Dick. He was a bit touchy about being called a rake and a knave, and as to the charge of not being a gentleman—well, she would not tell him that one for a few months yet. It wouldn’t do for him to punch a duchess in the eye, especially not this particular duchess. She ought to have done it herself, though.