The Earl's Mortal Enemy

by Issy Brooke

  She disputed both of those assertions but found she couldn’t speak. She’d seen Froude lose his temper but Theodore didn’t need to hear about her early love affairs. And she knew he couldn’t think of Montgomery being a murderer because he identified too closely with him. They were brothers in science.

  But that only left her own brother, Alf, as a suspect.

  Theodore was watching her. His finger was pressed on Alf’s name on the paper.

  She shook her head, mutely.

  The feelings of uncertainty and loss threatened to overwhelm her again.

  This was her house, damn it.

  And she didn’t feel safe in it any longer.

  SHOUTS AND NOISE FROM outside the room brought them both to their feet in an instant. Theodore rushed to the door, putting his arm out to stop her from following him.

  “Let me find out what the matter is,” he said urgently.

  But she would not be told to wait. And the voice that they could hear – a man’s voice, unfamiliar to her – was excited rather than scared or angry. They hurried up to the corridor where everyone was now gathering. A policeman in uniform had something in his hands, wrapped in a cloth, and he was talking to Inspector Prendergast. The collected crowd of servants and guests parted to allow Theodore and Adelia to approach the police.

  “It seems that Constable Campbell has found the murder weapon, sir,” said Inspector Prendergast. His face lit up when he saw Adelia and she smiled back warmly. She’d not even had time to greet him properly yet. Theodore was right: he’d matured into a very sensible, confident man.

  “I shall wager money that it is a fossil hammer,” said Theodore.

  Prendergast reached over and pulled back some of the cloth while the constable held the item forward for them to inspect. “Indeed you are right.”

  “Where was it found?”

  Prendergast looked past them to the assembled crowd. But it was too late to send everyone away now.

  Mr Froude pushed forwards. “It was along here, wasn’t it?” He gestured to the doors. They were back along the corridor of guest bedrooms, and close to the corner where the other corridor joined. They were, in fact, halfway between Theodore and Adelia’s rooms, and everyone else’s.

  “Yes, it was.”

  Froude snarled, “That doesn’t mean a thing. I don’t understand why you’re looking so hard at us when it’s obvious it was one of this lot.” He waved his hand and Adelia realised that he meant the servants. She remembered then that his arrogance and dismissal of others had been one of the things she had disliked about him.

  Montgomery nodded furiously. “He’s right, you know. This isn’t the act of a decent sort of man. Not like us.”

  Adelia burst out, “All of our servants are perfectly decent!”

  “And your family?”

  “How dare you!” she said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Theodore asked.

  She knew that Mr Montgomery meant Alf. Alf was not considered decent. And Montgomery was probably right but it didn’t make her any less angry about the slight.

  Alf himself must have understood. He made some kind of noise, like a rodent in a skirting board, and left abruptly.

  Montgomery and Froude were now side by side, staring at the inspector. Froude had something like triumph on his face.

  Montgomery just looked angry.

  Inspector Prendergast flicked the cloth back over the blood-stained hammer and told the constable to take it downstairs. He addressed the audience. “We will continue with our interviews. Thank you all for your patience.” He walked away and the servants began to leave, too, gathered in little clumps, chattering quietly to one another.

  “Patience?” Montgomery muttered. “I lost my last shred of that some time ago. Ha!”

  Seven

  Thringley House was no stranger to visitors and the servants were coping easily with the influx of police. At least, they appeared to cope outwardly. Adelia took the rest of the day to go around the house and speak to each individual servant to personally reassure them that they were safe. She was horribly aware as she looked each servant in the eye that she could not really promise them that. And their haunted expressions told her that they knew it too.

  She wanted to tell them they could leave if they didn’t feel safe but that, too, was impossible. There were policemen everywhere and no one was allowed to leave. The restrictions didn’t apply to visitors, luckily, which meant that deliveries could happen as normal. A large house with so many inhabitants could not survive alone. By early evening, she had heard of one maid who had tried to smuggle herself out in a coal wagon and the gardener’s boy had not been seen for half a day. She was annoyed on principle but she understood their actions completely. Inspector Prendergast took detailed notes about both of them, but she was adamant that neither could be credible suspects.

  When he pressed her as to why she believed that, she could only flap her hands uselessly and say, “But why would they kill anyone? They’re just servants.”

  Inspector Prendergast gave her a look that suggested he was disappointed in her, and she didn’t like it.

  They all endured a miserably silent dinner that night. The food tasted of ash and no one spoke. The clink of cutlery against china sounded intolerably loud and if Froude ate one more carrot as noisily as a hound might, she was sure she would snap and he’d be the next victim, killed by a soup spoon. She’d happily do it herself.

  No one suggested withdrawing for cards and drinks that night.

  She could not bear the idea of going straight to bed after the meal, either. Instead she wandered along the upper galleries, once more making a round of the servants, offering to be a listening ear if anyone needed it. She knew they were all too aware of the difference in status to actually unburden themselves to her, but it was important to make the gesture.

  The only person who did corner her in an urgent need to talk was her brother.

  She didn’t want to speak to Alf openly so she hustled him into a cold, dark sitting room. The curtains had not been drawn in this unused room, and the uncovered window was like a huge slab of blackness in a grey and fuzzy wall. She left the main door open but very little light spilled in from the gas lamps in the corridor. Alf had a candle in a holder, cupping his hand around it to stop it guttering and flaring. It cast huge shadows across his face, making a monster of his features. She shuddered, but he drew close to her and spoke in a low voice.

  “Thank you for the money you gave me,” he said. “I’ve sent a note to a tailor in town. Even if I cannot leave, they can have something sent here so I can smarten myself up.”

  “Is that really important at the moment?” And the money had been a loan, not a gift; though she knew deep down that she’d never see it again.

  “It is more important than ever,” he said sadly. “They are out to get me, you know – Froude and Montgomery. I tried to tell them, you know, your husband and that policeman but I don’t think they believed me. Halifax was my ally. My only ally. He was a loud-mouthed fly-by-night, I know that very well, but he was my ... he was my friend, Adelia. One of the very few that I have. They didn’t like him, and they don’t like me. They’d get rid of me this very minute if any of us were allowed to leave.”

  She wanted to believe him. And she’d suspected him, falsely, of murder before. She still felt bad about that. But she could not help herself. She said, “Very well, Alf. I believe you. And I understand that this must be awful for you. But I have to ask you; did you go straight to bed after dinner last night? Did you see or hear anything at all?”

  Alf did not answer at first, as if he were thinking about what to say, and she was immediately suspicious. Surely the automatic answer was to say he’d gone straight to bed?

  Before he replied, someone spoke outside the door. “Hello?”

  Adelia jumped in surprise and Alf’s hand jerked, making him nearly drop the candle. Theodore popped his head around the door, the light from behind him making
his thin hair glow almost like a halo.

  “Oh, Theodore! It’s only me,” she said. “And Alf. Sorry.”

  He stood in the doorway. “But what are you up to here, closeted in the dark? Is everything all right? Mr Pegsworth, do you have some information for the investigation?”

  She had never managed to persuade him to call her brother Alf or even Alfred. There was an insurmountable distance between them both.

  “I – no, sir. Nothing. Sorry. Please excuse me.” He dashed past Theodore, almost pushing him out of the way in his haste to leave. Adelia remained for a moment in the dark, hoping that her emotions didn’t show on her face.

  “Are you coming to bed?” Theodore said at last.

  “Yes. Sorry. Of course.”

  She sighed. She didn’t think that sleep would be easy that night.

  Alf knew something and he wasn’t telling her.

  AND IT DIDN’T GET MUCH easier for Adelia during the next day, either.

  Of course, word had spread across the whole local area and suddenly they had a lot more “deliveries” from tradesfolk and merchants than one would expect on a chilly Wednesday. They would not have usually felt the need to call merely “...on the off-chance you needed some linen, my lady, and what’s this I hear about some murder?” She thought they had all been sent by Mrs Ingram who was adding this to her list of reasons why Adelia ought to be no longer welcome in the local polite society.

  Adelia dealt with the callers as calmly as she could but by luncheon, she was feeling frayed and irritable. Theodore had spent the morning speaking to all the members of staff again and again, accompanied by the inspector. She managed to get him alone after the midday meal.

  “What is happening? Who is saying what? Why can’t I be involved in this?” she asked and she could hear the note of petulance in her voice. She didn’t like it.

  Theodore took her hands. “You are cold,” he said, drawing her closer to the low fire in the parlour. This was the room set aside for the guests to make use of, but she had no idea where everyone else had gone; they currently had it to themselves. “And you know why you cannot be seen to be involved in this. It simply wouldn’t do. This is your house. Your home.”

  “And it is precisely because it’s my home that I feel I ought to be involved! Oh, Theodore, if I were twenty years younger I should throw an absolute fit about the whole situation.” She had to be content with stamping her feet. It didn’t help one bit and made her feel ridiculous, as if she were in a pantomime. “Anyway, tell me the latest news. Have your interviews been productive?”

  “Not one bit. All the servants were where they should have been at that time of night and they all back one another up, which of course we expect, but their level of fear and confusion is certainly convincing. Inspector Prendergast favours ...”

  “What?”

  Theodore dropped his gaze.

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I know what you won’t tell me. You mean he favours Alf as the chief suspect, don’t you? But Alf can’t have done it. Why would he?”

  “He doesn’t fit in with the others. Prendergast says that he’s out of place.”

  “He is. But that doesn’t make a man into a murderer. Consider this, then: Bablock Halifax did not fit, either, and now he’s dead. What if Alf is actually set to be the next victim?”

  He shook his head and she didn’t like the way he almost smiled, as if he were humouring her. She said, again, urgently, “Listen, Theodore, I am worried! He himself is worried and he told me so. He could be next. Trust me. I know that you value my judgement.”

  “Of course I do, but in this matter, I fear you are a little too close to things, emotionally.” He patted her hand and she stifled a scream. She would fight against this, she vowed, but she could not risk causing an argument at this stage. If she did, he would tell her nothing and possibly completely exclude her. She could see how delighted he was to be working alongside Inspector Prendergast, as if proximity to the young policeman gave Theodore a new sheen of respectability in the detective world.

  He went on, while she silently fumed. “Now, my dear, I have a surprise for you; while I have been busy with the inspector, I have set a few of the servants a task to construct something just for you in the gardens. Go outside, around the back of the glass houses, to the flat piece of lawn where we play tennis in the summer.”

  “What have you done?” she asked with suspicion. Theodore had been muttering rather a lot recently about novelty hedge-trimming and she was somewhat afraid she’d turn a corner in the garden and be faced with a twelve-foot donkey clipped out of box.

  He beamed. “Go and see. I hope it will give you something to do, and take your mind away from the present situation.”

  THE GREAT GALUMPHING idiot, she thought to herself, half an hour later. Theodore was a joyous, ridiculous, fool of a husband and she loved him so much that she thought she might burst. He was irritating beyond measure, yes, but nothing he did was out of malice. He only acted in her very best interests even if he totally mistook what those best interests were.

  And she had to concede he had tried to make her happy.

  She stood on the lawn with her back to the house, a thick shawl wrapped around her shoulders, rustic-washer-woman style. The grass was pale and bare, straggly with weeds and with patches of dry mud marring the usually-perfect lawn. A weathered wooden table stood near to her, and at the other end of the lawn was a set of large targets.

  There were two bows and a selection of arrows in a long thin box on the table.

  She shook her head, smiling to herself. She hadn’t realised that he had been properly listening to her when she’d told him about the archery she’d done at Edith’s house. But he had been listening and this was the result. And she wasn’t pleased because she had any underlying desire to take up a sport new to her; she was simply touched that he had thought of doing this for her at all.

  There was a stiff wind and she shivered. It was not the weather to start an outdoor archery session. She closed the box and turned around to head back inside. She’d ask a servant to come out and fetch the box to bring it in.

  But there was Inspector Prendergast, and he was coming towards her, with two ladies of a certain age hurrying along behind him. There was an air of exasperation on his face that she had never seen before. He was not here as a friend of the family, she remembered. He was here to do a job. She was witnessing his professional side.

  He said, abruptly, “More gawpers, my lady. Asking for you.” He touched the brim of his hat and walked briskly back to the house.

  The two women looked at one another in astonishment. “We are not gawpers! I have never been called a gawper! I am not sure what it even means. How rude! Wasn’t he rude, Esther?”

  “Very rude! Very rude! But that’s the new police for you,” the other lady sniffed. “Lady Calaway. I expect that you don’t know us but we are here on a vitally important matter and it is nothing to do with – oh, you know, all that business.” The lady waved her pale gloved hand at the house, dismissing the loss of a human being’s life with one derogatory movement. “Do forgive us our intrusion,” she went on, in a firm tone of voice that suggested the forgiveness was expected to be immediate and given without question. “I am Mrs Throckmorton – yes, of those Throckmortons, indeed, the very same – and this is my cousin Lady Passmore. Of the Passmore family in Gloucestershire. You will know her father the baron, of course. Everyone does.”

  Adelia had to search her memory and a vague recollection of a man who was as wide as he was tall with a very high-pitched laugh came to mind. Yes, everyone knew him, because they had to warn their daughters about him. She turned her wince into a smile. “Delighted to meet you both, I’m sure. How do you do.”

  “How do you do. Yes, well, we don’t do very well, do we, Esther?”

  “No, Hortense, we do not.”

  Both of them stared at Adelia until her mental map of the vast family trees of the Throckmortons and the Passmores li
nked with her more familiar memory of Edith and the Ivery family. “Oh!” she said, as it came together in her head. “Lady Passmore, I do believe that we met at my daughter’s wedding in fact, albeit briefly. And how lovely to meet you at last, Mrs Throckmorton. I have heard all about your dahlias.”

  Hortense Throckmorton smiled stiffly. “They are something of a legend, though I sin greatly in taking such pride in them.”

  Lady Esther Passmore shook her head. “They reflect the greater glory of God. Praise be.”

  “Praise be. Now, listen, Lady Calaway, we have come about Lady Ivery. Edith.”

  “Edith, yes,” Lady Passmore echoed.

  Both of them stared at Adelia. She had thought they were visiting her as harpies of Mrs Ingram so she was surprised at first when they mentioned Edith. Either way, she didn’t want to listen to gossip. She said, with tones of deep regret, “Please do speak freely here, kind ladies, but I must urge you to be brief as it is awfully cold and you will appreciate that I am unable to invite you inside my house, due to the presence of the police. Inspector Prendergast, as you can see, is in charge here now. It is all most trying,” she added, a calculated comment which meant they were forced to sympathise with her.

  Lady Passmore, who was very well-bred, murmured some platitudes. Mrs Throckmorton had fewer scruples and said, “It comes to something when a mere policeman can take over one’s ancestral home and begin to dictate what one can and cannot do within. It goes against all our ancient laws. I should like to see where this is allowed in the Magna Carta.”

  “And what is it you wished to speak with me about? I trust that Lady Ivery is well?” Adelia said, ignoring Mrs Throckmorton completely. She refused to be drawn into such conversations.

  Lady Passmore said, “We are worried about her. Aren’t we, Hortense?”