The Earl's Mortal Enemy

by Issy Brooke

  Theodore swept Adelia into an embrace. “Don’t worry, no one is looking; they are all busy and anyway, I don’t care.”

  She responded, gratefully and willingly. “Oh, I am so glad to be home.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She will be. I’ve agreed that she can stay here, at least for a week or two, because she cannot walk at all and will need constant attention.”

  “Can’t she get that at Ivery Manor?”

  “She can, and she will return there when she is able to. I just think she wants to be at home while she feels so poorly and vulnerable but I am sure she’ll soon buck up.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said but she knew he didn’t, really. “They will all be expecting her back there, you know.”

  “I know. She has such a supportive family around her but she cannot see it.”

  “I am sure she appreciates it all, underneath. She’ll soon get tired of us and go home to them. Though it always feels strange to speak of our daughter’s home being elsewhere.”

  She’s injured, Adelia thought. Her home is here. Adelia thought that she understood Edith’s need to be back in her childhood home at times of anxiety but she also agreed with Theodore: quite how long would the pair of them – mother and daughter – be able to tolerate one another’s presence?

  Not very long, as it turned out.

  EVEN GREGORY WAS APPALLED by Edith’s manner when she made the scene later that day.

  He came rushing over to Thringley House that afternoon, as soon as he heard that Edith was back, but of course he did not come alone. With him was an absolute horde of relatives, cousins, aunts, uncles, distant connections and vague family friends. They were clutching every manner of “helpful” item from crocheted blankets to bottles of tincture, tins of cakes and home hospital manuals handed down through the generations. Theodore squinted with suspicion at the old medical advice booklet from the Peninsular Wars.

  Adelia had expected as much and she welcomed everyone in. She settled everyone in their largest parlour downstairs. They called it the Red Gallery simply because it had an abundance of paintings on the walls and some deep vermillion rugs on the floor, and there were two fireplaces at opposites of the room to add heat on the chilly day. The maids sprang to the challenge of offering everyone refreshments while Adelia took Gregory along a wide passageway to the room in which his wife had been installed.

  “It isn’t ideal,” Adelia confessed to him. “It’s a little-used parlour but it’s quiet, private and has two rooms so she can sleep in one room and rest during the day in the other part. And it has a nice view of the lawns. Well, it does in summer.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be here that long...?” he said but there was doubt in his voice that brought Adelia up short.

  “She won’t. I think she only wants to rest for a few days after the journey in peace and quiet.”

  “I promise she will get all the peace she wants at Ivery Manor,” he said earnestly.

  “I know you do. But I suspect what she sees as peace is not the same as what everyone else sees. She craves ... well, she craves solitude ... I think.”

  “She has that. She can spend hours in rooms on her own, or out playing archery, or walking. I put no limits on her life. Absolutely none. My chums tease me for it.”

  “I know you don’t restrict her.” Adelia put her hand on his forearm and smiled warmly. “She has the most excellent husband, and we all adore you very much. “She must adapt to her new life, but she needs time.”

  “Time is something she is going to have in abundance for the next few weeks at least.”

  “Indeed. Now, here we are.” She tapped on the door they have arrived at.

  Edith called out, grumpily, “What now?”

  “Your husband is here,” Adelia said, and opened the door to peek in. “Are you decent?”

  “It hardly matters if it’s only my husband – but yes, I am decent.” Edith was sitting in a low overstuffed armchair by a half-moon table, her leg up on an ottoman, a plaid blanket thrown over her lower limbs.

  Adelia let Gregory in, and retreated back to the Red Gallery to play hostess to the dozen or so other guests. Harriet was sleeping off her journey in one of the guest rooms upstairs. Adelia was glad to have her around, though she knew she’d have to keep her apart from Theodore as much as possible.

  It was nice, she decided, to have a range of new people to talk to. And it demonstrated the high regard that Edith was held in. They were all very concerned about her and they swamped Adelia with questions and advice and one old lady gave homilies on the benefits of having a bird in a cage in a sickroom. Yes, the mass of people and their comments were sometime intrusive and a little tiresome, and one or two of the visitors were plainly there out of sheer nosiness rather than sympathy, but they did all mean well, at heart. Adelia warmed to them very quickly.

  And then Edith came in.

  She was being wheeled in a bath chair that Gregory was pushing. The chair had been unearthed from a lumber room behind the stables earlier and thoroughly cleaned. Two maids opened the double doors to the gallery as if they were introducing royalty to a ball, and as soon as Edith saw the assembled throng, she flung out her arms wide and cried, “Stop! Gregory, you said there were one or two people here. This is an army!”

  “They are not here to attack, my dear,” he said. “They are well-wishers. And,” he added, with a hint of impatience, “they are family.”

  That said, a number of the gathering did begin to advance upon the pair like the advance column of infantry. Adelia tried to encourage the people nearest to her to remain seated. “Let them come in – just wait ... give them some space. That wheeled chair is not easy to manoeuvre.”

  But it was to no avail. The Ivery family and its outer branches began to crowd around the “poor, suffering invalid”. Edith was deluged with questions. “How did it happen? Does it hurt? What did the surgeon say? What, no surgeon? A doctor? A lady doctor?” She was also on the receiving end of a slew of advice. “You must remain in bed! No, she needs to walk upon it as soon as possible to force the bones to knit back together. Beef broth is the only thing! No, she must have stout every morning without fail. Perhaps stout and broth? No, Geraldine, not in the same glass!”

  And it was inevitable that Edith should give out a great wail which stopped everyone in their tracks. A silence descended.

  “Perhaps I ought to take you back to your rooms,” Gregory murmured, beginning to pull the unwieldy chair backwards.

  “No! Why should I? Everyone else can go. Get out, the lot of you! You’ve only come to peer at me, prod at me, poke at me. All I am is an object of gossip and spurious curiosity! A specimen in a jar! I hate it, I hate you all!” She was sobbing now. “Get out, get out!”

  Gregory dragged the chair back as quickly as he could, and Adelia sprang up to get to the doors in time to have them opened. No one spoke. They all looked on in horror and embarrassment while Edith, tears coursing down her cheeks, shrieked like a hysterical child. Adelia wanted to slap her. But she told herself to wait until they were out of sight.

  Theodore came down the stairs as Gregory finally got Edith out of the Red Gallery. Adelia was now standing in the corridor outside the room full of guests and she was about to go back inside and close the doors but Gregory let go of the handles and moved around to face Edith. When he spoke, he sounded angry.

  “Edith, every single one of them is here to wish you well and offer their help and assistance. You knew what you were marrying into when you took my hand in marriage and yet you seek to insult me and my family at every turn! I don’t understand, and I am at a loss what to do about it. Well, what to do about you ... as for this, I now need to make endless apologies on your behalf.”

  “Don’t apologise on my behalf,” she retorted.

  “It is only a temporary apology until you can write to every one of them with your own apology,” he said firmly.

  She opened her mouth to speak but he put up his han
d. Adelia had never heard him speak with such suppressed fury. “No! Don’t you dare answer me back. You have behaved like a child, Edith, and so I shall treat you as a child. I am certainly ashamed of you as a wife.” He whirled around and slammed his way into the Red Gallery, pulling the door behind him, leaving Adelia outside with her daughter and Theodore.

  “Ashamed?” Edith said to herself in a small voice. “Of me?”

  “We all are,” Adelia spat out, her anger matching Gregory’s. “Theodore, take this ungrateful wretch to her rooms, if you will. I cannot bear to look at her.”

  He looked confused. He didn’t know what was going on. But he grabbed the chair and silently pulled her backwards down the corridor. Adelia waited where she was, pacing around the corridor a little to calm down, until Theodore came back.

  “Yes,” she said before he spoke. “I will tell you everything. Let me speak briefly to the guests in there, and bid them leave at their own convenience, and then perhaps can we take a walk in the gardens?”

  “Of course. I will find Smith and have your outdoor things brought while you speak to everyone. Good luck. She was ... well, she is in a lot of pain. That could be an excuse to offer the guests?”

  “No. There are no excuses for that. Her behaviour was unforgiveable,” Adelia muttered, and surged into the Red Gallery to do her very best. She knew that word would swiftly get to the ears of Mrs Ingram and she shuddered at the thought.

  Fifteen minutes later and she was walking in the misty grounds of Thringley House. There was a light drizzle but they kept to the sheltered areas under trees though they were almost bare of leaves. Theodore was alongside her in a thick woollen greatcoat, its collar turned up, and she thought that he looked like a handsome Russian soldier.

  “Everyone was very understanding which is far more than she deserved,” she said. “I used your excuse in the end, though I don’t believe it, and I told them that she was clouded with strong drugs. They were very gracious about it.”

  “She didn’t say a word to me when I took her back to her room. I think she knew she’d behaved appallingly but she doesn’t know what to do about it now. She needs some time to think.”

  “She can have plenty of time to think. I have a mind to turn the key in the door and not let her out until her leg is healed.”

  “That’s not up to us anymore,” he reminder her. “And Gregory is a fair-minded man who won’t stoop to such punishments, even if they are his right as a husband.”

  “It’s as if she thought her life would not change when she got married,” Adelia said. “I don’t understand her.”

  “But my dear, you understand everyone,” he said, drawing her arm into his. “I think you are right that she wanted everything to carry on as normal for her. She’s still a girl in many ways. Perhaps that comes from being the youngest. Did we molly-coddle her?”

  “I can’t think that we did but maybe her older sisters made her into a pet. Yet – no, no, that does not fit. Mary, Felicia, those are the sweet ones. Edith was ever the boldest, the cleverest, the most independent...”

  “She is clever but she’s not the cleverest. Don’t let your maternal emotions get in the way of the rational facts,” Theodore said, and it surprised her for a moment. It shouldn’t have taken her by surprise. He was the logical one, after all. He went on, saying, “Dido is the cleverest in household matters. See how she has taken on Mondial Castle and succeeded against terrible odds! Margaret is clever – cleverer, I think, than either of us know but she keeps herself to herself. Her intelligence is almost a masculine one. Felicia, Mary, well – their talents lie in their feminine charms, their beauty, their lightness of heart, in their individual ways. Is that not a kind of cleverness? I think so.”

  “And what about Charlotte? And ... Anne?” The last name pained her, as it always did. Poor, poor Anne.

  “Charlotte?” Theodore laughed. “I am a little peeved that she led you on such a merry dance in London but I am hardly surprised by it. She dances and she laughs; she only seeks fun, and who is to say that’s not the cleverest choice of all? Life is short and we have to make the best of it. She is certainly doing that.”

  “Selfishly, though,” Adelia said. “No good can come of a life sinking into dissolution and ...”

  He squeezed her hand. “My life was sinking into such things and then one very good thing came into it. You! She is young. Do not write off her future yet.”

  They walked on. There was nothing to say about Anne that would not have caused them both pain and confusion. She was married, yes, the second wife of the frighteningly intellectual Bernard who was a decade or more older than her. She had a child. She had a household. She had security. And she was cloaked in dark, evil demons that seemed to crowd her from morning to night, pressing her down into a silence of despair. What could one say?

  So they talked of distracting things instead. They began to speak, of course, of the murder.

  “I think Prendergast and I are coming to an understanding,” Theodore said. “Though he still seems unwilling to completely take me into his confidence.”

  “Why is that? I hope you are being properly respectful to him and mindful of his authority here.”

  “But it’s my house!”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said crossly. “Go on, though. Tell me all the latest developments.”

  “We suspect that money was taken from Halifax’s room after he was killed. We know that his finances were in a parlous state. Neither Montgomery nor Froude have anything suspicious in their financial histories, but Pegsworth, I am sorry to say, has caused us both some doubts. He asked for a loan from a bank when he arrived but was refused. Now, however, he clearly has money and no one can say from whence it came. The conclusions are sadly obvious. I am sorry, Adelia. This must be hard for you...”

  “No. No! My brother is many things but he is not a murderer,” she said in horror. “I have yet to tell you about Mr Montgomery. Theodore, all the suspicion falls upon him. Montgomery is the cheater and the liar.” Something tugged at her remembrance. “I overheard Montgomery say something odd to Halifax, you know. Mr Halifax had called upon us, before they all moved into the guest rooms. Mr Montgomery came to look for him and he was not pleased. Halifax left his case behind and I went after him to return it before they left. I heard Halifax tell Montgomery they had always worked together – and Montgomery replied not out of choice. That could mean all sorts of things, but none of them are good.”

  “Interesting, but knowing what I know of our pernickety inspector now, he will want hard evidence. I don’t think even your word or mine will be enough for the man.”

  “Well then,” said Adelia, almost triumphantly. “I can prove that he is a fraud.”

  “How so? And you have been calculating in your drama, my dear.”

  “I know, it is dreadful of me. Perhaps this is where Edith gets it from. Anyway, here. I have kept it upon me as its value to the case is possibly immense.” She showed him the letter from Mr Nett, and he read it thoroughly, twice, before looking up at her.

  “This is, indeed, serious. I will take this to Prendergast at once.”

  “But wait...” she called as he spun away and took off across the wet lawn.

  “What?” He paused.

  She didn’t know what she wanted to say. Wait for me? Include me? Let me tell him? Alf is not a murderer because the money that he has originally came from me – from, indeed, from you – and has done for years? Because I have been lying to you for years and years?

  She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, miserably, and he disappeared without even questioning why she was so troubled. He probably hadn’t even noticed.

  She trudged back into the house, and wondered exactly where Alf had been that night. He had been evasive when she had spoken to him previously.

  Maybe now was the time to force the truth out of him.

  And again, she felt that reluctance to face the facts.

  She knew exactly how E
dith felt – if she didn’t ask the questions, she wouldn’t have to deal with the answers.

  She decided she’d go and wake Harriet and ask her best friend for advice. She slipped in through a back door.

  Sixteen

  Mr Froude sprung out from behind a long-case clock as Adelia walked along a quiet ground floor corridor. She was carrying her cloak over her arm and heading for a set of back stairs. She hoped that all the guests had left by now, but she wasn’t taking any chances in accidentally encountering them.

  “Oh! You made me jump. Whatever are you doing down here?” she asked. Perhaps he had heard Edith’s kerfuffle, and she was a little embarrassed by her daughter’s behaviour all over again.

  His eyes fixed on her to an unnerving degree. “I have been admiring some of the wood carvings,” he said, waving his hand vaguely towards the unassuming and rather plain clock. He didn’t look at it while he spoke and he was obviously lying. He inched towards her and she suddenly became uncomfortably aware that they were perfectly alone on this little-used passageway. She took a step back but it only made him step forward again. She had to stop, or else she would be chased backwards out of the house in the end.

  “It is so good to see you again, Adelia,” he said.

  “I just wish it were under better circumstances, Mr Froude,” she replied pointedly.