EQMM, July 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I kept my eyes on him as I put the phone on his desk, slid the fileting knife out of my bag, and stuck it between his ribs, just where his cheating heart lay beating. He looked surprised and grunted. There wasn't much blood. I picked up the phone.

  “Margot Anderson.”

  “Oh, Ms. Anderson,” came a young female voice. “I've got Doctor Fleming for you.”

  “Margot?” Her voice was sharper now. “Margot, it's good news. The hospital screwed up. There's a patient called Margit Andreson, and someone muddled her notes with yours. You have no tumour, only a minor chest infection, easily cleared with a course of antibiotics. The rest is . . . a mistake. Margot?”

  He still looked surprised, with the narrow knife sticking out of his chest. And I felt wonderful.

  There'd be plenty of time to paint now.

  Copyright © 2012 by N.J. Cooper

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  * * *

  Fiction: WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

  by Judith Cutler

  Several of Judith Cutler's recent stories for EQMM have been historicals, and it's an area of the genre in which she excels at both novel and short-story length. Her Tobias Campion series includes two novels, The Keeper of Secrets and Shadow of the Past, as well as the stories that have appeared in this magazine. The Midlands-born author also contributes entries in her Lina Townend antiques dealer series to EQMM, and the latest book featuring that character is Guilt Trip (Severn House/May, 2012).

  Exeter, 1814

  There are those winter days when everything is grey, day emerging imperceptibly from night and returning again, and so still that not even the air seems to move. The birds, if they fly at all, do so soundlessly, invisibly, and the smoke from the hundred Jacobean chimneys atop the roof merges seamlessly with the sky. On such days you expect voices indoors to be quiet, demeanour gentle.

  But it was on exactly such a day that Lady Westgate declared that her priceless diamonds had been stolen, and that she knew exactly who had taken them and how.

  Her Ladyship, a lady the shady side of thirty and, to my mind, probably no great beauty even in her prime, was a guest of my employers, the duke and duchess of Teignbridge, here at their country residence, Teignbridge Hall. That in itself should have guaranteed suitably dignified behaviour. However, once she had recovered from an attack of strong hysterics, perhaps understandable given the value of the article that had disappeared, she became decidedly belligerent. It was to be expected, then, that Lord Teignbridge, raising a bored eyebrow, declared that since I had appointed the member of staff she alleged was responsible, it was I who would deal with the matter.

  Almost as an afterthought, he murmured, “Tell you what, Dawson, you might care to invite that parish constable—what's his name? Voke?—to confer with you.”

  Then he retired to his private library, where he would seek his carpet slippers, and open Homer, ever his refuge in times of stress.

  Lady Teignbridge, summoned from her boudoir where she was dressing for a day in the hunting field, could scarcely have found the problem less interesting, though she said all that was correct. Without prompting, she corroborated His Lordship's advice, and set forth to the stables, cursing the delay, not quite under her breath.

  Thwarted, Lady Westgate turned her invective on me. Fortunately, after so many years in service, I was able, despite an onslaught worthy of a fishwife, to maintain an expression of perfect propriety.

  When she paused for breath, I bowed.

  “Would you permit me, My Lady, and Mr. Voke, the constable, to see the apartment from which the item was taken?”

  “Item? You call a diamond tiara, set with rubies and sapphires, an item?”

  I could have called it a vulgar monstrosity, but naturally confined myself to a bow that she took for an apology.

  * * * *

  Mrs. Lacock, the housekeeper, had put Lady Westgate in the Yellow Bedroom, in the new wing, with its fine views over the park. There was, of course, an art to placing guests—I believe we had some twenty with us this October—in appropriate chambers. Some married couples were delighted to have adjacent rooms, linked by a dressing room, but I fear that they were in the minority. What reasons husbands and wives had for being separated from their spouses might well be a subject for gossip in the lower orders, but it is said that while a member of the nobility is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a good butler is born with a brass padlock to his lips. Silver bends, of course, but do not underestimate the strength of a butler's discretion.

  In fact, the only way that Her Ladyship could have slept close to Lord Westgate was to have joined him in Vienna, where he ran a gaming hell, fleecing any young man foolish enough to try his luck there. Officially, of course, he was a brave officer in India; thus Lady Westgate was able to play the grieving wife, though rumour had it that the only passionate feeling they shared was one of mutual loathing.

  For some reason she had not brought her own maid, which I found surprising in one so particular about her hair and person. I will not mention the brightly coloured tiara, which she wore, quite inappositely, one feels, at the impromptu and supposedly informal assemblies that Her Grace requested us to put on every few days for her guests and a few neighbouring families. Instead, Lady Westgate relied on Izzie Fielding, a girl from our household.

  Izzie was a local village child, with a sweet Devon complexion and golden curls the severe cap of her uniform could scarcely confine. Mrs. Lacock had been training her up in the hope that she might one day have just such an opportunity. Once a girl became a lady's maid, her future was assured, provided that she was honest and as capable as a butler of keeping mum. Despite being able to read and write, and sewing as good a seam as you'd see, Izzie had had to wait a long time for this chance, and had so far—to judge by Lady Westgate's appearance—done as well as Mrs. Lacock had hoped.

  “She has even read aloud to Her Ladyship—only a novel, I fear, but that was Her Ladyship's taste, not Izzie's,” Mrs. Lacock told me, as proud as if Izzie were her own daughter. “I shall be sorry to lose such a good worker, but if Lady Westgate wanted a permanent abigail then I should have no hesitation in recommending her—and in advising her family to permit her to leave Teignbridge.”

  But Izzie was the one whom Lady Westgate held responsible for the theft of her diamonds. I could not believe it—did not wish to believe it. A girl of scarce fifteen, capable of such sinfulness.

  I had to remind myself that being accused is far from being condemned. For Izzie's sake, and, of course, for the honour of our establishment, Voke and I must be meticulous in our investigations.

  Voke, summoned from goodness knows what parochial transgression, was red in the face with his exertions as he joined us in the superbly carved entrance hall. Although the wood was old, there was only one piece of damage, where a chance Civil War cannonball had removed the top of a newel post. A splinter had caught and killed one of the family dogs, now immortalised in marble, but that was the only injury. The family portraits gazed down, the Lely eyebrows lifted in surprise that such a low form of life as Jedediah Voke should be standing beneath them. He might have stepped straight from a comedy by the Bard, his red face, sleepy eyes and slow delivery giving the impression that he was naught but a yokel. Therein lay his strength as an investigator. No one suspected how shrewd he might be. Put him, however, in an old-fashioned powdered wig and a well-cut coat and, now deeming him to be a magistrate, you would be struck by the intelligence of his brow.

  But today's stained breeches and disreputable hat convinced Lady Westgate that she was speaking to a complete hayseed.

  “It is quite plain,” she declared, speaking loudly as if to penetrate a dim intelligence, “that the depraved girl told her beau where it was and bade him break in through the window. Oh, he would use a ladder, of course!” she said impatiently, as if we might have imagined a strapping lad flying up to her first-floor room. “You can see where the glass is broken. Indeed,” she said, addressing me directly, �
��it is high time that you sent for a glazier to repair it before I veritably catch my death.”

  “And where did you leave them there jewels?” Jedediah enquired.

  She managed a haughty gesture to indicate where on her dressing table she had left her tiara, before she retired to the daybed, sighing at intervals and making much use of her vinaigrette.

  Jedediah joined me at the window, which was indeed broken, though there was very little glass in evidence. It would have been a simple matter to slip an arm through the smashed pane, and to open the catch and thus the window. It was but a small step from there to the dressing table and, the tiara secured, back again.

  “No one has touched this here glass, my lady?”

  “What a stupid question! Who would do it but that maid? And I have demanded that she be confined until you arrest her and drag her away. Indeed, I cannot conceive why you are wasting all this time.”

  “What I cannot see is why she should involve another miscreant,” Jedediah said slowly. “Would you not have expected her simply to pocket the jewels and escape from the Hall as fast as her little legs would carry her?”

  It might have been one of the curtains that spoke, for all the notice Her Ladyship took of him.

  Promising to send the estate handyman to repair the window, I ushered Mr. Voke from the room, his nose almost touching his knees as he made his bow. We headed for the back stairs, never used by the family or their guests.

  “I'd like to take a look at the flower bed below her ladyship's window before we speak to young Izzie,” Jedediah mused. “And we need to find out who this young man of hers might be.”

  “As to that, I believe young Matthew Veale is known to be sweeter on her than on all the other young maidens that set their caps at him. But whether she reciprocates is quite another matter,” I added. “She's as lively a lass as you'd wish to have in the servants’ hall, singing sweetly when asked, and never too uppity to read aloud a message for someone who doesn't know their letters. Or to write one in return. But for all that, she knows her place. Mrs. Lacock has never had call to speak firmly to her.”

  * * * *

  Matthew Veale was working in the kitchen garden, defying any weeds to try to spend the winter there. He was a tall, strong young man, as befitted his calling. There was no doubt in my mind that he could have carried the heavy ladder needed to reach Lady Westgate's window. Indeed, he could have carried it in one hand, her ladyship herself in the other. I was about to call him over, but Jedediah held up a thick finger in warning.

  “If someone has propped up a ladder, it will have left marks in the soil beneath, will it not, Mr. Dawson?”

  As one, we bent, more stiffly than either of us would have cared to admit, to peruse any silent message left by the intruder. There were no ladder marks, nothing, in fact, except a quantity of broken glass—far more than on the floor of the Yellow Room. But neither did it appear that the bed had recently been dug over to hide any traces.

  It was time to summon Matthew Veale, who tugged his forelock respectfully and waited politely for us to speak. However, Mr. Voke's question clearly disconcerted him.

  “When did you last dig this bed, Matthew?”

  “Why, that'd be about four weeks since, sir. Is there something amiss with it?”

  “Nothing at all. But there is something amiss in the house, Matthew, as you might have heard.”

  There was no doubt that under his deep tan, he paled, then flushed. But he said nothing.

  “It is alleged, Matthew, that a theft has taken place. And that it has been perpetrated by none other than sweet little Izzie Fielding. Can you believe it? A poor child like that like to swing!”

  He swallowed so hard it must have given him pain. “And what does Izzie say?” he asked at last.

  “Nothing. Locked up, she sits and sobs.” Voke was not telling the strict truth. We had not questioned the girl yet, had we? “But I cannot believe she would have undertaken such a heinous crime on her own, can you?”

  Matthew breathed deeply but said nothing.

  “Very well, Matthew,” I said, “His Lordship is paying you to work, not stand about gossiping. Off you go now.”

  As we watched his retreating back, Voke voiced my thoughts. “He knows something, that young man. But the devil knows what.”

  * * * *

  Mr. Voke's declaration that Izzie Fielding was sitting and sobbing was not far from the truth, after all. However, she was not being kept as anything like a prisoner, even if she felt she was. She was in the still rooms with Mrs. Lacock, counting the bottles and jars of preserves for the winter, Mrs. Lacock keeping up a stream of gentle conversation as if Izzie were merely suffering from an affair of the heart and needing to be diverted. Indeed, when Mr. Voke and I appeared, Mrs. Lacock invited us all into her own sitting room and sat down beside her, holding the girl's hand as we prepared to question her.

  “Let me put a straight question to you, young Izzie,” Jedediah began, sitting opposite her with a smile more like that of an indulgent uncle than of a skilled inquisitor. “Did you steal Lady Westgate's jewels?” Receiving a decided negative, he continued, “Did you help someone else to steal them? You know that I shall have to search your things, do you not? Aye, and search the rest of the Hall, attic to cellar—the duke and duchess's honour as hosts is at stake.”

  She nodded her head dumbly, lips parted, eyes awash between their swollen lids.

  “Is there anything you would like to tell us, anything at all, Izzie, before we begin our search? Because it would be better for you if you spoke before we found anything that might incriminate you.”

  * * * *

  We did not expect to find anything in the bare little room Izzie shared with five other girls. Each girl had a cupboard for her few items of clothing; none owned much else. And yet, they were fortunate compared with their sisters back home, who led harder lives than they, with few clothes, less food, and precious little hope of improving themselves. We searched all the cupboards, just to make sure, and turned the mattress on each narrow bed.

  “What we should be doing is searching Lady Westgate's room,” I muttered, unaccountably angry.

  “Indeed we should—and we shall. But I fancy we should lure Her Ladyship away first. And that is a matter for Their Graces. And recollect that it may be, if our enquiries amongst the servants prove fruitless, we shall have to question all their other guests too. That will cause some fireworks, I'll be bound.”

  I bowed. “I will speak to His Grace now.”

  “Meanwhile, I will hunt for the dratted gems. I'll start in the attics. Though I expect to find nothing but the dust of ages and broken chairs from Good Queen Bess's days.”

  * * * *

  Mr. Voke's face was grim when I met him next, and he patted his pocket significantly. I believe he put out his hand to steady me, but I took a deep breath and nodded sadly. That a girl we had known for all these years had betrayed our trust!

  “You have proof, then?”

  “Proof that the tiara—what an ugly thing it is!—was not in Her Ladyship's room. But no proof who put it in that hideous great flower vase—”

  I permitted myself a dry smile. “I fear there are many up there that might fit that description, Mr. Voke.”

  “The silver gilt thing that sits in the middle of a dinner table—that one. Anyway, there's no proof how it got there, none at all. And it is with that in mind, Mr. Dawson, that I propose to continue with our mooted search of Her Ladyship's room. Pray lead the way.”

  No one could have found anything to criticise about the way Izzie had maintained the room. Everything was as immaculate as if she had expected Mrs. Lacock's eagle eye to check her work at any second. All Her Ladyship's other jewellery was in the appropriate compartment of the travelling strongbox, all the shoes carefully stuffed with tissue, all the clean linen beautifully folded.

  Mr. Voke no doubt found everything he inspected equally faultless. He moved about his side of the room sighing sadly. Unti
l he let out a triumphant yell, hastily suppressed. He had in his hand a day dress, which had been stuffed under the bed. The embroidered flounce round the hem was filthy.

  “Has she been wading through mud?” I asked.

  “Possibly. And then something else has stuck to the damp fabric. Dust, Mr. Dawson, dust. I wonder what has happened to the shoes she must have worn. And her pelisse. They must be found, Mr. Dawson, found at once.”

  * * * *

  Well used to the vagaries of the nobility, all the indoor staff dropped what they were doing and hustled about in search of the missing attire. Of the tiara nothing was said. But in the middle of the bustle, a loud rap at the kitchen door announced the arrival of Matthew Veale.

  “I've come to confess, Mr. Dawson. “'Twas I who stole her ladyship's diamonds. I and I alone.”

  “You had best give them to me then,” said Mr. Voke, those sleepy eyes very alert.

  “Alas, I cannot, sir. Overcome with guilt at my terrible deed, I threw them into the lake, sir.” The words came out so stiff and pat I was sure he had been rehearsing them.

  “You had better show me where, so that the lake can be dragged,” Voke said sternly. “A pretty necklace like that must be found.”

  “Indeed, sir, I was in such a state I cannot rightly tell where I was when I threw it. And it was a great strong throw, sir, right into the middle. So now you'd best take me off to the gaol, sir, and let me be hanged the next assizes.”

  “Very well. Bind his wrists, if you please, Mr. Dawson, and lock him in the brewhouse till we have a moment to spare. Now we can release young Izzie.”

  * * * *

  There was, as I am sure Mr. Voke was aware, a convenient window in the brewhouse through which it would be possible to have a conversation, if not an intimate one. He bade Mrs. Lacock bring him a tankard of her best home-brewed and retired round the corner, out of sight of the house. Normally he would have indulged himself with his pipe, but, though clearly tempted, he stowed it carefully away. He pressed the side of his nose with a huge finger, winked, and left me to respond to the various demands of the guests as best I could with no staff to assist me.