Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance)

by Lucinda Brant

  Sir Charles deliberately bit his tongue. Lady Rutherglen had done more to save her ungrateful nephew’s fat neck than any other person living. In many ways she had paid the ultimate price for her devotion to her sister’s offspring, and she was going to be called upon one last time to make certain that Lord George Stanton succeeded to the Cleveley dukedom. Too many people’s livelihoods depended on that outcome, her ladyship included. But Sir Charles knew that Lord George did not care in the least what sacrifices had been made on his behalf, or by whom, because all his life what George wanted George received, regardless of the consequences to others. Hence their present predicament. But Sir Charles didn’t have the energy or inclination to lecture on the obvious so said simply,

  “Trust me, my lord. All will become clear once we reach Bath.”

  His lordship did trust him. He had every confidence in Sir Charles being able to right matters. After all, he had managed it five years ago, and with the blessings of his mother and his aunt. He expected nothing less than absolute loyalty from his stepfather’s henchman. Suddenly he did not feel so ill.

  “So what’s your plan, Charlie?”

  “That, my lord, has already been set in motion. We must now put our trust in my raven-locked school friend’s pathetic desire for truth and justice.” He took out his pocket watch to view the time and grinned. “I should think by now he is on the road into Somerset to confront the Duke.”

  “What?” thundered Lord George. “You’ve roped Halsey into this? Why, in Bedlam’s name? If anyone’s capable of raising the dead, it’s that cursed principled trouble-maker.”

  Sir Charles smiled unpleasantly. “Precisely. And what better way to get a self-righteous Duke to keep the dead in their graves than have a crusader of righting wrongs on his back?”

  Lord George was not as dull-witted as Sir Charles supposed, for in response he broke into such unrestrained laughter that the former secretary was quite prepared to ignore the stench of stale vomit and urine about his lordship’s large person.

  Selina sat in a corner of her travelling coach being bumped about on uneven roads as she tried to read the morning edition of The Gazette. She loathed travel, being constantly jostled, bounced and swayed this way and that on narrow, rutted and muddied roads; the tedium of miles and miles of countryside; and the smell of horse sweat and manure in the crowded stableyards of the inns along the way. It was not that she disliked the country or country life. It was the getting there she found irksome.

  And her two travelling companions weren’t providing her with any diversion to help the passing of the hours.

  Evans sat beside her, back rigid as ever but fast asleep, with her head forever falling forward so that her pointy chin bounced on her emaciated chest. Talgarth was huddled in a corner diagonally opposite, wide awake and ignoring the open fields. He stared vacantly at the padded velvet upholstery between the two women. Despite being rugged up under three blankets, and with a hot brick under his feet, his forehead was beaded with perspiration and he continued to shiver, arms folded tightly across his chest in brooding silence.

  He had not spoken since their overnight stay at Marlborough, where he had been violently ill in the stable yard; the third such vomiting episode since leaving London. Selina was well aware his suffering was self-inflicted. Nausea, chills and sweating always accompanied her brother’s periodic episodes of opium withdrawal. He was punishing himself for what he saw as his failure as an artist. It was an act of self-loathing, and although Selina hated to see him in such distress she knew no amount of cajolery on her part would make him feel any better, and it certainly wouldn’t get him to speak. He must be allowed to initiate conversation in his own good time.

  So she returned to the pages of The Gazette and finished reading an article on the successful passage of the Bristol Bill, her interest only momentarily piqued by a quote from Sir Charles Weir, praising the Commons vote and giving his long-winded explanation verbatim of what it would mean for the mercantile greatness of the kingdom.

  “Whatever did Cleveley see in that man?” she asked herself aloud and tossed the folded newssheet to one side to pick up the Public Advertiser.

  “I’m a damned failure!” Talgarth announced, momentarily forcing his thin body to stop its involuntary shudders.

  Selina pretended a moment of distraction. She did not look up from the newsprint. “I beg your pardon, dear… What did you say?”

  “I’m a failure.”

  “Failure…?”

  “The exhibition was a failure. No one will care to commission a portrait from a failure. God damn it! I allowed myself to fall all to pieces in full view of the world.”

  Selina folded the Public Advertiser, a sidelong glance at the dozing Evans.

  “Tal, you are being too harsh on yourself. Anyone with proper feelings couldn’t but be affected by such hideous vandalism. Who could think less of you for showing your emotion? In fact, I would be surprised if you didn’t receive a flood of commissions because of it.” She held up the newssheet in her hand. “Why, in here there is an article on the exhibition that gives you three paragraphs to Hamilton’s one.”

  What she did not add was that there was just as much ink devoted to speculation, as to the identity of the vandal or vandals of Talgarth’s portrait and to the identity of the figures in the portrait. One reviewer proudly stated that he had inspected the damaged canvas and was of the opinion the mystery lady was none other than French Louis’ latest mistress, Jeanne du Barry. Selina had no idea how this startling conclusion had been reached given that the portrait had been so badly defaced with red paint that it was impossible to discern even the hair color of the sitter.

  “Lina,” Talgarth said in an agonized whisper, “it was my best work. My very best.”

  Selina had not viewed the portrait before its ruin but she was sure he was right. She wanted to gather him up in her arms and hug away his hurt. She wasn’t given the opportunity to agree with him. Talgarth suddenly slammed the side of his fist against the door paneling, rage welling up within him.

  “Cobham will think I did it, just to get attention. He thinks I’m mad.” He met his sister’s open look. “Am I? Am I mad, Lina?”

  “Not at all,” she answered calmly, which she truly believed.

  What Cobham thought was entirely different. But then their elder brother lacked all imagination. So had their parents, who, unable to deal with Talgarth’s scholastic ineptitude, had had him strapped to a chair for hours on end, with a tutor standing over him reciting Latin and Greek verse. As if their recalcitrant son could breathe in his education by simply being in the presence of an Oxford don!

  “The fact you ask the question shows you are as sane as me,” Selina added with an understanding smile. “Besides, what do you care for Cobham’s good opinion? I certainly don’t.”

  Talgarth was not completely convinced. He pulled the blankets closer about his thin frame, shivering uncontrollably. “Then why did you side with him and have me sent away?” he complained. “You said Continental travel would do me good. You said it was best I get away from England. And when I returned, where did you and Cobham send me but to Bath, a declining waterhole best suited to hypochondriacs and invalided soldiers! He considers me an embarrassment to the family name. Do you? Is that why you sided with him?”

  “An embarrassment? Good God, Tal. Your black moods are nothing to Cobham when compared to my independence of spirit. His euphemism for the fact I refused to share the marital bed with a husband who was a misogynistic lunatic. He detests having a plainspoken sister. Besides,” she added with a sad smile, glancing down at her gloved hand, “once I was married off, it was best you were away—away from all that—unpleasantness.”

  Talgarth’s self-loathing increased tenfold and he snuffled into the blanket. “God, Lina, I’m a callous fiend. Forgive me. What’s the loss of one canvas compared to the years of torment you endured at the hands of that monster… I hope Apollo is deserving of you.”

  Selina
dipped her head, an ache in her throat, thinking it apt her brother should refer to Alec as the Greek God of manly beauty and reason. But with her feelings still painfully raw after Alec’s abrupt and angry departure from her house, she felt unequal to speaking about him. Indeed, he was still angry with her. At Marlborough their carriages had crossed. He was preparing to leave when her carriage had pulled into the busy stableyard.

  Talgarth voiced what she was thinking. “He didn’t say more than two words to you at Marlborough.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Apollo’s handsome features are hard to miss even when this painter was retching into the straw. What did you do to upset him?”

  Selina’s jaw dropped in indignation. “Why presume I’m the one at fault?”

  “Because you’re like me,” Talgarth said with a rare smile, “damned mule-headed.”

  Selina had to concede this was true but added in a small voice in her defense, “I made the best decision for both of us.”

  When Talgarth shrugged and looked unconvinced and stared out the window, as if losing interest, she deftly turned the subject, hoping he was still receptive enough to answer a few of the questions Alec had put to her.

  “Do you know who would want to vandalize one of your pictures, Tal?” she asked gently.

  “You know me, Lina,” he answered with a sigh of resignation, gaze on the windowpane and not the scenery beyond. “I’ve offended more people than I’ve made friends. I don’t suffer fools. Bath is populated by fools and old women. I’ll paint anyone’s portrait for the right fee, but I won’t be treated like an ignorant lackey!”

  “Oh, I agree. It’s your method of dealing with fools that perhaps needs refinement. There was that incident with Mrs. Sudgemoor and her three little pooches, remember?”

  Talgarth ground his perfect teeth. “Oversized furry rats! They would’ve destroyed my favorite Turkey rug had I not hurled the chamber pot at them.”

  “But, my dear,” Selina pointed out, biting the corner of her lower lip to stifle a smile, “Mrs. Sudgemoor was the one who suffered the contents of that chamber pot.”

  “Foolish woman got in the way,” he grumbled, illness and a persistent headache making him oblivious to the humorous side of the incident. “Her fault, not mine.”

  “And you publicly humiliated Lady Russell in the Assembly Rooms, telling her, in a voice that could wake the dead, that if she was not pleased with the portrait of her two youngest daughters it was entirely of her own making, they being so ugly that only a beheading would see them suitably married off.”

  “Did I? Well, I did my best. They are ugly, Lina. The finest silks and pomading don’t make an ounce of difference. And, I omitted the warts.”

  “A similar incident occurred involving Cleveley’s sister-in-law, Lady Rutherglen. You said that when she came to your studio to view the portrait of her and Lord Rutherglen she was so outraged as to demand you paint another, refusing to pay your fee until the second canvas was completed… And you said to her that only a portrait of her—her—buttocks would produce an improvement on the original!”

  “Did I?” Talgarth said, momentarily pleased with himself. He shifted restlessly on the upholstered bench. “I could paint a hundred portraits of that woman and it wouldn’t change the fact you can’t dress swine up in silk and expect it still not to stink of pig.”

  “I know you do try your best, Tal,” Selina sympathized. “It is a sad trial to have to paint these people just to earn a place amongst the painters of the day. But you don’t dislike living at Bath altogether, do you?” she asked, a gloved hand clutching at the strap above her head when the carriage lurched to the left as it slowed to negotiate a fork in the road. “And Ellick Farm is less than half a day’s ride away. Miranda and Sophie so look forward to your visits. You’ve made a difference to their lonely lives.”

  Talgarth gave a huff, not at all convinced, but he swallowed his sister’s leading question by blurting out, “Lonely? Much you know about life down on the farm! On one particular visit, I rode out there to see if there were any errands Mrs. Bourdon wanted running, and I found her and Sophie in the midst of unwrapping a cart load of gifts from some old London gent who’d come a-calling.”

  “Old London gent?”

  “Felt an intruder, I can tell you, Lina,” Talgarth grumbled. “Though they did their best to make me welcome, I could tell I wasn’t wanted.”

  Selina sat up, a frown between her fair brows. “Who was this gentleman?”

  “You needn’t look concerned he was wooing her. He was old and portly enough to be her grandfather. And he was at pains to tell me he wasn’t staying at the farm but up at the big house on the hill—”

  “Bratton Dene?”

  Talgarth nodded. “Friendly fellow. Full of chat. Retired vicar. Shabby clothes. Strange that. By the gifts he’d brought with him, skeins of Spitafields silks and velvets, silk stockings and the like, I’d have thought he’d have dressed himself better. Still, he seems the sort who prefers to give than receive, which I guess is why he’s a vicar. He certainly doted on your Miranda and Sophie.”

  “Did he tell you his name?” Selina asked, though a sense of foreboding told her she knew already.

  “Blackburn? Blackbird?” Talgarth pulled a face. “Black-something-or-other—”

  “Black—well? Was his name Blackwell?”

  “Blackwell? Yes. I dare say that was it.”

  “Did he say what had brought him to the farm?” Selina persisted. “Do you know if this was his first visit or if he’d been to the farm before?” She let go of the leather strap above her fair head, the carriage now rumbling along on a more even road, and chewed on her lower lip in thought. “Tal? Did he tell you anything about himself? Obviously he was well known to Miranda, but… Tal?”

  Her brother had snuggled back into the corner of the carriage and closed his eyes. The throb at his temple had become so bad it was affecting the vision in his left eye. He’d talked too much. At the next inn, he would smoke opium from his bamboo pipe and the pain would be more bearable. He had just enough chandu to last him until he reached his Bath studio.

  When would this wretched journey come to an end?

  “Tal, I need to know what he—”

  “Enough, Lina. That’s enough for now,” Talgarth muttered without opening his eyes and turned his head away from her into the velvet corner.

  Selina closed her mouth on a sigh and sat back beside her still sleeping maid, knowing it was pointless to continue. She would have to be patient and await the next opportunity for Talgarth to feel open to confidences. She stared out the window unseeing, ruminating on the connection between a shabby vicar and a young woman and her illegitimate daughter, and had to concede that Alec’s supposition seemed even more plausible now: that the Reverend Blackwell was the parish priest who had sent Miranda to her all those years ago.

  But why send the girl to her? And why to Ellick Farm? Did the vicar often visit Miranda at the farm? And if he did, it begged the question: if he had kept regular contact with Miranda then perhaps she had confided the circumstances of Sophie’s conception and thus it was he who had blackmailed George Stanton after all, seeking retribution for Miranda and her daughter for Stanton’s appalling crime. Had Stanton known the identity of his blackmailer all along and taken matters into his own hands at Weir’s dinner party? But Blackwell didn’t seem the sort of man who would be party to blackmail. And George Stanton was a coward. He would get someone else to do his dirty work for him; someone with brains… Sir Charles Weir immediately came to mind.

  But the Duke had also been at that dinner party. And Talgarth did say Blackwell was staying up at the Duke’s mansion… Did Cleveley know the vicar had visited Miranda at the farm? Had Blackwell confronted the Duke with the knowledge that the woman his adopted son had raped lived practically on his doorstep? Had Cleveley decided to take matters into his own hands and shut the vicar up before the truth would out?

  Such postulating and bei
ng bounced over bad roads for hours on end had definitely contributed to a travel-induced sick headache so that Selina audibly sighed with relief when the carriage pulled up outside the George Inn in the High Street of Norton St. Philip. Here they were to put up for the night and go on to Ellick Farm at first light. And when a postilion handed her down to firm ground, Selina was just as eager as Talgarth to seek the relative peace and quiet of the George’s best bedchambers.

  The flaggings were strewn with straw to conceal the mud and filth trampled in by weary travelers and wool merchants come to meet and enjoy this thirteenth century inn’s hospitality. Crowded and noisy, Selina hardly noticed men or chatter as she made her way under the archway of the porch to the warmth indoors with Evans in tow. But just inside the doorway Selina did notice the slight figure of the tall, thin boy with a pronounced limp, because in his haste to get outside his shoulder knocked her sideways and she looked hard at him as she fell back into the arms of a fellow traveler.

  The traveler hurled abuse at the boy’s clumsiness and half the room turned and stared. The boy froze and mumbled an incoherent apology as he glanced fleetingly up at the lady he’d unwittingly collided with, then fled into the cold afternoon air.

  Selina’s astonishment was visible, and her fellow traveler, thinking her shock was due to the uncouth behavior of a local bumpkin, offered to go after the runt and whip some manners into him. This Selina declined, but she would seek out the boy as soon she had secured their rooms for the night, for she knew him.

  It was Billy Rumble, nephew of her cook at Ellick Farm. He had one leg shorter than the other and a clubfoot and cared for Selina’s horses when she came to stay. At other times he did odd-jobs around the farm and at harvest time worked on the Duke of Cleveley’s estate. What was he doing here, miles from home and alone? Miranda had confided to her that the boy dreamed of going to sea. Had he finally run away?

  Billy hobbled as fast as his uneven legs would take him to the furthest, darkest and quietest corner of a narrow laneway that separated the inn’s kitchens from the stables. Stopping to catch his breath, he unbuttoned his old woolen coat, roughly pulled his shirt out of his breeches and extracted a bundle of letters stuffed in a worn stocking that he’d kept next to his skin since leaving the farm. He then thrust his shirt back into his breeches, roughly rebuttoned his coat and shoved the bundle in a deep pocket.