The Stuart Sapphire

by Alanna Knight

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps they were even present last night, sleeping under my roof, and are leaving undetected at this moment.’ Beyond the window, where the storm had wreaked havoc with the ornamental gardens, the sound of trotting horses reached their ears from the gravel drive as the carriages of the overnight guests took their leave.

  Townsend, following his gaze, gave him a despairing glance.

  ‘Quite correct, Townsend. Of course, I can hardly insist that they all stay and wait to be questioned.’

  There was nothing in truth that Townsend would have liked better, thought Tam, than to interrogate distant members of the royal family and the upper echelons of British aristocracy.

  ‘That would present certain difficulties, Your Grace,’ Townsend said smoothly. And indicating Tam, ‘I should like Mr Eildor to remain to assist me. As a distinguished lawyer he is expert in such matters of detection.’

  Tam bowed and smiled at this compliment, considering how little use he had been in tracking down the Stuart Sapphire. They were not one whit further in that investigation, for he was certain, despite Townsend’s methods of interrogation putting the fear of God into every shopkeeper or suspicious person they interviewed, that given the circumstances of the robbery, it could only have been carried out by someone inside the Pavilion.

  However, he was not too unhappy about Townsend’s decision, since it gave him a chance to meet Lady Gemma again and an opportunity to hear the strange story of Jem which had twice been interrupted.

  Sir Joseph had given instructions to put at Townsend’s disposal one of the minor rooms nearby, a footman’s waiting place or large butler’s pantry in effect. A long narrow window overlooked the main entrance and Townsend made himself comfortable in one of the two chairs provided. Leaning his elbows on the small table he looked around with satisfaction.

  ‘This will do admirably for our purpose, and we might as well begin by interviewing the servants. If I know anything about domestics, they will know a great deal more about this maid than she knew herself.’

  ‘May I suggest, sir, that we first look at her room,’ said Tam. ‘There might be some evidence there.’

  ‘Capital idea, capital! You do that, if you please, while I line up the servants,’ said Townsend having been presented by Sir Joseph with a long list of names. ‘This will take some time,’ he sighed.

  In the hall, Tam looked around hopefully for a glimpse of Lady Gemma. Disappointed that she was not to be seen at this hour of the morning, he asked a passing servant for directions to Simone’s room.

  Not this time up the grand staircase but through the long narrow corridors with access to the kitchen, and up three flights of wooden back stairs. A door was opened and he was informed that this was Simone’s room which she shared with Bessie, the under-housekeeper.

  Tam had expected that the marchioness’s maid would have had the privilege of a room to herself, or at least something more luxurious than the rather dark room under the eaves with its barred windows.

  Was that to prevent an easier way of suicide? he wondered, when a voice behind him said:

  ‘What would you be wanting in my room, sir?’ A stout apron-clad female had appeared. This was Bessie. With an apologetic smile Tam quickly explained that he was helping Mr Townsend.

  ‘The man from the Bow Street Runners,’ said Bessie, dismissing him with a sniff of contempt. ‘We know him, he comes here to visit His Grace. But what would he want to know about Simone?’

  Tam explained patiently that when someone died unexpectedly, even by their own hand, enquiries had to be made.

  ‘By her own hand, indeed. Never. Not that one! She thought too much of herself. Better than the rest of us, she thought, being her ladyship’s maid.’

  ‘Do please sit down,’ said Tam hopefully. This encounter promised to be interesting.

  ‘I will sit in my own room, without your permission, young man,’ puffed Bessie, but when he smiled at her, she decided she wasn’t all that offended after all. In fact, she was quite happy to talk to this nice-looking young man. A pleasant change indeed and there were one or two grievances she wanted to share.

  ‘When did you last see Simone?’

  ‘If you mean when did she last sleep in that bed, it wasn’t last night, or the night before that. And when her ladyship was at home, Simone slept in her dressing room. Very proud of that, she was. You can have the room all to yourself, Bessie, she would say. Her ladyship needs me close at hand.’

  And pausing for breath, ‘She thinks – I mean, thought a lot of herself, did our Simone.’ Leaning forward confidentially, she shook her head. ‘Now, sir, I ask you, does she sound the kind who would walk into a lake?’

  ‘What do you think happened, Bessie?’

  Bessie looked uneasy. ‘I haven’t made up my mind, but if you was to ask around, you’d find that Mademoiselle Simone Dupres wasn’t all that she pretended to be. By no means.’ She laughed harshly.

  ‘For one thing, she wasn’t French at all. I don’t know the language but apart from “yes” and “no”, no one ever heard her speak a word of it. Our chef is French and he laughed himself silly about it. Said she had never even set foot in France, never mind being born in Paris. As a matter of fact,’ embarrassed for a moment, she cleared her throat, ‘we happen to know that she came from up north, Manchester way, and Simone wasn’t her real name at all.’

  ‘That is interesting,’ said Tam encouragingly. Interesting but hardly criminal, he thought. There were French ladies’ maids all over Britain in stately homes, born in Britain from humble backgrounds, who changed their names to something more exotic than Smith or Jones.

  ‘Did she go everywhere with her ladyship?’

  She looked at him and he gave her an almost conspiratorial smile. He certainly was a handsome young man and not a bit snobbish. There was something about him, kind of sympathetic and understanding, that made her want to confide in him, tell him all her troubles.

  ‘No, she did not. We all knew that her ladyship and Simone had lives of their own. For instance, when her ladyship went to Brighton, she had a nice little place there that His Grace knew nothing about, for entertaining her friends. But Simone stayed here. It seemed she wasn’t needed there and that gave her time on her own. Her ladyship is so demanding, she would say, and off she would go to that man she had in Whitdean.’

  ‘What man was that, a lover you mean?’

  So this was the mysterious sick aunt he had heard about.

  ‘Yes, a lover he was. A married man too, we guessed.’

  ‘Did he ever come here to visit her?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. At least not often and I never saw him. But there was another thing. We knew that Simone had someone else.’ Pausing for breath, she studied him again. He was smiling, oh, a lovely lad, so nice and friendly, she felt already as if she had known him for ages, someone she could trust.

  ‘She had a real beau, a lord from Brighton. And he used to come and visit her in the summerhouse. He was here at the funeral. Still is, I think. I don’t know whether I should give you his name, it might cause trouble.’

  He smiled. ‘I think I know it already,’ and he put a finger to his lips.

  Bessie laughed and looked amazed. ‘You do know a lot, sir. Here’s me telling you about Simone and I bet there’s a lot you could tell me.’

  ‘Perhaps there is, Bessie, perhaps there is. Meanwhile I have to look through Simone’s possessions, just in case there is anything else we should know about.’

  Bessie obligingly indicated a wooden trunk. ‘That was all she kept here, her wardrobe as she called it. She kept it locked. She didn’t know that I knew where she kept the key,’ she added.

  Standing on tiptoe she retrieved it from above the window ledge and gave it to Tam. ‘It’s all right, sir, you won’t find anything but clothes. No secrets there. If she had any private letters and things, she didn’t keep them here.’

  She stood by him while he unlocked the trunk.
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  ‘Only clothes, like I said.’ It was true. And handing her back the key, he thought she blushed, for his smile also said: As you well know.

  A bell rang shrilly on the wall. ‘Oh Lord, that’s for me. I must go.’ And at the door, straightening her apron, she curtseyed and gave him a coquettish glance. ‘Glad to have been of help, sir.’

  Downstairs in the hall, a selection of servants of various ages and in various uniforms were sitting on improvised benches awaiting their turn to be interviewed by John Townsend. Tam observed one very young and scared-looking maid emerge and he guessed she was thoroughly intimidated by the Bow Street officer’s technique of interrogation, as she rushed over to an older, more experienced maid and looked ready to burst into tears.

  He followed the next in line and Townsend acknowledged his presence with a nod. Once more he found that, although the questions were conventional, Townsend’s manner was threatening, his voice too loud, in that lion’s roar which seem to presume severe deafness on the other person’s part. He was, by now, well acquainted with Townsend’s methods of interviewing possible suspects. He had seen it day after tedious day in the back streets of Brighton.

  How long have you been a servant here? What was your relationship with Simone? (Most did not fully understand that this only meant: Did you like her?) Do you know anything, in confidence, of Simone’s private life, or of any enemies that would have driven her to suicide or make her a potential murder victim?

  The answer was invariably ‘No’ but it was the word ‘murder’ that struck terror into their hearts. As one servant was dismissed, Townsend ticked his sheet against that name, whose place was taken by yet another.

  ‘So far,’ he whispered, ‘can’t fault a single one of them. They are all either innocent, know nothing about the maid or are indulging in a conspiracy of silence,’ he added grimly.

  It was fairly obvious that Townsend’s conclusions were justified, and Tam felt that he had done considerably better with Bessie, who had willingly given him information, confirming his guess that Simone considered herself superior to mere domestics and had behaved accordingly, distancing herself from them and from the activities of the servants’ hall.

  The morning was over when the last of the servants went back to their duties. Townsend threw down his pen and gathered his notes in a gesture of disgust.

  ‘That was a regular waste of time. It’s hard to believe that they were all speaking the truth—’ Then, as the stable clock struck twelve, he consulted his pocket watch and brightened considerably. ‘Now we might hope for luncheon, but I am afraid Sir Joseph will be disappointed.’

  If Townsend had hopes of dining with the family it was he who was to be disappointed, as a servant brought a tray with steak pies, potatoes and roly-poly pudding into the tiny room. Considering the tankard of ale, Townsend looked deeply offended, having hoped for wines from the Creeve cellar, which, he assured Tam, were of excellent vintage.

  Tam nodded sympathetically. Townsend was a long way from being treated as the close family friend he bragged about being. But Tam was also nursing a secret disappointment. Lunch in the dining room would have given him another opportunity to talk to Jem, or Lady Gemma, as he had to get used to addressing her.

  They were finishing their meal when a knock on the door announced Dr Brooke, who had been called into examine the dead woman.

  ‘I thought you would want to know that she drowned. No doubt about that, her lungs were full of water. But that is not to say that she wasn’t pushed into the lake first and her head held under.’

  Townsend looked gratified at the doctor’s verdict as he went on: ‘One thing I did learn was that none of the servants ever heard of her wanting to take the waters in Brighton. She seemed to have an aversion to water in any form; we are given to understand that is a weakness of the French in general.’

  Tam looked at him and decided not to mention that Simone was from Manchester. Would Lord Percy make arrangements for her burial? That seemed doubtful in the circumstances, but he hoped that there was enough information about her for someone close to collect her body. Otherwise it would be donated to the medical profession, as was the rule for unclaimed bodies.

  As the doctor left them Townsend sighed. ‘So we’re no further forward,’ he grumbled. ‘Sounds as if she was done in, right enough, but we aren’t any nearer finding her killer.’

  ‘We still have the outdoor staff,’ Tam reminded him gently and, when Townsend frowned, he added: ‘She died outside, after all. What about stable boys, gardeners and so forth?’

  Townsend gave him a sharp and rather angry look as if he had rather wished his enquiries to be over for the day. And sighing wearily, he said: ‘I suppose you’re right. My nephew Rob, he works in the stables.’

  This information was given a little reluctantly, Tam thought, guessing that this was Townsend’s real connection with Creeve House, not the marquis’s friendship he enjoyed boasting about.

  ‘He’s an honest, reliable lad so at least we will get the truth from him.’

  They were walking across the hall when Townsend spotted Sir Joseph leaving the dining room and heading towards the study. ‘Must have a word, he will want to know our progress so far. Just wait here for me.’

  Tam waited, enjoying a chance to look at some of the ancient portraits of bygone Creeves that lined the walls, when a footman approached and handed him an envelope. ‘This is for Mr Townsend, will you give it to him please?’

  When Townsend emerged a few minutes later, he took the envelope and thrust it into his pocket with an impatient gesture. His flushed countenance spoke louder than any words that his interview with His Grace had not gone particularly well.

  Chapter Twenty

  In the stables, Rob seemed genuinely delighted to see his uncle and looked suitably impressed at being introduced to an Edinburgh lawyer. After the usual preliminaries regarding family matters, Rob said how shocked they all were at the maid drowning in the lake. A suicide, as they had been informed.

  ‘I suppose there must be suspicious circumstances, Uncle John, that we haven’t heard about and that’s why you’re here,’ Rob added shrewdly and immediately offered to talk to the lads, to see what they knew.

  ‘Mind you, I can account for most of them last night. We were given the meats and ale left over from her ladyship’s funeral and the ten of us had a giddy old time, myself included, and we all went to our beds very drunk indeed. Frankly, Uncle, I don’t think any of us knew Simone except for seeing her at a distance walking with Lady Sarah, or on the odd occasion when she was sent to make arrangements for her ladyship’s horse to be saddled.’

  ‘Did she ride with her?’

  ‘Never. She was a bit scared of horses.’

  ‘What about her ladyship’s visits to Brighton?’ Townsend asked the coachman who had joined them and who was eagerly listening to their conversation. ‘Didn’t she take a carriage?’

  ‘Not from here, sir. Maybe she took her horse.’

  ‘She never did,’ Rob replied, and Tam had a sudden unbidden vision of the marchioness clad in nothing but a fur cloak and pearls, riding furiously along the Lewes road. Then sensibly he realised these items were most probably kept in her Brighton apartment to wear on the short step to the secret entrance at the Pavilion.

  ‘His Grace only keeps one carriage these days, doesn’t travel much any more. But there are hiring ones available in Lewes. Mostly for rich ladies, widows and suchlike, travelling on their own or for folks who can’t afford to keep a carriage and horses.’

  The coachman informed them that the gardeners didn’t live in and went back to their own homes in the village, starting early on summer mornings.

  Townsend had a stroke of luck when the gamekeeper who had discovered the maid’s body had seen them walking towards the stables and was waiting in the yard eager to tell his story to the Bow Street officer.

  Peters was his name, he said, and he had spotted what he thought at first was an old sack floating in
the ornamental lake.

  ‘Gave me quite a turn, it did, when I realised who it was. Yes, I recognised the young lady, she often walked past my cottage near the drive back there, and if I was in my garden we would pass the time of day, very polite she was.’

  He sighed and looked bleakly at them. ‘Shame it is, smart wench like that taking her own life when she had so much to live for.’

  Tam studied him closely as he spoke. He was a handsome man aged about forty, tall, with white hair and a moustache. Tam wondered if Townsend had noticed that he was very well-spoken and had the look of an army officer who had seen better days.

  As far as the theory of murders was concerned, the killer was most usually to be found in the ranks of those known to the victim: family or close associates. Or the person who made the discovery – and Tam had reached his own conclusions, deciding that Peters was the prime suspect as he replied to Townsend’s question.

  ‘As a matter of fact, sir, I did see a tall man, a stranger – possibly someone who had been at her ladyship’s funeral – hanging about near the summerhouse late last night. He wasn’t wanting to be seen and was quite upset when my dogs flushed him out. I thought he just didn’t want to be sociable, the gentry are often that way inclined, you know.’

  Suspect number two, thought Tam uneasily, wondering if the tall stranger the gamekeeper had observed might also be the stalker who remained invisible to Townsend.

  As they walked back to the house, Townsend put his hand in his pocket and drew out the envelope which he had forgotten about.

  He handed it to Tam. ‘I don’t have my spectacles. Please read it to me – I don’t suppose it is anything important.’

  It was a very short note: ‘Dear Mr Townsend, I saw you at the funeral. I should like to have a word with you if convenient. (Signed) Simone Dupres.’