Lady Anne 01 - Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “A framework of lies!” Grover said.

  “I don’t understand what any of this means,” Pomfroy said impatiently. “And I don’t know why, my lord, you have gathered us all here to listen to such things that make no sense to any of us.”

  Darkefell motioned to Sanderson, who dragged Spottiswode forward. “William Spottiswode, you have publicly stated that you murdered Cecilia Wainwright. Do you affirm that statement now?”

  Shivering, the wretch shook his head. “No. No, I dint do’t.”

  “But you did kill, did you not?”

  “Sheep! Nobutt sheep!” he cried out. “Squire Grover tolt me I could ’ave whatsomever I wanted out t’wine keeper, so I kilt sheep, his’n, some others, an’ I drank an’ drank ’til I was near ’nuff blind. Den I heard about t’girl being kilt up here t’markwis’s place, I t’ought… did I kill’er? So I sed it in me cups, but I dint, I swear’t. I kilt sheep, but niver yon maiden. Squire tolt me yon blackamoor kilt ’er.”

  “How could you have killed Cecilia?” Darkefell said. “Your landlady, after close questioning, was able to state with some assurance that you were lying in your room that night, passed out from drink, one of those bottles of potent wine that Mr. Hiram Grover so obligingly gave you clutched in your paw—some of the finest wine I have seen in England, brought from his Italian odyssey when he was a traveling purchaser for a wine merchant before his fortunate inheritance of his estate.”

  “So I gave the drunk some bottles of wine!” Grover said, lumbering out of the chair, driven to defend himself against the mounting evidence.

  Lord John stood back as his wife called out to him, her faint voice quavering.

  Grover’s cheeks burned red, but his clenched fists showed white knuckles. “I’m leaving this dreadful county, this dark corner of benighted England. I might as well dispose of the wine, for how can I store so much in the cottage to which I have been forced by this powerful man’s ravening hunger for my land?” he said, waving one hand toward the marquess.

  Murmuring among the crowd broke out.

  “Aye, ask him about that,” Grover said, glancing around at his neighbors. “His lordship has agreed to purchase my land for a pittance after driving me purposely into bankruptcy with his evil vengeance for some imagined slight.”

  “Imagined slight?” Darkefell shouted, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I imagined no slight, nor did I imagine the slaughter of a score of Africans by your own men on the high seas near Jamaica and then your insolent attempt to collect insurance money on them.” He stalked over to Grover and shook his fist in his face. “Horrors I have suffered in the night and in the day, the remembered screams of dozens of helpless, ill, enslaved humans ringing in my ears… yes, I say humans… people! And if I’ve suffered, I can only imagine the nightmares Osei Boatin endures after seeing his fellow slaves murdered en masse.”

  Darkefell turned to the vicar, who stood with his wife and Beatrice Lange. “Those people, the slaves… they’re our brothers and sisters, are they not, Reverend?” he said, his voice ringing out in agitation. “Is this man,” he said, flinging his hand out toward Osei, “not the living embodiment of God’s grace?”

  He whirled, the fierce anger in his dark eyes, frightening to see for some, Anne supposed, but thrilling to her, for it was clean anger, burning bright through the filthy deeds of Hiram Grover, and it shone as powerfully as a lamp lighting a revolting, dirty corner.

  “You,” he growled in Grover’s face, “followed the murder of a score of Africans with the murder of a girl who did nothing more to you than foolishly demand money in exchange for silence.” He stopped abruptly and glanced around. “Cecilia was a clever girl. She figured out about the sheep that Grover paid Spottiswode to kill, you see,” he said to the others, his tone calmer. “She carried this fellow’s child,” he said, pointing his finger at Jamey. “And she wanted more than the life of a shamed maid carrying a bastard child—she wanted the honored position of wife and mother, and money to purchase a livery stable so that Jamey could use his talent with horses.

  “She didn’t know Grover was bankrupt—none of us did—so she threatened him with exposure of his sheep killing. She sent him a note by an illiterate stableboy to meet her, and Grover did, but instead of giving her money, he murdered her and left behind things he hoped would make it look like either I or my brother were guilty: a tuft of fur from a robe he hoped would be taken as the wolf costume he already knew I was using in my charade as the werewolf, and a bit of gold chain filched from John’s pilfered pocket watch. And to kill the girl, he used my mother’s own garden implement, stolen from her greenhouse.”

  Lady Darkefell turned, a look of horror on her face. “Hiram, you did this?”

  “I did not! It is the basest lie.”

  “It was a fool’s plot, and only an abject fool would think it could succeed,” Anne said, speaking up finally. “But he might be able to deny it if Ellen Henderson, who thought to take up blackmail from Cecilia, had died at his hands, as she was supposed to and as he thought she did. But she’s alive,” Anne cried triumphantly. “She’s alive and has pointed out Mr. Hiram Grover as her attacker.”

  Grover went white, and for a bulky man, reacted swiftly. He bolted for the door, but Sanderson, quick moving when he cared to be, tackled him and threw him down.

  Twenty-Four

  Chaos ensued; Anne felt as if she was the calm center of a maelstrom.

  Lydia screamed and fainted. Darkefell leaped to Sanderson’s aid, bending Grover’s arm behind him and hauling him to his feet. The murderer still blustered, but Darkefell shouted that it was over; Ellen Henderson was conscious and had confirmed everything they had just said. If Grover had not killed Cecilia, he would have had no reason to try to kill her.

  Pomfroy shouted questions while the vicar prayed aloud, raising his voice to be heard over the din. He must believe God to be hard of hearing, Anne thought. Lady Sophie sat in the chair Grover had vacated, her head down; Miss Beatrice Lange, concern writ on her pretty round face, advanced to the woman and hung over her, finally kneeling by her and gazing up into the older woman’s face. The vicar’s wife approached Miss Lange and Lady Darkefell, and ordered Andrew, the hovering footman, to summon the marchioness’s abigail and have the housekeeper bring cool water and a cloth. She took charge of the large household with remarkable efficiency, earning Anne’s admiration.

  Lily Jenkins stood with her husband away from the chaos, and the two spoke earnestly. Finally the young woman threw herself into her husband’s arms, and he hugged her.

  Anne’s primary concern was Lydia, who regained consciousness as the commotion calmed—Sanderson bundled Grover away as Darkefell explained everything to the magistrate and vicar. This time Anne thought Lydia’s faint real, not manufactured to avoid answering awkward questions or distasteful visitors. Anne hesitantly approached the married couple and said to Lord John, “I’m concerned about Lydia’s health. She should see a physician. If you do not like Doctor Younghusband, with whom Lord Darkefell is acquainted, I will gladly accompany her to Bath to consult my mother’s physician, a gentleman famous for his cures.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Lady Darkefell said, rousing herself enough to look up from her misery, the pool of lamplight shed on her showing her ravaged face swollen with emotion and wet from tears. “Lydia is well.”

  “I don’t think so, my lady,” Anne said, frowning over at the heartless woman. Who could gaze at poor, pale Lydia and think she was in perfect health? “She’s excessively fragile and so full of sensibility that—”

  “Pish-tush,” the marchioness said briskly, shrugging off Miss Lange’s comforting hands. “She’s with child, nothing more.”

  With child. Those words from the marchioness stopped the remaining hubbub—Sir Trevor querulously harangued the marquess while Spottiswode pleaded for mercy—and all faces turned toward Lady Darkefell.

  The marchioness sighed deeply and said, “If the girl had a jot of common sense, she w
ould have known. Cecilia suspected, just as she knew she was enceinte. She whispered it to Mrs. Hailey, who asked me. Given the signs, I said it likely was true and have been watching since, waiting for the featherbrain to realize it. Why should she need to be told every little thing? I knew almost immediately when my boys were given to me. She will be quite, quite all right, if she will just realize it.” She sighed with great weariness and put her hand over her eyes, slumping back in her chair. Miss Lange tactfully withdrew from a family moment.

  Lord Darkefell advanced to his brother and took his hand, shaking it heartily. “Congratulations, John. Have a girl, first, will you?” He winked at Anne, who was still in some shock.

  Looking back at the nausea and faintness, Anne wondered why it had never occurred to her that Lydia was going to have a baby. She looked up into her friend’s face and was surprised to see fear. “Lydia,” she said, reaching out and touching her arm. “My dear, don’t be afraid. You’re a healthy girl and will be fine.” With a firm look, she took in the marchioness in her glance and said, “And you have your motherin-law, who is experienced in such matters, to help. Isn’t that so, Lady Darkefell?”

  “Yes, of course,” the woman said, not uncovering her eyes. “Of course.”

  ***

  It had been an eventful night, but it was finally over. Pomfroy had been threatened into taking Hiram Grover into custody, though he seemed reluctant and still expressed doubts even after Darkefell took him over their reasoning, step-by-step. Even the evidence of Ellen Henderson, who had met Grover to demand blackmail and was almost killed for her effrontery, did not convince him. Murder, in Pomfroy’s eyes, was a crime of the lower classes. Grover, even in trade as he was, was still closer to being a gentleman than the servants who accused him.

  Lydia rested comfortably now that she knew her husband was not only not a murderer but, more importantly to her, had never kissed Cecilia. Ellen Henderson had tearfully admitted she made that up just to get her rival for Jamey’s affections, the lovely and intelligent Cecilia, in trouble and, she hoped, banished from Ivy Lodge.

  Dinner, such as it was, was not much in demand. The marchioness did her best, herding those left into the dining room, but appetites were not large, and some simply sat in mortified silence, Mrs. Lily Jenkins the most noticeable of those. She would speak to no one except to deny the worst charge against her, of pilfering Fanny Allengate’s journal and altering it; the couple left first, directly after the last remove. The vicar and his wife were the last to leave, and Mr. Sydney, at the door, murmured his good-byes to Lady Darkefell. As Anne hung back in the shadows, watching, he trailed off as he began to expound on a “delightful evening with congenial company.” That polite social fiction was absurd, even when offered by the stuffy little vicar.

  There were still a lot of questions in Anne’s fevered brain. It was late, but as the marquess said good-bye to his mother, Anne took him aside. “I’m still confused on a couple of points, Darkefell,” she said as she walked to the door with him.

  He glanced toward his mother, who was speaking with Mrs. Hailey, and murmured, “As I know you are fond of late-night strolls, meet me outside once the household is quiet.”

  And so, as the full moon rose in the sky, Anne slipped from the house by way of the garden door, a method of egress that led one through the kitchen garden and beyond. Her heart began to pound uncomfortably as she spotted the marquess standing alone near the end of the garden, moonlight touching his gleaming dark hair with spots of brightness.

  “You’ve come,” he said softly as she approached. He took her hand and led her through the kitchen garden and into his mother’s rose garden.

  “How much are we really sure of?” she asked as they strolled down a graveled path. She was acutely aware of the feel of his warm hand enclosing hers. “There seems to be so much left unsolved. Starting with Tilly Landers’s death at the falls. And Fanny Allengate… how did she die? Can we lay these other crimes at Hiram Grover’s feet?”

  He frowned, his strong features softened by the glamour of moonlight. “I’ve always wondered if Tilly was simply meeting someone, as she ofttimes did, and fell to her death. The cave above the falls is not so far from town, you know, by way of a commonly traversed pathway and suited, as you saw, for a lovers’ trysting spot.”

  “So…” She hesitated; she was treading on delicate ground here. “Why did your brother claim he saw her fall?”

  “He was trying to protect me.”

  “How did that protect you, to say that he had seen her fall?” He was silent; she stopped and withdrew her hand from his. She already knew the answer but wanted him to say it. “My lord, why did he think he would be protecting you? What had you to do with Tilly Landers?”

  His expression was grim, and he said, “Do you know, in general I don’t give a damn what people think of me.” He turned and gazed down at her. “But I care about your opinion, my lady. I care what you know of me, what you think of me.”

  “Is not the simplest way to ensure I understand your past and your present, your motives and your actions, is to explain them to me?” she said, her heart throbbing at the idea that he should care so greatly what she thought of him. She searched his eyes.

  “Perhaps. I’ve never deigned to throw the cloak of godliness over my actions. I’m just a man and cannot claim an unblemished past.”

  “My experience has been,” she said tartly, “that those who do claim an unblemished past are those most likely to have much of which to be ashamed. Hiram Grover claimed virtue, but his hands are stained with blood. I deeply distrust that ‘cloak of godliness,’ as you call it.”

  Silence. The moonlight was just strong enough to delineate his profile, the saturnine twist to the lips, the grim set of his square jaw. She prodded him, saying, “Was there a connection between you and Miss Landers? Is that why your brother thought he needed to protect you from the accusation that you had contributed to the young woman’s death? Is that why Jacob Landers hates you?”

  “How perceptive you are,” he murmured, “and how I wish, at this moment, that you were the dullest, least-imaginative creature on earth.”

  “But how pleased I am that your wishes are not fact. I shouldn’t like to be dull, my lord.”

  He laughed out loud and shot her a glance of appreciation. “Always, even in my grimmest moments of self-flagellation, you can make me laugh.”

  But she would not be diverted. “You openly stated that you had no connection with Miss Allengate, and so it was easy to see that, if she did not write the journal entries herself, they must have been writ by someone else. We now know that is so and that Mrs. Jenkins, in her jealousy over an old rival, did so.”

  As Anne had whispered to Darkefell in the Ivy Lodge drawing room, that was one puzzle Ellen Henderson was able to solve; Grover, as he throttled her, gloated over his various actions to destroy Darkefell’s reputation and peace of mind. Among them, he subtly directed Lily Jenkins, suggesting to her that, as Fanny had already confessed her infatuation with the marquess to her, perhaps Lily could make a fool of the girl she feared her husband still loved, by using secret letters. Fanny, an imaginative and sensitive girl, believed the anonymous notes she received to be from the marquess and saw their secret correspondence as that between star-crossed lovers, unable to openly acknowledge their passion because of their differences in status.

  Anne could only imagine that Grover thought to accuse the marquess of misleading the girl, forcing him to publicly repudiate her, but she tragically died before that scheme bore fruit. Lily, after Fanny’s death, had taken it a step further with Grover’s suggestion that, to be sure she was not caught as the writer of the anonymous notes, she should cover her tracks. So she pilfered the journal, ripped out two pages, and added a few entries suggesting that Fanny and Darkefell had finally met and consummated their affair. This was to throw suspicion on the marquess if any of Lily’s fake letters to Fanny were ever found. It was a vicious, disgusting scheme that could only have
come from a depraved mind, Anne thought. She hoped someone would find a way to make Lily Jenkins pay for the attempted destruction of two reputations: Fanny’s posthumously, with the disgusting journal entries, and Darkefell’s, by suggesting he had taken advantage of a fragile and innocent young woman, perhaps leading to her suicide.

  Anne absolved Lily Jenkins only of knowing she was being used by Hiram Grover, who had his own desire to destroy the marquess. Lily Jenkins had much to answer for—her cruel plot against Bess Parker was tantamount to attempted murder—but that was not Anne’s responsibility to prosecute.

  The marquess had been silent, brooding, as he stared at the ground, and Anne went on, “Your unwillingness to be equally frank about Miss Landers as you were about Fanny Allengate leads me to believe… to conjecture… ” She trailed off, watching him and waiting for him to confess his involvement with the barmaid.

  He finally said, “She was my mistress, yes, for a couple of autumnal weeks. My sensual needs sated, my fastidiousness would not stand more than that.”

  In a low and trembling voice, Anne said, “Do not criticize the young woman whose favors you no doubt eagerly sought while the fever was upon you. It’s not fair! Nor is it gentlemanly.”

  “How perfectly you judge, my lady,” he said, his voice harsh with anger, “that about which you know nothing.”

  “I know people,” she said, facing him and glaring into his eyes. “I know women and serving girls, and I know they have hearts to break and spirits to crush.” She turned away, ready to go back in, and said, “I have no stomach for this conversation now, my lord.”

  “Stop! We’ve wandered away from my point,” he said, grasping her arm and turning her back. He stared down at her in the faint moonlight. “I am loath to damage myself in your eyes. I fear you’re a harsh judge and may not give allowance for male weakness. I would never say to a woman that she must have only one bonnet in her life and that she should never sample other bonnets, trying them on, even purchasing one or two.”