by M C Beaton
M. C. Beaton is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, several Regency romance series and a stand-alone murder mystery, The Skeleton in the Closet – all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit www.mcbeatonbooks.co.uk for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter: @mc_beaton.
Titles by M. C. Beaton
The Poor Relation
Lady Fortescue Steps Out • Miss Tonks Turns to Crime • Mrs Budley Falls from Grace Sir Philip’s Folly • Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue • Back in Society
A House for the Season
The Miser of Mayfair • Plain Jane • The Wicked Godmother Rake’s Progress • The Adventuress • Rainbird’s Revenge
The Six Sisters
Minerva • The Taming of Annabelle • Deirdre and Desire Daphne • Diana the Huntress • Frederica in Fashion
Edwardian Murder Mysteries
Snobbery with Violence • Hasty Death • Sick of Shadows Our Lady of Pain
The Travelling Matchmaker
Emily Goes to Exeter • Belinda Goes to Bath • Penelope Goes to Portsmouth Beatrice Goes to Brighton • Deborah Goes to Dover • Yvonne Goes to York
Edwardian Candlelight
Polly • Molly • Ginny • Tilly • Susie • Kitty • Daisy • Sally • Maggie • Poppy • Pretty Polly • Lucy • My Lords, Ladies and Marjorie
Regency Candlelight
Annabelle • Henrietta • Penelope
Regency Royal
The Westerby Inheritance • The Marquis Takes a Bride • Lady Anne’s Deception • Lady Margery’s Intrigue • The Savage Marquess • My Dear Duchess • The Highland Countess • Lady Lucy’s Lover • The Ghost and Lady Alice • Love and Lady Lovelace • Duke’s Diamonds • The Viscount’s Revenge • The Paper Princess • The Desirable Duchess • The Sins of Lady Dacey • The Dreadful Debutante • The Chocolate Debutante • The Loves of Lord Granton • Milady in Love • The Scandalous Marriage
Regency Scandal
His Lordship’s Pleasure • Her Grace’s Passion • The Scandalous Lady Wright
Regency Flame
Those Endearing Young Charms ? The Flirt • Lessons in Love • Regency Gold • Miss Fiona’s Fancy • The French Affair • To Dream of Love • A Marriage of Inconvenience • A Governess of Distinction • The Glitter of Gold
Regency Season
The Original Miss Honeyford • The Education of Miss Paterson • At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple • Sweet Masquerade ?The Constant Companion • Quadrille • The Perfect Gentleman • Dancing on the Wind • Ms. Davenport’s Christmas
The Waverly Women
The First Rebellion • Silken Bonds • The Love Match
Agatha Raisin
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener • Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage • Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam • Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate • Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance • Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison • Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body • Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns
Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers • Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble
Hamish Macbeth
Death of a Gossip • Death of a Cad • Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife • Death of a Hussy • Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster • Death of a Glutton • Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man • Death of a Nag • Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist • Death of a Scriptwriter • Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas • Death of a Dustman • Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village • Death of a Poison Pen • Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer • Death of a Maid • Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch • Death of a Valentine • Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher • Death of Yesterday
The Skeleton in the Closet
Also available
The Agatha Raisin Companion
The Marquis Takes a Bride
M. C. Beaton
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First electronic edition published 2011
by RosettaBooks LLC, New York
This edition published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013
Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1980
The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47210-132-7 (ebook)
Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson
To my friend, supporter and helper, Madeline Trezza, with much love.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter One
Runbury Manor, home of Lord Charles and Lady Bemyss, had been designed by Robert Hooke in the seventeenth century and some uncharitable people said it had not been cleaned since.
It seemed, indeed, a fitting home for Lord Charles’ pack of senile and bad-tempered old hounds since it smelled like a kennel. Elderly dogs lay gasping and panting in front of the fire in winter and snored in various Chippendale chairs in the summer, only rousing themselves to nip some passing guest.
Lord Charles had once explained to his friends and neighbors that since he himself could no longer follow the hunt and preferred to take his ease in a comfortable chair, then it was only fitting that his old friends of the hunt—the ancient remnant of his pack of hounds—should do likewise.
His lady Priscilla was equally devoted to the smelly animals, often preferring to talk to them rather than to any human being. The dogs understood so much more.
The couple would have been perfectly happy had they not been burdened with one human responsibilit
y in the shape of their granddaughter, Jennie.
Jennie’s parents had been taken by the cholera when she was still a baby and she could not remember them at all. She had been brought up by her grandparents, who were strict in some things and very lax in others.
She had been spared the rigors of an education, Lord Charles holding to the old-fashioned view that a female with an uneducated mind was a rare and beautiful thing, yet her social training had been severe. She knew how to curtsy with grace, how to manage a train, how to use a fan of any size, how to compliment a gentleman on his taste in snuff and how to listen to long and boring dissertations on hunting and agriculture with wide-eyed interest. Outside the Manor, however, she could run wild as she pleased and ride for miles around without the escort of a groom.
In the house, her duties were to help her grandmother in the still room and to eat everything on her plate at table. Any food left uneaten would be served to her at the next meal and, should she not eat it then, at the meal after that. She was taught to practice that cheese-paring economy so peculiar to the English aristocracy. Old clothes were never to be thrown away unless they were in rags and Jennie became an adept needlewoman—although she had little time to spend on her own clothes. When she was not sewing “white work” in long seams with all the mysterious rites of counter-hemming, running and felling, top-sewing and pointing, she was kept busy at her embroidery frame producing pictures in tent or tapestry stitch.
Provided she obeyed these rules of the house, her grandparents treated her with the same impatient kindness that they used to give their dogs when they were puppies.
In this unlikely atmosphere, Jennie bloomed like the rose. She had a mass of glossy black hair, a little heart-shaped face, wide hazel eyes and a petulant, at times willful, mouth. She had on occasion very pretty manners, a good deal of intelligence despite her lack of education, but was unfortunately inclined to sulks and temper tantrums. It was not because her grandparents were in any way indulgent, in fact they hardly noticed whether she was in a good mood or not, but she had been petted and indulged by her first cousin, Guy, for quite a number of her formative years.
Jennie had been in love with Guy since the days when she could only toddle after him. Guy was some five years older than Jennie, a slim young man of medium build with fair curly hair and an engaging boyish expression. He followed the sporting fashion of the Corinthians and ran around London with a set of wild young men who would have shocked Jennie to the core could she have seen them first-hand. But she only heard of their antics from Guy and thought that Guy and his circle must be the most dashing and elegant bloods in the world.
Jennie was, in fact, spoiled through neglect. Although she was fed and clothed, she was often lonely and had no books to pass the weary hours. She was often unsure of herself and had no one but Guy to turn to, her grandparents never understanding a word she said, immersed as they were in the narrow channel of their own lives. And like all neglected children, Jennie would throw scenes and temper tantrums as the only way she knew to satisfy her craving for love and attention.
Guy would soothe her and pet her and train her up in his own cynical worldly philosophy. And with only Guy to listen to her, Jennie grew more and more dependent on the young man for comfort and advice.
Guy was a regular visitor to the Manor. Like Jennie, his parents were dead. He lived in comfortable lodgings in St. James’ but found the Manor a useful retreat from duns and creditors. He never failed to try to borrow money from Lord Charles, although he was hardly ever successful, Lord Charles becoming unaccountably deaf when anyone so much as hinted that his lordship should even part with a farthing.
He also enjoyed Jennie’s uncritical adoration and in return brought her presents, told her there was no one in London to match her beauty and also tried to instill into her young brain his own peculiar moral code. Jennie, now on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, believed that one could do almost anything one liked provided one was not found out. Being found out, Guy would say, was a heinous crime. Marriage, Jennie learned, was the best future for a woman—not because she should fall in love and wish to have children, but because she would be free from the restrictions imposed on a single girl and be immediately able to set up a flirt. Women who were faithful to their husbands, Guy had told her, were the women who were too plain to catch the eye of anyone else.
And Jennie would drink in all this and believe every word. Having a lover, in Jennie’s mind, was simply having someone to flirt and intrigue with, as she flirted and intrigued with Guy.
She was walking in the gardens of the Manor, hoping Guy would arrive in time for her birthday as he had promised, when she heard her grandfather’s peremptory bark echoing through the open windows of the Blue Saloon, “Jennie, fetch your grandmother and bring her here. We want to talk to you.”
Jennie looked startled. Her grandparents hardly ever wanted to see her about anything—anything, that is, that would involve the presence of both of them.
Her grandmother, she knew, would be in the still room and so she made her way there, secretly beginning to hope that her grandparents had actually, for once, bought her a birthday present.
Lady Priscilla was weaving around the still room with a vague sweet smile on her face. She had been making ice by putting equal parts of ether and water in a metal jug and then applying an air pump to the mixture. As usual, she had forgotten to open the little window in the still room and had knocked herself silly with the ether fumes.
With the ease of long practice, Jennie tugged open the window, placed a cover over the jug, stoppered the ether and supported her grandmother from the room.
Once they had reached the great hall, Lady Priscilla had recovered enough to straighten her cap and ask Jennie in an impatient voice what it was she wanted.
“Grandfather wants me to bring you to the Blue Saloon,” said Jennie.
“Oh… yes… that,” said Lady Priscilla, banging the side of her head with her hand to bring her weak eyes back into focus. “Most important, my dear. Follow me.”
Jennie meekly followed her grandmother into the Blue Saloon, a great room which looked out onto the shaggy lawns at the front of the house. A few threadbare rugs holding stands of spindly tables and chairs were dotted like islands here and there on the expanse of sanded floor. The Bemyss ancestors stared down from their blackened canvases and dingy gold frames. Several clocks ticked away busily, set at every hour but the right one, and at least six dogs snored and wheezed and whooped as they chased rabbits in their sleep.
Lord Charles looked up as they came into the room.
He was a heavily built man with a florid face and rather protruding pale blue eyes. He was wearing a powdered wig, slightly askew, and was dressed like a farmer with his stocky, muscular legs encased in gaiters.
Lady Priscilla, by contrast, was pale and wispy and always seemed to have things trailing from her body—a thin, wispy gauze stole, a long limp glove held in one hand, limp streamers hanging from her unstarched cap or simply loose threads trailing from the hem of her gown.
“Sit down, Jennie,” barked his lordship. All the comfortable chairs were occupied by dogs so Jennie took a hard camel-back chair near the window where the sweet, cool air of the evening blew in and banished the smell of dog—from that little area of the room at least.
“You’re eighteen years old tomorrow, ain’t you?” demanded his lordship, reluctantly putting down the latest edition of the Sporting Magazine (“Of the Transactions of the Turf, the Chase, and every other Diversion Interesting to the Man of Pleasure and Enterprise”) and fixing his pale blue eyes on his granddaughter.
Jennie nodded and sat demurely on the edge of her chair with her hands in her lap. What present would they give her? Jewelry perhaps!
Then Lord Charles dropped his bombshell.
“You’re to be betrothed tomorrow, Jennie. You’re a lucky girl. He’s a fine young man.”
A delicate pink suffused Jennie’s face.
“Guy,
” she breathed. “Oh, Grandpapa. I shall remember this birthday until the day I die.”
“What’s that?” barked his lordship. “Guy? Don’t be silly, girl. As if I would let you marry your first cousin. Country’s going to rack and ruin and d’ye know why? Damned inbreeding, that’s what it is. You’re not marrying any first cousin, my girl, and producing a lot of totty-headed inbred brats. You’re to marry Lord Cyril Chelmsford Branwell, fourth Marquis of Charrington. He’s coming here tomorrow and we’re signing the marriage settlements. So make sure you take a bath and put on some clean linen,” added Lord Charles, who hardly ever did either himself.
“And if I refuse?” said Jennie in a dangerously quiet voice.
“What’s that? Refuse? Nonsense. No question of it. Was all fixed by your dear Ma and Papa when you was in your cradle. You can’t do nothing about it.”
“I won’t. I won’t. I won’t,” said Jennie, her voice rising to a scream and her little heels beginning to drum against the floor.
“Grandmama!” she stormed at that lady, “you cannot allow this to happen.”
“But it has, my dear… or is… or will be,” said Lady Priscilla vaguely. Her stomach gave a sudden violent rumble and she stared down at it in surprise.
“Did we eat dinner, my dear?” she inquired plaintively of her lord. “I cannot remember.”
“We ate at four o’clock, you idiot,” said Lord Charles. “I remember it quite distinctly. It was a French stew of green peas and bacon.”
“You’re quite right, my dear,” said his wife. “It was a very good pot beef with tomata catsup.”
“Fool! French stew!”
“Oh, no, my love,” replied his wife with maddening patience. “I remember now perfectly, don’t I Caesar?” Caesar, a large wolfhound, gave a hiccup and a snore. “Dear doggie,” cried Lady Priscilla. “Caesar says it was pot beef.”
“Tcha! You’ve got windmills in your head.”
“Enough! Stop!” cried Jennie desperately. “This is ridiculous.”
“Quite right!” said Lord Charles in surprise. “Not often you agree with me, Jennie. As if that damned dog could remember anything. He can’t remember me. Bit me the other day.”
