A Curious Beginning

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  For once he was speechless, and I took the opportunity to make myself more comfortable. “I mean to sleep now, Stoker. I advise you to do the same.”

  I closed my eyes then, as he rested his thoughtful gaze upon me. And in time, I slept.

  • • •

  I roused myself as we drew near to London and woke refreshed, if somewhat stiff. I poked Stoker from his snores.

  “Bloody hell, what?” he demanded with all the grace of a bear roused from hibernation.

  “We have nearly reached London. Where do we go from here? We cannot return to your workshop if there is a connection betwixt you and the baron. I wonder if we ought to seek out that Mr. de Clare. He was cryptic, to be sure, but he knows something of this business, and he might be able to offer us aid.”

  Stoker blinked, then rubbed his eyes, pressing hard for a moment. He gave a jaw-cracking yawn and stretched. When he was fully roused, he spoke, his tone stern. “Look here, Veronica, I know you mean to ferret about in this business, but I do not think I can let you do that. Max did entrust me with your safety, remember, and there is no call for you to be exposed to further danger. We don’t know what this de Clare fellow is about. Let me see you back to your cottage, and I will find him.”

  “You! Haring about London when the Metropolitan Police are combing the streets for you? Not bloody likely.”

  He sighed. “I admit it is a plan not without its difficulties, but I think you will be safe at your cottage.”

  “It is not my cottage,” I reminded him. “I gave it up, and no doubt it has already been let again. Besides, I do not think I would be any better off there than with you.” The time had come, and so, drawing in a deep breath, I launched into an explanation of the circumstances under which the baron had found me.

  When I finished, a muscle was twitching in his jaw, and when he spoke, it was through clenched teeth. “And did it not occur to you to mention this sooner?”

  “We have not been in the habit of sharing confidences,” I reminded him. “Besides, the ransacking of the cottage was simply the act of an opportunistic thief who got away with nothing.”

  “Was it?” He thrust his hands into his hair. “How can you not see it?”

  “I assumed the fellow who broke into my cottage was simply looking to steal whatever was at hand. It is a common enough occurrence during funerals.”

  “What did he take?”

  “Nothing! He got away when I chased him into the garden. He grabbed my arm as if he meant to carry me off, but I do not believe that was his original intention. The baron helped me elude him, and when the fellow ran away, the baron seemed quite overcome. He insisted I was in some sort of danger and that I must go at once with him to London.”

  “Where he tells me that he is engaged in a matter of life and death and that I must protect you, even at the cost of my own life,” Stoker finished.

  “Yes, well, that was a bit melodramatic, I admit.” I paused. “You look very much as if you’re restraining yourself from shaking me.”

  “Maximilian von Stauffenbach was not melodramatic a day in his life. He was a pragmatist. If he said it was a matter of life and death, it was,” he said, fairly spitting the words in his rage.

  “And now you think that my thief is the one who broke into the baron’s house as well and murdered him?”

  “I do not believe in coincidences,” he said. “Now tell me everything again. From the beginning.”

  I did as he bade me, beginning with the funeral and tea with the Clutterthorpes and ending with my arrival upon his doorstep. He shook his head, thrusting his hands again through his unkempt hair. He was beginning to resemble one of the more disheveled Greek gods after a particularly trying day of warfare with the Trojans.

  “Why in the name of God didn’t he tell me more?” he murmured. He lifted his head, and his expression was grave. “I ought to have demanded more from him. Instead I allowed him to leave you there with no explanation, only a promise to look after you. Why didn’t he tell me?”

  I smoothed my skirts. “No doubt he expected to at some future time.”

  “That is it,” he said, comprehension breaking across his face. “He expected to tell me because he did not observe a threat to himself, only to you. He was not the intended target of this murder. You were.”

  I blinked at him. “That is preposterous. I mean it, Stoker. I think you have finally taken leave of your senses.”

  “I am fully in command of them, I assure you,” he replied coldly. “And if you would pause for the merest moment and consider what I am saying, you would see it too. Max did not come back to London alone, Veronica. He brought you. He did not take you to his home, but to mine, a place where no one would think to look for you. Good God, woman, he even told you he believed you were in danger! Why is it so difficult for you to believe someone killed Max in order to get to you?”

  “Because I am not that interesting,” I told him.

  “Someone wanted to get to you,” he went on. “They wanted you so badly they broke into your cottage. They followed you to London and they killed Max.” He softened his voice marginally. “Veronica, who would want to kill you?”

  “No one! You have known me for a handful of days, and yet I would wager you know me better than anyone else now living. I am as you see me. There are no mysteries here, Stoker,” I said, almost regretfully. “I wish that I could rend the veil and expose some great secret that would justify what has been done to the baron, but I cannot. I am a spinster reared in a collection of uninteresting villages scattered across England. I write papers about natural history and I collect butterflies and I indulge in harmless love affairs with unattached foreign gentlemen. I know no one; I am no one. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity,” I added helpfully.

  “There was no mistake,” he returned, his mouth tightening a little. “Someone wanted to harm you—so badly that they were willing to bludgeon an old man for the privilege. You know something.”

  “I know nothing,” I insisted, but even I could not deny that whatever had befallen the baron seemed to touch upon me, albeit tangentially. “He did say he knew my mother,” I told Stoker. It was a slender offering of peace, but it was all I had to give.

  “Who was your mother?”

  I spread my hands. “I have no idea. But if you and I are going to get to the bottom of this, we must stop playing at distrusting one another.”

  He curled a lip. “That’s rather like a horse thief lecturing the farmer on locking the barn door, is it not? I have come to a conclusion. You insist that you know nothing. I do not believe you. There is a possibility we may both be correct.”

  “Go on.”

  “It is just possible that you know something you do not realize you know.”

  He turned his head, and I noticed the way the lamplight burnished his hair. It had a blue gleam in this light, coal black but with something glimmering in the depths. It was a shame that such hair should be wasted on a man, I thought idly. Any fashionable woman would have given fifty pounds for a wig made of it.

  “Veronica?” He waved a hand in front of my face. “Pay attention when I am lecturing you. You can woolgather later.”

  “Very well. I admit, I have been less than forthcoming. I am done with it. Ask me what you like. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I ask only the same courtesy in return.” He opened his mouth, but before he could protest, I went on swiftly. “And I promise to ask only questions that may be pertinent to the investigation. You may keep your own secrets. Are we agreed?”

  I put out my hand, and after a long, agonizing moment, he took it.

  “Agreed. And as a pledge of good faith, you will take the first turn. He made no effort to find you after your first guardian, Miss Lucy Harbottle, died. It was only after her sister died and left you quite alone that he took the trouble to come to you. That begs the obvious q
uestion, what changed with Miss Nell Harbottle’s death?”

  I considered a moment. “Well, it left me finally and irrevocably alone in the world. I planned to leave Wren Cottage and begin my travels anew. But he could not have known it. I told no one save the vicar, and that only minutes before the baron arrived.”

  “Something else, then,” he prompted. “What of your inheritance? Did Miss Nell leave you money?”

  I smothered a laugh. “Hardly. There were a few notes and coins in her household box, but I left those behind to compensate the landlord for the damages.”

  “Bank accounts? Investments? Jewelry?”

  I shook my head at each of these. “The sole household account was in both of our names and has a current balance of sixteen shillings. I have a little money of my own for traveling, but I keep it in a separate account. As to investments, there were none, and Nell did not wear jewelry save a cross that I buried with her. She had never left it off as long as I had known her and it did not seem right to bury her without it.”

  His gaze was bright and inquisitive as a monkey’s. “Was it valuable?”

  I shrugged. “Not in the least.”

  Stoker gave a gusty sigh. “What else? What could have brought them together?” He seemed to put the question more to himself than to me, so I sat quietly, letting him think.

  He was silent some minutes as he pondered, then began to fire questions at me. “How did your aunts live? If there was no money in the bank, where did they acquire the funds to run the household? Did they have other friends? Did they correspond with anyone? Did they have peculiar habits?”

  I put up a hand. “One question at a time if we are to be rational about this. First, the money. I do not know from where it came. A sum was paid into the account every quarter. Aunt Nell was quite discreet upon the subject, but she did indicate it was a family legacy. And before you ask, no, I know nothing of her family save that she and Aunt Lucy were born and bred in London. Aunt Lucy did say once they two were the only ones left, so I presume the money was an annuity to be paid for the duration of their lives. As to friends and correspondence, I can tell you quite certainly they had none of either. They were perfectly content with their own society and went out very seldom. They attended church and occasionally served on committees, but they did not go out of their way to make friends. And once we left a village, they did not engage in correspondence with those we had left behind. What else?”

  “Peculiar habits,” he commented. “Anything that struck you at the time as curious.”

  “The only habit I can recall is that they insisted upon purchasing a newspaper every day and it had to be the Times. They liked to keep current on affairs of the world. Aunt Nell was quite serious, always preoccupied with needlework and the Bible. The only present she ever made me was a motto for my bedroom: ‘The Wages of Sin Is Death,’” I told him with a shudder.

  “Christ,” he said.

  “Exactly. But Aunt Lucy made up for it. She was lively and kind, a great gardener. She did not like my traveling, but she understood it. My first butterfly net was a present from her, and she gave me a compass to mark my first expedition,” I said, touching the little instrument pinned to my bodice. If I closed my eyes, I could still see her, with her cloud of fluffy white hair and her gentle hands, pressing it into my palm. “So you will always find your way home again, child,” she had said, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

  Stoker had fallen into a reverie, but he roused himself then, like an opium dreamer slowly emerging from a fugue. “I think I have it,” he said. “Your aunts were hiding out after committing a crime.”

  “Stoker, you astonish me. I cannot believe that your imagination could lead you so far astray as to suggest that those two harmless old women were criminals!”

  “Think of it,” he insisted. “It is the only logical solution. They have money, enough to live comfortably, but they will not divulge its source. They do not encourage friendships or correspondence. They move from village to village. It makes perfect sense,” he finished, sitting back with an air of satisfaction.

  “I can think of a dozen explanations just as likely, and none of them involving felonious old women,” I returned.

  “You cannot name one.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it abruptly. “Very well,” I said after a moment. “I cannot think of one at present, but I have no doubt I could, and something just as outlandish as you propose. Tell me, Stoker, since you are so persuaded as to their guilt, what crime do you think they committed?”

  My voice was sharp with sarcasm, but Stoker’s was triumphant. “Kidnapping.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I think they stole you, Veronica. You did not belong to either of them. Where did you come from? They must have taken you. Perhaps your nursemaid was inattentive or your mother very young. You were left in a pram somewhere, no doubt in a park or on a village green, and in a moment of inattention, the Harbottle ladies snatched you up and carried you off.”

  “Stoker, in spite of your protests to the contrary, I can only assume that your taste in literature tends towards the sensationalist and absurd. The Harbottle ladies did not carry me off. I was a foundling.”

  “Ah, and where, precisely, were you found?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I cannot say! I never asked and they never told me. They were very close about their past. We did not speak of such things.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  I puffed out a sigh. “I told you—gardening with Aunt Lucy, needlework and sin with Aunt Nell. Those were their sole interests and comprised the bulk of their conversation. Aunt Nell also supervised the cooking; Aunt Lucy taught me the rudiments of nursing. I read aloud to them in the evenings. That is the whole of it.”

  “It sounds a dreary life,” he said suddenly.

  “Of course it was dreary, but it was all I knew, and that made it bearable—at least until I discovered butterflying and the freedom it provided. When I was eighteen, I left on my first expedition to Switzerland in search of Alpine varieties. I sold the specimens to collectors and made enough money to fund another expedition, this one further afield, and that is how matters progressed for the next several years. The aunts did not like it, but the money was my own, and so they could not prevent me. I traveled, I came home for visits, and I nursed Aunt Lucy and later Aunt Nell.”

  “Tell me about your aunt Nell’s death.”

  I sighed. “A series of apoplexies. Her first was some months ago, a little after Christmas. It was quite a severe one, robbing her of much movement and most of her speech. The doctor wrote to me in Costa Rica and I organized my passage home. I found her much altered from the woman I had always known. The doctor dosed her heavily with morphia to keep her calm and quiet. A few months after her first attack, she suffered another apoplexy, much more violent than the first, and when she regained consciousness, it became clear she had entirely lost the power of speech. She tried to write, but that, too, was beyond her abilities, and the doctor said it was kinder to keep her under the spell of morphia until she passed. When she died, I will confess, it was a relief to me. I did not like to see her thus. She had always been a person of great energy and purpose, and it was difficult to see her reduced to so little.”

  “I can understand,” he said softly. I did not much care for his sympathy in that moment, and I hurried on. “Surely even you must see that this line of inquiry is a dead end. The baron’s past is a far likelier vein than mine. Let us begin with the poor gentleman himself. Had he enemies?”

  Stoker shook his head. “None of which I am aware.”

  “He was a foreigner. Do you know whence he came?”

  “Coburg. He studied in Brussels for a time and then attended university in Bonn.”

  “Excellent. And when did he come to this country?”

  “Early in the ’40s. He was a childhood frie
nd of Prince Albert. After the Prince Consort married Queen Victoria he had some trouble settling in, and he asked Max if he would come and make his home in England. Max had no ties of his own left in Germany. His parents were dead and he had no siblings, so he came.”

  “Did he see the prince often?”

  “Not very. The queen was a demanding wife,” Stoker added with a ghost of a smile. “But when she could spare him, the two men had the occasional dinner or ride together. Most often they corresponded by letter. I suspect the prince simply felt more at ease for having one of his own countrymen close at hand.”

  “No doubt,” I mused. “But as interesting as his connection with the prince might be, Prince Albert has been dead for decades and, as far as we know, the baron lived unmolested. If there was any sort of motive to harm him from his friendship with the prince, surely it would have caused some villain to act long ago.”

  “Agreed. So if the motive is not to be found in his friendship with the Prince Consort, we must look to his more recent past.”

  “How did you meet him?” I inquired.

  “He was a guest lecturer when I was at university. We had common interests, and he was kind enough to act as mentor to me when I had few friends. Later, much later, he saved me,” he finished simply.

  “Was that the debt you both spoke of when he left me with you? The reason you felt you owed it to him to protect me?”

  He nodded, and I thought that would be an end of it, but he spoke, each word as slow and heavy as if he were hewing them from a burial place—a burial place deep within himself. “When I was injured in Brazil, what followed was for me a very dark time. I do not speak of it. I do not even let myself think of it. But there are depths to which a man can sink, and I have plumbed them all. I could not bring myself out of it. I was content to stay there and to die there. My wounds had healed, but my body was in a far better state than the rest,” he recalled with a bitter twist of his mouth. “Max sailed halfway around the world to bring me home. If he had not made it his business to search me out, I would have stayed, rotting in a prison I had made for myself, too sunk in despair to find my way out again. It was Max who found me, who cleaned me up and brought me back to England.”