Consequences of Sin

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

  A PENGUIN MYSTERY

  CONSEQUENCES OF SIN

  Clare Langley-Hawthorne was raised in England and Australia. She was an attorney in Melbourne before moving to the United States, where she began her career as a writer. She lives in Oakland, California, with her family. Consequences of Sin is her first novel.

  Consequences of Sin

  An Edwardian Mystery

  Clare Langley-Hawthorne

  Penguin Books

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2007

  Published in Penguin Books 2008

  Copyright © Clare Langley-Hawthorne, 2007

  All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0198-5

  CIP data available

  Except in the United States of America, 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 without the publisher’s prior consent 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.

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  For Sam and Jasper

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to a great many people who made this book possible. First and foremost I am indebted to my husband, Tim; my parents, Pat and Paul; and my mother-in-law, Marie, for not only providing me with valuable support and encouragement but also looking after my twin babies, Sam and Jasper, when I needed to make some much needed revisions. Thanks also to my agent, Randi Murray, and my editor, Brett Kelly, for their wise counsel and enthusiastic support. I would like to thank my nanna and grandad who worked their entire lives in the mills and factories of Rishton and through whom I learned much of what I know about the north of England. I would like to thank Peter and Lorena for organizing and sharing my visit to the Orinoco delta, which helped inspire this story in the first place. Finally, this novel would have never been written if it wasn’t for the support of my personal cheerleading squad and writing group. To Pat, Gail, Melissa, Victoria, Eva, and Eileen: thank you for your unfailing belief that Ursula Marlow would one day make it into print.

  Consequences of Sin

  One

  London, October 1910

  When the telephone rang downstairs so early that Saturday morning, Ursula Marlow knew it could only be bad news. Moments later she heard a soft, hesitant tread on the stairs and then a tentative knock at her bedroom door. It was still quite dark. Ursula rose quickly from the four-poster bed, slid her feet into a pair of ivory satin slippers, and grabbed the tawny cashmere shawl that lay furled on her bedroom chair and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders.

  “It’s all right, Biggs,” she whispered through the bedroom door. “I’m awake…. I’ll come downstairs.”

  The door opened slowly, Biggs handing her the lamp as she stepped through the doorway.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Miss Stanford-Jones.”

  Really, Biggs could be so formal at times.

  Ursula descended the stairs, Biggs trailing behind her, dutiful and silent.

  She picked up the receiver in her left hand and leaned over the mouthpiece to answer.

  “Winifred, is that you?” she asked.

  “Sully—thank God. I had to call. Didn’t know who else to turn to…. It’s all frightfully shocking. I don’t even know if I can tell you. It’s just that there’s somebody here—here in my room—and, Sully—I think she’s dead.”

  Ursula was silent. The shawl around her shoulders slid noiselessly to the floor. Biggs, standing a respectful distance away, moved forward and picked it up. Ursula remained standing in the hallway in her white batiste nightgown. She realized that Winifred was right—who else could help her? Who else would have the connections to get this sorted—if “sorted” it could be? Who else but the daughter of one of the richest industrialists in England?

  “Don’t move. I’ll be over as soon as I can.” Ursula put down the receiver. “Biggs, run outside and get me a cab.”

  Biggs raised an eyebrow but complied.

  Ursula raced upstairs to dress quickly, without waking Julia, her maid, to assist her. The bedroom was cold despite the coal fire in the grate that still glowed weakly. Not wishing to wake anyone further in the household, particularly not her father, Ursula left the main electric lights off and readied herself in the meager light from her bedside lamp, struggling to lace up the long, straight corset on her own. “Damn and blast!” she muttered under her breath while hastily buttoning up the taupe linen dress Julia had laid out for her the night before. The clock on the mantelpiece struck five. Ursula impatiently pulled on a pair of black gabardine-and-leather boots she found discarded under a chair, leaving the laces half untied as she hurried down the stairway in the semidarkness. Biggs was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, umbrella in hand.

  “Never mind about the brolly!” Ursula exclaimed. “Is the cab here?”

  “Waiting outside,” Biggs replied calmly. “And, miss, I expect you’ll be needing this,” he said, handing over her coat and Morocco leather purse.

  Ursula held on tightly as the cab thundered its way down the dimly lit streets. A fine mist of rain was beginning to fall. The street lamps along Piccadilly Circus cast a luminous glow in the fog. A delivery cart made its way alongside them, its dark-coated
driver hunched over in the cold. After what seemed like hours, they turned on to Great Russell Street, past the imposing colonnades of the south front of the British Museum, and drove down Montague Street. The wheels grated against the pavement as they came to a halt outside a familiar white Georgian terrace house. The gas lamp on the street corner glowed hazily in the damp fog, but there were no lights on in the house. Ursula had come here many times for meetings of the Women’s Social and Political Union, but only during the day. At night it all looked alien and strange.

  Ursula met Winifred at one of the first WSPU meetings she attended, held in the Queen’s Hall. Although she knew her by sight from Somerville College, their paths rarely crossed. By the time Ursula went up to Oxford, Winifred was already in her final year and her reputation as a radical was firmly established. As Ursula sat listening to Winifred lecture on the rise of the Women’s Cooperative Guild, she had felt decidedly conspicuous in her fur-trimmed coat and hat. Her father’s name was, after all, synonymous with “oppression of the workers,” as Winifred so often put it.

  She felt this same conspicuousness tonight as she alighted from the cab. Her world was about to collide with Winifred’s, and she wasn’t sure now that she was at all prepared for the consequences. She had forgotten her hat and her gloves. The late-autumn wind chilled her to the bone. No doubt she looked ridiculous standing there in the early hours of the morning—her hair still coiled in the loose plait she wore at night. Ursula had spent most of her childhood being cosseted against the weather out of fear she, too, might succumb to the consumption that had claimed her mother. It eventually became almost instinctive that she rebel against such protectiveness. She regretted that impulse now and shivered. What was she doing here?

  “Are you goin’ to be all right, luv?” the cabbie asked. “Don’t look like no one’s home, if you ask me.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ursula replied with a smile, and reached into her purse to pay him.

  The cabbie looked unconvinced.

  “Truly,” Ursula reassured him, handing him the coins.

  He took them and tipped his cap, muttering something under his breath about “these modern women.”

  Ursula stepped back quickly from the curb as he drove off.

  She walked up and tentatively rang the doorbell, hearing its distinctive metallic clang echo through the seemingly deserted rooms. She wondered if Winifred was sitting upstairs waiting in the dark. Ursula had never been upstairs, but her imagination was quite capable of conjuring up a terrible and macabre scene. The hallway and living room, which she had seen many a time, remained silent and dark. There was no sound or movement. Ursula hesitated, then rang the bell again. Dark imaginings stirred within her—perhaps something far worse had occurred since that hurried phone call, which now seemed a lifetime ago.

  The door opened suddenly, and Ursula quickly entered. Winifred stood holding a thick yellow candle. Wax dripped onto her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “It’s upstairs…” she spoke hoarsely.

  “Can you bear to tell me what happened?” Ursula whispered, putting her purse down on the hall stand.

  “That’s the most awful thing about it all,” Winifred answered. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what happened. I don’t…I don’t remember anything.”

  “Can you show me, then?” Ursula asked, secretly terrified by the thought of what she might find.

  Winifred’s ashen face spoke of many horrors. Horrors that would have been inconceivable only a week before, as Ursula sat in this same parlor savoring afternoon tea. Ursula remembered how warm the room felt as the afternoon light streamed in through the windows, how the smell of freshly toasted tea-cakes and honey filled the room and the chatter of conversation reached a fever pitch over the fate of the Liberal government. As she followed Winifred along the hallway, these images swiftly retreated from her mind, like the sun disappearing below the horizon.

  The scene upstairs was surreal and frightening. Everything was bathed in shadows and half-light. The coal fire was still smoldering, and the ebonized mirror above the mantelpiece caught the faint flickers of the dying candlelight. The bedclothes were all tangled about the body. Rough sheets. Heavy gold brocade bed-cover. Vermilion-and-black Oriental cushions. It had the air of a sultan’s harem, half discovered in the darkness. The window was ajar, and the curtains began to billow open with an unseen breeze, allowing the misty moonlight to enter the room. Ursula could just make out the angular limbs of a young girl. Naked, facedown on the bed. A dark stain beneath her, spreading out on the sheets.

  Ursula knew that this was something too terrible for either of them to handle.

  “Have you touched anything?” Ursula asked.

  “No, I just…I just…”

  “It’s all right. Don’t…don’t say anything. We must get help.”

  Ursula carefully took the candle from Winifred’s grasp and then led her out of the bedroom and back down the stairs. Ursula turned on the Rayo lamp that stood on a plain hallway table. Frantic thoughts coursed through her head, but none seemed to stop or make any sense. Her legs didn’t seem able to support her weight, and as she gripped the side of the table, she felt the room spin.

  She had to pull herself together.

  Ursula took a deep breath.

  “Why don’t you wait in the parlor?” she asked.

  Winifred remained standing at the foot of the stairs, a vacant look on her face.

  “Freddie…”

  Winifred showed no signs of having heard her.

  “Freddie,” Ursula repeated, “where is your telephone?” But there was still no response.

  Ursula left Winifred standing at the foot of the stairs as she walked back along the hallway toward the kitchen. Switching on the electric light, she soon saw the distinctive wooden box mounted on the wall. The shiny black earpiece was off the hook and dangling from a thin cord. Quickly, Ursula walked over and replaced it.

  Ursula had never been in this section of the house before. She peered around the doorway from where the telephone was mounted and looked into the kitchen. She couldn’t resist turning on the light, almost as a reassurance that nothing else nightmarish or strange resided in the house. The kitchen was comfortingly ordinary, with the cast-iron stove in the corner, the long wooden table in the center, and the rack of plates above the sink. It also looked recently cleaned—only a Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin lay out on the counter. The edge of a blue tea towel was visible in the sink. Ursula wondered (perhaps surprisingly for the first time) how Winifred could afford to live as she did. Clearly she had someone come in regularly to clean—perhaps a local girl—but it was obvious that no one lived in. Given the time, Ursula also realized that whoever the domestic help was, she was likely to arrive early.

  “What are you doing?”

  Winifred’s voice from behind made her jump.

  “Nothing…just looking for the telephone,” Ursula replied cautiously as she turned her head to see Winifred standing in the hallway, her face illuminated by the glow of the kitchen light. Winifred was staring at her with a peculiar expression. It was an unnerving combination of wariness, fear, and anger, like a lioness, crouched down, ears back, deciding whether to attack or flee.

  Winifred pointed to the telephone on the wall. “And you needn’t worry,” she called out, as if reading Ursula’s mind. “Mary doesn’t come on weekends. My aunt’s generosity doesn’t extend that far.” Without any further word Ursula knew she must strike up all her nerve to face what had to be done.

  She lifted the receiver, and the operator answered. Ursula then summoned her courage to ask to be connected to the one person in the world to whom she dreaded being in debt. Lord Oliver Wrotham. Thirty-nine Brook Street, Mayfair. King’s Counsel and her father’s most trusted adviser. The only man who could help her now.

  The telephone call that followed was a blur. Ursula could recall only fragments of the conversation—disembodied voices, mostly her own. She couldn’t re
member his initial reaction, only a cool voice telling her to remain downstairs—not to return to the bedroom on any account—and then a faintly sarcastic tone that inquired whether her father was aware of her acquaintance with Miss Stanford-Jones. A rosy flush of shame crept up Ursula’s face as she recalled her father’s warning to her after his first introduction to Winifred: “Never trust a woman who wears brown wool trousers and smokes a Dunhill pipe.”

  Ursula and Winifred were in the front parlor with the curtains drawn when Lord Wrotham announced his arrival with a hard, sharp rap on the front door. Ursula grasped her friend’s hand as they sat side by side on the buttoned-back sofa. Winifred remained seated, her eyes staring at the floor, as Ursula rose to her feet.

  “I’ll get it,” she said.

  She walked across the tiles, her footsteps echoing down the hallway. No sooner had she begun to open the door than a tall, dark shadow pushed roughly against her, closing the door almost as soon as it had been opened. In one quick movement, the shadow had removed his coat and hat and placed them on the hallway table.

  He straightened up, eyed her with cool, appraising blue-gray eyes, and said, “You need to leave, now.”

  “What…?”

  This was not the greeting Ursula expected. Anger she could deal with. Arrogance she was used to. But this? The command, so calmly made, seemed a bit absurd.

  “You must leave now. Did anyone see you enter?”

  “I…I don’t know…. Apart from the cabdriver, I don’t think there was anyone. But what could that possibly have to do with—”