Consequences of Sin

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

  Ursula laughed despite herself. “Right ho! Thanks for the warning. No need to worry, though, I’ll be home well before then.”

  Biggs closed the car door and tapped on the roof, signaling Samuels it was time to depart.

  Oxford had been Ursula’s dream, a refuge from the profligacy and materialism of London. That she should marry well was not lost on her. Now that she was twenty-two, she was expected to attend all the modish parties, wear all the latest fashions, and make only polite conversation (neither too witty nor too indiscreet) at the frequent afternoon soirees held by her father’s great friend and confidante Mrs. Eudora Pomfrey-Smith at her Chelsea home. Ursula was to be wooed and won, but, much to everyone’s chagrin, she had so far refused to comply, preferring to dream of past debates in the Junior Common Room of Somerville College rather than winning the hand of one of the many chosen admirers who frequented Mrs. Pomfrey-Smith’s parlor.

  The London streets were crowded with cars and carriages. The roadworks in Piccadilly Circus filled the side lanes with acrid steam. Newspaper sellers carrying large posters shouted out the latest headlines, while a man with a sandwich board advertising Tomkins & Co. Gentlemen’s Tailors paced up and down the pavement.

  As they weaved their way through the city, trying to avoid pedestrians, horses, and bicycles, Ursula adjusted her hat and tucked back the stray hairs that insisted on coming loose. One of her chief vanities was her long auburn hair. She loved how, when loose, it tumbled down her back in seaweedy strands and curls. As a girl she’d imagined herself posing for a painting as the enchantress Morgan le Fay, head thrown back, casting her spells.

  How silly those girlish dreams seemed now.

  The car slowly wended its way toward the Embankment. They passed the WSPU duplicating office on the Strand, where Ursula volunteered one day a week. She and Winifred had spent many an hour standing behind a trestle table cranking out copies of hand-bills. The memory made her smile briefly until she remembered the look on Winifred’s face the last time she saw her, stricken and pale among the dark shadows. Inevitably, the image of Lord Wrotham also intruded, and she tried to push it out of her mind as quickly as she could.

  Ursula first met Lord Oliver Wrotham at one of Mrs. Pomfrey-Smith’s soirees. She was only eighteen at the time and was immediately struck by his indifference to her. He clearly had not been invited as a potential suitor. She had heard of him, obviously, as her father spoke of his young legal adviser now and again (especially when trade-union matters were concerned—which was more and more often these days). Up until this time, however, the rare visit by Lord Wrotham to the Marlows’ Belgravia home resulted in his being hastily ushered into her father’s study or the library. Ursula would rush downstairs to catch a glimpse, but the most she had ever seen was the back of a tall, dark-haired man as he passed through the doorway.

  This particular soiree had an Indian theme. Mrs. Eudora Pomfrey-Smith (“Dolly” to her close friends) was particularly fond of themes. She was also fascinated by transcendentalism and the possibility of communing with the dead. She had once suggested a séance for Ursula, to try to contact her dead mother, a proposition that had made Ursula’s father promptly explode with anger, and it was never mentioned again. The themed parties now took a more subdued and less morbid tone. The servants were instructed to wear suitable costumes (the footmen in turbans, the serving girls with orange silk flowers in their caps), and guests were invited to “dress appropriately.” For Ursula this meant she was allowed to wear a raw silk Fortuny dress of dark crimson with a matching garland of silk flowers in her braided upturned hair.

  “Ursula, my dear.” Mrs. Pomfrey-Smith swept before her. “I simply must introduce you to someone. Now then, tidy your hair—that’s it—and for God’s sake smile. You spend too much of your time with your nose buried in books, I daresay. Your eyes look positively squinty! Stop frowning and chin up—come on now!”

  Ursula allowed Mrs. Pomfrey-Smith to lead her across the room to where a tall man, in his early thirties, stood talking to Ursula’s father in hushed tones. As she approached, her father placed a hand on this man’s arm, and their conversation ceased. Ursula was used to seeing a flushed face and a hesitant smile whenever she was introduced, so the cool, appraising gaze from this man’s blue-gray eyes was unsettling.

  “Lord Wrotham, my daughter, Ursula.”

  She returned his stare without a smile.

  “Ursula, you’ll have heard me speak of Lord Wrotham, I’m sure. Now you finally have the chance to meet.”

  Lord Wrotham inclined his head slightly. “It is indeed a pleasure.” Yet his tone seemed to indicate something to the contrary.

  Ursula smiled coolly. “I am always interested to meet Papa’s business associates. Tell me, was it you who helped put those poor strikers out on the streets? One hundred men. With families. I hear most have not found other occupations, and their wives can be seen lining up outside the factory gates in Blackburn begging for food.”

  Ursula’s father sighed.

  Lord Wrotham replied, with a ghost of a smile, “I did indeed assist your father with his recent trade-union troubles. I am proud to say that the matter resolved itself entirely to our satisfaction. If we had met the unionists’ demands, the Blackburn factory would have been forced to close as uneconomical. Then, my dear, all three hundred workers would be out on the streets.”

  The sound of Samuels switching off the car engine outside the Tudor Gate to the Inner Temple brought Ursula’s thoughts abruptly back to the present. She caught sight of Tom Cumberland, the manager of her father’s dockside warehouses and one of Mrs. Pomfrey-Smith’s chosen suitors, heading toward Bouverie Street, his coat collar turned up against the wind. Ursula groaned and slid down in her seat. Tom ran frequent messages for his employer from the dockyards, and Ursula did not wish to be seen. The thought of explaining her presence to him was too much. Besides, she generated far too much gossip belowstairs as it was.

  Tom passed by quickly, and Ursula clumsily got out of the rear seat, declining Samuels’s assistance and instructing him to “wait here for my return.”

  She smoothed her skirt, checked her hat, and then proceeded to walk into the quadrangle, conscious of the curious glances she was eliciting from the steady stream of black-suited men walking from room to room across the flagstones. Some were in wigs and gowns, others (clerks, she presumed) in single-breasted suits. Puffed-up and straight-backed, they passed by her with supercilious stares. Ursula returned their gaze and straightened herself up. She passed a gilt-edged sign bearing the names of the barristers by stairwell and floor. On the left was written LORD OLIVER WROTHAM, KC—ROOM ELEVEN. She hurried up the stairs.

  Ursula squeezed past a crush of people outside room six, and headed up to the third floor, where she knocked sharply on the black-lacquered door with the number 11 emblazoned on it in gold leaf. A small man with a graying beard and a balding head answered. Lord Wrotham’s clerk eyed Ursula warily.

  “I’m afraid Lord Wrotham is not receiving visitors at this time. If you are a prospective client, you need to see your solicitor, and I must advise you that his lordship is currently much engaged. He is accepting no new cases at the moment—”

  Ursula had to interrupt him. “I am Ursula Marlow. You must be”—she glanced quickly at the doorplate—“Mr. Hargreaves. Be so kind as to inform his lordship that I wish to see him immediately.”

  Mr. Hargreaves didn’t move.

  “You are no doubt aware of the valuable and lucrative relationship Lord Wrotham has with my father,” Ursula continued. “So I feel confident that you will convey my message to Lord Wrotham with great…haste.”

  Mr. Hargreaves still made no move.

  “I do not believe that his lordship is expecting any member of the Marlow family today,” he said slowly.

  Ursula was unimpressed. “Kindly inform him that, nonetheless, a member of the Marlow family is here to see him—and that the matter is of some import.”

  “His lo
rdship is currently engaged in very important pretrial matters.”

  “Mr. Hargreaves, are you deliberately trying to delay me?”

  He eyed Ursula again. She felt a flush rise in her cheeks, but she met his gaze with a resolute stare.

  “Please come in and wait,” he said finally. “I will see if Lord Wrotham can meet with you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ursula entered the doorway and was led down a narrow hall lined with bookshelves filled with leather-bound law reports.

  “Please wait here.” Hargreaves directed her to an armchair in the far corner of a room at the end of the hallway. Behind the armchair was a row of wooden filing cabinets, and on the clerk’s table stood a tall stack of paper bundles, each tied with pink ribbon, in a wire tray.

  Hargreaves knocked on a door to the right of the table and then exited silently, leaving Ursula to sit down and try to compose herself. She had rehearsed the conversation in her mind earlier in the day (all morning, to be exact), but now she couldn’t recall how she intended to start or finish—not even the questions she had so carefully thought out. Her mind was blank.

  She had fully expected Lord Wrotham to keep her waiting. Fully expected that he would refuse to discuss the case with her or would send a message to this effect via his clerk. Instead, however, he appeared in the doorway almost immediately. Ursula hadn’t even time to check that her hat was still on straight. He seemed surprised. Perhaps a little unnerved. Vulnerable, even. It was as though she, suddenly trespassing on his domain, had caught him unawares.

  “Miss Marlow,” he said. “This is indeed a…well…unexpected, nevertheless.”

  “I am here to discuss the Stanford-Jones case. Has any progress been made?” Ursula heard herself speak quite clearly and forcefully, even though she felt her last shred of confidence waning under the guarded stare that met hers. She had always thought of Lord Wrotham as a tall and aristocratically thin man (all taut spine and stiff upper lip), but now he seemed arched and gaunt. His hair, normally combed back smoothly in place, was beginning to fall forward across his eyes. He had the look of someone who had just received a shock and was still recovering.

  “Good heavens!” Ursula cried out involuntarily. “What on earth has happened?!”

  Her mind leaped to all sorts of conclusions. Freddie dead in a gutter…. Her father murdered in his train compartment…. Her imagination needed very little encouragement to run away with itself.

  Lord Wrotham raised his eyebrows. His composure was quickly returning. “Happened?”

  “Have you had bad news? Has something happened to Freddie?”

  “Freddie?”

  “Winifred.”

  “Miss Stanford-Jones?…No, nothing else has happened to her as far as I’m aware.”

  “Then what?” Ursula asked. “You look as if you’ve received the most awful news.”

  Lord Wrotham ran his long fingers though his hair, smoothing it back into place.

  “Please, Miss Marlow,” he replied. “Spare me the dramatics and come inside.”

  Ursula followed Lord Wrotham into his richly furnished office. Above his leather-top desk hung a magnificent tapestry, like an Edward Burne-Jones painting, only intricately and beautifully woven. The scene depicted an ethereal-looking woman stepping forth from the shadows of a tower, the scales of justice precariously balanced in her hands. The tower was dark and covered in ivy, while the lady was bathed in a soft golden light as she emerged from an archway. Ursula had expected to find Lord Wrotham in a stark, austere room with nothing but a framed copy of his degree from Oxford’s Balliol College on the wall.

  She looked around further, trying to adjust herself to each new element she encountered. There was an antique terrestrial globe mounted on a pedestal, a stuffed blue-and-yellow bird encased in glass, and a display cabinet containing some kind of illuminated manuscript that was almost hidden in the corner. In her mind, with his streamlined and finely cut features, Lord Wrotham was like a machine in which every fragment, every muscle, seemed efficient and unyielding. That he should have chosen to surround himself with objects of such rich sensuality unsettled her.

  In the center of the room were two leather armchairs for clients.

  “Please take a seat,” Lord Wrotham said.

  Ursula removed her hat and gloves and sat down.

  Lord Wrotham calmly walked over to the far side of the room, replacing a red and tan book on its shelf.

  “Tea?” he asked, turning toward her.

  Ursula shook her head. “I guess we must start with the usual pleasantries,” she said. “But I feel that under the circumstances…”

  Lord Wrotham walked in front of her and reached down to open a silver cigarette box on his desk.

  Ursula was piqued but determined to remain calm. “I want an update on the Stanford-Jones case,” she said. “As you refused to answer my letters and I had no response to my calls, I believed that a personal visit was in order.”

  “Indeed.” Lord Wrotham lit the cigarette and sat down behind his desk.

  Ursula noticed there was another doorway, almost obscured by the tapestry above Lord Wrotham’s desk. The door opened a fraction and then shut quickly. Mr. Hargreaves, no doubt.

  There was a long, cold pause. Lord Wrotham did not speak. Ursula smoothed her skirt, trying to control her anger.

  The clock on the mantel struck half past two. Lord Wrotham reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a fob watch. He flicked open the case to double-check the time.

  “You have an appointment?” Ursula asked, irritation growing in her voice.

  “I am due back in court at three.”

  “But of course,” she murmured, her jaw starting to clench from the effort of having to remain civil. Impatience and frustration were starting to get the better of her. The door opened again, as if on cue, and the balding head of Mr. Hargreaves appeared. Hargreaves coughed, to which Lord Wrotham responded with a peremptory nod of his head.

  Ursula caught a glimpse of the anteroom with its mirror, washbasin, and stand. Lord Wrotham’s wig and gown were hanging on a coatrack. Hargreaves sighed and closed the door.

  “My apologies,” Lord Wrotham said calmly. “Mr. Hargreaves is not known for his subtlety.”

  “Nor his manners,” Ursula responded dryly. “He certainly made it quite clear that I had no business being here.” She shifted in her seat.

  “Now then, about that tea…” Lord Wrotham began to say.

  Ursula rose to her feet. She’d had just about enough of the small talk.

  “Have you or the police questioned Miss Stanford-Jones about what happened?” she asked, her lace-up ankle boots making a taptap sound on the polished floor.

  “Please sit down,” he said more sternly.

  “Pray remember,” she replied tartly, “that I am not one of your dogs. You do not need to wave your hand and command me to sit. I am quite capable of deciding whether to sit or stand on my own.”

  She cast him a defiant look, but Lord Wrotham, taking a slow draw on his cigarette, appeared not to notice.

  She was still standing when he finally said, “Miss Marlow, naturally my colleagues at the Metropolitan Police have had a number of discussions with Miss Stanford-Jones. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to disclose—”

  “Then what are you at liberty to disclose?!” Ursula interrupted crossly.

  “My dear,” he began smoothly, “you must understand—”

  Lord Wrotham stopped in midsentence. Deciding to take a different tack, Ursula had walked over to his desk, come around to his side, and sat down on the edge, less than a foot away from him. In her doing so, her skirt brushed lightly against the back of his left hand. Lord Wrotham sat stock-still. Ursula sensed the power in her trespass, and it was intoxicating. Lord Wrotham lifted the cigarette to his lips and let it hover for a moment in midair. He raised an eyebrow slightly. Ursula leaned forward.

  “I was rather hoping that you would have more information,” she said with th
e merest hint of a smile.

  “Really?”

  “Yes—I felt sure that you would have had something for me.” She stared at him, acutely aware of the narrow space between them—of the starched edge of his collar and smooth skin of his throat—so close. He smelled of tobacco and bergamot. A heady combination.

  “I have nothing that can answer the real question you have,” Lord Wrotham said, his voice dispelling the tension.

  “And what question is that?”

  “Whether she really murdered that girl.”

  Ursula rose quickly. She had trespassed too far.

  “Lord Wrotham…” Ursula began, raising a hand to her throat to steady the indignation in her voice. “I can assure you that Miss Stanford-Jones is entirely innocent! I know her! There is no way she could ever be capable of such a thing!”

  “Miss Marlow,” Lord Wrotham replied, extinguishing his cigarette with a light rap on the edge of the silver ashtray, “I have seen dozens of cases where people have done the very thing no one thought them capable of. Prima facie, even you must admit, the evidence against Miss Stanford-Jones doesn’t look good.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Ursula retorted.

  “I suggest you leave that for the Metropolitan Police to decide,” he responded dryly.

  “Surely there must be something—anything—to mitigate the circumstances?”

  “Well, attending Madame Launois’s establishment certainly wasn’t one of them.”

  “Madame Launois?” Ursula frowned. She felt as if she were suddenly under cross-examination.

  Lord Wrotham’s eyes bore into her.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she answered frankly.

  Lord Wrotham leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands. Ursula suspected he had been trying to draw her out and was irritated.

  “What about this establishment?” Ursula demanded. “Could it be that someone there had a motive for murdering poor Laura?”

  Lord Wrotham shrugged. His interest seemed to have waned as quickly as it had flared.