Banquet of Lies

by Michelle Diener

  “They were surprised to see Mavis. Up at the big house.” She waited a beat, then turned her head. “But Mrs. Jones seems a decent type; Mr. Jones, too. He read the letter, and looked pretty gob-smacked, I have to say. But there was no questioning it. He took Mavis in, gave her a room. Said how they’d be needing her right enough, if the Barringtons were coming back.”

  The Barringtons. Plural. Pain stabbed at her, a quick, lethal strike, because her father wasn’t coming back. She wound her arms around herself.

  Iris rubbed her hands close to the flames. “Think they’re a bit worried about it, truth be told. They’re old, and they’re fine for looking after an empty place. But not a house full o’ life.”

  Gigi said nothing. What could she say to that that wouldn’t betray her? That wouldn’t give her agony away?

  “Mavis look less upset?” she said at last, as the silence stretched out and she found some control.

  “Thanks to you.” Iris turned, let her back toast a little. “How’d you know about that job, then? How’d you swing it?”

  Gigi shook her head. “That’s a private matter. The important thing is Mavis is safe and warm and has a new job.”

  “True enough.” Iris turned back again, her body relaxing as it heated up. She gave Gigi another little sidelong look, and there was no mistaking she was still curious. “Babs gone up?”

  “Yes. Harry and Rob went out. Edgars, too.”

  “Who’s looking after his lordship, then?” Iris asked, eyebrows raised.

  “He’s out as well.”

  “Well, I’ll go up.” Iris took a step toward the stairs, then pivoted back. “How could he turn on her? He liked her. He took her in.”

  “He’s under strain. Mostly of his own making, but he’d like to blame it on me. Maybe some of it is my fault, but he’s responsible for his own behavior.” Gigi tightened her lips. “He reacted without thinking.”

  “How can you send someone out to starve without thinking?” Iris asked, her voice soft. “Even if he’d lost his temper, he could have come back during dinner, told her to stay.”

  “That would have meant he’d have to admit he was wrong. Just changing his mind would be a confession he’d made a mistake.”

  Iris nodded. “And God forbid His Edginess would ever be less than perfect.”

  Gigi had never heard her call Edgars His Edginess before. She’d seemed to disapprove of the others saying it.

  “If it makes a difference, when I told him I’d got her a new job, he was shocked.”

  “Maybe he did plan to change his mind?”

  Gigi nodded at Iris’s half-hopeful look. “Perhaps.” She sighed. “He’s very unhappy with me.”

  “Don’t you go leaving.” Iris took a step toward her, as if to grab hold of her. “Don’t let him run you out, too. It’s nicer here since you came.”

  “I . . .” Gigi shook her head. She didn’t want to lie, but Iris took her headshake for a denial, and exhaled.

  “I don’t know how you jigged it, but thank you for fixing Mae up. She didn’t deserve what she got tonight, and you set it straight.”

  Gigi watched her climb the stairs, and wondered how she was going to handle things when it came time to tell the truth.

  She dragged the only armchair in the room to the fire and curled up in it, waiting for Aldridge to return.

  She must have dozed off, for the bang of the kitchen door slamming open startled her awake. A freezing wind blasted through the kitchen and ripped the warmth out of it like a blanket pulled off in the night.

  Her heart thumping in her chest, she stood, half-disoriented, and saw Edgars walking too carefully, too bright-eyed, down the stairs. He placed each foot down as if he were walking across ice, the door open and forgotten behind him. Rain and leaves, a few pieces of newspaper, blew and swirled around him.

  “The door,” she said, and he looked behind him, shrugged, and kept walking down.

  Shivering in the onslaught of cold air, she strode, temper tightening around her like a net, toward the stairs to close the door.

  Edgars caught her arm as she moved past him, his grip strong and punishing. “I’m better than you, you miserable Frenchie. Better than you by far.” He tried to shake her, but she jerked out of his hold, heart hammering, and ran up the stairs. She slammed the door and turned to face him, breathing hard.

  Whether she should have shut herself in or let herself out with Edgars turned drunk and mean she didn’t know. But the alternative was the storm raging outside and the shadow man.

  Edgars was less of a threat than they were.

  “I’ll do for you. Send you packing. See if I don’t.” He waggled a finger at her.

  “You’d be fired, and you know it, if you tried to do anything of the sort.” She didn’t know if this was true, but she believed Edgars thought it might be.

  He blew rudely through pursed lips. “Maybe the satisfaction of seeing you gone will be ’nough.”

  “I doubt you’ll think so when you’re sober.” She walked cautiously down the stairs and gave him a wide berth. “And I think you’d better hope his lordship doesn’t need you when he gets back tonight.”

  “His lordship can kiss my arse. And you’d know about that, wouldn’t you?” He gave her a leer. “Given you a nice big kiss there, has he? When you were rolling around outside like animals in heat?”

  Edgars stumbled a little as he wound his way to the cellar. “I need a drink, after the walk from th’ pub. Nice Bordeaux in here, had my eye on it a while.” He said the words staccato, pronouncing them perfectly as he took painfully long to find the key to the door and open it.

  He could get fired for drinking the wine. Gigi knew of more than one butler who had been.

  She gnawed the inside of her lip as she listened to him fumbling around. She didn’t want him on the streets. On her conscience. And she wouldn’t be offering him a place at Goldfern. That was out of the question.

  He stepped back into the kitchen at last, holding a bottle high in one hand. “Got it.” But there was something in his face, a sort of panic, that made her think he’d come a little to his senses and was wondering what on earth he was doing.

  Behind her, the door slammed open again, the sound making her jump.

  Edgars started as well, and she saw the bottle drop from his hand, saw him try to grab it as it fell and smashed at his feet.

  He looked up, aghast, and Gigi was grateful for the excuse to turn away from his stricken face, to look at Rob and Harry as they fought the door closed.

  “Been waiting the weather out down at a coffeehouse, but we realized there weren’t no letting up.” Harry turned the key in the lock.

  He must have noticed the silence in the room, and, with Rob, looked down at the widening pool of red wine at Edgars’ feet.

  “Accident?” he said.

  “Your sudden arrival startled Mr. Edgars. That door crashes open loud enough to wake the dead.” Gigi spoke easily, and went to the sink to get a mop and a dustpan.

  “Would you and Rob find all the glass? I think Mr. Edgars needs to change and clean his shoes before the wine soaks into them.”

  Harry took the dustpan cheerfully enough, but she saw Rob give Edgars a hard stare.

  “His lordship waiting for that?” he asked. “Want me to serve him something else?”

  There was silence. Edgars had yet to say a word, and Gigi wondered if he thought himself capable, now that he was shocked into a semblance of sobriety.

  He lifted a foot, wiggled it to dislodge some glass, and staggered a little. He clutched at the doorframe for balance. “His lordship’s not back yet.” Then he lifted horror-filled eyes to Gigi. “Is he?”

  She shook her head.

  Rob’s face hardened as Edgars got up the nerve to make for his rooms, each step a squelch of pungent red wine and the odd crunch of glass. He couldn’t walk a straight line, and the silence stretched out, painful as the sound of metal scraping on cobblestones. He scrabbled for his door ha
ndle, got it open on the third try and slammed himself inside.

  “He’s plowed,” Harry said, with a hush in his voice.

  “Top-heavy, and no doubt about it.” Rob slid her a look. “Not on his lordship’s booze?”

  Harry, bending down to delicately pick up a large piece of glass, whipped his head up, eyes wide.

  “No.” She looked at the wide-open cellar door. Shook her head. “No.”

  “Or not yet. Had a mind to try the Bordeaux?” Rob lifted a piece of glass with the label on it, stained and wet but still legible.

  Gigi shrugged.

  “You could point the finger. Get him in a right fix. Or tossed out, even.” Rob threw the last piece of glass into the bin, and she started to mop. “ ’E don’t like you. So why don’t you?”

  She squeezed out the mop, poured the wine and water down the sink, and filled the bucket again. “I don’t care for a fight with Mr. Edgars.”

  “Some would.” Rob leaned back against the dresser while she finished up. Harry stood close to the fire, watching them both.

  “I’m not some.”

  “No, Cook. You’re not.” Rob turned to the stairs up to his room, Harry trailing behind him. “I’m not sure what you are, but you’re not the common run o’ things, that’s for sure.”

  She stood alone, mop still in her hand, for a long while after he and Harry had gone up.

  There wasn’t a sound from Edgars’ rooms, and she hoped Aldridge didn’t need him tonight. She mopped the trail he’d left from the cellar to his room, then closed the cellar-room door.

  She wondered where his lordship was.

  The dying fire popped, and then the logs collapsed in on themselves.

  She shook herself. Wherever he was, it looked like she wasn’t going to share her secrets with him tonight.

  26

  Greenway’s clerk, Mr. Unwin, was twitchy. He stood in his tiny hallway, unable to keep still, reminding Jonathan of an enlisted soldier he’d known who’d been caught in a cannon blast. He’d come away without a scratch, but thereafter, on the battlefield or not, he seemed to expect another blast at any time—one that would end his life.

  “I don’t mean no disrespect, my lord, but Mr. Greenway told me to keep quiet about where he’s gone.” Unwin rubbed his hands together in an agony of indecision.

  Jonathan took out the official letter Durnham had given him and handed it over.

  Unwin looked at the Crown seal and his hands shook. “I don’t know what to do. Mr. Greenway were really clear. . . .”

  “When I came to see Mr. Greenway the other day, I wasn’t able to tell him a few things—in the interests of international relations. But it is now felt that it would be more useful to speak to Mr. Greenway frankly, and see if he knows anything that could help us.”

  Jonathan watched as Unwin smoothed out the paper, as if it would somehow smooth out the tricky situation he was in, and read the short note Durnham had penned. He lifted his head. “Says here to give you my full cooperation, in the name of the king.” He rubbed the side of his cheek. “I’d want to keep this letter. Show Mr. Greenway I ’ad no choice.”

  “Certainly.”

  At last, Unwin invited him to sit in the small parlor at the front of his neat little house. Jonathan lowered himself onto a surprisingly fashionable sofa with dark green and maroon stripes, and waited for Unwin to settle himself into a large armchair.

  “Mr. Greenway closed the office, my lord. Right after you came in to see ’im. I don’t know when he actually left. He’d ’ave ’ad to make arrangements, I’m sure.”

  “Left for where?” Jonathan wondered what instructions Barrington could have given his lawyer for such a quick response.

  “To where Sir Barrington was staying, in Stockholm, my lord.”

  “He went to see Barrington? In Sweden?” Jonathan wished again that he could have told Greenway about Barrington’s death when he’d seen him. Could have prevented this wild-goose chase.

  Unwin gave a decisive nod.

  “But why?”

  “They ’ad a sort of system, as Mr. Greenway put it. Sir Barrington would send Mr. Greenway a note every third day. Sometimes, with the post being what it is, it would be delayed a little, or two would come at once. But we’re missing three o’ them already, my lord, and tomorrow, if nothing comes, it’ll be four.”

  “What was the system for?”

  Unwin looked away. “Not my place to say, my lord.”

  “Let’s make it your place for the moment, Mr. Unwin.”

  Unwin winced. “My understanding—nothing Mr. Greenway told me, mind, but what I worked out for myself—is that Sir Barrington was involved in things. Dangerous things, sometimes. Scared he’d land himself in trouble somewhere, and no one would be able to get him out.”

  “No one?”

  “Well, no one official, was my understanding. That he’d be on ’is own if he got caught with something the Crown would find embarrassing. That he’d ’ave to pretend it was all ’is own doin’. So he’d be stuck.”

  “And he wanted Mr. Greenway to come to wherever he was and help him?” That would be a sensible precaution, Jonathan thought, his opinion of Barrington climbing even higher. If he were caught with incriminating documentation, it would be very hard for Whitehall to swoop to the rescue without their admitting a part in it.

  But Unwin was shaking his head. “No. Not him. Though, o’ course, if Mr. Greenway could do something for him, he would. No, it was to get Miss Barrington safe. Mr. Greenway was to drop everything and keep Miss Barrington safe, make sure she wasn’t alone somewhere with Sir Barrington in jail or worse, and with no one to turn to.”

  “And you say three letters were already overdue when I came yesterday?” That would make sense. It was over nine days since Barrington had died.

  “Yes. Mr. Greenway was already twitchy about it, but when you came to tell him about the break-in, and someone looking through Sir Barrington’s letters, well, that did it.” Unwin heaved a sigh. “Like there was a fire under him, it was.”

  Jonathan recalled Dervish had had to move immediately to catch a boat leaving for Stockholm. If Greenway had moved a little slower, been delayed even slightly, he might have missed it. Might be cooling his heels in Dover right now, waiting for the next boat to leave.

  “Thank you, Mr. Unwin. You’ve done the right thing, and I promise you, there’ll be no trouble from Mr. Greenway over this.” Jonathan stood, eager to be on his way. If he could reach Dover while Greenway was still there, he could finally do something useful in all this.

  If Greenway had missed the boat, he would try to get to Sweden another way, rather than wait the week for the next ship. Pay passage on a fishing vessel, perhaps, or a private boat.

  But that would take time. Time Jonathan could use to reach him, if he left without delay.

  And if Greenway had made the boat with Dervish, he wondered if the two men would meet, get talking and realize they shared the same goals.

  Doubtful.

  Dervish was as forthcoming as a stone, and Greenway not much better.

  He gave Unwin a quick wave as he jogged down the path to the carriage Durnham had loaned him for the journey. He looked up to the driver, huddled in his coat against the rain. “Get me to the nearest coaching inn.”

  * * *

  Gigi snuck out of the house at dawn. She didn’t want to see Edgars and hadn’t heard a sound from his bedroom as she’d grabbed the baskets and put on her coat.

  It was a relief.

  She would prefer him to be up and about, back in control, before she saw him again. Not stumbling hungover into the kitchen after a bad night.

  That way led farther down the twisted, antagonistic road they’d begun on, and she wanted off.

  This was not her kingdom to fight for. She needed to leave the field of play.

  She didn’t call Iris to go with her. With Mavis gone, Iris and Babs would have to take on Mavis’s jobs. She would manage at the market on her own.<
br />
  She glanced down the alley toward the back lane, but the thought of trying to retrieve the letter she’d left for Dervish in the early morning dark was suddenly too much for her. She’d tell Aldridge about it when he deigned to make an appearance, and they could retrieve it together. She was tired of taking chances.

  The sun was still firmly below the horizon and the streetlamps were on, casting a dirty yellow glow over things. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, though, and the air was cool and clean, with the faint tang of mud.

  As she stepped onto Chapel Street she looked left—habit by now—to Goldfern, but there was no one there.

  She began walking to South Audley. A man was coming down the street toward her. He stepped into the pool of light from a streetlamp, and she stared at him before his stride took him back into the shadows.

  Though she was still in the darkness between lampposts, she knew he had been watching her, too.

  He was well dressed. Not a nobleman, she would guess, but someone who worked for one. A lawyer or a banker.

  There was something about him—not his looks; nothing about him was familiar—but something in the way he moved, the way he looked at her, that set the hairs on the back of her neck upright, and she gripped the baskets tighter, wishing they could be used as weapons.

  She also wished it wasn’t five o’clock in the morning, and that she and this stranger weren’t the only people on the street.

  There was nothing for it, though, but to keep walking toward him. The alternative was to run back home, and she refused to do that.

  Gigi increased her pace, her boots thumping a quick beat on the cobbles in time with her racing heart.

  She wanted to look away from him, to avert her head, but that tasted too much like fear to her, revealed too much of her nerves. She deliberately looked toward him as they stepped closer to the next streetlamp, approaching from opposite sides.