It took a moment for her to answer, a moment in which the rain assaulted me like an impertinent child, but eventually she said, “Of course.”
I cursed the cowl of her cloak as I stared back into the blackness where her face should have been, wondering if there was relief to be found there or something else. “I will see Mr. Pendragon later tonight,” I lied. “Where can we get in touch with you?”
Again there was more than a moment’s hesitation in which I could not fathom what she was considering before she finally answered, “I will seek out the two of you.”
“That will not—”
“Forgive me my misgivings,” she spoke over me, “but I have already been amply deceived by too many men.” She swept around me before I could respond and bolted for the nearest gate out of the park. “I trust you understand. . . .” she called back hastily.
The rain increased as I moved to follow her, and by the time I made the short distance to the small side gate she had used it had begun to pour. I squinted down the street and caught her scurrying into a cab waiting along the side of the road just down from where I was standing. “Mrs. Hutton . . . !” I called out, but the driver hammered the reins in an instant and his carriage took off.
As I watched it disappear around the corner, I was heedless of the fact that I was getting soaked through to the skin. It did not matter to me in the least anyway, as all I could think about was how shocked Colin was going to be when I finally had the chance to tell him what had just happened.
CHAPTER 8
As I stared out of Eugenia Endicott’s carriage I could hardly believe my eyes. The sight before me seemed impossible, and I knew my jaw had unhinged, leaving me to doubtlessly look quite the comic vision, should anyone be staring back at me.
I had not started out this new day intending to make this particular journey. My first thought had been to visit Maurice Evans at the Yard to update him on my conversations with Mr. Galloway and the day nurse, Philippa Bromley. It wasn’t that I felt I had achieved anything notable yesterday, after all I was, as Colin liked to say, merely assembling the facts around the case, but rather I was curious to see whether Mr. Evans had received any word from Colin. In truth, I could scarcely contain myself until the afternoon for wanting to report my encounter with Charlotte Hutton to Colin. And it was for that precise reason that I decided not to see Mr. Evans. I feared I could not hold my tongue and knew Colin would be furious if I confessed my contact with Mrs. Hutton to the Yard before telling him. Besides which I was all but certain he was unlikely to elect to confide in them anyway.
And so I was left to my own devices while I awaited Colin’s return, offering me few alternatives but to set myself to the Endicott case once more. It was to that end that I had returned to Layton Manor that morning, to beseech Mr. Fischer to drive me out to meet the woman Adelaide Endicott had consulted on a twice-monthly basis for all matters spiritual. Which is how I found myself quite unexpectedly bolt upright in the back of the Endicotts’ carriage on Lancaster Gate, staring at a house I remembered very well.
It did not appear to have changed in the least since I had last been here. Still looking ever so slightly woebegone with its densely thatched roof and the partial covering of ivy clinging to its oat-colored walls of twirling plaster. I could even spy a slip of the giant, curved wrought-iron letter, peeking out from beneath a waterfall of the same ivy running up the front of the chimney, that I knew formed the bottom part of the letter S. But it was the little flowers planted along the walkway of the tidy front lawn that confirmed the owner of this home, just as it had done for Colin the first time we had come here six months earlier. Brightly colored flowers with heads like English tea roses, but not roses at all; dahlias. For I found myself delivered to the home of Lady Dahlia Stuart.
“Thank you, Mr. Fischer,” I called out as I climbed from the carriage. “You have done me a great service.”
“Do you need me to wait for you?”
“No thank you,” I answered as I headed up the short walkway to the front porch, remembering the first time Colin and I had come here during the Bellingham case. Lady Stuart had been a difficult woman to find at first, before ultimately proving to be pivotal to that case. For she, above all the men in the Queen’s Guard, had proven herself to be as committed to finding the truth of the Bellingham murders as Colin and I.
I rapped on the door and watched Mr. Fischer steer the Endicott carriage back down the block and out of sight. Of all the potential characters I had girded myself to meet here today, I had never remotely conceived of the possibility that it would turn out to be this fine woman.
“Oh . . .” her elderly father and houseman—Evers, she called him—grumbled the instant his eyes fell upon me, before he’d even fully opened the door. “You . . .” His eyes flicked to my left and right and then he cast his gaze behind me as he peered down the walkway. “Where’s the other one?” he asked, his tone as sharp as a knife’s edge. “Did ya finally come ta yer senses?”
I took note of the fact that his well-practiced vernacular had slipped and could not help but be amused by it. “I am afraid not,” I answered with great good cheer. “Is Her Ladyship at home? Might I have a word with her?”
He rummaged up a scowl, as he always seemed prone to do, before finally answering. “Ya know she doesn’t like people just droppin’ in.”
“I am not people, I am a friend. You will announce me or I will announce myself,” I said with a steady smile.
He curled his lips and stepped back, ushering me in with his usual dearth of enthusiasm. I took no heed of it as I made my way to the parlor, Evers starting off in the opposite direction to fetch tea, I presumed. As he shuffled away I felt content in the knowledge that he had no greater dissatisfaction with Colin and me than the fact that we knew the truth about him and his daughter. He refused to believe that we had no need or desire to reveal their complex pasts to anyone. The word of a gentleman meant nothing to Evers, which said more about him than it did about us.
I stepped into the parlor and found it just as it had been the last time I was here: brimming bookshelves lining the sidewalls astride a plaster-and-brick fireplace, a high-backed couch and four wingback chairs arranged just so, all of them covered in the most colorful fabric of leaves and thatch that spoke to the whimsy of Her Ladyship. I took a minute to look at the photographs while I waited for her, but I did not have to wait long.
“Mr. Pruitt . . .” I heard her voice before I saw her step out of the hallway from the opposite side of the room. “What a distinct pleasure.”
“Lady Stuart . . .” She looked ever the beauty, her flawless skin and shining black hair accentuating a face that looked carved from marble, perfect in its angles and curves. “The pleasure belongs to me,” I said. “And I am delighted to see you looking as well as ever.”
She came into the room moving with the grace of a dancer, which I knew she had once been, adding to her distinction and refinement. “Please make yourself comfortable,” she said as she gestured toward the chairs. “I trust my father showed you the proper courtesy. . . .”
“I don’t believe he cares much for Colin and me.”
She sat down with a pained smile. “I’m afraid he will forever find you and Mr. Pendragon something of a threat, given all that you know.”
“That is absurd,” I answered as I seated myself across from her.
“I know”—she gazed at me with her luminous smile—“but my father is quite a different matter. I hope you will forgive him his impropriety.”
“Think nothing of it. You are fortunate to have your father still in your life under any circumstances.”
As if on cue, her father returned with a tray of tea and biscuits and set them before us. “Thank you, Evers,” she said, maintaining the charade that had been in place the first several times we had visited her. He loosed another grumble and ambled back out of the room, and I hoped he felt assuaged by the continuance of their normalcy. “I would say he means well, but it’s
really only insofar as it suits him,” she said with a wink. “But I suspect you have not come here simply to check up on my father and me. You are by yourself; please tell me there is nothing wrong with Mr. Pendragon.”
“Mr. Pendragon is quite well,” I assured her, “and would send his regards if he knew I was here. But he is out of the country for a few days and I have been following up on a case. It is a case that has led me, amazingly, to you.” I could not help the smile that overtook my face.
“Oh . . .” She finished preparing our tea and handed me a cup. “How extraordinary. Should I be concerned?”
I laughed and could tell by the twinkle in her eyes that she had not meant to be serious, either. “It would seem that we live in a time when your services are particularly desired. I suppose it should come as no surprise that more than one case might bring us to your doorstep.”
She lifted her eyebrows and nodded. “I make a good living.” She leaned forward, offering the plate of biscuits, and gave me a conspiratorial smile. “If they ever tire of my form of the truth I shall be quite done in.”
“Or perhaps you will forgo the spirit world and make some use of this new thinking around the workings of the mind. You are already clever enough to ferret out what people wish to hear. And that skill is most definitely not something you divine from formless ectoplasm.”
Her smile widened, once more illuminating her face. “You flatter me, Mr. Pruitt. So tell me, which of my clients is it that has crossed your path?”
“Adelaide Endicott,” I said, and watched as her face slowly crumbled. “Ah . . . of course you have heard what has happened.”
“The papers are implying that she took her own life, but I cannot imagine her capable of doing such a thing. Do you and Mr. Pendragon really believe it to be so?”
“We have only just begun our investigation, but Colin is decidedly of the mind that Miss Adelaide did not harm herself nor is it the matter of an accident. Though I will confess that I do not know exactly how it is he has come to that opinion so quickly.”
“Really?! I would have thought you the one person privy to the machinations of his deducements.”
“I suppose I am, but only as he sees fit to share them with me. So while I can assure you that Miss Adelaide did not bring an end to her own life, I cannot tell you how such a thing is known, and as I am sure you can imagine, there is much else yet to be solved.”
“So how can I help you?” she asked as she refilled our tea.
“Did you know the young man who assisted Miss Adelaide, Mr. Freddie Nettle?”
“Of course. He seemed a bright and earnest young man who very much doted on her.”
“Then I presume he came here with her?”
“Absolutely. My understanding was that she went nowhere without him. He pushed her wheeled chair, and if there were stairs or some other obstacle impeding her, he either removed it or swept her up in his arms and delivered her to wherever she needed to go. He was quite strong, though she was only just a slip of a woman.”
“Yes . . .” I could not help the sigh that escaped from my lips. “Which does rather play against him. If Miss Eugenia can get the Yard to heed her suspicions against Mr. Nettle, it is not difficult to believe that he could easily have cast her from that window.”
Lady Stuart frowned. “How awful. I simply cannot imagine him doing such a thing. You would have thought she was his own grandmother the way he fretted over her.”
“Miss Adelaide must have been grateful to him.”
“She adored him.”
“I wonder if she made any allowances for him in her will.”
Lady Stuart’s brow creased as she clearly picked up on my inference. “Not that she mentioned to me, and we did talk about so very many things.”
I waved a hand dismissively, finding my own imaginings ill-conceived and lacking merit. “If Mr. Nettle had harbored any desire to murder his mistress I am certain he could have found a more suitable way to accomplish it than in the middle of the night when the two of them were alone. Even the dimmest of criminals can usually conjure a better alibi than what little he has contended of that night.” I looked back at Lady Stuart. “So what was it that brought Miss Adelaide to see you on such a regular basis?”
“She sought the same thing most of the women who come to me seek, freedom from the ghosts of her past.”
I felt my eyebrows spring upward. It was not the answer I had expected, though at the moment, I wasn’t at all sure what I had thought she might say. “Ghosts?!” I said after a moment. “Are you now a convert to your own chicanery?”
She laughed, as I had meant her to, and leveled her striking gaze upon me again. “Come now, Mr. Pruitt, we all of us have ghosts in our pasts. Things we regret but cannot change. Fears . . . misfortunes . . . burdens . . . all of which wriggle about our minds like burrowing worms. There are those of us who can abide it, shunting them back in place as it becomes necessary, and there are those who cannot. They are the victims of the decisions they cannot unmake and the deeds they cannot undo. Miss Adelaide was one such person.”
The smile on my face disintegrated as quickly as a shiver from her words. These distant ghosts, these formless entities who insisted on having their due, were not foreign to me. “I see. . . .” I murmured, taking a languorous sip of my tea to further collect myself before speaking again. “And what was it that most affected Miss Adelaide?”
“It was a child.”
“A child . . . ?!” I repeated. It was unthinkable that Miss Adelaide, a spinster, could have borne a child.
“Yes,” Lady Stuart said, smoothly ignoring my obvious shock. “Not her own, of course, but that of a woman who worked for her family when she was young. Someone she felt she was in a position to aid but did not. This would have been some sixty years ago. Can you imagine the scandal?”
“I’m afraid I can imagine the scandal were it to have happened yesterday. And what became of this child or the woman?”
“As I am sure you assume, the infant was whisked off after its unfortunate birth. And the woman . . .” She shook her head and looked off toward the windows. “Adelaide said it destroyed the poor thing. I do not know how it could have been any other way.”
“How awful.” And yet I found my mind already twisting through a host of other possibilities. “Her, you said. The child was a girl?”
“Yes.”
“Which might explain why she professed to having seen a vision of a young girl wandering around Layton Manor weeping. Did she tell you of that?”
“Many times. She said the visions started almost two years ago. Perhaps a lifetime of guilt had finally done its damage as she began to face the waning of her own health. . . .” Lady Stuart let her voice drift off, and while I knew there was something to her assertion, something else had begun to rattle about my brain that refused to be stilled.
“Do you not suppose . . .” I began, taking great pains to sound casual, “. . . that there might not be the slimmest chance that she was, in fact, referring to her own indiscretion? Could that not speak to the level of intense emotion she still carried after all these years?”
A wistful smile brushed across Lady Stuart’s lips as she looked at me, her eyes filled with aching and sorrow. “Perhaps, though I would find it hard to believe it to be so,” she answered. “There is an irrevocable bond between a mother and her child that can neither be denied nor extinguished. It is sacred and true, and I can only tell you that Adelaide Endicott did not appear to have that fire in her soul when she talked about her regret.”
“I see. . . .” I muttered like a man who knows nothing of a woman’s heart. But in this Lady Stuart was mistaken, for my own mother had possessed no such bond. So while I felt compelled to remain unresolved about the possibility of Miss Adelaide’s having borne a child, I also suddenly had the inkling that Lady Stuart had been speaking with the authority of one who has suffered the very thing she was talking about. “What did she tell you of her visions?”
“The woman in question was the lady’s maid who cared for both her and her sister, Eugenia,” she stated with a sigh, making it clear that the weight of the story impacted her still. “Miss Adelaide never told me the young woman’s name nor did I seek it out. It made little difference since the woman was released from the Endicotts’ employ at the time it happened.”
“So I would suppose,” I blurted, receiving a pained sort of grimace from Lady Stuart that made me curse my carelessness and vow to be more delicate.
“Yes . . .” she said evenly as she poured a bit more tea for both of us. “Apparently, the poor girl had been courting a young man who worked at one of the neighboring estates, and when her indiscretion became known she was whipped nearly to death by Adelaide and Eugenia’s father. Miss Adelaide told me that it was through her intervention, and hers alone, that the young woman’s life managed to be saved.”
“And what of Miss Eugenia? Did she not also interfere?”
Lady Stuart looked at me with an expression that was at once as assured as it was discreet. “I do not know whether you ever had the pleasure of meeting Miss Adelaide; she was such a kind and pleasant person, but she and her sister . . .” Her eyes drifted off for a moment before she snapped them back to me with a gracious smile. “They were two very different women, and while I would not presume to state that one was any better than the other, they had their own perspectives on intolerance and propriety.”
Even with the small amount of time I had spent with Miss Eugenia, I imagined that I understood precisely what she was telling me. “What do you think it was about this lady’s maid that brought Miss Adelaide to your doorstep after all these years?”
The Endicott Evil Page 8
