by Liz Carlyle
“West Widding?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Coggins a little irritably. “And I am afraid…well, I am afraid he took your gig, sir.”
“Well, it’s not as if I have ever used it,” said Gareth. “Besides, I instructed him to go. There was some particular business I wished him to take care of, and I daresay there was no other way to get there?”
Coggins looked relieved. “Not easily, sir,” he answered. “It’s five miles away.”
Just then, Dr. Osborne came down one of the staircases. “There you are, Your Grace,” he said upon seeing the duchess. “I am so glad you caught me.”
Antonia hastened toward him. “Oh, heavens, have you been here all this time, Doctor?” she asked breathlessly.
“No, no, I had to return to the village for more medications,” he said. “I’ve just this instant come back.”
“How is she, Dr. Osborne?” asked Antonia anxiously. “How is my poor Nellie?”
Osborne smiled down at the duchess. “She is resting comfortably,” he reassured her. “I have given both her and Jane a little something to keep the cough at bay and to help them sleep quite soundly. In a few days, they should both be well on the mend.”
“Thank you, Osborne,” said Gareth, stepping forward. “How are our patients in the stables?”
The doctor’s gaze swiveled toward him, as if he was just now noticing Gareth’s presence. “Oh, good afternoon, Your Grace,” he replied. “They are much improved, thank God. Now if we can just keep everyone else well?”
After a few more polite exchanges, Antonia excused herself and went up the stairs to sit with her maid. Osborne stood beside Gareth, watching her go.
“She is a lovely creature, is she not?” said the doctor.
“Yes,” said Gareth quietly. “A lovely creature indeed.”
Nestled between the river and the forest, the village of West Widding was a pretty little gem, save for the eyesore of a massive brick workhouse which sat along the water’s edge. The parish boasted an inn, two public houses, a justice of the peace, and a small medieval church whose bell tower had collapsed during the Lord Protector’s reign and had never been rebuilt. It was the third of these boasts, however, which most concerned George Kemble.
He drove past the squat, towerless church, turned left at the second public house, and, at the end of the narrow lane, found what he sought. The home of John Laudrey was a wide, hideously modern cottage made of brick, and standing in gardens so new they looked over-pruned and shrunken. A maid in a gray serge dress opened the door and let her eyes sweep down his attire. He easily passed her examination. She showed him into a parlor at the back of the house.
When Laudrey entered, he at once struck Kemble as being overly self-important and moderately intelligent—always a dangerous combination. He was a large, bristle-haired man whose shoulders looked about to burst from his coat seams. The justice opened the letter which deVendenheim had sent down from London, a remarkable shade of red burning slowly down his cheeks as he read, until he looked rather like a boil about to rupture.
“Well!” he said. “It is always helpful to have the Home Office step into our business after we’ve done with it.”
Kemble smiled and seated himself without being asked. “I rather suspect Mr. Peel views murder as being very much the Home Office’s business,” he said tartly. “Particularly when it has gone unresolved for some months.”
“Oh, a murder now, is it?” Laudrey thrust the letter at Kemble and sat down. “No one wanted to hear of that last year when the deed was done.”
“Well, it certainly was a questionable death.” Kemble folded his hands neatly over one knee. “And the new duke has ordered me to get to the bottom of it. He hopes a second set of eyes will help.” It was not a request, so Kemble barged on. “I’m told you were called to the ducal estate by the local constable on the morning of Warneham’s death. You examined the body, found signs consistent with potassium nitrate poisoning, and interviewed the doctor, who ventured an opinion that the duke had used too much of his asthma medication. Do I have that right?”
“If you know all that, why must I be bothered?” asked the justice.
“Right, then, thank you,” said Kemble. “Warneham—the new duke—tells me that you and the doctor disagreed as to whether it was a case of murder or an overdose. An inquest was held, and the doctor’s opinion prevailed?”
“Yes.”
Kemble considered it a moment. “May I ask, Mr. Laudrey, whether or not you interviewed the two gentlemen who were houseguests at Selsdon that evening—Sir Harold Hardell and Lord Litting?”
“I tried,” Laudrey admitted. “But they had left at dawn unaware of the duke’s demise—or so they claimed. Afterward, it being a suspicious death, I went up to London to talk to the gentlemen, but I got naught from them except for the fact that there had been a good deal of smoking going on in the billiard room that evening.”
“Yes, so I heard,” murmured Kemble. “Let me ask, Mr. Laudrey, if there was anything else which made you suspicious about the late duke’s death?”
Laudrey shifted uncomfortably. “The London gentlemen were hiding something, I thought,” he said quietly. “The upper classes will go to a great deal of trouble, you know, to avoid even the breath of scandal touching them, even if it means a death must go unanswered for.”
“Perfectly true!” said Kemble. “And you are thinking, are you not, of the duchess? It’s quite all right. The gossip is still going round Lower Addington.”
“Everyone knows she was married against her wishes,” said the justice. “And while it mighn’t be common knowledge up so far as London, it did not take a doctor to see that the lady was not wholly in her right mind.”
Kemble imagined that seeing one’s husband lying dead on his bedroom floor would unsettle even the hardest of nerves, but he said nothing. Instead, he leaned forward in his chair. “Do you know what caught my attention, Mr. Laudrey?” he asked. “The fact that in ten years, there have been at least three premature deaths in that house. And I am not going back so far as to count the first duchess. What killed her, by the way?”
“A broken heart, they say, over the little boy that died,” Laudrey admitted, then his voice flattened. “But the fellow who did the postmortem said it was just an infectious appendix which ruptured and poisoned the poor lady.”
“Ah,” said Kemble. “Well, that is fairly cut-and-dried, is it not?”
Laudrey reluctantly admitted that it was.
“And the second duchess,” Kemble murmured. “Yet another tragedy! Do you recall what happened to her?”
The justice looked at him a little disparagingly. “I daresay you know already. The young lady took a bit of a spill whilst hunting.”
“A bit of a spill?” Kemble had never heard it characterized quite so benignly. “Do we know how this spill occurred?”
“Mrs. Osborne said her horse shied at a fence,” he said. “The poor lady was beside herself, for she was in the lead. She felt, I think, that she’d led the girl into something which was beyond her skill.”
“Yes, the second duchess had a good bit of cheek, I’m told,” said Kemble. “Was she not a good rider?”
“She had been raised in Town, as I understand it,” answered Laudrey. “Riding to hounds in the countryside is a different kettle of fish.”
“Just so,” said Kemble. “And it was such a tragedy that the child was lost.”
“Well, that part was never clear to me,” said Laudrey. “But then, I’m not a doctor. In fact, I was not involved in the matter at all, as it was considered a natural death.”
The hair on the back of Kemble’s neck suddenly rose. “I beg your pardon?”
Laudrey opened his hands expansively. “The child, as I understand it, was not lost until some days later,” he answered. “The young lady was abed mending her bruises, then the tragedy occurred. Afterward, she took a fever—something to do with female things not happening as they ought—and that was w
hat killed her.”
It was an interesting but subtle difference. “A fascinating story, Mr. Laudrey,” said Kemble. “Who did the postmortem? Osborne?”
“No, no,” said Laudrey. “He had not come down from Oxford. It was probably Dr. Frith here in Widding, but he is dead now.”
“Was he any good?”
Laudrey nodded appreciatively. “Very good indeed.”
Kemble looked at Laudrey a little coyly. “And is Osborne any good?”
Laudrey hesitated. “Osborne is a fine physician too,” he said. “But perhaps more beholden to opinion than to science.”
Kemble looked at the man with a new appreciation. “You mean Osborne is more apt to find what the family wishes to find, do you not?”
“I didn’t say that,” Laudrey answered. “But he obviously catered to Warneham’s whims and fancies. I never saw such a lot of powders and pills and unguents in my life.”
Having seen the bulging box of medications, Kemble did not disagree. “What was she like, the second duchess?”
Laudrey shook his head. “Too far above my social circle,” he said. “I never heard any ill spoken of her. She was very young, and doted on a bit by the village ladies.”
“Which ones, specifically?” asked Kemble.
Laudrey considered it. “Well, there was the rector’s wife.”
“Mrs. Hamm?”
Laudrey slowly shook his head. “I believe this was in the time of the previous rector,” he said. “The name escapes me. And then there was Mrs. Osborne. And Lady Ingham—her husband had just bought North End Farm, and she is a bit—well, pardon my saying—”
“Yes, a social climber,” Kemble added ruefully. “I had noticed.”
Laudrey seemed to relax in his chair.
“Tell me, Mr. Laudrey,” he said, “since you seem a man of sense. What was the duke’s third wife like?”
Laudrey pulled a sad face. “Oh, a quiet girl, and terribly nervous. She simply was not up to the duties of a duchess, I never thought.”
“Oh, dear,” said Kemble. “It sounds tragic already.”
“It was, rather,” said Laudrey pensively. “She was the eldest daughter of Lord Orleston, whose seat was just to the south of here. His younger girls had married, but Lady Helen was not a beauty, and it was said she preferred church work and gardening to marriage.”
“Why did she marry, then?”
“Well, Warneham offered for her—because she was convenient, I always thought,” Laudrey said, shrugging his big shoulders again. “And like the duke, Lord Orleston hadn’t a son, so all he possessed was to pass to a nephew. I daresay he wished to be sure the girl had a home of her own when he was gone—which he is now. But then, she is too, isn’t she, poor girl?”
“She became overly fond of her laudanum tonic, it sounded,” said Kemble.
Laudrey’s eyes narrowed. “Doctors nowadays are bit quick with the laudanum, I’d say,” he answered. “And all the other things in those tonics.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kemble. “What, precisely, was she taking?”
Laudrey shrugged. “I cannot recall,” he admitted. “Just the usual hodgepodge of opiates, herbs, and sedatives which ought just as well be dispensed off the back of a Gypsy’s cart, if you ask me. And nearly any apothecary will sell you laudanum. Peddle it like gin, they do.”
“Heavens,” said Kemble. “Do you think the duchess was addicted?”
Laudrey shook his head. “Who’s to say?” he answered. “A hundred babes a month die up in Middlesex parish alone from ingesting too much black drop—no one really admits that, of course. But that’s what it is. Soothe your troubles—or someone else’s—with a touch of opiate.”
Kemble looked at him curiously. “What, precisely, are you saying, Mr. Laudrey? Was Dr. Osborne overprescribing his tonics?”
“No more so than any of his kind,” the justice admitted. “We took an account of his medicine chest, of course. A bottle of tincture of opium was found to be missing, but then his mother remembered knocking something off the windowsill and breaking it as she watered her violets. She never bothered to see what it was. Frankly, I find this every time I have call to go through a doctor’s chemicals and records. They leave things sitting around their clinic, they keep shoddy notes.”
Kemble tried to turn the subject back to the dead duchess. “Could this young lady have suffered from melancholia?”
Laudrey nodded a little sadly. “Everyone later said she was downcast over her childlessness—and they were married a good many years. The duke was terribly disappointed by it. I am sure she knew it, too. Frankly, the lady looked outright sick to me when last I saw her.”
“Sick as in how?” asked Kemble.
The justice looked uncomfortable. “I hardly know,” he admitted. “I wondered if she was eating, to be honest. But she never struck me as a suicide. She was too devout. But what good would my pressing forward with an inquiry have done?”
“I understand,” Kemble murmured. “One would not wish to inconvenience the duke in any way when his barren wife had so conveniently obliged him by dying.”
Ire flashed in Laudrey’s eyes. “Now you may wait just a moment, sir!” he countered. “I do my job—insomuch as I am able. I thought the death ought to have been looked into, and I told the duke so.”
“Did you indeed?”
“Most certainly!” Laudrey narrowed his gaze. “But the duke said he didn’t want the gossip, and he threatened my job if I pursued it. I got the impression that since the girl was of no more use to him, he wished her buried, literally and figuratively. I thought it chilling, myself.”
Kemble was beginning to agree with him.
“And that is one reason I have not bestirred myself too thoroughly over his death, if you must know,” Laudrey went on. “Perhaps the duchess did do him in. But I wonder if perhaps he simply got what was coming to him?”
Kemble smiled thinly and rose. “Perhaps he did, Mr. Laudrey,” he said pensively. “Perhaps he did at that.”
Laudrey, too, got up from his chair. “Well, there you have it, sir. That’s the whole of what I know.”
Kemble bowed stiffly. “Thank you, Mr. Laudrey,” he said. “The new duke is most grateful for your kind assistance.”
Late that evening, Mr. Statton’s weather prediction came true in a flash of light and a low, distant rumble from the sky. Unable to sleep, Gareth lay in bed to the sound of the rain, this time a steady downpour instead of lashing, wind-driven sheets. Good Lord, they scarcely needed more rain, he considered, as the time for harvest neared.
Unaccountably restless, Gareth got out of bed, put on his dressing gown, and lit a lamp by his reading chair. He picked up one of Watson’s agricultural magazines and flipped randomly through it. Some of it actually made sense to him now. He was gaining his sea legs, he thought, where this business of growing things was concerned.
While he had not wanted to return to Selsdon—and still had not faced a great many of his demons—Gareth was beginning to appreciate the importance of the place. He had meant his stay here to be but a short one, but now he was not so sure. The estate needed a great deal of oversight, and Gareth was beginning to feel pride in his ability to comprehend and to make good decisions. Pride in Selsdon itself. The work was not as tangible, perhaps, as sending ships and commodities flying around the world, but managing a large estate, he had discovered, was not so very different from managing a large shipping company.
Mr. Watson seemed surprised at Gareth’s hands-on approach and his easy grasp of the accounting. Warneham had done no more than plow in enough cash to keep crops in the ground and the income stream flowing. Long-term improvements such as Knollwood had been let go for decades save for the threshing machine, which Watson had pressed for. Gareth felt a growing eagerness to see just what could be done when the place was treated as the piece of real business capital it was.
Despite all this eagerness, however, Watson’s agricultural magazine could not hold Gareth�
��s interest. His mind was elsewhere, really. It was still on the path to Knollwood, in the little folly by the pond. In talking with Antonia today, it had frightened him a little, the rage he still held inside. The seething resentment toward Warneham. A part of his youth had been stripped from him—and his grandmother’s life quite likely shortened—by a selfish, vindictive man. A man who had then spinelessly lied to his friends and his family about the truth of what he had done.
Even now, if he closed his eyes, the sound of the rain could take him back to his life aboard ship. He could still smell the filth, the heat and stench of leering, unwashed sailors. He remembered what it had been like to go hungry, and to gratefully eat food so rancid and wormriddled that it had not been fit for human consumption. He remembered storms so vile they could make a man pray for a painless death. He remembered weeping like the child he had been with longing for his grandmother, and his old life in London. A life among people he had trusted and understood. Had his grandfather lived, Gareth would likely have been a prosperous merchant or a goldsmith by now. Perhaps even a money lender. All, even the latter, were honorable professions so far as Gareth was concerned.
As if driven by Gareth’s thoughts, another low rumble passed over the house, this one very near. Unable to stop himself, he went to the window and looked out over the curtain wall. Just to make sure. He did not have to wait long for the next flash of lightning. This time, his eyes were quick. This time, he knew just what—and who—to look for. The rampart was empty, thank God.
But that did not necessarily mean that Antonia was not frightened, did it? He did not know her habits. Perhaps even as he stood here with his hand pressed to the cold glass, she was wandering the house, trapped in that dreamlike state between wakefulness and sleep, grieving for her children. And tonight there would be no Mrs. Waters to depend upon—she was likely lying in her bed upstairs with her throat wrapped in flannel and her cough soothed by some of Osborne’s infamous laudanum.
