Louisa may have been talented at presenting a bland facade in front of her mother, but she was clearly not a good enough liar to face such an accusation head on. She sucked in a sharp breath, her cheeks going painfully pale before a bright-pink flush swept from the neck of her gown all the way to her hairline. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you could possibly mean,” she said, swallowing. “I certainly do not receive gentlemen callers after dark. Except, of course, my dear husband, but he is out of town on business.”
“Oh, perhaps it was your mother he was climbing up the trellis to pay his respects to,” Mr. Page said mercilessly, standing. “I shall ask her directly—”
“No!” Louisa had gone pale again, and she leaped up to block his path to the door. Her breath was coming in sharp gasps. “You cannot … you must not … what do you want from me?”
“You do know Mr. Wyatt, then?” Lily asked, glancing toward the door. Ofelia would keep Mrs. Smythe occupied for as long as she could, but there was no knowing how long they had.
“No,” Louisa said stubbornly, though her hands were visibly trembling.
Lily didn’t blame her. The cost of such a revelation would not be as high for a young matron as for an unmarried girl. But if word of her indiscretion got out, Louisa Preston’s life could still become very unpleasant. And if her husband was angry enough to sue for divorce, both she and her mother would be pariahs. Lily hated to put her on the spot in such a manner, but there was enough at stake that she didn’t hesitate.
“Mrs. Preston,” she said, cool but not accusatory. “We do not care about your nighttime activities for their own sake. But Mr. Wyatt, like the rest of his family, is under suspicion of murder. And we need to understand his motivations and movements.”
“Mr. Wyatt had nothing to do with his uncle’s death,” Louisa said fiercely. “I know he did not.”
“We have no way to prove that,” Mr. Page said, crossing his arms. “According to Mr. Wyatt, he was home by himself all night. But according to the servants at his residence, he did not return home until it was nearly dawn. Plenty of time for a man to commit murder.”
Louisa raised her head, looking resigned and terrified at the same time. “Percy could not have killed his uncle,” she whispered, “because he was with me that night. He visits when my husband is traveling, as he is this week.”
The silence after her words was deafening. Louisa looked as though she was going to be sick, but she clenched her shaking hands into fists and met Mr. Page’s eyes.
“Mrs. Preston,” he said, a little more gently. “Think carefully about what you are saying. If the matter should come to trial, you might have to be called on to provide testimony as to Mr. Wyatt’s whereabouts. Do not commit yourself to something that is not true, that could damage your own reputation and well-being, simply to protect him.”
He was testing her, Lily was sure. Mr. Page was too stiffly honorable to ever require a woman to sully her own reputation in such a tawdry manner. But the threat of that kind of exposure would be enough to make any woman think twice about uttering such a lie, even to protect someone she cared for.
Louisa Preston did not back down. “But it is true. And I would rather my reputation be in tatters than see Percy hanged for a crime he did not commit.”
The sudden burst of voices in the hall made all three of them jump. Ofelia’s was loudest of all, raised more than it needed to be to warn them to finish their conversation. Lily sank back into her chair, motioning the others to do the same. Mr. Page swiftly complied, and Louisa Preston, after a moment of frozen panic, did as well. Lily could see the girl’s hands trembling, though she did her best to hide her distress.
“Indeed, such a pleasure,” Ofelia was saying as the door swung open. “Mrs. Adler, what good fortune! Mr. Preston has returned home, just in time for me to compare him to his portrait, which is such a perfect likeness. I shall have to commission one for Sir Edward immediately …”
Talking smoothly to cover any confusion in the room, Ofelia cheerfully made the introductions. Mr. Preston was a great deal older than his wife, perhaps in his late thirties, with a pleasant-looking face and broad build that were both starting to go soft. His clothing was still dusty from travel, and he ought to have excused himself to change, but apparently he couldn’t resist the opportunity to make the acquaintance of his distinguished guests.
“If I can be of any service to you, Lady Carroway, or Sir Edward,” he kept repeating, mopping his brow with a handkerchief and beaming. Lily thought he came close to offering them his card at several points, though he managed to restrain himself from such a faux pas.
“Your mother mentioned that you were planning to walk this afternoon, Mrs. Preston,” Ofelia said at last, when it seemed that Mr. Preston and Mrs. Smythe were going to try to encourage their guests to settle down for some refreshment. “Perhaps we might accompany you?”
Lily could have hugged her friend. It was an excellent way to extend their chance to talk with Louisa while escaping the intense attention of her mother and husband. “An excellent idea,” she said, rising.
“Oh, yes, how lovely!” Mrs. Smythe burbled, while Mr. Preston added his enthusiastic agreement. “I would join you, of course, but I remember well how young people like their amusements …”
“It is the day for your weekly visit to the British Museum, is it not, Louisa?” Mr. Preston asked, clearly not offended that his mother-in-law did not class him with the young people. “She does so love the exhibits there; charming really, such an inquisitive girl …”
Louisa looked like she might have tried to protest, but a single glance at Mr. Page’s stern face made her swallow, back down, and voice nothing but polite agreement.
It took another five minutes before they could make their escape, but at last the four of them were out the door, Louisa wearing the petulant, scared expression of a child who had been caught in misbehavior and knew there was no way to evade punishment.
“Well,” said Ofelia at last. “I am amazed they did not come with us.”
“They have aspirations,” Louisa said grumpily. “No doubt, at this moment, they are scheming to get Lady Carroway to sponsor me to some society events in the winter, or even to wrangle an invitation for us all to visit her country house this fall.”
“What makes you so sure Lady Carroway has a country house?” Lily couldn’t help asking.
Louisa gave her a pitying look. “Her marriage was in all the papers, accompanied by a great many details about Sir Edward’s family. My mother arranged an advantageous marriage for me, but my husband aims even higher. Hence my closely guarded, deeply boring life. I expected it to change after my marriage. Sadly, it has not.”
“Thus your affair with Mr. Wyatt?” Lily murmured.
The look Louisa shot her was venomous. “Your father did not have a profession, did he, Mrs. Adler?” When Lily shook her head, Louisa laughed shortly. “Families like yours may have high standards for propriety and manners, but they are woefully outmatched by the moralizing of those in the middle classes with ambitions to join them.”
Lily gave Mr. Page a sideways glance. “I have noticed such tendencies,” she said, pleased to see him flush a little around the ears.
Louisa shrugged again. “My mother was convinced that if I was sheltered and innocent enough, she would be able to marry me off to a duke. She had to settle for a barrister who will one day inherit a country property. He intends to settle down and become a gentleman while I spend the rest of my life moldering in the country. I would rather have some fun while I still can.” She scowled suddenly, rigid with tension. “Are you going to tell him?”
There was a long pause. Ofelia and Lily both glanced at the Bow Street constable.
“No, we have no intention of telling your husband,” Mr. Page said, and Louisa Preston’s shoulders slumped with relief. A moment later, though, she was upright as ever, her parasol adjusted to shield her from the glare of the morning sun and hide her face from any passersby. “O
ur next stop will be to speak with Mr. Wyatt, not your husband.”
Louisa opened her mouth as though she were about to say something, closed it, opened it again, and sighed. “Mr. Preston mentioned that I regularly visit the British Museum, as I am sure you recall.” She gave Lily a sour look. “I imagine you do not forget much.”
“I never boast about my own accomplishments,” Lily said modestly. On her other side, Ofelia gave an unladylike snort of laughter but said nothing. “But I do recall his comment. And I also know that the British Museum is an excellent place for an assignation.”
Louisa Preston nodded, looking resigned. “Mr. Wyatt and I meet there once a week.”
Mr. Page scowled but said nothing. Lily didn’t approve either, but she was more sympathetic than he to the plight of a girl married to a much older man, not of her own volition but to better her family’s standing. It was little wonder to her that the young Mrs. Preston had begun an affair with a man much closer to her own age. And her personality struck Lily as an excellent match for the snobbish Mr. Wyatt.
“Well, then,” Mr. Page said. “Permit us to accompany you to the museum, Mrs. Preston.”
It was not a request, and Louisa Preston sighed. “We are to meet by the corals and fossils on the upper floor.”
* * *
When Lily had been an unmarried girl in London with her father, the British Museum had required all visitors to register in advance for tickets, which could be collected at set times during the day, and only a small group of people were allowed to enter at a time. Had that still been the case, they couldn’t have gone with Mrs. Preston.
Fortunately, as the museum had grown, it had abandoned the system of ticketing and simply allowed respectably dressed people to enter between ten o’clock in the morning and four o’clock in the afternoon. Their group received a glance from the porter as they were handed their maps, but they were all clearly well-to-do, and he did not linger over them more than any other visitors arriving that morning.
They had debated quietly, on the way there, whether it would be best to conceal themselves from Mr. Wyatt. But, as it was the middle of the day in a very public space, Mr. Page decided it was unlikely that anyone would try to make a scene. And meeting and speaking in a public place would be far less likely to excite comment than trying to speak to him at his lodging house or asking for his attendance at the house on Wimpole Street.
So Lily and Ofelia stood with Mrs. Preston in front of the shelves of fossils, watching the door, while Mr. Page stood a couple of paces away in front of a display of beautiful corals. Mrs. Preston fidgeted with impatience but did not protest. When Lily quietly expressed her appreciation for the younger woman’s cooperation, she received a decidedly unimpressed look in response.
“I’ve no wish to see him accused of murder,” Louisa Preston muttered. “The sooner that nasty constable is satisfied, the sooner I can go back to my life without worrying that anything untoward might come to the attention of my husband.”
When Percy Wyatt entered the room at last, he was nattily dressed in a fitted black jacket and gray waistcoat, with a jet stickpin in his cravat. Lily sighed to herself. She knew enough of Mr. Wyatt’s finances to be sure that he could not afford a single item he was wearing; apparently his brush with the moneylender had not cured him of his expensive habits. But his being a spendthrift was not the problem she was concerned with at present.
His eyes slid past Ofelia, whom he had never met, then locked on Mrs. Preston. He smiled, but the expression slid from his face with almost comical quickness when he realized who was standing next to her. As soon as he noticed Lily, his countenance turned a sickly color, and he turned as though he would flee the room. But Mr. Page was suddenly there, smiling politely and taking Percy’s arm to lead him back toward the group of women.
“Now, Mr. Wyatt, no need to look so green,” the constable said, a little cruelly. “You ought to be grateful, in fact, that we’ve discovered your friend.”
Percy Wyatt’s eyes darted frantically between them, but he came meekly enough to stand in front of the display of fossils. “What happened?” he whispered to Mrs. Preston.
She turned her sour expression on him. “They found you out, of course, and came to my house,” she hissed. “My husband was there.”
For a moment Lily feared she had been wrong and that Mrs. Preston would indeed make a scene. But then the young matron sighed, her expression and her shoulders both drooping as if she had been deflated.
“Why did you hide that you were under suspicion, Percy?” she whispered. “Did you not think I would tell them you were with me?”
“But …” He looked amazed. “Your husband … I could not ask such a thing of you. Besides.” He gave Mr. Page a look that was heavy with displeasure. “I told them I was at home sleeping all night. Surely that ought to have been enough.”
Mr. Page sighed gustily. “Why should it have been?”
“Because I am a gentleman,” Percy said stiffly. “The word of a gentleman ought to be enough.”
Lily couldn’t help the derisive sound that escaped her, and even Mrs. Preston looked exasperated with him. “You were lying, Mr. Wyatt,” Lily pointed out. “So your word is hardly unimpeachable, is it?”
“But …” Percy frowned, clearly wanting to protest more but unable to think of a good argument. “Well, I suppose you are right. But it was rather unsporting of you to suspect my word before you knew I was lying.”
Lily thought Mr. Page might abandon his dignity and actually roll his eyes. “Murder investigations do not generally proceed according to the rules of sporting behavior,” he said instead, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Since murderers, as you may imagine, are so often unsporting themselves.”
“And since you had rather a recent history of being untruthful,” Lily pointed out with false sweetness.
Mr. Wyatt looked reasonably embarrassed and cleared his throat quickly. “Well, then what happens now? Even you must admit I could not have been harming my uncle when I was …” He blushed suddenly, realizing what he had been about to say, as Mrs. Preston made a noise like an angry cat and kicked him in the ankle.
“What happens is that you tell us if there is any other information you have been withholding,” Mr. Page said sternly. “Lady Carroway, perhaps you and Mrs. Preston would like to go view the exhibit in the next room while I speak to Mr. Wyatt?”
“Why does Mrs. Adler get to stay?” Ofelia grumbled.
“Because she would whether I asked her to leave or not,” he muttered, while Lily grinned at his clear displeasure.
“Oh, very well. Come along, Mrs. Preston.”
Once the two women were gone, Mr. Page turned on Percy Wyatt once more. “Where was your cousin that night?”
“Frank?” Percy frowned in surprise. “He was out gambling and drinking until something like four in the morning. Surely you’ve been able to verify that?”
Mr. Page didn’t answer. “And what do you know of the maid named Edie who used to work in your uncle’s house?”
“Edie? Lord, man, I never notice the maids.”
“Try, if you please,” Mr. Page bit off.
“Why does it matter?”
“That isn’t your concern.”
Lily could see that the answer set Percy’s back up; the two men were eyeing each other scornfully, each offended by the other’s manner and behavior. But there wasn’t time for them to slowly realize they were on the same side. Too much was at stake.
“Mr. Wyatt,” Lily said, her voice soft and serious. She took his arm and steered him toward the next case of shells as she spoke, not wanting the other museum patrons to see them standing in front of one display for too long. “However little respect you may have for Mr. Page and his methods, you must admit he is skilled at his job. He unearthed your secrets, after all. And at the moment he is doing his best to protect your cousin. Or have you not heard the rumors spreading about Arthur?”
“Arthur?” Percy stared at her in
confusion. “But … all that is just talk, of course. Arthur has nothing to do with this.”
“He does, in fact.” Lily glanced at Mr. Page for permission to continue; when he nodded, she dropped her voice even further. “Arthur knows something about what happened to your uncle that night, even if he does not realize it. And his maid, Ellen, was poisoned, likely because he told her what it was.”
Percy paled with shock. “But … the doctor said …”
“The doctor was wrong,” Mr. Page said sharply. A woman in a mightily plumed hat turned to glare at him, and he cleared his throat as he gave her a quick, apologetic bow. He lowered his voice as he continued. “Ellen was poisoned. And unless we can find out who did it, your cousin will continue to be in danger.
“So I’ll ask you again, Mr. Wyatt: what can you tell us about the maid Edie who used to work in your uncle’s house?” Mr. Page’s voice grew sharp. “And don’t think to hide your own dealings with her. As you have learned, I have my ways of ferreting out information.”
“My own dealings?” Percy looked confused and then, as realization dawned, affronted. “A gentleman does not interfere with another gentleman’s servants,” he said stiffly. “How uncouth. Anyway, that is far more Frank’s style than mine.” He spoke carelessly, only seeming to realize what he had said after the words had left his mouth. “Not that I know anything about any … business between them,” he said quickly. “Just that Frank is more of a romancer than I am.” His mouth twisted. “Girls like him better,” he added in a petulant mutter.
Lily would have laughed at him if the circumstances hadn’t been so serious.
“But I do think she got the position because she was someone’s niece, or cousin, or something like that.” Percy frowned again, turning the museum map around in his fingers and worrying at the edges as he thought. “Maybe Mrs. Harris? No, it was the head housemaid, that was it. Sarah, perhaps? Edie was her niece.”
“Mr. Wyatt.” The Bow Street constable’s words sounded as though they were being forced past clenched teeth. “I spoke to all the servants in your uncle’s household. The head housemaid is named Mary, and she has no brothers or sisters.”
Silence in the Library Page 27
