A Murderous Relation

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Perhaps later,” I said, pushing the cup a little distance away.

  She fixed her gaze upon the cup and stared hard, her expression one I had seen only too often.

  “Very well.” I sighed. I took up the cup and drained it, putting it carefully back onto the saucer. I held her gaze with my own, betraying no reaction whatever to her vile concoction.

  She poured out the rest of the noxious brew. “I need something stronger, then,” she grumbled.

  “Why? Are you trying to poison someone?” I asked pleasantly.

  “Not exactly poison,” she answered, her brow puckered in thought. “But a little discomfort wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “Whose discomfort?” I inquired.

  “Charles’,” she said, giving the syllables dark emphasis. Charles was his lordship’s second son, and as devious a creature as I had ever encountered. The trouble was, he had the looks of a Botticelli saint, so very few people ever believed him capable of real mischief. I had a fondness for the boy myself, but I could easily see how his tricks could irritate a younger sister beyond endurance.

  “Now, Lady Rose,” Stoker began firmly.

  I nudged him with my foot. “Stoker, I rather think that Lady Rose and I might like a few minutes of conversation. Just us women.”

  Lady Rose opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, but the sound of the word “women” brought her up sharply. She gave me a look of grudging respect. “Yes, please, Stoker.” Her eyes followed him as he left. She regretted letting him leave, but I could tell she was mightily curious about what I wanted.

  I came directly to the point. “Yesterday, I believe a crate was delivered to the Belvedere.”

  Her eyes slid from mine. She was an adroit liar when she wanted to be, but she had not expected this. I settled back on my stump, arranging my skirt smoothly over my trousers as I waited.

  “Was there?” she asked.

  I huffed a sigh at her. “Come now, Lady Rose. You are a better liar than that and we both know it. Your delivery was a beat too late, and your voice has gone high.”

  She thrust out her bottom lip a little. “Very well. There was a crate.”

  “A large crate, taken into the Belvedere.”

  She said nothing, but a tiny nod acknowledged what I said was true.

  “Now, George or another member of staff is supposed to remain with all deliverymen until they have left the premises, but George was drawn away from his duty—as was everyone else—by what I am given to understand was a rather spectacular display of temper on your part.”

  “I may have fussed a little,” she said begrudgingly.

  “Lady Rose,” I said, allowing a note of warning to creep into my voice. She tossed her pretty curls.

  “Do you think to frighten me?” she demanded. “You dare not strike me.”

  I gave her a thin smile. “My sweet Rose, I don’t have to strike you to make you suffer. Now, tell me what you know and I will tell you exactly what to put into your brother’s tea to make him purge his guts up.”

  A smile of dazzling radiance broke over her face as she spat into her hand and thrust it towards me. “Word of honor?”

  I spat into my own palm and shook firmly. “Word of honor.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  A quarter of an hour later, I quitted the hermitage, in full possession of what I wanted to know and having explained to Lady Rose the precise dosage of rhubarb to dispense to Charles with instructions to administer it in a double-steeped pot of tea for the maximum effect.

  Stoker was resting in the snuggery, the little area at the top of the gallery stairs in the Belvedere. It was furnished for comfort, not glamour, and it was the one spot where we often went to brood or rest as we worked out a particularly knotty problem. He was draped long on the sofa, reading the Daily Harbinger, the very copy George had brought that morning.

  “Anything of relevance?” I asked as I took a seat in the large armchair that leaked stuffing and provided a haven for a very polite family of mice.

  He tossed the newspaper aside, steepling his fingers under his chin as he swung his feet onto the floor, moving gingerly and wincing a little at his injuries. “Just the same old tripe.” He flicked me a glance. “When does it end? These poor souls, living on scraps at the edge of civilized existence. They suffer more than the worst wretch in our prisons, and yet what crime have they committed except to be born poor and forgotten?”

  It was a familiar refrain. Stoker had been a child of privilege and wealth, but he had run away in his youth. His father always had him found and dragged home again, yet those boyish adventures had shaped the man he had become. He had lived cheek by jowl with every variety of person, taking in their knowledge, studying their ways. Some philosophies—most, in fact—he had rejected. He was no respecter of institutions simply because they boasted antiquity. He believed, like all good radicals, that everything ought to be examined anew by each generation. What served society should be retained, and what did not should be discarded without sentiment or reserve. He was a very modern man, his guiding principles in complete accord with my own. We might occasionally quibble about the specifics, but together we wanted nothing more than to leave a world better than the one into which we had been delivered.

  I picked up the discarded newspaper and skimmed it quickly. “They have no real sympathy for the victims,” I observed. “No understanding of what would drive a woman to sell herself for a few coppers. They do not care that people are born into the vilest slums and must live the whole of their lives bound by its limitations. For all their faults, I do envy the Americans that,” I told him. “They permit a man to make himself and do not hold it against him. A woman as well.”

  He was silent a long moment before asking, “What did Lady Rose say?”

  “She was paid to stage her little act, just as we expected.”

  He sat forwards. “Paid? By whom?”

  “By a man with a great deal of facial hair and a strong smell of licorice,” I told him.

  His eyes lit. “That bloody old porter at the club.”

  “No doubt,” I agreed.

  “And if he was able to manage a crate containing Madame Aurore’s body without assistance, I think we may presume that he is significantly more able of body than he pretends. What do you know about him?”

  I shrugged. “We spoke twice. He was outrageous to the point of insult both times, overly familiar and appalling. I wanted nothing more than to get away—” I broke off and Stoker waited whilst I puzzled it out. “But of course. His maladroit behavior was as much a masquerade as his pretended infirmity. If he infiltrated the club in order to spy or to wreak some harm upon Aurore, what better way to ensure he was left to his own devices than to act like a tiresome old ruffian?”

  “The only question is why she would ever permit someone like that in her club,” Stoker mused. “She was elegant and refined, as were her surroundings.”

  “I mentioned something of the sort to her and her response was that he was new, a sort of charity case, I gathered. She said words to the effect that she believed in giving everyone a first chance.”

  I fell silent again, thinking hard. “There was something else. An odor besides the licorice that I could not place. It was decidedly chemical in nature.”

  “And you do not know what it was?”

  I shook my head, frustrated. “No, it was elusive, only a whiff because the licorice was so strong, almost as if he were using it to mask the other. If only I could place it!”

  “When did you notice it?” Stoker asked.

  “I caught a first sniff of it when I spoke with him before entering her rooms,” I said slowly, “but I did not really smell it until afterwards, when I stopped to talk to him again.”

  “What did you think of?”

  I closed my eyes. “Sheep shearing.”

 
“Lanolin?” he suggested.

  I shook my head again, eyes still closed. “Not that. The tufts of wool that lie in little drifts when one is shearing sheep. And dressing-up boxes.”

  I opened my eyes to find Stoker grinning at me and I groaned. “The odor was spirit gum. He was wearing a false beard and eyebrows.”

  “And the bushy whiteness of it made you think of sheep being sheared.”

  “And the spirit gum put me in mind of dressing-up boxes because one is always sticking on beards or moustaches,” I finished. “Extraordinary. However did you work that out?”

  “When I was learning Latin, I had the devil’s own time memorizing declensions,” he told me. “I used to read aloud as I walked, and I was always more interested in the birds and plants than the words. I discovered if I recalled what I had been looking at or smelling at the time, I could often remember what I had read.”

  “How very curious. You ought to write a paper,” I suggested.

  He shuddered visibly. “You know my opinions on the social sciences. And, in case it has escaped your attention, we have the problem of a corpse to dispose of.”

  “But why bring her here?” I asked.

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “She was delivered here before we escaped. Matters would have been going according to plan for your uncle and Archibond at that point. With Archibond in Special Branch, it would have been an easy enough matter for him to arrange for the body to be discovered here. But it makes no sense.”

  “Because they would have had no reason then to discredit us,” I said, picking up the thread of his thoughts. “She needed to be discovered at the club in order to implicate Eddy in her murder. Archibond indicated as much. And if Eddy were thought to have murdered a courtesan so near to Whitechapel, it would be a very short leap to laying suspicion of the Ripper’s crimes at his door. Imagine the furor! There is not a newspaper in the Empire or abroad that would not shriek the scandal from the headlines. Even if he were proven innocent, he would never escape the stain of it. I am persuaded Madame Aurore was brought into the plot as a means of luring Eddy into indiscretion, and at some point, Archibond or Uncle de Clare decided it was not enough for her to play the role of courtesan, she must play the role of victim as well.”

  Stoker broke in. “So, she was murdered by Quiet Dan and left for Eddy to find at the appointed hour. Remember, they were in the mews stairs, ready to burst in and discover him standing over her bloodied body.”

  “But we fled and they lost time in chasing us down, just enough time for someone else to nip in and retrieve her body,” I reasoned.

  “Someone who had been watching her closely and was on hand, ready to act swiftly and decisively to foil as much of the plot as possible,” Stoker added. “They not only chased us down but abducted us from the pavement outside the club and had to take us to the warehouse in Whitechapel. No doubt it was some time before they could return to the club and then discover their corpse had disappeared.”

  “What a nasty shock for them,” I mused. “To have set up such an elaborate scene only to have it ruined, first by our running away and then by someone else whisking her body away.”

  “But why bring it here?” Stoker demanded. “And furthermore, who outside of the original plot even knew we were there?”

  There was the sensation of whirling, as if I were dancing, and I remembered the strong grasp of the female porter who had partnered me. Good night, Veronica Speedwell.

  “There was someone,” I said slowly. “The female porter who admitted us.”

  Stoker shook his head. “We gave no names, there was no list.”

  “But she knew me,” I told him. “Later that evening we danced.”

  One brow quirked upwards. “You danced?”

  “Waltzed, actually. She is quite a good partner, a little lighter in the turns than you are,” I explained. “And when the dance was finished, she said, ‘Good night, Veronica Speedwell.’”

  “And you are only just now telling me this?” he asked in a voice that was murderously calm.

  “I have been a little busy since,” I returned coldly. “You will forgive me if an abduction rather pushed such a trifling incident out of my mind.”

  “It is hardly a trifling incident, Veronica,” he replied. “Our identities were known by at least two porters at that club, one who danced with you and one who hauled Aurore’s corpse into our home. I do not much care for the possibilities.”

  “I understand,” I said, humbling myself a little. “But perhaps the possibilities are not as bad as you fear. As you say, if we were meant to be implicated in Aurore’s murder, someone need only send an anonymous note to Scotland Yard and her body would be discovered in our possession. But that has not happened. I think someone brought her here for safekeeping.”

  “Have you quite taken leave of your senses?”

  “I have not. It is perfectly logical, if you would only stop to consider it. The porters knew some of what was transpiring at the club. Perhaps Madame Aurore took them into her confidence. Perhaps they eavesdropped for pleasure or money. In any event, they knew who we were, and when they discovered their mistress’s dead body, they brought her here, entrusting her, as it were.”

  “That is the most far-fetched, fantastical—”

  “Have you a better theory?” I challenged.

  He fell silent, gnawing on his lower lip. “I have not,” he said finally. “It is logical.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I still do not like it,” he growled. “It puts us in the path of danger.”

  “In the path of danger?” I was frankly incredulous. “My dear Stoker, in the past two days, we have been abducted, held against our will, chased, shot at, and—in your case—thoroughly beaten. We have not been so much in the path of danger as standing in the middle of it, surrounded on all sides.”

  “Hence my irritation,” he finished glumly.

  “That and a lack of sustenance,” I told him in a firm tone. “We have missed luncheon, but I will order a full tea and then you will rest. It will be some time before you recover your strength.”

  It was a mark of his fatigue that he argued with me for only a quarter of an hour before giving in. “What about Sir Hugo?” he asked as he finished off the last of the scones some time later, licking cream and jam from his fingers in contentment.

  “I will send a note requesting an audience as soon as he can spare us the time,” I promised. “I think it best if we speak in person. If nothing else, he will be pleased enough to see the bruises on your face and might take pity on us.”

  “Then perhaps we ought to show him my ribs,” he said sleepily. He gave a great cracking yawn and settled into the sofa. A moth-eaten old coverlet lay along the back and I drew it over him, tucking it neatly under him. I usually resisted all impulses to nurture—it is never a good idea to let people get accustomed to one’s servitude—but Stoker had earned a little kindness, I reflected.

  And whilst he slept, I penned a brief note to Sir Hugo, stating only that we requested an audience at his convenience and dispatching it with a coin for George. Afterwards, I settled to labeling a case of Papilio buddha—Malabar Banded Peacock butterflies—whose notes had gone astray. I had just removed a sweet little imposter nestling amongst them (Common Bluebottles, Graphium sarpedon, are often mistaken for the more elusive Banded Peacocks) when Stoker appeared, looking a little better for his rest.

  “Has the post come?” he demanded, helping himself to a cup of tea from the stone-cold pot.

  “A telegram from Rupert in elaborate code,” I told him. “The parcel has been safely delivered to Scotland with no troubles. That is an end to that,” I said, clearing my throat. It had been a hectic twenty-four hours in Eddy’s company, and I was glad he had been speedily returned to the bosom of his family. Apparently his sister’s prevarications had roused no suspicions, and he was ha
ppily ensconced once more at our grandmother’s castle, no doubt spending his days tramping upon moors spread with heather and harebells, returning late to a cozy tea by the fire, butter dripping from toasted crumpets as they shared inside jokes and titbits of gossip about other members of the family.

  “Veronica?” Stoker said softly.

  I roused myself and waved a hand to the rest of the post, returning to position my little Bluebottle in a more appropriate collection. Stoker flicked through the pile of letters and circulars that had accumulated during our absence, throwing most of them onto the floor with his customary nonchalance. He plucked one letter from the pile, tearing open the envelope and skimming the contents in a fury.

  “Bloody bollocking hell,” he muttered.

  “Trouble?”

  “It’s Pennybaker,” he fumed. “He claims there is a problem with the quagga. My quagga.”

  “What sort of problem?” I asked, attempting to sound interested. Frankly, I was far more excited by the discovery of a dysmorphic specimen in the collection of Banded Peacocks. To encounter one with male and female characteristics in such good condition was a rare find indeed, and I envied the collector who had netted it.

  “He says the glue has proven inadequate,” he said, jaw clenching furiously.

  “It is possible to have a bad batch of glue,” I pointed out. My calmness only incited his fury further.

  “I make each batch of glue myself,” he reminded me. “You know that. My formula is precise, my methods exacting. I have never, never returned a specimen to a collector in imperfect condition. He is threatening legal action.”

  “Legal action!” I turned at last from my butterflies. “That sweet little man? Feathers. He drank champagne from my slipper. I don’t believe it for a moment.”

  “Well, he is,” Stoker insisted, waving the letter like a flag. “And I will not stand for it. Are you coming with me?”

  “Coming? You mean to visit him?”

  “He invites me. Says that we can settle this like gentlemen because he is not unreasonable and expects that with a few modest repairs we can put this behind us. Modest repairs,” he repeated, muttering a few other choice phrases that have no place in a polite memoir.