The Lady Fan Series: Books 1-3 (Sapere Books Boxset Editions)

by Elizabeth Bailey

  “Very well, let that pass. So you got up to fetch the bottles. Did you take them to your master?”

  “No, madam. Foscot accompanied me and took them himself.”

  “That will not do, Cattawade,” snapped the dowager. “I know your habits. You would consider it your duty to hand the bottles personally to his lordship. What should induce you to do otherwise?”

  The butler did not flinch. “The knowledge, my lady, conveyed to me by Foscot, that his lordship was in a foul temper.”

  “He was, was he?”

  “Yes, my lady, he having quarrelled violently, according to Foscot, with her ladyship.”

  Ottilia eyed him with new interest. “And in the morning you discovered her ladyship murdered. What did you suppose, Cattawade?”

  His eyes went to the dowager, and the mask slipped a little as his jowls reddened. “I confess, madam, I thought what anyone might think. It was not a welcome notion.”

  “It was a false one,” the dowager returned on a harsh note.

  “I am in hopes of so proving,” Ottilia said, and gave the man her warmest smile.

  For the first time in their dealings, the butler showed real emotion. The rims of his eyes gleamed and his mouth quivered. “I hope and trust you will, madam, for the horror of that suspicion haunts us all.”

  “I will do my best. And I am so grateful for your help, Cattawade. I am sure we will have occasion to talk again.”

  Her words, she was glad to see, had silenced the dowager, who shot her a sharp look. Ottilia hurriedly nodded dismissal to the butler, who bowed and circumspectly withdrew. She turned to her employer with a smile, ushering her back towards her bedchamber, from which the glow of many candles set the vestibule alight.

  “I am sorry to have been so thoughtless as to talk outside your chamber.”

  “I am only too glad to hear another voice,” said the dowager, leading the way into the room, “Come in with me, my dear.”

  Ottilia entered behind her and saw at once that the truckle bed set up beside the four-poster was empty. “But where is Miss Venner?”

  The dowager was climbing back into bed. The curtains were not drawn and there were candles burning on the mantel, on the night table, and in one of the wall sconces.

  “In the dining parlour, I trust. I sent her to fetch me a glass of port.” She settled herself against the pillows and patted the bedclothes beside her. “What have you been up to this late in the night?”

  Obediently, Ottilia perched on the edge of the bed. “I thought it as well to seize opportunity at once and begin upon my explorations.” She gave a brief account of what she had found. “Although I cannot think Colonel Tretower will do anything but pooh-pooh the suggestion that a lover came by any of these ways. Nor can I blame him, for each has its drawbacks.” To Ottilia’s dismay, the dowager shivered. “Are you cold, ma’am?”

  “To the bone,” came the reply, “but not from lack of heat.”

  Her glance shifted, as if she tried to penetrate the wall separating this chamber from that of the late marchioness.

  “Dear me, is it so very uncomfortable, ma’am?”

  “To lie behind Emily’s chamber? It is perfectly morbid, just as Francis said.” Abruptly, she hit the pillow beside her with a clenched fist. “Why had this to happen? It is so cruel. Who could have done it? Who would be so vicious? Oh, it does not bear thinking of!”

  Ottilia reached out, taking hold of that fist and cradling it. “Hush, ma’am. We will discover him, I promise you. The truth will come to light.”

  For several moments the dowager did not speak, her anguished gaze remaining fixed upon Ottilia’s face. She bore the scrutiny without protest, aware that her employer’s eye was concentrated rather on the inner turmoil of her emotions than on herself. At last the dowager spoke, and with weariness. “I see that image of her ruined features and feel nothing. It is as if there is no reality in it, as if I dwelled in a dream.”

  Ottilia said nothing. This was the expected stupor, catching up at last with the elderly dame. It was perhaps merciful that the overburdened mind should close down for a while, leaving one numb. She was no stranger to the phenomenon.

  “What is your given name?” asked the dowager abruptly. “It is absurd, after all that has passed, to be addressing you as ‘Mrs. Draycott’. I feel as if I had known you forever.”

  “I know just what you mean,” she returned warmly. “I would be only too happy if you will call me Ottilia.”

  The dowager’s brows rose. “Yes, I remember now. Unusual. But I like it. It suits you.”

  “Why, thank you, ma’am.”

  “And you may address me as Sybilla.”

  Ottilia was startled. “Oh, I could not.”

  “I don’t see why not. Teresa does so, and you are my companion.”

  “Yes, but Miss Mellis has been with you for many years, while I —”

  “Have insinuated yourself into an intimacy unequalled by the wretched creature in all that time. No, I will hear no more argument, for my mind is made up.”

  Ottilia felt utterly discomposed. “But, my dear ma’am, it is scarcely respectful. In the circumstances —”

  She was cut off without ceremony. “The circumstances are unprecedented.”

  Then, to Ottilia’s great distress, the dowager’s face crumpled and she leaned forward, holding out trembling hands.

  “Oh, my dear child, can you not see how desperate I am for a friend?”

  A tear slipped from under the dowager’s lashes, and Ottilia could bear no more. “Sybilla! Oh, my poor dear.”

  And then her arms were enfolding the woman, who clung to her, dry sobs racking her thin body. Ottilia rocked her, hushing gently, much as she had done when one of her nephews had needed comfort. But this was a collapse she had not anticipated. The dowager appeared so strong, so assured. But to find her vulnerable after what she had endured should come as no surprise.

  Within a few minutes the dowager’s sobs abated, and Ottilia felt her resist the encircling arms. Releasing her, she hunted in her pocket for a handkerchief.

  Sybilla took it with a word of thanks. “I am glad we are alone,” she said a trifle shakily. “I should hate Francis to have seen me behaving like a watering pot.”

  “I am sure he would much dislike to see you distressed, ma’am.”

  “No, and I would not add to his troubles, poor boy. This has brought a deal of unpleasant work upon him.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Ottilia, relieved to note how Lord Francis had returned to favour. She added with deliberate cheer, “But he has been a soldier, I gather, and will know how to stand to battle.”

  “We must all do so, Ottilia.”

  “Very true. But for the present, dear Sybilla, I think you have stood enough, do not you?”

  She had expected an argument, but the sound of the door opening forestalled it. The dowager contented herself with a sigh.

  “Here is Venner with my port.”

  “In good time,” said Ottilia, and rose to give place to the lady’s maid by the bedside. “Good night, ma’am. Don’t let the nightmare fright you too much, I beg.”

  Sybilla took the glass from her maid and sipped. “It will be well if we both sleep, Ottilia. We must needs conserve our strength.” Ottilia was relieved to hear the more normal acerbic note returning to the dowager’s voice. “Not only must we face the gossips in due time, but there is Candia to be thought of.”

  Venner started, catching Ottilia’s attention, and she saw a flash of some violence of emotion in the woman’s face. But in a second, her customary sour expression returned. Ottilia’s response to the dowager was made without thought as she continued a surreptitious survey of the lady’s maid.

  “Candia?”

  “My granddaughter.”

  “Of course, I had forgot.”

  “The poor child will be distraught at losing her mother,” said Sybilla. “I shudder to think what it will do to her to learn the manner of Emily’s death.”
>
  Sleep was fitful, disturbed by strange dreams wherein dark passages and contorted faces juxtaposed with a series of odd conversations and a coach hurtling into the night with a clatter of hooves upon the cobbles. This last clashed so loudly in Ottilia’s head that she woke, staring with unseeing eyes into the enclosing darkness of the bed-curtains. The clatter came again, transposing itself in her mind into something near at hand.

  An instant later, she identified its source. No horse this, but the ordinary household sound of the chambermaid working at the grate in the fireplace. The happenings of the past couple of days tumbled into Ottilia’s mind, and she fastened upon one piece of information she’d been given. Without thought, she reared up in the bed and flung back the curtains on one side.

  “Sukey!”

  The girl cried out, dropping her tools with a clang as she tried to turn sharply. Crouched as she was, the chambermaid lost her balance, threw out her hands to save herself, and ended up on all fours, staring up at Ottilia with starting eyes.

  “Oh dear, I am sorry,” exclaimed Ottilia, throwing herself out of bed and going quickly across. “Let me help you up.”

  Sukey allowed herself to be assisted to her feet, but she was clearly unsteady, her breathing shallow and fast, so that Ottilia felt obliged to keep a hand under her elbow to prevent her falling again.

  “I am so very sorry,” she said again. “I did not mean to startle you.”

  The girl found her tongue. “Ooh, miss, you give me a terrible fright! I thought it were the mistress, large as life again.”

  How this might be so in a chamber set in a separate floor of the house and on the other side to boot, Ottilia forbore to enquire. It was evident Sukey was a girl with a vivid imagination. She was a plump child, little more than fourteen or fifteen, Ottilia judged, with a quantity of bouncing dark hair escaping from under the regulation cap and a pair of expressive pansy eyes that were undoubtedly destined to get her into a great deal of trouble. She was just the sort of girl to draw the opposite sex like a magnet.

  “What a horrid thought,” Ottilia said, with just that touch of drama to induce the chambermaid to develop her theme.

  The girl nodded and sniffed, dragging her sleeve across her nose. “It give me the shivers, miss. I thought I were back in my lady’s room, and her lying all cold and dead in the bed.”

  She sniffed again, but there were no tears in the wide eyes, and it was borne in upon Ottilia that she was suffering from a cold in the head.

  “Goodness, how dreadful! I am sorry to have reminded you of such an experience.”

  Sukey gave an artistic shudder. “Summat awful, it were, miss. To think of my lady lying there all cold and stiff while I made up the fire! Fair makes my hair stand on end, miss.”

  “I am not at all surprised. It must have been quite shocking.” She released the girl, confident the chambermaid was sufficiently recovered to stand on her own. “I don’t suppose you heard anything while you were in the chamber, did you, Sukey?”

  Sukey shook her head vehemently. “I’ve a cold in me head, miss, and me ears weren’t working good.”

  “I don’t suppose you saw very much, either?” Ottilia surmised, crossing to the door to retrieve her dressing robe from a hook and shrugging it on. It was cold, the chambermaid having been interrupted before she could get the fire going properly, but this was not the moment to draw her attention to the fact.

  “I didn’t see nothing but the bed-curtains, miss. Closed they were, like always.” Her eyes grew rounder. “But I felt summat.”

  “What did you feel?”

  “Ooh, it were like the time me little brother shoved a piece of ice down me back, miss.” She shuddered again. “Like as if I knowed there were summat wrong.”

  Ottilia knew the propensity of people to be wise after the event, but she saw no reason to doubt the girl. A lively imagination did not preclude the possession of a sixth sense. She shifted tack. “Can you remember what time it was when you were doing her ladyship’s room?”

  The question seemed to throw Sukey, who blinked owlishly. “I start at six, miss.”

  Ottilia smiled. “Yes, but I take it you do not start in her ladyship’s room.”

  “Oh no, miss. I’ve the downstairs parlours to do first, so’s they’re warm when anyone comes down.”

  “Very well, what time do you usually finish?”

  “After seven, miss, depending.”

  “Depending on what?”

  “Who’s in the house, miss. But I’ve to be back downstairs afore eight to help Jane get the dining parlour ready for breakfast.”

  “Then you must have been in her ladyship’s chamber somewhere between, say, half past six and a little after seven?”

  “Yes, miss.” The reminder proved unfortunate, sending her back to a familiar theme. “Ooh, miss. To think she were lying dead there all the time while I were poking flinders in the flames!”

  “It was horrid for you,” Ottilia soothed as patiently as she could. “It would be better to try not to think of it.”

  “I can’t help it, miss,” Sukey protested. “It’s like as if I knew. Only I couldn’t do nothing for her if I had. It were too late.”

  A note of hysteria had crept into the child’s voice, and Ottilia gentled her tone. “There is no need to distress yourself. You could not have known, Sukey.”

  The girl struck her hands together and her whole face brightened, as if a sudden thought had attacked her.

  “I did know, miss, I did. I never thought it before, but I couldn’t hear her, miss. I couldn’t hear her breathing.”

  Ottilia stared. Of course! The chambermaid performed the same chore, day after day, like clockwork. She would not have realised how every sound and sight must be imprinted in her memory. She had no need of a sixth sense. The lack of one item in the familiar pattern had penetrated without full awareness.

  Sukey stood like a stock, as if lost in her own recognition. Then a change came and her pansy eyes widened. “I heard the clock. On the mantel.”

  Intent now, Ottilia eyed her. “When, Sukey?”

  “When I were outside the door, miss. I were that glad to get out, I stood a minute for me heart was beating so fast, I was afeared as I’d swoon.”

  “And you heard the clock. Did it chime?”

  The girl nodded wildly. “It ain’t nowise loud. It’s like a little tinkle, chiming the hour.”

  “Seven o’clock then.”

  “Must have been, miss. It don’t chime but the once. When I hear it of a morning if I’m in there, I know I’m near finished.”

  “Oh, well done, Sukey. That is most helpful.”

  Sukey beamed. That she understood the significance of her words was doubtful, but she blossomed under the praise. Ottilia thanked her profusely.

  “I am sorry to have kept you. I’m afraid you will finish late this morning.”

  “It don’t matter, miss,” said the chambermaid airily, kneeling to the fire again. “I’ve only the range to do after, and it ain’t going nowhere.”

  Ottilia laughed and, throwing back the curtains around the bed, climbed into it again, wondering if it was too early for a maid to bring hot water for her ablutions. Since she was now wide awake, she could fill in the time until breakfast by resuming her exploration of the house, although she did not wish to get in the way of the servants who would be busy at this hour. Undecided, she nevertheless stopped the chambermaid as she was about to leave the room.

  “Sukey, would you be kind enough to ask one of the maids to bring my hot water up early?”

  “Yes, miss. If the copper’s been set on the fire, which ain’t nowise certain,” said the chambermaid frankly. “The whole house is that upset, Mrs. Thriplow says as how it’ll be topsy-turvy for days.” On which ominous note, the chambermaid bid Ottilia a cheerful good morning and retired, armed with her bucket of coals.

  Proof of the housekeeper’s prophecy was rapidly evident.

  The copper had undoubtedly been nowhere
near the fire at its usual time, for no hot water appeared in Ottilia’s chamber until past nine o’clock, and she had perforce to abandon her scheme of checking the rest of the house. It was going on for ten by the time she joined the dowager in the dining parlour, where a small round table set between the two windows had been covered with a cloth and laid for breakfast.

  “If you are hoping for sustenance,” said Sybilla by way of greeting, “you may find yourself disappointed. I have been waiting more than half an hour already. Thriplow was not exaggerating. The whole place has gone to pieces.”

  “So I have been led to believe,” agreed Ottilia smilingly. “Inevitable, in the circumstances.”

  “I’ll give them inevitable,” promised the dowager fiercely. “There is no reason in the world for such slackness.”

  “Come now, ma’am. Do you expect the servants to be any less discomposed by these events than ourselves?”

  “No, I expect them to be more so,” came the tart response. “They thrive on such happenings.”

  “Well, yes. Despicable as it may seem, I daresay it brings excitement into lives otherwise drab beyond bearing.”

  Ottilia came under a glare from the dowager’s black eyes. “Must you always stress the very thing I prefer to ignore?”

  Laughing, Ottilia begged her pardon. “Do I do that? How very irritating it must be.”

  Sybilla flicked a hand at her. “There you go again. It is for me to speak of my irritation, not you.”

  Ottilia eyed her narrowly. “You slept badly, ma’am?”

  The dowager sighed deeply and her pose of injured defiance collapsed. “Appallingly. I could not swear to it that I closed my eyes at all, but I suppose I must have done.”

  “Oh dear,” said Ottilia, contrite. “Did not Venner’s presence help? Perhaps I should not have suggested the move.”

  “Yes, you should,” snapped Sybilla. “Do you suppose I cannot endure a few sleepless nights?”

  “Not if even one makes you as crotchety as this,” said Ottilia frankly.

  A faint laugh escaped the dowager. “My dear Ottilia, if you have a fault, it is in being so ruthlessly right all the time. Are you never at a loss?”