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

by Elizabeth Bailey

  Her husband shifted his back from the mantelpiece and came across to her. “I wish you will take a rest, Tillie. If you are not exhausted by all this hullaballoo, I assure you I am.”

  She allowed him to usher her to the daybed, which her brother obligingly vacated, instead drawing up a straight chair to the fire. She took up a comfortable position, moving her legs to make room for Francis to perch beside her.

  Patrick caught her eye. “Well, Ottilia?”

  “It is not well at all, I fear. This but complicates matters, without bringing us any further forward.”

  “But if it shifts suspicion away from the young fellow Roy?”

  “Does it, though?” put in Francis. “We know he tried to obtain the hand of this sugar heiress years ago.”

  “And was exiled for his pains,” Patrick agreed, crossing one leg over the other. “But even if he aspires to gain her fortune that is not to say he must needs eliminate the guardian. If he could worm his way in, he could as easily elope with the girl.”

  Ottilia put up a finger. “That is the crux of the matter.”

  “An elopement?”

  “No, Fan. Worming his way in. He has an accomplice in Willow Court. Someone kept him informed.”

  “How do you know?” demanded her brother.

  “He makes no secret of the fact that he kept up a correspondence with Tamasine. But Tamasine cannot write. I have no faith whatsoever in Simeon’s assertion about the girl making herself understood in pictures. Nor is she capable of sifting the necessary information to pass on.”

  “No, she is no plotter.” Francis laid his hand over hers where it lay in her lap. “Who, then? You believed Hemp when he told you he was not party to it. And Cuffy’s attachment to his master was evident that first day.”

  “Ah, and the Ingleby female was clearly in love with the fellow,” put in Patrick with interest. “Who does that leave?”

  Ottilia could not resist. “Well, you are both so knowledgeable on the subject, why don’t you tell me?”

  “Whiting and Lomax,” said Francis at once.

  “Just so, Fan. However, I cannot imagine why Mrs Whiting should be in cahoots with Simeon Roy.”

  Francis removed his hand and sat back, the furrow lifting from his brow. “Lomax, then. I’ll believe it of him. The fellow is both surly and insolent. What is more, I recollect that he was not of Matthew Roy’s party and need not be considered loyal to him. He came with the original sugar heiress, Florine, and had been in her father’s employ.”

  “Yes, that must stand against him.” Ottilia recalled another instance that pointed to the butler. “He also filched a piece of paper from the desk on the morning of Sir Joslin’s death.”

  Patrick’s lips twitched. “I hardly dare ask how you know that?”

  “I saw him. What is more, he knew just what he was looking for. I marked it particularly, for he gave an audible sigh when he found it.”

  “What in the world could it have been?”

  “As to that, Fan, I have a suspicion, but as there really is no evidence to support it, I will keep my own counsel on that for the moment.”

  Her brother snorted. “How very unfair.”

  “Ha! This is typical, Patrick. She will never disclose something of which she is uncertain.”

  “Then for heaven’s sake, sister mine, at least share with us your views about this business of the mother’s death.”

  Ottilia frowned. “That is puzzling. I am inclined to believe Tamasine is confused. She may have heard something and added up two and two to make five.”

  “That I can well believe,” he said, his voice returning to its habitual even tone. “These mental derangements do not allow for logic. I have read a number of papers by practitioners in the field. The subjects tend to be completely literal in their thinking. They will take a statement at face value. If someone told Tamasine her guardian was in some way responsible for her mother’s death, she would likely make the assumption he had actually killed her.”

  “But did not Giles say she told him Sir Joslin had hurt her mother? She did not say he killed her,” objected Francis.

  “True. But Tamasine said her mother died and Sir Joslin therefore had to die too. The mother was also deranged. Suppose she attacked Joslin. If he then was obliged to use force to overpower her, his actions might be taken by Tamasine as having caused her death.”

  Ottilia stared at him. “Patrick, that is genius.”

  Her brother laughed and Francis gave him a mock slow handclap. “Bravo, old fellow! You have joined the ranks of the Fanshawe detection team.”

  Ottilia interrupted the ensuing exchange of banter. “Florine attacked Joslin and hurt him badly, for I got it from Hemp. That may account for this reckoning of Tamasine’s.”

  “That’s why she pushed Joslin?”

  “Just so, Fan. But my problem is not solved by that.”

  “How so?” Patrick leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees.

  Ottilia was amused to see his interest fully aroused. “Tamasine told me she is not yet done. And that was after Joslin was killed.”

  “But when she told Giles, she was clearly speaking of Joslin.”

  Ottilia looked at her spouse and put up an admonitory finger. “Do not be misled by the child’s changing her tale to suit her convenience, Fan. There is rationality there. As far as someone in her condition can be rational. We must take note of Patrick’s dictum. If she is literal, we must take her literally. If she says she is not yet done, then there is more here than we have yet discovered.”

  “Once you know it, will you have solved it, do you think, Tillie?”

  “Perhaps, Fan.” She sighed. “If only we can also ascertain the whereabouts of those wretched missing sweets.”

  Sybilla’s descent upon Willow Court upon the following morning proved untimely. Escorted by her son, with Ottilia in attendance, she entered into a scene of chaos.

  Bandboxes and portmanteaux littered the hall where several persons were assembled. Cuffy, who had opened the door to the visitors, no sooner closed it behind them than he hefted a couple of the bags and followed Hemp, already climbing the stairs, similarly burdened.

  A matronly figure, enveloped in a thick travelling cloak, was engaged in discussion with Miss Ingleby and Lomax. All three looked towards the new arrivals and Ottilia noted exasperation entering the companion’s face. She moved towards them, but before she could speak, Mrs Whiting came bustling through the green baize door, accompanied by a chambermaid carrying a quantity of fresh linen.

  Miss Ingleby was obliged to give place to allow the cavalcade to reach the stairs, a trifling delay which allowed Ottilia to get in first.

  “Lady Polbrook wished to speak with your charge, Miss Ingleby, but I see we are inopportune.”

  “Extremely so.” The woman’s glance swept the party, and came to rest on the dowager’s face. “Tamasine is not at liberty today, ma’am.”

  Sybilla’s black eyes snapped. “Then I will content myself with you, Miss Ingleby. Shall we step into the parlour?”

  “I am much occupied, as you see. Mrs Delabole has just arrived, and —”

  “Ah, you must be Tamasine’s aunt,” cut in Ottilia, sailing across the hall towards the matron, who was staring in frowning silence.

  She was a faded creature who must once have been beautiful. A few strands of flaxen locks escaped a pretty cap under a serviceable bonnet, which framed a face with skin softened by the years, whose plumpness disguised its creases. Her eyes were blue like Tamasine’s, but paler in hue, and just now showed their owner to be flustered.

  An uncertain smile formed on her lips as she took the hand Ottilia held out. “How do you do? I’m afraid I…”

  Her voice was soft, a little breathy and she spoke with hesitance, question in her face.

  Ottilia smiled. “Pray don’t be dismayed. You do not know us, but we are neighbours. I am Lady Francis Fanshawe. Allow me to present my mother-in-law, the Dowager Marchioness of Polbro
ok, who lives across the road. My husband and I are staying with her. Oh, this is my husband.”

  Looking bemused, Mrs Delabole shook hands. “Forgive me, Lady Polbrook, I am but just arrived, I’m afraid, and I know nothing of the neighbourhood.”

  Sybilla inclined her head. “I was a little acquainted with Sir Joslin. Allow me to condole with you on your loss.”

  “Oh, thank you. Though I hardly knew the man, you know. I mean, we met a great many years ago, before Matt — my brother, I mean — went off to Barbados.”

  “Then your situation is unenviable, if you are obliged to take all in charge.”

  “Indeed, and I have left everything at sixes and sevens at home. I do not know how we are to do.” She seemed to recollect herself and tried for a measure of calm. “But I must not run on. Miss Ingleby, perhaps…?”

  As the woman turned to the companion, Francis saved the day, moving to open the parlour door. “Shall we await your pleasure in here, ma’am? No doubt you will require a little time to yourself after your journey.”

  “Ah, how thoughtful, yes. Miss Ingleby will arrange everything, I am sure, if someone will only direct me to my chamber.”

  A prudent retreat seemed in order and Ottilia followed her mother-in-law into the familiar parlour. She detained Francis as he closed the door.

  “I’m going to run upstairs in a few moments, Fan, while you remain with Sybilla.”

  “Do you think that’s wise, with everyone running hither and yon?”

  “That is just why. No one will pay me the least attention.”

  “Pray, what are you about, Ottilia?” demanded the dowager, who had taken a seat near the fire. “Our mission here is set.”

  “Yours, Sybilla, yes. Mine is to discover what has happened to Tamasine.”

  The intelligence that the girl was incarcerated had been carried to the Dower House by her nephews on the previous evening. Just as she had guessed, they had raced back to Willow Court the moment they escaped their father’s eye.

  “Locked up in the attic she is, Auntilla.”

  “Bouncing off those mattresses like a jack-in-the-box!”

  “And screaming and screaming!”

  The image conjured up in Ottilia’s mind had harrowed her, engaging her sympathies for the poor child’s unenviable condition. Whether she was still in the attic remained moot, but Ottilia meant to brave the place again if necessary.

  Tamasine’s room was quiet. Ottilia put her ear to the door, but no muttering rewarded her. The key was in the lock and she tried the handle. It turned and squeaked a trifle as, with care, she pushed inward. The girl was evidently not in her bedchamber. Just to be sure, Ottilia peeped around the edge of the door.

  No erring daughter of the house was visible, either wandering or lying on the bed. The place was empty, which suggested she was still in her attic room. If so, she had been held there for hours. Could it be good for her?

  Then Ottilia bethought her of Simeon Roy who had not been of the party downstairs. Suggestive perhaps? She could not suppose he had been permitted to remove Tamasine from the premises. The companion regarded him with too much distrust.

  Leaving the child’s bedchamber as she had found it, Ottilia sneaked along the passage towards the back of the house, seeking for the stair she had used before when Tom led her to Tamasine’s eyrie. Unlikely anyone would be coming up. They were too much occupied below. She found the narrow stair and, not without a flurry of trepidation, hurried up to the floor situated under the eaves.

  The sound of voices caught at her ears, but muffled. Was the door to Tamasine’s eyrie then locked? She turned the corner and crept along the passage, glad to think there was someone with the creature, if it was indeed her voice she had heard.

  The door was open, but when Ottilia looked around the jamb, she could see no one. She went into the room proper and found it empty. Moreover, the voices still sounded muffled. Heavens, were they coming from above?

  Standing still, she listened, cocking her head and gazing at the slanted ceiling.

  A high-pitched laugh sounded. That must be Tamasine. But there was a second voice. Deeper? A sense of intrigue gripped Ottilia. Now, how in the world was she to find a way onto the roof? Convinced the voices were above her, she sped out of the room, heading for the stairwell.

  No access there. She took the stairs to the landing below, moving rapidly along one side and then the other, hunting for another stair to no avail. At last she found herself back in an upper storey of the main gallery. At once Ottilia saw that the stairs continued on up and she followed them. The turn brought a door in sight, open to the elements. A patch of dull sky showed through.

  As she reached it, she could again hear the voices. Some sort of recitation seemed to be in progress, more than one voice sounding together. Ottilia stepped through the aperture and onto the roof. It looked to be extensive, but the immediate pathway led between two elevations and opened out onto a flat surface surrounded by low walls either side, then continuing into another pathway beyond.

  Simeon Roy was leaning against the inner wall under a tiled elevation while Tamasine was sitting cross-legged on the flat surface nearby, evidently undisturbed by the biting wind that was already making Ottilia shiver.

  Some sound must have betrayed her for Simeon turned his head. Consternation leapt into his face, but he recovered swiftly and the habitual languor succeeded it. He pulled away from the wall, dropping into one of his nonchalant poses.

  “If it is not Lady Fan come to seek you out, my little Tam. What a lucky girl you are today.”

  A shriek of delight emanated from Tamasine and she sang out. “Lady Fan, Lady Fan, Lady Fan.”

  Ottilia walked up to the man, uttering a pleasant greeting. “How do you do, Mr Roy? I trust you are well today, Tamasine?”

  “Welcome to my eyrie,” said the girl in the most ordinary of tones.

  Startled, Ottilia could not think how to answer for a moment. Was this then the place she regarded as her eyrie, rather than her prison attic room? Or did she not descry a difference?

  “Why, thank you, Tamasine, I am very glad to be allowed to come.”

  “You won’t be for long.”

  The mutter came from behind her and Ottilia threw an admonitory glance over her shoulder. Simeon Roy responded with a quirked eyebrow and an amused look.

  Ottilia ignored him. “What are doing up here in your eyrie?”

  Tamasine turned her hands, setting her knuckles together, and wiggled her fingers. “See? I can make people in the steeple. Simeon showed me.”

  “In the church, Tam. The people are in the church, not the steeple.” Simeon played the nursery game on his fingers. “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple. Look inside and see all the little people.”

  “The preacher, the preacher,” called Tamasine.

  But even as Simeon began upon the rest with the preacher going upstairs and saying his prayers, the girl sprang up from her position on the floor, interrupting him with a demand for Lady Fan to look at her picture. She ran to the low wall and Ottilia was astonished to see an old mattress had been set against it. She began scrabbling inside, pulling out straw and flinging it this way and that.

  Ottilia turned to Simeon Roy, keeping her voice low. “Is it safe?”

  His brows lifted. “For you or for Tam? She won’t attack you if that is what you fear.”

  Ottilia refrained from informing him of the earlier occasion when she very nearly had been a victim of Tamasine’s demented state.

  “I meant her being on the roof? Why does she come up here?”

  His lip curled. “I can no more fathom the intricacies of Tam’s mind than you, Lady Francis. I did suggest she might prefer to come in. She says she likes it here.”

  Ottilia shivered and rubbed her arms. “I can’t think why anyone would put a mattress up here. She cannot lie in this cold surely?”

  “I imagine she brought it up here herself. Or persuaded Hemp to do so. I doubt she wants it fo
r its proper purpose.”

  “For what then?”

  But the question answered itself, for with a cry of triumph, Tamasine brought forth a crumpled collection of papers, scattering them as she hunted through them, chucking them in a disorderly way to join the wisps of straw.

  What in the world would she be at now? But Ottilia was not going to enquire of the wretched Simeon. She would get no satisfactory answer.

  “Does she know Mrs Delabole has arrived?”

  “That’s what I came up to tell her. She is not interested.”

  “Lady Fan! See? I found it!” The cry came from Tamasine, who was now holding up a scrunched ball of paper. “I made a princess picture.”

  Ottilia moved to join her and took the balled paper the child held out. “May I open it?”

  “It’s me,” said Tamasine gleefully. “I am the sugar princess.”

  Taking this for tacit permission, Ottilia gently prised the paper apart and spread the creased sheet open. A jumble of unrelated lines and curves rambled across the paper, drawn with what looked to be charcoal. There was no impression to be made of it in any real sense, but Ottilia produced an admiring look.

  “Why, this is indeed the sugar princess, Tamasine.”

  For a moment the girl said nothing, eyeing Ottilia with the disconcerting stare of vacancy. Then she snatched the paper and tore it across and across, throwing it into the air. The wind caught fragments and they fluttered away, scattering across the roof.

  “Wrong answer,” murmured Simeon Roy from behind her.

  “A little late to be telling me that,” Ottilia snapped.

  Tamasine ran to the mattress by the low wall and threw herself down upon it, lying perfectly still with her face buried. Was she feigning sleep the way she had on the first day with Miss Ingleby? Seizing her chance, Ottilia turned to confront Simeon.