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

by Elizabeth Bailey

  Suddenly dog-tired, she sank down to sit on the stairs, clutching at the banister rail as she listened to the excited retelling of Tom’s incarceration by the madwoman, as he insisted on calling Tamasine. She heard this time how he had managed to get away after the girl had dragged him onto the parapet, with a threat of jumping off.

  “I don’t think she would have jumped really. But she said we would jump and I said we should jump the other way first just to make sure we could do it. She started to turn and I managed to slip out of her hold. I ran along the wall and climbed onto the roof as fast as I could. I thought she would follow me, but she didn’t. And then I thought she was going to fall, but she managed to keep her balance. And then Auntilla came and danced with her and she died and…”

  Ottilia closed her eyes, the remembrance of Tamasine’s last moments coming back with a vengeance. It was so unfair! The child had likely been driven even more demented by the application of increasing doses of laudanum. If only they had never brought her to England. Although, would that have served? Even then Mrs Whiting had the fixed intention of taking her life whenever she became too difficult to manage. Just so had she served the wretched Florine.

  “Tillie?”

  Her eyes snapped open to a sudden flash of déjà vu. An eon ago she had been sitting on the stairs at the end of the first such adventure and Francis had asked her to marry him.

  “Oh, Fan, thank heavens you’ve come!”

  He sat down beside her and drew her close against him. “I wish I’d never gone.” His face changed. “Dear Lord, you’re freezing, Tillie! Here, let me warm you up.”

  Hours passed before Ottilia was able to satisfy the hungry curiosity of the inmates of the Dower House. With the recovery of her faculties, a number of urgencies overtook her and she was obliged to enlist her spouse’s services.

  “Delaney, Fan. Or is it Lovell now? He must be sent for at once. The coroner too.”

  Francis released her and stood up. “I’ll send Giles. He drove me back and should have gone around to the stables by this time. Come, Tillie. You will take cold sitting on the stairs.”

  She allowed him to pull her to her feet, holding together the edges of his coat which he had stripped off to wrap about her shoulders. Her mind was already busy with the next problem as she descended the flight.

  “And Summerton too, I think. We cannot rely upon Patrick at this juncture.”

  But her brother, still holding his younger son in his arms, looked up at that moment. “Let me but take Tom and Ben to Sophie and I will come and take a look at the bodies.”

  “I’ll look to Tom, Papa,” said Ben, sounding decidedly grown-up. “You have duties here.”

  Ottilia’s heart warmed. No trace remained of the desperate child who had run to her in fear of his brother’s life. But the mention of bodies brought the other appalling happening to mind and she seized Patrick’s arm as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Mrs Whiting must not be moved! The Justice ought to see her exactly where she is.”

  Patrick released Tom into his elder son’s charge. “I’ll see to that. Go to your mother, Tom, there’s a good lad.” He lowered his voice as the boys headed for the front door. “What about the girl?”

  Ottilia’s throat constricted for a moment. “Hemp is bound to bring her down. She cannot be left on the roof.”

  “Then I’d best instruct the footmen to put her in her bedchamber.” He was gone on the words, taking the flight two steps at a time.

  Francis slipped his arm around Ottilia again. “Will you sit in the parlour until I get back?”

  “No, Fan, I will come with you if you mean to go through the servants’ quarters. I must go to Mrs Whiting’s room.”

  “What the devil for? Can’t it wait?”

  But Ottilia was already moving in the direction of the baize door at the back of the hall. “Too important, Fan. Do you get to the stables and catch Giles before he takes it into his head to come into the house. I don’t think it would be good for him to see Tamasine, do you?”

  Her spouse looked at once grim. “Decidedly not.”

  Ottilia slipped off his coat and gave it to him. “Take this, Fan. I am warmed up now.”

  He shrugged it on, told her he would join her in the housekeeper’s room the moment he had sent Giles upon his errand, and departed down the long corridor leading through the domestic offices.

  Ottilia followed more slowly, trying to dismiss from her churning mind the more lurid of the morning’s memories. A clatter of pots and pans indicated the stirring events of the immediate past had not yet penetrated to the nether regions. The oddity of this heightened a growing sense of unreality. Even the fact of Mrs Whiting’s murder seemed remote now.

  She was glad to think it would be Patrick and not herself who witnessed Tamasine’s handiwork. She was not normally squeamish, but she found it profoundly affecting to think of the child’s vengeful act after holding her while she breathed her last. Poor little sugar princess indeed. It was hard to blame her, painful to think of the viciousness existing within that tortured mind. Better perhaps to remember the childish delight, the gleeful silvery laughter and the occasional amusement of her non sequitur utterances.

  Her thoughts had brought her within sight of the housekeeper’s domain and Ottilia hesitated on the threshold. She must do now what she had intended to achieve before the drastic happenings of the day. It had been meant to prevent them, but a sneaking sense of the kindness of providence could not but obtrude upon her regret. The child was at peace and Mrs Whiting could no longer answer in this world for her misdeeds.

  She drew a breath and walked into the room. The door of the housekeeper’s cupboard, which she had fully expected to find locked, was hanging wide. Confusion, shock and dismay attacked Ottilia one after the other.

  Had Mrs Whiting left it thus? In the heat of this morning’s debacle had she seized what she needed and rushed to the scene? Or had another broken it open and rifled some of the contents?

  She moved to examine the lock. The wood around it was splintered, telling its own tale. Who in the house had forced it? Not Mrs Whiting. She had the keys after all.

  Ottilia pulled the door wide and checked over what it contained. The ledgers were still stacked where she had seen them last when the housekeeper showed her the records of Tamasine’s doses. There was no way to tell from memory if any were missing, but there was no gap, so it was safe to assume they were intact.

  She shifted her attention to the various bottles and jars on the upper shelf. This was where the laudanum was stored. There was one full bottle and another standing open with its cork vanished. It was half empty. Had Mrs Whiting grabbed a dose in a rush? Ottilia looked around for a set of glasses and spied a measuring tub on the table with the errant cork nearby. In her mind’s eye, she imagined the housekeeper dashing in, aware from the cacophony that a dose would be needed and hurrying to set one up.

  But had the cupboard been broken open even then? Was anything else missing? She turned back to her inspection of the shelves. She readily recognised a collection of innocuous household remedies: Asoefetida drops, Turkey Rhubarb, Cream of Tartar and a variety of elixirs jostling one another, along with various unguents and a pot of Mercury pills. Nothing obviously missing. She checked further down.

  The lower shelves contained various packages and boxes, but at once a tell-tale gap showed a hefty stack of uniform shape to be conspicuous by its absence. The size rang a bell with Ottilia and she had just placed it when her husband’s voice drew her attention.

  “Have you found whatever you were looking for?”

  She turned to look at him. “Something is missing.”

  He came forward, eyeing the cupboard. “Do you know what it is?”

  She returned her gaze to the gap. “I have a fairly good notion. What I don’t know is who forced the lock.”

  Francis instantly cast his eyes upon the area where the wood was splintered and cursed. “For pity’s sake! Ano
ther mystery is all we need.”

  A horrid thought struck Ottilia. “We must stop Hemp from taking Tamasine to her room!” Energised anew, she sped from the little room and hurried along the corridor. “There’s a back stair, Fan. Quickly!”

  A burst of excited whispering broke out behind her and she flicked a glance backwards. A couple of maids and a sturdy woman in a stained apron, who was holding a wooden spoon, stood in a cluster a few doors down from the housekeeper’s room. Ottilia ignored them and hurried on.

  Reaching the cross-corridor at the point of the door to the main house, she turned into it, pointing towards the stairwell now visible ahead. “There, Fan! Run up, if you please, and head Hemp off if he is on his way. Let him put the girl in any other room but her own.”

  Francis was already halfway up the first flight, but he acknowledged this with a nod and clattered on up the wooden stairs.

  Out of breath already, Ottilia paused with her hand on the bannister.

  “What is it, ma’am? What’s happened?”

  One of the maids had braved the scene. Ottilia waved her back.

  “That you shall know presently. Stay down here, if you please.” She bethought her of the butler. “Wait! Where is Lomax?”

  The maid, a frightened-looking creature with a thin face, crept a few steps closer and dropped a curtsy. “He’s still out searching far as I know, ma’am.”

  “Ah, then he was here when all the commotion started, was he?”

  The maid’s eyes rolled. “When Miss began a-screaming fit to bust herself, ma’am? I didn’t see him, ma’am, but I heard he went up. I seen Mrs Whiting who went up straight.”

  “Did she come down again, do you know?”

  The maid shook her head. “I seen her go up, but she ain’t come back down since.”

  No, for she could not. Then she must indeed have seized a dose and taken it up with her. But who had broken open the housekeeping cupboard? She thanked the maid and headed on up the stairs, still pondering. On recalling the butler, she’d wondered if he was the culprit, although it was hard to think why he might have occasion to do such a thing. Then she recalled Mrs Delabole mentioning Lomax having helped the footmen to overpower Tamasine.

  Instinct pointed her in one direction. If she was right, it would explain a great deal.

  By the time she reached Tamasine’s bedchamber, she was out of breath again, but was relieved when Francis came out of the room, looking exceedingly grim. Ottilia halted in the corridor, surveying him.

  “You’ve found them!”

  “If you mean what I think you mean, the remains are scattered all over the place.”

  Ottilia walked into the familiar bedchamber and halted on the threshold. The boxes lay everywhere, the empty packages strewn across the bed, the floor and clinging here and there to the curtains. She went to pick up one of the boxes, turned upside-down on the unmade bed. It was an exact copy of the box of sweets Tamasine had offered to Ottilia the day before and it was, like the rest, empty.

  “She stole them. She must have been eating them all night.”

  “And you think Mrs Whiting gave her another dose?”

  Ottilia sighed out a hopeless breath. “I should doubt of her being able to. I would not be surprised to find a vessel spilled on the floor in Tamasine’s attic. She might have had a dose last night. But if she ingested five boxes of these wretched sweets, it is unsurprising she was maddened this morning. She might have been hallucinating.”

  “What, when she killed Mrs Whiting?”

  “Who can say? I only know she meant to kill her — someday. Just as Mrs Whiting intended, at a suitable moment, to dispose of Tamasine. Only I don’t think she did. Tamasine saved her the trouble.”

  When, at length, Ottilia expounded this view to Mrs Delabole, that lady burst into sobs, sitting plump down upon one of the parlour chairs where she had taken refuge as soon as she returned to the house.

  “Thank heavens! I could not have borne it if the wretched creature had done such a thing. But does that Justice fellow believe you?”

  “I have not troubled him with that tale, ma’am. He has enough on his plate coping with Tamasine’s destruction of the unfortunate woman.”

  In fact Ottilia had abandoned as futile any attempt to explain her theory about Tamasine’s revenge. The Honourable Mr Robert Delaney, arriving along with the coroner in default of his colleague Mr Lovell who was still away, had no difficulty in believing Tamasine had committed the murder. The condition of her gown and the blood on her face were proof enough. Not to mention the weapon.

  “For I understand from your good brother, Lady Francis, that the insane can display superhuman strength if they are in the throes of a mad fit.” Horrified he might be, but he was inclined to think it a judgement upon those who knew no better than to allow an insane person to roam free. “What if the creature had bludgeoned some innocent instead of a member of the household? I can only suppose it a merciful dispensation of providence that she was found within the house since I understand most of the inhabitants were out hunting high and low for her for some time.”

  He considered the case as closed and gave leave for the dead to be buried as soon as may be, saying he would write up his report for the authorities, who would, he asserted, be perfectly satisfied with his judgement.

  Ottilia did not doubt it and was glad to see the back of him at last. By the time he departed, the undertakers had arrived, closely followed by the unexpected return of Miss Ingleby and Simeon Roy. The ensuing uproar, when the events of the morning were divulged to the truants, was enough, Francis said, to wake both corpses from their rest.

  He refused to allow his wife to become embroiled, and indeed Ottilia was relieved to leave the cacophony behind her.

  “Though I feel sorry for poor Mrs Delabole.”

  “It is time and past she took charge of the situation. I only hope she will not feel it incumbent upon her to come crying to you at the Dower House whenever she can’t cope.”

  The dowager, when informed of his hope, told him he was baying at the moon.

  “Mark my words! The creature will be over here dragging us into the business before the cat can lick her ear. She can’t leave until all is settled, I presume? How did you fare with Delaney?”

  Since Sophie, attended by Miss Mellis as usual, had swept her sons upstairs with her, refusing to let them out of her sight, Ottilia had no qualms in relating what the Justice had said and her mother-in-law, doubtless querulous from the horrors of the day, animadverted on the man’s character for several moments.

  “Of course he has no notion,” Ottilia said when she could get a word in, “for I did not feel it incumbent upon me to tell him, that Tamasine’s attack upon Mrs Whiting was the culmination of her reckoning.”

  Sybilla, seated across from her on the sofa, cast her an eagle glance. “How so?”

  “Mrs Whiting poisoned her mother.”

  This announcement was productive of a sudden silence. Lady Polbrook stared. Patrick, occupying the other end of the sofa, raised his brows. And Francis, in his favourite stance by the fireplace, one elbow resting on the mantel, bent a frown upon his wife. He was the first to speak, his tone reproachful.

  “I dare say you have known that for days.”

  “Of course she has,” said Sybilla on a scornful note. “You did not tell us that when you said you thought Mrs Whiting made those wretched confections.”

  Patrick raised an eyebrow. “That is what makes you maintain she intended to do the same by the daughter?”

  “I am quite sure she did. If Tamasine had not broken into her housekeeping cupboard, I expect she would have fed her those sweets every day in hopes that her addiction to sugar would do her work for her.”

  “Along with the doses to quiet her? Yes, I must concede that would be enough to do the trick. Without time for the body to get rid of the poisons, the accumulations would inevitably result in coma, and very likely death. You could scarcely hope for an emetic to remove enou
gh to keep her alive.”

  “You are certain it was Mrs Whiting feeding the sweets to Tamasine?” asked her husband.

  “Who else? No one had access to those boxes except herself. Tamasine stole five from the cupboard and there may be more in there. I did not have time to make a thorough check.”

  “Do you mean to tell me,” broke in Sybilla, evidently still struggling with the truth of it, “that the wretched woman had it in mind all along to dispose of that afflicted child?”

  “Yes,” said Ottilia baldly, “I do. What is more, I am convinced that the moment she realised how her machinations had helped to put paid to Sir Joslin, even though by accident, she found every opportunity to increase Tamasine’s dosage in the hope the girl would succumb as quickly as possible.”

  “But how callous!”

  “To her mind, I believe, she was performing a service. Just as she did for Florine, after it became clear the woman had become too violent. When I spoke of Tamasine suffering imprisonment, or perhaps hanging, Mrs Whiting was horrified and said she could not let them do it. She preferred to dispose of her in a fashion she thought humane. I suspect Tamasine’s attack upon Phoebe sounded her death knell.”

  Francis’s frown was direful. “Mrs Whiting did not bargain for Tamasine’s scheme of revenge, I take it?”

  “I doubt she even guessed Tamasine knew she had poisoned her mother. If she heard her speak of revenge at all, I imagine she took it for another manifestation of the girl’s deranged mind, and never thought to be upon her guard. Only Miss Ingleby understood the streak of rationality that ran through Tamasine.”

  “That creature? I thought we had been rid of her at least!”

  “Oh, I imagine you will be, Sybilla. I cannot suppose the rekindled passion between those two has as yet burned itself out. Although, I would guess Simeon will wish to remain for a while, in hopes of a share of Tamasine’s fortune.”

  “For my part, they are welcome to each other,” said Francis. “A more quarrelsome pair I hope I may never meet. As for that fellow, Lomax, he may go hang for all of me. What troubles me more is what is to become of those blacks.”