“I fear, Anne,” she said, laying down her book, “that you are not making very much progress with your task.”
Anne sighed. “No, Miss Fawcett — I’m so sorry.” She was a biddable girl, who liked to please the governess, of whom she was quite fond. “But I don’t seem able to give my mind to anything bookish this morning! Perhaps if I might have a breath of fresh air I should do better — it’s so monstrously stuffy in the schoolroom, don’t you think, ma’am? In spite of the windows being open.”
The schoolroom was towards the top of the house, with small windows which did not admit much air on an exceptionally warm day such as this. Miss Fawcett agreed that this was so.
“Very well, my dear Anne, you may stroll about a little in the gardens. Return in, say, half an hour’s time or so, and perhaps you will then feel ready for rational occupation.”
Gratefully, Anne made her escape, scampering downstairs like a frisky rabbit and leaving the house unobtrusively by a side door. She skirted the formal gardens near to the house, choosing instead to walk in the shade of the trees which led down to the lake. She had almost reached the ornamental temple which stood beside it, when she saw another female figure about to mount the steps of the building. Recognising her mother’s maid, Healey, Anne opened her lips to call a greeting; but something in the furtive look which Healey cast about her kept the girl silent. Instead, she drew back behind the shelter of a large, spreading oak, her slim form amply concealed. She watched with mounting curiosity.
Healey seemed satisfied that no one was about, for she wasted no more time in reconnaissance, but ran up the steps and disappeared into the temple. From where she was concealed, it was impossible for Anne to see into the building, which had only two small windows facing on to the steps. To approach nearer would be to risk discovery if Healey should suddenly emerge. Anne could not have explained why, but she felt instinctively that the maid was about some secret business, and would resent being spied upon. It might be no more than a meeting with some follower — did females as old as Healey have followers, the girl wondered? — but ever since the time when Anne had found Healey looking through her mother’s correspondence, she had been suspicious of the maid. She decided to wait in hiding and see what transpired.
She had not long to wait. In about five minutes, Healey reappeared. This time, she did not look about her, but staggered down the steps like someone intoxicated. She was clutching something in her hand, but as she was facing away from Anne, the girl could not see what it was. She began to run with unsteady steps back towards the house. Once she stumbled and almost fell, but managed to right herself to continue her headlong flight.
For a while, Anne stared after her in amazement. Then, realising that Healey was unlikely to return, the girl ventured to approach the temple. She was cautious at first, fearing there might be someone within; but once she was close enough to peep through a window and see it was deserted, she entered quickly.
She looked about her. The temple was bare. She examined first the marble bench and then the floor, but could see nothing to indicate what Healey’s errand could have been. Only a perverse curiosity made her stoop to look under the bench, for she had no genuine expectation of finding anything. After examining the area thoroughly, she presently gave an excited exclamation.
One of the floor tiles was loose, and a thin edge of paper protruded from beneath it.
With fingers that trembled slightly, Anne raised the tile to disclose a small piece of cheap, thin paper folded across.
She hesitated for a moment, glancing uneasily behind her.
No one was there. Hastily, she opened the note and read its brief contents, written in a hand obviously unaccustomed to literary exercise.
I’m scared there’s a Bow Street man asking things I don’t want no more leave me be for God’s sake.
Anne sat staring at the note for several minutes, uncertain what to do. Should she remove it and show it to someone in authority — her father, for instance? Or would it be better to replace it, but tell him about it? Anne, of course, knew nothing about the circumstances of her uncle’s murder beyond what was common knowledge, and it was generally supposed that he had been killed by a burglar whom he had surprised in the act. That being so, she did not connect Healey’s actions in any way with the murder. Nevertheless, the maid had been behaving strangely of late, and Anne felt that perhaps she ought to bring what she knew to someone’s notice. The only thing was, to whose?
She started suddenly, fancying she heard a noise outside. She looked round apprehensively, but no one was there. The fright, short-lived as it was, persuaded her to quit the temple and return to the safety of the schoolroom without further delay. Quickly she replaced the note in its hiding place, tucking it in more securely than Healey had done — for there could be no doubt that it was Healey who had left it there — and taking to her heels. She ran all the way back, pausing only to recover her breath a little before she climbed the stairs to the schoolroom. By then, she had decided whom she would tell: her bosom friend Fanny, recipient of all her secrets.
A few hours later that same day, Ross, one of the new grooms at Firsdale Hall, was sent into York on an errand to a saddler’s. Having discharged this, he stabled his horse at a modest hostelry in the Shambles, then walked through into Coney Street. As he passed the great clock of St Martin le Grand overhanging the street, he paused for a moment to gaze up at the figure on top, the ‘Little Admiral’ holding his sextant. Then he crossed over to enter the Black Swan, one of York’s coaching inns.
He was inside only a short time before emerging to walk down to the Mansion House, then turn right across St Helen’s Square, and so into Stonegate. Just beyond the Olde Starre Inn, a plaster figure of a red devil crouched beneath the eaves of a printer’s establishment at the entrance to a narrow alley called Coffee Yard — advisedly so, since the buildings were chiefly coffee houses.
Ross entered one of these, finding a small, rather dark room with few customers. He made his way towards a bench at the far end, where a solitary man was sitting, his face in shadow. The two greeted each other casually, then put their heads together in earnest conversation.
Joe Watts, who had been keeping Ross under surveillance since the groom had left Firsdale Hall, went soft footed into the coffee house once he saw that the two men were absorbed in their talk. He beckoned to the proprietor, and unostentatiously displayed the short truncheon he carried in his pocket with the Crown stamp on its head, insignia of the Bow Street Runners.
“Yon man in the corner who’s been joined by the newcomer,” he said. “Know who he is?”
The proprietor shook his head, looking worried.
“Ever seen him before?” persisted Watts.
“Ay, a time or two. But what’s amiss? Ye bain’t after him, I hope, for this is a respectable house, and I don’t want no fuss and botheration. How’m I to know what folks be up to? As long as they come in quiet and drink their coffee, I can’t hardly be blamed for owt wrong, can I, now?”
Watts ignored this. “Does he meet other men here regular, like?”
The man considered. “Happen he does. Ay, now ye mention it, the once or twice I’ve noticed him, there’s usually been some other cove who’s come in to join him arterwards. But folk do meet here — that’s the purpose o’ a coffee house. Like a tavern, only not so noisy,” he explained, with heavy sarcasm.
“And you can’t say where he comes from?”
“No, I know nowt about him. He’s not a regular, ye understand, like some. Just looks in now and then.”
Watts nodded, cautioned the man to say nothing about the inquiry, and slipped quietly from the shop.
He returned to Stonegate, and crossed over into the Olde Starre Inn, where he was staying. A man loitering in the entrance hall approached him respectfully. This was a constable borrowed from the York contingent; one who, in Watts’ opinion, most nearly approached the standard of a Cockney counterpart. Watts issued his orders, and the constable at o
nce left the inn for Coffee Yard.
As for Watts, he went round to the stables to collect his horse for the short ride back to Firsdale. There might be no harm in a groom from Bradford meeting a friend in a York coffee house, but it would be as well to keep an eye open.
CHAPTER 10
“I told you that I should have been the one to interview the maid Healey, and not Runner Watts,” said Anthea accusingly. “I would not have been put off by what was most likely a feigned swoon.”
“I doubt if she would have submitted to your questioning in the first place. After all, you’ve no authority at all over her. Moreover, it would have been difficult to justify such a proceeding to de Ryde, would it not? Watts was the obvious, official interrogator.”
Anthea agreed doubtfully to this.
The pair had been strolling around the paddock at the Knavesmire, where the Firsdale Hall party had been since noon on that same day. Justin had seized an opportunity, when they were a little apart from the others, to give her an account of events earlier that morning.
Their isolation did not last, for they were soon joined again by Julia Marton, Louisa and Rogers. Sir George, finding locomotion painful and difficult in all the crowd, had chosen to remain seated in the grandstand, where he had the company of several neighbours. Harry, as usual, had gone off with his young friends.
Justin groaned as he saw the Cholmondeleys’ party approaching, but there was no way of avoiding an exchange of greetings.
“Oh, my dear Lady Marton!” gushed Mrs Cholmondeley. “Is it not the most melancholy thing that an outsider should win the last race? And there I had placed a substantial wager on the favourite! So, too, had my dear spouse, not to mention these other gentlemen — well, I think perhaps Mr Thrixen did not do so, nor Mr Barnet, but poor Sir John was ‘in the suds’, as the gentlemen say! Mr Reade, I forget — did you wager on Rising Sun, also?”
“Not I, ma’am!” laughed Reade. “To my mind, any filly with a name like that is bound to be a disappointment, what, Barnet? Notice you didn’t risk y’r blunt on the nag.”
“Not really a betting man,” returned the other, but without a trace of an apology. “That’s to say, unless I can bet on a certainty.”
“What an admission!” exclaimed Fulford, looking to Anthea for support. “I’m sure, Miss Rutherford, that you can’t approve such a cautious fellow!”
“On the contrary,” she answered, with a twinkle, “it’s no bad thing for a gentleman to avoid deep doings in gambling and such like activities.”
“Ah, but you, with your carefree nature, ma’am, must abhor these penny pinching notions! I see you as a lady of initiative and enterprise — pray do not disillusion me!”
He had moved closer to her as he spoke, looking up into her face with open admiration. Rogers, seeming to stumble, trod on his foot.
“Hell and —!” he broke off the imprecation with an effort. “I beg your pardon, Miss Rutherford, but I was taken unawares — I recommend you to look where you’re going, sir!”
This, sharply, to Rogers, who apologised promptly. Justin studiously avoided his eye.
“I do trust that you will all look in on us whenever you feel inclined,” said Mrs Cholmondeley to Julia. “It was prodigiously pleasant, yesterday evening, don’t you agree, Lady Marton? And there’s no occasion for standing on ceremony with my dear Cholmondeley and myself, as you must very well know by this time! Of all things, we welcome company! Pray don’t wait upon a formal invitation, but just drop in upon us, any of your party.”
Julia promised that she would, and issued a similar invitation in her turn.
“Well, what would you have me do?” she demanded, in answer to protests from Justin and Anthea when they had parted from the Cholmondeleys. “Civility required no less, but I dare say they won’t take us up on it. In any event, I must for very shame invite them to dine with us before long.”
There were general groans at this threat as they moved back to the grandstand.
“I do believe,” said Anthea to Rogers, “that you deliberately trod on Sir John Fulford’s toes.”
The two were walking quite by chance a little apart from the others.
“What in the world can have given you that notion, I wonder?” he countered, with an attractive lopsided grin.
She gave him a saucy look.
“For the life of me, I cannot imagine,” she countered.
“No, indeed. Well, I must admit that I find that gentleman’s gallantry towards you odious, and I cannot credit that you precisely relish it yourself?”
“Oh, but surely you realise, sir, that to a female all admiration is welcome? Poor creatures that we are, we need to be paid compliments and made pretty speeches to — what would we do without these tributes to our beauty and charm?”
“Now you think to roast me, ma’am. This may be true of some females, but I’ll take my oath you’re not one of such a paltry breed! How can you think to take me in with such stuff? But I know well that you don’t, and I’m a fool to rise to the bait. The trouble is —” his voice took on a serious note — “I am a fool where you’re concerned, Miss Anthea. And well you’re aware of it!”
“I must say that remark is scarcely flattering!”
He looked at her, bewitching as she was, her hazel eyes glinting with mischief under a most becoming bonnet trimmed with lilac ribbons, and a few stray dark curls peeping from beneath it. He caught his breath, paused in his stride and almost — but not quite — seized her in his arms.
“Miss Anthea!” he said, in a voice not quite steady. “Surely you must know —”
At that moment, their tête-à-tête was abruptly interrupted by Harry, who arrived with two or three of his young friends, chattering away like starlings and effectively putting an end to all private conversation. Lady Marton announced that it was time they were getting back to poor George.
“For he’ll be moped to death without us, you may depend! He finds it so frustrating not to be able to join us in strolling about between races.”
Justin cocked a cynical eyebrow at Rogers, who managed to recover from his previous mood sufficiently to reply in kind. The interlude between his friend and Anthea had not passed unobserved by Justin, however, and he speculated upon how long it would be before Sprog declared himself. Also — and perhaps this was the more intriguing speculation — what answer that bewitching but undoubtedly flirtatious niece of his would make to the poor fellow. At present, she seemed unruffled.
“I must say, Aunt Julia, that Uncle George appeared tolerably content when we left him,” laughed Anthea. “He and Mr Deering were disputing the points of one of the racehorses in most lively style!”
“Well, I’m sure I wish him joy of it, my dear Anthea, for truth to tell, I have had my fill of horseracing for today, and have more than a suspicion of the headache,” replied Julia forlornly. “However, I don’t mean to spoil everyone’s pleasure by saying I wish to go home.”
Both young ladies commiserated with her; but by now the menfolk were chatting among themselves about the prospects for the next race, so paid no heed.
An idea suddenly came to Anthea.
“Aunt Julia, would you truly like to return home?” she asked solicitously. “If so, I’ll willingly accompany you, for I, too, have seen sufficient racing for one day.”
Julia Marton turned to her eagerly. “Oh, would you, indeed, my dear? But then —” her face fell — “we cannot leave poor Louisa without any female company. She’ll find it so flat and dull with all the gentlemen of our party doing nothing but talking of horseflesh, and no doubt quite ignoring her.”
Louisa, who had been hoping to see Mr Giles Crispin among the racegoers but had now quite given up any expectation of doing so, hastened to say that she would not mind at all if she left the Knavesmire before the final two races.
The decision to leave early was conveyed to Justin and Rogers, who dutifully attended the three ladies to the family carriage, and undertook to explain matters to Sir Geo
rge, who could readily command a seat in one of the neighbours’ carriages. Justin and Rogers had travelled to the Knavesmire in Justin’s curricle.
If there was the slightest lingering over handing Anthea up into the carriage on the part of Rogers, the others studiously ignored it. In spite of her headache, Julia Marton reflected that perhaps her scheme was not going altogether awry, although she had nearly despaired of it.
Anthea was genuinely fond of her aunt, so her solicitude was not entirely feigned. Nevertheless, when the idea of returning home early was mooted, she had been struck all at once by a splendid notion. If she could be free for a while from Justin’s keen eye, might she not find an opportunity to go alone to Denby House, and possibly enlist Anne de Ryde’s help in gaining an interview with Healey?
Fortune was with her to an unexpected degree. Anne was in fact at Firsdale Hall with her governess in attendance, and closeted with Fanny Marton. The girl had been confiding to Fanny her experience earlier that same day with Healey, and they were both trying to decide what ought to be done. The appearance of Anthea seemed providential. Here was someone less awe-inspiring than a parent: one of themselves, yet older and with more experience of the world.
As soon as Lady Marton had taken herself off to lie down, Fanny contrived to draw Louisa and Miss Fawcett out of the room for long enough to enable Anne to tell her story to Anthea.
“What do you think I should do, Miss Rutherford?” the girl concluded. “It may be only a private concern of Healey’s — a follower, perhaps, though I should have supposed her to be too old for that! Yet the mention of the Bow Street Runner in her note, and then that other strange incident, when she was searching through Mama’s correspondence some days since — Fanny told me she had repeated that confidence of mine to you, for she didn’t wish me to think her underhand, and of course, I don’t think any such thing, and indeed, was relieved that she should have done so, for now you can see that I had good reason to spy upon Healey, though in general I would think it a shabby thing to do —”
Masquerade of Vengeance (The Rutherford Trilogy Book 3) Page 10
