by M. C. Beaton
“Did you actually suspect me of smuggling?” demanded Giles.
“Oh, not you, my lord,” said Mr. Pottifer. “But there’s a lot of butlers around this part of the coast who don’t mind lining their own pockets by buying up a shipload of contraband and entering it in the books as an order from the wine merchant.”
“I am sure Thomson would do no such thing,” said Giles hotly. “He’s been with the family for years.”
“We were only doing our job,” said Mr. Pottifer. “Best be on our way. We’d better look in at Lord Humfry’s place farther along. There’s been strange goings-on along this coast.”
Giles followed the men up the cellar steps and then turned for a last look around. Something white gleamed in the darkness, caught at the back of one of the racks. He waited until Mr. Pottifer and his men had left and went slowly back down the cellar steps. He crossed to the rack, bent down and stretched his hand in, and tugged at a piece of white material. It was a small, lacy lady’s handkerchief. He held it to his nose. It smelled faintly of Paradis, a scent that Susie usually wore.
He sat down on a barrel and thought hard. Susie dealt with the management of the household. She had control of her books. She had run like a startled hare when he had mentioned smuggling, and the next thing, the portcullis had conveniently dropped. So if anyone was behind smuggling, if anyone was feathering his or her own nest by fixing the books, it must be Susie.
The scheming little bitch! he thought furiously. My uncle’s fortune was not enough for her. Little gold digger. I was going to marry her. I said I loved her. Of course she wants to marry me. She wants her hands on my fortune so that any brat she might produce will take all this away from me.
He searched the keep from top to bottom but there was no sign of Susie. He had not thought to look in the kitchens.
Susie was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by a bevy of anxious servants. “You see, my lady,” Thomson was explaining, “the old earl knew what we was up to, and he didn’t mind ’cause he liked the best of everything and didn’t much care how it was come by. Then the wages haven’t been changed around here for nigh on twenty years, but we none of us complained on account of the fact that we could make a bit out of the contraband by selling stuff to the houses around here. We’ll need to lay off for a bit now, of course, but thanks to you, there’s no harm done. But you must not tell my lord, for he’d be so mad, he’d fire the lot of us.”
Susie looked at the circle of faces and bit her lip. She had a strong streak of loyalty in her, and she could not forget the servants’ kindness to her.
She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “I won’t tell Giles anything. How did you manage to get everything away in time?”
“We hadn’t much, my lady. The excisemen have been patrolling the cliffs this past fortnight. We had to buy all the stocks for the ball in the regular way. It took us no time at all to hide the rest down that back stairway.”
“Very well,” said Susie heavily. She tried to smile. “Don’t all look so worried. I’ve said I won’t tell Giles.”
“It’s not that, my lady,” said Mrs. Wight, the housekeeper. “There’s something we think you ought to know.”
“What?” Susie looked up, amazed at the ring of concerned faces.
“You tell my lady, Thomson,” said Mrs. Wight. “My nerves are that unstrung, I can’t take any more. I always had the artistical temperament, and it always do give me wind round the heart.”
Thomson looked slowly around at the other servants, who all nodded.
He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table opposite Susie. He had not asked for permission to sit down, and that alone should have warned Susie that what he was about to impart was serious.
“It’s like this, my lady. There’s something about Lord Giles we think you ought to know. He suspects you of murdering Lady Felicity.”
“No! I won’t believe it!” cried Susie.
“It’s true, my lady. He’s hired that there Inspector Disher to investigate the case, private-like. Disher’s already been snooping round the stables, questioning Clifton.”
Susie looked pathetically around the ring of watching faces. They all nodded.
So her romance with Giles had been nothing more than another dream. She sat very still, very white, and very tense.
“Miss Carter,” said Thomson to the lady’s maid, “you’d best take your mistress upstairs and see she has a lie down.”
Carter bustled forward, and Susie allowed herself to be led away.
Such a short time ago she had felt she was walking in a dream. Now she felt she was wandering through a black nightmare from which there was no awakening.
Giles was not able to find Susie until the ball had started. His attention had been claimed by the needs of his various guests. Now he stood on the edge of the ballroom floor and watched with cold blue eyes as Susie entered on the arm of Lady Matilda. She looked like an exquisite French painting, the combination of her seeming innocence and the daring sophistication of the dress making everyone turn and stare. Her eyes looked enormous in her white face, the gold of her dress bringing out sunny gold highlights in her sun-bleached brown hair. She wore a headdress of gold silk roses and carried a large black ostrich-feather fan. She no longer moved with the awkward, immature grace of a young colt but with the assured movements of a sophisticated woman.
She glanced fleetingly in his direction and then looked quickly away. He felt black anger beginning to boil up inside him, for that one look had carried a tinge of guilt, and that double-damned her in his eyes. He would not ask her to dance. He was determined not to make a scene in front of his guests. He had not reckoned on the presence of one Harry Carruthers, an old army friend. Harry was a perpetual bachelor who, nonetheless, adored pretty women. He was an entertaining rattle with a fund of witty and amusing stories. Like the old campaigner he was, he quickly routed the opposition and claimed Susie for the first dance.
At first Susie moved like a mechanical doll in his arms through the steps of the waltz, but then, over his broad shoulder, she saw Harriet Blane-Tyre clasped in Giles’s arms, and a wave of hot jealousy washed over her. She began to laugh at all Harry’s remarks, spurring that gallant fellow to further humorous efforts, and the blacker Giles’s looks became, the more Susie laughed and laughed.
Still, he would not have created any public scene had he not been called to the newly installed telephone. Inspector Disher’s voice bellowed from the other end of the line. Inspector Disher did not really believe in the telephone and felt he had to make his voice carry all the way to the castle by sheer volume.
“Don’t shout,” said Giles crossly, holding the heavy earpiece away from his ear. “What was that you said?”
“I said I’ve found a witness to Lady Felicity’s death, my lord. It’s a bad, bad business. Shocking!”
Giles gently placed the phone back on its table and backed away from it as the inspector’s now tinny and indistinguishable voice crackled on. So it had been murder after all. He did not want to hear the details. As the inspector roared on about the bad business being Lady Felicity’s shocking treatment of the horse, he marched back out into the courtyard and into the ballroom.
Susie saw him before he saw her, so that when he noticed her floating past in the arms of Harry Carruthers—again!—she was smiling languishingly up at that gentleman.
Giles hated her with an all-consuming passion.
He wanted revenge.
Now!
He marched up to the rostrum, where the band was playing, and held up his hand for silence.
The band fell silent. The guests stopped dancing. All faces turned in his direction.
He looked an awe-inspiring figure with his strangely tilted eyes blazing like twin chips of blue ice and his handsome face as white as the dazzling frill of his evening shirt.
“That woman,” he said in a cold, carrying voice that dripped venom, “is a murderess!”
Everyone turned slow
ly and stared at Susie, moving away slightly so that the dancers formed a long corridor down which Giles and Susie stared at each other.
“That was Inspector Disher on the telephone,” Giles went on, never taking his eyes from Susie’s face. “Lady Blackhall, my dear Susie, murdered Lady Felicity.”
Several hundred breaths drew in in a hiss of shock. “Not only that, but this Lady Macbeth here has been using my home to feather her nest. She has been using this castle as a center for her smuggling activities. My late uncle’s fortune was not enough for her, you see, and in the light of this latest news, I wonder if she came by it honestly. You, Henry, and that other footman, take her away and lock her in her rooms until the police arrive!”
Giles gave a signal to the band, which immediately started to play. Susie was led from the room by the two men, and not even Harry Carruthers moved to stop them.
The ball was a disaster after that. Several of the ladies felt obliged to faint to prove their delicate sensibilities, and most of the gentlemen found it a good excuse to get drunk.
Giles’s rage and misery seemed to permeate the whole castle. Married couples began to squabble openly, and the elderly Earl of Murr could be heard calling his wife a “frozen-faced old muffin.”
The braver of the debutantes tried to resume their flirtations, but there were not many gentlemen to flirt with, since they were mostly across the courtyard in the bar, discussing the delicious scandal and making large inroads into the stock of iced champagne.
Giles waited miserably and drearily for the law to arrive. He waited. And waited.
At last he telephoned the police station, only to be told that—as he might have guessed—Inspector Disher was on leave and was not on the telephone at home. Nonetheless, Giles was surprised that the inspector had not called in at his station to collect a constable to assist him in his arrest. Perhaps he thought Giles was paying him to hush the whole thing up. Well, he was bloody well mistaken, thought Giles savagely. He would see Susie dangling on the end of a rope at Newgate if it was the last thing he did, and that would teach her to flirt with Harry Carruthers! With that latest insane thought, Giles realized that he was mad with jealousy. A cold hand of doubt clutched at his heart. What exactly had the inspector said? He had said it was a bad business. That was all. Oh, God!
Giles sent a postillion to the inspector’s cottage, demanding that gentleman’s presence at the castle immediately. But the inspector chose to arrive in person only some ten minutes later.
Giles ushered the inspector into the library of the keep while the laughing, dancing, tinny music of the faraway band seemed to mock him.
Inspector Disher was perspiring freely, having walked and half run all the way on foot. He removed his bowler, which left an angry red rim around his worried forehead, and said, “I couldn’t wait till the morning, my lord. Why didn’t you listen to me?”
“I’m sorry,” said Giles dully. “Tell me about it.”
The inspector produced a large notebook, opened it up, and cleared his throat. “A certain young lad called Freddie Winkler was brought to my attention. He’s a lad of about nine, and he’s always playing round the old gravel pit, though Mrs. Winkler has said she’ll tan his hide if she catches him there again. Well, it so happens that that there lad was round the gravel pit on the day of Lady Felicity’s accident.”
“And?”
“And he says like it was a shocking business, and he hadn’t told nobody ’cause he was frightened, and furthermore his ma would whip him if she found out he’d been playing there.”
“Get to the point, man,” said Giles tersely. “What did this child see?”
“He was up near the top of the pit,” said the inspector, “and he sees Lady Felicity behaving in a shocking way. The child says she was half murdering that horse, Dobbin, cutting at him with her whip till the beast bled, sawing at his mouth, and a-digging with her spur. It’s a bad business—cruelty to animals. Were her ladyship alive, I’d have her in court for cruelty, lady or no lady.”
“So the horse threw her?”
“Yes, my lord. It all happened just the way Lady Susie said it did.”
Giles felt sick.
He’d done it again.
But worse was to come.
After the gratified inspector had left with a sizable check in his jacket pocket, Giles was about to leave the study when he found himself confronted by the stately person of his butler and the round figure of his housekeeper, both asking to have a word in private with him.
He walked back into the study and motioned them to sit down.
“I’d prefer to stand, my lord,” said Thomson anxiously, “for you’re not going to like what you’re going to hear.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, Thomson.”
“Very well, my lord, but we’d rather stand. It’s about the smuggling.”
“Go on.”
“It was nothing really to do with my lady, my lord. We started the contraband business away back in the old earl’s day, during his second marriage. See, like we told Lady Blackhall, our wages have remained the same for the past twenty years, and the old earl, he preferred to let us make a bit at smuggling rather than pay us any more. Now, Lady Susie, she found out by accident. She seemed to think it was a bit of a game. She’s just a romantic young girl, my lord.
“But she saved our necks when the excisemen came calling, and we pleaded with her to say nothing to you. But we couldn’t none of us stand by and let her take the blame.”
Giles sat as if turned to stone.
“And if she did kill Lady Felicity,” put in Mrs. Wight stoutly, “then good luck to her, for her ladyship treated my young lady something crool, that she did, always sneering and tormenting and worritting her.”
“Lady Felicity’s death was an accident,” said Giles. “I discovered that this evening.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Thomson, clearing his throat, “that you’ll be wishing to call the authorities and have us turned over?”
“No,” said Giles abruptly. “Good God, no! I have caused enough misery this evening. You will cease this trade, and all your wages will be reviewed and increased accordingly. Now, please go and leave me alone!”
Thomson and Mrs. Wight were only too grateful to escape and spread the glad news among the other servants.
Giles sat in the library for a long time.
Then he went slowly back to the ballroom to make his second announcement of the evening.
“I must have been insane,” he told his startled audience. “Lady Susie is guiltless. She is no murderess, nor yet a smuggler. I have made a ghastly mistake.”
Harry Carruthers stepped smartly up to Giles and blacked his eye, and Giles socked him on the mouth. Various drunken young men decided to settle old scores there and then. The Countess of Murr tottered into the buffet, picked up a large blancmange, and emptied it over her husband’s gray head, shouting, “Who’s a frozen-faced old muffin now, you old goat?”
Harriet Blane-Tyre, overcome with champagne and excitement, allowed herself to be led off to a dark spot of the grounds and seduced by a very unfashionable and almost penniless young man. Cecily Winthrope threw her arms around the second fiddle and told him she loved him madly. Over in the buffet, the Earl of Murr retaliated by tipping jelly down his wife’s august cleavage, cheered on by a group of wild young men who all seemed to have black eyes, bleeding noses, and torn shirt frills.
Giles fled from the scene as soon as he could and ran to the top of the keep.
Susie’s bedroom and sitting-room doors were wide open. A glance was enough to assure him that all her clothes were gone. A faint aroma of Paradis hung in the still, empty room to mock his folly, and down below, the best of England’s aristocracy crunched among the broken glass, threw cakes and lobster patties at each other, and had a perfectly splendid time.
Under a full moon, Lady Matilda’s antique carriage lumbered on its way to London with the indefatigable La
dy Matilda knitting in one corner and Susie, dry-eyed and white-faced, in the other.
On the opposite seat sat a grim and disapproving Carter. They were bound for Susie’s parents’ home in Camberwell, and Carter did not like that one bit.
Behind the carriage trotted an evil-looking horse called Dobbin. Every time the carriage stopped, he tried to stave in the back of it with his hooves just to pass the time, but the occupants of the carriage were too wrapped up in their own thoughts to care whether he succeeded.
Susie sat in a dry ache of physical and mental misery. Nothing had hurt her so badly before, neither the death of her husband nor the death of Lady Felicity. This time she felt she was mourning her own death; the death of all that was young and romantic and free and tender and fresh.
She sat in numb misery as the miles slipped by and the sky grew paler and paler, until an angry red sun rose above the horizon of the black Essex marshes.
But to those who live in fantasies, a special release from pain is granted, a release denied to the poor souls who have grown to maturity, left their childhood dreams behind, and stared reality straight in the eye.
Down in the black pit of Susie’s abject misery, a little dream began to take root, grow, and blossom. By the time the weary horses had stopped at a large posthouse to allow the night travelers some much-needed rest, it was in full flower.
Lady Matilda had said roundly that Giles had been talking a lot of codswallop about murder and would come to his senses in the morning. But Susie decided that she would be arrested for murder and hauled off to Newgate Prison.
She would stand in the dock at the Old Bailey, with her head thrown back and her veil thrown back, and she would bravely out-stare the accusing eyes of Giles across the courtroom. “Prisoner at the bar,” said the judge (stab-stab-stab)—for the judge was none other than Basil Bryant—“How do you plead?”
“Not guilty,” said Susie in a loud, clear voice, while across the court Giles gnashed his teeth in rage. The evidence would mount against her. A wicked smile would play across Giles’s evil lips. At the last breathtaking moment a surprise witness—an old tramp or somebody like that—would be rushed in. He would have seen the whole thing. She would be acquitted. The bells would ring, and the people would cheer. Basil would severely reprimand Giles. FAMOUS PHILANDERER, GILES, EARL OF BLACKHALL, TRIES TO RUIN HEIRESS, the headlines would scream, and as he left the court the angry mob would tear him to pieces.
