“Whatever one’s mother-in-law proposes is the correct answer,” Lavinia said, laughing merrily. “How lucky you are not to have a mother-in-law, Annie! You have only your mother to guide you, and her advice may always be depended upon. Oh dear, we have bored Will to sleep. Look at him, poor man!”
The viscount lolled in his chair, head sunk on his chest, snoring very delicately.
“I must tell Mrs Cumber to prepare rooms for you,” Annie said.
“Nonsense! We will not inflict ourselves upon you without warning in this harum-scarum way. Besides, it is not just ourselves — there will be my maid, his valet, the coachman, groom and footman to be accommodated. As soon as the horses and postilions are rested, we will go on into Salisbury and find an hotel.”
“You most certainly will not,” Annie said fiercely, ringing the bell. “Ah, Sheffield, tell Mrs Cumber to prepare rooms for Lord and Lady Dillington. There will also be five servants to house. See that the horses and postilions are fed and watered, and then sent on their way.”
“Yes, madam,” he said, without the slightest hesitation. In fact, Annie thought she saw a gleam of excitement in his eyes. It would be stretching the capabilities of the house rather, but it was a challenge to be met, not shirked. “Might I suggest to Mrs Hewitt that she deploy the goose for dinner?”
“By all means deploy the goose today, so long as we have meat enough for tomorrow,” Annie said with a smile.
“Ah, yes, one must be well fortified for the rigours of the Sabbath,” Lavinia murmured as Sheffield bowed his way out of the room. “What a splendid fellow. Deploy the goose, indeed!”
“Mr Huntly’s valet, now… erm, deployed as a footman,” Annie said.
While they were giggling over Sheffield, Judith bounced into the room, to be greeted by Lavinia with almost as much enthusiasm as Annie had been.
“My dear Mrs Huntly! May I suppose that you have now received your visit from my dilatory brother-in-law, and thus received your thousand pounds from the Benefactor?”
“Not thus far, Lady Dillington,” Judith said. “I have not yet had the honour of a reply to my letter, still less a visit from Mr Willerton-Forbes.”
Lavinia’s screech of outrage woke her husband with such a start that he jumped to his feet, a panic-stricken expression on his face, no doubt assuming that violence of some kind was under way.
“This is not to be borne!” Lavinia said. “How dare he neglect his duty in this manner! Paper, Annie, at once, and pen and ink. I shall write to Pettigrew this instant and instruct him to drop every other engagement and attend Mrs Huntly here as soon as a post chaise may be had. It is insupportable that all these relations of deck hands and sail makers may be as rich as Croesus, while the widow of a gentleman has received not so much as a penny piece. Annie’s groom must ride at once to the nearest post office to be sure my letter goes off on the next mail coach. Pettigrew will not ignore me, on that I am quite determined.”
16: Outrage And Argument
While Lavinia wrote her letter, her outrage spilling onto a second sheet of paper, Annie’s mother departed with a murmured, “I shall just give Mrs Cumber a hand.” Judith cajoled the exhausted viscount and the brandy bottle to a quiet room equipped with a chaise longue, where he could rest peacefully until his bed chamber should be prepared.
Annie watched Lavinia scratching away with her pen, the quill dashing across the paper, then quickly dipped in the inkstand, then dashing away again.
“Mr Willerton-Forbes is very busy, I am sure,” Annie ventured. “Do not berate the poor man too greatly.”
“Busy! He is not at all busy, for he is back in London, and what can he possibly find to do there? No one is in town in August.” She tossed her pen down on the stand, scattering a few drops of ink, which Annie rushed to mop up. “I cannot understand it, Annie. Pettigrew is the world’s most methodical man, and that is precisely why he was given this task on behalf of the Benefactor. He has investigated everyone who was aboard the Minerva when it sank, and tracked down the legal next of kin — a wife if there is one, or the sons and daughters if not, and that was tricky enough, for should he include natural children as well as the legal ones, and should the amount be divided amongst them equally or should the eldest get the whole? And whenever he asked for guidance in the matter, he was simply told, ‘Use your best judgement, Willerton-Forbes.’ It has all been rather fraught, as you may imagine, with people who were not who they said they were, everyone he talked to claiming to be somebody’s next of kin, and he had to choose from amongst all the rival claims. And there is one person who cannot be accounted for at all — a passenger who was thought to be a man, but turned out to be a woman! And no one has the least idea who she was. Is that not astonishing?”
Annie agreed that it was. “Poor Mr Willerton-Forbes! How awkward it must be to settle everything satisfactorily, when there is so much money involved. Naturally everyone with a shred of a claim wants some of it. The Benefactor must be a very mischievous person, to arrange to give away so much money in that whimsical way.”
“Mischievous?” Lavinia laughed. “I had not thought of it so, but it is rather capricious, is it not?”
“Who is he — the Benefactor? Is he capricious in other ways?”
“My dear, no one knows! His identity is a complete mystery. The new Duke of Falconbury would be my guess, in memorial for his brother, but there are those who suspect one of the Royal Dukes, or even the Queen. She has a gentle heart, so it might be her, who knows? But Pettigrew does not, and nor does his head of chambers. Still, he does not need to know the identity of the Benefactor to do his work properly, and that he has lamentably failed to do. It is six months since that ship sank, and Mrs Huntly should have had her thousand pounds long since.”
“I am sure there will be a reasonable explanation,” Annie said. “If Mr Willerton-Forbes is as thorough as you say, then it cannot be merely an oversight. A man of meticulous habits does not forget things, or lose them.”
She was reminded as she spoke of Mr Huntly’s will, still missing almost two weeks after his death. There was another meticulous man, and surely there would be a reasonable explanation for the disappearance of the document. He must have hidden it somewhere, but where and for what purpose was beyond her ability to guess.
~~~~~
After so many quiet weeks, Willow Place now echoed to voices. The whispers of the servants, the soft, muted tones of the ladies, the deeper masculine rumbles of the gentlemen, and above them all, the high-pitched excited cries of Jerome as he went about his appointed task of searching the house for the missing will. His booted feet thumped up and down the stairs as he called out his progress, usually trailed by one or more of his brothers. “Hush, Jerome. Be a little quieter, for pity’s sake! Try to remember this is a house of mourning,” they would say, as they took the stairs two at a time to keep up with him.
Annie made over Mr Huntly’s desk to the enterprise, and it was soon covered with sheets of paper bearing lists of rooms searched, those yet to be examined and a methodical system for accomplishing the same. Jerome was a very methodical child, and yet it was just what was needed. Annie was beginning to wonder if the will would ever be found, for what was the point of such an important document if it were to be kept so well hidden that it needed a search of military proportions to locate it? It must have been destroyed somehow — burnt, perhaps, as he always burnt the newspapers when they were no longer needed. As to why he would do such a thing, she could not imagine.
Sunday was a day of calm amidst the bustle. Annie did not feel able to attend church, and her mother and aunt kept her company at home, but Uncle Tom was keen to go, and Lavinia and her husband went with him, along with Judith and her daughters.
“You must be exhausted, still,” Annie said to Lavinia. “Do not feel obliged to go if you had rather rest.”
“Indeed, we must go! The good people of Wickstead will expect it of us, for when one is a stranger to the neighbourhood, it is one’s sol
emn duty to show oneself in public and thereby supply sufficient fodder for gossip. Just imagine if Mrs Rupert Huntly’s old friend were known to be staying, yet sequester herself for the entire visit! Such behaviour would be abominable. As to resting, we may sleep during the sermon, you know. Will always does so at home, and I am sure your Mr Popham is just as boring a preacher as our Mr Clark. I do not mind a boring sermon, myself. I always feel that if I have suffered through a particularly long and dry one, then I have done my penance for the week and may enjoy myself thereafter with a clear conscience.”
Monday brought the resumption of Jerome’s search, but it also brought a less welcome visitor, in the sombre person of Sir Leonard Fairbrother.
“I am in receipt of your letter, Mrs Huntly, apprising me of the presence of a man in the gardens,” he rumbled in his gravelly voice. The drew out the word ‘man’ to such a length as to imbue it with some surprise, as if it might be quite usual to see a dragon standing about in the shrubbery at night, or a host of angels, but a man was hard to credit. “You saw the fellow several times, it seems?”
“Exactly as I noted in my letter, Sir Leonard,” Annie said. “I wrote down all the dates, and every detail that I could remember.”
“Yes, yes, but there is no trace, d’ye see? Not a trace of anyone being at a place and at a time he should not be. No one else has seen any such person, d’ye see? I have made enquiries… extensive enquiries of your servants and anyone living nearby, and no one has seen such a person. Nor has anyone said to me, ‘Oh, that is just the gamekeeper’s boy, Sir Leonard,’ or anything of that sort. There are no Romanies in the area just now. No tinkers. No reports of unsavoury types hiding away from the Excise men. Nothing of that nature at all, Mrs Huntly.”
“Do you think I invented the story, Sir Leonard?” Annie said coldly. She had agreed to see Sir Leonard alone in the hunting room, but now she wished she had listened to Uncle Tom’s offer to accompany her. He, at least, knew her not to be a fanciful person.
“Not invented, no,” Sir Leonard said carefully. “Merely… mistaken. This is an isolated estate, I grant you that, and a stranger could easily slip in and out unobserved, but to return many times and then to stand about in the open, just waiting to be observed? That does seem like rather odd behaviour, do you see? Very odd behaviour altogether, and not to be seen by any other person. It has been pointed out to me by one or two persons, as I pursued my enquires, that the river does sometimes exude a degree of… well, mist… obscuring fogs and—”
Annie jumped to her feet. “It is clear what you are saying — that this man was a figment of my imagination. There was never a man there at all, but my fanciful brain created him out of river mist. I know what I saw, Sir Leonard, and it was considerably more solid than river mist. I know a man of flesh and blood when I see one.”
He was obliged by courtesy to rise, but he was a large man, and his chair had no arms, so it was not a swift business. “There is no need to take that tone with me, madam,” he said, after he had heaved himself to his feet. “I am obliged to consider all the evidence and in this particular case, you are the only person to have seen this intruder and therefore—”
“Good day, Sir Leonard.”
“I wished only to explain that—”
“Unnecessary. Good day.”
Sir Leonard licked his lips, looking as if he were about to speak. He thought better of it, bowed punctiliously and departed, wordlessly but with some dignity.
Annie strode about the room, her anger raging within her. How dared he insult her so! To accuse her of inventing such a story was unspeakably rude, even if it was wrapped up as a mistake, or some kind of fog-shrouded illusion. Even if he thought it, the implication should not have been voiced.
She was still pacing restlessly when Adam came in at a rush, and moved towards the big desk, where Jerome’s notes were laid out. “Just wanted to check—” he began, before noticing her agitation. “Cousin Annie? Is anything amiss?”
For an instant she hesitated. It would be awkward to explain. Adam had airily dismissed her dawn intruder as a romantic affair, yet with some consciousness in his manner that aroused suspicions in her breast. She had written to Sir Leonard because she had not trusted that explanation. Could she now admit her actions? Yet her dislike of deception was stronger than her embarrassment. She must be honest, and if he thought the less of her for such mistrust, so be it. Her reservations were well founded, and not mere caprice.
“Sir Leonard was here just now,” she said, lifting her chin resolutely. “I wrote to tell him of my concerns regarding the man seen from my window at night, but he dismissed them. He believes I was deceived by river mist.”
Adam’s face changed from concern to surprise and then to a frowning thoughtfulness that she could not interpret. “I see. You may remember our previous discussion on this subject… when I told you that it was merely a romantic entanglement? Yet that was not sufficient to set your mind at ease?”
“How should it be?” she cried. “I am not a child, to be fobbed off with whatever story the adults choose to tell me. You forget that I have been trained by an apothecary. It is not enough to know that a certain simple has a specific effect — one must know why and under what circumstances and what the proper dosage is. My uncle trusted me with all his knowledge and experience and wisdom, and taught me to question everything — everything! Yet you expect me to accept your word blindly, and Sir Leonard does not believe me at all! I am just a foolish irrational woman, I suppose, not fit to be included in the discourse of men. Pah!”
“You are being very irrational at this moment,” he said with some heat. “If you will not trust me, there is nothing more to be said.”
“It is not a simple matter of trust,” she said, forcing herself to speak more calmly. “I cannot accept anything unquestioningly, just because someone I trust tells me so. I may read in a herbal that juniper berries are an excellent remedy against dropsy, but that means little unless I understand that the plant is in the solar sphere, and hot in the third degree and dry in the first. With such knowledge I may judge how best to apply it. Without such knowledge, I am in the dark. So it is with your words, intended as reassurance but to me of little use without further explanation.”
His lips twisted as he considered the point. For a few heartbeats, she held her breath — surely now he would explain, and reveal all that he had been holding back?
With a sigh, he said, “It is not in my power to say anything more. This man is no threat to you, that is all I can tell you.”
“Then there is nothing more to be said.” She turned her face away from him to stare unseeingly out of the window.
“Annie…” he began. Then, with a huff of annoyance, he swept out of the room.
Despite these unsettling encounters, Annie looked forward to that evening’s dinner at Wickstead Manor with some excitement. There was guilt, too, for as a new widow she should be eschewing all social occasions for some weeks to come, and perhaps if she had previously enjoyed the usual round of engagements that the neighbourhood afforded, she would have been content to stay quietly at home. Two months of confinement to her own house, however, had left her thirsty for the smallest variation in outlook, and although it would be improper to accept a formal invitation, Adam and his sister were family and that made it perfectly acceptable. Or so she told herself, and since her mama made no demur, she firmly set aside her reservations.
She even had a choice of gowns for the evening, for Mama had brought several of her own mourning gowns from Guildford, which she and Betty had been busily modifying to suit Annie. She chose the most sober, together with a black lace cap that managed to be rather fetching and deeply sombre at one and the same time, and was satisfied that she was suitably attired for the occasion. However little she grieved for her husband, there must be no lack of observance of the mourning period.
They needed both Annie’s own carriage and Lavinia’s for the journey of some five miles — almost three miles
to the Salisbury road, a mile along that and then a further mile towards Wickstead. In the fields, a few children were busy gathering the last of the spilt grains from the harvest. They looked up curiously at the carriages as they passed by, and a few waved and ran alongside for a while until the dust was too great and they dropped back. The carriages turned aside before the village was reached, the entrance to the Manor marked by a pair of stone pillars topped by eagles. The gates stood wide open, but the gatekeeper’s wife and a line of children emerged from the lodge to curtsy and bow respectfully as they passed by.
The drive was short, along an avenue of stately elms with glimpses of well-kept grounds, the shimmer of a lake visible through the trees. The house was a surprise. Being called Wickstead Manor, Annie had formed an image of a property very like Willow Place, of warm medieval bricks and mullioned windows. Instead she was confronted with a starkly modern building of cool grey stone, not large but gracefully proportioned, with an elegant portico dominating the entrance. There Adam awaited them, and seeing him standing beneath the high columns in his evening attire, the coat tightly fitted, the cravat artfully tied and the stockings revealing shapely legs, she was struck anew by how gentlemanly he looked. He was perfectly fitted to his setting as a man of wealth and taste and respectability.
He greeted them with his customary amiability, handing the ladies down from the carriages with a smile for everyone, but there was a reserve in his manner towards Annie that she could not mistake. She understood it, and did not blame him although it saddened her.
“How do you like Wickstead Manor?” he said to her quietly. “Does it please you?”
“Very much,” she said with sincerity, “although it is not at all as I pictured it in my mind. A manor house should not be so gracefully modern.”
“How true,” he said. “It should be ancient, with chimneys that smoke, passageways that go nowhere and a roof that leaks, would you not agree?”
He smiled as he spoke, but Annie thought his light-heartedness seemed forced. She tried for the same jesting tone. “Certainly. Also, shutters that rattle in the slightest wind, a priest’s hole and a resident ghost.”
The Apothecary (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 3) Page 16
