A Christmas Gathering

by Anne Perry

  “Yes, I have thought of that.” Cavendish’s voice was bitter. “And no doubt whoever attacked her has thought of it also. Or is that your plan? Tempt him to try again? Hit her harder this time? Live bait, as it were? Is this what we’ve come to? And who are you going to set to guard her? Who are you certain is not guilty? Of course! Watson-Watt, the daydreaming artist. He wouldn’t have the strength or the nerve.”

  “Two people,” Narraway replied, ignoring the barbs. “Servants, vouched for by your housekeeper, Mrs. Pugh. One to watch the other.” His mind was racing. “Didn’t you think of that?”

  “Get out!” Cavendish strode over to the door and opened it.

  Narraway walked through without looking at him, as if Cavendish had been a servant doing the expected thing. Actually, his mind was already on how he would tell James. He had dealt with Cavendish, as far as was possible.

  He saw Amelia coming across the great hall with its inlaid marble floor, her soft leather shoes making little sound on it. She did not look pleased.

  “This is appalling!” she said waspishly. “What if the silly girl just slipped on a patch of mud.” She waved one hand dismissively. “What was she doing in the orangery in the middle of the night anyway? Nothing any decent young woman would want us to know about. We should look the other way, and pretend we haven’t seen…as you do when someone drops their false teeth in the soup!” She looked thoroughly annoyed.

  Narraway wanted to laugh. He could feel hysteria rising inside him like a wave. It was so ridiculous, and yet sensible, and beyond his imagination to think of. “I agree,” he said. “Perhaps that was what happened. A guilty lover’s secret, and she lost her balance? Do you think?” It was absurd enough to believe. For that matter, had she even seen whoever had hit her, or would she be as puzzled as the rest of them…except one?

  Amelia looked at him with some surprise. “Well, what else? Either that…or something equally idiotic. She’s a young woman with too little to do and too much taste for being the center of everyone’s attention. She should have some children. Or find something else useful to do.”

  Narraway could think of no possible answer to that that wasn’t rude, so he merely made a noise as if agreeing with her, and walked on quickly.

  He eventually found James in the garden room, looking as if he were trapped inside the house and contemplating escape. Or maybe he realized that this was possibly the closest part of the house to the servants’ quarters, and therefore to the housekeeper’s room where Iris was lying, still unconscious. Those who were guarding her would not yet permit him any closer. He looked too frightened and too grieved to be angry about it. He was staring out of the window into the garden and did not appear to be aware that Narraway had come in and closed the door.

  “James,” Narraway said gently.

  James turned, blinking as if just waking up. “What? Has—has something happened?” His eyes implored to be told, and yet he was also terrified of the answer.

  “She hasn’t woken yet,” Narraway told him. “I was looking for you because I had to tell you something in the utmost confidence. I cannot, unless you give me your word that you will not repeat it. Not only will you be prosecuted for treason if you do, but it may cost Iris her life. That you must believe, because it has already been attempted once.”

  “What?” It was meant to be a demand, but his voice was too grating in his throat to have any authority.

  Narraway took two overcoats off the pegs on the wall and handed one to James. “Outside, and then we cannot be overheard.”

  “Overheard? Who…?”

  Narraway put his coat on and opened the door into the garden. He was immediately engulfed by icy air.

  James obeyed, and several moments later they were a hundred feet along the path, with bare trees on one side and the cut-back herbaceous border on the other. A weak winter sun pierced the morning mist still shrouding some of the trees.

  Narraway came immediately to the point. He had thought of exactly how much he would tell James, and what he must lie about or just omit. “Iris was carrying a package of immense importance to the government,” he began, “in order to pass it secretly to someone here and for them to take it on the next step of the journey. She did not tell you because she was sworn to secrecy for your protection, as well as her own.”

  “Then how do you know?” James demanded. He was jerked out of his fear for her momentarily, and now he was angry, challenging. The most precious thing in his world had been threatened—indeed, might already be lost—and he was not going to believe anyone easily.

  Narraway understood. He knew what it was to love so deeply, so certainly, that it was the light by which one saw everything else of value. Time did not reduce one’s vulnerability. If anything, it made it greater. He answered with the truth. “Because I am the one to whom she gave it. I have access to the people for whom it is destined, and she does not.”

  “Then why didn’t you take it to begin with?” James demanded. “Why involve her at all?”

  “Because she has easy and natural access to the people who had it in the first place. I do not,” Narraway replied.

  “If it was meant to be secret, who attacked her, and how did they know? Are they following you? And you led them to her?” There was sharp accusation in that. “Even I know that you had something to do with Special Branch. That’s more than unsubtle…it’s just damn stupid!”

  Narraway was stung, both because he was far above courier grade—as much as the chief of police was above the constable on the beat—and because there was sense in what James had said. Many people knew what Narraway had been, probably most of the people who were guests in this house. It had even been mentioned. How should he answer? And had he been clumsy? Or was it a simple deduction anyone could have made? “We assumed no one knew about the package,” he answered, trying to keep the edge of defensiveness out of his tone.

  “Obviously someone did!” James snapped.

  “Yes, I presume from the origins of the package. Whether they knew I was to receive it or not, I am unsure.”

  “Are you saying she was…careless?” James asked, his voice wavering now. He wanted to defend her, but he needed to know the truth. He was torn between needing Narraway’s help and wanting to blame someone other than Iris.

  Narraway understood that. But he was far more used to having loyalties tested and his affections bruised than this young man. “No,” he said quite honestly. “If she was betrayed from the start, which is likely, then she did nothing wrong. She could have been perfect, and it would have made no difference.”

  James walked in silence for several yards. A few last leaves drifted down from the branches above them and settled on the path.

  “You must tell none of this, none at all, to anyone.” Narraway felt the urgent need to impress this on James. “One person suspects, perhaps knows, but he also knows now that she did not have the package on her. It is not hard to deduce that she had passed it on already, to whomever it was intended, but they may well search your room.”

  James stopped on the path and stared at him. “I found my things had been slightly moved, just an inch or two. I noticed because my razor was just beyond my reach. I thought a maid had moved it. A shirt not hung up where I knew I had left it.”

  “Precisely,” Narraway agreed. “Nothing that would give you thought at the time. But be careful. Don’t be alone, if you can help it. Have two people or more with you, and lock your room at night, if you are there.”

  “But surely—”

  Narraway put his hand on James’s arm. “It is one of the guests,” he said less gently. “And let Iris stay where she is, in the servants’ quarters, where the servants can be with her all the time.”

  “Couldn’t her attacker be one of them?”

  “Whoever it is does this sort of thing very often,” Narraway pointed out. “
None of the servants is new here, except for a thirteen-year-old tweeny maid, about five-foot-nothing tall and ninety pounds dripping wet.”

  James smiled bleakly, but there was gratitude in his eyes. “Not her, then. Thank you for telling me. It does not really matter if she saw him, or if he thinks she might have, he will come back to kill her…if she lives. But”—he swallowed—“it is better than thinking it was an assignation of some sort.”

  Narraway looked back at him. “She’s perfectly charming, but I am sure it was not. The idea of betraying my wife with anyone at all is as sickening to me as it is to you. But I need you to help me, not get in the way.” That was only part of it. Narraway realized with surprise that it was also important to him to silence the agony of doubt in James’s mind, the fear that the love that mattered so much to him was not real. Was it James he was protecting, or the belief in love itself?

  He turned, and James turned with him. They walked slowly back along the way they had come, toward the house, side by side, discussing what they could both do to help keep Iris safe.

  Narraway had been afraid that this was the past, Normandy playing itself out all over again, and he was watching it as helplessly as before. It was not! But was it any better? There was still the unseen hand pulling all the strings, possibly bringing death to someone young, vibrant, so full of passion and hope, and he was watching just as uselessly.

  * * *

  Vespasia stood in the corner of the long gallery. It was a good place to be alone, while appearing to be engaged in looking at the portraits, mostly of Amelia’s ancestors, going back to the Civil War two hundred and fifty years ago. They were colorful pictures. Artists loved painting the cavaliers—those aristocrats on the king’s side—as handsome; romantic; with long curling hair and hats with feathers, almost plumes; and of course lots of lace at the throat. The detail was ravishingly beautiful. And the cavaliers lost, which made them even more romantic. The roundheads were all plain and grim, with polished body armor that reflected the light in interesting ways. They were pompous, humorless, and self-righteous and had wonderful names like Praise-God Barebones. Imagine addressing a child as Praise-God! They had to be humorless, or they would have tripped over themselves laughing! They won. No romance in that. Except for a satirist, perhaps? Vespasia felt there was a mine of ironic humor there, largely unexplored, to do with imposed religion and laughter: humor based upon the absurd.

  But Amelia’s ancestors had not run to satire. One eighteenth-century gentleman wore an expression as if he had bitten into a lemon, and carried the name Blessed Barbon. A descendant of Barebones, maybe? Various other ancestors had gained their lands and titles for service to Charles II, who was wise enough not to take revenge on those who had overthrown the monarchy and executed his father, Charles I. The Restoration was a time for the return of music, theater, dancing.

  There was great wisdom in allowing people to laugh.

  Vespasia realized she was deliberately escaping the present, and that had to stop. Narraway had not told her what he had been doing in the night, or what connection he had to Iris or the attack on her. However, it was apparent to Vespasia that it was extremely important to him. She assumed he would explain in time; and until then she must forget her own anxieties, the fear of being boring to him already or at least insufficient to feed his intelligence and the dreams that she knew lay deeper inside him than he had allowed anyone else to go. She must help him, blindly, if that was the only way open to her.

  Who was Iris, more than a pretty young woman with a husband more interesting than he seemed at first? Who had attacked her, and why? Who was she to Narraway? Why had a couple so much younger than the rest of the guests been invited to this party at all?

  No one had mentioned a family relationship. And there seemed no professional connection. Cavendish was a country gentleman with a marvelous estate, who sometimes dabbled in politics, possibly more than was visible in his easygoing manner.

  Vespasia tried to recall all that she knew of him, but it was really no more than the tragedy of his first wife, Genevieve, hardly ever referred to. Cavendish had married again, although some time after that. Lady Amelia Cavendish was a Cavendish born, as well as by marriage—a distant relation, apparently—and Cavendish Hall was hers. She had no living brothers, and so she had inherited it.

  Rafe Allenby had an early military career, a later one as an explorer, and finally was an ambassador in a few unlikely places, mostly in the Middle East. Dorian Brent appeared to have inherited money and done nothing remarkable himself.

  What had Vespasia known about detecting? Nothing! She was an earl’s daughter, wealthy enough never to have to concern herself with money. She knew and was known by everyone who was anyone. She had been loved, admired, envied, now and then hated. She had been an excellent horsewoman, a good shot, and above all passionately opinionated and both physically and morally brave. All charming qualities and utterly useless in the current situation.

  And then her great-nephew had married the sister of Charlotte Ellison, who in turn had married Thomas Pitt, a policeman, of all things, and drawn them all into the world of crime and detection. Ultimately it had gone from Bow Street to Special Branch. Charlotte meddled in her husband’s cases, and Vespasia had assisted her with intense pleasure and, as it turned out, considerable skill. Now it was time to think of Victor and how she might put all of her past knowledge to use.

  Of course, she could detect, if she put her mind and her heart into it. Proceed from the known to the unknown. But what did she know?

  Iris had been attacked, very violently, in or near the orangery, sometime between midnight and about three in the morning. Was that certain? Yes. She was found in the orangery unconscious, with lacerations on her neck and shoulders. The blood from the cuts was already dry. She was fully dressed, stockings and shoes not even damp. She had not been outside, but she was not in her nightclothes. She was probably there to meet someone, planned beforehand.

  She was badly hurt. The head injury was serious. In fact, she might die. Please heaven, not! But it was possible the attacker had meant to kill her, indeed might still mean to. It would be a good idea to go back to the orangery in full daylight and examine the place more clearly. For what? Signs of a struggle? Even a fight? Broken twigs or leaves on the ground, where they would not have fallen naturally. Scuffs in the earth around the orange trees. Signs of earth on the path or marks on her shoes. Had anyone thought to tell the maid not to touch anything? Above all, not to clean it? It was something she should do immediately, instead of standing here frozen in front of the portrait of Blessed Barbon.

  She went straight to the hall and across it, along the corridor, and through the baize door into the servants’ quarters. There was a footman outside the housekeeper’s door, and he straightened as soon as he saw her.

  “Sorry, m’lady, but you can’t go in there,” he said unhappily.

  “Quite right,” she approved. “No exceptions. I would like to see the housekeeper, if you please.”

  “Yes, m’lady.” He blushed. “I can’t take you, ’cause I’ve got to stay here, but you’ll likely find Mrs. Pugh in the butler’s pantry. Everything’s a bit…”

  “Yes, of course it is. Thank you.” She went as she was directed and found the housekeeper, a slender woman with the customary large ring of keys tied to her apron at the waist.

  “Yes, m’lady?” she said anxiously.

  “If it hasn’t already been done, will you instruct all the servants that they are not to enter the orangery?” Vespasia asked. “I’m sure you appreciate we must examine the floor to see if there are any signs from which we can deduce what happened. In case there should be any…difference of opinion. An innocent party may be blamed. It is all most unfortunate. How is Mrs. Watson-Watt?”

  “Still the same, m’lady. I don’t know what else we can do for her,” Mrs. Pugh said unhappily.

&n
bsp; “Nothing but wait, I fear. When she comes round, she might take a sip of brandy, or hot beef tea.”

  “We have both of them. Oh, I do hope she’ll…” She trailed off, not sure what else to say.

  “So do I,” Vespasia agreed. “We must hope for the best. Where are her shoes that she was wearing at the time? If you have not cleaned them…”

  “No time yet, m’lady.”

  “Excellent. May I see them, please?”

  “Certainly. If you’ll just wait…”

  “I’d rather come with you. I want to see them exactly as they are, before any dirt or smudges are knocked off them, or wiped away.”

  The housekeeper gave her a momentary look of confusion but she obeyed. The shoes were in the housekeeper’s room, where Iris was still lying motionless, face white, eyes closed.

  Vespasia hesitated a moment, looking at Iris, saying a silent prayer, and then moved to the shoes. “Very good place to keep them,” she approved. “Are the rest of the clothes here?”

  “Over there, m’lady.” Mrs. Pugh pointed to where they were carefully laid over the back of the chair.

  Vespasia looked at the shoes closely. First the left. She turned it over. The sole was quite dry, but there was a shred of mulch on the heel. She looked at the other and found a deep scar on the heel, as if it had been drawn hard and heavily sideways across some sharp edge. If Iris’s shoe had been on her foot at the time the scar was made, she must have fallen hard against the concrete edge of the surround to one of the orange trees.

  Did that indicate anything they did not already assume?

  Vespasia began examining the clothes, picking them up one by one, turning them to the light to see if there were tears, holes, smears of soil or blood. There was very little to see: a bit of loose mulch on the hem of her gown, hard to distinguish because of its dark shade. There was no blood anywhere, even on the shoulder near her head where Iris had bled, though not heavily. Was there blood on someone else’s clothes? Would he hide it? Or try to wash it out? Or get rid of it? That was a line to follow. How much blood was it?