Page 15 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)
Chapter Seven
“We need to speak with the grandmother,” Hyperia said. “If Hannah went willingly with her escorts, that’s a very different situation from a forced abduction.”
She and MacNamara had been watching for my return, enjoying the shaded bench under the enormous oak at the center of the stable yard.
I had barely stepped down from the saddle before Atticus had absconded with Atlas, giving the beast a thorough visual inspection and apparently finding him in acceptable condition.
Did the boy but know it, Atlas had stamina sufficient to put most English mounts to shame.
His Iberian sire had passed that on to him, along with nimbleness of body and brain.
From a dam born to the plow, Atlas had inherited a calm temperament and significant strength.
The horse had saved my life numerous times, and I would never intentionally put him in harm’s way.
“Hannah might have gone willingly at first,” MacNamara said, “only to realize too late that she’d been hoodwinked. She tends to believe the whole world is as forthright as she is.”
He sat with his bad leg almost straight before him, a walking stick propped at his side. Even in the fresh air of the stable yard, a faint vanilla hint of pipe smoke clung to him.
I lowered myself to the dusty ground and sat cross-legged opposite the bench.
My eyes ached, despite my blue specs, and while Atlas might be up to long hacks, my recent horseback excursions had all been shorter than the morning’s outing.
I was saddlesore and reaching the frustrated portion of the investigatory program.
“Strother was exceedingly pleasant,” I said, “almost ingratiatingly so, but he had little in the way of information. He explained to me that Hannah has disappeared previously. She shook off the Irish viscount’s heir by making an unannounced visit to a school friend in Kent, though Strother did not recall the friend’s name. ”
“I cannot contradict him,” MacNamara said, “not in the generalities. Hannah did visit an acquaintance to the east. She mentioned to me in passing her intention to travel, though we were little more than cordial at the time. We were just getting to the point where I’d call us something more than literary friends, hacking-out friends.
I credit the viscount’s heir for aiding my cause as a suitor. ”
I gathered up a handful of pebbles and amused myself as I often had around campfires in Spain by trying to toss them in a perfect circle.
“Let me guess,” Hyperia said. “Downing was the fate that awaited Hannah if she didn’t find herself a more agreeable spouse, and there you were, all bookish and bashful?”
MacNamara smiled. “And that strategy finally worked, or I thought it did. The school friend is Mrs. Dabney Witherspoon, of Little Pomset. The village is actually in Surrey, though the next village to the east lies in Kent.”
“A brother might not know such things,” Hyperia said, watching my pebbles fall. “If I asked Healy who my best friends were at school, he’d recall one or two of the prettiest, but he’d not know to whom I was closest or with whom I still correspond.”
My circle was lopsided. I gathered up my pebbles and tried again.
“Even so, if you undertook to visit one of those chums, wouldn’t you have to pack a few dresses, choose some reading for the journey, decide upon which hats and how many pairs of slippers, and so forth?
I recall my sisters preparing for house parties less than a two-hour ride from here, and it seemed like days of extra work for the laundry, the seamstresses, the cobbler…
Can a lady truly sneak off to pay a visit of two weeks’ duration without a sibling taking notice? ”
Hyperia peered at me. “You have a point. Everything must be packed just so, or the wrinkles are endless. One wants to take at least three shawls—formal, informal, and practical for warmth—and that’s just the beginning.
Which jewelry to bring along. Whether to include a riding habit, which means tall boots, a cloche, riding gloves… The preparations are complicated.”
Rather like moving around a general. The business wanted forethought, and stealth was nearly impossible.
“Do we conclude Strother was lying?” MacNamara asked, using both hands to raise his knee enough to allow the sole of his foot to rest flat on the ground. The shift caused him a fleeting wince, and Hyperia, noting his expression, sent me visual orders.
Enough pondering. Let’s get him back to the house.
I rose and dusted off my backside. “My nether parts are no longer inured to using Mother Earth for my wing chair. Let’s find more comfortable surrounds, shall we?
We can continue this discussion over luncheon, but as to Strother’s mendacity…
He doesn’t strike me as dishonest by nature.
He is, though, forgettable, as Miss West noted.
He gives no offense, he takes none. He leaves almost no impression at all. ”
Though I did have the lingering sense that Strother had wanted my good opinion, perhaps simply because I was the local ducal heir?
MacNamara used his cane to stand upright on his good foot. I assisted Hyperia to rise, or we used that pretext to avoid watching MacNamara’s struggles. That he’d come all the way to the stable to await my return was a measure of his anxiety, because clearly the man was in pain.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” he muttered, straightening.
“Shakespeare’s Henry V ,” Hyperia countered. “Not one of my favorites.”
Nor mine, but soldiers quoted that speech back and forth the night before a battle, so I pitched in with the closing lines, as MacNamara must have known I would.
“‘The game's afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge, Cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”’” My dear brother had particularly liked that last part, the wretch.
Hyperia frowned at the mention of Harry—and Harry—while MacNamara grasped his cane and shuffled forth.
“We tentatively conclude,” he said, “that Strother failed to note Hannah’s travel preparations on this occasion and that he forgot the name of her school friend.
We hold open the possibility that he’s instead simply trying to minimize the risk of scandal by weaving a convenient little sampler of facts, recollections, and omissions.
He does care for Hannah, and the rest of it—Hannah and her mother being on the outs, the viscount sniffing at her hems—is all accurate. ”
“Strother brushed aside the confidence Lady Dewar reposed in Her Grace,” I said, keeping to the very moderate pace MacNamara set.
I did not offer Hyperia my arm, nor did she take it.
She was doubtless waiting, as I was, for the moment when MacNamara stumbled or tired to the point of needing assistance.
“Said the old girl was growing daft, no doubt,” MacNamara replied. “If she’s daft, I’m the next patroness of Almack’s. Lady Dewar might well forget what was on last Tuesday’s supper menu, but her hearing and vision are as sharp as mine.”
“Then we need to arrange a discreet conversation with her,” I said. “Hyperia, what do you think of attending divine services this Sunday at St. Rumwold’s?” I cited the house of worship in Pleasant View’s market town.
“Worth a try.” She paused to snap off a blooming spear of purple iris. “We can call upon my Fortnam cousins for Sunday supper. They worship at St. Rumwold’s, or collect their local gossip in St. Rum’s churchyard. They might know something of Miss Stadler.”
“You are related to the Misses Fortnam?” MacNamara asked.
“They are aunts to my late mother, but we’ve always called them cousins. Formidable dames, or they were in my childhood. I have no Gaelic, Julian. You will have to be my escort if we’re to interview Lady Dewar.”
“MacNamara, are you up to a churchyard conversation with Miss Stadler’s granny?”
He stopped and rested heavily on his walking stick. “If I must. What will you be doing?”
“Have you a miniature of Miss Stadler?”
The lady’s home, oddly enough, had had no likenesses of her that I’d seen.
Of her brother, I’d noted sketches aplenty and even a portrait in the music room that I’d glanced at in passing.
Her sisters had been rendered in oils over the formal landing, a trio of young feminine pulchritude, but of Hannah, not so much as a pencil drawing.
“I have this.” MacNamara produced a small oval folding case and opened it to display the painting inside. A lock of dark hair occupied one half, a smiling visage the other.
“She’s pretty,” Hyperia said. “Why do people insist that a woman who isn’t gorgeous must be plain, when she may yet be very attractive despite a wide mouth or definite chin? Hannah is quite comely.”
MacNamara snapped the miniature closed. “Hannah does not emphasize her beauty, and she’s no Venus, but I am no Adonis. Her most impressive qualities are of the heart and mind. We suit.”
Did they, or had Hannah arranged a departure that suggested MacNamara had a wishful grasp of her true sentiments? The latter possibility seemed less and less likely.
“If you will accompany Miss West to services and supper with her cousins, I will find the school friend with whom Hannah stayed previously and learn what I can. I will make discreet inquiries at the coaching inns within a one-or-two change radius of Pleasant View, though that trail is growing cold. Then too, kidnappers would not allow Miss Stadler to take the air unsupervised, if it’s kidnappers we’re dealing with. ”
What I did not say was that even kidnappers would have to allow the young lady the use of the facilities. Murderers, of course, would not face that problem, but then, what possible motive would justify the extreme measure of homicide?
MacNamara returned the miniature to his breast pocket. “You have hard riding ahead of you, my lord, if you seek to inquire at two dozen coaching inns.”