Page 10 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)
Chapter Ten
“Bad business,” Atticus said, tromping from the stables with me and Hyperia. “Very bad business, going after the coaches like that. The grooms are all off in corners whispering by twos and threes. The gardeners are keeping to themselves. The footmen aren’t hanging about the harness room like they sometimes do.”
“Any theories?” I asked as we ambled along.
“When was those coach wheels smashed?” Atticus replied. “When were they, I mean. Bashing about like that makes noise. The carriage house is some distance from the stable, but still… If the lads were in the yard watering the horses, bringing in stock from the pastures, dumping the muck carts into the pit around back… Somebody shoulda heard something.”
This detail, like Cressida Northby’s comment about not having heard a pistol fired among the fowling pieces, caught me up short.
“Excellent point, Atticus. When do the lads take their nooning?”
“Early. They are up at the crack o’ doom, so they eat before the family at midday. They eat supper same time as family, finish up at the stable, and seek their beds.”
“At noon,” Hyperia said, her arm linked through mine, “the stable and carriage house are empty?”
Atticus peered up at her. “Should be. If a man were in a fury, he’d need only ten minutes or so to wreck those coaches. The carriage house isn’t locked, and that sledgehammer is kept in the carriage house for bangin’ on this and that. The farrier says it’s not one o’ his.”
“That suggests a spontaneous bout of destruction,” Hyperia observed as we emerged into the dreary shadows of the formal garden. “Use what’s to hand, lay about when nobody’s around, decamp unseen.”
“Or,” I said, “it suggests familiarity with the carriage house appointments, right down to the tools hanging on the wall.” Those walls were also adorned with harnesses, every equipage being carefully fitted to the vehicle and the horses for which it was used and the whole being draped on custom pegs and racks in the precise order in which it was put on the horse.
The sledgehammer, pliers, hasp, and so forth hanging on nails in the corner were not the first thing the eye would notice.
“What else are you hearing, Atticus?” I paused by the empty fountain. I could see the boy’s features only indistinctly, the twilight shadows having deepened to the point that from inside the house, one would believe darkness had fallen. Out in the elements, the sky to the west was yet streaked with gray.
An hour for trysting, spying, and being spied upon.
“Not much bein’ said.” Atticus shuffled his boots among the dry leaves accumulated beside the fountain. “It’s unnervin’ when the lads and footmen stop their chatting. Seems like talk is how they get through the day. Gossiping about the maids, complaining about the work, joking about nothing, and longing for a beef roast. They’re lively, usually. They aren’t lively now.”
“Who goes on as if nothing is afoot?” Hyperia asked. “Who pretends he has nothing to fret over?”
Atticus aimed a stare in the direction of the stable, the rooftop of which was visible against the darkening sky through the bare hedgerow.
“The head lad is all business,” he said. “Back to work, quit yer lollygaggin’, that sort of thing. He had the grooms tidy up the carriage house right smartly, all the broken bits swept into a pile for the wainwright to salvage what he can. Nobody is pretending nothin’, miss. We know trouble when it smashes a marquess’s coach wheels.”
Atticus’s voice told me what I might have seen in better light: The boy was afraid. He was acutely sensitive to the moods of the adults around him, and those adults were afraid as well. For their jobs, very likely, also for their physical safety.
“Take yourself to the kitchen,” I said. “Linger in the servants’ hall, pine for home, doze off in the corner by the fire. Keep your ears open. You’ve given us an insightful report, and I thank you for it.”
“Aye, guv. Miss.” He vanished up the walkway, his steps pattering into the darkness.
“You are pondering,” Hyperia said, making no move to follow the boy into the house.
I cast caution to the wind—we were engaged—and brought her into an embrace. “Why not wreck the coaches properly, Perry? If you were the guilty party, you’d be furious enough to wreak havoc. You have a stout hammer in your hand. The stable and carriage house are downwind of the Manor by design. Sound won’t travel to the Manor, and the lads and gardeners are all off, wolfing down a midday meal. You have the extra five minutes to destroy the vehicles themselves, but you stop after whacking the daylights out of a few wheels. Who are you, and what is your goal that you limited the damage like that?”
“Perhaps,” she said, bundling close, “you are a woman or a youth and not truly strong enough to destroy the vehicles. Perhaps you are of a calculating nature and enjoy the notion of causing the marquess a fortnight’s delay, during which you will devise another means of annoying and harassing him.”
Daunting thought. “I want to find this fiend, Hyperia, and shake answers out of them. I cannot see a pattern, and that in itself suggests we are dealing with either an unhinged mind or diabolical cleverness.”
She stepped back and took my hand. “Or we are dealing with the chaos of war, as you noted earlier. One faction poisons the marquess’s trifle. The other faction whacks at the carriage wheels. If this is what you dealt with in Spain, Julian, it’s no wonder you came back to us slightly the worse for wear.”
My French captors had had something to do with my shoddy condition, but I wasn’t about to bring up that topic again.
We parted in the Manor’s chilly atrium, Hyperia to change for dinner, me to find the marquess. Atticus was afraid, Hyperia was likening the situation to a war, and they were both prudent, canny individuals, whom I wanted to keep safe above all else.
I made the appropriate inquiries of a footman, then rapped on the door of Dalhousie’s study. I did not yet have the pleasure of shaking answers from the perpetrator of the day’s mischief, but I could question mine host, at length and in detail, and caution him regarding the need for extensive preventive measures.
“My lord.” Susanna seemed surprised to find me requesting entry to Dalhousie’s sanctum sanctorum, but she quickly recovered. “I was just leaving. Mind you two aren’t late for dinner.” She sidled around me with a smile and bustled off.
“Come in,” Dalhousie said, rising from behind his desk. “Susanna was just reviewing the household books with me, the appointed day and hour for that exercise having arrived. I daresay I was not very attentive to the ledgers. Brandy?”
“Brandy would suit.” Dalhousie was trying for the persona of the gracious host, but his gaze was wary, and two brandy glasses had already been used and returned to the sideboard. If the intention had been to steady his nerves, the project was still a work in progress.
“I brought this home from Paris,” he said, pouring two more servings into clean glasses. “To your health and to… spring.”
I sipped, finding the vintage agreeably fragrant—oak, apples, a hint of cinnamon—and blessed with the smooth fire that soothes even as it warms the gullet.
“What did Cressida have to add to the day’s mayhem?” Dalhousie asked, gesturing to the wing chairs before the fire.
I took a seat, finding the cushions warm and comfy, the fire nicely blazing. “She did not hear a pistol fired on the occasion when your hat came to grief,” I said, setting my brandy on the side table. “She noted that detail very clearly and admitted as well that both Lady Albert and Susanna took a brief respite from the firing line at a moment when such a pistol shot might have been fired.”
Dalhousie sank into the second chair with the sigh of a man carrying heavy burdens. “Do you believe her?”
“She strikes me as being more disinterested than either the marchioness or Lady Albert, and her first loyalty would be to the squire. He’s the magistrate, and if a crime has been committed on his watch, and he’s failed to investigate, then he’s derelict in his duty. She would guard his flank before involving herself in the intrigues and foolishness here.”
“He would not be derelict,” Dalhousie said tiredly. “He’d be discreet. I am not about to make wild claims about bandits lurking in Northby’s very woods, and because he was present on the scene in the capacity of landowner and organizer of the shoot, some other authority would likely have to be brought in, and Mama…” He sipped again. “The marchioness does not want to foment ill will with the neighbors.”
I was fast losing patience with the marchioness. “Bit late for her to turn up diplomatic and delicate, Dalhousie. For that matter, your enclosure scheme has already set the entire shire against you, and you haven’t yet drafted the parliamentary particulars. The marchioness at her sweetest would need generations to overcome the malice your enclosure scheme has already earned you.”
“Tam says the same.” Another listless sip. “He says I can look forward to salted wells, pasture gates left open, haystacks mysteriously catching fire… The talk has grown ugly, and all because I want to bring a bit of progress to my corner of the realm.”
That sounded exactly like the sort of unhelpful, generally threatening observation Tam would make before nattering on about Cato the Elder on the topic of warfare.
Bellum se ipse alet. The quote popped into my head as I nosed my drink a second time, a reference made by Cato himself to his brutal, lightning campaign to conquer and subdue Hispania Citerior.
“What are you muttering about?” Dalhousie asked, finishing his drink.
“‘The war feeds itself,’ meaning that once mayhem and violence pass a certain point, the destruction itself tends to engender yet more chaos and horror. Loyalties evaporate in the face of suspicion. Imagined slights escalate into vendettas. Looting has no consequences…” Horrible images from Spain—Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo in particular—tried to crowd into my head.
This was what came of allowing Hyperia to peek at my wartime memories.
“You refer to my smashed coaches,” Dalhousie said. “Disturbing, I grant you, but we can walk to divine services if the weather is fair, and the farrier says he can fashion cotter pins to make your vehicle serviceable by noon tomorrow.”
Divine services were not on my mind. Divine retribution, on the other hand… “You must post guards, Dalhousie. Plowing and planting have not yet begun. Recruit from the yeomanry and the tenants you trust, choose only the stoutly loyal and reliably alert.”
“You said it yourself, my lord. I have sown rancor with my neighbors over the enclosure scheme. They will eagerly take my coin in exchange for extra duties, then look the other way when my livestock is spirited away.”
“Then post your footmen and gardeners to keep watch on the outbuildings. Close the estate’s main gates and insist your gatekeeper remain sober during daylight hours. Roust the gamekeeper to make regular patrols of the footpaths most commonly used by the villagers and tenants.”
Fortify the camp, for pity’s sake. Post the sentries, dispatch the scouting patrols, secure the ammunition under lock and key.
Dalhousie rose to pour himself another brandy, his third, at least. “I haven’t regiments and battalions to command, my lord. The footmen and gardeners have regular duties, and my mother does not believe in hiring excessive staff. She will notice that her evening posset takes longer to come up from the kitchen, and she will take umbrage at a lack of fresh flowers on the breakfast table.”
Wellington, notably gallant toward the ladies, would not have spared the marchioness five minutes beneath the chandeliers at Almack’s.
“What does your dear mother make of the havoc in your carriage house?”
Dalhousie fiddled with the decanters at the sideboard, examined his drink closely, and acquired the truculent air of the unrepentant schoolboy, all without saying a word.
“Dalhousie, I despair of you. You have not told the marchioness we’ll be walking to divine services.”
He resumed his seat, tossing the drink back at one go. “You don’t know my mother, my lord. She nearly flayed me alive for attending the shoot on the anniversary of my father’s passing. He’s been gone for nearly two decades. I was away at school when he died, and yet, I am to remark the day and the hour and spend them in contemplation of a father I recall as self-absorbed and at best benignly negligent regarding his heir.”
“If your mother was so wroth with you, why did she host a buffet for the shooting party on the same occasion?”
“To punish me, of course. To throw in my face that not only did I fail to honor my father, I had also expected my mother to ignore the occasion of her bereavement. She could have reminded me of the date. She could have mentioned something to Suze, who surely would have warned me, but that’s not how Mama works. She excels at ambushing others with guilt.”
Did she excel at more deadly ambushes? “A martyr to misery and determined to ensure everybody else suffers the same fate.”
“Not misery. Duty, propriety, consequence… I have not told her about the coaches. I was hoping you might broach the topic with her.”
“Of course.” Her reaction to the news would be interesting, though by now, her spies could well have made their reports. “Cressida says your mother went absent without leave during the shoot.”
“Mama wasn’t with us. She remained here, preparing for the buffet.”
“No, she did not, and nobody seems to know where she got off to. I’ll ask her.” I rose, ready to make haste where Dalhousie was dithering and wallowing. “The situation is escalating, Dalhousie, from threats to your person to wanton destruction of your property. Time is of the essence, and if I were you, I’d jettison any notion of enclosing that heath.”
He nodded, which I took as acknowledgment of a sensible suggestion rather than assent. He was unfailingly resolute about his enclosure and an absolute invertebrate when it came to managing the marchioness.
How hard could it be to have some frank words with one’s own mother?
I was halfway to her ladyship’s suite before I could admit even to myself that such discussions could be very difficult. I knew from experience how trying those honest, painful conversations could be and knew as well that my own dear and occasionally exasperating mother would agree with me.
“My errand is brief,” I said, strolling past a lady’s maid intent on repelling boarders. “One must not make the marchioness late for supper, after all.”
Lady Dalhousie occupied a settee facing the hearth of her sitting room, her workbasket at her feet. Compared to Hyperia’s rather plain kit, this basket was rife with the regalia of feminine productivity—pins; a darning egg; an abundance of pointed knitting needles; and no less than three pairs of gleaming, razor-sharp scissors in different sizes.
Her ladyship spared me not so much as a glance. “You have a positive gift for rudeness, my lord. Hames, you will return in a quarter hour.”
“Yes, my lady.” Hames curtseyed, glowered meaningfully at the clock, and decamped, closing the door silently in her wake.
I seated myself on a fussy little blue and gilt Queen Anne chair. “If it’s courtesy you want, I will do you the very great honor of not wasting your time. Where were you on the day of the shoot, Lady Dalhousie?”
Her needle moved in a slow, steady rhythm. “Here, of course. Where else would I be in the middle of a winter’s day?”
“You were not at the Manor when Cressida Northby came over to offer you the loan of some staff. You were out.”
“I was merely too busy to put up with Mrs. Northby’s nosiness. She doubtless intruded to try to winkle the menu from the staff and otherwise find grounds to fault the Manor’s hospitality.”
A thief attributed larceny to his every acquaintance. “She is your cousin, and yet, you refer to her formally even as you attribute base motives to her. Do you accuse Mrs. Northby of the destruction in the carriage house?”
The needle paused. “What destruction?”
“The family conveyances have all been violently hobbled. Wheels smashed to kindling and left in bits on the floor. My own coach saw the removal of every cotter pin holding the wheels to the axle, which in some ways is the more dangerous mischief. I might well have sent Miss West to Town in that vehicle, only to have it come to grief a mile from your gateposts.”
Her ladyship slapped her needlework atop the open workbasket. “The traveling coach must be repaired at once, and Dalhousie must go to Town. Easter is but a fortnight away, and he should already be in evidence at the clubs and shops.”
“Don’t expect me to lend him my coach,” I said. “I might well need a means to flee the battlefield, or at least send my ladies to safety.” I silently apologized to those ladies for hiding figuratively behind their skirts.
In point of fact, Dalhousie hadn’t asked me to loan him my coach, which I would have cheerfully consented to do, provided that I, two armed guards, and the ladies traveled with us.
“You are not known for fleeing from battles,” Lady Dalhousie said, folding her arms. “Getting yourself captured, yes, and committing treason, possibly, and even the next thing to fratricide, but nobody has accused you of lacking courage.”
The barb stung, as it was intended to. “You have misled me regarding your whereabouts on the day of the shoot. You left the Manor premises for some time. You may cast all the insults upon my honor you please—more bad form, alas, and me a lowly invited guest—and I will still demand to know where you were and why you dissembled.”
She closed the lid of her workbasket with an audible snap. “By what right do you demand anything of me?”
“Your son has been shot at, poisoned, threatened, his saddle tampered with, and now his property has been viciously destroyed. Somebody is willing to risk a hanging to wreak havoc on his lordship’s person. The marquess has charged me with finding the perpetrator. If you thwart me, you abet a criminal intent on tormenting your son.” I picked a piece of lint from my sleeve and flicked it to the carpet in the tradition of the best arrogant boors.
“But then,” I went on, “you delight in tormenting Dalhousie.”
My aim had been true as well, though the business of verbal skirmishing with the marchioness wearied and disgusted me. I understood her. She was driven by pride and haunted by regrets, though she would never admit to either.
I did not like her, and yet, I had to respect her ruthlessness.
“I love my son.” Never had those same words carried such a load of venom.
“You do not even know your son. You love some paragon of filial devotion who exists only in your imagination and to whom you constantly compare the very good and decent man Dalhousie has become. Where were you on the day of the shoot?”
“You think I would aim a gun at my only offspring?”
“No, actually, but if you were abroad in the general vicinity of the woods, you might have seen something of note, might have crossed paths with the steward or undergardener or head lad, who should have been walking in the direction of the assembling beaters, but was instead headed elsewhere.”
She frankly stared at me.
“You might have seen a footman scurrying off to the bridle paths rather than making haste for the kitchen gardens. Need I go on?”
Some of the righteousness left her bearing. “I went to the family plot. I crossed paths with nobody. I did not return to the Manor until I heard the guns start up.”
Credible, given Dalhousie’s earlier remarks, but not quite convincing. “Why not tell me that sooner?”
“Grief is private, as you would know if….”
I’d lost a brother, a father, and countless comrades, along with half my wits, the majority of my dignity, and the better part of my reputation. “You were saying?”
“My grief is private. If my lord has accomplished his errand, he will please leave.”
“Your grief is private, but you feel free to instruct Dalhousie on the metes and bounds of his mourning for his father, to let him accept a neighbor’s invitation and even offer the hospitality of the Manor on the anniversary of your bereavement, and then castigate him for his supposed thoughtlessness.” I rose, only too happy to quit present company.
“You should rejoice that your son is not a hostage to grief,” I said. “You should give thanks that he can look to the future rather than make a graven idol of the past. You should thank the heavenly powers that Dalhousie cares enough for his own welfare to call in reinforcements when trouble is afoot. Instead, you hector and belittle him over trivialities. My lady, I bid you good day and thank you for your honesty, however belated.”
“I left flowers,” she said, rising. “I left nineteen roses on my husband’s grave. All the roses we had, but it was enough. One for each year.”
Not an apology, but a plea of some sort. Very well, I’d offer her a report. “The vandalism in the carriage house today likely took place at noon, when the whole of the stable staff would have been in the servants’ hall at the midday meal. A short sledgehammer was on hand to effect the destruction, and Dalhousie has summoned the wainwright to do the repairs.”
“Dalhousie said nothing to me. Do the others know?”
Others meaning Lady Albert, Tam, and Susanna, I supposed. “They do, and now you are informed as well.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell me himself?”
I might have heard some genuine bewilderment in that question, along with the predictable complement of indignation.
“If ever you find the courage to query your son on that point, please listen to his answer. Don’t interrupt, don’t accuse, don’t lecture. Listen .”
My exhortation was met with silence, so I bowed and withdrew, wishing more than anything that I could avoid the ordeal of supper. Alas for me, I was never one to run from a battlefield, even in Lady Dalhousie’s grudging estimation.