Page 11 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

Chapter Eleven

Supper was a subdued affair, carried mostly by Lady Ophelia’s humorous recollections of Mad George’s royal court, seconded by Susanna’s recountings of the local assemblies, and Tam’s flirtation and flattery. Lady Dalhousie sent her son brooding looks, the marquess maintained a host’s polite interest in the conversation, and I nearly fell asleep over the crème br?lée.

Hyperia declared a need to retire early, and I claimed the honor of lighting her up to her room.

“The marchioness was surprised to learn of the mischief in the carriage house,” I said as we trudged up the steps. “I’d bet Atticus’s boots on that.”

“Such an odd sort of vandalism,” Hyperia said. “Why not steal the silver, slash the portraits, cut down the rhododendrons?”

“The house is never entirely empty, and hacking down rhododendrons takes time and makes a ruckus.”

“I was thinking out loud, Jules, not asking for an analysis. You should dodge off after a single glass of port. You are tired.”

“I am, and I miss the Hall.” Until the words were out of my mouth, I hadn’t known my own sentiments. A soldier learned to merely nod at homesickness in passing, lest it deliver blows to the spirit that felled him as effectively as bullets to the heart.

In that chilly, shadowed corridor, I longed as ardently for my home as I did for answers to Dalhousie’s problems. Caldicott Hall was safety and repose, welcome and peace. The one place on earth where I had always been welcome.

The goodwives and yeomanry in the local surrounds might be equally attached to the thorny expanse of heath where their children played and their goats grazed—a sobering thought.

Hyperia stopped outside her sitting room door. “You miss the Hall. I worry about Healy. He’s at the family seat, ostensibly putting the finishing touches on his second play.” She slipped her arms around me and leaned against my chest. “Tell me my brother is not becoming a sot, Jules. Tell me his playwriting isn’t just an excuse to hide from his creditors and from me.”

“You are a devoted sister, and Healy is not a complete gudgeon. His first play was good, the second will be better, and having two on offer rather than a single debut effort is shrewd of him.” The first play was humorous, sly, and a bit ribald, but not overly so. “We can look in on him when our business here is concluded.”

“When will that be, Jules?” She straightened to peer at me by the light of the corridor sconces.

I kissed her nose. “Feeling restless and preoccupied? Frustrated perhaps because you cannot already see patterns of cause and effect in the evidence we have thus far? Wondering if there are patterns, but fearing you lack the acumen to see them?”

“More or less. The restlessness is the worst. I feel as if I ought to be doing something, peering into cupboards, lurking at keyholes. How do you bear the impatience?”

I drew her back into my arms and thought of months spent wandering the Spanish countryside, impatience my constant companion. Was the drunk snoring in the corner of the cantina a spy, and if so, for how many factions? Should I follow him into the night or pretend to doze in my own corner?

After a few near disasters, I’d learned the value of waiting and watching and waiting some more. Observing, listening, and lengthy bouts of cogitation and rumination had been the most valuable tools of my trade, and I hoped they were sufficient for present purposes.

“I persist,” I said quietly. “I do the tasks likely to yield information, and when I’ve done them, I regroup and try again. Rest is important too, Hyperia. You said that yourself. Give your mind time to consider what you know, to sleep on the questions and riddles. If you asked Susanna to introduce you to a few neighbors, you’d likely learn things about Dalhousie’s enclosure scheme that he isn’t telling me.”

“Such as?”

“Are the ladies as opposed to it as the men? Dalhousie will need an army of masons to build his walls and an army of gardeners to get any produce off the acreage. He’ll need a fleet of wagons to move the goods to Town or to the ports, and that means a herd of mules or draft horses to pull the wagons.”

“It means,” Hyperia said slowly, “an ocean of laundry, another ocean of ale, cottages to be built, farriery for the hoofed stock… more apprentices for the cobbler, more candles bought from the chandler. Not only progress, but prosperity—perhaps.”

“Perhaps, and perhaps the ladies view the matter in that light. I’d best rejoin Dalhousie and Tam and raise this very topic over the port. I plan to call on the innkeeper tomorrow, chat up the head lad, let Northby know of today’s developments, and—”

“Why bring Northby into it?”

I opened her sitting room door, and a gust of warm air greeted us. “Let’s finish the discussion before the fire, shall we?” Rather than in a corridor where any footmen could be lurking in the nearest alcove.

Hyperia scooted through the doorway. I followed, and we gained both warmth and privacy. I took advantage of the latter to kiss my beloved properly—also a bit improperly—and then she was once again cuddled in my embrace and radiating far less frustration.

“Northby is the magistrate,” I said when my mind was again able to connect words into sentences. “Dalhousie’s pride is one thing, Lady Dalhousie’s horror of gossip is another, but the king’s peace is Northby’s responsibility. He should be kept informed as a courtesy.”

“Dalhousie should inform him, then.”

“Dalhousie is not comfortable confronting his elders, much less taking them to task. Then too, Northby, as host of the shoot, might well suggest calling in another magistrate to investigate, and Dalhousie dislikes that notion.” Dalhousie disliked even more the prospect of explaining such an eventuality to his mama.

“Better to call in you?”

“Us. Will you visit the vicarage with me tomorrow?”

“Yes, but why?”

“Because we conduct our investigations as reconnaissance missions. We do not posit a theory—Tam is to blame—and then see only the evidence that condemns him. We collect as much relevant information as we can and follow where the facts lead.”

“I’d rather blame Lady Dalhousie.”

“Tempting, I agree. She has much to answer for, but she did not aim a gun at her son or wield that sledgehammer.” I was nearly certain of my conclusion. “I asked Susanna for her ladyship’s whereabouts at midday, and the marchioness was said to be inventorying the linen closets at tedious length.”

“Where was Tam?”

“I hope to find that out in the next half hour. Dream of me, my darling, and know that I will dream of you.”

We engaged in another spate of kissing, but of the subdued variety necessary when a man must return to polite company with his wits about him, drat the ruddy luck.

“Be careful, Jules,” Hyperia said, seeing me to the door. “You’ve been lucky thus far, but please… be careful.”

“You too, Hyperia, and we must both exhort Lady Ophelia to exercise caution as well.”

I left, despite a towering impulse to linger, and Hyperia let me go. I was right in one sense—we had work to do, days of it at least—but Hyperia’s frustration was understandable too. Matters were growing more dangerous, and the author of Dalhousie’s trouble grew bolder with time.

For the sake of all concerned, we needed to catch our culprit, the sooner the better.

Tam had been in the library from breakfast until the nooning bell had rung, observed by any number of footmen, Lady Albert—the light in the library was the best for close work—and the butler. He thus provided an alibi for his mother and produced one for himself, at least as regarded the vehicular destruction.

As the investigation moved into the second week, I settled in as if for a siege. The innkeeper knew nothing about any unfranked notes being delivered to the Manor. The vicar had little to say regarding the enclosure scheme or anything of merit, but then, Dalhousie held the local living, and the vicar’s opinions were perforce tempered by prudence.

Hyperia dutifully embarked on a round of social calls with Susanna, swilling tea by the gallon and gathering only a vague sense that the ladies were as opposed to enclosure as their sons and husbands were. Even the local stonemason, fearing that all his custom would be stolen by crews brought in from Cornwall, wanted nothing to do with any enclosure walls.

“We feel becalmed in our inquiries,” I said to Northby as he and I walked along on opposite sides of a drystone wall along the border of the Abbey and the Manor. We paused occasionally to heave a tumbled rock back into place among its brethren, or to assess a patch of greater damage wrought by the past year’s frost heave.

On Northby’s side of the wall, a pair of aging hounds gamboled about, sniffing the base of the wall here, anointing it in the time-honored fashion of canines there. The breeze held a hint of mildness by early spring standards, though on my side of the wall, patches of snow lingered from an overnight dusting.

“You wait for the hounds to pick up the scent,” Northby said, gaze on his companions, “but no matter how you cast them, Reynard has left no trace of his passing.” He put a sizable rock atop the wall, filling a gap made by nature. “Dalhousie should have raised the alarm sooner if he wanted the matter investigated. Any tracks in the woods are long gone by now. Alibis are in place, silences secured.”

I had looked for those tracks anyway, and the squire was right. Rain, wind, the passage of time, and the denizens of the wood had obliterated any useful signs.

I wedged a flat rock into a gap on my side of the wall. “I’ve questioned the entire household about the hour when the coaches could have been tampered with. Everybody from the boot-boy to the pensioners can account for their whereabouts. This time of year, the noon meal is conscientiously well attended.”

The marquess had been inspecting some fallow ground with the steward, which had spared me the chore of interrogating a senior and much-respected employee regarding his movements.

“You are left with two possibilities, my lord. Dalhousie’s enemy in this case might not bide under his roof, which is easily possible. In the alternative…”

The hounds gazed intently in the direction of the village, then looked to the squire.

“Somebody is lying,” I said, hefting another rock on my side of the wall. “The Dandridges are good liars, the marquess in particular.”

“You insult the man, my lord. I don’t care for Dalhousie’s enclosure ambitions in the least, but he’s honest. Even foolishly honest.”

“He dissembles daily and to good effect. His whole family thinks he’s a bit spoiled, not overly bright, something of a poseur, but generally well intended. He smiles, he quips, he hugs the ladies and goes about his business, and not one of them realizes how hard he’s working or how much he has to manage.”

My respect for Dalhousie had grown as I’d watched him at close range. He had my brother Arthur’s ability to accomplish a great deal without ever resorting to hurry or ill humor. Perhaps a successful peerage depended on that talent, and in Dalhousie’s case, an agreeable demeanor meant his industry was even less obvious to the casual observer.

He made time to take meals with family in the usual course. He teased the ladies and was friends with Tam. He shielded his dear mama from any confrontations and kept a roof over family members who ought by rights to be housed in humbler circumstances.

“Dalhousie isn’t a liar in the insulting sense,” I said. “I stand corrected, but he’s an accomplished actor.”

“Needs must, given his station, I suppose.”

We came to a patch of wall half disintegrated by the elements. The component parts lay in disarray on muddy ground, and the tracks of hoofed stock and large fowl led in all directions.

“They leap upon the wall over and over,” Northby said, “the sheep, the deer, the errant bullock, or ambitious heifer, and the wall weakens. The water gets in, the freezing and thawing take a toll, and without anybody intending any destruction, a wall guaranteed for a hundred years yields at last. Mind you don’t put all the heaviest specimens on the bottom. That’s not how a stout wall works. The top must secure the bottom as the bottom supports the top.”

We toiled in pleasant silence, the activity sending me back to boyhood, when Harry and I had tagged along after the dikers who’d kept the miles of stone wall at the Hall in trim. The crews who mended walls for us were a peripatetic lot, but every spring they showed up, quiet, thickly muscled, and as steady in their labor as the sun moving inexorably in the sky.

While I put the finishing touches on my side, the squire took a pull on his flask. “Dalhousie has company.”

A lone rider on a lathered bay galloped up the long curving driveway to the Manor. Because the wind blew from the south, the tableau took place in silence rather than accompanied by a tattoo of hoofbeats. The dogs watched the horse intently, but remained on their haunches two yards from the squire.

“Not company,” I said as the horse barreled right past the front steps and around to the porte cochere. “News. News from Town, I’d say. That’s a messenger, given the state of his attire, not a caller, and that horse was chosen for stamina and speed rather than elegance or the comfort of his gaits.”

Northby capped his flask. “Bad news, then, in all likelihood. Your lordship had best go pour oil on troubled waters, or whatever it is you’re about these days. If you’re ever in want of work, you can mend wall for me. Somebody taught you properly.”

“I’ll bear your offer in mind. Northby, where were you at noon on Friday?”

He decided to be amused rather than affronted. “At my midday meal, with my wife, where I always am at noon, lest I be lectured endlessly about domestic bliss resting on a solid foundation of domestic routines, et cetera and so forth. When we refer to domestic bliss, we don’t mention whose bliss, do we?”

He sent the Manor an unreadable glance and ambled off along his side of the wall, the dogs trotting at his heels.

I made my way across the park and told myself that asking the squire to account for himself was simply being thorough, but, in fact, I was grasping at straws. My coach had been restored to seaworthiness, as had the marquess’s phaeton, and the wainwright promised a functional traveling coach in time for divine services—Palm Sunday, as it happened.

I’d told the squire we were becalmed, but a more accurate description was that we were awaiting the next calamity. If some local malefactor wanted to prevent Dalhousie from journeying to London with his enclosure bill ready for submission before Parliament, only another calamity would suffice to thwart that aim.

Atticus met me in front of the porte cochere. “Messenger from Town, guv. Nothin’ good ever comes from Town on a fast horse.” He was walking that fast horse, the beast’s sides still heaving with exertion.

“Give that one a sip of water, Atticus, then keep him walking for at least the next thirty minutes. A sip of water every five minutes, his tack off after three sips, then back to walking. A light sheet on him after the next sip—he’s to be uncovered for no more than five minutes. Hay, water, or such grass as you can find for the next three hours, but no grain. When he’s dry, curry him to within an inch of his horsey life. He’s not to be kept in a stall overnight, lest he stiffen up.”

Atticus until recently had been entirely illiterate, resulting in a prodigiously fine memory. “Aye, guv. You’d best get inside. This fine weather won’t last. Come along, horse. You’ve earned your keep this day.”

The gelding trudged after him, head low, steps plodding. I watched them depart for the stable yard, the horse in particular. A well-made specimen in good flesh, despite the time of year. Not a livery stable hack or a coach horse subjected to the indignity of work under saddle.

The news from Town had arrived on a Dalhousie mount, stabled along the route for Dalhousie purposes and likely ridden by a Dalhousie groom.

More bad news, indeed.

I let myself into the Manor by the side door and was met by Susanna.

“Dalhousie received the messenger in the study,” she said. “I’ve warned the kitchen that a hungry rider needs immediate sustenance, and we’ll find a place to house him overnight. I’ve seldom seen so haggard a countenance.”

“Where is the rest of the family?”

“Their ladyships are resting at this hour. Tam is playing billiards.”

“Say nothing to anybody, Miss Susanna, but please fetch Miss West and Lady Ophelia for me. I will join the marquess in his study.”

“Lady Ophelia is in the village looking over the shops. I’ll find Miss West.”

Lady Ophelia was on reconnaissance, then. “My thanks.”

She bustled off, apparently agreeing with me that the older ladies were best left to their embroidery and tea trays for the nonce.

I rapped on the study door and admitted myself before permission could be granted. Dalhousie stood by the window, a study in pensive, gentlemanly contemplation. A dusty, lanky man of indeterminate years waited by the hearth, a glass of what appeared to be spirits in a gnarled hand. His age could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty, but having seen him on horseback, I knew him to have been to the saddle born. Former steeplechase jockey would be my first guess.

“Lord Julian Caldicott,” Dalhousie said without turning away from the window, “may I make known to you Richard Franklin, who has the honor to be my London stablemaster. Dicky began as a groom under my grandfather. I trust him without limit. Dicky, Lord Julian is equally in my confidence. Tell him what you told me.”

Dicky took a swig of fine spirits and sized me up with a gimlet glance. “We’ve had a fire in the Dalhousie town house.” This dire news was imparted with the incongruously musical lilt of the native Welshman. “Started in his lordship’s apartment. The staff caught it early, and the damage is mostly to his lordship’s quarters. We’re dealing with the stink and mess now—the housekeeper has been nigh moved to profanity, and her a God-fearing woman—but the structure remains sound.”

Fire, the godmother of all calamities. “When was this?”

“Last night. The place has been all astir in anticipation of the family arriving. Airing this, beating that, dusting the other. Flues should have been clean in the family rooms because they haven’t been used all winter, but something went amiss. Bad business, my lords.”

Dicky was given to understatement. “You’ve kept it quiet?”

“Aye. Fire in London is grounds for riot and panic. The staff will keep mum if they value their jobs.”

No, they wouldn’t. For a time, shock and loyalty would ensure nothing was said, but some junior footman, three pints down, would let slip a grumbling comment about having to strip the paper from the walls of the marquess’s sitting room. An exhausted chambermaid would complain to the coalman about all the carpets having to be taken up because they had been ruined.

Word would get out, meaning the time to investigate was now.

“We can take my coach,” I said to Dalhousie’s three-quarter profile, “though you will please ask the wainwright to complete repairs on your own conveyance as quickly as possible for the sake of the ladies. If we leave in the next hour, we might make London by midnight.”

If Dicky had set out at dawn, he’d covered fifty miles, give or take, in less than eight hours on roads alternately muddy and frozen. Dispatch riders had been capable of such feats, and once upon a time, I had been, too, given enough sound horses.

“I’d wait, my lord,” Dicky said. “We’re into that season where the top half inch of ground thaws by midmorning, and that same half inch won’t freeze again until after sundown. Deadly perilous going for even a surefooted team. I have the messenger mounts shod with studded shoes this time of year for that reason. The coach teams haven’t any studs.”

Studs, small metal protrusions that gave a horseshoe purchase on wet grass or slick footing, were another dispatch riders’ trick.

“Get you to the kitchen, Dicky,” Dalhousie said, turning at last. “My thanks for your haste. You were right to bring the news directly to me. Your discretion belowstairs would be appreciated as well.”

Dicky grinned, teeth showing white against a dusty, lined countenance. “I’m too knackered to gossip, milord. I’ll be asleep before I’ve done justice to my first pint.”

“The horse is in good hands,” I said as Dicky moved toward the door at a slightly uneven gait. “He’ll be walked, watered, rugged up, fed, and fussed over until he’s turned out for the night.”

Dicky nodded. “Could not ask for better. If you do decide to make for Town, I’d appreciate a seat on the box. Don’t like to leave my post for any longer than I have to.”

Dalhousie nodded. “Understood, and again, my thanks.”

The door closed behind a man prepared to travel one hundred miles in a day to be home with his horses. “He should have been a dispatch rider.”

“He lost two brothers that way and a cousin. One of the brothers left a young wife and son behind.”

“You provide for them.” Why else would Dalhousie keep track of such a detail?

“Of course. I suppose I should offer you a drink.”

“Dalhousie, you’ve had a shock. Sit down and stop trying to be the gracious host.”

“I am a gracious host.” Even the marquess apparently grasped the inanity of his reply. He took a wing chair by a fire that had nearly gone out. “Fire in London. To risk that… My God, Caldicott. I’m dealing with a lunatic.”

I poured a stout tot of brandy and brought it to Dalhousie. “Medicinal. Drink it, if you please.” My next task was to build up the fire. People enduring a shock were often menaced by unaccountable shivers and trembling. Warmth was in order.

“The town house blaze was contained,” I said. “Your staff was alert and took prompt action. I am mindful that Dicky speaks as an expert when he says we ought not to leave now, but if we travel on horseback, we’ll be less at risk. Any attempt to clean up the scene of the crime could destroy evidence.”

Dalhousie sipped his drink with elegant restraint. “I want this to be a mishap. Somebody overlooked one of the chimneys at the last cleaning. Birds nested, the usual chimney fire that’s mostly smoke and soot. Birds don’t nest in winter, do they?”

His mind was unequal to the enormity of the latest disaster. He’d need time to absorb the facts and more time to make any worthwhile decisions regarding next steps—time we did not have.

“I have pigeons.” I set the fireplace poker back on its stand. “I can get word to your London staff to cease any cleaning or restoration efforts immediately. I can be in Town by midnight.”

“Pigeons don’t nest in winter either—oh. Those sorts of pigeons.” He sipped again, nosed his drink, and set the glass aside. “I should go with you.”

He was trying to think, bless him. “You should bide here with the ladies.” I took the second wing chair and did some thinking myself. “I’ll take Tam.”

“Tam?”

“If anything else should go amiss here, Tam can’t be immediately implicated when he’s in Town with me.” Tam fifty miles distant from Dalhousie would also be less able to make anything go amiss. “You have a stout reinforcement in Susanna, and you should mention this development to Northby as well.”

“Susanna should be told. She worries about everybody, and she will want to know why Tam was dragooned off to Town.”

That was more of Dalhousie the old-fashioned paterfamilias surfacing, which was probably an encouraging sign.

“Will Susanna respect your confidences?”

His smile was wan. “She even respects me, I think. Sometimes. Who would risk fire in London, my lord? Damnable business. Desperate. I wasn’t even in Town, and anybody could have ascertained that fact simply by peering into the mews or dropping ’round the nearest pub.”

Or reading the newspapers, or inquiring of the family’s London gardener. “You make an interesting point, but try not to trouble yourself overly with speculation. Carry on here, keep up the rounds with the steward, inspect every piece of fallow ground, admire the mares in foal, carry the baritone part at divine services.”

He picked up his drink again. “Fallow ground doesn’t need inspecting, though I grant you, the mares in foal are a lovely sight. I’m more of a tenor than a baritone.” He sipped with every appearance of contentment. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“Another calamity arrived, right on schedule. I find that encouraging, Dalhousie, not daunting. Before you remove permanently to Lisbon, let me poke around the scene of the fire. Good decisions are made based on good information, and I might bring exactly that back from London.”

He finished his drink. “The fire is blazing, and yet, I’m cold. I don’t envy you a ride to Town, my lord. I should go with you.”

“You will defend the castle. I will take Tam. I’m off to send a pigeon and to let Miss West know what’s afoot. You may trust her and Lady Ophelia with your life.”

Dalhousie saluted with his empty glass. “Pray heaven, I am not doing just that. Safe journey, my lord, and good hunting. See that you return in one piece.”