Page 9 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

Chapter Nine

“Whoever tampered with the coaches did not account for spare cotter pins,” I said as Atlas shuffled through the dead leaves carpeting the path between the Manor and North Abbey.

“They pulled out all four, Jules,” Hyperia replied, her borrowed mare mincing along at Atlas’s side. “Does your coachman carry four spares?”

“No, but most coaching inns and smithies will have pins for sale. The smashed wheels on Dalhousie’s traveling coach bother me more.” Fortunately, Godmama’s traveling coach had been sent into Reading to spare the marquess having to feed four extra horses.

As for my own traveling coach, the cotter pins had been removed from all four wheels.

Dalhousie’s conveyance had suffered more violent damage. Somebody had taken a sledgehammer to all four wheels on his crested monstrosity, as well as two wheels on his heaviest baggage coach. His phaeton had suffered one smashed wheel. The dog cart and farm wagons appeared unscathed—so far.

“Somebody,” Hyperia said, “grasped that it’s not enough to have four wheels of equal diameter.” She steered her mare around a puddle. “The wheels must fit the vehicle, else we could pop the farm wagon wheels onto the carriage. Dalhousie seemed oddly resigned to being hobbled.”

The marquess’s reaction had struck me as more pensive than resigned. He’d surveyed the damage with us, the head lad, stablemaster, and coachman silently standing by. His lordship’s sole reaction had been to order the village wainwright onto the scene to make repairs in due course.

The woods around us were damp and barren, which suited my mood. As a sleuth, I was failing Dalhousie spectacularly, and the destruction in the coach house had me frankly flummoxed—more flummoxed.

“Dalhousie is ashamed, Hyperia.” From flummoxed to ashamed was only a short step, for me as well. “The enemy has stolen another march on him. Told him not to go to Town, then when he made no plans to decamp, spiked his guns. Unless he wants to borrow a neighbor’s coach and announce to all and sundry that his castle wall has been breached, he will miss the first few weeks of the Season.”

“The marquess could have the phaeton fixed first, Jules, and brave the elements. He could take a post-chaise or go to London on horseback.”

I had not realized how desserts were served at the Manor, but in other regards, my perception was better informed than Hyperia’s.

“You’d have the marquess arrive in Town without his mama as a hostess in the one year when he truly needs her good offices. He would have to explain to the neighbors why he’s borrowing a plain coach, despite being the one fellow in this shire to whom anybody can turn in emergencies for support and generosity.

“His unorthodox arrival in Town would be remarked,” I went on, “particularly when he’s known to be embarking on a search for the next marchioness. Whatever his faults, Dalhousie has a natural aversion to being the subject of talk.”

Hyperia maintained a silence that I took for diplomacy on her part.

I offered one more point for consideration. “Dalhousie might also have told the wainwright to make repairs ‘in due course’ because planting approaches, and the farm wagons, harrows, and plows all merit the highest priority for the coming weeks. He’s mindful of the appearances, and in his position, most men would be. Then too, he’s not about to leave the ladies to fend for themselves when violent mischief is afoot.”

The timing of the vandalism had been excellent from the standpoint of causing maximum bother, in other words, provided one knew Dalhousie well and could play on his pride and consequence.

“He will not abandon his mama,” Hyperia said after her mare had sniffed at a dangling branch of rhododendron. “On that we are agreed. The destruction in the coach house speaks of significant malice.”

Enough malice to get the perpetrator hanged, and the miscreant had to know as much.

“The coach house put me in mind of a battlefield, Perry. An hour after the last shot is fired, the air clears, the birds sing, the sun shines, and yet, if you look at the ground—gore, tragedy, suffering, and such pure wrongness …”

Dalhousie’s elegant traveling coach, a pleasure dome on wheels with a diameter nearly as tall as I stood, had been canted at an angle. In the next bay, the phaeton had nearly toppled to its side, like a pair of drunks leaning on each other to remain upright. The damage had been done mostly to the spokes of the wheels—easy to smash—while my own coach had looked deceptively seaworthy. Broken bits of wood had littered the coach house’s dirt floor, and the coach door had swung silently on an invisible breeze.

“A woman could have wrecked those wheels,” Hyperia said slowly. “A very angry, determined woman. I lifted the hammer, Jules. The weight was stout, but not prohibitively so.”

We emerged from the trees, North Abbey rising up before us a hundred yards on. I drew Atlas to a halt, and the mare stopped as well.

“A woman?”

Hyperia adjusted her reins. “Isn’t poison traditionally a woman’s weapon? The ladies would know how the desserts were served, too, and many a stylish lady carries a peashooter when she goes traveling.”

Great Jehovah’s flaming arrows . “I cannot see Lady Dalhousie swinging even that smallish sledgehammer.” She was more likely to fire verbal darts, though her ladyship was in resolute good health… My reservations were based not on lack of ability, but lack of motive. “She above all people wants Dalhousie doing the rounds in Town.”

“Lady Albert is quite robust,” Hyperia said. “She could come and go from the carriage house or stable without anybody remarking upon her presence. She doubtless has the ability to loosen stitching. She was present at the shoot. She has motive, Jules. For that matter, Tam could have made that mess in the carriage house.”

Hyperia urged the mare forward, and Altas moved off as well.

“We’re forgetting somebody,” I said.

“Susanna. I don’t want her to be the villain, Jules. She’s the voice of reason amid the Dandridge eccentrics.”

“She is barely related to the Dandridge eccentrics, but she’s quite close to her step-cousin Tam.”

We edged onto the drive that circled before North Abbey’s granite facade.

“I still can’t see Susanna being so beastly,” Hyperia said. “You’d have me believe she has brought all this mayhem down on Dalhousie, perhaps to kill him, perhaps to keep him away from Mayfair, while she waits for dear Tam to take a bride, have a son, and eventually inherit?”

“What if she hopes to be dear Tam’s bride?”

Hyperia wrinkled her nose. “If so, she’s an actress of more talent than Mrs. Siddons herself. Susanna dotes on Tam, but with a generous leavening of exasperation. Marriages have been built on less, of course, but the theory doesn’t convince me.”

“Nor me, though neither can I rule her out. She has the relevant access to the marquess and his property and possesses the means necessary to trouble him.”

“But no credible motive,” Hyperia said as we clip-clopped up the drive. “Do you suppose the damage to your coach was limited to mere missing cotter pins so as to encourage our departure?”

“Possibly. I’m not blowing retreat, Hyperia.”

“Neither am I, Julian.”

Her tone was merely pleasant, as mine had been, though in my heart of hearts, the impulse to keep Hyperia safe, to ensure hostilities never endangered her, battled for expression. She would be deeply annoyed at my chivalry.

“We shouldn’t stay long at the Abbey,” Hyperia said. “Darkness still comes early.”

“The requisite two cups will do,” I said, hoping to escape even that penance, “and I see well in the dark.” Harry had envied me that skill.

“Good,” Hyperia said as a fellow in humble attire emerged from the side of the house and approached the mounting block. “I would not want to be lost after sunset on Dalhousie land when a hammer-wielding, poisoning, saddle-tampering, pistol-wielding maniac is on the loose.”

Not a maniac, but certainly a person whose mental peregrinations had yet to form into any pattern I could discern. Hyperia’s observation, that a woman’s hand might be directly evident in Dalhousie’s troubles, bothered me.

We had considered both Lady Albert and Lady Dalhousie as suspects in theory. To see firsthand the results of malicious mischief that could be attributed to either of them was unnerving, like hearing shots fired and realizing the guns were aimed in one’s own direction.

“I want Tam to be guilty,” I said, sounding forlorn to my own ears. “Disgruntled staff would do. Unhappy neighbors would suit my purposes as well, but please not the ladies and especially not sensible, gracious Susanna.”

“You are old-fashioned, Jules. For the most part, I like that about you.”

“Who is your current favorite for Dalhousie Manor’s criminal-at-large?”

Hyperia considered the stolid, tidy facade before us. “Jules, I have not the faintest inkling. The evidence confuses, the witnesses condemn one another, and here we are at the home of the magistrate, who does nothing. I am utterly confounded.”

“Which makes two of us.”

The groom took our horses with promises to loosen girths only and offer hay and water.

I raised my hand to rap the owl-shaped knocker on the right side of the Abbey’s double, red front door, but the owl swung away before I achieved my objective.

“You are Miss West,” an aging blond Valkyrie said, “and you would be Lord Julian Caldicott. I know your godmother. I’m Cressy Northby. Your brother has been derelict in his duty to the ducal succession. One cannot approve, however much one admires independence of spirit. I suppose you want some tea. Squire won’t be joining us. Do come along.”

Hyperia swept into the house, and I followed more tentatively. I’d been expecting Cressida Northby to convey substance and sense with her presence, and she’d certainly achieved that much.

The rest of my impression surprised me: This was a woman who’d wield a hammer easily, even gleefully, and she was doubtless a dead shot as well.

I leaped to that conclusion without a moment’s hesitation. So much for my old-fashioned notions of chivalry.

“No tea?” Cressida said, gesturing with a full silver teapot. “One heard your lordship was eccentric, but perhaps you have a point. Brandy goes better with chocolate, if you ask me, particularly on a chilly afternoon. Miss West, mustn’t let good China black go to waste.”

Mrs. Northby did not speak so much as she declaimed, boomed, and orated. Hers was a large, self-assured presence, though she carried less in the way of extra flesh than her sister, Lady Albert. She was Junoesque in the flattering sense. Her features included a nose any patrician Roman matron would have been pleased to point into the air and blue eyes shining with both interest and intelligence.

She could have done it. She could have done all of it.

Cressida poured out with the same air of brisk efficiency that seemed to emanate from her organically. The resemblance to Lady Albert was present about the chin and mouth and also in a sense of watchfulness lurking beneath purposeful distractions.

“Will your lordship deign to sample a biscuit?” she asked, thrusting a plate of cinnamon biscuits at me.

“Go ahead,” Hyperia said. “Good sweets are best appreciated when fresh.” She plucked one of the three from the plate, and I accepted the other two.

“You are an engaged pair,” Mrs. Northby said. “Such a relief, to finally bag a mate. One can stop all the posturing and games and get on with life. Squire would agree.”

Squire doubtless agreed frequently. “Northby suggested we discuss with you the particulars of the recent shoot,” I said. “Dalhousie’s hat came to grief, and that incident has been followed by other troubling developments.”

“A bout of the grippe would trouble anybody, but young men make the worst patients. Miss West would agree with me, I’m sure.”

“Young men also, oddly enough, make our best soldiers,” Hyperia mused, munching on a biscuit. “All very perplexing.”

Cressida sent her a keen look. “You have brains. A mixed blessing for a young lady, but more useful than burdensome by my lights. Somebody did put a hole in Dalhousie’s hat. He’s lucky that shot wasn’t three inches lower. Would have been an inquest, suspicions, fingers pointed. Scandal and talk, and the squire would have been in the center of it. He’s getting on, you know. Still spry, still sharp, but death by misadventure is a bad business, and I’m glad my old boy didn’t have to deal with it.”

“The verdict could not have been murder by person or persons unknown?” I asked. The biscuits were fresh, rich, and sweet. Hyperia was eyeing the only one remaining on my plate, so—old-fashioned gudgeon that I am—I offered it to her.

She took it.

“Murder sounds exciting,” Cressida said. “Makes for great talk on darts night and at the hunt meets, but Dalhousie is a marquess. Putting out his lights wouldn’t be a matter for seven years transportation. Somebody would swing for that, if convicted. We aren’t exactly timid souls hereabouts, but we’re sensible. Send Dalhousie to his reward, and then Tam steps into his boots.”

Hyperia broke the biscuit into two equal halves and gave me back one of them. To refuse her generosity would have been churlish, and yet, I felt I was conceding some philosophical point when I accepted the offering.

“Tam is well-liked,” Hyperia said. “Or am I mistaken?”

“One suspects you are seldom mistaken, Miss West. Tam is well-liked, but he can afford to be. He doesn’t sit on the commission for the peace. He doesn’t hold the living for three parish churches. He doesn’t control tens of thousands of acres or decide who can rent them on what terms.”

She paused to sip her tea with curious delicacy. “Tamerlane Dandridge has a pretty little estate five miles to the east,” she went on. “He lets it out to some banker’s son and visits only quarterly. He fribbles away his days and drinks and sports away his nights because he has sufficient income to do so. The least such a decorative creature can do is be agreeable.

“Hand him a title, though,” she went on, “and he will either soon take on some of Dalhousie’s less charming characteristics, or he’ll erode the family’s wealth and standing with his self-indulgence. Spares can’t help themselves. Give them the title, and they must out-peer the peer.”

“And yet,” I said, “somebody fired a bullet through Dalhousie’s hat, and Tam would benefit greatly if the aim had been lower. Who was present at the shoot?”

She rattled off a list that matched the information provided by the squire.

“What his lordship means,” Hyperia said, “is were any of the attending guests missing from the firing line. We are interested in both the ladies and the gentlemen.”

Blue eyes narrowed shrewdly. “We ladies are kept in the middle of the line, like biddy hens penned into our roost. Mind you, we are experienced with firearms, more sober than the men, and most of us as accurate as the men as well, but we are considered a hazard to be guarded against.”

When had women become so averse to personal safety? I did not dare ask the question, because I had the sense even my query was somehow missing the mark.

“So there you were,” I said, “in the middle of the line with the other ladies, enjoying an excellent vantage point for keeping an eye on the whole lot. Did you see any of the men step back to load a fresh fowling piece or find a handy log to sit on?”

“The beaters were getting closer, so the men weren’t about to leave their posts. Squire is very strict about no firing early, because that scares the game off in the wrong direction. Cora—Lady Albert, rather—doesn’t care for the noise when the whole line starts shooting at once, so she did step back a bit, and Susanna went with her, which I took for… Well, the best time for a lady to step behind a handy tree is when all the men are keen to fire.”

“Lady Albert and Miss Susanna both took a break from the shooting?” Hyperia asked.

“They did. I got off a few shots. Heaven knows we’ve grouse enough to spare, and this is a hungry time of year for the lesser folk. You needn’t bother accusing either Susanna or Cora of attempted murder, though.”

“Was I about to? From what I understand, nobody has laid information, and nobody intends to.”

Cressida gave me a thorough perusal over her tea cup. “You say that now, and one can rely on Dahlia’s aversion to scandal up to a point, but she would see Tam whipped at the cart’s tail, hanged, drawn, and quartered rather than let him have the title.”

“Why do you exonerate Lady Albert and Miss Susanna?” I asked. Cressida Northby would have reasons, well-thought-out, sensible reasons for the opinions she held.

“I heard no pistol shot during their absence. All sorts of fowling pieces booming up and down the line, but a pistol has a very different voice. More of a crack or a pop than a proper weapon firing.”

“Why a pistol?” I asked, because her usual confidence imbued her latest recitation.

“The size of the hole in the hat for one thing, and birdshot leaves a very different pattern, as my lord doubtless knows. A pistol fits the bill as well because it’s easily hidden in the folds of a shooting jacket or cloak.”

Points the magistrate himself had not passed along, but then, I hadn’t needed him to. “Is it possible,” I said slowly, “that the pistol shot was drowned out by the fowling pieces?”

“Possible, but bass voices don’t drown out the sopranos, do they, my lord? And my hearing is excellent.”

Her self-assurance was in equally good repair, but I took seriously the evidence she presented. An experienced artillery sergeant could listen to cannon fire and know exactly how far away the enemy’s pieces were as well as the type of shot fired—until the constant noise took the inevitable toll on his faculties. Even going deaf, some of them could gather the same information from the feel of the thud in the chest caused by the reverberation of the cannon fire.

Hyperia held out the empty biscuit plate. “Lady Albert would seem to be as devoted to furthering Tam’s prospects as Lady Dalhousie is to limiting them.”

“The pair of them deserve each other,” Cressida observed, putting four more biscuits on the plate. “The boys have made their peace with one another, which is fortunate. I pity Susanna, though, having to mediate between Cora and Dalhia, cosset Tam, and keep the household running without tromping on Dahlia’s dainty toes. One must enjoy a challenge to thrive in such a situation, and Susanna does.”

“Would Susanna be happier here with you?” Hyperia asked, accepting the biscuits.

“Yes and no. She is welcome. She is always welcome, but the squire and I are set in our ways, purely gentry, and happy to be so. At the Manor, Susanna isn’t as socially isolated—they do entertain quite a bit over there—and she is fond of both Tam and Dalhousie. Obscurity is an acquired taste for some of us and better served later in life.”

“She would be wasted here,” I suggested.

“Very much so, though we’d love to have her. Tam would miss her, and Dahlia would soon learn how much the staff relies on Susanna. Dahlia was so determined to become Lady Dalhousie. I suspect even Cora is beginning to wish her ladyship the joy of her prize.”

These observations had little to do with who had fired a bullet at Dalhousie, and yet, Cressida’s perspective merited attention.

“The marchioness seems quite well suited to her station,” Hyperia said, taking a biscuit and offering me the plate.

“She is now. She was an awkward fit originally. Obviously with child almost upon the church steps, clearly not a love match despite that evidence. There was talk—isn’t there always?—and she had no allies. Just deserts, I say, and yet, Dahlia failed to anticipate the reception she’d earn for her obvious conniving. Mayfair has an infernally long memory when it comes to scandal.”

Said with some satisfaction.

“And then Cora married Lord Albert.” I yielded to temptation and ate another biscuit. “Was that to spite Lady Dalhousie?”

Cressida topped up Hyperia’s cup and poured herself more tea. “I daresay, but Cora and Albert surprised everybody by rubbing along quite well. Tam has his father’s charm and his mama’s talent with the arts. If he ever grows up, he’ll make a passable husband and a wonderful father.”

Would he and his wife bide at that estate five miles to the east, or would his bride become another pawn in the family feud at the Manor?

“Can you tell us anything more about the day of the shoot?” Hyperia asked. “Somebody fired a bullet at the marquess’s back. Such a creature lacks honor and must be held accountable.”

An inspired angle, given Cressida’s forthright nature.

“The squire and I have discussed this at length, and we honestly cannot settle on a preferred villain. Cora and Susanna stepped back for only a few moments, and neither one of them wishes Dalhousie harm. I can tell you this, though.” She took another placid sip of her tea. “Dahlia did not participate in the shoot.”

Never let it be said that Cressida Northby lacked thespian inclinations. “Northby said she no longer cared for shooting, but she’s a competent shot.”

“She was a dead shot, back in the day. She’s the lady of the manor now. After the decimation of the wildfowl, the lot of us were to enjoy a buffet at the Manor. Dahlia as hostess should have been annoying the staff with last-minute orders to do what had already long since been done and so forth. I popped over on horseback as Squire was assembling the shooting party here and offered the use of my maids and footmen.”

“And her ladyship was out?” Hyperia asked, dipping a biscuit in her tea.

“Truly out . The Dalhousie butler is cousin to my housekeeper, and when he means ‘not receiving’ rather than ‘out,’ he lowers his voice as if imparting a confidence. He meant her ladyship was away from the premises just before the shoot. I have no idea when she returned, or if she’d been doing a bit of target practice while away from her duties.”

“What woman,” I said, genuinely horrified, “what parent, could aim a bullet at their own offspring? What you suggest is heinous, and I can think of no motive that would justify filicide.”

Cressida set down her tea cup. “Is there a bullet hole in the brim of your hat, my lord?”

I thought for a moment. “I would say not, but you are correct: I donned my hat without examining the brim. Why would Lady Dalhousie put a bullet hole in her son’s…?”

While the ladies regarded me patiently, I worked out the answer to the hypothetical for myself: abuse his lordship’s hat, send him into the woods to the shoot, then fire a pistol at the ground in proximity to him. He whirls about, finds his hat has been potted, and assumes he’s been targeted. Suspicions swirl, Tam is accused. The marchioness is happy.

“Far-fetched,” I said. “Too Byzantine.” By comparison, smashing the coach wheels was a direct means of ensuring the marquess remained at the Manor.

And yet, Cressida’s scenario explained the odd angle of the shot, didn’t it?

Cressida took one of the two uneaten biscuits. “A woman of wealthy antecedents who will get with child to ensnare the peer courting her cousin is a woman who is comfortable with complication, my lord. She wants Tam disgraced and Dalhousie safely filling the nursery. Depend upon that.”

We left a short time later and made our way on horseback through woods going prematurely dark.

“What are you thinking, Jules?”

Hyperia seemed to ask me that rather a lot. “I’m thinking about crossfire, Perry, and complications. One party might be trying to discredit Tam, and they are doing a lively job of it. Another party might be harassing Dalhousie and preventing him from going to London. That team has scored runs aplenty too. The war in Spain became similarly complicated.” I patted Atlas absently, my sole companion for some of that war.

“I thought the Peninsular campaign was a simple matter of driving the French back over the mountains?”

Simple. Ye thundering angels of understatement. “In one sense, you are right, but some of the Spanish supported the French, some did not. Some of the Spanish who opposed the French were equally opposed to the British or the Portuguese. Some of the French generals could be relied on to aid the others. Some were too invested in looting their Spanish fiefdoms before retreating to the comforts of Paris to bother with fighting the British and so on. One tread carefully.”

“But you stayed there, even when you could have come home on winter leave.” A thread of bewilderment ran through her words.

A thread of hurt.

“I was better at my job if I kept my instincts honed, Perry. War can make a certain twisted sense when it’s your daily reality. When you reach that point, ballrooms and tailors’ fittings become irrational distractions. Days at sea to resume playing cards at the clubs for a few weeks or hacking out despite a sore head… I saw no point in it when I could have been forming alliances among shepherds or learning exactly how to pass safely through a particular mountain range.”

“You were safer if you didn’t look away.”

So safe, I’d ended up chained to the wall of a French dungeon. “Something like that. I don’t miss it.” And I did not enjoy the topic, particularly when aired with Hyperia.

Her mare stepped daintily over a fallen branch. “You miss something about it. You would have told Dalhousie to hire himself bodyguards otherwise.”

I had tried. “He was in mortal peril, or so I believed.” I wasn’t as sure now. Peril, yes, but was his life at stake?

“You could not rescue Harry, so you will rescue Dalhousie.” Hyperia aired a theory more than she made an accusation, and yet, her words stung.

“Must we discuss this?”

“Yes,” she said gently. “A little bit at a time, when we have the privacy and fortitude to do so, we must. I missed you, Jules. I prayed for you. I wrote you letter after letter that I tossed into the flames. Those morning hacks and card parties you disdained were unavoidable for me, and I would have given anything to be with you in those mountains.”

My proud, brave beloved was sharing with me a piece of her heart I did not deserve. I wanted to change the subject, to canter off down the path and claim Atlas had taken a fright.

Atlas was plodding along beside the mare, not a care in his horsey world.

I mustered all of my courage and followed Hyperia’s inspiration.

“I would have given anything to have had you with me, Perry, and I am for damned sure grateful to have you with me now.”

I had written her letters, too, but in the normal course, a gentleman did not correspond with a member of the opposite sex to whom he was neither engaged nor related. In the freezing snows, I had pictured her by the hour enjoying the social whirl, turning down the room with this handsome heir or that charming younger son. By dark of night, I had prayed for her safety and happiness, and when I’d been chained to that wall, I’d kept the memory of her in my heart, a beacon of hope and determination.

Someday, I would tell her all of that, truly I would. She was right, though. Baring the soul was best done slowly, in small steps, in the exclusive company of one’s beloved.

I offered up a truth I could share joyfully, one I’d conveyed previously to happy effect. “I am utterly besotted with you, Perry West, and that I merit even your passing consideration continually astounds me.”

She smiled. “Good, and that’s enough flummery for now. We have another family dinner at the Manor to endure, and we haven’t had a report from Atticus the livelong day.”

Subject changed, though I would ponder the hurt I’d done my darling at length, and if a man in love could make amends for past wrongs to his lady, I would find a way to do exactly that.