Page 25 of Deadly Murder (Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mystery #14)
Sixteen
I set the telephone earpiece back in the cradle. It was early in the morning, yet Althea Walsingham had responded to my note.
Her husband had left for his office at the Exchange for the day, and she had just sent her housekeeper off to the market in spite of the rain. She had been expecting a telephone call from me.
We spoke briefly. I heard the way her voice softly caught as she spoke of her son, then the way she took a breath and then carried on, speaking of the time after the horseback riding accident at Hyde Park.
Aunt Antonia had spoken of her strength in the aftermath. She truly admired her, and my great aunt rarely admired other persons.
I could count them all on one hand. Others were simply wastrels—a somewhat antiquated term—or in her own words, those with feathers for brains.
Never one to mince words, she’d declared, “You live long enough, travel enough, and you realize there are few truly intelligent and good people in the world. Most others are simply cluttering the place up.”
I had seen some of that as well in the cases Brodie and I took, where good people were made to suffer for others.
I had several questions to ask Lady Walsingham, yet I was very aware it might become difficult to now learn that—what they believed had been an accident—might very well have been no accident at all.
Lily had folded the comforter she had used the night before. She had slept on the settee in the main office with Rupert on the floor beside her, even though Brodie had offered our bed for Lily and I to share.
He had been perfectly willing to take the settee for the night or the chair at his desk, which he pointed out he had slept in more than once when working late on a case.
“The settee’s better than a pub or cold alley. I know how it is between a man and woman,” Lily reminded us.
“Aye, we’ll make up for it later,” Brodie had replied with a wink at her, while I chose to ignore the both of them.
The weather seemed to have settled somewhat during the night.
It was not raining at the moment, although ice covered the walkway on the landing and hung from the railing on the second floor.
Beyond the sidewalk, The Strand was a sea of slush as morning traffic of wagons and coaches cut paths around delivery carts and coal wagons.
“I’d like to accompany ye,” Lily commented as she handed me the folded comforter. “I can make notes.”
She had smoothed the wrinkles from her gown, combed her dark hair then tied it back, and made use of tooth powder at the washstand in our bedroom, as it was far too cold to venture down the hall, not to mention risk the icy landing.
“I know everything ye’ve learned from reading yer notes last night,” she added. “And I did assist yesterday at Marlborough House, when ye might not have learned how the murderer escaped.”
“It could be useful,” Brodie commented. “As ye well know, I’ve not the fine penmanship that she has. And I’m off to Bond Street to speak with a tailor who might be able to tell us what they can about this.”
He held aloft the neck scarf Lily had found in the forest at Marlborough House the day before.
He pulled on his long coat, then took my hand and pulled me close. He brushed my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“And wot of the two of ye?”
It did seem there was no argument there about Lily accompanying me.
“Sir Laughton is to arrange a meeting with the man who was vice chancellor of Trinity College when His Highness and the others attended,” Lily announced.
“He may know something of the event that sent Prince Albert to the university just before the Prince of Wales departed,” I added. “And we will be meeting with Lady Walsingham,” I added. “I telephoned the residence yesterday, and she is willing to meet with us.”
“In the matter of the young man who died in that riding accident. It could be important.” He nodded, then kissed me.
“Then I will see ye both here afterward.”
It did seem as if Lily and Brodie might be forming a campaign against me.
Parry, shift, thrust, and point, well made from her lessons when I had instructed her in the sword room at Sussex Square.
She had learned her lessons well, and I agreed that she could accompany me this morning. I then hoped to meet with the former vice chancellor from Trinity College whom Mr. Laughton had agreed to contact.
Sir John and Lady Walsingham, lived near Highgrove, an area of stately homes and estates. According to Aunt Antonia, the townhouse at number 12 Linden Place was their London residence, with their country home in Surrey which Althea Walsingham had inherited through her family.
They had returned to London at the end of September as the heat lessened in the city and the holiday season approached. The forthcoming Christmas holiday was their first since the death of their son.
There was the usual congestion of traffic on The Strand, particularly as the weather had settled somewhat and people took advantage to tend to their usual tasks at banks, shops, and the marketplace.
Mr. Cavendish was finally able to wave down a coach, the driver, Mr. Jarvis, familiar from previous adventures across the city. He tipped his cap.
“Mornin’ ladies, where will it be this fine mornin’?”
It was as I provided him the address at Linden Place that I caught sight of a man who stood head and shoulders above those around him who crowded the sidewalk across The Strand.
It was a fleeting glimpse and then he was gone. Still…
“That be in Highgrove,” Mr. Jarvis commented, drawing me back to the moment.
I nodded. “Yes.” And climbed into the coach.
“What is it?” Lily had climbed in after me and took the seat across.
I shook my head, not at all certain I had seen anything of importance.
“Nothing,” I replied as we settled ourselves for the ride across the city.
Yet I was unable to shake the feeling, more the certainty, that the man I had seen was somehow familiar.
We arrived at the Walsingham residence, and I asked Mr. Jarvis to wait. It was quite possible that the meeting might be very short indeed as I had no way of knowing what to expect when I explained the reason for our visit.
A housemaid answered the door, and I introduced the two of us. She nodded and showed us into the front parlor.
“Her ladyship will be with you presently.”
While we waited, I took in the details of the front parlor—the Queen Anne furnishings, two portraits of an older man and woman, perhaps the parents of either Sir Walsingham or Lady Walsingham.
There was a side table beneath windows that looked out onto a narrow garden that separated the Walsingham residence from the next one over. More photographs sat at the table.
One was in sepia tones, the subject was a small child of perhaps three or four years.
Another was a tall youth in a school uniform with a shock of dark hair that spilled over his forehead.
The last photograph, in black and white tones, was of the same young man with a long rifle and a pair of dead grouse at his feet.
“Our son, Jack. He was named for my husband.”
I turned. Lady Walsingham stood framed in the doorway to the parlor.
“We have never met,” she said as she came into the room. “But I have heard of your adventures from Lady Antonia. And now you are here, Lady Forsythe. And the matter you spoke of—I might have hoped for a different occasion to meet.”
She had asked the reason I wanted to meet in our brief conversation the day before. I had not gone into detail, only that it was a matter that might be related to her son’s accident. Meeting her now, I felt a twinge of regret that it was under such difficult circumstances.
She was an attractive woman, not a great deal older than myself, I would have guessed, with dark brown hair, blue eyes framed by dark lashes, and a soft smile framed by perhaps more lines than she might have had before the accident.
It was there in her eyes as well, a look that I had seen before, that came from the pain of loss and never went away.
“And you are?” she inquired with a look at Lily who introduced herself.
“Ah, Miss Montgomery. Lady Antonia has spoken of you. Perhaps following in Lady Mikaela’s footsteps?”
Lily nodded but made no comment.
Lady Walsingham then gestured to the chairs that sat before the fire at the hearth. When the maid reappeared, she ordered tea to be served.
“You spoke yesterday of a matter that might be related to my son’s accident.”
I waited until tea had been served and the maid then left.
“We have taken an inquiry case that has been most baffling,” I began and left out the details of the deaths of the two other two young men.
“There is reason to believe that it may be regarding Sir Walsingham’s friendship at university with three young men.” I saw the surprise in that soft blue gaze.
“In what way?”
“We’ve been asked to investigate a recent situation, the attack on a young man at Marlborough House.”
She nodded. “Dreadful situation. We did not attend as we have not yet accepted any social invitations. Yet, we were aware of it through others who were there that night. And my husband is acquainted with Lord Huntingdon.”
“A gentleman called upon us yesterday, without a previous announcement,” she continued. “Sir Avery Stanton of the Special Services. Neither of us were here at the time.”
Bloody hell.
I could only imagine what that might have been like if he had been able to question either of them about their son’s “accident.” Sir Avery had served a career in the military. His manner was blunt and quite brash with little regard for anyone else.
“He left his card with our housekeeper and informed her that he would return. And now you are making inquiries,” she added. “It would seem there is more to the situation than our friends were aware of at the time.” She folded her hands. “Please speak plainly, Lady Forsythe.”
“A man was seen fleeing Marlborough House immediately after young Huntingdon's fall. It is possible that the young man’s death was not an accident.”