Miss Dramatic, page 21
Why had she wasted her time resenting Wordsworth when she could have been nourishing herself with Shakespeare?
Tavistock returned in the company of Mr. Drysdale and Lady Iris—when had she left the audience?—and the entire trio looked too grim for such a pleasant evening.
If that meant the marquess had caught the blighters red-handed, so much the better.
Gavin whispered something to his mother, then assisted her to her feet.
“Miss Peasegood, Lady Duncannon,” Mrs. DeWitt said, “let’s catch a peek at the marquess in leading strings, shall we? The gallery has several portraits of him in his misspent youth and one of Lord Phillip when he was still in dresses. Tavistock’s curls were adorable.”
Lady Iris was busy glowering at the darkness beyond a window. Miss Peasegood and the countess had no choice but to accept Mrs. DeWitt’s invitation.
“I’d like to see that,” Gemma Drysdale said. “The marquess before Society got its paws on him.”
Rose expected Tavistock, the host, the peer, the largest specimen in the room, to thwart her. Instead, Gavin merely shook his head.
“You will stay, if you please. You will want to hear what’s said.”
“Don’t order my wife about, DeWitt,” Drysdale drawled. “The exercise is pointless in the first place and insulting to me in the second.”
Rose emerged from the shadows. “Mrs. Drysdale will stay. She has been present for the whole drama, and she deserves to see the final act. Shall we be seated?”
If the marchioness objected to Rose taking on the authority of the hostess, she hid it behind a slight smile. Not only did Lady Tavistock take a chair herself, she patted the place beside her on the love seat, and like a loyal hound, the marquess was immediately settled next to her.
Lord and Lady Phillip occupied a sofa, Lady Iris sat alone, and the Drysdales took wing chairs at opposite ends of the parlor hearth.
Gavin indicated that Rose might be comfortable on the piano bench, a front-row seat as it were.
“Let the play begin,” Rose said.
Gavin remained on his feet. “A prologue is in order. Early last year, I met Mrs. Roberts at a house party in Derbyshire. I was present as one of Drysdale’s Players, hired to entertain, make up numbers, and improve the scenery. I became enamored of Mrs. Roberts, and on an occasion of parting from her, I found a heap of coins—a small fortune—among my effects. I put the coins in her jewelry box and said nothing about it to anybody.”
“Must you?” Drysdale shot his cuffs. “Every fellow has youthful indiscretions, DeWitt, but there are ladies present, at least one of whom might appreciate some delicacy.”
“I would appreciate the truth more,” Rose said. “Carry on, Mr. DeWitt.”
“The discovery caused a misunderstanding between Mrs. Roberts and myself, one we’ve sorted out, though we are left with questions. Who intruded on a very private moment to put the money where it should not have been, and why?”
“A prank, perhaps?” Gemma Drysdale suggested. “The Players are no respecters of privacy or decorum. You hadn’t been with us that long, and practical jokes were to be expected.”
“Pranks involving enough money to keep the Players in hot meals for an entire winter?” Gavin asked.
Mrs. Drysdale sent a curious look across the room to her husband, who was absorbed with fiddling with the lace at his cuffs.
“Interesting,” Lady Tavistock said. “But how does this ancient business have any relevance now?”
Her ladyship knew exactly how, but she, too, had a role to play.
“Drysdale accosted me shortly after his arrival at Miller’s Lament,” Gavin said. “He accused me of stealing both money and a ruby necklace. I’d never seen such a necklace, but Mrs. Roberts reminded me that our hostess in Derbyshire had had a portrait done, and in that portrait—which graces her formal parlor—she’s wearing rubies.”
“The Versailles Rubies,” Lady Iris said. “A gift to her great-grandmother from the Sun King, passed down from mother to daughter, and one of few treasures your hostess was able to take with her from France. She promised her mother she would never sell or break up the necklace, but somebody took it while the house party was in progress.”
“That somebody was not Mr. DeWitt,” Rose said. “He had ample means of his own, little opportunity, and no motive. Was that somebody you, Lady Iris?”
Her ladyship looked, for once, less than beautiful. Her mouth was grim, her eyes shadowed with fatigue. The fashionable original so relentlessly preoccupied with her herbal was a role, apparently. No surprise there.
“I believe Lady Iris blames herself for the necklace’s disappearance,” Gavin said. “She was placed among the maids and footmen to help keep the valuables safe.”
“And I failed,” Lady Iris spat. “I failed, and I promised I would rectify my error. The necklace hasn’t surfaced in any of the usual underworld locations. No new creations of spectacular rubies have come on the market. The Ludgate jewelers haven’t heard a whisper in all the time since the necklace went missing, and Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Saint Petersburg, Rome, even Prague haven’t either.”
“Which leaves investigating the guests?” Drysdale asked. “You suspect DeWitt just as I do.”
“Which leaves,” Gavin said, “investigating everybody. Going back over the notes, again and again. Lady Iris and her friends have doubtless been snooping about all up and down the Derbyshire guest list in the months since I came south. Am I the last possibility?”
Lady Iris opened her mouth, then shut it, then appeared to reconsider. “You were.”
“Though, of course,” Gavin said, “if you, yourself, had taken the gems, then this diligent investigation would provide the perfect ruse for hiding your larceny.”
Her ladyship crossed her arms and tried for imperial disdain, to no avail.
“Nosing about while maundering on about failure would be the perfect distraction,” Drysdale said, slapping his knee. “By God, DeWitt, you do have a brain.”
“But I still don’t have an answer,” Gavin said. “If her ladyship was the thief, why did she bother following you into the library, Drysdale? Why were you trying to open the map cabinet when Tavistock joined you there?”
Tavistock crossed his legs at the knee, Continental-fashion. “I switched the keys,” he said, sounding perilously sober. “DeWitt explained to me how the sleight of hand works. Drysdale was trying to use the desk key to open the map cabinet, while Lady Iris lurked in the darkest corner, half concealed by curtains. If Drysdale merely wanted to admire the gems again, why not light even a single sconce?”
A silence stretched, while Gavin took up the place beside Rose on the piano bench.
“I took nothing,” Drysdale said. “So what if I wanted another peek at an amazing display? Anybody would have been impressed.”
“You weren’t merely impressed,” Gavin said. “Tavistock was also careful to let you know that many others had access to that hiding place. My entire family, the marchioness, Lord Phillip, and his wife… We all know about the map cabinet, and you knew we know and could thus be suspected if an item went missing. You were tempted.”
“I took nothing,” Drysdale said again, “and I have no ruby necklace. I suggest we search Lady Iris’s effects for starts and perhaps Mrs. Roberts’s apartment in an abundance of caution.”
Oh dear. He ought not to have said that. Rose could feel the shift in Gavin, feel the leap of anger, stayed only by the firm hand of self-discipline.
“The difficulty for you, Drysdale,” Gavin said softly, “is that you knew the rubies had been taken. The owner knows, her professional snoops know, and the original thief—that would be you—knows. The riddle remaining is who stole the rubies from you?”
“He’s right,” Lady Iris said. “Lady Rutherford was keen to keep the loss private. At first, she wanted to believe she’d misplaced the gems, and she refused to implicate her own staff. The authorities know nothing. The local magistrate wasn’t even informed. She had contacted us before the house party for extra security, and she continues to rely exclusively on us to this day.”
“Us?” Tavistock asked.
“The Mayfair Blossoms,” Lady Tavistock said. “They apparently have something of a reputation if one knows where to ask.”
“I have no necklace,” Drysdale said, “and I was a victim of thievery as well. The entire sum paid to me for our efforts in Derbyshire went missing and has never been recovered. Our door at that house party had no lock worth the name, and you know, DeWitt, how casual the Players are about privacy. You took that money on a lark, just to see if you could.”
“Drysdale, cut line,” Gavin said patiently. “You accused me of taking both and claimed the valuables were in close proximity. You were caught trying to steal from Tavistock not thirty minutes past. Regarding the necklace, you had motive, means, and opportunity. If you admit the specifics of your crime, we might be able to track down the second thief.”
Rose had been watching Gemma Drysdale throughout the conversation. Gemma’s expression remained one of mild curiosity, despite the noose tightening around her husband’s neck, setting Rose’s imagination to work on the question of how.
How would anybody in a close-knit troupe living in one another’s pockets hide anything of value, much less a distinctive necklace? Who among all the Players would have had that much privacy, that good a hiding place?
Who knew precisely where Hammond Cicero Drysdale would never bother searching?
“Let’s have a look at the Players’ store of props,” Rose said. “The costume jewelry in particular. I’m sure we’ll find a very fine ruby necklace among the paste and pinchbeck, won’t we, Mrs. Drysdale?”
“Gemma?” Drysdale’s bewilderment was real. “Gemma? What is she saying?”
Gemma looked at her hands. She looked at the clock. She looked at her husband. “Mrs. Roberts is saying that you were going to get us all hanged.” She rose and crossed the room to the great harp, taking up a study of its elaborately carved pillar. “I meant to return the necklace, but the opportunity never presented itself, so I thought to put it in Mrs. Roberts’s jewelry box—she would notice such a fine piece among her widow’s collection—but she had… company. I had to improvise. I suppose we’ve reached the part where I go mad or drink poison.”
Gavin went to the sideboard and poured a tot of brandy. “Or we’ve reached the part where you tell us the rest of the story, and we listen as open-mindedly as we can.”
“I don’t understand,” Drysdale said, looking old and confused. “I don’t… Gemma, I don’t understand.”
She sipped her brandy. “You never have, Hammond. You’ve never even tried to understand.”
Gavin’s imagination had painted Drysdale as the lead in some sort of deep scheme—stealing the necklace, realizing Lady Iris was on to him, and then pretending to lose the necklace while pointing an accusing finger at innocent parties.
In the alternative, Drysdale might have been in league with Lady Iris.
Lady Iris might have been diligently framing Drysdale for her own ends.
Rose’s conjecture—that Gemma Drysdale figured centrally in the drama—made all the sense in the world, with the benefit of hindsight.
“As Drysdale’s wife,” Gavin said, resuming his seat beside Rose, “you had two problems. Your husband was a thief, and I was outshining him on the stage.”
“The connection isn’t as simple as you think,” Gemma said, tracing a vine carved into the rosy maple. “You inspired Drysdale to think beyond our humble sphere, to get ideas. He could stage a few of the lesser tragedies with you to lead the cast. He could aspire to longer works, because your memory is apparently limitless. His ideas cost money. Hammond’s ideas always cost money. You were a problem precisely because you are so talented, DeWitt.”
Drysdale watched her caressing the wood as if he’d never before in all his born years beheld her. “You stole the necklace.”
She closed her eyes and steadied herself against the harp, unwittingly adopting the signature pose of the tragic heroine.
When Gemma turned her gaze on her husband, her expression was full of banked rage. “Let us be very clear, Hammond: You stole the necklace from its rightful owner and after our hostess had so generously paid us. Lady Iris does not make a very convincing maid, and there were a couple of footmen who always seemed to be lurking in alcoves with nothing to do. I realized that if our effects were searched, we would be bound over for the assizes before you could say, ‘Out, damned spot.’”
“You stole the money too?” Drysdale asked.
Gemma took the stool beside the harp. “Can a wife steal from her husband when she’s considered nothing more than a legal afterthought to his personhood? I hadn’t planned to take the money, but when I went to put the necklace in Mrs. Roberts’s jewelry box, I had the sum in my pocket, lest somebody else relieve you of it. I saw that Mrs. Roberts had company, and that was a solution to my other problem.”
“Meaning me,” Gavin said. “My ability was inspiring Drysdale to greater feats of greed and folly, so I had to go.”
“You had to go,” Gemma said. “Not only was Drysdale getting wild notions about touring the great capitals, you were nobody’s fool. We knew you came from means, and you’d see what the members of the troupe might miss—new sets, new wardrobes, scripts, props, handbills, advertisements… It all costs money. A lot of money, and that’s in addition to keeping the Players fed, decently clad, and housed. If you asked the wrong questions, if you heard the wrong rumors up from Town… you could send us all to the Antipodes.”
Gavin thought back to Gemma’s quiet presence with the prompt book, her silent appraisals in rehearsal, her apparent dislike of him.
Not dislike, but rather, fear.
Rose took his hand. “You worried about another possible consequence if Mr. DeWitt remained associated with the troupe, didn’t you?”
Gemma’s smile was wan. “That his talent would be forever buried in the shires?”
“That he’d be found guilty by association, and a good man would be branded a criminal because your husband was a selfish idiot.”
So that’s how Rose had solved the riddle—the ghost of Dane Roberts had pointed squarely to Hammond Drysdale.
“The Players and I know what Hammond is and what he isn’t. He’s not the world’s greatest thespian. He never will be. But that troupe is his life. He would do anything to keep us together and performing. Anything. DeWitt was a recent addition to our numbers, with no idea what a mare’s nest Hammond could make of things.”
“But, my dear,” Drysdale began, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I don’t take these risks for myself. I only did it—”
“Do not”—Rose’s voice would have cut marble—“imply that you steal, lie, and break your word for the sake of others. If you could not be the great hero onstage, then you’d be the great hero in your own mind. Misunderstood, unappreciated, nobly bearing up under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune while nevertheless having a jolly time on precisely your own terms. Be glad your wife hasn’t taken up the art of the horsewhip.”
Rose’s warning inspired a flurry of glances, between Lord and Lady Phillip, Tavistock and his marchioness, and Drysdale and his wife. Even Lady Iris was regarding the supposedly quiet widow respectfully.
“You have a flower name,” Lady Iris said. “I told Delphine and Zin that you have a flower name.”
“As does my marchioness,” Tavistock said. “Back to the matter at hand. Was it you, Mrs. Drysdale, who left the coins among DeWitt’s effects? Were you trying to incriminate him?”
“I was trying to put him in disgrace to a sufficient degree that he’d be glad to leave the troupe. I expected Mrs. Roberts would see the money sitting among DeWitt’s clothing. She should have been suspicious of its origins when Drysdale reported that his funds had been stolen, and she should have been further concerned when she found a heap of rubies in her jewelry box. The only party with access to her quarters who might have purloined the coin and the necklace was Mr. DeWitt. She should have suspected him of theft, though I doubt she’d have turned him over to the authorities.”
That plan was not exactly outlandish, but neither was it very astute. But then, Gemma Drysdale’s perspective was that of a woman much disappointed by the man in her life. That Gavin might waken first, and take offense at the coins, hadn’t occurred to her.
“The necklace never made it to my jewelry box,” Rose said. “What happened?”
Gemma ran a hand gently over the harp strings and graced the air with the soft whisper of a glissando. “I was startled.”
“Mr. DeWitt startled you?”
“With a perfectly lucid rendering of the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet. ‘Two households, both alike in dignity…’ I nearly screamed I was so surprised.”
“Instead, you fled with the necklace?”
“And I have been fleeing with the necklace ever since, though when Drysdale mentioned this gathering, I hoped my luck had turned. I meant to hide the necklace among the effects of one of the guests and hoped Lady Iris would learn of it. They all seem so chummy, with their flower names and disguises and roles.”
Roles. Well, yes. Gavin would ponder that puzzle later. “Where is the necklace now?”
Gemma plucked a minor chord. “Mrs. Roberts has the right of it. The necklace has been hiding in plain sight, among the props with a lot of paste. I’ve never let anybody wear it for fear Drysdale would recognize the piece.”
“As well I might.” Drysdale rose. “If Lady Iris will take charge of the necklace, then it only remains for somebody to repay me the coin I was parted from in Derbyshire. All’s well that—”
“Don’t attempt the merry exit,” Gavin said, rising. “Your stupid greed caused untold suffering to many victims, and while you can return the gems, you cannot undo misunderstanding, shame, or hurt feelings. You cannot wave away the pain Lady Rutherford, a decent and generous woman, endured because she could not protect a family legacy from your ambitions.”
