A Brazen Curiosity, page 9
part #1 of Beatrice Hyde-Clare Series
Bea opened her mouth to protest and immediately closed it again when she realized renouncing her own shrewdness was perhaps not the best way to respond. Instead, she paused to consider the question as if it were a riddle, leaning back in her chair and staring out at the sparkling lake stocked with char and trout. She found Kesgrave’s ready admission unsettling, for she’d expected him to affect confusion to deflect the charge. With Mr. Otley tucked under a sheet in the wine cellar and the floor of the library scrubbed clean, she had no proof that her version of events was more correct than his, and if the duke had stuck to his outrageous lie, she would have had no recourse but to abandon the field. Her threat to compromise him, which had borne surprising fruit, had merely been a bluff all along. If he’d held his ground, she would have slunk out of his room no more enlightened than when she’d arrived.
But to own the falsehood without equivocating implied he wasn’t just playing a deeper game than she, he was playing a different one.
Or perhaps she was crediting him with too much cunning and his object was much more simple: He hoped to confuse her. She’d assumed his purpose in praising her so much was to turn her head, but it was just as likely he thought compliments were so absent from her daily existence that a spate of them would confound her into silence.
She was certainly quiet now.
True, but she was still there, in his bedchamber, demanding answers.
Although Bea distrusted the duke’s motives, she didn’t believe he actually wanted the murderer to go free. He cared far too much for order—in the listing of naval ships, in the cataloging of local fish—to allow a moral trespass such as homicide to go unpunished. The idea of a villain escaping justice would offend him on a deeply personal level.
Realizing that, she understood at once what he hoped to accomplish with his lie about Otley’s death and discovered she wasn’t outraged by it at all. Indeed, she was impressed with the practicality of the solution.
“Your plan is to lull the murderer into a false sense of security by letting him think he got away with his crime,” she observed with determined calm, for she didn’t want Kesgrave to know how much she admired his reasoning. “It has the added benefit of keeping everyone exactly where they are, for if the guests suspected a murderer roamed among them, they would leave the country posthaste and return to their homes. Now we have the time and leisure to investigate properly.”
“We?” he asked, his eyebrow quirking.
Bea blinked innocently. “I mean ‘you,’ your grace. Now you have the time to investigate properly and I have the time to embroider a sampler in Lady Skeffington’s very comfortable drawing room. I cannot thank you enough for ensuring I have ample opportunity to do so.”
Although she said all the right words with the correct mix of sincerity and eagerness, he narrowed his eyes skeptically. “This is a dangerous matter, Miss Hyde-Clare, not some lark for you to indulge your ill-advised sense of humor.”
Having never been credited with a sense of humor before, she was delighted to discover he considered hers to be ill-advised. She hoped by the end of their stay he would promote it to utterly foolish. “Of course, your grace,” she said placatingly. “I would never deem it anything else.”
For some reason, he found her quick agreement less than reassuring. “I’m serious,” he said sternly. “You will not pursue it.”
Beatrice laughed as she stood up, for she had several things to do before changing for dinner, including launching a full-scale investigation into Mr. Otley’s death. “Now you are the one being frightfully suspicious, and I must agree it’s an unpleasant experience indeed when someone will not take you at your word. I hope you will accept my apologies for my earlier mistreatment of you. You are undoubtedly a very fine upstanding duke, and I wish you all success with your very dangerous pursuit.”
“Miss Hyde-Clare!” he said, his shoulders stiff as he stood before her to impede her progress.
“No need to say it, your grace,” she insisted as she brushed past him toward the door. “I know you wish me success with my embroidery as well. I will admit to you since there’s no one else present to witness my humiliation that my skill doesn’t quite match my enthusiasm. But every day is a chance to improve.”
“I know what you’re up to.”
Her hand on the doorknob, Bea turned to look at the duke, his handsome features pulled into a scowl, and raised a finger to her lips to shush him. “Remember, if anyone discovers I was here, you will be ruined. Think of your incandescent future with your Incomparable wife and those impossibly perfect children.”
While the Duke of Kesgrave stared at her with bewildered horror, she opened the door a sliver, peered through the crack, confirmed that the corridor was unoccupied and slipped silently out of his room.
She had a murderer to find.
CHAPTER SIX
The corridor did not remain empty for long.
As soon as Bea closed Kesgrave’s door behind her, she heard the rumble of male voices—Mr. Skeffington and Lord Amersham!—and although she had prepared a practical explanation for why she was in that part of the house, it eluded her in the panic of being caught outside the duke’s rooms. Heart racing, she looked around wildly for a place to hide and threw herself behind the first viable object she spotted: a voluminous fern in the corner near the staircase.
She landed with a thud, bumping her head first against the wall and then the planter as she settled into her hideaway. Pulling a frond out of her mouth, she cursed the ridiculousness of the situation: hiding behind a potted plant!
Perhaps she had read too many of Mrs. Radcliffe’s Gothic novels after all.
Nevertheless, she appreciated the coverage the fern provided, for crouched behind the large ceramic planter, she was almost entirely shielded from view. Only a careful inspection of the corner would reveal her presence, and fortunately the gentlemen were too distracted by their conversation to look behind them.
She listened carefully as they strode past her and down the hall.
“…why you must continue to fixate on the matter,” Amersham said. “It was a sound investment, and sound investments sometimes go awry. That is all anyone need know. Although I do remind you, nobody need know, especially your parents. If you must talk incessantly about something we did recently, let’s discuss your excellent day of angling.”
“I caught one fish,” Mr. Skeffington said sulkily as they arrived at his door. “That hardly constitutes an excellent day.”
“Well, it seems very impressive to me. If you remember, I caught nothing at all despite my enthusiasm,” Amersham pointed out reasonably.
“That is because you don’t know how to tie a fly properly, as you were born and bred in…”
Mr. Skeffington’s reply was cut off as the two gentlemen disappeared into his room and closed the door.
Bea extricated herself from the fern as smoothly as she could manage, and as she walked back to her section of the house at a clipped pace, she considered the information she’d overheard. It was possible, of course, that Mr. Skeffington and Amersham were discussing an investment in an enterprise wholly unrelated to Mr. Otley—coal mining, for example, or the construction of a canal—but there was something about the way the earl had said, “That is all anyone need know” that was quite specific. He emphasized the word need, indicating that there was much more to the story than he was willing to tell.
Was that elided information the fact that the two young men had been swindled by an old friend of the family?
Had they figured out that the hibiscus investment was a fraudulent scheme?
Bea recalled her own ignorance about the weather in India, despite her wide breadth of knowledge, and found it difficult to believe the two callow youths, who had both been sent down from Oxford several times, were better read than she.
Ah, but this wasn’t an exam on The Iliad. It was an investment opportunity involving what might be a significant amount of money. Indisputably, before sinking funds into hibiscus plants in a foreign country, one investigated the venture thoroughly.
Mr. Skeffington’s own mother’s dismal view of his education, however, argued for the opposing view, and deciding that neither man would have done his due diligence, she settled on the two dupes as her first viable suspects. She thought it was unlikely either could handle the swipe to his vanity with equanimity and imagined how the scene in the library would have played out. Seeking a moment alone with Mr. Otley to discuss their concerns, they would have been angered by his denials or made irate by his confirmation and struck without thinking.
The bash on the head with the candlestick would have been as impulsive as it was vicious.
As theories went, Bea thought it had much to recommend it. Young men were not known for restraining their passions, and even a personage of advanced years would react with spontaneous fury upon discovering he had been tricked by a man his parents trusted. It would account for the oddity of the murder weapon, as a knife or pistol was far more common for disposing of one’s enemies.
If the event had indeed occurred without preparation, then the perpetrator would have had no plan for how to dispose of the damning evidence after the crime. Thinking of the blood that dotted the wall, Bea wondered what a young man of Skeffington’s or Amersham’s ilk and breeding would do with clothes that had been contaminated by his vile deed. Would it occur to him to discard them immediately so that nobody could trace the crime back to him or would he simply leave them for the valet to dispose of, as per his usual habit?
Bea felt her heart pound in excitement as she realized her original supposition had validity: Finding the murderer could be as straightforward as locating the gentlemen’s pile of soiled clothes. All she needed was an opportunity to sneak into their rooms and look around.
Tonight was out, obviously, for Mr. Skeffington and Amersham would soon be changing for dinner and she could not be certain when they would return in the evening. The risk of being caught was too great, but if the weather held, tomorrow would present plenty of opportunities. Both men would participate in whatever activity Skeffington arranged, be it fishing or hunting or shooting.
Delighted to have a course of action so cleanly mapped out, Bea smiled brightly as she turned into the hallway that contained her bedchamber and found herself unexpectedly face-to-face with Miss Otley.
The daughter of the victim!
Surely, she had additional information Bea would find useful in her quest to attain justice for her father.
Knowing that the right approach would be vital in getting the beautiful young lady to share personal information, Bea nodded solemnly and said, “Miss Otley, if you will allow, I would like to give you something I think will help you greatly during your time of anguish.”
The other girl opened her large blue eyes wide as she contemplated Bea with surprise. “Indeed, Miss Hyde-Clare?”
Given the slimness of their acquaintance, Bea was startled to discover the young lady even knew her name. With no indication to the contrary, she’d naturally assumed Miss Otley thought of her as “plain female of no import No. 2.” The fact that there wasn’t another woman in attendance at the party who could fit the description did little to improve Bea’s place in the hierarchy.
“Yes, only I need a moment to retrieve it. Do wait here,” she said, running to her room to hunt through her top drawer. She tossed several items to the floor and pushed the remaining clothes to the side. She knew it was there somewhere…
Aha!
Grabbing the article, she dashed outside to discover Miss Otley had not stayed in the hall, per her request.
No matter.
She knocked on her door, and as soon as the other girl opened it, she held up a plain cloth bonnet festooned indifferently with a thin gray ribbon. “A mob cap,” Bea said, holding it up triumphantly.
Miss Otley stared blankly. “A mob cap?”
“A mob cap,” Bea repeated with a firm nod as she entered the room. “Since the moment we met, I have envied and admired your impressive assortment of beautiful bonnets with outlandish, cheerful feathers, which show your beauty to great effect, and realized you must be lacking in appropriately forlorn mob caps.”
“A mob cap,” Miss Otley echoed wretchedly, her expression so dire, Bea felt as if she were consigning her to a corset of the sturdiest whalebone rather than a slip of linen that rested lightly on one’s head.
“It’s yours to keep,” Bea offered.
Although the item was too banal and unwanted to be regarded as a gift, Miss Otley’s breeding ensured that she thanked her visitor for bestowing it. “You’re too kind.”
“It’s the least I could do,” Bea said, looking around the room, which was as lavishly decorated as hers, with deep, rich colors and handsome furniture. “I find that a good mob cap always makes me feel better.”
Miss Otley nodded, as if this statement made sense, for she was too tired not to be agreeable, but then the substance of the comment struck her and she opened her eyes as wide as saucers in surprise. “Really? How?”
“They’re warm and cozy,” Bea explained. “I thought given the unfortunate circumstance, you would appreciate a little warmth and coziness. I can only imagine how difficult this is for you. I barely knew my own father, for I was only five when he died, and yet I still miss him every day. It must be so much harder when he is a cherished and familiar figure in your life.”
“Thank you, yes, it is quite difficult. It’s as if someone”—she blanched as she recalled who that person actually was—“ripped a large hole in the middle of my life. It’s unbearable how everything is familiar but nothing is the same.”
Given Bea’s assessment of Miss Otley as a pretty peagoose, she was surprised by the astute articulation of her feelings. “You’re lucky to have your mother. She seems like a dependable woman in a time of crisis,” Bea said, recalling how sternly the matron had ordered her husband about. “She’s had so much to contend with recently, including your father’s misfortunes in India. Imagine, a fire destroying your entire investment. Even before this terrible and tragic turn, she was bearing up under an oppressive weight. I hope you will tell me if there’s anything I or my family can do to help.”
“You are very kind and I will keep your offer in mind. But you mustn’t listen too closely to what my mother says. She has a way of increasing the intensity of her suffering to earn the sympathy of others. Although it was a setback, to be sure, the destruction of the hibiscus crop has not been the great devastation she described. We are certainly not miserable,” she said firmly, then her face clouded with sadness as she considered the substance of her words. Her fingers wrapped around the mob cap as she found some consolation in fiddling with it. “That is, we were not miserable. Our lives had hardly been affected by the fire.”
Bea found her experience difficult to reconcile with her mother’s discouraging description of events. “I’m happy to hear you haven’t suffered, my dear, but I wonder how your father managed it.”
Miss Otley’s eye brightened as her face took on a calculating look. “I wondered the exact same thing, especially as Mama’s concern over the hibiscus shrubs was minor compared with her apprehension over the loss of Papa’s other crop of a few months before.”
At once Bea recalled the Incomparable’s words in the drawing room: the latest setback.
“On that occasion,” the girl continued, “Mama was wild with concern, and she and Papa did not calmly discuss the matter over breakfast like they did last month with the fire. Indeed, they tried to hide it from me because they didn’t want me to worry. Anxiety can have a disastrous effect on one’s appearance, as you must know. But I overheard them whispering about it one morning. Mama was telling him that he had to figure out something immediately or the tradesmen would come pounding on the door—the front door, you understand—at any moment. Her tone was quite frantic, but Papa, bless him, remained calm and assured her he had the matter well in hand. And of course he did, for I never had to miss a single fitting at Madame Babineaux’s. If his business disappointment had curtailed our ability to buy the latest French styles, then I could understand Mama’s distress, for what is the point of being in London if not to turn yourself out in the height of fashion. But our credit was always good with the modiste, so the only conclusion I can draw is Mama was overreacting. She does like to do that, I’m afraid. Nobody can enact a Cheltenham tragedy in the drawing room with the same fervor as my mother.”
As skewed as the other girl’s perspective was, Bea acknowledged the validity of measuring the world in increments of fashionable gowns. It was only when a calamity affected something you held dear that it took on the patina of reality. “And what had happened to the crop on that occasion? Was it another fire?”
“A rival company,” she said. “One was larger and had more influence in the region. It simply swooped in and claimed our fields for its own. It was a very sordid display of brute force. I don’t wonder why they refused to tell me anything about it.”
Miss Otley was curiously knowledgeable for a woman in whom her parents refused to confide, Bea thought. “How did you discover the truth?”
“I searched their things,” she explained simply, “and discovered correspondence from Mr. Wilson, my father’s agent in India, discussing what had happened. I could find no letter that mentioned the fire that destroyed the hibiscus plants, which is how I know it’s not quite the huge calamity my mother claims it to be. Despite my appearance, I’m quite a sensible young lady, Miss Hyde-Clare, and I’m prepared to sink into the doldrums if the fire has made us wretchedly poor. But the truth is, I simply don’t know if that’s the case and it’s been very confusing. I cannot tell you how dreadfully disheartening it is not to know whether you are able to buy the new ostrich hat with the pink plume you saw in Madame Chevalier’s shop window.” Her tone, which had turned mournful at the mention of the hat, dissolved into despondency as she realized the answer was finally clear in the wake of her father’s actions. She began to weep quietly as her fingers twisted the mob cap so tightly Bea feared the sturdy linen would tear. “Perhaps Papa found it disheartening as well, and that is why he did this awful, terrible thing to us. Perhaps he grew tired of waiting for fate to knock him down once and for all, and he decided to do it himself. How cruel of him not to consider me. I’m far too beautiful to sink into despair. My eyes are supposed to sparkle with merriment and gaiety as I contemplate my noble husband, not simmer with misery as I consider the lowly country squire to whom I’ve been tethered to settle a debt. He will have dirty boots and use rushlights in the parlor. Just think of it: rushlights.”
