Murder at Marble House (7 page)

“Jesse . . .” I pushed away from the railing. “Did you know her?”

“The medium?” He looked down at his feet, smiling slightly. “Yes, I knew her. All of us on the force did, like we know
all
of Newport’s more
interesting
entrepreneurs. She came down from Providence about two years ago—”

“Mrs. Stanford is from Providence,” I said quickly.

“Yes, I know, Emma. That doesn’t make her a murderer.”

“Maybe not. But someone committed a murder here today, and I’d bet my best hatpin it wasn’t Clara Parker.”

J
esse and I returned to the house, where he instructed Aunt Alva’s guests not to leave Newport until further notice.

“Good heavens, are we suspects?” Roberta Spooner reached for her sister’s hand and the two women drew together as though against a common enemy. Even Jesse’s reassurances didn’t smooth the alarm from their brows.

“No, no, it’s merely a precaution, ladies. I might have more questions for you. But if you wish, the two of you may return to your own home.”

“But you said not to leave Newport,” the shorter, frailer-looking Edwina said. “And Sister and I live in Portsmouth. Though I must admit, it would be ever so comfortable to be amongst our own things. Not that it hasn’t been splendid staying at Marble House, mind you,” she added hastily with a startled glance at Aunt Alva. “Then again, perhaps
splendid
isn’t quite the proper term under the circumstances.”

“Oh, Edwina.” Roberta slipped an arm around her sister’s waist. “I’m sure Detective Whyte meant we’re not to leave the island. Since Portsmouth is
on
the island, our going home shouldn’t pose a problem. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Whyte?”

Jesse seemed to be fighting a grin. “Quite right, ladies. We’ll know where to find you if we have further questions for you.”

Hope Stanford brushed off the sisters’ concerns. “I for one have no intentions of running off. I’ve got important business in Newport and I’m not about to let a little thing like a murder deter me one bit.”

A
little
thing like a murder? I bit my tongue to keep from retorting. Instead, I said, “I’ll drive you back to town now, if you like, Jesse.”

Downstairs in the main hall, he drew me aside, out of the hearing of the footman attending the front door. The ladies had all retired to their guest rooms. I assumed Aunt Alva had likewise gone to her room, or perhaps she was with Consuelo. The house had grown quiet, and Jesse spoke just above a whisper. “Would you mind if I borrowed your carriage to get back to town? I can have it returned to you in an hour or two.”

“Well, yes, but why go to the trouble of having someone return it when I can take you?”

“Because I want you to stay here, Emma.” His voice dropped lower. The clinking of someone putting away china in the serving pantry drifted from across the large expanse of the dining room. The footman standing by the door looked straight ahead. We might have been invisible for all he registered our presence, but for a slight pricking of his ears.

Jesse ran a hand through his bright auburn hair and flicked a glance to the top of the staircase. “I’d like you to talk to your cousin and ask her the questions I can’t. Would you do that, Emma?”

I couldn’t help chuckling. “Do you really think I have more authority over my aunt than you do? After all, you have the law on your side.”

“Challenging Alva Vanderbilt is not worth the trouble that would inevitably follow. But you’re Miss Vanderbilt’s friend as well as her cousin. Will you please talk to her for me, and let me know what she says?”

The word
friend
pricked my conscience, but I said, “Of course I will. I’ll go up and see her now, and I’ll call you later from home if there’s anything you need to know.” I grinned. “That’s if I’m allowed to go home. I’m not under house arrest here, am I?”

“As if you would stay put if you were.” He smiled ruefully, then took my hand. “Thank you, Emma.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll talk to you later.”

He nodded and continued holding my hand a moment too long, long enough to become more than a friendly gesture. This wasn’t the first time he’d made such an overture, albeit a subtle one, and now, as then, a sense of awkwardness flooded me. Gently I slid my hand free, careful to keep a smile on my face as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. As if I hadn’t just glimpsed a bit of Jesse Whyte’s heart.

Despite an age difference of some dozen years, he and I would surely have made sense—so much more sense than Derrick Andrews and I ever could. Not only were we both Newporters born and bred, we hailed from the same Point community, whose inhabitants were probably the saltiest and most straightforward of all Newporters. He and I understood each other....

Jesse was my father’s friend as well as Brady’s, and to me he’d always been like an older brother. Could there be more between us? Suddenly his image faded in my mind’s eye while another formed, Jesse’s straight auburn hair darkening to wavy brown, his boyish features strengthening to a square jaw and chiseled profile.

Derrick. Had it been only that morning I’d sent him packing, as they say? After all that had happened in the hours since, it seemed like years ago. Yet it was too soon—far too soon to even consider another. Jesse was my friend, and I was grateful for that friendship, but for now, at least, there could not be more.

As if he read my thoughts, his smile turned wistful, then sad. He left and the footman closed the door behind him. The servant was new to the household and I didn’t know his name; but even if I had, my throat had closed and my tongue ran too dry to allow speech. I wandered into the Gold Room, where the events of this dreadful day had begun, and where I stood leaning with my back against the wall to regain my equilibrium.

Good grief, that made two men in one day I’d sent away disappointed—on top of everything else. Feeling wretched and drained, I pushed away from the wall and made my way up the stairs.

Outside Consuelo’s room I tapped my knuckles lightly on the door. No answer came, so I tried again. Finally, I turned the knob and poked my head inside. Consuelo’s bed lay empty, as did the bedside chaise. A quick glance around the room failed to reveal my cousin. Was she in the dressing room?

“Consuelo? Are you here?” I ventured a few feet inside. “Darling, it’s me . . . Emma.”

Silence.

“Consuelo?” Unease churned inside me. Something felt utterly, entirely wrong about this empty room.

Hurrying down the corridor, I pressed my ear to her mother’s door. The silence within sent me on to the next bedroom, this one draped in rich greens and burgundies—my uncle William’s former suite. Somehow I could picture my cousin seeking solace among her father’s things. The door was open and I came to an abrupt halt on the threshold. “Consuelo, are you in here?”

When no answer came I strode through into the dressing room, but it, too, stood empty. I doubled back, following the zigzagging hallway past the large front bedroom currently occupied by Lady Amelia, reserved for her due to her rank as an aristocrat. Here the hall turned and led to a small sewing room. I barged in, panting, but found no one inside. My concerns spiraled, though I couldn’t quite say why. This was a large house and while my cousin might have been under house arrest of sorts, she was certainly allowed to wander where she wished. The library? But Jesse and I had been standing in the main hall and we never saw her come down the stairs.

It was then I realized that in all the uproar of finding Madame Devereaux, of Clara appearing to be the guilty party, and the police arriving and questioning the rest of us, no one had spared a thought about Consuelo’s welfare. No one had questioned how badly the day’s events might have upset her. No one thought to check on her after we all returned to the house. We had simply assumed she’d seen little or nothing at the pavilion and had returned to find comfort in her dolls and books and the many luxuries to be found in her bedroom.

But I, better than most, knew how little comfort Consuelo gleaned from that room, from this house, and how terribly sensitive she was, though she struggled always to conceal it.

So then, if her room brought her neither cheer nor reassurance, where would she go?

“Consuelo?” I called out, the inexplicable panic now rising in my throat.

A door opened and Lady Amelia swept into the hallway. “Is something wrong, Miss Cross?”

She looked annoyed; I had apparently disturbed her rest. I also noticed her accent had diminished once again. “Have you seen my cousin?”

“Miss Consuelo?”

“Yes,” I almost snapped in my impatience. “Since her brothers are away, there is only one person in this house I’d refer to as my cousin.”

She smoothed a hand down one side of her beautiful emerald gown, from ribs to hip. “I haven’t seen her since . . . you know.”

I released a breath and rushed past her. As I reached the staircase landing, Aunt Alva came out of her room. “What is going on? Is that you I hear caterwauling through the house? Really, Emmaline, a lady—”

“Where is Consuelo?” I asked over her admonishment. That cut her off short. She blinked. “In her room. Where else?”

“No, she isn’t.”

For a full moment Aunt Alva stared back at me, looking nonplussed. Then her face cleared. “Downstairs, then. She probably wanted a book.”

“I think we had better see.” I hefted my hems and hurried down, hoping, yet doubting, we’d find Consuelo in the library. Aunt Alva’s footsteps followed heavily in my wake, making me remember what Clara had said earlier.

I wiped the thought from my mind and concentrated on finding Consuelo. My own thudding footsteps echoed off the glass-fronted bookshelves in the library; there was no sign of Consuelo. Then Aunt Alva brushed past me on her way to the rear-facing windows; she braced her hands on the sill and peered out. “She’s not on the terrace either.”

With a look of determination that bordered on anger, she fisted her hand around the bellpull in the corner and gave an aggressive tug, leaving the tasseled length of embroidered brocade to swing vigorously as she rounded on me.

“How long has my daughter been missing, and when were you planning to inform me?”

I raised my eyebrows in a show of wounded dignity. “I didn’t know she was missing—I still don’t. But I am concerned about her. I think we should search—”

Grafton walked sedately into the room and tipped a bow. “Ma’am?”

“Were you below stairs just now?”

“I was, ma’am.”

“Did you see my daughter down there?”

I expected him to look mystified; instead, he appeared to try to hide a guilty look that admitted Consuelo did occasionally seek out the servants’ domains in order to escape the oppression of living in this echoing, shadowy house, always under her mother’s thumb. “No, ma’am. I haven’t seen Miss Consuelo since tea on the terrace.”

Aunt Alva tapped her forefinger against her chin. Then she said, “I want the house searched, Grafton.” With a brisk nod he started to turn away. “Grafton!”

He turned back.

“I want the house searched by you alone. Tell no one what you’re doing. Go through each room, including the attic, until you find my daughter. Then bring her here to me.”

His expression never changed. “Yes, ma’am.”

“When I get my hands on that girl . . .”

“Aunt Alva!”

As if she’d forgotten my presence, she jumped at the sound of my voice, then scowled. I pushed on anyway.

“Don’t you think perhaps a lighter touch with Consuelo might be in order? It’s been a horrendous day and she was already upset before it even began.”

“Do not presume to tell me how to raise my daughter.” She seemed to bring me into focus as if through the crosshairs on a rifle. “Did you manage to convince her to marry the Duke?”

I stared down at my feet. “I believe I did, though I’m not proud of it.”

“Good.” Her smile held relief but little warmth. “Now if we can just clean up this mess before he arrives. If we’re lucky, he’ll never hear of it.”

My mouth dropped open. “Is that what you’re worried about? Need I remind you a woman is dead? Another is in grave danger of spending the rest of her life in prison. And at the moment your daughter is nowhere to be found.”

“Oh, Emmaline.” She waved a hand in the air, a dismissive gesture that so infuriated me my pulse pounded and spots danced before my eyes. “Consuelo is playing a little game for attention. All right, I’ll give her some attention. I suppose you’re right in that I should look upon her antics with a bit of tolerance and show her that Mama is not the ogre she likes to believe I am.” Here the light in her eyes became fierce, searing in its intensity. “But as for what happened here today, it has nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with my daughter.”

“It happened on your property.”

“An unhappy coincidence. I’m sorry a woman died, Emmaline, truly I am, but it’s simply not my business. Nor yours, if you’re wise.”

 

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Grafton said an hour later, “but Miss Consuelo does not appear to be anywhere in the house.”

“Nor in the stables or the gardens or anywhere else I can think of,” I added as I strode into Aunt Alva’s private sitting room on the second floor. “I even checked the Cliff Walk.”

“She’d never go there,” Aunt Alva said absently, as if other thoughts held her attention. “She’s terrified of heights.” She stood up from her writing desk, where she’d been writing some sort of list, and went to gaze out the window at the rear of the property. The tops of meticulously pruned trees swayed beyond the open casement, and a raucous squawking of seagulls carried on the breeze. “What is that child up to?”

“Aunt Alva,” I said to her back, “I think it’s time to resum-mon the police.”

She whirled. “Are you mad?” Her gaze flicked to the butler, still hovering a few feet from the escritoire. “That will be all, thank you, Grafton. Say nothing to anyone and should you discover my daughter . . .”

“I’ll escort her to you, madam.”

Aunt Alva followed him as far as the door, which she shut firmly behind him before turning back to me. “You are not to speak of calling the police, Emmaline.”

“But if Consuelo is missing—”

“Oh, she is not
missing.
The very idea. If she’s gone, it’s because she stole the opportunity of today’s distraction to slip out without my noticing.”