A Christmas Guest (8 page)

Zachary did not say a great deal, and she saw him look at Bedelia more often than she would have expected. There was an admiration in him, a sense of awe. For her beauty? She was certainly far better looking than poor Agnes. She had a glamour, an air of femininity, mystery, almost power, that confidence gave her. Grandmama watched her as well, and in spite of herself.

What was it like to be beautiful? There were not many women so blessed, certainly she had never been so herself, and neither were Agnes nor Maude. Clara was no more than handsome. Luminous, heart-stopping beauty was very rare. Even Bedelia did not have that.

Grandmama had seen it once or twice, and one did not forget it. Emily's great-aunt by her first marriage, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, had possessed it. Even in advanced years it was still there, unmistakable as a familiar song—one note, and the heart brings it all back.

Why did Zachary still watch Bedelia? Ordinary masculine fascination with beauty? Or good manners, because this was her house?

Arthur did not watch her the same way.

Agnes looked at both of them, and seemed to see it also. There was a sadness in her eyes. Was it an awareness that she could never compete? Perhaps that was the sense of failure Grandmama detected, and understood. She knew it well: a plain face, no magic in the eyes or the voice, above all the knowledge of not being loved.

Envy? Even hate, over the years? Why? Simply beauty? Could it matter so much? Very few women were more than pleasing in their youth, and perhaps gaining a little sense of style, or even better, wit, in their maturity. And she had not been left on the shelf. But sisters did compete. It was inevitable. Was money also involved, and now a peerage, too?

The conversation continued around her, concern for those who would be alone over the Christmas period and possibly in need, those whose health was poor, anyone to whom they could or should give a small gift. Would the weather deteriorate?

“Do you often get shut in by the snow?” Grandmama inquired with interest. “It must be a rather frightening experience.”

“Not at all,” Zachary assured her. “We will be quite safe. We have food and fuel, and it will not be for more than a day or two. But please don't concern yourself. If it happens at all, it will be in January and February. You know the old saying ‘As the days get longer, the weather gets stronger.' ” He smiled, transforming his face from its earlier gravity to a surprising warmth.

She smiled back, enjoying the sudden and inexplicable sense of freedom it gave her. “I have found it very often true,” she agreed. “And I am sure you are quite wise enough to guard against any possible need. It was rather more such things as someone falling ill that I was thinking of. But I daresay that is a difficulty for all people who live in the wilder and more beautiful country areas.”

She continued being charming. It was like having a new toy. She turned to Bedelia. “You know, Mrs. Harcourt, I would never have seen Romney Marsh as anything more than a very flat coast, rather vulnerable, with a permanent smell of the sea, until I met Miss Barrington. But on our walks I saw how she was aware of so much more! She spoke of the wildflowers in the spring, and the birds. She knew the names of a great many of them, you know, and their habits. The water birds especially.” She was inventing at least part of this as she was going along. It was exhilarating. The surprised and anxious faces around her increased her sense of adventure.

She drew in her breath and went on. “I had never realized before how perfectly everything fits into its own place in the scheme of things.”

“Really?” Bedelia said, her voice almost expressionless. “It is an interest she had developed recently. In fact, since she left England altogether. She must have gained it from reading. Except perhaps in her early childhood, she never saw them in life.”

“She did not go walking a great deal?” Grandmama asked innocently.

“She was only here for a matter of hours,” Bedelia informed her. “She did not have time to go out at all. Surely she told you that she arrived without giving us any prior warning, and we were thus unable to accommodate her. Do you imagine we would have asked Joshua Fielding to offer his hospitality were it possible for us to do so ourselves?”

So she was correct! Maude had been given the single dose of peppermint water by someone in the house. She must think very rapidly. Better to retreat than to cause an argument, much as the words stuck in her mouth. Was it better to be considered a fool and of no danger at all, or as a highly knowledgeable woman who needed to be watched? She must decide immediately. She could not be both, and time was short.

Bedelia was waiting. They were all looking at her. A brilliant idea flashed into her mind. She could be both apparently stupid, and extremely clever—if she affected to be a little deaf!

She drew in a breath to say so, and apologize for it. Then just before she did, she had another thought of infinitely greater clarity. If she were to claim to be deaf then any evidence she gained could later be denied!

She smothered her pride, a thing she had never done before, except on that unmentionable occasion when her own past had loomed up like a corpse out of the river. But if she had survived that, then nothing this family could do to her would ever make a dent in her inner steel.

“You are quite right,” she said meekly. “I had forgotten she had been away so very long. If she had no interest before, then it must have been acquired entirely by reading. Perhaps she was homesick for the wide skies, the salt wind, and the sound of the sea?”

There was a flash of victory in Bedelia's eyes, a knowledge of her own power. Grandmama felt it as keenly as if it had been a charge of electricity between them such as one is pricked by at times if one touches certain metals when the air is very dry. She had read that predatory animals scented blood in the same way, and it gave her a shiver of fear and intense knowledge of vulnerability, which made life suddenly both sweet and fragile.

Was that what Agnes had known all her life? Or was she being fanciful? What about Maude? Was she crushed, too? Was that really why she had left England, and everything familiar that she unquestionably loved, and gone to all kinds of ancient, barbaric, and splendid other lands, where she neither knew anyone nor was known? A desperate escape?

Perhaps there was very much more here, beneath the surface, than she had dreamed, even when she had stood in the bedroom beside Maude's dead body this morning?

Bedelia was smiling. “Perhaps she was,” she agreed aloud. “But she could have chosen to live by the sea if she had wished to. Poor Maude had very little sense of how to make decisions, even the right ones. It is most unfortunate.”

“We were hoping to go out far more, later, when she returned …” Agnes glanced at Bedelia. “In the New Year … or … or whenever we were certain …,” she trailed off, knowing that somehow she had put her foot in it.

Grandmama stared at her, willing her to explain.

Bedelia sighed impatiently. “Agnes, dear, you really do let your tongue run away with you!” She turned to Grandmama in exasperation. “You had better know the truth, Mrs. Ellison, or you will feel that we are a cruel family. And it is not so at all. Maude is our middle sister, and she was always unruly, the one who had to draw attention to herself by being different. It happens in families at times. The eldest have attention because they are first, the youngest because they are the babies, the middle ones feel left out, and they show off, to use a common term.”

“Maude was not a show-off,” Arthur corrected her. “She was an enthusiast. Whatever she did, it was with a whole heart. There was nothing affected or contrived in her.”

Bedelia did not look away from Grandmama. “My husband is a man of extraordinarily generous spirit. It is his work for the less fortunate for which Her Majesty is offering him a peerage. I am immensely proud of him, because it is for the noblest of reasons, nothing tawdry like finance, or political support.” She smiled patiently. “But occasionally his judgment is rather more kind than accurate. It was apparent as soon as she arrived that Maude had traveled in places where manners and customs are quite different from ours. I'm afraid that even her language was not such that we could subject our other guests to her … her more colorful behavior. We knew that Joshua, being on the stage, might be more tolerant of eccentricity. Of course we could not know that you also would be staying with him, and if Maude has shocked you or made you uncomfortable, then we are guilty of having caused that, and on behalf of all of us, I apologize. Our inconsideration in that regard is what has been disturbing Agnes.”

Agnes smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.

“I see.” Grandmama tried to imagine Maude as an embarrassment so severe as to be intolerable. She did not know Lord Woollard. Perhaps he was insufferably pompous. There certainly were people so consumed by their own emotional inadequacy and imagined virtue as to take offense at the slightest thing. And the Maude she had met would find a certain delight in puncturing the absurd, the self-important, and above all the false. It would be a scene to be avoided. If Arthur Harcourt had done as much for others as Bedelia said, then he was deserving of recognition, and more importantly the added power to do more good that such an accolade would offer him.

“I'm sure you do,” Bedelia said gently.

“All families seem to have their difficult members,” Zachary added ruefully.

Grandmama had an unpleasant feeling that in her family it was she herself. Although Caroline was now giving her some competition, marrying an actor so much younger than herself! And there was Charlotte, of course, and her policeman!

A short while later the ladies retired to the withdrawing room and she learned little more of interest. She considered inquiring after people's health, but could think of no way of approaching the subject without being catastrophically obvious. She was extremely tired. It had been one of the longest days of her life, beginning with tragedy and horror, and ending with mystery, and the growing certainty in her mind that someone in this house had altered Maude's medicine. Exactly how it had been achieved, and with what, she had yet to ascertain. Even more important to her was why? Maude had been successfully sent to stay with Joshua. Lord Woollard had been and gone. What was the element so precious, or so terrible, that it was worth murder?

She excused herself, thanked them again for their hospitality, and went up to her room. Please heaven it would snow tonight, or in some other way make it impossible for her to leave. There was so much she had to learn. This detection matter was more difficult than she had supposed, and against her will she was being drawn into other people's lives. She cared about Maude, there was no use denying that anymore. She disliked Bedelia and had felt the strength of her power. She was sorry for Agnes without knowing why. Arthur intrigued her. In spite of all that was said about him, his success and his goodness to others, she felt an unnamed emotion that disturbed her. It did not fit in.

Randolph and Clara were still too undefined, except that Clara had great social ambitions! Could that possibly be enough to inspire murder?

It was all swirling around in her head as she put on the housekeeper's nightgown and climbed into the bed, intending to weigh it all more carefully, and instead fell asleep almost immediately.

The following morning she slept in, and was embarrassed to waken with the chambermaid standing at the foot of the bed with tea on a tray, and an inquiry as to what she would care for, for breakfast.

Would two lightly boiled eggs and some toast be possible?

Indeed it would, with the greatest pleasure.

After enjoying it, in spite of the circumstances and the thoughts that occupied her mind, she rose and washed. She dressed in the housekeeper's other black gown, again with the chambermaid's assistance, and found she rather enjoyed talking to her. Then she made her way downstairs.

She met Agnes in the hall. She was wearing outdoor clothes and apparently about to leave.

“Good morning, Mrs. Ellison,” she said hastily. “I do hope you slept well? Such a distressing time for you. I hope you were comfortable? And warm enough?”

“I have never been more comfortable,” Grandmama replied with honesty. “You are most generous. I do not believe I stirred all night. Are you about to go out?”

“Yes. I have a few jars of jams and chutneys to take to various friends. Nearby villages, you know? I am afraid the weather does not look promising.”

Grandmama had another burst of illumination, of double worth. She could catch Agnes alone, unguarded by Bedelia, and if the weather did not oblige by snowing them in, she could affect to have caught a slight chill to prevent her returning to St. Mary in the Marsh tomorrow, or worse, this afternoon.

“May I come with you?” she asked eagerly. “I am not here beyond this brief Christmas period, and I would so love to see a little of the outside. It is quite unlike London. So much wider … and cleaner. The city always seems grubby when the snow has been trodden, and everything is stained with smoke from so many chimney fires.”