Banquet of Lies (23 page)

Iris shook herself, letting tiny bits of hail fall in a shower of icy confetti. “Made it in the nick.” She shivered as she walked down the steps, and shrugged out of her coat. “I’d already turned into the side lane when it started getting serious.” She stood by the fire, arms around her waist.

“They were surprised to see Mavis. Up at the big house.” She waited a beat, then turned her head. “But Mrs. Jones seems a decent type; Mr. Jones, too. He read the letter, and looked pretty gob-smacked, I have to say. But there was no questioning it. He took Mavis in, gave her a room. Said how
they’d be needing her right enough, if the Barringtons were coming back.”

The Barringtons. Plural. Pain stabbed at her, a quick, lethal strike, because her father wasn’t coming back. She wound her arms around herself.

Iris rubbed her hands close to the flames. “Think they’re a bit worried about it, truth be told. They’re old, and they’re fine for looking after an empty place. But not a house full o’ life.”

Gigi said nothing. What could she say to that that wouldn’t betray her? That wouldn’t give her agony away?

“Mavis look less upset?” she said at last, as the silence stretched out and she found some control.

“Thanks to you.” Iris turned, let her back toast a little. “How’d you know about that job, then? How’d you swing it?”

Gigi shook her head. “That’s a private matter. The important thing is Mavis is safe and warm and has a new job.”

“True enough.” Iris turned back again, her body relaxing as it heated up. She gave Gigi another little sidelong look, and there was no mistaking she was still curious. “Babs gone up?”

“Yes. Harry and Rob went out. Edgars, too.”

“Who’s looking after his lordship, then?” Iris asked, eyebrows raised.

“He’s out as well.”

“Well, I’ll go up.” Iris took a step toward the stairs, then pivoted back. “How could he turn on her? He liked her. He took her in.”

“He’s under strain. Mostly of his own making, but he’d like to blame it on me. Maybe some of it
is
my fault, but he’s responsible
for his own behavior.” Gigi tightened her lips. “He reacted without thinking.”

“How can you send someone out to starve without thinking?” Iris asked, her voice soft. “Even if he’d lost his temper, he could have come back during dinner, told her to stay.”

“That would have meant he’d have to admit he was wrong. Just changing his mind would be a confession he’d made a mistake.”

Iris nodded. “And God forbid His Edginess would ever be less than perfect.”

Gigi had never heard her call Edgars His Edginess before. She’d seemed to disapprove of the others saying it.

“If it makes a difference, when I told him I’d got her a new job, he was shocked.”

“Maybe he did plan to change his mind?”

Gigi nodded at Iris’s half-hopeful look. “Perhaps.” She sighed. “He’s very unhappy with me.”

“Don’t you go leaving.” Iris took a step toward her, as if to grab hold of her. “Don’t let him run you out, too. It’s nicer here since you came.”

“I . . .” Gigi shook her head. She didn’t want to lie, but Iris took her headshake for a denial, and exhaled.

“I don’t know how you jigged it, but thank you for fixing Mae up. She didn’t deserve what she got tonight, and you set it straight.”

Gigi watched her climb the stairs, and wondered how she was going to handle things when it came time to tell the truth.

She dragged the only armchair in the room to the fire and curled up in it, waiting for Aldridge to return.

She must have dozed off, for the bang of the kitchen door slamming open startled her awake. A freezing wind blasted through the kitchen and ripped the warmth out of it like a blanket pulled off in the night.

Her heart thumping in her chest, she stood, half-disoriented, and saw Edgars walking too carefully, too bright-eyed, down the stairs. He placed each foot down as if he were walking across ice, the door open and forgotten behind him. Rain and leaves, a few pieces of newspaper, blew and swirled around him.

“The door,” she said, and he looked behind him, shrugged, and kept walking down.

Shivering in the onslaught of cold air, she strode, temper tightening around her like a net, toward the stairs to close the door.

Edgars caught her arm as she moved past him, his grip strong and punishing. “I’m better than you, you miserable Frenchie. Better than you by far.” He tried to shake her, but she jerked out of his hold, heart hammering, and ran up the stairs. She slammed the door and turned to face him, breathing hard.

Whether she should have shut herself in or let herself out with Edgars turned drunk and mean she didn’t know. But the alternative was the storm raging outside and the shadow man.

Edgars was less of a threat than they were.

“I’ll do for you. Send you packing. See if I don’t.” He waggled a finger at her.

“You’d be fired, and you know it, if you tried to do anything of the sort.” She didn’t know if this was true, but she believed Edgars thought it might be.

He blew rudely through pursed lips. “Maybe the satisfaction of seeing you gone will be ’nough.”

“I doubt you’ll think so when you’re sober.” She walked cautiously down the stairs and gave him a wide berth. “And I think you’d better hope his lordship doesn’t need you when he gets back tonight.”

“His lordship can kiss my arse. And you’d know about that, wouldn’t you?” He gave her a leer. “Given you a nice big kiss there, has he? When you were rolling around outside like animals in heat?”

Edgars stumbled a little as he wound his way to the cellar. “I need a drink, after the walk from th’ pub. Nice Bordeaux in here, had my eye on it a while.” He said the words staccato, pronouncing them perfectly as he took painfully long to find the key to the door and open it.

He could get fired for drinking the wine. Gigi knew of more than one butler who had been.

She gnawed the inside of her lip as she listened to him fumbling around. She didn’t want him on the streets. On her conscience. And she wouldn’t be offering
him
a place at Goldfern. That was out of the question.

He stepped back into the kitchen at last, holding a bottle high in one hand. “Got it.” But there was something in his face, a sort of panic, that made her think he’d come a little to his senses and was wondering what on earth he was doing.

Behind her, the door slammed open again, the sound making her jump.

Edgars started as well, and she saw the bottle drop from his hand, saw him try to grab it as it fell and smashed at his feet.

He looked up, aghast, and Gigi was grateful for the excuse to turn away from his stricken face, to look at Rob and Harry as they fought the door closed.

“Been waiting the weather out down at a coffeehouse, but we realized there weren’t no letting up.” Harry turned the key in the lock.

He must have noticed the silence in the room, and, with Rob, looked down at the widening pool of red wine at Edgars’ feet.

“Accident?” he said.

“Your sudden arrival startled Mr. Edgars. That door crashes open loud enough to wake the dead.” Gigi spoke easily, and went to the sink to get a mop and a dustpan.

“Would you and Rob find all the glass? I think Mr. Edgars needs to change and clean his shoes before the wine soaks into them.”

Harry took the dustpan cheerfully enough, but she saw Rob give Edgars a hard stare.

“His lordship waiting for that?” he asked. “Want me to serve him something else?”

There was silence. Edgars had yet to say a word, and Gigi wondered if he thought himself capable, now that he was shocked into a semblance of sobriety.

He lifted a foot, wiggled it to dislodge some glass, and staggered
a little. He clutched at the doorframe for balance. “His lordship’s not back yet.” Then he lifted horror-filled eyes to Gigi. “Is he?”

She shook her head.

Rob’s face hardened as Edgars got up the nerve to make for his rooms, each step a squelch of pungent red wine and the odd crunch of glass. He couldn’t walk a straight line, and the silence stretched out, painful as the sound of metal scraping on cobblestones. He scrabbled for his door handle, got it open on the third try and slammed himself inside.

“He’s plowed,” Harry said, with a hush in his voice.

“Top-heavy, and no doubt about it.” Rob slid her a look. “Not on his lordship’s booze?”

Harry, bending down to delicately pick up a large piece of glass, whipped his head up, eyes wide.

“No.” She looked at the wide-open cellar door. Shook her head. “No.”

“Or not yet. Had a mind to try the Bordeaux?” Rob lifted a piece of glass with the label on it, stained and wet but still legible.

Gigi shrugged.

“You could point the finger. Get him in a right fix. Or tossed out, even.” Rob threw the last piece of glass into the bin, and she started to mop. “ ’E don’t like you. So why don’t you?”

She squeezed out the mop, poured the wine and water down the sink, and filled the bucket again. “I don’t care for a fight with Mr. Edgars.”

“Some would.” Rob leaned back against the dresser while she finished up. Harry stood close to the fire, watching them both.

“I’m not some.”

“No, Cook. You’re not.” Rob turned to the stairs up to his room, Harry trailing behind him. “I’m not sure what you are, but you’re not the common run o’ things, that’s for sure.”

She stood alone, mop still in her hand, for a long while after he and Harry had gone up.

There wasn’t a sound from Edgars’ rooms, and she hoped Aldridge didn’t need him tonight. She mopped the trail he’d left from the cellar to his room, then closed the cellar-room door.

She wondered where his lordship was.

The dying fire popped, and then the logs collapsed in on themselves.

She shook herself. Wherever he was, it looked like she wasn’t going to share her secrets with him tonight.

G
reenway’s clerk, Mr. Unwin, was twitchy. He stood in his tiny hallway, unable to keep still, reminding Jonathan of an enlisted soldier he’d known who’d been caught in a cannon blast. He’d come away without a scratch, but thereafter, on the battlefield or not, he seemed to expect another blast at any time—one that would end his life.

“I don’t mean no disrespect, my lord, but Mr. Greenway told me to keep quiet about where he’s gone.” Unwin rubbed his hands together in an agony of indecision.

Jonathan took out the official letter Durnham had given him and handed it over.

Unwin looked at the Crown seal and his hands shook. “I don’t know what to do. Mr. Greenway were really clear. . . .”

“When I came to see Mr. Greenway the other day, I wasn’t able to tell him a few things—in the interests of international relations. But it is now felt that it would be more useful to
speak to Mr. Greenway frankly, and see if he knows anything that could help us.”

Jonathan watched as Unwin smoothed out the paper, as if it would somehow smooth out the tricky situation he was in, and read the short note Durnham had penned. He lifted his head. “Says here to give you my full cooperation, in the name of the king.” He rubbed the side of his cheek. “I’d want to keep this letter. Show Mr. Greenway I ’ad no choice.”

“Certainly.”

At last, Unwin invited him to sit in the small parlor at the front of his neat little house. Jonathan lowered himself onto a surprisingly fashionable sofa with dark green and maroon stripes, and waited for Unwin to settle himself into a large armchair.

“Mr. Greenway closed the office, my lord. Right after you came in to see ’im. I don’t know when he actually left. He’d ’ave ’ad to make arrangements, I’m sure.”

“Left for where?” Jonathan wondered what instructions Barrington could have given his lawyer for such a quick response.

“To where Sir Barrington was staying, in Stockholm, my lord.”

“He went to see Barrington? In Sweden?” Jonathan wished again that he could have told Greenway about Barrington’s death when he’d seen him. Could have prevented this wild-goose chase.

Unwin gave a decisive nod.

“But why?”

“They ’ad a sort of system, as Mr. Greenway put it. Sir Barrington would send Mr. Greenway a note every third day. Sometimes, with the post being what it is, it would be delayed a little, or two would come at once. But we’re missing three o’ them already, my lord, and tomorrow, if nothing comes, it’ll be four.”

“What was the system for?”

Unwin looked away. “Not my place to say, my lord.”

“Let’s make it your place for the moment, Mr. Unwin.”

Unwin winced. “My understanding—nothing Mr. Greenway told me, mind, but what I worked out for myself—is that Sir Barrington was involved in things. Dangerous things, sometimes. Scared he’d land himself in trouble somewhere, and no one would be able to get him out.”

“No one?”

“Well, no one official, was my understanding. That he’d be on ’is own if he got caught with something the Crown would find embarrassing. That he’d ’ave to pretend it was all ’is own doin’. So he’d be stuck.”

“And he wanted Mr. Greenway to come to wherever he was and help him?” That would be a sensible precaution, Jonathan thought, his opinion of Barrington climbing even higher. If he were caught with incriminating documentation, it would be very hard for Whitehall to swoop to the rescue without their admitting a part in it.