Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (28 page)

Plantagenet Halsey’s keen grey eyes blinked but his voice remained level. He knew exactly who she was; knew what rooms she was occupying and that a young woman servant had accompanied her. The hotel proprietor had obliged his nephew and they had been on the alert for when just such an opportunity as this would arise. A pity Alec had felt obliged to run back to Marlborough to play knight-errant to his virago ladylove and her sickly brother. Still, the old man was pleased to have the upper hand at something.

“Will you indulge an old man by permitting me to know your Christian name, Mrs. Bourdon?”

“How can I refuse you, sir, after your kindness to me on the stair? It’s Miranda.”

“Ah! And here was I thinkin’ you might be a Catherine. But don’t get me wrong. Miranda suits you very well. Very well indeed.”

“Catherine? How strange of you to say so, Mr. Halsey,” she answered with surprise as they crossed Cheap Street. “My daughter’s name is Catherine.”

“Is that so?” replied the old man with enthusiasm. “In my day little Catherines were blessed with a string of pretty names. Is that still the fashion, Mrs. Bourdon?”

Tam gaped openly at Plantagenet Halsey’s straight back. When had the old man ever been interested in conducting small talk with young mothers about their offspring? He wondered if the hit to his head had done more than leave a dent in his skull.

“I don’t know anything about the fashion, Mr. Halsey,” Miranda was saying, now completely at ease with her elderly companion. “But she does indeed have a string of pretty names: Catherine Sophia Elisabeth; after my husband’s mother. It’s rather a mouthful for a four year old, isn’t it? We’ve always called her Sophie.”

“Sophie? How delightful!” Plantagenet Halsey said with a satisfied smile and a jaunty spring in his step that closed Tam’s mouth and narrowed his eyes, wondering at the real meaning behind such seemingly inane questions. There had to be more to this pleasant walk to the Abbey than what met the eye and Tam was going to find out what it was. He was not the least surprised when the old man abruptly turned the conversation into a lesson on the town’s historic past, in particular the Roman occupation of Bath, keeping his young companion enthralled until they reached the imposing West front of the Abbey.

Tam politely declined to join the service with Plantagenet Halsey, Miranda Bourdon and the rest of Bath’s elite who were filing into the Abbey. He excused himself saying he had errands to run. His decision had little to do with his duties or his religious beliefs and everything to do with knowing his proper place. The old man might disregard, even openly ridicule, the social order, but as son of an earl and uncle to a Marquess, he could say and do as he pleased; his radical opinions excused away by his own kind as mere eccentricity. Tam could not afford to step outside the boundaries of what was expected of him as valet to a peer of the realm and sit shoulder to shoulder with the old man and his social equals.

So he went for a stroll along North Parade to the river Avon and sat on the grassy embankment to admire the view. He still had no idea if he had passed his apothecary’s examination. He was confident he had provided more than adequate responses to satisfy the detailed questions put to him by the somber-faced examiners in the Great Hall. He had correctly identified, classified and offered uses for any number of plants put in front of him. He had spoken with knowledge on simples and provided answers, almost word for word, from passages in the Pharmacopeia. Not even the last question of the morning had shaken his self-confidence. He knew the answer well enough, could recite the response in his sleep, and he rattled on without thinking very hard about it at all. The preparation and application of tinctures containing Monkshood; more specifically, what would be the most likely outcome should such a preparation be ingested, particularly in its powdered form, was more than satisfactorily answered.

It was only later, waiting in the quiet of the paneled anteroom with several other nervous apprentices, that panic set in and fear chilled his bones.
Monkshood: its preparation and ingestion
. He’d been so puffed up with his own cleverness that he was blind to the significance of such a question. And it had been put to him by the Chief Examiner, a haughty, gaunt little man who had been apothecary to the previous King George and knighted for his services.

Surely the question was mere coincidence? Sir Septimus Bott could know nothing of Tam’s suspicions regarding the cause of death of the Reverend Blackwell: asphyxiation and stoppage of the heart brought about by the inhalation of a powdered form of Monkshood blended with his snuff. But the coincidence was enough for Tam to seriously wonder if the question was deliberately put.

As he drifted off to sleep, stretched out on the grassy bank, listening to the flow of the river and the mews of waterfowl amongst the reeds, he wondered if he was being overly sensitive to Bott’s pertinent question. But Sir Septimus knew he was valet to Lord Halsey and, like every other educated Londoner, he read the newssheets, thus knew that his lordship had been present at a dinner party where a vicar had up and died of a heart attack. But surely Sir Septimus could not know his lordship’s suspicions regarding the Reverend Blackwell’s death? Yet, that was exactly what Tam now believed.

He had been the last of the apprentices to be dismissed and the only one to be informed that as he had a dispensary at his place of employment, which was not presided over by a master apothecary, it would be inspected and appraised before a final decision was made on Tam’s suitability for admission as a fellow of the Society. No time or date was given and he was sent on his way.

Tam didn’t know how to tell his lordship that not only had he no idea if he had passed or failed the examination, but that Lord Halsey’s London residence, No. 1 St. James’s Place, was to be visited without invitation by three wardens of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

Dogs barking as they chased waterfowl out of the reeds had Tam scrambling to his feet and brushing grass from the back of his breeches and frockcoat before he was fully awake. The sun’s position high in the sky told him he had fallen asleep and he ran all the way to the Abbey, only stopping when he reached the churchyard. Bent over from being out of breath, he looked up from his knees and saw that the service was well and truly over, the last of the congregation coming out into the sunshine. Most of the worshippers lingered, making plans for the afternoon, while the more infirm were carried back to their lodgings by sedan chair, their servants and retainers walking behind the burly chairmen.

One private sedan chair remained by the Abbey entrance, its door held wide by a liveried servant and the two long poles on which it was carried allowed to rest easy by its carriers as they awaited its aged occupant. Several of the churchgoers drifted back to this chair as word went round that one of their number had taken ill inside the Abbey. For one dreadful moment Tam thought it was the old man but as he did not have a chair the thought was quickly dismissed. Then, as he continued to skirt the small gathering looking for Plantagenet Halsey and his companion and not seeing them, he wondered if the young lady had gone into early labor.

He felt anxious for Miranda Bourdon. But it was not only her advanced stage of pregnancy that caused him to be apprehensive. The moment he caught a flash of her face on the hotel’s stairwell he had experienced a frisson of recognition and with it a sense of foreboding. But later, watching her talk with the old man, he convinced himself that there was no circumstance he could think of when he would have come into contact with such a well-bred young lady. Her beauty alone was cause for remembrance. Yet, the feeling he had met her before had stayed with him and again, as he shouldered his way to the open front doors, he racked his mind to think of an occasion or a place where he may have met the young woman.

He would have stepped inside the Abbey but for the tight knot of persons coming out into the muted sunshine. At its center was a grand dowager, kept upright by two men who supported her bulk by holding her limp arms at the elbow. She was incapable of walking unaided and her rich silk petticoats dragged under her feet. Her head, with its elaborate coiffure of powdered curls brushed over padding and bright turban with ostrich plumes, lolled to one side and her eyelids fluttered.

In Tam’s opinion, the woman was clearly in no fit state to be moved, but one of the two richly clad gentlemen following up behind was loudly urging the men carrying her to get her into the chair as quickly as possible. To add to this din, the dowager’s maid was sobbing and trying to put salts under her mistress’s nose while another woman patted a limp hand and mouthed soothing platitudes.

Leading the charge was a po-faced churchwarden officiously parting the ways with his outstretched arms, clutching his bible in one hand and this he flung left and right as if it was a sword fending off the hordes.

Tam flattened himself against the brickwork to allow the commotion to pass out into the courtyard and slipped inside the cavernous Abbey. He found Plantagenet Halsey standing to one side of a group of chairs, leaning on the head of his Malacca cane, talking with another of the churchwardens. Miranda Bourdon was seated on a chair close-by.

“I regret this incident occurred here before you both,” apologized the churchwarden as Tam approached and waited a little way off. “As you will appreciate, particularly at this time of year, Bath has many elderly inhabitants who are not in the best of health. Those with exceptionally delicate constitutions require the utmost care and attention. Her ladyship could just as easily have taken a turn at the Assembly Rooms as here in the Abbey. And it was far better that she did so here than, say, whilst bathing in the King’s bath. I have every confidence that, God willing, she will be herself again in no time at all.”

He looked expectantly from the old man to the young lady, as if requiring their confirmation and was surprised when Miranda continued to stare straight ahead at the great East window. Her delicate profile was deathly pale while a rapid pulse beat in her long slender throat. It was only when she dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a lace handkerchief that he realized she had been crying. She was so lovely to look at that he allowed his gaze to linger longer than was polite. His little eyes wandered from her tear-stained cheeks to her slim arms, over the fullness of her breasts and down to where her hands were clasped under a very round belly. His eyes widened and flashed up at the old man whose slow lift of bushy eyebrows not only confirmed the warden’s immediate thought but made him fire up red with embarrassment in cheeks and bulbous nose.

“If anyone will make a recover it’ll be Frances Rutherglen,” Plantagenet Halsey stated, aware of his young companion’s distress and more to cover the warden’s acute embarrassment than to provide an opening for further discussion. “The woman has the constitution of an ox and as much feelin’ as a dead cod. Besides, she ain’t as old as she looks. White lead paints and too much snuff has aged her before her time.”

“You know Lady Rutherglen, sir?” the warden asked, feeling he should say something, although he had a great desire to crawl under the nearest vacant chair. “She is one of the more, dare I say it,
acerbic
members of our congregation. But a most generous benefactress.”

“I don’t doubt it. The only way she’ll see the gates of Heaven is to buy ’em!”

The warden forced a laugh. “Now, now, sir! I hardly think this the place to jest about her ladyship’s—”

“Who’s jestin’?” said Plantagenet Halsey to cut him off. He made an upward gesture with his thumb. “He knows only too well what I mean. It’s time we got some fresh air, don’t you agree, Mrs. Bourdon?”

“Perhaps Mrs.—?—Mrs. Bourdon would care to sit a little while longer?” the warden suggested gently. “Lady Rutherglen’s collapse has unsettled her nerves. Most understandable, given the—um—circumstances. Perhaps her ladyship had an unexpected fright? Perhaps a mouse ran out from—”

“Don’t be an ass, man! The woman had a fright all right. But it’d take more than a mouse to frighten Frances Rutherglen.”

Miranda turned wide, glistening blue eyes up at the old man. “Why do you say so, Mr. Halsey?”

“She looked straight at me, that’s why, ma’am.”

Miranda blinked and glanced down at the wet, twisted handkerchief on her lap. “At you? Oh... Yes, yes at you... But why, sir?”

“My outspoken, fools would call ’em radical, opinions on particular topics offend the Quality; especially the stiff-necked matriarchs of Frances Rutherglen’s ilk. If she had her way I’d be clapped up in the Tower.” The old man grinned sheepishly. “I’m sure they think I ain’t fit to enter God’s Temple.”

“Surely not, sir—” began the warden but was interrupted.

“You have a good heart and a clear conscience, Mr. Halsey,” Miranda stated. “Lady Rutherglen has neither...” She made a sudden move to stand and the old man and the churchwarden were quick to assist her. “Thank you. I—I am not quite myself.”

“What you need is fresh air,” Plantagenet Halsey stated. With a nod to the warden and a signal to Tam to follow, he led Miranda across the wide-open expanse of the Abbey, a hand holding her arm above the elbow, the other resting on his Malacca cane. “And a good dish of black tea back at Barr’s will revive us both.”

“Yes, I should like that,” she answered in a distracted voice and permitted the old man to lead her out of doors into the openness of the busy church courtyard.

Lady Rutherglen’s chair had been taken up and was making a slow progress toward the sycamore trees of the Orange Grove, her retainers keeping step with the chairmen. One gentleman with a lace-covered white hand lightly on the chair door was talking earnestly to its suffering occupant. Plantagenet Halsey’s eyes narrowed, taking in this scene but he quickly recovered, remembering his companion, and turned to suggest they continue on their way and found her staring fixedly at the departing chair. A glance at Tam, who shrugged his shoulders in acknowledgement that he, too, was aware of Mrs. Bourdon’s preoccupation, and the old man’s curiosity about the young lady deepened.