Death at St. James's Palace (34 page)

“That’s because I’m still hoping.”

But on this occasion John was to be disappointed. When the great door in the central tower opened, the footmen who answered informed him solemnly that His Grace, the Duke of Guernsey had taken a coach and gone into town.

“This is rather upsetting,” John said, frowning. “You see, I am here on the business of Sir John Fielding, the Principal Magistrate. Is there no way I might be allowed in?”

“No, Sir. His Grace would not permit.”

“Oh damme. Well, when may I call? When will His Grace return?”

“We do not discuss His Grace’s business with strangers, Sir.”

“Oh Perkins, don’t be so pompous,” called a female voice from somewhere in the Great Hall. “Who is there?”

The two footmen looked at one another in consternation. “It’s Her Grace,” whispered Perkins.

John stared, startled, thinking that he had not heard aright.
“Her
Grace?” he said. “Is that the Duke’s mother?”

“His Grace’s mother is dead, Sir,” said the pompous Perkins. “I refer to His Grace’s wife.”

“Wife?” exclaimed the Apothecary. “But he’s so young. I didn’t even know he had one.”

“Oh do stop gossiping, all of you,” said the female voice, now much closer at hand. Then there was a quick light step and the two footmen bowed in unison as a young woman appeared in the doorway and gave John the most ravishing smile.

“Good day, Mr. Rawlings,” she said.

It was Lucinda.

Chapter 22

T
he shock was so intense that the Apothecary literally reeled against the doorpost while Irish Tom, gazing down from the coachman’s box, shouted out, “So there you are you saucy minx! I wondered where you’d been hiding yourself.”

Lucinda flashed her wisteria-coloured eyes in his direction. “I’m sorry, Tom.” She turned back to John. “And I apologise to you as well, Mr. Rawlings. To leave you in the lurch after you had been so good to me was utterly inexcusable.”

He smiled at her weakly. “May I come inside? I think it might be easier to talk.”

“Of course.” Lucinda turned back to the servants, who were standing agape. “Perkins, Ruff, Mr. Rawlings is a friend of mine and must be treated as such. His coachman is to be entertained in the kitchens. He and I will take champagne in the orangery.”

“Very good, your Grace.”

“I can’t believe it,” said John, following Lucinda through the Great Hall and on towards the back of the huge house where an exquisite orangery with extravagantly ornamented garden seats and tables within, had been built across its entire length.

The guinea bright hair, short still but growing longer, glistened in the light as Lucinda led the way to a cool spot and there sat down, motioning the Apothecary to do likewise.

“I am sorry to shock you like this. I still haven’t got used to it myself.”

“I think you had better start at the beginning.” He paused, and added, “Your Grace.”

“Please. I am Lucinda to you, and always will be. And I will tell you everything just as soon as the servants have gone.”

For footmen were approaching, bearing trays and buckets of ice, all of them bowing deferentially to the beautiful young Duchess and her visitor.

“And to think you were my housemaid,” said John won- deringly.

Lucinda raised her glass. “I shall never forget how you took me in, Mr. Rawlings, nor Mrs. Rawlings’s kindness either. If I can repay you at any time in the future, the pleasure will be mine.”

They clinked glasses and drank. “Now tell me your story,” the Apothecary asked.

“The early part you know. Lady Mary gave birth to me when she was fifteen, out of wedlock, a total ruination to her marriage prospects. I was immediately put out to foster parents and there I stayed until one day, during the school holidays, a brother I didn’t even know I had came to join me. He had just started at the Brompton Park School but was proving to be so sickly that there was cause for concern. That was when my mother called on me to talk about him. Do you know, it was the first time I had met her in my entire life.”

“Then why were you so loyal?”

Lucinda shrugged elegant shoulders. “I don’t know. I think perhaps it was because she was what she was and I found it impossible to hate her.”

“What about Fred? How did he feel about her?”

“Oh he loved her, poor little boy. But he loathed his stepfather and Goward detested Fred, called him a fat slug and forbade him the house. I was being educated at a girl’s school but when Frederick got ill, Lady Mary made me dress as a boy and accompany him to Brompton Park. That was the way she salved her conscience.”

“You know that your mother is dead?” John asked.

“Yes, Jack Morocco told Michael. It’s strange, isn’t it. She treated me less well than her horrible lap dogs, yet my heart was so heavy when I heard the news. How odd that invisible thread is, one longs to snap it and yet it is almost impossible to break.”

“You were very good to her in so many ways, Lucinda. She deserved none of your kindness but you gave it without stint. Why, you even cleaned her gown for her when she was sick at the investiture, didn’t you?” The Apothecary looked at his former servant over the rim of his glass, never taking his gaze from her face.

For the first time Lucinda’s composure broke. The delicate skin flushed, the lovely eyes darkened, she looked at the floor.

“How did you know?”

“I had an inkling some while ago that the thirteenth page boy might have been you. But I didn’t know for certain until last night. It was then that I realised that Frederick’s appearance had altered completely through illness, and that you had gone to the investiture to keep an eye on him. Of course I saw you there, supporting your mother when she was vomitous, to use her word, but I didn’t recognise you. But there were clues. Mary Ann remarked on the eye colour of the page who had seen them in. Your husband - how odd it is to use that word - knew perfectly well that you were present but lied to protect you. Somebody ran away just after Goward fell to his death. It was you, of course, hurrying to get back to my house before the alarm was raised. Then there was your absence from Nassau Street, where you should have been all along, lighting the fires and preparing for my return.” John paused and drained his glass. “I rather believe, Lucinda, that you know who it was who killed your mother’s husband.”

She was very white but she met his eyes. “Yes, I know. But I shall never tell as long as I live.”

“You don’t have to. The question has already been answered.”

She smiled humourlessly. “Do you want to hear the rest of my story? How I turned from a servant into a Duchess?”

“I would like to very much.”

“As you probably guessed, it was Michael’s half-brother.

Arnold, who raped me in my bed. Then he was foolish enough to boast of it and the Duke gave
him
a sound beating for his pains. Anyway, Fred was too ill to abandon in that terrible place so I ran away from your house and went to get him. I had a little money so we were able to stay at an inn for a few days, during which time I wrote to Michael at Fishergate Place. He wrote back and invited me to stay, wanting to make amends for his brother’s gross treatment of me.”

“Then I saw her, the most beautiful girl in the world, and I married her, not only to protect her but because I had fallen in love with her.”

It was the Duke, who had approached them silently, and now stood staring at John as if he might call for him to be thrown out at any moment.

Lucinda got to her feet and flung her arms round him, then they kissed without inhibition and John was strangely touched by their youthful passion and obvious adoration of each other.

He stood up. “Good afternoon, your Grace. The Duchess is telling me all that happened after she left my house.”

Michael turned to his bride. “Are you quite happy about that?”

“Oh yes, sweetheart. This man rescued me when I had run away. Then I ran away from him. I owe him an explanation. Please come and sit with us. I’ll call for another glass.”

She was sure of herself again and John thought how easily she had slipped into the role of peeress of the realm, then realised that her grandfather had been the Earl of Grimsby. “May I ask how you got permission to marry when you’re both under twenty-one?” he said with a smile.

The Duke laughed shortly. “I’m afraid we didn’t bother. Lucinda’s mother was hardly likely to make any objection as she had never acknowledged the girl. My parents are dead and I have been in charge of my own destiny for several years now, so there was no one to raise a voice against my actions. We married in Marybone church where my family has a pew and I am not exactly unknown. The vicar was delighted and accepted a large fee. So who is to object?”

“Nobody really.”

“Precisely.” The Duke waited until another hovering servant had gone. “So, Mr. Rawlings, are you completely satisfied?”

The Apothecary nodded. “Certainly.” He paused, then asked, “Where is the Earl of Lomond now? I take it he is also under this roof.”

The young couple exchanged a very strange look and a clear picture came into the Apothecary’s mind of a changeling, lying on a chaise on a stone balcony and peering over the balustrade at John’s departing carriage.

Lucinda spoke. “Yes, Fred’s here.”

“Would it be possible for me to speak to him?”

The Duke answered for her. “I’m afraid Lord Lomond is ill. He is not receiving visitors.”

John looked straight at Lucinda. “He has the wasting disease, doesn’t he?”

She didn’t answer but turned to her young husband for assurance.

The Apothecary persisted, certain now that they wouldn’t ask him to leave. “It is my belief that his disease has been self inflicted. That Frederick began to fast after his stepfather banned him from the house, round about the time that his portrait was painted by Julius Witherspoon. I think that the child began by refusing to eat and soon it became such a habit with him that he could no longer stop himself. Am I right?”

The Duke answered with another question. “You know of this illness?”

“Yes, I have seen it before. Once or twice. It usually affects young women, those of a particularly brooding nature. But enough ill treatment from a brutal parent or bullying contemporary could bring it about in a boy.”

“What is it called, this malaise?”

“It has no name. It is simply self-inflicted wasting disease.”

“Can it be cured?” asked Lucinda.

John looked grim. “Rarely. It seems like some terrible insidious spider, wrapping its long legs round its victim and never letting go.”

“Fred does have it,” she answered, and started to cry, quite quietly but with enormous grief.

Her husband crossed over and put his arms round her. “She has been trying to protect Frederick from it for years, poor girl. She has coaxed him and loved him and fed him and given him all that she possibly could. But now she can do no more. Mr. Rawlings, my tragic little brother-in-law, once known as Fat Fred, weighs no more than a child of four.”

“Dear God,” said John, and thought to himself, for at least the hundredth time, that the Gowards, husband and wife, had indeed deserved to die.

“He’s seen a physician?”

“Dr. Bolsover comes daily. He is highly respected and has treated my family for many a year. He has tried everything in his power but none of his physicks, none of his powders, can persuade Frederick to eat. He is under the crazed delusion that he still looks fat. He believes that his mother - he has no idea that the bitch has died, incidentally - will receive him at home once he is thin enough.”

“God’s mercy,” was all the Apothecary could say.

The Duke went on, and there was a break in his voice, “The boy’s arms and legs are like sticks, obscene in their thinness. His face is so hollow that his teeth look too big for him. By Christ, I tell you, Sir, that I did not kill George Goward at the investiture. But had I known then what I know now, I would have done.”

“I think most present on that occasion would say the same.”

Lucinda raised her tear-stained face, which had been buried in her husband’s waist, where she sat and he stood.

“Michael, do you think Mr. Rawlings should visit Fred? Perhaps he could think of something, something that Dr. Bolsover might have overlooked.”

The Apothecary shook his head. “If a respected physician cannot bring about a cure there is scant chance of my doing so.”

“But is it worth a try?”

“I would hate to disappoint you.”

“Oh please, Mr. Rawlings. Please, please, please.” She was begging and it was pathetic.

But still John was reluctant. “Your Grace, Lucinda, once the wasting disease has its victim in its grip, there is nothing anybody can do.”

“Do it to please her,” whispered the Duke.

“Very well, if you insist. But I have no medical bag with me. This was a call on behalf of the Public Office. I simply had to check that my theory was correct. That you, Lucinda, were the thirteenth page boy.”

“But how did you know I would be at Fishergate Place?”

“I didn’t. But I did glimpse Frederick as I left the other day, though I didn’t make the connection that it was him until last night. And I knew that wherever he was, you would be close at hand.”