Evelyn Richardson (19 page)

The solicitor rose also, most reluctantly. “But the academy… When Lord Granville—I mean, I can help with the disposal of…” He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other as his client’s expression, which had been grim, now grew positively murderous.

“Get out.”

“What? You cannot mean…”

“I said, get out, Mr. Barham. If I need the advice of someone who possesses less courage and fewer resources than I do, I would have consulted my footman. Now, good day, Mr. Barham. You are free to return to the more respectable concerns of the rest of your clients.”

The solicitor gasped, hemmed and hawed for the space of a second or two, then scuttled from the room with a great deal more speed than he had entered it.

It was at this inopportune moment that Margaret Denholme stuck her head around the door to inquire about the journey home.

“Men!” Catherine snatched up a satchel and began furiously stuffing account books and correspondence into it without the least regard for order or neatness.

“A useless set of creatures, to be sure,” the mathematics teacher agreed readily, “but what have they done in particular to upset you this time?”

“Just being themselves—arrogant, spineless, meddling, unhelpful—you know, the usual.”

Margaret was forced to be content with this sweeping generality in spite of her very clear conviction that some very specific grievances had prompted it. But it was equally clear that Catherine was in no mood to elaborate, so stifling her rampant curiosity as best she could, Margaret settled into what she hoped seemed like companionable silence during the carriage ride home.

It was not until they had halted in front of the vicarage that Catherine at last emerged from the fit of abstraction that had consumed her the entire time. “I may need to be out of town for a few days in the near future. I trust that you can see to the academy in my absence?”

Margaret turned, her hand still grasping the handle of the carriage door, and looked at her friend in some alarm. “Nothing serious, I trust?”

“No, just the usual—‘Ugolino’ and his greedy ways. I believe I must go to Oxfordshire to speak with Great-aunt Belinda’s solicitor.” Catherine did her best to sound nonchalant, knowing full well that a solicitor who had drawn up a will many years before his client’s death was hardly likely to be able to help Catherine prove her case, but it sounded reassuring.

“Certainly. I shall be happy to take care of things while you are gone. Is there anything in particular you wish me to attend to?”

“No. Just make sure that Lady Arabella is fully occupied and well amused. I feel certain that she has seen through that selfish young man I told you about and now realizes that he was only after her for her fortune, but young women are very romantic creatures, and handsome, determined young men can be very persuasive. I do not think we have anything more to fear from that quarter, but it would be naive to dismiss it entirely.”

“Very well, then. I shall keep my eye on her and I shall also instruct Olivia to take her shopping regularly. The shops on Milsom Street may fill a young woman’s mind with frippery, but all in all, they can provide an excellent antidote to an unwholesome interest in an unsuitable young man.”

“Thank you, Margaret. I know it pains you to suggest it, but the notion of shopping is a wise one and far more likely to distract Arabella’s thoughts from dangerous channels than Euclid or Pythagoras. I promise to return as quickly as I can; my business is straightforward and should take little time or explanation.”

Chapter Twenty-one

But the more Catherine considered it, the more she doubted that one solicitor would be more helpful than another. Certainly her own, who should to all intents and purposes have had her best interests at heart, had been worse than useless. Who was to say that Great-aunt Belinda’s would be any better, if he were even alive? After all, the last and only time Catherine had seen him, he had barely looked more lively than the woman whose estate he represented. And besides, what did it matter if he was able to prove that it was his client’s intent that her entire estate go to Catherine if she had neglected to set it up as a special trust for her great-niece and then had been so foolish as to predecease that great-niece’s husband?

The journey from the vicarage to the dower house was no more than a mile, but it was long enough for Catherine, racking her brains for a solution to her problem, to recall how she had first learned of Great-aunt Belinda’s death. It had not been the letter from the solicitor that had first brought her the news, but a hasty note written by her great-aunt’s companion informing Catherine that her great-aunt had died in her sleep late the previous evening after having been ill for several days.

Late the previous evening! Catherine sat bolt upright as the carriage drew to a halt in front of the dower house. That was it! The academy was safe after all! Granville had died midmorning of that day and therefore he had predeceased Great-aunt Belinda by possibly as much as twelve hours.

Not waiting for John Coachman to open the door or put down the step, Catherine leapt from the carriage, brushing past Lucy who was anxiously awaiting her.

“Madam, I am so glad you are home, for…”

“Not now, Lucy, I am busy.”

“But Mary… Yes, Madam. Very good, Madam.” Lucy broke off with a crestfallen look. If Lady Catherine, who was always the soul of kindness and consideration, was uncharacteristically brusque, then undoubtedly there was a reason for it. Lucy’s mistress never did anything without a reason.

The maid sighed and went to tell Cook to ready madam’s supper. In good time Lady Catherine would explain it all, but in the meantime, Lucy’s news would wait, for surely whatever was responsible for putting that determined expression on her mistress’s face must be very important indeed to make her behave in such a way.

Meanwhile, Catherine raced into the library and tore open the top drawer of her husband’s account desk. The battered old piece of furniture was one of the few things she had been able to convince Hugo to part with. It had stood in the estate office for as long as her husband could remember and every quarter day, she and he had dispensed the servants’ wages from it.

Hugo, who employed the very expensive services of a supercilious agent, had had no need for such a desk, and his wife, shuddering delicately, had called it a hideously rustic bit of lumber that had no place in a gentleman’s house. So Catherine had brought it with her to the dower house, taking strength and reassurance from its solid, utilitarian bulk and the memories of better days that it brought with it.

Hardly daring to breathe, she pulled out the packet of letters containing all of the correspondence that had to do with Great-aunt Belinda and sifted carefully through it, but the letter was not there.

Frowning in puzzlement, she carried the stack of letters over to a chair by the window and searched through it more carefully this time, examining each piece of paper to make sure it had not stuck to the one below or above it somehow, but the letter still was not there.

Catherine’s heart began to pound uncomfortably. She was a deliberate, careful person who took great pains never to misplace anything if she could help it, especially something as important as a letter announcing her great-aunt’s death. Again, she searched through the stack. Again, she found nothing. She closed her eyes, desperately trying to recall every action she had taken with regard to the letter. Had she put it some other place for some particular purpose? But no, she remembered having received the letter and, after reading it, placing it in the bundle with the rest of Great-aunt Belinda’s correspondence and relying the ribbon carefully around it. Then she had put it back in the desk drawer. When the letter from Great-aunt Belinda’s solicitor had arrived, she had added it to the bundle. The letter from the solicitor was still there; the companion’s letter was not. Catherine was certain that she had never had cause to remove the companion’s letter from the bundle.

Was it possible? Could someone else have removed the letter? No! Such disappearances were the stuff of gothic tales, not a widow’s simple, quiet existence.

“Madam?”

Catherine looked up to see Lucy hovering in the doorway.

“Your supper, Madam. It is ready. Would you like me to bring it to you here?”

“No, thank you, Lucy, I am just coming.” She saw the maid’s anxious expression. “I am sorry, Lucy. You had something to tell me when I first arrived, but I had something else on my mind. What was it you wished to say?”

“Oh, I suppose it is nothing much, really, Madam.” Lucy looked gratified that her mistress had remembered. “But it is Mary. She seems to have just up and left us without so much as a by-your-leave. Her few belongings are gone. She said nothing to anybody, and after you were so kind to take her in when Lord Granville let her go. The ingratitude of some people—but then she always was a sly little thing.”

“'A sly little thing.' Hmmm.”

“What is it, Madam?” Attuned to her mistress’s every mood, Lucy felt rather than saw the arrested expression on Catherine’s face.

“I wonder.” Catherine stared thoughtfully out the window for a minute or two. “Can you discover, without anyone’s being the wiser of course, if she happened to stop by Granville Park after she left us?”

“But why would she stop at the Park if they were so unfeeling as to let her go without a reference in the first place?”

“Because I am not so sure that they did let her go. She may very well have been in their employ when she came to us.”

“What? How?”

Catherine smiled grimly at Lucy’s astonishment. “I will say this once, and only to you, Lucy, for I have no proof, but a certain document is missing. It is a document I placed carefully in my desk some time ago and I have not taken it out again. Now that document is missing, and so is the maid who showed up suddenly on our doorstep not long ago, which leads me to the possible conclusion that she stole the document, a document whose contents would put an end to Lord Granville’s latest and nastiest scheme. Now, do you think you can find out if she returned, even for a moment, to Granville Park after leaving us?”

Lucy’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “But of course I can. John Coachman’s nephew is a stableboy at the Park. He is a likely-looking lad who never misses a thing. He will be able to tell us. Shall I send for him?”

“No. Do not do anything that might cause comment. But if John were to happen to hear in the course of things that his nephew happened to see Mary at Granville Park after she left here, it would go a long way toward clearing something up for me.”

“Very well, Madam.” Lucy brightened as a sudden thought struck her. “Now, Sukey in the kitchen was quite friendly with Mary when she was here. She was always begging Mary to tell her how they did things at the Park, as though Mary would know.” Lucy sniffed disparagingly. “Perhaps Sukey knows where Mary is.”

“I think it is best if you say nothing at all to Sukey about this. All we need to ascertain at the moment is if Mary returned to the Park. John Coachman’s nephew is as reliable a source as any and less likely to be noticed than others might be.”

“I understand, Madam.”

Catherine barely touched her supper that evening, picking at it here and there as she leafed through “Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Committee Appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the State of Mendicity and Vagrancy in the Metropolis” in
The Edinburgh Review
. But her mind was not on the words before her. In fact, she hardly saw the pages at all as she flipped through them one after another. What was she to do now that the letter was gone—either destroyed or in Hugo Granville’s possession, but most certainly not in hers?

How was she to prove that she did have sole right to Great-aunt Belinda’s fortune? Clearly it was a waste of time to worry herself over the loss of the companion’s letter now that it was gone, but at least thinking about it had not been entirely wasted, for she was able to recall its contents in minutest detail. Great-aunt Belinda had died before Granville. Of that Catherine was now absolutely certain. She just had to find another way to prove it.

Unfortunately, Catherine was also able to recall that the companion, a Miss Harriet Smith, had mentioned accepting another position somewhere in Lancashire. While it was possible that someone in the neighborhood near Great-aunt Belinda’s handsome manor house might remember where that position was, it was also highly unlikely. Great-aunt Belinda had been a woman of scholarly and reclusive habits who had shown little patience with the mundane interests and trivial concerns of her neighbors. She had employed only the smallest of staffs, all of whom were undoubtedly dispersed far and wide to other households.

The most Catherine could hope for was to discover that the exact time of her Great-aunt Belinda’s death had been recorded somewhere, in the parish register, perhaps. She knew that Margaret Denholme’s father, who was most punctilious about such things, insisted on absolute accuracy and detail in recording the time and cause of death in the registers. For others, though—in her own native parish in Yorkshire, for example—the simple notation of the date of burial sufficed. If luck were with her, the vicar in charge of Great-aunt Belinda’s parish would be a man who subscribed to the Reverend William Denholme’s view of such matters.

Whatever the case, it was clear to Catherine that it was incumbent upon her to travel to Oxfordshire, for there was no one else she could trust to carry out such a delicate and time-consuming investigation. She had warned Margaret Denholme that such might be the case; now all she had to do was prepare the staff at the dower house.

“But, Madam,” Lucy protested, “what if John Coachman’s nephew brings him news of Mary? John Coachman will be gone.”

“His news will just have to keep until I return. With any luck, the journey I am about to take will provide me with the same information that was in the document Mary took, if indeed she took it. Remember, I have no proof as yet, only my suspicions, so we must proceed with caution. In the end it will be sufficient to know that Mary returned to her employer after she left us at the dower house.”