Henrietta (17 page)

“You can’t,” drawled the husky voice. “But if you do not do what I say, I shall drag you before the Bow Street magistrates for impersonating a lady of quality.”

She looked round nervously. “All right, my lord. I’ll tell you. But not here. They watches me every move.” Fright was disolving her voice into its normal Cockney whine. “I know you is to be at Raneleigh with Miss Sandford. There is a temple there… a sort of Greek thing… near the river…” She suddenly saw the burly footman approaching and wrenched out of his grasp. “Twelve o’clock, my lord…” The slight whisper came back to him faintly. He felt a hand on his arm. “Everything all right, my lord?” said the footman. There was a hint of underlying menace in his voice.

His lordship raised his quizzing glass. “Take your hand from my arm, fellow,” he said icily. “You are soiling my coat.”

The footman looked narrowly from Lord Reckford to the fake Miss Sandford who was to all intents and purposes wholly absorbed in a rubber of piquet. He gave a surly grunt and lumbered back to his post by the door.

Lord Reckford collected Jeremy and suggested that they should leave quickly. They walked along, discussing the mystery of Henrietta’s impersonator. “Do you think she will come?” asked Jeremy.

“Of course,” replied his friend cynically. “Money rules her world as much as our own.”

Henrietta was tired of Raneleigh. All the social world flocked to the pleasure gardens after the theater to see and be seen. The ritual was to stroll down one crowded walk bowing or cutting various acquaintance as the case might be and then stroll back going through the whole process again. Miss Scattersworth was surrounded by an audience of bright young men who danced around her in their tall heels, shrieking with laughter and clutching their long walking canes like so many demented Bo-Peeps. The spinster was enjoying her fame as a wit immensely and was almost as noisy as her admirers. She had again begun to dress in clothes too young for her years and had discarded her caps and… oh, horrors… Henrietta could not believe her eyes. For the one sedate thing in all her vagaries of dress had been Miss Mattie’s prim grey hair. Now her head was covered in a mass of improbably golden curls held in place with a baby blue silk ribbon tied in a bow over her left ear.

Henrietta writhed in embarrassment. People were beginning to look at her oddly as well, since the whispers about her supposed debauches in gambling clubs had gone the rounds. She sighed with relief as she recognized the tall figure of Lord Reckford coming towards her. He bent over her hand and then whispered quietly that he had some news for her. “I shall ask Miss Scattersworth for permission to take you for a stroll although Mr. Holmes is coming with us and should be chaperone enough.”

His lordship looked round in a puzzled way. “Why, where is Miss Scattersworth?” Henrietta waved her fan faintly in the spinster’s direction. Lord Reckford bit his lip to hide a smile. He broke through Miss Mattie’s twittering ring of admirers. “I have come to beg your permission to walk a little way with Miss Sandford,” he said in chilly formal accents, embarrassed and irritated by the ring of foppish and painted faces.

“Why, of course, you naughty, naughty man,” said Miss Mattie with a roguishness awful to behold. She tried to bat her eyelashes at him but she had painted them so thick with blacking that they stuck together. The Beau bowed and left her surrounded by the waving handkerchiefs of her court as they vied for the honor of prying her eyelashes apart.

Henrietta walked a little way, flanked by Lord Reckford and Jeremy Holmes, pleasantly aware of the envious glances cast in her direction. When they had left the crowds behind, Lord Reckford outlined what had happened and their discovery of her impersonator.

Henrietta clasped her hands. “But that is marvellous. Let us go quickly.”

They hurried along the more deserted walks. Lord Reckford noticed gratefully that Henrietta was too absorbed in her mission to notice or be embarrassed by the sounds of noisy love-making in the bushes around them.

At the far end of the gardens stood the temple, shining faintly in the moonlight. They mounted the short flight of steps and went inside.

A couple of lovers hurriedly leapt to their feet, adjusting their dress. The woman seemed more enraged with the interruption than the man and she departed shouting raucous advice to Henrietta about how to cope with two men at the same time. Henrietta’s escorts were thankful to note that she did not understand one word the woman was saying.

Henrietta sat down on the bench vacated by the lovers, Jeremy sat next to her, and Lord Reckford leaned against a pillar and stared out at the muddy waters of the Thames. After what seemed to Henrietta to be hours, Lord Reckford said in a flat voice, “She isn’t coming Jeremy. We should have waited for her at the club and taken the risk. Damme, if I ever find out who’s behind this, I’ll murder him with my own hands.”

Henrietta rose wearily to her feet and stumbled. Jeremy caught her round the waist and led her gently down the steps of the temple. He turned to address a remark to his friend and received such a blazing look of rage that he stepped back a pace. “Oho! So that’s the way the land lies,” thought Jeremy.

The silent threesome made their way back into the crowds. Miss Mattie had gone on to a party with her admirers. “What! At two in the morning!” raged Lord Reckford stuffily, much to the amusement of his friend. “Come, Miss Sandford, I shall escort you home. Goodnight, Jeremy. I shall call on you tomorrow.”

“Wait a bit,” said Mr. Holmes, an imp of mischief dancing in his eyes. “I ain’t your servant, Guy. I shall come with you. Want to make sure Henrietta’s right and tight.”

Lord Reckford’s thin black brows snapped together and he gave in with bad grace. Jeremy chatted pleasantly all the way to Henrietta’s home, leaving his furious friend to curse him mentally for a prattling idiot.

They waited patiently while Henrietta searched in her reticule and produced a heavy key. “Why on earth don’t you tell at least one servant to wait up for you,” snapped his lordship.

Henrietta looked at him in surprise. “I do not think it fair, my lord. I am not a child, you know. I have opened my front door and put myself to bed for some years now. Why, it would be the height of selfishness to expect my butler to lose his night’s sleep to perform such a simple chore for me.”

“Dash it all,” protested Jeremy. “That’s what they’re paid for.”

“They are not paid to perform unreasonable duties or to work unreasonable hours,” said Henrietta. “And may I remind you, they are
my
servants.”

She opened the door and they followed her into the hall. Henrietta turned and held out her hand, “I must thank you both…” Then she broke off and put a frightened hand to her mouth. “What’s that?” From the drawingroom came the sound of an irregular tap, tap, tap.

The very house seemed to hold its breath as if waiting for their next move.

Henrietta gave an impatient shrug as if to dismiss her fears and strode forward and flung open the double doors of the drawingroom. She stood for a second, framed in the doorway, then she fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Her impersonator swung gently in the breeze from the long open windows. She was hanging from a belt round her neck which was strapped to the Waterford chandelier. Her protruding eyes gazed glassily round the room as her body slowly swung round and round, her tiny feet tap, tap tapping rhythmically against the chair she had been standing on. And with every revolution, the crystals above her sent out a chattering unearthly tinkling like the voices of wicked fairies mocking the dead.

A note lay on the escritoire by the window. While Jeremy helped Henrietta to a sofa, the Beau crossed over and picked it up.

The writing straggled wildly across the page. “My dear Miss Sandford,” he read. “The man you are seeking is Guy Reckford. He plans to drive you mad because he is mad himself. Ask him what became of Lucinda. I can stand it no more. God forgive me….”

Lord Reckford crumpled the parchment in his hand, and stared unseeingly at a portrait of one of Mrs.

Tankerton’s simpering ancestors over the fireplace. Slowly he took down a tall wax candle from the mantleshelf and held it under the paper. His arm was seized by Jeremy Holmes. “For God’s Sake, Guy, what’s in the note?”

He shrugged his friend off and dropped the letter on the hearth where it crackled and blazed. “Later, Jeremy,” he said softly with a glance at the slowly recovering Henrietta. “Later.”

There was a commotion in the hallway outside as Miss Scattersworth returned with her admirers. Lord Reckford dashed to bar the door but he was too late.

To his surprise, Miss Mattie neither screamed nor fainted. She glanced quickly from the grotesque swinging figure to Henrietta and then back to her shocked and twittering entourage. “Home gentlemen,” she said firmly, hustling and shooing them before her. Then she returned to the drawingroom and looked at Lord Reckford, seeming suddenly old and tired. “I shall take Henrietta to her bedchamber while you summon the magistrate, my lord.”

She waited until Lord Reckford and Jeremy had left and then turned to Henrietta. “Come, my dear. Come to bed and I shall find something to make you sleep. Come with Mattie.”

Henrietta rose to her feet like a sleepwalker. She was just about to leave the room when the letter which had been burning merrily on the hearth gave a final spurt of flame and went out.

Shaking off Miss Scattersworth’s arm, she walked over to the fireplace and picked up the charred paper. It had not burned completely and a few trails of handwriting stood out sharply.

“…Reckford… mad… what became of Lucinda….”

T
WO DAYS HAD
passed and the mystery seemed darker than ever. The dead girl was identified as a high class prostitute and interest in the case promptly died as far as law and order were concerned. The girl had obviously committed suicide and London was well rid of her.

Henrietta had got rid of the remains of the letter and confided her fears to Miss Mattie. What if the elegant Beau himself were tormenting her as part of some mad game played out by a bored aristocrat? After all, look at the insane and violent crimes that had been committed by the Mohawks. Seeing that her friend, although worried and frightened, at least showed no signs of succumbing to the vapors, Miss Scattersworth had volunteered to solve the mystery of what had happened to Lucinda by discreetly questioning her new acquaintances, many of whom, as she pointed out, were confirmed gossips.

Waiting for her return, Henrietta wished she had never enlisted the help of her friend. She found herself not wanting to know anything at all about Lucinda.

She heard Miss Mattie’s brisk step in the hall and sat bolt upright in her chair. Please let him not be guilty of anything, she murmured to herself.

Miss Mattie trotted in and then seemed to spend an unconscionable amount of time divesting herself of many fluttering shawls and several bulky packages.

“Well, well, Henrietta,” said the spinster finally, sitting down with a bump. “These Roman sandals of mine are so pretty but I declare, after any amount of walking, they do cut into one’s legs so.”

“A plague on your Roman sandals,” snapped Henrietta. “Honestly, Mattie. I’ve been sitting here all morning nearly
dying
with apprehension. What about Lucinda?”

Miss Mattie looked rather wildly about the room. “I really would rather not tell you, my dear, and gossip is never reliable and…”

“I would rather hear it no matter what,” said Henrietta quietly.

Miss Mattie sighed. She began, “Remember I told you that Lucinda Braintree went off with the Marquis of Glenmorrison. Well, it seems that after a year, she had a hankering to see Beau Reckford and managed to get herself invited to a house party at which he was to be present. It was somewhere in Essex, I forget the name of the people. Anyway, it seemed as if the affair was to begin again. Lucinda certainly seemed eager enough but after a few days, Lord Reckford was obviously trying not to be alone in her company.

“Then one night, Lucinda could be heard sobbing and screaming in Lord Reckford’s bedroom. The following days, she avoided everyone, but could be seen walking and walking round the grounds with her dress muddy and her hair in a mess. Lord Reckford cut short his visit and returned to Town and afterwards she went completely berserk. She ran down the driveway after his carriage, cursing and screaming and he… he never even turned his head.

“Lucinda grew worse and worse and was finally committed to the madhouse.”

Henrietta heaved a sigh of relief. “Come now, Mattie, women don’t just turn mad over night.”

Miss Scattersworth looked at her doubtfully. She said, “But, my dear, I can see it all. Perhaps they were in a great Gothic castle with… well, you know… bats flying from the battlements and dead gnarled trees all over the park.

“‘I spurn you,’ says the handsome lord. ‘Have pity on me,’ she screams. ‘’Tis only you I love.’ ‘Away, woman,’ he snarls. And her poor mind becomes unhinged and…”

“Really, Mattie, if you go on in this strain I shall think that
your
mind has become unhinged. I shall forget about the whole business. After all, Lord Reckford has been a victim himself. Do you not remember when his staff was drugged and he was imprisoned in his room?”

Miss Mattie shook her brassy curls, “We have only his word for it. He could have made the whole thing up in order to worm his way into our confidence. Perhaps, I could investigate…”

“Enough!” cried Henrietta, getting to her feet. “Not another word. I am very grateful to you for your efforts, but please let the subject be forgotten.” She paused in the doorway but Miss Mattie was engrossed in removing her tortured foot from its Roman sandal and did not look up.

Perhaps Miss Mattie would have dropped her latest role of Bow Street Runner had it not been for the unexpected visit of Mr. Symes. Mr. Symes explained that the vicar had kindly let him have a free hour in Town while he visited his tailor. He did not, however, explain that Henry Sandford had the irritating habit of using his curate to carry his many parcels back to Nethercote.