Hounds of Autumn (7 page)

Next she moved to the two long tables. She guessed that this would be where Camille’s current projects were. Near a roll of tubing, a box of ph test strips and a spare mechanical limb of some sort, she found a prototype of Camille’s battery. She knew that Camille had been working on a cadmium and nickel battery that could be used over and over again. But to see it was extraordinary.

According to the notes, the cadmium and nickel electrodes were placed in a potassium hydroxide solution. An aqueous electrolyte that was alkaline? She had never heard of such a thing.

She took these notes also and crammed them in with the rest, immediately regretting it, as the reticule became impossible to close. She pulled a few pages out, folded them and slipped them into the top of her stocking. She mashed the reticule under her palm until it was small enough to pull the drawstring closed. She would have to remember not to open it until she was in her own room.

She looked back at the battery. Potassium hydroxide was expensive to obtain, though not prohibitively so, for someone of Camille’s or her own station. She glanced around the room and found a shelf containing a few bottles. Rummaging through, she saw that the small potassium hydroxide bottle was almost empty, though nearby was a bottle of murky fluid marked “13.5.” Curious.

She grabbed the box of ph strips from the work table. She opened the 13.5 bottle and was greeted by a murky, watery smell. She dipped one strip into the 13.5 liquid and set the strip aside. Then she tipped the potassium hydroxide bottle until she could wet the other strip, which she set beside the first. She looked over Camille’s books and through other shelves and boxes while she waited. Finding nothing but assorted wiring and gears, she came back to the strips. The strips were nearly identical shades of deep blue. Interesting.

Returning to the workbench, she noted with interest that many of the parts used in the projects were unevenly worn. Old parts were mixed with new, indicating that some were re-used from elsewhere. She could even spot rust on some, especially a spool playback machine similar to the one Ambrose owned and a household mechanical that stood in one corner. The Grangers were wealthy. Why would Camille need to re-purpose old parts? Perhaps Mr. Granger kept her on a restricted allowance. And if he was as controlling as Chloe imagined, Camille was fortunate to have a room to build in at all.

Footsteps came down the hall, but passed by. Time was short. She tore through boxes, finally finding one with a notebook. It was too large for her to take with her and she cursed under her breath. She paged through it and tore out a few pages, which she folded and crammed into the bodice of her dress. Her eye caught a small black wooden box which had been hidden beneath the notebook and assorted parts. Opening it, she found a stack of bills resting in the red velvet interior. She thumbed through it. It was a handsome sum. And all of the bills faced the same direction. Odd to have such care taken when the rest of the room was a disaster.

She heard footsteps, and threw the box back and tossed the notebook on top.

“Pardon me,” said a voice. Chloe spun around to see the housekeeper in the doorway, scowling. “Guests are not allowed in Mrs. Granger’s rooms.”

“I was merely trying to help. You have a broken garden mechanical, and I can fix it easily enough. Save you a trip to Lydford’s to repair it.”

“That is not necessary, thank you. I must ask you to rejoin the guests downstairs.”

“Thank you. I will do that shortly. I only need a minute or two more.” She grabbed a handful of wiring and moved back to the workbench.

“Please, mum.” Something in the housekeeper’s voice was plaintive. Chloe looked up. “You really mustn’t be here. The master will be furious. He doesn’t want anyone in this room.”

Chloe hesitated.

“Please.”

She couldn’t afford to anger Mr. Granger, not when there was so much she wanted here. She put down the wiring, cleaned her hands on a nearby rag and followed the housekeeper downstairs.

Chapter 10

D
ownstairs, Ambrose was waiting for
her. “Robert returned twenty minutes ago. Where were you?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, and took his arm.

They proceeded with the group to the waiting carriages. The gleaming black hearse was four carriages ahead of theirs. Matched horses pulled the hearse, their sleek black sides shining in the sunlight. Their harnesses were festooned with black ribbons and feathers. The driver was finely dressed and the hearse itself was beautifully decorated in black and silver. If Mr. Granger had suspected his wife of having a lover, he had not retaliated by scrimping on funeral expenses.

The group that assembled at the church was smaller than the one that had been at the Granger home. For the second time in as many days, Chloe found herself in the Aynesworth pew. At the front of the church, Mr. Granger sat in the first pew. He did not look to the right or the left, but kept his eyes fixed on the vicar, his hymn book or on the floor.

Chloe was torn. She half pitied him. Aside from herself, he had been the only person who appeared saddened by Camille’s death. He had allowed her to have a whole room of the house as a laboratory and had thrown her a lavish funeral. She remembered the books on Camille’s laboratory shelves, and how completely unsuitable they were for a woman. Aside from Ambrose, she had never thought a man could allow such freedoms for his wife. It was his sacred duty to guard her, physically, mentally and spiritually. But Mr. Granger had allowed it.

Someone had murdered his wife, and now everyone in the church occasionally glanced at him, wondering if he had killed her. The rumors must have been painful for him. If the Aynesworth servants were any gauge of public opinion, the scandalous idea that Camille was going to run away with her paramour was all over town. She thought of the box of carefully kept money in the laboratory.

But then, Mr. Granger had been unkind to Camille, monitoring her letters and driving her to whatever caused her to be out on the moor at night. Maybe she had been fleeing him. But if she had, why would she have left the money back in her laboratory?

Chloe tried to focus on the service, but her mind was not on the hereafter. Her concern was for the living. At the end of the service, six men at the front rose and carried Camille’s coffin down the aisle. The vicar followed them, with Mr. Granger last. He grasped his brass-knobbed walking stick and moved down the aisle with a limp that proved the stick was not merely decorative. She had not noticed the limp at the house earlier.

The people filed out of the church, forming a crowd around the door. As the Aynesworth pew was near the front, they were pressed in the midst of the crowd for a few minutes. Chloe listened for strains of French, hoping that Camille had family present, but she heard none.

“A puff of sulfurous yellow smoke, I tell you,” said a young man. “Every time they disappear.”

“That’s poppycock. Don’t repeat things like that, especially in church,” said a young woman who had the same black hair and freckles as the young man.

“No, it’s true. The pair of them go from Okehampton to Tavistock, and back again. Have to pick a single blade of grass each time. When the hill is bare, then their penance will be done,” he said.

“There’s nothing out there and you know it. I’m not a little girl anymore and you can’t scare me with ghost stories.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you lived out there like I do,” said a tiny woman with wild gray hair and large square teeth. “You’ve seen things. I’ve known you since you were small and you told me. You know it. You don’t have to act like you don’t.”

“Oh, come now. You still leave out saucers of milk for the piskies,” said the girl.

They passed out of earshot, and Chloe and Ambrose were able to move into the churchyard where the group assembled around the gravesite. As the vicar spoke of ashes and dust, Ambrose touched Chloe’s arm and pointed discreetly behind them.

She gasped. There were prints in the mud with four marks in front and a perfectly oval pad at the base. They were identical to the ones at the bog. They ran along the edge of the churchyard, and then vanished into the gorse behind it. So the hound was still functional and apparently still wandering the area.

Men with ropes lowered the coffin into the grave, and a few women sniffed and dabbed their eyes with lacy handkerchiefs. Mr. Granger was dry-eyed as he stared at the lid of the coffin, deep in the dark earth. The crowd started to disperse to return to the Granger house for the obligatory funeral meal, which would undoubtedly be more lavish than the lighter fare served earlier. Mr. Granger remained, his hands clasped in front of him on the knob of his walking stick. Chloe thought that the tip of his nose looked pinker than it had been before.

She wanted to follow the hound tracks to see if it was perhaps nearby, but there were too many people about. The black-haired brother and sister were arguing nearby.

“Look there,” said the man. “Those tracks. See? It’s the churchgrims. They should have buried her at a crossroads.”

“That’s for suicides, you dolt,” said his sister.

“Then what are those?”

“How should I know? But I’m hungry. Let’s be going before the entire roast is taken.” She pulled his arm.

Ambrose walked Chloe across the churchyard and to the road, where a row of carriages awaited.

“Would you mind if we went straight home and missed the luncheon?” She would have said that she didn’t feel well, but it would be a lie. Physically, she was well.

Ambrose instructed the driver to take them to the Aynesworth house. Once they were ensconced side by side within the privacy of the carriage, Ambrose raised an eyebrow.

“Would you like to share with me what you have in your handbag?”

She blushed and hesitated for a moment before opening it. She hoped he would not be upset with her. Ambrose whistled low as she handed the stack of papers. Then she reached into her stocking to draw out another paper, which made him chuckle. And finally, she pulled pages out of her bodice, and he gave a wicked laugh.

“Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?” he said with a small, mischievous smile.

“Not to visit the queen, I assure you. I wanted to see Camille’s rooms. I found her laboratory and discovered these.”

After perusing the pages, he put half of the papers into his coat pockets.

“I’ll carry these to the house for you,” he said, handing the rest back to her. She fitted them back into her reticule.

“Unfortunately, there are so many more notebooks and things in Camille’s laboratory. I could only grab these. I need to see more. There was just so much.”

“Were you discovered?”

“Yes, but only by a maid and the housekeeper. And she seemed so frightened of Mr. Granger that I doubt she’ll tell him I was up there.”

“Then why don’t you want to go for the luncheon?”

She wouldn’t usually pass up such luxurious fair as would surely be on offer at the Granger home. And she was dreadfully hungry.

“It’s the people. They’re all, well … too happy. Enjoying themselves too much.”

His smile faded and he looked out the window. “Yes, I think it was more a party for many of them.”

“I just want to go home,” she said. He took her hand and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

Chapter 11

C
hloe closed her bedroom door
behind her and pulled out the note pages from her reticule. She unfolded them and laid them between the pages of a large hardbound art book on a side table before ringing for her lady’s maid.

Miss Haynes entered and helped Chloe out of the dress she had worn to the funeral and into a more relaxed blue dress for the afternoon.

“I’m glad you thought to pack that one,” Chloe said as Miss Haynes shook out the gray dress, examined it for rips or stains and hung it up.

“Well, I certainly didn’t think you’d need it for a funeral. But it’s one of your more versatile dresses. A white ribbon and a cameo around your neck, and it’s cheered up. A black shawl and your onyx cross pendant with it, like today, and it’s fit … well, for mourning.” She glanced at her mistress’s face. “Are you all right, mum?”

“I’m all right. It was awful seeing Camille laid out like that. But what I just couldn’t abide was being with all those mourners. They were having too grand a time, feasting and all.”

Miss Haynes nodded. “The other servants were talking. Mr. Granger’s household put together quite a spread under such short notice. Must have bought up half the bakery and butcher shops while they were at it.”

“Likely they did. And whoever they hired to dress up Camille made her look beautiful.”

“I heard she was quite a beauty, even if she was French.”

Chloe smiled and stroked Giles who was resting on the windowsill. He swiveled his head and watched a tree branch wave in the breeze.

“Down,” she said, and he paused before jumping off the windowsill. “I’ll be in Ambrose’s temporary study.”

“Just a moment, mum,” said Miss Haynes, shutting the door. “It’s about the rider you saw the other night.”

“You heard something?”

“I wasn’t sure who to ask, or even if I could ask,” she said. “It’s not as if the other servants are fond enough of me to tell me secrets. I was going to ask Mr. Frick to try to find out, but decided against it.”

“Why?” Mr. Frick had been Ambrose’s valet for decades. He was the soul of propriety and discretion.

“Well, he might mention it to Mr. Sullivan, and I wasn’t sure if you wanted him to know that you had been in the laboratory so late that night.”

“Ah. Thank you for thinking of that. But he already knew. He came in to tell me it was bed time, but I wanted to keep working. He didn’t seem to mind. I think he worries about me if I work too much and neglect myself.”

“Yes, I know how you can be when you get on a project.”

“Back to the rider, if you please.”

“Right. I couldn’t just go around and ask the other servants without them thinking I was a gossip or a busybody. So I had the idea that I could say that the rider frightened me, and I thought he might be an intruder. I thought that if any of them knew who he was, they might tell me to keep me from going to the butler or causing a commotion about it.”

“Very clever.”

“Thank you. I asked a maid who has a room near mine. My room faces the front of the house, so I told her that I had heard something, looked out my window and saw the rider. Told her I was terrified it was a bandit, maybe the one who murdered that poor woman. I said I wanted to ask the master or call the police. The more hysterical I got, the more she tried to quiet me.” Miss Haynes crossed her arms with a smile.

Chloe was willing to let her relish her story, but was growing impatient. “So who is it?”

“Ian. He goes out a few times a week. Though for the last few weeks, he has been going out every night. Goes into Farnbridge and sees someone there. No one knows who. At least, the chambermaid didn’t. He’s been doing it for years. The servants were instructed that if anyone spoke of it, they’d be dismissed. The chambermaid was terrified that I was going to cause trouble. She told me, but made me take a vow of secrecy.”

“Which you then promptly broke by telling me,” said Chloe and smiled.

“I had my fingers crossed! And I’m not going to talk to anyone else, that’s for certain.”

“Did you learn anything else?”

“That was all. But I’ll tell if you if I learn anything more.” She tidied a few things on the vanity, straightened some of the books that Chloe had left lying about and closed the door behind her as she left.

Chloe grabbed the art book, and called to Giles who had vanished under the bed. He poked his head out and bounded toward her. Something was in his mouth. She commanded him to “drop,” “open up” and “give the blasted thing to me!” but he would not relent. With difficulty, she managed to pry the thing out of his mouth, only to discover it was an old brass button with some threads attached.

“Irritating creature,” she said, tossing the button onto the table. He sat on his hind legs with his paws up to his chest, like a rabbit.

“Brrr?”

“Well, that’s new. And yes, you are adorable. Come.”

She opened the door that connected her rooms with her husband’s room to find him reading a book. He glanced up and motioned to a second chair.

“I won’t be very long,” she said, sitting across from him with the art book in her lap.

He kept his eyes on his book as he reached into his jacket and handed her the stack of notes he had kept for her. She slid them into the book with their brethren.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said.

“You want me to ask Mr. Granger if we could visit.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Because you want the rest of her notes.” He looked like the cat that ate the codfish.

Exasperating man. “I do. Do you think you could manage it?”

“I already have.”

She waited until she was sure he wasn’t going to say anything more.

“And?”

“As soon as we got back, I sent a note requesting that we pay Mr. Granger a brief visit. I said that I was eager to make the acquaintance of the husband of my wife’s friend, wanted to pay our condolences, etcetera.” He waved a hand, but kept his eyes on his book. “When we are there, we can delicately broach the subject of you having access to Mrs. Granger’s work. That’s assuming, of course, that he didn’t hear about your private expedition to get the items yourself.”

She jumped up and kissed his forehead. “You are wonderful.”

“I know.”

“I’m off to your study. I’ll see you at supper.”

“Enjoy your study of fine art.”

She closed the door to the sound of his laughter.