Laura Lee Guhrke (11 page)

“Grimstock will take your things upstairs, Inspector,” Violet told him, breaking the silence. “After tea, one of us will show you your room.”

The colonel made a huffing sound of disapproval from behind his paper. Violet ignored it. “I hope you will like your room,” she continued. “If there is anything you need, please ask.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Violet, dear, are you truly certain Agatha will agree to stay with Charlotte during her visit?” Miss Peabody asked.

“Of course she’s certain,” Miss Atwood answered in her deep bass voice before Violet could do so. “If Agatha stayed here, where would she sleep? The roof?”

Violet turned to Mick and explained, “My sister, Sophie’s mother, is coming for a two-month visit, and she wanted to stay with us, but I’m afraid that’s impossible because you are here, so she will be staying with her other daughter, Charlotte.”

“Much to everyone’s delight,” Edward Dawes said, laughing.

“Really, Edward,” Violet rebuked him with a frown. “You mustn’t say such things.”

“Why not?” the young man countered with a shrug. “It’s true. None of us enjoy her company or want her here, not even you.”

“Violet, dear,” Miss Peabody spoke to cover Dawes’s blunt statement, “what plans have you to entertain your sister?”

“There are dozens of things on for Jubilee,” Violet replied, “so we’ve a great many choices, but I thought we would start by taking her to Ascot for the week of the races. Our cousin, Lord Fortescue, has a box there, as you know, and his estate is in Berkshire.” She smiled at Mick. “Perhaps you would care to accompany us, Inspector?”

“I’m sure Ascot’s much too pretentious for Mr. Dunbar,” Sophie interjected before Mick could reply. “He prefers Epsom.”

Mick had to admit that was true, but she only knew it because of his question to her the night before about the races at Epsom, not because she had some sort of psychic ability.

“Besides,” Sophie went on, “any invitation to Lord Fortescue’s Berkshire estate for Ascot Week should be made by him, Auntie, not by us.”

“When did you become such a stickler for etiquette, dear?” Violet said with some surprise. “Victor won’t mind.”

“Katherine will.”

“Probably,” Violet was forced to concede with a sigh. “But, Sophie, really, how can you protect the inspector from the fiend who wishes to kill him if he is not nearby?”

Mick wanted to laugh at the notion of Sophie Haversham trying to protect him. He’d grown up in the toughest slums of London, and she lived amid the pampered of Mayfair. He was a policeman, she was a young lady. He was a man, she was a woman, he stood seven inches taller and about six stone heavier than she. Protect him? The idea was ludicrous.

Sophie was watching him. “Does something about the idea of my protection amuse you, Inspector?”

“Not at ail,” he said, turning his smile on her. “After all, you are my guardian angel.”

Before she could reply, Mick turned to Violet. “I enjoy race-meetings very much, ma’am, and I would be happy to accept your invitation, but I do not wish to impose on your cousin.”

“I’ll write to Victor and get his permission for you to come for the week,” Violet said and beamed at Sophie. “There, dear, another obstacle cleared away. It’s quite obvious that the spirits want you to protect the inspector from harm.”

Mick smiled in a joking fashion. “Do you think Miss Haversham could help us win a bit of sterling and tell us who the winner is before each race begins?”

“Sometimes she does try, Inspector,” Violet assured him. “But only when no one places a bet.”

“It seems the spirits don’t wish me to profit from their guidance,” Sophie told him. Her voice was bland, but there was defiance in the look she gave him, as if daring him to contradict the whole theory of spiritualism in front of the women present who firmly believed in it.

He had no intention of doing so. Instead, he turned her question back on her. “Do you believe the spirits guide you?”

“Of course.”

Something told him she didn’t believe in spirits any more than he did, a fact he found intriguing, but he was given no chance to pursue the subject.

“Violet told us she received you in the conservatory,”
Miss Peabody said. “What do you think of Sophie’s tropical forest?”

“It’s beautiful.” He glanced at Sophie. “It must take a great deal of your time?”

She did not reply, so Violet spoke for her. “Gardening, both indoors and out, is my niece’s favorite interest. She has quite a passion for flowers.”

“Indeed?” Mick turned to Sophie with a smile. “I hope all your suitors are aware of this. . . umm. . . passion?”

She blushed a deep pink. “I don’t have any suitors.”

“Oh, Sophie, dear, of course you do!” Violet said, laughing. “There’s Mr. Collier at the bank. Why, every time you go in there, he insists on being the one to wait on you. There’s Mr. Shelton’s son, Geoffrey, and Lord Heath’s son, Robert.”

Mick filed those names away in his memory to investigate those men later, as Violet went on, “All of them adore you, Sophie. Why, I’m sure if you let any one of them—”

“Since you seem so interested in flowers, Mr. Dunbar, perhaps you would like to see the garden?” Sophie interrupted, desperation in her voice. “I’ll show it to you, if you like.”

She wasn’t asking him to the garden because she wanted the pleasure of his company, but that didn’t bother him in the least. Perhaps he could goad her into accidentally letting some useful scrap of information slip out. He set down his teacup. “Any man would be happy to walk in the garden with you, Miss Haversham. I am honored by your charming invitation.”

At his gallant words, Violet beamed with obvious
pleasure, Miss Peabody giggled, and even the sharp-faced Miss Atwood condescended to smile at him.

Sophie pressed her lips tight together, turned around, and started out the door without a word, beckoning him to follow her with an impatient wave of her hand.

“Sophie,” Violet called after them as they left the drawing room, “if you are going out to the garden, would you do the flowers for dinner? I noticed the bourbon roses arc in bloom. We might have some of those as a centerpiece.”

“Of course, Auntie,” Sophie called back as she stalked down the hallway, her heels churning up the muslin flounces of her lace-trimmed petticoat as she walked. Mick noticed that in the middle of the row of buttons down her back, one button had come undone, showing him a bit of the white lace corset underneath. He smiled, knowing she didn’t have a clue she was giving him a peek at her undergarments.

He followed her to the kitchens at the back of the house, where she paused in the butler’s pantry to don an apron, grab a basket, and put a pair of cutting shears in her apron pocket before she walked out the back door.

Mick continued to follow her, staring at her back and appreciating the artistic qualities of a woman’s undone buttons as Sophie led him across a small expanse of lawn. They stepped onto a flagstone path that wove through the colorful landscape of a true English garden coming into bloom. The garden was surrounded on three sides by a high stone wall, which blocked out most of the urban noise of London and locked in the sweet, heavy fragrance of flowers.

He followed her down the path, but they had barely taken half a dozen steps before she turned around to face him. “My suitors arc none of your business. Must you poke and pry into my private life?”

“You said you didn’t have any suitors.”

“The point I’m making is that I know what you are trying to do. You’re asking questions in a way that sounds like casual conversation, but is really interrogation.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s insulting, and it’s futile. How could any suitors I have possibly concern you?”

“I judge what concerns me, Miss Haversham. If I think something might be relevant to my investigations, I will pursue it, and I really don’t care if you find that uncomfortable.”

Sophie placed her basket on the stone path, grabbed her shears out of her apron pocket, and began snipping half-opened roses from the closest bushes, dropping them into her basket as she worked. “You learned everyone’s whereabouts when you were here this morning, and you must know now that we’ve all told you the truth. You finagled that invitation to move in here, but you wouldn’t have acted on it if you still suspected one of us was trying to kill you.”

“So?”

“So you are now going to try to find out all you can about my friends and acquaintances, and take guesses as to which of them might be your suspect. You want to know about my possible suitors because, if it’s not one of us, you think it must be someone else I know. How accurate am I thus far?”

“You’re very perceptive.”

She shot him a wry look. “It’s not perception. It’s knowledge. There’s a difference.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you, sometimes I can tell what people are thinking. I know what you are up to, and I brought you out here to tell you in private that I don’t appreciate your motives.”

“But why do you think it’s futile? Do you really think no one you know is capable of murder? Are you that naive?”

“It’s not about naivete. I know whoever tried to kill you has nothing to do with me. It has something to do with you.”

“What evidence do you have?”

She didn’t answer that. Instead, she picked up her basket and turned to continue along the path.

He watched her as she walked away. She still insisted she could see the future and read people’s thoughts. He wondered if he’d been right in the first place. Maybe she really was off her onion.

She paused a dozen feet away and bent down to cut some sprays of bright yellow flowers, and when she straightened again, he grinned. Another of her buttons had come undone.

He wondered if he should offer to fasten them for her. The sway of her hips as she continued on down the path made that notion even more tempting. The bright sunlight backlit her body as she walked and gave him the shadowy outline of her legs through her skirts, legs that he remembered from his explorations the night before were long and shapely. Without that petticoat, though, he’d be seeing more than just a vague silhouette.
“Damn,” he murmured, “I wish women didn’t wear so many clothes.”

She stopped and turned around. “What are you doing way back there?” she called.

Mick tried to shove thoughts of her legs out of his mind as he walked to where she was standing. He reminded himself that she was a suspected conspirator in a plot to kill him, and that she was probably loony, but that didn’t divert him from wanting to run his hands down those long legs of hers, to caress the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees. He took a deep breath. “How do you read people’s minds?”

“I just do,” she answered. “What someone else is thinking simply enters my head, as if that person were talking to me.”

There was no way she was telling the truth. If she could read his mind right now, she’d slap his face.

“I really don’t care whether you believe me or not,” she went on. “What I do care about are your actions. Probing into our lives, asking questions about our friends, digging up rumor and innuendo, all for naught. Eventually you’ll be forced to accept that no one we know had anything to do with the person who shot at you. Why don’t you just go away?”

“Don’t worry, Sophie. I might get killed before I find out any of your secrets.”

“I don’t want to see anyone die!” she cried. “That’s why I went to Scotland Yard in the first place. I just don’t understand why you feel the need to invade our privacy.”

“Why does my presence worry you so much? Who are you trying to protect?” He took a step closer to her.
She moved as well, stepping off the curved stone path and straight back into an enormous brier of roses. She was trapped.

“C’mon, Sophie, tell me the truth.” He reached out, pulling the basket from her hand before she realized his intent. He tossed the basket aside, ignoring her cry of indignation as flowers spilled across the ground.

He moved his body closer to her, and once again she stepped back, tangling herself more deeply in the brier. Pink petals fluttered down, and one caught on the silver hair comb by her ear.

He lifted his hand to her hair, and his fingertips brushed the velvety skin of her ear as he reached for the rose petal. She stiffened, her body going as rigid as one of those silly cupid statues in her conservatory. He could hear her rapid breathing and feel her desperation to escape, but amid the thorny branches, she dared not move. Slowly, he pulled the petal from her hair.

Mingling with the scent of roses was that elusive, erotic perfume she wore. What was it in that fragrance that aroused him so? Mick inhaled deeply and bent his head closer. “What’s your secret, Sophie?” he murmured, brushing the rose petal beneath her chin. “A lover?”

“Don’t-—” She paused and turned her face away. She drew a deep, trembling breath. “Don’t do that.”

“You can tell me the truth,” he whispered against her ear, and he felt her shiver. “Is it a lover you’re protecting?”

“Stop it.” There was panic in her voice as she flattened her hands against his chest and pushed at him.
Mick relented a bit, stepping back enough to give her a little breathing room.

She turned her face toward him, leaning her head back to look him in the eye. “You think this is about me, someone I know, but you’re wrong. It has something to do with you.”

“So you’ve said. Again, what’s your evidence?”

“Do I need evidence? You are a policeman. You move within the lowest classes, dealing with fiends of the underworld all the time.” She made a sound of contempt. “No doubt you’ve forgotten the manners of good society, because you treat everyone like a criminal. It’s barbaric.”

She spoke of him and his occupation with the contempt of a good housekeeper talking about black beetles in the larder. He couldn’t help laughing. “You think I’m treating you like a criminal?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, luv. The way I deal with criminals is to torture them on the rack.”

“That does not surprise me.”

He put his hands on her waist and moved closer, catching that fragrance again. “You, I’d interrogate very differently.”

“Let me go.”