Sheri Cobb South (7 page)

Thomas shook his head. “None at all.”

“What time would you say this was?”

Thomas’s brow puckered in concentration. “I know it was after midnight, for I remember hearing the clock chime. Closer than that, I couldn’t say.”

“You recall hearing the clock strike twelve, but you didn’t hear it strike one?”

“Aye, I did, but that’s the problem. The long-case clock in the hall marks the hour and half-hour. So, after the twelve strokes at midnight, it would strike once for half-past twelve, once for one o’clock, and once for half-past one. So, even if I’d heard the clock strike one—which I can’t say for certain, as I hear that single stroke so often during the day that I take no special notice of it—I couldn’t say for sure what time it was marking.”

“I understand, Thomas. Thank you for being so frank. Now, if I may borrow your pantry a bit longer, I’d like to have a word with the housekeeper.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll fetch Mrs. Applegate.”

Thomas set off at once on this errand, leaving Pickett to ponder the footman’s cryptic testimony. The tomb of Deacon Toomer may shut the door on the poor sod. . . The “poor sod” in question would appear at first glance to be his late lordship; the time—if Thomas’s estimation was anywhere near accurate—would seem to bear this theory out. Was it possible that Thomas had unwittingly overheard a murder being planned? Or was Lord Fieldhurst not the one spoken of, but the one spoken to? Had the viscount been in the room at the time, and had his connection with the unknown Deacon Toomer— whatever it might be—somehow led to his death? Pickett sighed. How was he to solve this case when every new development raised more questions than it answered?

“Excuse me, sir. Thomas said you was wanting me?”

The pantry door had opened to frame a middle-aged woman as plump and round-cheeked as her name implied. Pickett found himself liking her on sight. Her high-necked black dress was covered by a voluminous white apron, and a black-hemmed cap adorned her graying locks—tokens of mourning for her late employer that somehow sat oddly against a naturally cheerful countenance. In her hands she cradled a steaming cup, which she presented to him with a maternal air. “I thought you might be ready for a spot of tea. Milk and sugar?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Applegate. Sugar please, no milk.”

As he watched her make the necessary improvements to his tea, Pickett remarked, “I appreciate your kindness, Mrs. Applegate. This must be hard on all of you. I daresay the household is at sixes and sevens.”

“Lawks, yes! Here I’ve been in service since I was a girl of fourteen and thinking I’d seen it all! Well, I don’t mind telling you I’ve never seen nothing like this, not by a long chalk! And now there’s Mr. Rogers gone, and Sukey swearing she’ll not set foot in my lady’s bedchamber again for love nor money—

“Yes, a curious thing about the butler,” observed Pickett, seizing his opening. “Have you any idea where he might have gone?”

“No, for he had no family, apart from a son who enlisted in the army. Young Billy Rogers might have had a good position as a footman—might have stepped into his father’s shoes someday, come to that, for the Rogerses have served the Fieldhursts for generations. But he was mad to see the world, so he up and took the king’s shilling, nigh breaking his father’s heart in the process. Last I heard, the lad was somewhere in the Mediterranean.”

“And Mrs. Rogers?”

“Dead these ten years and more, God rest her soul. She was housekeeper here before me.”

“So you’ve known the butler quite some time.”

“Lawks, yes! Never knowed him to behave so oddly, though. Wouldn’t have thought him capable of it, neither, for he was always that particular about his work.”

“What about earlier during the day? Did he seem upset, or act in any way unusual?”

“Truth to tell, I can’t rightly say,” admitted Mrs. Applegate. “He spent most of the day in the wine cellar, having just received a new shipment from Berry Brothers. I do remember him fetching up a fresh bottle of brandy for his lordship at about ten o’clock, but I didn’t see him again, as he didn’t come down to dinner. Nor,” added the housekeeper, her jolly air quite vanished, “did that French creature, neither, until the meal was half over.”

“French creature?”

“Her ladyship’s maid. Calls herself Camille, she does, although I could call her a thing or two! Gives herself airs, speaking that foreign gibberish and strolling into the servants’ hall in one of her ladyship’s gowns, like she was the Queen herself!”

Pickett, who dealt every day with the most sordid of crimes, found himself slightly shocked by this comparatively minor infraction. “The maid wears Lady Fieldhurst’s gowns?”

“Her lady’s maid,” reiterated Mrs. Applegate. “A lady’s maid is often given her mistress’s cast-offs,” she added somewhat regretfully, as if reluctant to admit that, in this case at least, the despised Camille was within her rights.

“And what time did the staff eat dinner?”

“At about twelve-thirty.”

Pickett’s eyebrows rose. “Isn’t that rather late?”

“Not for the Season, for we don’t eat until after the family has gone out for the evening—or, like last night, until the guests have gone home. In the winter, of course, or at Fieldhurst Hall, it’s different, for there we keep country hours.”

Pickett scarcely heard the last part of this speech, for a thought had struck him. If Rogers had chosen to make his escape while the rest of the staff was at dinner, was it possible that Camille, arriving late, might have surprised him at some point along the way? At any rate, her position would give her ready access to Lady Fieldhurst’s bedchamber without attracting undue attention. He would do well to have a few words with the lady’s maid—provided, of course, that he could make heads or tails of her “foreign gibberish.” He thanked Mrs. Applegate again for the tea and dismissed her, with a request that she send Camille to him. A twist of the housekeeper’s lips gave him to understand that she had no liking for this errand, but she apparently performed it nevertheless, for a scant ten minutes later, the door to the pantry burst open and a woman entered the small room.

Anyone less like the matronly Mrs. Applegate—or, for that matter, the ethereal Lady Fieldhurst—would have been hard to find. She wore the prim black dress of a serving woman, its only ornamentation the round, black buttons which fastened the bodice tightly from waistline to throat, but the oppressive modesty of this garment somehow only served to emphasize the lushness of the figure beneath. The tightly-bound locks of hair visible from underneath her mobcap were jet black, and the expression in her dark eyes was haughty. Her nose was straight, as was her backbone; her posture would not have shamed a duchess. Pickett had never seen anyone look less servile.

“Camille de la Roquefort?”

“Out,” she said, with a toss of her head which Pickett, who knew no French, took for agreement.

“You are Lady Fieldhurst’s personal maid?”

“Oui.”

“How long have you held that position?”

“Since her marriage to le vicomte. Six years.”

“And before that?”

Her expression could have frozen water. “Before that, I had maids of my own.”

Pickett had been scrawling notes in his occurrence book, but this assertion was so unexpected that his pencil paused in mid-sentence. “I take it this was in France?”

Again that inclination of the head: half agreement, half defiance. He understood it a little better now; she had come down in the world indeed, one of the émigrés who had fled the Terror of the previous decade. He felt a momentary pang of sympathy but resisted the urge to express it. This proud creature, he suspected, would scorn pity, particularly from the likes of him.

“What of your family?” he asked instead. “Are they still in France?”

She shrugged. “Oui, those who survived the Terror.”

“Do you write to them?”

“Our countries are at war,” she reminded him. “Communication, she is tres difficile, but le vicomte has always been most helpful.”

Pickett nodded. That might well explain the letter on Fieldhurst’s desk, although Sir Archibald Stanton’s interest in it still mystified him. Was there more to the letter than simple family correspondence, or was Sir Archibald, that bastion of the Foreign Office, in the habit of seeing spies behind every bush? Once again Pickett wished he’d possessed the foresight to pocket the letter himself. Although he could not have read the French words, he had no doubt Mr. Colquhoun could have.

“When was the last time you wrote such a letter?”

“Yesterday, or perhaps the day before.” She passed a shapely but slightly chapped hand over her eyes. “Forgive me, monsieur, but time, he has stood still. It is all too terrible!”

Were her tears genuine, Pickett wondered, or had hers been the angry voice Thomas had heard shouting about Deacon Toomer? He allowed her a moment to compose herself before continuing.

“Did you wait up to undr—er, did you wait up for her ladyship to return last night?” The idea of the viscountess in a state of undress was far too distracting to think about, much less put into words.

“Non, monsieur. Madame told me I need not so do.”

“So what did you do after she left for the ball?”

The Frenchwoman gave a Gallic shrug. “I put her ladyship’s room in order; then I went down to supper.”

Pickett consulted his notes. “Lady Fieldhurst left the house at half-past eight, and supper in the servants’ hall was not served until after midnight. Did it really take four hours to clean her ladyship’s room?”

The look she gave him was one of pure scorn. “I do not ‘clean her ladyship’s room,’ monsieur. I am not a chambermaid! When I say I put her ladyship’s room in order, I mean I put away her jewels, launder her linen, repair her torn lace, and iron her gowns.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Pickett, with deceptive meekness.

“Pas de tout,” Camille conceded with a wave of her hand. “Madame had also given me a gown of yellow crape. This I put on and wore to dinner.”

Since this admission coincided with Mrs. Applegate’s account, Pickett changed tactics. “Did you see the butler, Mr. Rogers, anywhere along the way? On the stairs, perhaps?”

“Mais non. No one was on the stairs, and the butler was not at dinner last night. Moi, I believe he was already gone.”

“And after dinner? Did you, at any time during the evening, hear voices coming from her ladyship’s room?”

“Milord and milady conversed as I dressed milady’s hair, but after that—non.”

“Were Lord and Lady Fieldhurst angry with one another? Did they quarrel?”

“Milord had long been unhappy over madame’s failure to conceive a child, but they did not quarrel over this last night, at least not to my knowledge.”

“Do you know, or have you heard of, anyone called Deacon Toomer?”

Again she bent on him that look of disdain. “I am of the one true faith, monsieur. I know nothing of these English deacons.”

Pickett made a last notation in his book, then dismissed the lady’s maid. Alone in the butler’s pantry, he dug his fingers into his hair as he scanned the scrawled pages of notes. His outlook was not optimistic. Now, in addition to finding a killer, he had to locate a missing butler, identify a deceased churchman, and unearth a pair of wine-stained breeches. And while he was about it, he might as well toss the falsely accused viscountess across his saddle-bow and rescue her single-handedly from the gallows. At this point, one seemed no more impossible to achieve than the next.

Chapter 6

Visitors, Both Welcome and Otherwise

While Pickett interrogated her household staff, Lady Fieldhurst received yet another caller, this one far more welcome than her husband’s family had been. Lady Dunnington was almost ten years the viscountess’s senior; nevertheless, a firm if unlikely friendship had blossomed between the two very different women. And if the countess was said by some to be a trifle “fast,” certainly no one could find fault with the appearance of the lady who now swept into the room with the air of one accustomed to command. Her lilac muslin walking dress and gold-braided, purple pelisse were in the first stare of fashion, as was the matching bonnet that covered her dark tresses. The dyed ostrich plumes adorning this confection fluttered as she sailed across the room to seize her hostess’s hands.

“My dear Julia, I was never so shocked!” she declared, kissing the air on either side of Lady Fieldhurst’s face. “How very obliging of Frederick, to be sure! Who would have thought it of him?”

The viscountess acknowledged this sally with a weak smile. “Trust you to say something outrageous! But you cannot have heard the whole, Emily. Frederick’s death was no accident. He was murdered.”

Lady Dunnington’s face paled at this pronouncement, and she sank onto the nearest chair, but she was a resilient creature, and quickly recovered her composure. “Is it as bad as that, then? Truth to tell, I scarcely believed it when I heard he was dead.”

“Oh yes, it is quite true! There is a Bow Street Runner below stairs even as we speak, questioning the servants.”

“My poor Julia, how dreadful for you! You must tell me about it at once!”

Lady Fieldhurst was more than willing to unburden herself to a disinterested party, and one, moreover, who possessed neither the authority nor the inclination to clap her in irons and haul her off to Newgate. In one particular, at least, she could not have had a more sympathetic audience. Since Lady Dunnington’s estrangement from her husband and subsequent string of lovers were common knowledge among the beau monde, she expressed no shock, much less disapproval, at Lord Rupert Latham’s presence in her ladyship’s bedchamber.

“And about time, too!” she declared roundly. “But how dreadful that it should end this way, before it even began! What will you do now?”

“I daresay I shall do as you have been urging me, and set up my own establishment, for live in the Dower House with Mother Fieldhurst I will not! Nor do I have any particular desire to return to my father’s house. I do not know how it is, but I can never remain beneath Papa’s roof for five minutes without feeling as if I were still eight years old.”