Suzanne Robinson (3 page)

“I was nearly run down by a motorcar driven by a she-devil,” Cheyne replied. “A screeching little harpy with wild black hair, scarlet lips and a barbaric accent that would curdle wine. I think she was American, and if I ever see her again, I’ll thrash her with that.” Cheyne stabbed a finger in the direction of the crop.

“You ain’t hurt.” Mutton tossed the cravat aside and took Cheyne’s soiled coat.

“She had the temerity to berate me for getting in her way.” Cheyne swept away from Mutton, yanking at his shirt buttons and prowling the room. “And she called me a—let me see if I can recall the colorful phrase—an ornery priss-pants.” He stopped undressing when he heard a guffaw from the valet.
“It’s not funny. She caused me to fall into a vegetable cart, and then she threw melon at me.”

“For no good cause, right?”

“Exactly.” Cheyne poured water from an antique porcelain pitcher into a bowl and splashed his face. “Damned motorcar. Appalling little beast.” He dried his face with a towel, then scowled at his hair, which was still matted with vegetable pulp. “She had eyes like volcanic glass. God! I never saw such a bold miss. She glared at me in the most direct and brash manner.”

The sound of running water issued from the bathroom along with Mutton’s cockney voice. “Right, gov’nor. Not like them young English ladies you’re always telling me about. What was it you called them? Oh, yeah. Vapid. That was the word. And dreary. And washed-out.”

“At least they haven’t tried to kill me.” Cheyne sat down and pulled off a boot. “What does God intend by allowing a dangerous madwoman like that to own a motorcar?” He dropped the other boot and stalked into the bathroom, where Mutton waited with washcloth and soap.

“Women should never have been allowed to ride bicycles, much less drive motorcars.” He shed his clothing and sank into the tub.

“Right,” Mutton said. “They should go back to being vapid, dreary, and washed-out.”

Cheyne narrowed his eyes. “I don’t appreciate your cheeky tone. One day you’ll presume too much on the fact that you saved my life.”

“Them were glory days, out in India and Africa. I was the best batman in the army, me.”

“So you say.”

Mutton folded a towel, then placed a hand over his heart and raised his gaze to the ceiling. “I never asked for nothing. It was the Lord’s will that I was around when you got yourself shot and surrounded by them Boers. It weren’t nothing, me sneaking out and dragging you back to camp in the middle o’ the night.”

“I’m not listening, Mutton.”

“You don’t owe me nothing, my lord.”

Cheyne clenched his jaw and remained silent. Mutton only called him “my lord” when he wanted to annoy, for Cheyne didn’t use his title.

“When are you going to get one of them motorcars? I’d look real flash behind the wheel of one o’ them. You been putting it off for months.”

Sinking under the water and bursting back to the surface, Cheyne sputtered and said, “It’s clear that the streets are no longer safe for riders. I’ll find out what kind the harpy was driving and buy one. It was fast, and it didn’t fall apart when it jumped the curb. And if I ever see that girl again …”

Cheyne smiled at the idea of scaring the savagery right out of Miss Motorcar by racing up to her and coming to a stop at the last moment. No doubt she would berate him with her bizarre vocabulary. Her dark eyes would erupt with volcanic flame and her white-rose skin would flush. He expected she’d be
wearing her voluminous driving costume that failed to hide her quick, lithe form. Miss Motorcar wasn’t a beauty, but she had an altogether pleasing and dramatic appearance. What a pity she ruined it with her uncivilized manners and speech.

An uncomfortable pruniness of the fingers and toes reminded Cheyne of how long he’d been thinking in the tub. Mutton had left him there, and it was time to begin the day’s business. He was the only member of his family who was “in trade,” as those of his former set would have termed it. Having developed a distaste for the vacancy of mind fostered by an aristocratic life, Cheyne had chosen a profession that took advantage of his talent for logical thought. He was a private inquiry agent.

Not that any of his Society friends or family knew it. They only knew what he allowed the public to know, that he’d done something equally distasteful—gone into investments in the city. This ugly truth was enough to scandalize his parents and their friends. Gentlemen lived off income from vast estates. Only the lower orders actually set out to make money.

He got out of the tub, dried, and was dressing when Mutton knocked and came into the bedroom. “Got a visitor.”

“How many times have I told you, you should say that Mr. So and So has called?”

“Right,” Mutton said, rocking on his heels and causing his shoes to creak. “Superintendent Balfour has called. He’s waiting in the drawing room, and—”

“I told him I wasn’t interested in his case.”

“Looks like you got to tell him to his face.”

Cheyne turned away to examine his tie in the mirror. “No, you tell him.”

He heard the door shut. Mutton had a way of vanishing before he could be told to do something he didn’t want to do, and dealing with Scotland Yard was something he never wanted to do. Sighing, Cheyne took a last look at his frock coat, adjusted his cuffs, and went downstairs.

Stuart Balfour waited for him by the fire in the drawing room. He was looking askance at a Regency daybed across the room. The piece was upholstered in pale blue to match the walls, while the pattern of the brocade echoed that in the Robert Adam ceiling of blue, white, and gilded plaster. Cheyne paused by the harpsichord and smiled.

“It’s an heirloom. There’s a rumor that Empress Josephine wrote letters to Napoleon while reclining on it.”

Balfour cleared his throat, “Quite. Now, see here, Tennant. This stubborn refusal to help out in this case won’t do.”

“I’m not going back into Society just to find some blackguard who’s purloined the indiscreet letters of some foolish and spoiled debutante.”

Balfour chewed his mustache, then pulled a photograph from his coat pocket and handed it to Cheyne. “I believe you know the young lady.”

A girl of nineteen looked back at him from beneath golden hair pulled up and puffed out in the new style. She wore an enormous hat festooned
with ostrich feathers, lace, bows, and a stuffed sparrow. She had the face of a porcelain doll, a small, prim mouth and little hands. She held herself erect in that impossible stance created by corset and padding, and somehow managed to look like a shepherd’s daughter dressed in borrowed finery.

Cheyne shook his head in pity. English girls were kept ignorant of the world, cosseted and cloistered with nannies and governesses until they reached marriageable age. Then they were thrust into Society, paraded around London, Biarritz, and the Riviera until they caught the eye of an eligible young man. Their parents sent them, ignorant and full of rosy hopes, tripping blindly into marriage. This was the Honorable Miss Juliet Warrender, daughter of his father’s old friend Lord Hubert Warrender.

“Tell Lord Hubert to pay what’s demanded. You fellows at the Yard are quite capable of lying in wait when Warrender meets the blackmailer.”

“A lovely idea, Tennant, but Lord Hubert’s a bit busy at the moment, making arrangements for his daughter’s funeral. She took laudanum last night.”

It was like being rammed in the chest by a motorcar. Cheyne laid the photograph on the harpsichord and walked to the windows that looked out on Great Chartwell Road. Hansom cabs, coaches, victorias, a milk wagon, and an omnibus clattered in the street, while vendors added their clamor to the general din. He remembered Juliet as a schoolgirl, all teeth and legs. She’d been a shy thing, fond of flowers, toads and climbing trees. Her one claim to charm had
been her voice. A soprano of operatic quality, she made a splash her first Season and captured the attention of the Earl of Hartfield’s son.

Cheyne moved the sheers aside and contemplated the progress of a nanny and her three charges as they marched along the opposite sidewalk. Juliet hadn’t been long away from such outings when she died.

“All right,” he said, turning and indicating that Balfour should take a chair. “Tell the whole of it again.” He joined his guest.

“The first we heard of this man was when Sir Thomas Folkestone vanished from his home in Shropshire. His wife and sons came to us for help, and we found the chap had absconded to Australia, of all places. Someone had gotten hold of the bills he paid for his mistress’s house in Cheapside here in the city.”

“Ah, yes, I remember.”

“That was almost eighteen months ago,” Balfour said. “Since then we’ve been keeping an eye out for further incidents. It’s hard to know when someone of rank and position becomes a victim of blackmail unless something goes wrong. We suspect that old General Sir Michael Kent was being bled.”

Cheyne’s gaze sharpened, and he leaned toward Balfour. “Old Kent was supposed to have died in a hunting accident. His shotgun misfired.”

Balfour shrugged, and Cheyne cursed under his breath. “What did you find out?”

“The general spent most of his life in the military. It seems his affection for his men went deeper than
what one would expect.” Balfour studied Cheyne’s pallor for a moment. “So you see that we need someone familiar with the aristocracy, someone who’ll be accepted. Whoever is blackmailing these people knows secrets that only someone moving in the highest circles could know.”

Cheyne rested his arms on his thighs and lowered his head. “You think it’s someone in Society. It could be a servant, you know.”

“That’s why we picked you. You know how to investigate, and you’ve got that appalling fellow Mutton who can handle the servants.”

Looking up at his guest, Cheyne nodded. “Mutton will be glad to hear that he has such a sterling reputation at Scotland Yard. Leave what you have. I’ll look at the files and contact you.”

“The commissioner wants you to begin at once.”

Shaking his head, Cheyne smiled. “It will take me a few days to convince my family that I wish to be included in their guest lists again.”

Balfour didn’t ask why. Cheyne hadn’t expected him to. His estrangement from his family was common gossip. Luckily his mother still sent pleading letters several times a year begging him to “do his duty,” give up practicing a trade and do nothing, as became the son of a duke. He would have welcomed her letters had they contained any hint that she missed him. He wasn’t foolish enough to expect such expressions of fondness, however. The cold stone tomb of his mother’s heart had barely enough
space to contain a mild affection for her eldest son, much less anyone else.

Beatrice Maud Allington, née Seymour, was one of England’s great Society hostesses along with the Duchess of Devonshire and the Duchess of Manchester. Her life was devoted to the pursuit of the traditional pastimes of such great ladies—grand balls in the Season, massive country house parties out of Season, and a little dabbling in charity and political affairs as long as these didn’t interfere with her social engagements.

Balfour rose to leave. “I’m glad I was able to convince you. I couldn’t face another call in the middle of the night to look at the body of a dead girl.”

“I can’t work miracles, old man. It will take time to reintroduce myself to Society and discover who’s doing this.”

“I know. We’ll just have to hope the fellow is sated with money for a while.” Balfour shook Cheyne’s hand. “Thanks, old chap. You know I wouldn’t have presumed on our acquaintance for any but the gravest reasons.”

“You allowed me to prove my ability when I first set myself up in this little occupation of mine, Balfour. I’d listen to anything you cared to say.”

Once his guest was gone, Cheyne picked up the leather document case Balfour had brought, crossed the drawing room and opened a pair of doors to enter the White Library. This was one of his favorite rooms because, like the drawing room, it had a wall
of soaring windows that faced the busy street. The sun had burned the morning mists away, and shafts of golden light marched across the carpeted floor. The room took its name from the white plaster walls and coffered ceiling as well as the long series of inset bookshelves with their pediment tops. Beige and white chairs and couches surrounded the fireplace. Cheyne found the button set unobtrusively in the wall beside the marble fireplace mantel. He subsided in a wing chair, lay the document case on the floor, and drummed his fingers on the chair arm.

Mutton appeard immediately. “So, we’re going to have ourselves a Season, are we?”

“Someday you’re going to get caught listening at keyholes by someone who won’t take kindly to your prying,” Cheyne said with a scowl.

“Seeing as how Scotland Yard specifically asked for the services of yours truly, I think I’m allowed.” Mutton hooked his fingers in the armholes of his vest and expanded his chest.

“They’re familiar with your criminal past,” Cheyne snapped. “That’s why they think you’ll do.”

“Bloody smart thinking, that is.”

“Cancel my appointments for the rest of the week.”

“I got Smythe doin’ that right now.”

Cheyne glanced at the document case beside him, then turned his icy regard on Mutton. “Then you’ll be so good as to get my dear mother on the telephone. I understand she has recently had one installed in Grosvenor Square.”

Mutton whistled. “So you really are going back.
After what you said when you was delirious with your wounds that time, I’d of thought you’d keep clear o’ them.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“This’ll be a show, it will.”

“Shut up, Mutton, and go do as I said. I believe Her Grace is giving an intimate dinner for thirty or forty people next Thursday. The perfect opportunity to commence.”

“Right.” Unperturbed, Mutton lumbered out of the room.

When he was alone, Cheyne went to the mirror and stared into his own eyes. He wouldn’t mind seeing his mother so much. He’d grown used to her indifference. sometime after he entered Cambridge he’d realized she couldn’t help being shallow as a lake in a drought. The poverty of her mind wasn’t all her fault, for her character had been pruned and trimmed from birth to fit the narrow boundaries laid out for women of her rank. It had taken him years to recognize this, and many more to admit it without his attempts at objectivity being overwhelmed with childhood pain.