The Devious Duchess (15 page)

The minister gave a carefully worded eulogy, making much of Lord Dudley’s longevity and little of his lack of accomplishments. At least he had not been an active doer of wrong. His sins were mainly sins of omission. By thinking of her own plight, the duchess eked out a few tears. Adelaide’s tears flowed more copiously, and Deirdre cried not at all. Her mind was on getting her news to Dick. She managed to have a word with him as the mourners left the church.

“Polly has left,” she told him. “She ran away last night before I had a chance to talk to her. What do you think we should do?”

“Have you told Straus?”

“I didn’t learn it till I went to the Grange this morning. I haven’t had a moment to do anything about it.”

“All right. I’ll handle it,” Dick told her.

“I’m not asking you to handle it. I just thought you might like to know,” she said primly.

“But I know the alternative if I don't save your aunt,” he reminded her. “Have you any idea where Polly could be?”

She gave him a questioning look, then blushed. “I wasn’t trying to force you into solving the case! Polly might be at home with her mother. Her clothing is all gone!"

The duchess, gratified that both Belami and Pilgrim had driven their carriages through the miserable rain, went forward to thank them. They declined an invitation to the funeral luncheon but gave a tentative acceptance for dinner that evening. Nevil was the only member of the family who accompanied the coffin to the mausoleum. Seeing that this would leave Adelaide stranded, Belami offered her a drive back to the inn. He was surprised to hear that Nevil had arranged for the doctor to take her.

“You could be right—about Nevil being jealous of you,” she told Dick. The saucy smile she wore had no place on a new widow’s countenance. “He gave me a rare Bear Garden jaw about seeing you. Not that I take orders from that caper-merchant. I dropped up to your room last night but couldn’t rouse you.”

“I took a few drops of laudanum for my headache,” he lied.

She smiled winningly. “I hope you don’t have a headache tonight, Belami.”

The fact of Nevil's not wanting him to talk to Adelaide was a strong enticement to see her, but he gave a vague answer and left. Straus had attended the funeral, not as a mourner, but he was there in the church to observe, and Belami followed him to Banting. The constable’s office was a homey, comfortable room on the main street of the village. Straus’s own apartment was connected to it, which enabled him to have the comforts of home close at hand. He was enjoying a cup of tea when Belami and Pronto entered.

Straus arose and rubbed his hands in pleasure to see them. His quick blue eyes lingered on Pronto as a possible new suspect in the case. Belami made them acquainted and got right down to business.

"I’ve come to report a missing person. Miss Polly Shard, a servant at the Grange, disappeared late last night,” he announced.

“Polly Shard, that’d be the good-looking one, if I’m not mistaken. She might have run off with a fellow,” Straus suggested.

“She might, and she might have been frightened off, too, by the murderer,” Dick replied.

“Come to cuffs with the duchess, did she?” Straus inquired, a twinkle of amusement glittering in his eyes.

“She had an argument with Sir Nevil Ryder. Mr. Pilgrim here overheard it,” Belami countered.

Pronto gave a garbled account of what he had overheard, and Belami interrupted to explain about Mrs. Haskell’s peculiar note.

“I know all about that. The good lady was in touch with me yesterday,” Straus said. “A strange thing, that note. It would have to be someone close to her who wrote it. Mrs. Haskell tells me the duchess was aware of her close connection with Mrs. Sutton,” he added. The knowing look he wore insinuated his opinion on the writer of the note.

“Her grace was traveling with me from Brighton at the time that note was written, Straus. I think it highly unlikely she was in such a rush to murder her brother that she couldn’t have waited a few hours till she got home to set the wheels in motion. Her grace isn’t the only one who knew of Mrs. Haskell’s indebtedness to her aunt and that she’d be sure to answer any summons from her.”

Dick explained in some detail Deirdre’s suspicions that Polly was involved in the matter. Straus didn’t quite ignore it, but he said dismissingly, “Hearsay evidence. It’s natural the young filly would do what she could to save her aunt. Of course, if Miss Gower invented the whole story, she’d be at pains to get rid of Polly Shard so that she couldn’t contradict it, wouldn’t she?”

Belami uttered an annoyed snort and arose. “This is pointless. I see your mind is made up. I shan’t disturb it with anything so irrelevant as facts. Come along, Pronto. We’ll have to find Polly Shard ourselves.”

Straus’s arm rose, and his thick fingers motioned Belami back to his chair. “Stay cool, lad. We’re not so far apart as you might think. I haven’t been sitting on my thumbs the whole time, you must know. I agree there’s a twist or two in Ryder that bears watching. All that crape he’s draped in, for one thing. It ain’t local goods, and where did he get it so convenient-like is what I’d like to know.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Belami suggested.

“I didn’t care to tip my hand. Between you and me and the bedpost, Belami, I’ve been wondering whether Ryder and Miss Pankhurst didn’t rig the whole thing between them.”

Pronto lifted his head from his chest and muttered, “Bath.”

“If it’s a bath you’re after, you’d have to be going back to your inn,” Straus told him.

“Bath—where Ryder bought the crape. Had to be,” Pronto elucidated. “Didn’t buy no Bath chair either.”

Belami explained this point, and Straus leaned back in his chair till the legs squealed with the strain. He examined his ceiling for a long, silent moment, then the legs of the chair eased back to the floor. “What I was thinking, you see, is that Pankhurst and Ryder might have worked the thing out together, thinking to give each other an alibi. Who says they were in Bath at all and not lurking nearby, slipping in unannounced to surprise the old gaffer with a bottle of brandy?” He stopped, and a frown settled on his brow. He shook his head in dissatisfaction. “No, it don’t fadge. What we keep coming up with is the poison in the lady’s stew. Till we hear from your chemist friend on that score, we’d best play our cards close to our chests. If old Charney is innocent, ‘tis a pity she went and messed around with the evidence.”

“I wish to God I’d done the arsenic test myself,” Belami exclaimed. “If I’d ever dreamed it would turn out to be so important, I would have done.”

“Well, next time, lad. Live and learn,” Straus said. “I’ll be running along to the Shards’ place and see if they’re harboring young Polly. It’s just two blocks from the inn. Would you like to hear the results, Belami?”

“I certainly would. I look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Straus.”

When Belami and Pronto were outside, hastening through the cold rain with their heads bent, Dick said, “At least Straus has begun to look at other possibilities than Charney. That’s something. Of course he’ll soon confirm Ryder was in Bath.”

“Right about the poison stew, though, Dick.”

“I know. I wonder if he could be right about Adelaide and Ryder being in it together. I’m going to stop off at the chemist’s shop, Pronto. Why don’t you go along to the inn and wait for Straus?”

“I will. I’m soaked through.”

Pronto ducked into the inn, and Belami continued to the chemist’s shop, where he bought the granular zinc and dilute hydrochloric acid to test Adelaide’s snuff for arsenic. It was impossible to assemble the equipment required for the test in his room, however, so he got permission to test it in the chemist’s small workshop behind his store. He mixed the snuff and chemicals and heated the mixture. The gas was passed through a heated glass tube, and he waited to see the results. If arsenic was present, gaseous arsine should form. This would decompose and leave a black deposit of arsenic in the tube. He performed the test first on the snuff from the box, then from the tin on the dresser. Neither sample gave any evidence of the presence of arsenic. He paid the chemist and returned to the inn, fingering the paper of Dudley’s that held one of the snuff samples.

He’d have a go at deciphering those initials when he got back to the inn. The purloined letters hadn’t been helpful at all. He learned that both Adelaide and Nevil were in the habit of applying to Dudley for money, but he had already suspected that. Pronto was at the door of the inn, waiting for him.

"What took you so long? Straus was here half an hour ago. Polly Shard ain’t at home. They was horrified to hear she’s gone. She has no relatives beyond this area. Doesn’t know a soul.”

“She’s got to know somebody.”

“If she does, her folks don’t know about it. The mother thought she’d run off with somebody called Mools, but Straus stepped around to the butcher’s shop, and it turned out Mools didn’t know nothing either. He’s there, on duty.”

“Let’s have a word with Mools ourselves,” Dick decided, and returned out into the rain.

“Glad this is a small village,” Pronto muttered into his collar.

The whole main street was only two blocks long, and the inn was in the middle, so they hadn’t far to walk. It was hard to credit that any female could find Edgar Mools attractive. He was a bran-faced young man with an unruly shock of red hair, ill-spoken and bad-humored, though it might have been Polly’s flight that accounted for the mood.

“I already talked to Straus. I don’t know nothing” was his surly answer when Belami accosted him.

Dick took a golden boy from his pocket and began flipping it into the air. Mools’s eyes followed its spirals with avid interest.

“Nothing at all?” Dick asked, idly flipping the coin.

“I know she was supposed to meet me early on her day off and she didn’t show up,” he suddenly remembered.

“What day would that have been?” Dick asked.

“Tuesday. It was the day the old gent died. I asked what kept her, and . . ."

“Then you did see her at some time that day?”

“No, that night at the barn dance the church put on. She came waltzing in after the first set.”

“What time would that be?”

“Late—maybe eight-thirty or nine. She said she shouldn’t of come at all. She was supposed to be back at the Grange at eight, but since Mrs. Haskell wasn’t there, she’d risk it. She only stayed a couple of hours, then I drove her home in my da’s jig."

This confirmed Deirdre’s theory that Polly had known of Mrs. Haskell’s departure before she learned about it from Anna after her return to the Grange. Edgar Mools had stopped looking at the spinning coin. His anger with Polly was dissipating and fear for her safety was seeping in.

“Do you think something’s happened to her?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What do you think might have happened to her, Mr. Mools?”

“She might of run off with someone—some gentleman, I mean. She has a bit of a way with gentlemen. Not that she’s a bad girl, but saucy. They seem to like that.”

“Any gentleman in particular?” Belami persisted.

“She didn’t meet many at the Grange. There was only that nephew . . ."

“Didn’t run off with him. He’s still here,” Pronto mentioned.

Edgar Mools gave a dispirited sigh and said, “I know it. The only other thing I can think of is that she’s run away to London to be a city maid. One of the girls who used to work for the duchess went there to work in her grace’s house in Belvedere Square. Polly talked about London a lot. She wanted us to get married and go there, but how could I? I couldn’t live in London,” he said simply. “If Pol’s gone there, I’ll never see her again.”

Dick felt sorry for the boy. “Don’t be too sure,” he said, and gave him the guinea. “I’ll find out if she’s been to Belvedere Square and tell you.”

“Could you?” Mools asked, as if Belami had promised him the moon.

“I could, and I will. Don’t despair, Mr. Mools. This taste of city life might very well cure Polly of her fascination with London.” Especially if she’s found employment at the duchess’s home, he added silently to himself.

When they returned to the inn, Sir Nevil was pacing the lobby, waiting for them. He came forward, his face tense with worry. “Belami, the most shocking thing! Polly Shard has disappeared! I spoke to Straus as soon as I returned from seeing my uncle’s coffin disposed of. What do you suppose could have happened to her?”

Belami took a close look at Sir Nevil and judged his concern to be genuine. The fear that Nevil had spirited her away faded, and he began to wonder if Polly hadn’t gone to escape this man. In any case, Nevil’s concern for a mere serving girl was greater than normal. There was clearly something between them, and Nevil was worried.

“I’ve heard it, Nevil, and have been looking into it myself. It seems she had a strong desire to visit Brighton.”

“Eh?” Pronto asked.

Belami directed a quelling glance at his friend. “Her young man tells me she often expressed a wish to see the prince’s famous Pavilion.”

“She never mentioned it to me!” Nevil was surprised into saying.

“But why would she? That is hardly the sort of thing a servant would mention to a guest in her employer’s house,” Belami said blandly.

“That’s true! Brighton’s a devilish long way from here. She would have taken a coach, I fancy.”

"Very likely,” Dick agreed.

“I suppose you heard the will is to be read tomorrow at the duchess’s place,” Nevil said, eager to quit the subject of Polly.

“I hadn’t heard, but there’s no reason I should. It doesn’t affect me.”

“Not directly at any rate. Well, I shall walk around to the coaching office and see if I can get a line on Polly. Mrs. Haskell is very worried,” he added to explain his own concern.

“That’s kind of you,” Belami said.

They parted with no harsh words. Pronto suggested they stop off at the common room for an ale, and, as it was empty, Belami agreed.

“That Banbury tale about Polly being gone to Brighton won’t fool Ryder for long. He’ll learn the truth at the coaching office. Learn she took the London coach,” Pronto warned.

“If she stopped at the coaching office,” Belami objected. “I wish Réal were here. I’ll have to send my valet to Belvedere Square to see if Polly’s there and bring her back.”