To Wed an Heiress (17 page)

P
evensey wrinkled his nose as he evaluated his sketch of Philippe Bayeux. All of the face was drawn in detail except for the eyes. Pevensey had always considered eyes to be windows into a subject’s character. He had drawn Mademoiselle Mathilde’s eyes sly and seductive with a definite air of snobbery about them. He had drawn Torin Emison’s eyes as clever, but overly conceited in regards to his own worth, with the spark of idealism that young men possess who have never had to work for their bread. But Philippe Bayeux’s eyes he had not drawn at all, for the Frenchman’s character was, at best, enigmatic.

Pevensey gnawed on his lower lip and looked at the picture once more. He would have to go into the village and find bystanders to corroborate the Frenchman’s story, but as it currently stood, it seemed that Bayeux would have had no opportunity to accost Miss Hastings by the pond and do her harm. If Pevensey had correctly pinpointed the time when Miss Hastings left the house, then Bayeux would have been safely entrenched in his tavern breakfast while Miss Hastings was meeting her unfortunate demise. Yet, be that as it may, Pevensey still did not feel confident enough to add Bayeux’s eyes to the sketch—there was something the clock-conscious architect was concealing. Was it a past relationship with Arabella Hastings or was it something even more sinister?

Closing his book on the unfinished sketch, Pevensey wandered out of the drawing room into the hallway. The scullery maid, her arms full of kindling was coming the other way, and her cheeks reddened at the sight of him. Pevensey gave her a wink as they passed by each other like ships in the harbor—more from habit than from any actual admiration—and her homely face colored up completely. She ducked her head and hurried along, lingering at the end of the hallway long enough to send him a lovelorn glance.

“Ah, there you are, Pevensey!”

He turned around to see William Hastings bearing down on him from the other end of the hallway. “Good morning, Mr. Hastings.” Pevensey managed a thin smile. He had hoped to avoid Arabella Hastings’ father until he was reaching the end of his investigation. He should have known from past experience that William Hastings was not a man easily avoided.

“Nearly afternoon by now,” grunted Hastings, “and the second day you’ve been here. Well?”

Pevensey raised an eyebrow, refusing to answer the question until Hastings elaborated on it.

“Do you have enough to hang him yet?”

“Regrettably, no,” replied Pevensey. He used the word “regrettably” loosely, for nothing he had learned, as yet, had convinced him the earl
needed
to hang.

“What do you think I’m paying you for? To swap civil whiskers with the servants?”

“I think you’re paying me to find the truth, sir,” Pevensey’s tone was careful, in a manner designed to lower William Hastings’ hackles. “Which I will, all in due course. And speaking of truth, I’ve a couple of questions you might be able to help me with.”

Hastings grunted, and Pevensey took that as leave to proceed. He pulled out his sketchbook and began with the most innocuous inquiry concerning the questions plaguing him.

“About what time in the morning would you say your altercation with the earl took place?”

“Shortly after eight o’clock. Why?”

The end of Pevensey’s pencil began to waggle as it scribbled a clock face on the page. “I am still establishing the timeline of the morning in question and cross-checking it with all pertinent parties.”

“Hmm.”

Pevensey nearly grinned, thinking about how little William Hastings appreciated the methodical manner in which he was conducting the case. On the one hand, the man’s insistence on haste was understandable, but on the other hand, it was clearly a hindrance to finding out the whole truth of the matter.

“And another question for you….” Pevensey’s eyes left the sketchbook and came level with William Hastings’ so that he could watch his reaction. “Did you invite Philippe Bayeux, the architect, up to Woldwick?”

“No!” Hastings initial response was emphatic, but it did not take more than a couple seconds before he started to pole his ship backwards through the treacherous waters. “Well, that is to say, yes, I did! He’s worked for me before and I wanted to see what he would come up with for renovating this place.” Hastings’ jowls pulled back into a sneer. “But that’s all in the past now—I won’t be spending any of my blunt saving
this
gloomy disaster of a country house.”

Pevensey continued to press. “So, Miss Hastings had no part in inviting the architect here?”

“No, certainly not.”

“And this architect, Philippe Bayeux—was there a…romantic attachment between him and your daughter?”

“How dare you, sir!” The mill owner raised his voice, but to Pevensey, the outrage felt almost perfunctory—as if Hastings had been expecting that question.

“I regret seeming impertinent, sir, but as you know, my profession requires me to pursue every avenue of inquiry.”

“Philippe Bayeux was nothing to my daughter.
Nothing
!”

It was not exactly a straightforward yes or no, but Pevensey forbore from pushing the point any further.

“I expect a full report from you tomorrow,” said Hastings, jamming his thumbs into the pockets of the waistcoat encircling his upper half.

“As you wish,” said Pevensey, sensing that he had just been dismissed. The disappearance of William Hastings down the hallway confirmed this suspicion.

Where to go now? Pevensey checked his pocket watch; it was still a few hours before tea. The door to the library, just across from him, was ajar. And from inside, he could hear the faint snoring of someone asleep.

***

Pevensey’s profession did not require a good deal of sneaking about, but he had a slight build and a quiet step, and it was not too difficult to enter the library without waking its occupant.

Tiptoeing towards the sound of snoring, Pevensey rounded the set of wingback chairs which had their backs to the door. Leaning back in one of them, with feet propped up on a cushioned footstool, was an undistinguished looking woman of indistinct age. Her iron gray hair and worn face placed her at fifty or sixty years of age, but something about her thick figure made her seem younger.

Pevensey searched his mind for who this might be—she was certainly not a member of the family. But then, would a servant make free of the library chairs as a place to nap away a wintry day? He remembered Mrs. Alfred’s comments from a day ago. This must be the duenna who had accompanied Arabella Hastings, a Mrs. Rollo, if he remembered the name aright.

The strange flickering of the firelight on Mrs. Rollo’s immobile figure appealed to him. He was not accustomed to drawing females in their sleep, but his sense of the picturesque outweighed his sense of propriety and he pulled out his sketchbook.

Either the suddenness of the movement or the slight rustling of the pages disturbed the subject of his intended portrait. Mrs. Rollo’s eyelids sprang open. She saw immediately that she was being observed, but instead of making an outcry, she simply lowered her feet from the footstool, crossed her ankles, and folded her hands in her lap, waiting for whatever was to come next.

For a brief instant, Pevensey felt guilt and closed the cover of his sketchbook. He recovered quickly, however, and gave an encouraging smile. “I beg your pardon. I am Jacob Pevensey, attached to the magistrates’ office in London. I stepped inside to look for a Mrs. Rollo…might you be she?”

“Yes.”

This heavy monosyllable might have stopped a lesser man in his tracks, but Pevensey carried on effortlessly. “I have a few questions to put to you regarding the tragic events of two days ago. Would you mind if I sit down?”

Mrs. Rollo simply stared at him.

Pevensey slid into the other wingback chair without waiting for an answer that was not forthcoming, positioning it slightly as he sat down so that he could see the woman more clearly.

She had broad features beneath her gray hair, features too large to be called pretty and more becoming in a man than in a woman. Her shoulders were broad as well, ungainly, some might say, beneath the ill-fitting fabric of her gray dress.

“I understand you came to Woldwick with the Hastings family?”

“Yes.”

“And what…position do you hold in that family?”

“I am, or rather, I
was
companion and chaperone to Miss Hastings.”

Pevensey was delighted to hear Mrs. Rollo form her first full sentence. He had been afraid she would be no help to him at all.

“What were your duties?”

She shifted in her chair. “I accompanied Miss Hastings to social gatherings when her father was unable to attend.”

“And…?”

“That is all.”

“Ah,” said Pevensey, a little surprised. It seemed a small task. “Did Miss Hastings confide in you?”

“Certainly not.” Mrs. Rollo’s hands twitched in her lap. Pevensey noted that they were almost as large as his own.

“How long had you been Miss Hastings’ companion?”

“Three years.”

“So, even before she was out in society?”

“Yes.”

“Were you her governess?”

The woman smiled oddly. “In a manner of speaking.”

“What manner of speaking would that be?” Pevensey strongly believed that murder investigations demanded forthright questions and forthright answers.

“I taught. Miss Hastings did not always learn.”

“So she was not a bright student.”

“No, she was bright enough.” Mrs. Rollo leaned forward, the broad features of her face filled with intensity. “But she refused to apply herself to anything that required discipline.”

“Music and French, you mean?”

“Quite. Though she had other means of exercising her French besides my tutelage.” Mrs. Rollo’s voice took on a snide quality as if she were making a joke that only she would understand.

“Are you referring to Monsieur Bayeux?”

Mrs. Rollo stiffened. “No, why would I be?”

Pevensey ignored her denial and focused more on the dismay his own question had occasioned. “What was the relationship between Miss Hastings and Philippe Bayeux?”

Mrs. Rollo’s thick knuckles laced themselves together. She made no reply.

“I have reason to believe that this matter has direct bearing on Miss Hastings’ murder.” It was an overstatement, of course, but first Mr. Hastings and now Mrs. Rollo had flimflammed him on this subject, making him more than a little suspicious.

“I am a poor spinster,” she said at last. She would not meet his eye. “With Miss Hastings gone, I no longer have a place in this household. My only hopes for survival will be a small pension and good recommendation to find another position.”

“So Mr. Hastings has forbidden you to speak on this topic?”

She looked away into the depths of the flickering fire. This interview, it seemed, was finished.

A
fter extricating herself from the linen closet and exchanging another conspiratorial look with Garth, Eda disappeared into her own bedroom to ponder what they had heard. Walking over to the bed, she turned around, leaned back, and let herself fall against the goose down coverlet with a satisfying thump. Her shape imprinted onto the bedclothes and sent a few stray feathers wafting into the air.

What secrets could the French maid have been speaking of? Were they secrets pertinent to the murder? Were they secrets that could save Haro? A tight knot grew inside her throat. She could barely swallow—or breathe—and she felt her air-hungry lungs begin to collapse in on themselves.

The whole while they had been engaged—no, not engaged, simply bound by an understanding—he had never kissed her any more romantically than a farewell kiss on the cheek. And in all that time, she had never felt the lack. But now, after the fires of desire had been blown hotter by the bellows of jealousy, she knew that she wanted nothing more than for his lips to meet hers.

He had wanted to kiss her today, but the murder of Arabella Hastings lay between them, a putrid fly in the heady perfume of requited love. She could not kiss him until that impediment was gone.

She flung her head back against the bed. What secrets did Mademoiselle Mathilde know? Was there a hushed-up story in Arabella Hastings’ past that would shed light on the identity of the strangler? Or were the secrets merely concerning Arabella’s father, nefarious business dealings he was keen to hide from the public eye?

She sat up suddenly. It was all well and good to let the mind wander, but it would be far more useful to Haro to ferret out the truth. She must go and find Mademoiselle Mathilde before she departed and wring from her the secrets of the Hastings household.

***

Pevensey did not often leave an interview feeling dissatisfied, but in the case of Mrs. Rollo, he felt extremely vexed that his store of essential information had not increased one jot during the course of their conversation. He stood outside the library door for one minute, and then another.

It had been impossible to press the Countess of Anglesford when she told him her taradiddles about her niece being present in the drawing room. Had he questioned her further, her rank and her delicate constitution would have made Pevensey seem a boor at best or a scoundrel at worst. But the possibility of pressing Mrs. Rollo seemed a far more promising matter. She had neither rank nor connections. Who was to object if he applied a little force to the shell of this nut, just enough to crack it and get at the meat that lay inside?

Perhaps such sentiments were reprehensible, but Pevensey had to admit they were also responsible for his success in his chosen profession. The magistrates knew he would not rest until he had obtained the answers they needed.

Pevensey reopened the door of the library and re-entered the sanctum of tastefully arranged books and dark mahogany panels. This time he made no effort to disguise his footsteps.

Mrs. Rollo was enjoying the same chair that he had left her in not three minutes since, her feet once more propped up like an ancient laborer’s after a long day swinging his scythe in the field.

“Did you
like
Arabella Hastings?” Pevensey demanded, his opening assault far less politic, or polite, than his previous questions.

The Countess of Anglesford would have twittered in outrage—and reached for her hartshorn—but Mrs. Rollo’s inscrutably set face became demonstrably less set and decidedly less inscrutable. “No, young man. I did not.”

Pevensey breathed a sigh of inward exultation. The forthright approach had worked. She was opening up to him like a flower, albeit a very drab and unattractive one.

“Why is that?”

“She was lazy, sharp-tongued, untruthful, unkind, and irreligious.”

Obviously the old biddy had thought about this subject at some length.

“Did she have any good qualities?”

“She was content with
seeming
to have them…when on display for potential suitors.”

“But she made no such pretense at home?”

“No, and certainly not for the benefit of the
servants
.”

She said that last word bitterly. Pevensey knew that the life of a governess was a sad one—as gray as the faded dress Mrs. Rollo wore. She was not quite a member of the family and not quite a member of the hired help. Many governesses could at least take comfort in the joy of imparting knowledge, the affection of their students, or the respect of their employers—but for Mrs. Rollo, it seemed, none of these solaces were available. A debutante not interested in schoolroom instruction or societal guidance would undoubtedly treat her governess-turned-companion no better than a cook, a washerwoman, or a scullery maid. Mrs. Rollo was, to all the parties that mattered, a servant in the Hastings household, a servant disgruntled at the estimation of her own worth.

“Shortly before Miss Hastings’ death”—Pevensey did not feel the need to use a euphemism in front of Mrs. Rollo—“there was an altercation between her and Miss Swanycke. I understand you were present for that.”

“Yes.”

“Did Miss Hastings say something to provoke Miss Swanycke into slapping her?”

“I imagine she must have,” said Mrs. Rollo, her lips pulling back distastefully and revealing her large teeth. Pevensey was already imagining how often Miss Hastings must have provoked
this
woman, and how often Mrs. Rollo must have wished she could repay her in the same coin that Miss Swanycke had displayed.

“But you did not hear the exchange between the two of them?”

She hesitated. Pevensey held his breath—she was on the cusp of answering him, he could sense it.

“It was only a whisper, but I did hear it. Miss Hastings was assuring Miss Swanycke that she could drop a word in the ear of one of her gentlemen friends and obtain a carte blanche and a snug hunting bungalow for her, if she would only vacate the premises and release the earl from the net she held him in.”

Pevensey whistled in astonishment. No wonder the black-haired beauty had taken offense. “You seem to be an astute observer of your surroundings, Mrs. Rollo. In your observation of the family and household here at Woldwick, who would you say had the deepest resentment towards Miss Hastings?”

Her lip curled. “Other than myself, you mean?”

Pevensey raised an eyebrow. So, this broad-shouldered woman nursed a sense of humor as well as an implacable grievance. He looked down at the thick knuckles of her hands. When he first heard that the crime had involved strangling, he had assumed that the suspect would be a man, but could this woman—this bear of a woman—have been baited enough to react with a masculine strength?

She turned silent again, and Pevensey saw that she was refusing to speculate on others’ resentments.

“Where were you on the morning of the murder?”

“Breaking my fast with Mrs. Alfred, the housekeeper.”

“Thank you for being so forthcoming.” This detail should be easy enough to verify, and if it were true, then Mrs. Rollo—large knuckles and all—was not the strangler he was looking for.

***

Haro was tired of sitting with himself. Eda was nowhere to be found. Torin insisted on burying his nose in Terrence, or Plautus, or some other tedious Roman tome. And Haro had given his word not to leave the house, making a brisk gallop through the cold woods an enticing idea but utterly forbidden to him. He discarded the idea of going to sit with his mother, and—well, one could only handle so much of that pickled Frenchman, Bayeux.

The earl wandered into his father’s study—
his
study now—leaving the door open behind him. Sitting at the desk still seemed as foreign as putting on another man’s waistcoat. Haro remembered his father hunched in that chair, burning the candle far into the night at that desk during the few weeks of the year he was at his country home. His mother had always remarked how thorough her husband was with the accounting. Little did she know that his thoroughness was merely to conceal or mitigate the damage that a deck of cards had done to the Emison estate.

Haro sat down at the desk and opened the largest drawer. There was a locked wood case inside, the one that held his father’s pistols. Haro opened another drawer and fished out the key that would open the lock. There they were, the two silver pistols he had always coveted when he was a boy. He fingered the filigreed hilt of the polished firearm. His father would ride out with the hounds on occasion, but he had never been one for dueling or target practice—and yet the pistol was as clean and bright as if it had been the late earl’s most prized possession.

Haro fingered the trigger. He wondered what Edward Emison would have done if he had not lost his life to illness, if he had lived to face the financial ruin that now beset his family. Would he have taken the coward’s way out—a bullet through the temple? Or would he have braved the storm with them, retrenched, reformed, and resided in genteel poverty in a house in Russell Square?

“Ahem! Pardon me!” A freckled face peeked in through the open door. “If you are intending to shoot yourself, you will take the time to leave a note, won’t you?”

Haro looked up in surprise. “A note?”

“Of course! Saying that you strangled Miss Hastings. Everyone will assume that was the case, anyway, but it would make my job much easier if it were in writing.”

Haro leaned back in his chair. He resisted the urge to point the pistol at the Bow Street Runner. “What the devil is that supposed to mean? You’ve made up your mind against me?”

“Certainly not, my lord. But you do admit things look suspicious, do you not? A pistol in hand, finger poised to shoot, alone and indoors in one’s study—if those are not signs of a guilty conscience, I don’t know what is!”

Haro stopped leaning back, and the legs of the chair swung forward with a thump. He let go of the pistol, placing it carefully on the desk. “Mr. Pevensey, nothing could be further from my mind than committing suicide. I am, in fact, very much looking forward to putting these false accusations to rest and living the long life that lies before me.” He cleared his throat. “I hope that your interviews over the past two days have produced some information that warrants my optimism…?”

Pevensey said nothing to fill the space that Haro had left.

Haro frowned. His hands balled into fists, and he placed them on the desk in front of him. He hated to ask the question so directly, but after all, it was
his
family’s reputation,
his
future with Eda, and
his
neck on the line. “Have you a suspect other than me?”

The corner of Pevensey’s mouth turned up into a wry smile. “I wish I could oblige you with a yes, your lordship. I’ve found more than a few who had reason to wish Miss Hastings ill…but opportunity? Aye, there’s the rub. I still have more questions to ask, but so far, the only person I can place at the bridge at the necessary time is
you
.”