CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“Someone wanted to harm you—so badly that they were willing to bludgeon an old man for the privilege.
You know something.”
“I know nothing,” I insisted, but even I could not deny that whatever had befallen the baron seemed to touch upon me, albeit tangentially.
“He did say he knew my mother,” I told Stoker.
It was a slender offering of peace, but it was all I had to give.
“Who was your mother?”
I spread my hands.
“I have no idea.
But if you and I are going to get to the bottom of this, we must stop playing at distrusting one another.”
He curled a lip.
“That’s rather like a horse thief lecturing the farmer on locking the barn door, is it not?
I have come to a conclusion.
You insist that you know nothing.
I do not believe you.
There is a possibility we may both be correct.”
“Go on.”
“It is just possible that you know something you do not realize you know.”
He turned his head, and I noticed the way the lamplight burnished his hair.
It had a blue gleam in this light, coal black but with something glimmering in the depths.
It was a shame that such hair should be wasted on a man, I thought idly.
Any fashionable woman would have given fifty pounds for a wig made of it.
“Veronica?”
He waved a hand in front of my face.
“Pay attention when I am lecturing you.
You can woolgather later.”
“Very well.
I admit, I have been less than forthcoming.
I am done with it.
Ask me what you like.
I will tell you whatever you wish to know.
I ask only the same courtesy in return.”
He opened his mouth, but before he could protest, I went on swiftly.
“And I promise to ask only questions that may be pertinent to the investigation.
You may keep your own secrets.
Are we agreed?”
I put out my hand, and after a long, agonizing moment, he took it.
“Agreed.
And as a pledge of good faith, you will take the first turn.
He made no effort to find you after your first guardian, Miss Lucy Harbottle, died.
It was only after her sister died and left you quite alone that he took the trouble to come to you.
That begs the obvious question, what changed with Miss Nell Harbottle’s death?”
I considered a moment.
“Well, it left me finally and irrevocably alone in the world.
I planned to leave Wren Cottage and begin my travels anew.
But he could not have known it.
I told no one save the vicar, and that only minutes before the baron arrived.”
“Something else, then,” he prompted.
“What of your inheritance?
Did Miss Nell leave you money?”
I smothered a laugh.
“Hardly.
There were a few notes and coins in her household box, but I left those behind to compensate the landlord for the damages.”
“Bank accounts?
Investments?
Jewelry?”
I shook my head at each of these.
“The sole household account was in both of our names and has a current balance of sixteen shillings.
I have a little money of my own for traveling, but I keep it in a separate account.
As to investments, there were none, and Nell did not wear jewelry save a cross that I buried with her.
She had never left it off as long as I had known her and it did not seem right to bury her without it.”
His gaze was bright and inquisitive as a monkey’s.
“Was it valuable?”
I shrugged.
“Not in the least.”
Stoker gave a gusty sigh.
“What else?
What could have brought them together?”
He seemed to put the question more to himself than to me, so I sat quietly, letting him think.
He was silent some minutes as he pondered, then began to fire questions at me.
“How did your aunts live?
If there was no money in the bank, where did they acquire the funds to run the household?
Did they have other friends?
Did they correspond with anyone?
Did they have peculiar habits?”
I put up a hand.
“One question at a time if we are to be rational about this.
First, the money.
I do not know from where it came.
A sum was paid into the account every quarter.
Aunt Nell was quite discreet upon the subject, but she did indicate it was a family legacy.
And before you ask, no, I know nothing of her family save that she and Aunt Lucy were born and bred in London.
Aunt Lucy did say once they two were the only ones left, so I presume the money was an annuity to be paid for the duration of their lives.
As to friends and correspondence, I can tell you quite certainly they had none of either.
They were perfectly content with their own society and went out very seldom.
They attended church and occasionally served on committees, but they did not go out of their way to make friends.
And once we left a village, they did not engage in correspondence with those we had left behind.
What else?”
“Peculiar habits,” he commented.
“Anything that struck you at the time as curious.”
“The only habit I can recall is that they insisted upon purchasing a newspaper every day and it had to be the
Times.
They liked to keep current on affairs of the world.
Aunt Nell was quite serious, always preoccupied with needlework and the Bible.
The only present she ever made me was a motto for my bedroom: ‘The Wages of Sin Is Death,’” I told him with a shudder.
“Christ,” he said.
“Exactly.
But Aunt Lucy made up for it.
She was lively and kind, a great gardener.
She did not like my traveling, but she understood it.
My first butterfly net was a present from her, and she gave me a compass to mark my first expedition,” I said, touching the little instrument pinned to my bodice.
If I closed my eyes, I could still see her, with her cloud of fluffy white hair and her gentle hands, pressing it into my palm.
“So you will always find your way home again, child,” she had said, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
Stoker had fallen into a reverie, but he roused himself then, like an opium dreamer slowly emerging from a fugue.
“I think I have it,” he said.
“Your aunts were hiding out after committing a crime.”
“Stoker, you astonish me.
I cannot believe that your imagination could lead you so far astray as to suggest that those two harmless old women were criminals!”
“Think of it,” he insisted.
“It is the only logical solution.
They have money, enough to live comfortably, but they will not divulge its source.
They do not encourage friendships or correspondence.
They move from village to village.
It makes perfect sense,” he finished, sitting back with an air of satisfaction.
“I can think of a dozen explanations just as likely, and none of them involving felonious old women,” I returned.
“You cannot name one.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it abruptly.
“Very well,” I said after a moment.
“I cannot think of one at present, but I have no doubt I could, and something just as outlandish as you propose.
Tell me, Stoker, since you are so persuaded as to their guilt, what crime do you think they committed?”
My voice was sharp with sarcasm, but Stoker’s was triumphant.
“Kidnapping.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I think they stole you, Veronica.
You did not belong to either of them.
Where did you come from?
They must have taken you.
Perhaps your nursemaid was inattentive or your mother very young.
You were left in a pram somewhere, no doubt in a park or on a village green, and in a moment of inattention, the Harbottle ladies snatched you up and carried you off.”
“Stoker, in spite of your protests to the contrary, I can only assume that your taste in literature tends towards the sensationalist and absurd.
The Harbottle ladies did not carry me off.
I was a foundling.”
“Ah, and where, precisely, were you found?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I cannot say!
I never asked and they never told me.
They were very close about their past.
We did not speak of such things.”
“What did you talk about?”
I puffed out a sigh.
“I told you—gardening with Aunt Lucy, needlework and sin with Aunt Nell.
Those were their sole interests and comprised the bulk of their conversation.
Aunt Nell also supervised the cooking; Aunt Lucy taught me the rudiments of nursing.
I read aloud to them in the evenings.
That is the whole of it.”
“It sounds a dreary life,” he said suddenly.
“Of course it was dreary, but it was all I knew, and that made it bearable—at least until I discovered butterflying and the freedom it provided.
When I was eighteen, I left on my first expedition to Switzerland in search of Alpine varieties.
I sold the specimens to collectors and made enough money to fund another expedition, this one further afield, and that is how matters progressed for the next several years.
The aunts did not like it, but the money was my own, and so they could not prevent me.
I traveled, I came home for visits, and I nursed Aunt Lucy and later Aunt Nell.”
“Tell me about your aunt Nell’s death.”
I sighed.
“A series of apoplexies.
Her first was some months ago, a little after Christmas.
It was quite a severe one, robbing her of much movement and most of her speech.
The doctor wrote to me in Costa Rica and I organized my passage home.
I found her much altered from the woman I had always known.
The doctor dosed her heavily with morphia to keep her calm and quiet.
A few months after her first attack, she suffered another apoplexy, much more violent than the first, and when she regained consciousness, it became clear she had entirely lost the power of speech.
She tried to write, but that, too, was beyond her abilities, and the doctor said it was kinder to keep her under the spell of morphia until she passed.
When she died, I will confess, it was a relief to me.
I did not like to see her thus.
She had always been a person of great energy and purpose, and it was difficult to see her reduced to so little.”
“I can understand,” he said softly.
I did not much care for his sympathy in that moment, and I hurried on.
“Surely even you must see that this line of inquiry is a dead end.
The baron’s past is a far likelier vein than mine.
Let us begin with the poor gentleman himself.
Had he enemies?”
Stoker shook his head.
“None of which I am aware.”
“He was a foreigner.
Do you know whence he came?”
“Coburg.