Chapter 1 #2
“When did you last see Lord Dantry, and have you any reason to suspect foul play?”
“Foul play.” Sir Clive considered his toddy.
“Rotten notion. Foul play in the heart of Merry Olde’s most beauteous shire.
Your years in Spain have given you a jaundiced view of your fellow man, my lord.
A pity that.” He nosed his toddy, a rich, spicy, aromatic creation for which Mrs. Gwinnett should be canonized. “Foul play. Indeed.”
Now, he turned up evasive?
I had chosen the family parlor for this discussion, one of few rooms kept toasty at all hours.
The chairs were comfy, the dimensions modest, the hearth generous.
A pair of windows let in what light the day offered, and the art on the walls was landscapes of local scenes.
The millpond, the Hall’s eastern facade in all its springtime glory, the ruin of an old round tower where my brother Harry and I had played by the hour.
I wanted to turn that particular painting to the wall.
“Foul play can result from gaming debts,” I said, ignoring Sir Clive’s reference to my military career.
“Duels in which parties are injured or killed, affairs of the heart involving ladies with legal commitments to other fellows, business associates with bad tempers, inane wagers… I could go on. Many an otherwise decent person makes enemies.”
I had a few, mostly former soldiers who blamed me for harms I had not caused. A certain breed of morally simplistic officer much preferred to have enemies and to categorize every person he met as either friend or foe. Sir Clive, by contrast, had likely never made an enemy.
Or had he? “Might somebody be causing trouble for you by absconding with your cousin?”
He peered at me owlishly. “Trouble for me? By spiritin’ off with my houseguest?
I don’t see how. Dantry and I have always rubbed along well enough.
The difference in our ages means I have been more like an uncle to him than a cousin.
He’s my heir, I am not his heir—he has a younger brother who’s a bit of a rapscallion. ”
I trolled the depths of memory. “Sheldon.” Nickname Hellion.
“He was a couple of years behind me at university.” One of those obnoxious people who appeared to master complex material effortlessly, despite spending every waking hour carousing.
He’d never suffered a sore head or gone short of coin, as best I recalled.
“I invited Sheldon for a visit as well—would not be polite to invite only the one brother, would it?—but he’s soon off to Town, and this apparently requires more preparation than polishing his best boots and trimming his handsome locks.
Why they are both as yet unmarried baffles a simple old man like me. ”
A simple old man who knew how to win a horse race. “Do Dantry and Sheldon get on well?”
“They absolutely do. My late uncle got that part right, bless him. Not the best farmer in creation, did not marry brilliantly, and somewhat lacking in charm, but he raised those boys right.”
An odd eulogy. Sir Clive, by contrast, was an excellent farmer. He’d been devoted to his late wife, and he was a friend to all whether they sought friendship or preferred quiet solitude on a winter morning.
“Might Dantry have simply gone up to Town and failed to apprise you of his plans?”
Sir Clive’s genial expression knit into consternation.
“First, he would not be that rude. Dulcie would be hurt if he’d abandoned us in such an ungentlemanly fashion.
Hurt and offended, and one does not willingly offend my niece.
Second, if he went up to Town, why ain’t he in Town?
I sent an express to the earl’s London residence.
They are expectin’ Sheldon, but no word as yet from the earl. ”
I cast around for other benign explanations for a peer’s disappearance. “Could the earl have eloped with a local lady?”
“Dantry has no need to elope, my lord. He’s a peer and a good-looking specimen. The distaff find his company very congenial.”
My company was often not congenial. I was either battling old ghosts or sorting out some scandalous puzzle for polite society.
I enjoyed the investigations in hindsight—enjoyed having made sense out of clues, evidence, and witness recollections.
In the midst of the sleuthing, I was often irritable and difficult.
Would Hyperia expect me to give up my investigations? Would Society assume I was no longer interested in solving their delicate riddles?
I bit off a corner of my cheese toast. Mrs. Gwinnett railed against my demands for simple fare, then made even humble bread and cheddar into food for the gods.
“If Dantry was smitten with an inappropriate parti, he might have eloped,” I said, though the theory was farfetched.
A peer married where he pleased. Some choices were outrageous—a former mistress, for example.
The marriage was nonetheless valid, and eventually, if the parties behaved, limited acceptance from less-formal quarters followed.
“Do we have inappropriate partis out here in the shires?” Sir Clive asked. “If you mean a washerwoman or dairymaid, I cannot see Dantry making their acquaintance, much less succumbing to their charms.”
I could not see a young, unwed peer going for long without female companionship, but then, I’d come home from the war utterly uninterested in amatory pursuits. Perhaps Dantry had monkish inclinations or, like my brother Arthur, was devoted to a partner of his own gender.
If so, anybody privy to that information could threaten Dantry into a permanent remove to France.
A remote possibility at best. “What do you think happened to Dantry?”
“Haven’t a clue, my lord, else I’d be about locating him.
I’ve looked for tracks, though without mud or snow to aid the situation, I haven’t sighted any.
Dantry is a good-sized fellow—Arbuthnots tend to height—and he’s not particularly wise to the ways of the country.
I don’t believe he could set a snare to save himself.
If he hasn’t come to grief at the millpond—frozen, of course—or been set upon by wolves, he’s in comfortable surrounds.
I would not call him soft, but you would probably refer to him as a civilian. ”
A civilian did not realize that snares properly set could mean the difference between surviving a winter in the Spanish mountains or starving.
A civilian would not obscure his trail as a routine element of passing through the countryside.
A civilian would have no idea that a sheep byre could be positively cozy—if spectacularly malodorous—in the midst of a winter storm.
“We might be looking for a body, Sir Clive.”
He set his drink aside with about an inch left in the glass.
“Don’t care to look for bodies, my lord.
Had enough of that with my James. Poor lad.
We did find him, though. Gave him a proper send-off.
About killed me. My dear wife was never the same after that, and that about killed me all over again. ”
I’d forgotten that Sir Clive had buried a son. The lad had been out on his pony and come to grief in a fall on a fine summer day. The pony had never been located, probably because some local farmer knew that Sir Clive might have shot the beast on sight.
The whole incident had taken place before I’d been out of leading strings, but the cautionary tale had survived young James by years.
“Dantry did not take a horse,” I said. “If he left the Knot, he did so on two feet, and he’s either the first person in recorded history to hide successfully in rural England, or he’s gone up to Town, where he’s lying low amid creature comforts.”
“If a man is avoiding his London creditors,” Sir Clive said, “he does not lurk under their very noses.”
“If a man wants to hide, he does not bide in the shires, where every fresh face, stray dog, or new towel hung on the neighbor’s wash line is remarked and discussed. A million souls are said to dwell in London. Dantry knows Town, and he’d be a needle in a vast haystack if he ran to ground there.”
Sir Clive shook his head. “The benevolent Deity did not intend for us to live all on top of each other, a million little ants in a heap. No fresh air, no clean water, no decent housing, no place to raise a garden. Old soldiers starving in the street, haggard women offering their diseased charms on every corner. You may keep your Londontowne, my lord. Sodom on Thames, if you ask me, and I am not a religious man.”
I avoided London for much the same reasons.
Yes, beautiful architecture, fine shops, lovely parks, and wonderful art were to be found in abundance, but so was squalor unmatched this side of hell, often a few streets away from great wealth.
Then too, Society gathered in London, and outside of my investigations, Society and I had little use for each other.
And yet, I had to make some show of searching for the earl, lest my mother be wroth with me.
“Would you mind if I had a look at the quarters you provided for Dantry?”
“Would not mind at all. Have a look, nose around, ask rude questions, stare off into the distance, and mutter in Spanish. Your mother says you find answers that way. Find me a stray earl, and I will be quite content.”
I could not recall ever muttering in Spanish in my mother’s presence. “When exactly did you realize Dantry had gone missing?”
“Wednesday morning. A fine morning for a hack, though a bit nippy. Dantry usually rode out with me after breakfast. Damned sun comes up too late this time of year to ride before the first meal. He’s a competent equestrian, is Dantry, though you have the better seat, also the better horse.
If that horse of yours ever goes missing, you’d best start the search in my stable.
Outstanding beast, if I do say so in the King’s English. ”
Sir Clive refreshed his toddy from a pitcher on the tray before us, topped the drink with some frothy cream, and stirred the lot with a long-handled spoon.