Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“As long as we’ve come this far,” Sir Clive said, “I ought to look in on my errant butler. His sister bides about three miles south of the Dovecote, and while I’m sure Deemster is a very great comfort to her in her hour of need, he has responsibilities at the Knot as well.”
“More rebellion in the ranks?” I asked as we did justice to a very respectable postprandial brandy. Sheldon had offered to show the ladies the Dovecote’s portrait gallery, and Sir Clive had suggested that he and I repair to the library for a nightcap.
The library, like all the public rooms of the Dovecote I’d seen thus far, was spotless, tastefully opulent, and relatively warm.
The hearth crackled with another wood fire, and beeswax candles burned in candelabra on the mantel, windowsills, and reading tables.
The library’s scent—books, beeswax, a hint of applewood smoke—was the epitome of winter comfort.
“The ranks are always rebelling,” Sir Clive said, finishing his brandy. “But I expect Deemster to contain the riots belowstairs. Dulcie overheard our housekeeper and the undercook squabbling in the conservatory and said it was even money whether Trixie or Mrs. Hochstetter would prevail.”
“What were they squabbling about?”
“Tisanes and herbs, of all things. Tansy, pennyroyal, parsley, rue… We grow all sorts of culinary weeds in pots in the conservatory. I gather we are running short, which is to be expected this time of year, but the weather has made us all querulous for petty reasons.”
“Is restlessness why you chose to ride over from the Knot?” I’d worried about him. Both he and his mount seemed impervious to the elements when they’d bested me and Atlas at the orchard, but I’d also seen Sir Clive all but gibbering with cold and disorientation.
“Restlessness does plague me, though I must say, the ride over was longer than I recall.”
“Longer and colder?”
He sank into a reading chair angled near the hearth. “Longer and lonelier.”
What an admission to make to a fellow he knew mostly in passing. “You will keep the ladies company in the coach on the way back to the Knot, sir, and I will ride your fine steed. More brandy?”
“Best not, though don’t let me stop you.”
I took the other reading chair, at a loss for more small talk. The weather, feuding servants, the weather, an errant butler…
Sir Clive broke the growing silence. “Where has Dantry got off to, my lord? I have a terrible suspicion that Pippindonk’s hell brew laid him low, and then the cold finished him off.”
A tipsy man might hang up his spurs and forget what he did with them, but why bring the spurs down to the village inn in the first place? Why lurk in the dark stable yard out of sight of the rest of the village? Why leave his hat among the yews?
“Dantry might not have served in uniform,” I said, “but he was no stranger to English winters or hard cider. Your theory qualifies as possible but improbable.”
“Kind of you to say so.” Sir Clive’s rejoinder was nearly testy, but then, losing his son to a fall from a trusted pony while riding over home terrain had qualified as improbable, until it had become the unbearable reality.
“Would you care for a game of cribbage, Sir Clive?”
He rose somewhat stiffly. “Young man, you come very close to humoring me, and that I will not allow. I am merely tired and worried and wondering what in blazes Sheldon can find to maunder on about regarding a lot of old paintings of dull, dead people.”
He wanted to finish the day in discussion with my mother. I suffered precisely the same yearning where Hyperia was concerned, and no hand of cards, small talk, or discussion of clues and theories would distract me from that longing.
“Might you show me Lord Dantry’s apartment?” I asked. “I failed to make this request of Sheldon when last I was a guest.” Too overset with missing memories and unhelpful neighbors.
“Why would you want to see his rooms?”
“Because I am apparently in the grip of the same restlessness afflicting half of creation in these surrounds, because all of my own theories regarding Dantry’s absence fall closer to improbable than likely.
Because I still feel as if I don’t know the man, and if I knew him, I’d have a better sense of what he’s about. ”
“You’re flummoxed?”
“Utterly.”
Sir Clive started for the door. “I suppose that’s something.
Dorothea says you are like a terrier at a rathole when you’re flummoxed.
She claims that even as a lad, you could worry a watch right down to the springs and screws, and you did not rest until you’d put the whole business back together in perfect working order. ”
“I took apart only the one watch, and I did put it back in working order.” Which was fortunate, because the timepiece had been given to my father by his grandfather on the occasion of Papa’s twelfth birthday. Arthur had the keeping of it now, and I might someday inherit the heirloom myself.
A daunting thought. Another daunting thought.
“Come along,” Sir Clive said, holding the door for me. “And let’s have a look at Sheldon’s quarters while we’re without female supervision, shall we? That boy has always puzzled me.”
“Capital notion.” My sense of Sheldon was also incomplete. I’d dismissed him as an understandably self-centered younger son, burdened with the usual money worries. He also expressed an exasperated fondness for his older brother, despite having little in common with the earl.
Fletcher had painted Sheldon as the more sensible sibling, the better candidate for the earldom, in fact, but Hyperia had described a more calculating man.
One who was always watching the door, always ready with a pretty, empty compliment.
That squared with my recollections of Sheldon at university.
Smarter than he let on, and more complicated.
“You’re quiet,” Sir Clive said as we mounted the central staircase. “Brooding?”
“Thinking.”
“Your mother says you excel at thinking, almost to a fault.”
I considered turning the tables on him: What are your intentions toward my mother? But he’d likely find that sort of posturing amusing and see it for the diversionary tactic it would have been.
“I have undertaken a number of investigations,” I said as we passed the landing, “always at the invitation of others. Such exercises require cogitation. It might comfort my mother to know that this search for Dantry will be my last effort to solve other people’s mysteries.”
When exactly had I made that decision? Because I had.
I wanted desperately to find the earl for any number of reasons, one of them quite selfish.
If this was to be my last charge across the investigatory battlefield, I needed for it to end in victory, albeit perhaps the sad victory of understanding how Dantry had earned a halo and wings.
“Your mother would disapprove of that choice,” Sir Clive replied, starting down a shadowed corridor. “She claims your sleuthing pulled you back from the brink of doom. A mother’s intuition in such instances is not to be lightly dismissed.”
Hyperia had pulled me back from the brink of doom. Hyperia, time, the brisk fresh air of my family seat, and the bonds of family and friendship.
Also sleuthing, often on behalf of family or friends.
“My mind is made up,” I said, “but I have yet to inform Miss West of my decision, so your discretion would be appreciated.”
Sir Clive rapped on a carved oak door, the scene thereon depicting a peaceable kingdom. The door was likely worth a small fortune, so exquisite was the carving.
“Grinling Gibbons’s work,” Sir Clive said. “He didn’t carve many doors that I know of.”
The Dutchman had been too busy providing decorative woodwork to places such as St. Paul’s Cathedral, Windsor Castle, and Hampton Court Palace.
“Impressive.” The carving was also a wonderful little parable for a peer to behold on his way to seek his slumbers.
We had let ourselves into Lord Dantry’s private sitting room. I brought a lantern from one of the corridor sconces and used a spill from a jar on the mantel to light a few candles.
If I’d expected imposing elegance, I was to be disappointed, also intrigued.
“Cozy,” Sir Clive said, gazing around. “My uncle certainly did not appoint this apartment in such a homey fashion.”
The carpet was thick—more Aubusson—the colors tending to cheerful greens and creams with dashes of pink and gold.
The curtains were pale green rather than some heavy dark velvet intended to keep out all sunlight.
Two chairs were comfortably upholstered and angled before the empty hearth, a hassock between them.
A pair of worn Hessians sat next to one chair, equally venerable house slippers next to the other.
The paintings on the wall were of a piece with the door carving. Pastures and paddocks full of fat sheep, contented cows, and glossy horses, with the Dovecote adding a touch of benign grace in the background. The signature on one of them was C. Arbuthnot.
“The earl is an amateur painter?”
“He dabbled as a lad. All you sophisticated young fellows are supposed to be artistically knowledgeable.”
The landscapes on the walls weren’t knowledgeable so much as they were sentimental. Technical competence turned toward a humble, personal choice of subject.
“I recall this room being much larger,” Sir Clive said, opening a door next to the windows. “Ah. I thought so. Dantry—Claude—divided his father’s sitting room into two rooms. Here, we have a study, if I’m not mistaken.”
I brought the lantern with me but didn’t bother lighting candles.
Sir Clive’s assessment struck me as correct as far as it went—the room included a worn desk, another reading chair, and a hearth plenty large enough to heat the space—but the carpet was fading, as were the curtains, and a quilt worn to visible softness had been folded over the back of the reading chair.
Small, plain pillows were lodged in the corners of the chairs, and of art, there was very little. A sampler quoted Proverbs 22:1.