Chapter 22
Chapter
The next morning, having ensured J. J. and Mornaday were both au courant with the latest developments, slender as they were, I settled to work cataloguing a recent arrival—a case of southern birdwings.
Troides minos is a truly striking species of butterfly, and these displayed remarkable variety in both size and colouration.
As I immersed myself in the study of these most graceful of creatures, Stoker busied himself with his “secret project.” Naturally I had not the slightest interest in penetrating his furtive business.
Despite what others may say behind my back and—upon occasion—directly to my face, I am not a naturally inquisitive person except where my own work is concerned.
But I will admit to a wisp of curiosity given that a mantle of embarrassment seemed to settle over his features whenever he prepared to disappear into the private studio he had constructed within the Belvedere.
He volunteered no information and it was beneath my dignity to ask, so when he presented himself a short while later for elevenses with a bared torso liberally streaked with glue and bits of long white fur, I said nothing.
I merely extended a cup of tea, dark as treacle and heavily sugared, just as he liked.
“Thank you,” he grumbled, plucking the cup from the saucer by the rim. He drank half of it down in a single gulp and crunched his way through two ginger biscuits with considerable annoyance.
“Everything all right, dearest?” I inquired, careful to keep my gaze fixed upon my case of birdwings.
“I am perfectly contented with my work,” he assured me.
But the deep flush to his cheeks told another story.
I was fluent in the language of Revelstoke Templeton-Vane; indeed, I would have challenged anyone to read it with more ease or competency.
While I might not know the particulars of his irritations regarding this current commission, I understood the remedy well enough.
I would admit to a curious inability to settle properly to my own work that morning.
Something about the Danse Macabre tickled the back of my mind, a glimmer of an idea that refused to form itself into a definitive thought.
It was annoying in the extreme, and the more I attempted to follow it, the more quickly it eluded me.
With a decisive gesture, I pushed aside the teapot. “I propose a journey. Sponge the worst of the grime from your person whilst I feed the dogs, and then we shall embark.”
“I have work—” he began, but his heart was not in it, and I grinned.
“Consider yourself abducted.”
* * *
Two hours later we were comfortably ensconced in a private compartment on the express train into the heart of Surrey.
Arriving at the station and securing our tickets had taken more time than expected, with the result that we almost missed the train altogether, and it was not until we were safely aboard and churning our way out of the smoke-strangled streets of London and into the brisk spring breezes of Surrey that I explained our destination.
“Little Saints?” Stoker asked, reaching for his tin of honeycomb. He crunched into a piece with no regard whatsoever for his teeth—a habit that would have seen my aunts into fits of hysterics—and cocked a brow at me curiously.
“There was a book in Lord Ruthven’s dressing room marked with a stamp from Little Saints, a boys’ school.
I found reference to it in a copy of Lord Rosemorran’s Historic English Schools for Gentlemen Scholars.
It is a modest establishment, founded in the last century in Peasgreen, a village some two miles from Guildford.
I am certain we can hire a station fly, or failing that, a short walk in the bracing spring air will be healthful for both of us. ”
“And what do you propose to do at a boys’ school?”
“I do not know precisely,” I admitted. “I came away without a firm plan. I was rather hoping you might devise one.”
He sighed. “Shall I trot out the family name again? It is a useful one. I could claim to be scouting schools for my brother’s eldest son.”
“Your brother does not have a son,” I reminded him.
“Not Tiberius—Rupert.”
I made a point of never committing to memory the names or ages of the offspring of my acquaintance, largely because I was not interested in the slightest, but also because the ages changed with startling swiftness.
No sooner had I dutifully admired an infant through gritted teeth than it had learnt to crawl and was terrorising the family pets.
After this came walking, a frankly horrifying stage where one could no longer simply put the child down and it would stay put.
How mothers and nursemaids managed was a thing I should never understand.
“Ah. I remember now. He has three, does he not?”
Stoker nodded. “The eldest is fourteen and enrolled at Rugby, where one imagines he is being flogged and bullied on a regular basis, just as the rest of us were.”
“Barbarous,” I murmured.
“Most boys’ schools are. But it is expected of a Templeton-Vane.
” He had told me little of his educational adventures, but I knew enough to realise it was not a happy subject for him.
“Perhaps the headmaster will see us, although it is highly irregular to simply appear without a letter of introduction or prior arrangement.”
I waved this away, but as we stood outside the gates of Little Saints some time later, it occurred to me that I oughtn’t to have dismissed his reservations quite so quickly.
The walk from the train had been so lovely, passing through fields dotted with dog violets and lesser celandine and little patches of wood thick with bluebells.
The air was so fresh and sweet that I drew in great lungfuls of the stuff, feeling reborn as I walked, arms swinging freely, my stride lengthening as my muscles stretched themselves.
It had almost been a pity to reach the school, but the shouts of youngsters as they went about their sporting games struck our ears long before we arrived at the gates.
These structures were tall and not particularly forbidding, but they were stoutly locked.
Apparently the headmaster of Little Saints was taking no chances of his charges escaping.
Or of intruders gaining ingress. A small gravelled court divided the gates from the school, both of them bordered by the playing fields.
In the distance was a small pond and beyond that a prettyish sort of wood where I imagined the pupils took nature walks.
The school itself had most likely been a house at one point; it had a cosily domestic air courtesy of the warm red bricks of its facade, and the heavy stone lintels over the windows gave it a sleepy look.
Thick vines of creeper spread across the walls, and the whole effect was one of smug, snug superiority.
Unexpected visitors excited some interest, for a few of the lads paused their efforts to hurl one another to the ground or fling a ball about—I confess I did not pay much attention to the objective of their game—and one, a tall, whippet-thin boy of perhaps sixteen trotted towards us, tucking in his shirttails and wiping the streaks of fresh sweat from his face.
He smoothed his hair and smiled politely as he reached us.
“Good afternoon. Might I be of assistance?” His vowels were carefully modulated—too carefully, I thought.
This was no aristocrat’s son, but perhaps a banker’s boy or a prosperous merchant’s heir.
He was not born to the caste of the bluebloods, but I had no doubt he would eventually marry in.
His games kit was of good quality and showed no sign of having been altered to accommodate a growing lad.
He had clearly been furnished with new clothes for the Easter term when many boys had to make do with what they had been given at the start of school in the autumn or perhaps an elder brother’s castoffs.
As he was expensively presented and with the air of wary confidence that new money brings, it was a simple matter to deduce his father had made a fortune and only recently.
I smiled, but it was Stoker who spoke. “Good afternoon. What is your headmaster’s name?”
“That would be Mr. Garvey, sir. Mr. Thomas Garvey.”
“I should like to speak with him. Now, if it is convenient.” He extracted a somewhat battered card from his notecase and passed it through the gates.
“I shall take this to him directly, Mr. Templeton-Vane,” the boy promised.
He trotted off in the direction of the school itself.
A very few moments later, he returned, looking a trifle abashed.
“I do apologise, sir, but headmaster is giving the Latin lesson this afternoon. Our regular Classics teacher is abed with a touch of gout. I daren’t interrupt Mr. Garvey. ”
“A stickler is he?” Stoker asked with a cordial smile. The boy grinned but quickly thought better of it, mastering his reaction with smooth courtesy.
“Mr. Garvey is an excellent headmaster. He brooks no slackness, sir.”
“I expect he does not. Well, we shall call again when we have made arrangements beforehand. Thank you, lad.”
“Thank you, sir. Madam,” he said, bidding us farewell with the most delightfully courtly bow.
“We ought to have got that boy’s name,” Stoker said as we walked away. “I suspect he shall be prime minister one day.”
“Or at the very least, chairman of the Bank of England,” I agreed. “How vexing though that the headmaster was not to be disturbed! A wasted trip.”
Stoker slid an arm through mine, drawing me close. “Was it really?”
I surveyed the sweep of the fields, now touched with the gold of the lowering sun, and I returned his smile. “I suppose not. Let us return to Peasgreen and wait for the train. I saw a pretty little tea shop just past the station.”
We were soon obliged with seats at a tiny table—far too diminutive for Stoker’s muscular bulk—and a tea set that might have done credit to Lady Julia’s dormouse.
The cups were approximately the size of thimbles, and each held but a swallow of tea.
The cakes were no larger than a sixpence, and Stoker regarded the sandwiches mournfully.
“I have seen more substantial portions in Lady Rose’s dollhouse,” he said, referring to Lord Rosemorran’s youngest and most chaotic child.
“At least we shall not be forced to make the return journey on an empty stomach,” I reminded him.
He emptied the entire jam pot—all two teaspoons of cherry preserves—onto a scone the size of a matchbox. “Hardly better than empty,” he grumbled. “Perhaps you were right and this has been a wasted journey.”
“I do wish we had been able to speak to the headmaster,” I replied as the waitress—a pretty, robust young woman with dimpled pink cheeks—delivered a fresh pot of tea.
Her dress was of spotted dimity with an old-fashioned muslin fichu concealing the greater part of an exuberant bosom that gave the impression of being imperfectly restrained.
“Headmaster? Would you be having business with Little Saints, then?” she asked.
It was rudely inquisitive of her to insert herself into our conversation, but one must always make allowances for differences in customs when one travels—Surrey being practically a foreign country in my opinion.
Furthermore, I had often observed that girls who worked in tea shops were incapable of serving cakes and tea without a generous side helping of gossip.
“We did, but the headmaster was unavailable to speak to us.” I was the one who replied, but her eyes were firmly fixed upon Stoker, a discernible rose blush rising in her cheeks.
“Oh, aye? Giving the Latin lesson, no doubt,” she told him. She made no acknowledgement of me, and I resigned myself to being perfectly invisible through the rest of the exchange.
“You are remarkably well informed,” Stoker told her with a smile so charming it ought to have come with a stern warning from the authorities about its effects upon impressionable young women. I could practically hear the girl sigh before she gave a little giggle.
“Thank you, sir. I am a great one for noticing things,” she murmured. She looked down, then peeped up again at him through her lashes.
“For god’s sake,” I muttered.
“Eat a scone, Veronica,” Stoker said, shoving a buttered tea cake into my hand. He turned back to the girl. “We were very disappointed not to speak with Mr. Garvey. Has he worked there long?”
“Oh, not more than two years,” she told him. “But if it is school business you’re about, you’ll not find better than Mr. Baddlesmere. He be the retired headmaster, worked there forty year or more.”
“Now, that would be useful,” Stoker said, and she beamed with pleasure. “Where might we find Mr. Baddlesmere?”
“Just a step down the way, sir. The street do bend around the church, and just past the churchyard is Bee Cottage. That is where you will find him, tending his bees most afternoons. You cannot mistake it. There is a great skep on the gate,” she told him.
He flashed her another winsome smile. “Thank you. You have been very helpful indeed.”
“Not at all, sir,” she said with an audible sigh.
I placed a few coins on the table and rose, pulling on my gloves. “Come, Stoker. There is not much time before the next train.”
He stood, giving the girl a courteous nod and she bobbed him a curtsy. I fairly pushed him out the door.
“I hadn’t finished my lardy cakes, you know,” he said somewhat regretfully.
I cocked a brow at him and turned towards the church. “It was most definitely time you finished something.”