Chapter 9 #2
From the moment he invited my family to Red Oaks, I had known the visit was a test.
Our future together depended on its outcome.
It is why I pleaded with Bea and Kesgrave to join our party. Whatever horrors the Holcrofts might feel at my family’s faux pas would be leavened by the prospect of a connection to the illustrious nobles. Any number of gauche and mortifying incidents may be forgiven in the cousin of a duke.
On the journey here, I thought constantly about passing the test. While Mama complained and Papa grumbled, I focused all my attention on the singular goal, drawing up a list of the seemingly endless ways my family might embarrass me and deciding how I would respond.
In most cases, I would apologize, smile ingratiatingly, and reference my distinguished relatives.
Did I conceive of the drawing room debacle?
No, I did not.
The depths to which Mama can sink are unknown even to me.
Even so, my catalogue of disasters was extensive, and yet despite my thoroughness, I never conceived of a scenario in which Sebastian would fail my test.
How could I have?
I did not have a test for him.
Why would I?
He is everything wonderful.
There is not a single category in which he falls short.
He is perfect.
Except he is not.
Like everyone else, he underestimates me.
I am a slightly dense bit of fluff to be soothed and humored and sometimes mocked.
My issue with the Altick episode is not that he lied to me, but that he lied to me so poorly. Rather than come up with credible fabrications, he fobbed me off with increasingly facile excuses that heightened my anxiety, which convinced my family that I lacked a sense of proportion.
There goes Flora again, making mountains out of molehills!
The insult is in the flimsiness.
The sin is believing I am that flighty.
It goes without saying but: Kesgrave would never treat Bea like that.
He would sooner chop off his right arm than insult her intelligence.
Not only does he have too much respect for her intellect, but he also recognizes the value of her contributions.
It is her insights that have led to the apprehension of a dozen murderers, and although my insights have led to the apprehension of only one murderer, that is still one murderer more than Sebastian’s.
Ordinarily, I would not hold my accomplishments over his.
It is vulgar to compare numbers in any context.
But in dismissing an observation that is evidently central to solving the murder, he leaves me no choice.
Am I saddened by it?
Immeasurably so.
I do not know why he bothered apologizing for grossly underestimating me if he means to continue to grossly underestimate me.
But that is a question for another day.
The investigator’s code precludes indulging my sadness at the expense of justice for the slain.
So I smile.
Mama would be so proud, at both the display of decorum and my ready implementation of her lessons.
She often complains that we ignore her, and while there is a healthy dollop of validity in the lament, the sheer repetition of her words has a corrosive effect: At some point, it becomes impossible to ignore her.
“I shall leave it with you, then?” I ask cheerfully.
Startled, Sebastian rises to his feet. He does not know he has failed my test but senses he has fallen short in some way, and seeking to reverse it, he asks me to tell him more about the shawl. “You say it was from this season? You recognize the design?”
It is too little too late.
He can show all the interest in my theory he wishes, but it will not make a difference. I am determined to find the killer while Sebastian is still chasing his tail among the drunken revelers in the village’s seedier taverns. To that end, I tell him everything I know.
He will not be able to claim later that I withheld vital information.
“It is the handiwork of Madame Valenaire, a fashionable modiste in Bond Street. Although the design decorating the border of the shawl is not new, the color scheme she uses for the rosettes was introduced this year. It has spawned many imitators, but none are as fine as the original,” I explain.
Solemnly, Sebastian gestures to the bench and urges me to sit down to discuss it further.
“Thank you but no,” I reply firmly, citing another engagement, which is not exactly true and not fully a lie. “I have already dallied too long and must be going. Au revoir!”
He inhales sharply as though to ask me to wait but thinks better of it, and my smile broadens as I imagine him puzzling over his misstep.
Yes, Seb darling, do please review your actions until you can identify where it all went wrong and then take pains never to do it again.
My heart hammers at the prospect of his never doing it again, because we are no longer romantically entangled. He cannot offend me if he does not speak to me.
This unpleasant thought follows me back to the house, and although I want to throw myself onto my bed and have a good cry over the demise of my perfect relationship, I must do right by Mr. Keast. Taking Sebastian’s comments under consideration—because I respect him without reservation—I realize there is some validity in his observation regarding Miss Nutting and Miss Braithwaite.
Subscribing to the full humanity of the Incomparable, I nevertheless concede that navigating a dark road alone in the middle of the night might require more spine than either young lady could muster.
Does the same apply to their mothers? Would Mrs. Nutting or Mrs. Braithwaite have the courage to travel the distance with only a modicum of light to avenge themselves on a lover?
In contemplating this supposition, I defer again to Sebastian, who does not believe the older women’s charms would have appealed to Mr. Keast. Furthermore, they are mature women, which means they are intimately acquainted with society, with its symbols of status.
Having invented an impoverished widow to take the blame, they would have ensured the shawl Eternally Devoted used was commensurate with her situation, and having nothing more ancient than Madame Valenaire’s finest, they would have selected another murder weapon or taken the garment with them when they left.
By that same token, their daughters must be exonerated as well.
Even the greenest country girl knows the value of an expertly made silk shawl.
Only someone for whom all shawls look alike would have made that mistake.
A man!
I am describing a man!
Suddenly, the most confounding aspect about the crime makes sense.
A man strangled Mr. Keast to death.
A man wrote the overwrought letters in the style of the prevailing gothic.
A man left the shawl behind as evidence of the killer’s identity.
A man bungled the murder from top to bottom.
Well, “bungled from top to bottom” is a little strong.
As far as murders go, the steward’s was successful in that the victim is dead and the culprit remains unknown. If Sebastian, his father, and Mr. Jenner get their way, the culprit will continue to remain unknown, as none of them are on the correct trail.
Sebastian is so close.
He has identified the correct sex, but his thinking is still muddled.
Until he recognizes the consequence of the soaked rug, he will never approach the target. And even if the soggy Aubusson were just a soggy Aubusson, no farmhand or laborer would have access to a silk shawl by a London modiste.
The shawl is the crux.
It is the thing upon which the entire mystery rests.
As significant as the new revelation is, it does not transform my investigation in every respect. One truth is unchanged: I will find the killer living in one of the stately manor houses in the district.
What is the motive?
Why would Mr. Nutting or Mr. Braithwaite strangle Mr. Keast?
I think of Eternally Devoted’s letters, which were designed to throw us off the scent, and wonder if the information contained within is all fiction. If the steward was engaged in an inappropriate relationship with one of the Incomparables, then the possibility of there being a child is not null.
Arriving at my bedchamber to fetch my bonnet, I contemplate the plausibility of the theory and recall the girls’ manners at the evening party.
They blushed prettily and laughed giddily and appeared generally unconcerned by anything but their own gaiety.
Miss Braithwaite, in particular, with her bright countenance aimed at Russell, who could do nothing but smile fatuously at the attention, appeared unbothered.
Would she have been able to shine so brightly if she was harboring a ruinous secret?
If she was hoping to fix my brother’s interest to ensure a father for her child, then perhaps yes.
(Truly, that would make so much more sense than her finding him genuinely compelling.)
If anything troubling or worrisome consumed either girl’s thoughts, she hid it beautifully.
Surely, that is meaningful.
I could not do it.
If I were bearing my clandestine lover’s child, I would never be able to present a happy affect free from strife, and I am a few years older.
But in the first flush of love, in the heady days of discovery, clutching my secret close like a treasure, a pot of gold to be hoarded, then I would thrill to be in his home.
To be so near and so far all at once.
And for nobody else to have a clue.
Such exquisite torture!
Except somebody always has a clue, especially in a well-run home with dozens of servants. My parents might have been oblivious to Bea’s investigative turn, but I knew something was amiss and so did Dawson. Even Russell had his suspicions.
From that perspective, it is not difficult to imagine the girl’s father discovering her surreptitious love affair and acting decisively to end it.
His solution is not acceptable.
What I am willing to excuse in a young girl seeking revenge against the vile seducer who deceived her I find contemptible in a man of years and wealth. With all the power at his fingertips, he could have banished Mr. Keast to the farthest reaches of the empire with just a single word in his ear.
Go.
That was all he had to say.
Go—tinged with meaning and menace.
The only question is which father is the killer: Nutting or Braithwaite?
It is a puzzle.
Bewildering, yes, but I am going to solve it before Bea and Kesgrave arrive on Saturday and before Sebastian realizes how wildly inaccurate his conclusions are.
To do that, I need information, and donning my bonnet to protect me from the vibrant sunlight, I seek out the butler, who arranges for me to be delivered to the vicarage in the gig.
Yes, I am starting where Sebastian said we should start yesterday: with the village gossip.
But the rest of the investigation is my own.