Chapter Nine
From sheer instinct, Piers threw himself in front of her and a chamber pot glanced off his chin with enough force to make him stagger. God knew what it would have done to April.
“Piers!” she gasped, as the chamber pot crashed onto the floor and broke in two.
Fortunately, it appeared to have been empty.
From a bed directly opposite them, an old woman demanded, “Where’s my damned breakfast?”
They appeared to be in her bedchamber. Though the bed hangings were open, they were of velvet, and she wore a cap of fine lace. Whoever she was, she appeared to be a lady—in name, at least.
“I have no idea,” Piers replied, feeling the trickle of blood at the edge of his chin. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed it. “Your behaviour, madam, is not acceptable.”
“Neither is yours,” she retorted. “Walking into a lady’s chamber without so much as a knock and breaking my best chamber pot. Who the devil are you?”
“Petteril,” he said, “And in this contest, I believe the chamber pot and I acknowledge a draw.”
She cackled. “Your head’s still in one piece, isn’t it?” Her beady eyes, sharp in her wrinkled old face, glared at Piers and then at April, who was examining Piers’s bleeding chin with some consternation. “You’ll be Susan’s paying guests.”
“And you will be...?” Piers said.
“Lady Temperley, Dowager. Dominic’s my son, Susan my useless daughter-in-law, and Miranda their spoiled doll of a... Petteril, you say? I thought they all died out. Hortensia was furious.”
She was. “Apart from me.”
“Knew your uncle, selfish old bugger. And there was another showy young feller in the Guards.”
“Bertie,” Piers said. “He’s with the Peninsular army now. Forgive me, Lady Temperley, but we were not informed you were here. And before you throw anything else, my wife is with child and I will not tolerate—”
“Don’t you threaten me, whippersnapper. I’ve eaten stronger men than you for breakfast. Spat ’em out too.” The old eyes glared at April. “Thought you were the maid. Who’s got no business being with child.”
It wasn’t much of an apology or even a justification, but Piers stopped feeling quite so nervous about April standing in the old woman’s line of vision. Though there was still a jug of water on her bedside table and a walking stick beside her on the bed.
“Which maid did you think I was?” April asked.
“Don’t matter to me. Waste of space the pair of them. Prefer the handsome young feller.”
“Edward?” Piers said cautiously. “So the three of them have been looking after you too? That’s why they were left behind.”
“Susan had no business renting the place out,” the old lady snapped.
“As if we’re damned tradesmen. Stupid idea, but Dominic would let her get on with it.
I told her to leave the servants too, since she’d promised them to you, but she wouldn’t have that either.
Insisted a viscount and his friends would travel with coaches full of their own people. Did you?”
“No,” said Piers. “Um...what made her take the servants?”
“Idiocy! She managed to scare off the Town servants, so she had to take this lot or hire new people during the Season while holding parties for Miranda. Girl’s got no character anyway—she’ll never take.”
“And we are not meant to know you’re here?” April said, while Piers moved with some interest toward the fireplace.
No doubt the old lady threw things and shouted at the servants in the middle of the night and made the maids cry. And the sounds all drifted up her chimney and down others, distorted and muffled as they emerged faintly from the fireplace in April’s room.
The old lady was cackling again. “She thought I might put you off coming. I drink brandy and I swear to annoy her. I’m a disreputable old harridan, a relic of a bolder age!”
“And you love getting away with it, don’t you?” April said.
The old lady’s eyes gleamed. “There’s not so much fun to be had in old age.”
“Just winding up the family and throwing things at the servants. They don’t deserve that, you know.”
“Then they should bring me my damned breakfast on time!”
“I don’t suppose,” Piers said, distracting her, “that you emerge into the main part of the house at night?”
The old lady regarded him with something like approval, overlaid with distinct mischief.
“Not just a pretty face, are you? The candlesticks are mine, came with me as part of my dowry when I married Sir Justin. I heard the servants gossiping about the new tenants and decided the silver was safer with me.”
What had they been gossiping about? The “student reunion” that had alarmed Constable Barley? Or the origins of the viscountess?
“And the reticule?” April asked.
“Impulse,” said Lady Temperley without shame.
“And a bid to annoy the intruders in your home?” Piers guessed.
The old lips twitched. “Perhaps. At any rate, the girl took them away again, put them back as if no one would have noticed. That was probably funny too. I imagined your faces.”
“What a refined sense of malice,” Piers marvelled.
“Thank you,” said Lady Temperley, apparently pleased. “Now do me a favour, young Petteril, and make those lazy girls bring me my breakfast. Better still, send the boy. At least he’s got some spirit about him.”
“The boy is—er...hors de combat right now.” Piers was inspecting her walking stick for signs of blood and hair, but in truth it was beyond imagination that she was the attacker. Despite her solid aim and the devil’s own spite. “But we shall certainly pass on your message. Good morning.”
He bowed and swept April in front of him toward the bedchamber door.
“You may call on me for tea occasionally,” came the grumpy old voice. “Since you don’t bore me.”
“Thank you,” April replied. She even smiled over her shoulder, although once the door was shut, she reached up with a worried frown, touching the cut on his chin with gentle fingertips.
“It barely touched me,” he said grimly, “but it would most certainly have struck you full in the face.”
“I think it was luck,” April said ruefully. “She’s like a furious, lonely baby.”
“They lock her in,” Piers guessed. “Though I suspect the routine failed at first.” Which was how she got the candlesticks and the reticule.
Instead of returning to the staircase, he went toward the double doors at the end of the passage.
They were indeed locked. And there was no sign of the key.
As one, he and April walked on up the staircase.
It was quite bare, though clean enough. Until recently at least, someone had swept and dusted in this part of the house.
None of the rooms on the floor above appeared to be in use. They were just storerooms for unwanted and broken furniture. Piers was more interested in the narrow stairs at the end of the passage. He led the way up, and this time found the key in the door lock.
“She can’t climb up all those stairs,” April said. “So the servants only use the attic door to move between here and the main part of the house.”
Piers unlocked the door and opened it.
As he had expected, he found himself on the same forked landing as they had discovered from the other side, one door leading to the maids’ quarters, the other to the old lady’s effective prison.
“So, Edward wasn’t actually bothering the maids when I saw him,” April murmured. “He was coming from Lady Temperley.”
“Probably. And probably so was Becky when I met her on the landing below last night.”
“Well, we’ve certainly solved a few of our mysteries,” April said, as they backed into the old lady’s wing. “Though it doesn’t really help us with who attacked Edward. Unless it was the old lady.”
“I can see her escaping down the stairs and out the door,” Piers said.
“I can even see her tottering her way toward the summer house with frequent rests, Edward in pursuit. She would certainly have no qualms about hitting him. But could she hit him that hard? If she could—an important if—it would explain why Edward didn’t fight back. Who would, against an old lady?”
“Or he didn’t see her coming. She might have imagined he was an attacker following her.”
“Her nightgown should be dirty,” Piers said.
“And there’s no blood on her walking stick.
” Though both could have been changed by the servants or even cleaned.
The stick was varnished so the blood wouldn’t necessarily have soaked in and stained.
“You could be right. We know she lashes out. And yet...could she really have felled him with one blow?”
“There’s nothing wrong with her aim,” April pointed out. “Edward may have only one wound, but we don’t know that she only hit him once in the same place.”
“True, especially if she didn’t recognize him in the dark.”
“She is locked in, a virtual prisoner in one room, abandoned by her family, seeing no one but three servants when they remember about her or when she makes enough noise to disturb them.”
They were both silent as they made their thoughtful way downstairs and out into the fresh air. Piers hesitated about locking the door, but in the end decided it was probably for the old lady’s safety. And everyone else’s if she was the one who had attacked Edward.
“I still can’t see it,” he said abruptly. “Why was Edward not in livery?”
“Because he’d been in bed and got up when he heard Lady Temperley clattering about?”
“Remembering his necktie as well as his coat? If she was escaping, wouldn’t he have bolted after her in the bare minimum covering? Even his night shirt?”
“Yes,” she allowed. “But their meeting could have been accidental if Edward was about his own nefarious business, and she frightened at being followed.” She wrinkled her nose. “Although Lady Temperley does not seem to be very easily frightened. We are collecting too many suspects. Again.”
The front door was opened by Peggy, looking slightly harassed.
Piers ushered April inside before him, and said blandly, “Lady Temperley is requesting sustenance.”