Chapter 7
THE SEVENTH CHAPTER
O, that a man might know The end of this day’s business ere it comes.
—Julius Caesar
The door to Father’s study was closed, but I had no doubt he was within.
I could smell his pipe tobacco, and if I pressed my ear quite tightly to the door, I could hear him talking.
From the rhythm of his speech, it was apparent he was reciting one of his beloved soliloquies.
Lear, no doubt. He was particularly fond of Lear.
I rapped sharply, and after a moment he called for me to enter.
I felt a sense of peace descend as soon as I stepped over the threshold.
Father’s study held only the most pleasant connotations for me.
Any childhood transgressions were dealt with as a matter of business, and lectures and punishments were meted out in his estate office where farmers and servants were given their pay or their notice.
Here, there was only the memory of spending time alone with Father, a rare privilege in a household of ten children.
It was in this room rather than in the schoolroom that each of us had learned our letters, following Father’s finger as he traced out a line of Shakespeare and encouraged us to sound out the words.
There was always a treat if we excelled—crumpets Father toasted over the fire, turning them on forks until they were brown and crisp.
There was a fire now, crackling away merrily on the hearth, the mastiff Crab stretched out lazily in front of it, her immense paws thrust into the ash for warmth.
The walls were lined with books, none particularly valuable.
The rare and costly volumes were shelved in the formal library where they were regularly dusted and rubbed with neats’ foot oil.
The study was the home of Father’s private collection, the bulk of it devoted to Shakespeare, with some poetry and a bit of history as well.
The tall Gothic windows were hung with claret velvet, and a pair of enormous thick silk rugs from Turkey warmed the stone floor.
The furniture was lushly upholstered in more claret velvet.
There were curiosities as well—an enormous armillary sphere, the stone wing of an Italian putti, a revolting stuffed monkey called Cyril that Father had won in a wager against the King of the Belgians—but it was a comfortable room, a gentleman’s retreat.
I remembered the hours I had spent in the window seat, secluded by those same velvet draperies as I read the books of my youth.
Father laid his book upon the desk. Bound in green leather and stamped with the March coat of arms, it was part of the set of Shakespeare that had been printed for him as a gift by the queen upon his accession to the earldom.
I hazarded a glance at the cover as I took a chair opposite his.
King Lear. I smiled to myself, but Father missed nothing.
“You seem in good spirits,” he observed.
“I was merely thinking how nice it is that some things do not change.”
He raised a silvery-white brow. “Like me? I shall never change. I am half as old as Methuselah and I mean to live forever. I shall point and laugh when Stonehenge crumbles to dust and I am still here.”
“Just as well. I am told there is no more space left in the family crypt.”
He pulled a face. “That may be, but when the time comes I shall make room for the old crone if I have to turn half the family out and sell their bones to make corsets.”
“I presume you are referring to Aunt Dorcas?”
Father stretched his legs, wincing only slightly. I could only assume his rheumatism was paining him. His little twinges usually presaged a change in the weather.
“I had forgotten how awful she could be,” he mused.
“Hard to imagine now she was once the toast of the Regency and her sisters with her. All four of them were painted the year the elder two came out. The paintings are in the little alcove outside the music room. Striking girls, they were. All the bucks were in love with them.”
“Even Aunt Dorcas?”
“Indeed so. An heir to a dukedom shot himself for love of her when she rejected his suit. They said she heard the news, then put on her prettiest gown and went to a ball where she danced every last dance, drank two bottles of champagne, and swam the pond on Hampstead Heath just to watch the sun come up.”
I shook my head. It seemed impossible to reconcile that desiccated old toad with a ripe, nubile young woman who broke men’s hearts as easily as one might crack an egg.
“I suppose time changes people,” I hazarded.
“Time and regret,” he corrected. “Dorcas and her sisters were outraged by Rosalind’s elopement with a footman.
They withdrew from society and refused to marry.
They thought they were disgraced, as if marrying one’s footman is any worse than the rest of the antics they got up to,” he finished, reaching for the cup of tea on his desk.
“They immured themselves in that old house in the Norfolk fens, and scarcely spoke two words to the rest of us for decades.”
“How dreadful! To shut themselves up like that, with only each other for company. Why did we never visit them?”
Father shrugged. “They made it quite clear no one was welcome. They were content to fester in the country, quarrelling with one another and complaining bitterly about the pittance of an allowance they received.”
This surprised me. “They were not given proper allowances?”
Father named a figure that made me gasp.
“Generous enough, by anyone’s standards,” he commented dryly, and I was forced to agree.
“Added to which, Grandfather settled the Norfolk house on them and paid for the maintenance. Their expenses were virtually nonexistent. I’ll wager there is a small fortune stuffed under a mattress or behind a fireplace brick in that house. ”
“But I thought that side of the family was poor,” I protested. “Emma and Lucy, always coming to us looking little better than charity children, complaining about cold-water baths and wearing the aunts’ castoffs.”
Father sipped at his tea. “Living in isolation can turn a person’s mind, and their minds did not have far to turn,” he said with a meaningful look over the rim of his spectacles.
“You mean they became peculiar?”
“In a word. They began to hoard things from the reports my father received. Money, newspapers, jars of jam. And never spent a ha’-penny if they could help it.
Dorcas even had her sisters buried in paupers’ graves in the churchyard in Norfolk to save a few pounds.
She was certainly not going to spend her life’s savings educating two girls she viewed as the fruits of sin. ”
“Their parents were married,” I pointed out.
“Hmm. Yes, well, there was some confusion on that point.”
I blinked at him. “Good heavens. Why did I never know any of this?”
Father shrugged. “Old family gossip. You were always burrowed somewhere with your nose in a book.”
“And here I thought the family was in danger of becoming respectable.” I still could not quite take it in. Lucy and Emma, bastards, and Dorcas and her sisters mad as hatters, after a fashion.
“But Aunt Dorcas’ pearls and the lace,” I began. Father shook his head.
“The pearls are glass beads, and the lace was her mother’s.
Her maid has been tearing it off and sewing it onto different gowns for fifty years.
And what she has not hoarded, she has pilfered.
Mind you lock up your valuables, I cannot vouch for their safety,” he said with a sigh.
“I could almost feel sorry for the old trout, but she is one of the most tiresome women I have ever known.”
“Then why did you invite her for the wedding?”
Father’s usual benign expression turned murderous.
“I did not. That would be the handiwork of your Aunt Hermia, who I hope is suffering mightily from the pangs of her conscience as well as a toothache. She insisted if Lucy was to be married from here, Dorcas had to be present, and then she hared off to London while I have endured the old terror,” he said with real bitterness.
“Aunt Hermia cannot help a toothache,” I chided. “Besides, with so many other guests, you cannot be much bothered with her.”
“Emma was not best pleased to see her,” Father confided. “Although I imagine she has had an easier time of it than her sister. I would rather have the keeping of ten children than one old woman.”
“You did have the keeping of ten children,” I reminded him. “Now, tell me how it came to be that Lucy is to be married here.”
Father shrugged. “Cedric is an acquaintance from the Shakespearean Society. Lucy was visiting London with friends. She called upon me, quite properly. I was just about to leave for a meeting, and the girl trotted along.
Cedric was there, and I introduced them. He was instantly smitten, and since then they have been inclined to view me as something of a faery godfather. I have been told they mean to name their firstborn after me. It is all incredibly fatiguing.”
“And Mrs. King? She is a member of the society also?” I asked carefully.
Father levelled his clear green gaze at me. “She is. As is Brisbane. They both began attending in September. I introduced them as well.”
“You are a regular Cupid,” I commented lightly.
“You will want only a bow and arrow to complete the illusion.” I chose my next words carefully.
“I am surprised their courtship has progressed so quickly. Mrs. King does not strike me as the type of woman to become engaged to a man she has known but for two months, although perhaps I have misjudged her.”
Father said nothing, but he sipped at his tea and his eyes slid away from mine. He knew something, and he was determined not to speak of it. And when Father made up his mind, it was pointless to attack him directly.
“What do you think of Violante?” I asked, and I do not think I imagined he looked relieved.
“I like her fine. She seems a rational sort of girl, from what I could determine with my faulty Italian. Pleasant enough, although with a beastly temper, I should think.”
“Then you are not still angry with Lysander for marrying her?”
He set the cup into the saucer with a sharp rap. “Why the devil should I be angry? Ly has to live with her—”
Too late, he remembered the letter, the summons home with dire threats if we failed to obey.
It had been a blind then, a lure to bring us back, for some other purpose entirely.
But Father could hold his counsel well enough when he chose.
If I wanted to know what he was about, I should have to lull him into security first.
I cut in smoothly. “I am so glad to hear it. She is indeed a delightful girl, and it is not kind to say it, but I think Lysander needs to be shaken up a bit. He is too tightly bound within himself. She is a tonic for him.”
Father laid down his cup and smoothed his waistcoat, a fraying affair in aubergine stripes. His sartorial taste was frighteningly close to Plum’s. “I am glad to hear it. Now, the reason I sent for you. Say hello to your friend. He has missed you, you know, and I don’t mean to keep him forever.”
He nodded toward the corner behind me. I turned to see a large, ornately wrought birdcage standing where a bust of Kean usually held court. Inside the cage was a bundle of sleek black feathers and a pair of intelligent jetty eyes.
“Grim!” I cried. I went to the cage and leaned near, careful to keep my arms behind my back. It would not do to have the tweed of my sleeves shredded by his sharp talons. He looked up at me, his head tipped quizzically to the side. After a long moment, he opened his beak.
“Good morning,” he said cordially.
“Good morning,” I returned. It was Grim’s favourite greeting, no matter the time of day.
I opened the cage door, and he bobbed his feathered head and hopped out.
His wings were tucked behind his back, and he walked across the carpet with the dignified air of an elder statesman.
Grim might have been a souvenir of the previous investigation, but he was also a great deal more.
He had begun his life as a Tower raven, property of the Crown and petted darling of the Tower’s inhabitants.
I wondered sometimes if he missed the social comedown he had suffered when the Queen had made me a present of him.
I returned to my chair and Grim followed. Father passed me a small box of sugared plums and Grim’s eyes brightened. “That’s for me.”
“Yes, it is, Grim.” I tossed a plum onto the carpet and averted my eyes. Grim was a lovely companion, but watching him eat even confectionery required a rather stronger stomach than I possessed.
Father rose and shot his cuffs. “I must take my leave of you, my dear. I have estate business to attend to before we depart for the village. Be ready in an hour.”
There was a note of satisfaction in his voice. He sounded like a man about to effect an escape, and that only heightened my curiosity.
But this was no time to confront him. I merely smiled affectionately. “No matter. It will give me time to read the newspapers. I haven’t had the English papers for weeks. I am frightfully out of touch.”
Father paused. “I am afraid Aquinas is too efficient by half. He has burned them all. Read the latest Punch instead. It’s just there on my desk,” he prodded.
I picked it up and opened the cover. I waited until he had closed the door behind him, then counted to one hundred. When I finished, I tossed another plum to Grim and went to the lidded basket by the hearth where Father always stuffed newspapers he had not yet finished.
With apologies to Crab for disturbing her, I knelt and opened it.
I was not surprised to find it was half full.
Another mystery, and it was not yet nine o’clock, I mused.
Quickly, I perused the pages, not quite certain what I was looking for.
It was not until the second time through that I saw it: each bit of newspaper he had saved carried some piece on the same subject, a recent riot in Trafalgar Square, all written in the last fortnight.
When I was finished, I replaced the papers just as I had found them. Then I wiped my hands on my handkerchief and coaxed Grim back into his cage with the last of the sugared plums. This house party was proving intriguing indeed.