Chapter Sixteen
The taxi threaded through the evening traffic of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Clemmi silent beside her.
Sir Conrad was dead. Beyond that, Lady Davenport’s telephone call had given them nothing – not how, not when, only that they should come at once.
“Poor, poor Cecily.” Clemmi’s hands twisted in her lap. “They were due to sail for England in a matter of weeks, and now … Oh, Elizabeth, if anything were ever to happen to Oliver … I don’t know what I’d do.”
Was it really losing Oliver that Clemmi should fear … or was it his secrets?
“Try not to dwell on it.” Elizabeth reached over and gave Clemmi’s hands a gentle squeeze before turning her attention to the window, the café terraces giving way to the shuttered shopfronts of the Faubourg as the embassy drew nearer.
Perhaps it was nothing more than a tired heart giving out. Sir Conrad was no longer a young man, and between the demands of the American visit, Mr Ashby’s murder, and his impending retirement, the past week had no doubt taken its toll.
Or was there something more sinister behind it?
Two deaths attached to the same office inside a week.
Was his death connected to Mr Ashby’s in some way?
And what of the message hidden inside Le Comte de Monte-Cristo?
Elizabeth didn’t believe in coincidences … had whatever was planned for the seventh already begun?
The embassy railings came into view, the Union Flag above the forecourt still at full mast. Not a single motorcar stood on the cobbles, no bustle at the gates – to all outward appearances, an evening like any other at the British Embassy.
Which was, she suspected, precisely the intention.
A footman was already descending the steps as the taxi drew up, reaching the door before the driver had left his seat. “Mrs Sterling. Lady Davenport is expecting you.”
Clemmi hurried up the steps while Elizabeth settled the fare before joining her beneath the portico as the footman pushed open the door.
They followed him through the entrance hall and up the staircase to the private apartments; not a housemaid on the stairs, not a voice anywhere in the house.
Did the staff even know the Ambassador was dead? Or had the news yet to travel beyond Lady Davenport?
The footman stopped at a set of double doors, knocked, and pushed one open. “Mrs Sterling and Lady Elizabeth Hawthorne, my lady.”
“Clemmi.” Lady Davenport rose from the sofa and crossed the room, hands outstretched.
“Oh, Cecily.” Clemmi caught her outstretched hands. “I came as quickly as I could.”
Elizabeth held back a step. She’d known Clemmi and Lady Davenport were friendly, in the way diplomatic wives were expected to be, but watching Lady Davenport cling to Clemmi’s hands, it was clear their friendship ran far deeper than committee luncheons.
Miss Bembridge rose from the rose damask armchair nearest the mantelpiece. “Mrs Sterling. Lady Elizabeth.” She inclined her head to each of them in turn.
So, the news had travelled at least as far as the chancery.
Clemmi turned towards Elizabeth, releasing one of Lady Davenport’s hands. “You remember Elizabeth, from the soirée?”
“Of course.” Lady Davenport managed a weak smile.
The vivacious hostess who’d welcomed her at the reception, the woman who’d managed snooty French dignitaries and back-slapping American bankers with all the ease of a seasoned professional, bore little resemblance to the woman before her now.
“I’m so terribly sorry for your loss, Lady Davenport.”
“Thank you, my dear.” Her free hand rose to the pearls at her throat. “Please, do sit down, both of you.”
Lady Davenport drew Clemmi down onto the sofa beside her, while Elizabeth took the armchair opposite Miss Bembridge, placing her bag beside her feet.
Miss Bembridge poured the first cup, added three sugars without asking, and carried it around the tea table. “Here, Lady Davenport. Drink it while it’s hot.”
Lady Davenport reached for it with both hands, the china rattling in her unsteady grip, tea spilling over the rim, into the saucer and onto the back of Miss Bembridge’s grey doeskin glove.
“Oh, your gloves.” Lady Davenport steadied the saucer on her knee. “Leave them with Mathilde before you go … she’ll have them good as new.”
“It’s quite all right, Lady Davenport.” Miss Bembridge drew back her hand, brushing at the droplets with her thumb.
“They’re old things … I’ve been meaning to throw them out for an age.
” She was already back at the tray, teapot in hand, before she’d finished speaking.
“Mrs Sterling, will you take a cup? Lady Elizabeth?”
Old things? Elizabeth took in the fine grey doeskin, barely a crease at the knuckles, the seams still crisp.
Lady Davenport managed two sips before setting the cup and saucer down on the tea table. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”
“Of course not.” Clemmi gave her hand a squeeze.
Lady Davenport reached for the cigarette box on the guéridon at her elbow and fitted a cigarette into her amber holder before removing a dark-coloured matchbook from the crystal ashtray.
“Here, let me.” Miss Bembridge was on her feet again, thumbing the silver table lighter to a flame and holding it out across the guéridon.
Lady Davenport drew on the cigarette until the tobacco caught and exhaled a slow stream of smoke from the corner of her mouth. “Thank you, Ruth.”
“Forgive me, Cecily.” Clemmi’s voice was gentle. “But you haven’t said how … was it his heart, or an accident, perhaps?”
“This was no accident.” Lady Davenport shook her head, her gaze settling on the unlit hearth. “It was quite … deliberate. There was even a note.”
Suicide? Elizabeth straightened in her seat.
“He’d been rather preoccupied of late … but I’d just put it down to the stress of his retirement and the move to England.
But this afternoon, when he returned from the Quai d’Orsay …
he barely had two words for anyone. Went straight to his study and shut himself away.
” She retrieved a lace handkerchief from inside her sleeve, twisting it between her fingers.
“If I’d only gone to him … if I’d knocked, even once–”
“You mustn’t think like that, Cecily. No one could have known.” Clemmi slipped her arm around Lady Davenport’s shoulders.
“Almost thirty years we’ve been married, and never would I have believed him capable of such a thing.” She took a long drag on the cigarette, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. “Perhaps one never truly knows another person … not even after thirty years.”
Perhaps one never truly knows another person. Elizabeth turned the words over. Hadn’t she been asking herself the same question about Oliver Sterling since the night of the soirée?
“Has anyone told Oliver?” Clemmi’s gaze snapped between Lady Davenport and Miss Bembridge.
“Didn’t I mention it?” Lady Davenport turned in her seat to face Clemmi. “Oliver’s already here. He’s the one who discovered Conrad.”
“Poor Oliver.” Clemmi’s shoulders dropped, a sigh escaping her lips.
First Mr Ashby and now Sir Conrad, and Oliver Sterling on the spot for both deaths.
“Forgive me, Lady Davenport, I hate to trouble you at such a time, but may I powder my nose?” Elizabeth reached down for her bag.
“Of course, my dear.” Lady Davenport waved a hand towards the door. “Along the landing, fourth door on the left.”
“The third, actually.” Miss Bembridge was already rising. “I’ll show you the way, Lady Elizabeth.”
“Please, don’t trouble yourself, Miss Bembridge. I’m sure I’ll find it.”
Elizabeth crept along the landing, keeping close to the wall. She paused at each door, pressing her ear to the wood and listening before knocking. When no response came, she eased open the door just far enough to peek inside.
The first opened onto a small salon, dust sheets over the furniture nearest the windows, the curtains already drawn. Behind the second lay a library, its shutters closed, the lamps unlit. She pressed each door shut with the flat of her hand.
The third door on the left was the one she’d asked for, white towels folded beside a porcelain basin.
The next door was locked. Elizabeth glanced along the landing once more before withdrawing two hairpins from her bag. The first slid in with ease, but the second kept snagging on something deep inside, the grandfather clock at the end of the landing ticking off every second wasted.
She withdrew the pins and tried again, adjusting the angle as she pressed deeper, her shoulders relaxing at the familiar click.
With a final glance along the landing, she slipped inside, easing the door shut behind her.
She paused at the door, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the faint yellow glow from a single brass lamp falling short of the corners and barely reaching the wing chair beside the mantelpiece, where Sir Conrad sat with his head tipped back and one arm hanging loose over the side.
Elizabeth crossed the room, crouching low beside the chair. A Webley & Scott pistol lay on the floor beneath his open right hand.
She leaned closer, her eyes going to the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger – no abrasion, no redness, nothing.
How odd.
She raised his right arm at the wrist with two fingers. It moved freely, no stiffness anywhere, and the skin beneath her fingertips still held a trace of warmth. Two hours at most, she estimated … likely less.
Next, she checked his left hand. Nothing there either, not that she’d expected there to be.
Straightening, she turned her attention to his right temple, steadying herself with one hand on the back of the chair as she leaned closer.
The entry point was clean – too clean. A shot such as this, from such close range, would leave a contact wound, soot blackened into the skin, scorching in the hair, possibly a muzzle mark pressed into the flesh from the force of the gases. But she couldn’t see any of these.
The wound on Sir Conrad’s temple was neat, the surrounding skin unmarked, the hair at the temple singed but barely.
This was more in keeping with a shot fired from a distance, perhaps two feet.