Death at Bishop's Keep (9 page)

“Yes, Papa,” Eleanor said, meekness itself. She cast her glance sideways at Charles. “Sir Charles has photographs of the dead man,” she added with a certain coyness.

Lady Henrietta pulled herself up. “I simply do not understand,” she remarked acidly, “the current attraction of crime, particularly murder, among younger people.” She gave Eleanor and Patsy a severe look down the length of her rather horsey nose. “No lady concerns herself with such vulgar matters.” She turned the same severity upon Charles, but indulgently relaxed, as if to say that his transgression, for transgression it was, was understood and forgiven. Men were expected to interest themselves in vulgar matters, while women were expected not to notice.

Charles bowed. “Your pardon, Lady Henrietta. I do agree. Murder is hardly a drawing room matter.”

Lord Marsden cleared his throat. “Bought another mare from Peel today,” he announced to no one in particular. “Aim to breed her to Farleydale.”

A look that might have been of misgiving crossed Bradford's face. “From Peel?” he asked. In a low voice, he added, “With respect, sir, I thought we had agreed not to—”

The baron's thick neck reddened fiercely. “A beauty, my boy. Excellent bloodline. High spirits. Grand bargain.”

Bradford subsided, although Charles thought his friend looked uneasy, and he wondered again what was troubling him. From horses, the baron's passion, the subject turned to hunting, and from hunting to balls, and from balls, inevitably, to weddings—specifically, to the wedding of Eleanor to Mr. Ernest Fairley, which would take place in three months' time. Precisely at nine, dinner was announced, and the company removed to the large dining hall.

 

Kate was pleased when she found herself seated next to Sir Charles at dinner, for she meant to ask him a question. They sat upon heavy gilt chairs with rose damask seats, under a cut glass chandelier filled with lighted candles. The light radiated over the long rosewood table, casting shadowy glimmers over the frowning likenesses of Marsden ancestors hung along the paneled wall. The candlelight also illuminated the fine china, delicate crystal, and ornate silver that gave the table an air of almost unimaginable magnificence.

Or so it seemed to Kate, who had never before sat down to such an elegant table, in such elegant company, a knight of the realm on one side of her, and a lord and lady at opposite ends of the table. But she did not feel overwhelmed by the elegance; instead, she was entertained, and intrigued. It was as if she were a spectator at a play in which the characters (some of them anyway) thought they were real, while she knew differently. Perhaps it was because she was an American, she thought, seeing the British gentry through alien eyes.

The dinner, regrettably, did not live up to the distinction of the table. The menu proceeded from a thin oyster soup to a gluey fricassee of chicken, and thence to a saddle of mutton with caper sauce and vegetables and after that a Tewkesbury ham, climaxing in a quivery blancmange that Kate thought notable only for its near total lack of taste. Throughout most of the dinner, the conversation consisted only of polite exchanges of appreciation for the food (feigned, on Kate's part), exchanges of local gossip, and various bits of fashion news from London, primarily pertaining to bridal finery. But when the blancmange was served, Kate turned to Sir Charles and asked the question she had had on her mind for most of the evening, ever since he had mentioned the dead man's scarab ring.

“If it was robbery,” she said without preamble, “why did the thief not take the gold scarab ring?”

Sir Charles put down his spoon. His brown eyes fastened on hers.
“Gold
ring?” he asked. “I do not believe I said—”

“To be sure,” Kate said, irritated at herself for jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. Just because Aunt Sabrina's scarab was gold didn't mean—“I have assumed too much. The scarab was made of a gemstone, then?”

“No,” he admitted, “it was gold. And I do agree—robbery hardly seems consistent with the facts of this case.” He paused. “Why do you ask?”

Kate allowed her glass to be refilled with champagne for the third time. “I am merely curious,” she said lightly. “One does not encounter a murder very often—outside of fiction, that is. Particularly a murder that is documented with photographs.”

“And do you often encounter murder in fiction as well?” Sir Charles asked. “Documented or otherwise?”

His words sounded like a challenge, and Kate knew what he was thinking. Women did not read stories with murders in them. Ordinarily, Kate might have answered his question with an evasion, but the champagne emboldened her. She answered his challenge with one of her own. “It is a pity, don't you think, that women and men lead such different lives?”

Sir Charles took a sip of his champagne, put down the glass, and parried with another question. “You do not agree that our differences make life interesting?”

“Hardly!” Kate exclaimed. “At least, not from a woman's point of view. Women are hedged about with rules of what is right and proper. No one evidences surprise when men read—or write—a book with a violent crime in it. But a woman cannot.” She frowned and pushed her champagne glass back. She was saying too much.

But Sir Charles seemed to have taken her remark seriously. “I fear,” he said, “that you are right. Women's lives are far more circumscribed than men's, although that seems to be changing as women venture into the world.” He turned his stemmed glass in his fingers. “But do you see it as useful to them to develop an interest in crime? How have you profited from its study, Miss Ardleigh?”

Kate perceived that her impulsiveness had nearly landed her in a trap. A pace or two more, and Beryl Bardwell might find herself in peril of discovery. She flushed, wondering how to extricate herself. “Well, I—”

She was saved by her hostess, who rose at the end of the table to signal that it was time for the ladies to withdraw.

“Perhaps crime is of general interest to you,” Sir Charles persisted. “Or perhaps it is
this
crime that fascinates you.”

“Charles,” Eleanor said, “if you wish your port and cigar, you must allow Kathryn to leave with the ladies. We cannot abandon her here.”

Kate rose with great relief.

“The chief part of the organization of every living creature is due to inheritance; and consequently, though each being assuredly is well fitted for its place in nature, many structures have now no very close and direct relations to present habits of life.”

—CHARLES DARWIN The Origin of Species

 

 

 

W
hen the ladies had gone, Bradford motioned to the butler to bring the port and offered a cigar to the vicar. He did not offer one to Charles, who was getting out his pipe, nor to his father, who had fallen asleep over the blancmange and was now sprawled in his chair, bald head fallen forward, mouth open, snorting in his sleep like a Yorkshire pig. Bradford looked at him, anger thick at the back of his throat. How much had he paid Peel for the damned mare? Too much, no doubt.

But then, any amount would have been too much, according to the family solicitors and accountants, who were becoming positively tiresome about the condition of the Marsden accounts. Damn it, Bradford thought ferociously, why couldn't his father
listen
to them? The anger settled into a heaviness that lay on his chest like a pleurisy.

But he could understand—a little. After all, his father had come of age when the old queen was young, when landed fortunes seemed solid as Essex earth and eternal as the sun, which never set upon the far-flung Empire. But Victoria was past her fifty-fifth year on the throne, the Empire was in a half-dozen tight patches, and the agricultural economy had been blighted by the repeal of the Corn Laws almost fifty years ago, allowing cheap foreign grain to flood the home market. There was no money any longer in horses, especially when one's judgments about bloodlines were as—Yes, let it be said! As feeble and faulty as his father's.

From the music room came the sound of the piano. Patsy, playing a Schumann song, passably well. Eleanor's soprano, untrained but acceptable, and a contralto—Miss Ardleigh's, he assumed. Bradford sipped his port, thinking unexpectedly of the American—part Irish, from the look of her. Not pretty, certainly, but rather handsome, when one actually looked at her. And one did look at her, for her calm self-assurance, her composure, was such a contrast to the stylish, self-conscious flourishes of the women around her, including his sisters.

Miss Ardleigh. Kathryn. Bradford frowned. Nothing could come of it except a little harmless flirtation, of course, for although she was the niece of a neighbor and primly enough dressed, she was Irish, and American. But of course, such a combination offered certain advantages. One might guess from looking at that wonderfully unruly mop of hair what a willful creature she must—

He set down his glass of port hard. No. No, this would not do. What he required was not a mistress to bed but an heiress to wed, and the sooner the better. He was beginning to feel desperate enough to acknowledge that the woman's other qualifications—appearance, demeanor, temperament—did not matter, as long as she was sufficiently rich. If the solicitors were right, he might soon have to resort to such a stratagem.

Bradford stared at the candles gleaming in their silver candelabra down the center of the long table. It was unkind to blame his father's faulty judgment for their situation. He had simply continued to live in the old manner, which was no longer suited to the times. And in any case, Bradford himself was not blameless, far from it. He had taken matters into his own hands in a way that, as he thought about it now, quite appalled him. He had poured a substantial amount of money—truth be told, much more than he could afford—into a venture he knew little about, on the word of a man of uncertain reputation. He had bargained with the devil, and if he had to pay the price, the fault was only his own.

Bradford picked up his glass again. However reckless his action, at least he had not closed his eyes to the need to ensure the reliable survival of the Marsden landed fortunes into an unreliable future. He had been looking out for the family. For his sisters, whose dowries had to be provided; for his mother, to whom the opinion of society was the inspiration of a frivolous life; for his father, and his damned bloody horses.

The candle in front of him guttered and went out. Even the assurance that he had done it for family seemed flabby, and Bradford felt suddenly chilled to the bone. If only Landers didn't require so much money to stay in the game. If only he'd been somewhere else when the man came along, dangling his damned patents like diamonds. He wished him dead. He wished him in hell!

“As to the corpse, Sir Charles,” the vicar was saying. “What will you do with the photographs?”

Startled, Bradford brought his attention back to his guests. Charles and the vicar were talking about the wretched murder. Had they no other topic of conversation?

“I shall develop the prints and take them to the police,” Charles replied, stoking his pipe. “The sergeant did not seem keen on them, however,” he added. “I rather fancy he agreed to receive them only because he feared to offend.”

“P‘rhaps,” the vicar said, thoughtful. “Juries do prefer rhetoric to scientific proof. Witness the Lamson trial in '82.”

“Ah, yes,” Charles said, accepting a light for his pipe from the butler. “A friend of mine, Dr. Thomas Stevenson, gave evidence. His testimony was based on his investigation of plant alkaloids—very fine research, too, very solid.”

“Well and good,” the vicar reminded him, “but Lamson was convicted upon his confession, not by the expert testimony of a scientist. Juries are confused by science.”

Bradford stirred uneasily. All this talk about trials and juries made him apprehensive. He changed the subject. “Speaking of investigations, Vicar, how are yours progressing?” He turned to Charles with a wry humor. “The vicar has a compelling curiosity about the afterworld. He is bent upon proving the physical existence of the soul.”

The vicar inclined his head. “Some persons—they shall be nameless, of course—take pleasure in deriding my investigations.” He waved a benign hand in Bradford's direction. “But my treatises on the nature of Spirit have been quite well received by the London Spiritualist Alliance.” He lowered his voice. “This is a subject that is spoken of, you understand, only among friends.”

“Of course,” Charles said gravely. “I myself have an academic interest in such dealings. My camera and I have been invited to several seances to photograph ectoplasmic manifestations.”

Bradford grinned and pulled on his cigar. “And what did you observe? Did your camera capture the soul, or did you find the ectoplasm to be merely flimflam?”

Charles was about to reply when the vicar interrupted spiritedly. “It does not matter what was observed! What matters is the commitment to unbiased observation, carried out in the service of Truth.” His voice grew louder and his white mustache, impassioned, quivered violently. “What is important is the application of scientific method of the study of the Soul.” He leaned forward, blue eyes fierce, leathery face intent. “If this inquiry is your aim, Sir Charles, you are in luck. There is within our very neighborhood, in nearby Colchester, an association of persons dedicated to this pursuit. It is called the Order of the Golden Dawn, and I am a member.”

“In Colchester?” Charles asked with surprise.

“Indeed,” the vicar said tartly. “Why should inquiry into spiritual matters be confined to the metropolitan centers?”