In the Brief Eternal Silence (82 page)

“I will be back directly,” Effington advised,
but Andrew forestalled him.

“Be a good man and pour me a drink before you
go, Effington, for I need one badly.”

“I dare say you have had more than one
already!” Effington said.

“I have, and I am in dire need of another. As
you shall be, I wager, after I tell you about this night's
work.”

And Effington, already certain that Earl
Larrimer's appearance was not caused by anything good, only sighed
and poured the drink, handed it to him, and then went on to see to
what needed done. As usual.

It was later in the morning when the shocking
and horrible news of the Dowager Duchess dying in the night, along
with her daughter-in-law, one from an attack of the heart, one from
foul murder, spread from the servants of one household to the
other. Effington was dressed and had his bags packed. He placed
them in the wardrobe of his bedchamber on the third floor of the
house, and then went out from his room as though just joining the
household for the day.

Applegate met him as soon as he reached the
second floor. “Effington!” the butler said. “You will not believe
the most startling, horrendous and tragic news that has just come
to us.” And the distraught butler imparted the dreadful tidings and
Effington imitated shock, leaning hard against the newel post.
Then, as the butler trailed off and Effington made choking back
grief noises in his throat, he suddenly flung his head up.
“Heavens, Applegate! And Earl Larrimer himself arrived here just
last night!”

“No!” Applegate said. “He did not!”

“Indeed, he did!” Effington insisted. “For he
himself brought tidings of the duke being in a rather bad riding
accident, of which Earl Larrimer was also involved. Why he even now
lies above in his lordship's chamber as I thought it was easier to
put him there than to disturb any of the maids, for it was late,
and he was so done in that he was nearly dropping with exhaustion
and I could not see him going any further in that condition, for he
had ridden clear from Chestershire, you see.”

And so Andrew's whereabouts were carefully
established. Not that they thought there to be any trouble upon
that head, but if it were suspected that Andrew had been in his
grandmother's house at the time of the incident, some bright soul
was sure to wonder how it was that his grandmother had heard his
mother's screams when Andrew, who was much younger and had much
better hearing, had not. All the servants' quarters were either on
the third or fourth floors, and as they were all nearly as old as
their employer had been, there should be no cause for wonderment as
to why they had not heard.

Applegate's face paled at this additional
news. “Milord has been in an accident also?” he asked with dreadful
disbelief. “Is he to be all right?”

And although Effington understood from Andrew
that St. James' condition was in grave question indeed, he knew his
fellow employees well enough to know that if he were to state this
on top of the news they had just received, that it would send the
entire household into a panic. Although St. James' grandmother's
servants were ready for tenure at any rate, St. James' servants,
for the most part, were not. So Effington by-passed this question
and rammed home the more important issue (at this moment, anyway)
of Andrew's whereabouts. “Do you not see, Applegate?” he told that
man in impatient and dire tones. “Earl Larrimer does not even yet
know of his own mother and grandmother's deaths!”

And Applegate paled and stammered, “Oh, my!
Oh, yes!” He gathered himself, added in a whisper, “One of us shall
have to tell him!”

Effington drew himself up as a man would who
is resigned to doing a very difficult duty. “I shall do it,
Applegate. Never fear.”

Applegate said, “You are a good man,
Effington. A very good man!” He wiped a tear from his eye and
turned to go below. Effington turned to go to milord's
bedchamber.

And Applegate reported in the kitchens of
what was even then going on above stairs, that Earl Larrimer had
arrived last night and was there even now, and that Effington was
about the heartbreaking task of breaking the news to that poor lad,
who had just had a riding accident with milord duke on the
yesterday also.

There was a good deal of exclaiming, and they
all pondered and sympathized with how the handsome and likable Earl
must even now be reacting, and by the time the rest of the staff of
St. James' home were alerted to this circumstance, and a groom
volunteered to ride over and alert the Duchess's home to this
circumstance, the story was that milord Larrimer was very
distraught indeed with the tidings.

And no one dwelled upon the fact that none of
them had witnessed this distraught state, for of course, it was
understood that was how he would be.

Effington, back in St. James' chambers where
Andrew had managed to sleep a few fretful hours, was the only one
to observe Andrew's dark head raise from where he was sitting in
only his

shorts on the side of his cousin's/brother's
bed, and ask in a flat voice, “It is done then?”

Effington nodded and said, “It is done.”

Ashton's job was more difficult. He was
normally the first to arise so other than changing his clothes he
only went to the kitchens to wait, and as was his habit, he made a
cup of tea and sat at the servant's table and read the newspaper
that had been delivered. He had done this every morning for
thirty-five years, always folding it neatly again so that the
Dowager would have no inkling that someone had been reading her
paper, although he suspected she knew perfectly well that he
did.

But this morning, he opened it and stared
blankly at it and counted the minutes until what appeared to be a
normal morning would become quite macabre. He glanced at the clock,
saw he still had some time, and the only concession he made to his
nervousness was to go and fetch some whiskey in his tea. By the
time anyone would perhaps notice it upon his breath, the household
would be aroar and no one would think it odd that he had needed a
steadying dose.

And it did steady him, and he even began to
read, a little, and when the first scream came from upstairs, by
Lady Lydia's lady's maid, he calculated, he had distracted himself
to the point that it came as a shock and he jumped.

He downed the last of his spiked tea, rinsed
his cup, and turned to head up stairs and begin the ordeal of
looking shocked, horrified, and mystified, but at the same time
observant enough to point out a broken window and jewelry
missing.

By the time he reached the hallway, the
entire second floor seemed to be crowded with every servant
employed, from the kitchen potscrubber to Andrew's valet with a lot
of maids in between, and every one of them was screaming and crying
and clutching their old chests.

Ashton strode in amongst them, for he was at
the very top of the hierarchy and it was his place to take charge
and make semblance. And so he observed with a pale face the scene
of the double tragedy, and then he directed with a shaky but
authoritive voice for Scotland Yard to be sent for and an
undertaker to be sent for, and for someone to be sent to
Chestershire, for to his knowledge Earl Larrimer and Milord Duke
were still sojourning there.

Then he closed the door on the scene and the
distressed crowd dispersed and he went down to fortify himself with
another furtive drink before the men from Scotland Yard should
arrive.

They of course went over the scene. But there
was nothing very surprising about any of it. There was a broken
window with the glass inside on the floor as it should be when
someone has broken it from outside. There was the small but heavy
coal shovel taken from the fireplace and lying quite bloody beside
Lady Lydia. There was the poor, old and fragile Dowager where she
must have come to her daughter-in-law's aid, but of course, for her
to have made that journey in her weakened condition, it was no
wonder that Lady Lydia was already dead and the villain gone by the
time she arrived. And no wonder she suffered a fatal attack of the
heart and died at the sight that met her eyes.

Yes, it was all very sad. But it accounted
for why Lady Lydia's rings were gone from her very fingers and the
Dowager still retained hers. For if she had come in while the
villain was still there, then surely he would have taken her
jewelry also. So he must have been quite gone. The men took an
inventory of the room with the help of a trembling but brave Ashton
and a trembling and not-so-brave lady's maid, and discovered more
jewelry missing.

They said they should like to talk to Earl
Larrimer. Ashton told them that he was out of town but would of
course be informed and if they would need to speak to him when he
arrived?

But no. If they should discover anything
else, they would speak to him then, but as it all seemed a very
clear, if tragic, case of a burglary gone awry, they could not see
disturbing him when he would be busy with making arrangements for
his mother's interment. “And the Duke?” they asked. “Will he be
making arrangements for the Dowager or will the Earl be doing that
also?”

And Ashton replied that he imagined the Duke
would take care of his grandmother, but that he would probably
arrive when the Earl did, as they were both in Chestershire where
milord duke's new fiancé resided.

So Scotland Yard's men were satisfied that no
one who was to inherit was connected with the crime scene and they
wished all their cases were opened and closed so neatly. Of course,
it was a shame about the jewels, for they would probably never be
found, for they very seldom were in cases such as these.

They took their leave just as the undertaker
and his assistants were coming in and the undertaker asked if there
would be some delay. But the Scotland Yard men told him that, no,
they were quite finished.

The undertaker began the task of readying the
bodies and setting up viewing in the drawing room for both ladies
(although he suggested Lady Lydia's coffin remain closed) in their
caskets half buried in great troughs of ice. There would be black
curtaining to hide this circumstance, for no one, especially the
peerage, wished to be reminded that their loved ones, without the
ice, would very quickly become odorous. Even as it was, by the time
both ladies were taken to their crypts the room would need
fumigated.

Although the servants of both households had
the 'true' story, it was still agreed upon that they owed the old
Dowager and both her grandsons their loyalty, and by the time the
newspaper men came knocking on doors, the story had been changed
slightly.

Lady Lydia had indeed died by the hand of a
murderous burglar, but she died of a single stab wound (for
bludgeoning was just too disturbing). The Dowager, that poor, frail
lady, died of an attack upon hearing the news, for that seemed more
decent than stating she had been found lying in a pool of Lady
Lydia's blood.

And as Scotland Yard's standard response when
dealing with a crime that involved anyone in the peerage, let alone
a Dowager Duchess, was a firm 'no comment', there was no one to
dispute these facts. When the story was made ready for print in the
next day's newspaper, it was this still tragic but much sanitized
version that was reported. It reminded no one of a day twenty-three
years before when the then Duke of St. James and his wife's deaths
had been screamed on the front page with every horrible detail put
down for their perusal.

Indeed, only a few of the older members of
society even recalled it, and they only said that it seemed as
though the Larrimer family had certainly had its share of
tragedies.

Chapter Thirty-one

There are times, Dante was later to reflect,
when not being in complete control of one's senses, or thoughts or
coherent reasoning was a blessing. For acceptance arrived at in
small degrees is easier to swallow than trying to bolt a great bit
of it back at once.

And so it was for him as he lay in the bed at
Miss Murdock's home.

He was on intimate terms with his injuries,
for the pain from each had its own character and its own torment
and his minutes of awareness were punctuated by many hours of
embattled sleep.

Lizzie was there every time he wakened,
whether it was light or whether it was dark. Sometimes she was
sitting, sometimes she was pacing the floor, and sometimes she was
dozing, and sometimes she was attempting to feed him or to give him
something to drink. But it was the small things that seeped into
his consciousness and niggled at him while he slept.

Effington arrived at some point and St. James
wakened to that man sponge bathing him and shaving him and
otherwise treating him like a baby. He became aware that the noise
of work on the house had stopped. And he came to realize that he no
longer heard servants scurrying about during the day, or grooms
calling to each other from outside. He had not heard his
grandmother's cane for two days. He had not heard Andrew's voice
for as long. Bertie and Ryan were still in residence, but he only
caught their voices on occasion, and their hushed tones unsettled
him.

He watched a fine layer of dust collect on
furniture and become more pronounced. A spider in its web in the
corner failed to appear to repair its web and the web tore in more
places and the dust settled on it also, and in short time it turned
into a cobweb.

All these small things he observed in his
brief periods of wakefulness and he was equally comforted and
alarmed by them. For it is peaceful watching the dust settle at
times onto furniture and cobwebs. No great activity to stir it up,
no great push to clean it away, but to allow it repose for a brief
time undisturbed.

But it was alarming as well, as though all
those dedicated to clearing the dust and cobwebs had been drawn
away by some greater mission. He appreciated the peace he was left
to, but he also wondered what greater mess needed seeing to.