Murder and Misdeeds (7 page)

Luten saw that the man needed something else to occupy his mind, and said, “Let us go into your study to go over the accounts. We should take the Consols to Grinstead and arrange for the ransom, should it be necessary.”

“I sit, waiting for a message to come. What is he waiting for?”

When he reached for the bottle, Luten said gently, “Come, let us go, Otto. The note might have come by the time we return.”

Otto rose slowly, like an old man. He was only fifty-five, but he looked twenty years older.

After they left, Corinne went up to Susan’s room to search the desk and for a closer examination of the whole room by daylight. If the desk had contained any secrets, Luten or Simon had gotten them. She noticed a shawl thrown over the window seat and lifted it. Beneath it sat Susan’s writing box. It was a lap box, broad and shallow, whose lid provided a writing surface when no desk was available. The marquetry lid was done in woods of various colors forming a star pattern. Susan must have sat at this recessed window, gazing out at the park, as she wrote.

Corinne lifted the lid and saw two of her own letters and a note from Luten sitting on top of the embossed stationery. Perhaps his birthday letter to her. Was this what he had been looking for? She resisted the temptation to open it, but did examine the envelope. The postmark was only five days old! Susan’s birthday had been a month ago. Luten had written to her that recently and not said a word about it!

Had Susan replied to the letter? The lap desk gave no answer. Her wandering eye happened to fall on the wastepaper bin by the desk. It appeared to be full of discarded silver paper, wadded up in a ball. Corinne removed it and saw beneath some smaller papers. She took the basket and emptied it on Susan’s bed. A few sheets of stationery had been squashed up and tossed out. She began flattening them. Three of them held a date at the top, the date indicating they had been written a week ago. The salutation, “Dear Luten,” was followed by a few lines of script. The actual message was so brief, it was hard not to catch the whole at a glance. “I am writing to ask you ...” A blob of ink accounted for the letter’s having been cast aside. The other two were no more informative. “You must not scold me, dear Luten ...” and a drop of what looked like cocoa. The other said, “You said I could always turn to you if I had ...” There was no apparent reason why this one had been abandoned, no smear of ink or cocoa.

Corinne puzzled over them, wondering what Susan had done that might merit a scold from Luten, before turning to root through the other discarded papers, mostly wrappers from the sweet shop in Burnham. Susan had a sweet tooth. This done, Corinne turned back to the lap-top desk and sorted through the loose papers there.

There were two lists. These did not seem too personal, and she glanced through them. It seemed Susan had more interest in keeping up her house than Otto suspected. She had listed various items: carpets, window hangings, a Regency desk, and a chaise longue, with the price of each beside it. The other list was for articles of clothing: bonnets, gowns, silk nightgowns, a satin peignoir with lace panels, petticoats, various pieces of lingerie. The prices listed beside the nightwear were rather high. There was a strange emphasis on intimate apparel. It might almost be a trousseau.... Corinne glanced again at the abandoned letters to Luten, with a frown forming between her eyebrows. “You must not scold me, dear Luten ...” What could it mean? “You said I could always turn to you if I had ...” It was an ambiguous statement. Was Luten playing uncle or lover?

She went to Susan’s dresser to see if she was actually short of nightwear. She had three lawn nightgowns and three flannelette ones. On the back of her door hung a quite nice woolen dressing gown, blue to match her eyes. There was no summer dressing gown. Her eye fell on the blanket chest, and she lifted the lid. There, carefully wrapped in silver paper, were some of the items on the list. A peach silk nightgown with ecru lace was there, along with an assortment of dainty lingerie, all packed in silver paper. And tucked amid the silken folds, a yellow tea rose, pressed between the pages of a book of poetry by Mr. Wordsworth.

Corinne remembered Luten looking in that trunk last night and closing the lid hastily, implying there was nothing of interest there. Was it possible he and Susan were secretly engaged, that he didn’t want her, Corinne, to see the trousseau? That was surely what these items were. Luten had sent her Byron’s poetry—had he sent her the Wordsworth book as well? She opened the flyleaf, but there was no inscription. There floated through her mind Luten’s pale face when Prance told them of Susan’s kidnapping. He had said, “I must go to Appleby Court at once.” “I would do anything to have her back,” he had said to Coffen. The dramatic phrase was unlike Luten.

She felt a heaviness around her heart, a sense of regret, almost of betrayal. Luten and Susan. When had this romance developed? Was it the affair with Soames that had nudged Luten into repeating his offer? Was that why she had jilted Soames? Why had they kept it a secret? Corinne thought of Susan as almost a sister, but she was beginning to realize she didn’t know her at all. Casual remarks that people dropped didn’t sound like the Susan of yore. She had “put her little foot down” when Blackmore offered for her. A good girl, “despite her little ways.” No wonder she took such scant interest in keeping Appleby Court up when she would soon be leaving it to go to her husband’s home. But then why were the carpets and window hangings on the list? Luten would not expect his bride to refurbish his elegant residences.

And it still didn’t explain her disappearance. She obviously had not run off with any man other than her intended when she was arranging her trousseau, and her intended must be either some local lad or Luten. If not Luten, then either Blackmore or Soames. She had rejected Blackmore. Stockwell thought she had had an understanding with Soames. The carpets and window hangings might have been destined for Oakhurst. There was no way to know when they had been purchased. Soames was said to be short in the pockets. She might have been planning renovations to Oakhurst.

There was not much else to be learned here in any case. When Corinne went below, she learned that Sir Reginald Prance had arrived.

Chapter Eight

She found Prance alone in the saloon, staring out the window, as elegant as ever after his trip.

“There you are!” he exclaimed when he heard her approach. “I felt as welcome as a bailiff with a lien on the furniture—no one here to greet me. What the deuce is going on, Corinne? That Friday-faced butler said Luten and Otto had gone to East Grinstead. No sign of Pattle or you. What is being done to find Susan?”

“Luten and Marchbank are arranging the ransom money.”

“Then a demand has been made?” he asked eagerly.

“No, but just in case, you know. Coffen has gone to report the highwayman and
—”

“You were held up
again!”
Prance’s eyes opened in excitement. He clapped his white hand to his heart. “Dear girl, don’t throw these alarming statements at me. Were you hurt? Did you lose much money?”

She gave him a brief description of the incident.

“I warned Pattle. But there, it is beneath me to say, ‘I told you so.’ I always avoid the cliché. You were not molested, and as for the rest—well, it is only money.”

“Did you have a safe trip?”

“Utterly boring. I have missed all the fun!” He pouted and demanded an account of what was being done to find Susan.

She brought him up-to-date on what they had discovered thus far, omitting, for some reason she did not quite understand, the letters to and from Luten, but told him about the trousseau hidden in the blanket chest.

“Well, you have all been busy, I must say—and so has little Susan. Does a girl accumulate her bridal things without a groom in mind? How does she know he likes peach,
par exemple?
Personally I despise it on any lady over fifteen. Surely a bride ought to wear white on her wedding night, providing, of course, that she is entitled to, and one assumes Susan is.

“There is still a deal to be done. We cannot sit on our thumbs while some wretch has his way with little Susan. Let us call on Blackmore. I don’t trust that customer above half. It is not like him to take a refusal lying down. He has been plotting his revenge all these months and provided himself an alibi while ordering one of his henchmen to abduct Susan from the orchard.”

“He will hardly tell us if he does have her,” Corinne said.

“I shall know by the looks of him. I am a bit of a dab at reading faces and gestures. I have made a study of it for my work in the theater. Grab your bonnet. I have left my carriage harnessed, ready for action. We’ll have her home for lunch.”

This, of course, was mere braggadocio, but it was hard to sit still, and Corinne hoped she might find some little clue at Blackmore Hall, as she had spotted the blue slippers at Greenleigh.

“It is foolishly optimistic of me to ask,” Prance said, “but do they set a decent table here at Appleby?”

“Far from it.”

“I feared as much, from the beggar’s velvet on the furnishings. A well-ordered house does not guarantee good mutton, but an ill-run one invariably serves bad food. We shall take lunch at the Rose and Thistle.”

“That’s a good idea. Coffen plans to do the same. I shall tell Mrs. Malboeuf.”

He shook his head. “That name alone is enough to indict her.”

“Shall we leave word for Luten?”

“By all means. I shall bring you both up-to-date on my party while we eat. Odd you did not inquire,” he added with another moue.

“Your parties are always stunning successes, Reg. There was no need to ask.”

“That blatant flattery goes a long way in assuaging my feelings, but you really should have asked. I did it all for you and Luten.” He peered at her closely. “He hasn’t come up to scratch?”

“No,” she said curtly. “How was the party, after we left?”

“A howling success, if I may be allowed a little tootle on my own horn. Pity you had to miss it. It went on until four. I cleverly gave all the ladies a bundle of flowers to take home, to save the job of removing them after they had left. The gentlemen jumped for those hanging from the rafters. That knock-me-down fellow, Lord Ponsonby, landed on Miss Gladstone’s skirt. She leapt back like a gazelle, leaving her skirts behind, petticoats and all. Some alert lady—Lady Melbourne, I believe it was— threw a shawl over her, but not before several gentlemen discovered she is knock-kneed. It was rather amusing.”

Corinne lavished the necessary praise, then left the messages, got her bonnet, and they were off.

Blackmore Hall was situated at the top of a rise, halfway to East Grinstead.

“It looks the perfect illustration for a gothic novel, does it not?” Prance asked as they drove up the graveled drive. “It has all the trappings: dripping elms, that age-darkened brick, those lancet windows. All that is missing is the whirling veils of fog. One should not visit a gothic heap by daylight. Except for Strawberry Hill, of course, and it is really only a folly. It is too laughably sublime to require moonlight. That would be gilding the lily—or in its case, I suppose, the strawberry.”

The carriage drew to a stop at the front of the house and they alit.

“The knocker has a nice hollow sound, just as it ought,” Prance said when he lifted it a moment later. “I do feel, though, that a skull would be more in keeping with the ambience than this wheat sheaf. If we are not greeted by a hag with bad teeth, wearing a black gown, I shall be greatly disappointed in Blackmore.”

Prance was destined for disappointment. It was a butler in a decent dark suit who admitted them to a well-ordered house. The paneling was dim enough to please him, but there were neither cobwebs, clanking chains, nor otherworldly groans to welcome them. They were shown into a lofty saloon whose carpet was not so very worn. The windows, while not gleaming, were not so sooted as to completely obscure the view of the park beyond. The worst he could say of the sofa was that it was like sitting on a sack of old bones.

Within minutes Lord Blackmore came to greet them. Corinne was struck by the physical similarity between the two gentlemen. Both were tall, lean, and saturnine, with skin that seemed to stretch tightly over their faces, lending them a strained air. Yet whereas Prance only looked pompous, Blackmore had a harder edge.
Sinister
was not too strong a word to use. It was his gray eyes, as cold as ice crystals, that caused it.

His bow was not quite as graceful as Prance’s. “Countess, Sir Reginald,” he said, strolling in. “Delighted to see you. No need to ask why you have condescended to call on me, after all these years, Countess. Let me assure you I do not have Miss Enderton sequestered in the attic, nor her body concealed in a hogshead of wine in the cellar. Yes, I did offer for her last Christmas. I was ... mildly disappointed at her refusal. The Hall required a new roof, but an obliging aunt died and that took care of that. Now, what would you have to drink? I have a decent claret ... but that is a boy’s drink, eh, Prance? Brandy for you and me. I think for Lady deCoventry ...” He stopped and examined her a moment. “No, you have outgrown Madeira since my last glimpse of you. Sherry, perhaps?”

“Sherry, thank you,” she said.

While he poured the drinks and passed them, Corinne was busy subjecting the saloon to a thorough visual search.

Blackmore’s lips twitched as he handed her the wine. “Do feel free to take a peek behind the sofa, Lady deCoventry,” he said, smiling coolly. “She would not really fit in that little escritoire you have been ogling.”

“I have been admiring it,” she said, trying to match his sangfroid. “French, I think?”

“Italian, actually. My using the French name confused you, perhaps. I don’t know the Italian word for a desk. It is Quattrocento, in any case.”

“Scrivan
ì
a,
I believe is the word in Italian,” Prance informed him. “But Quattrocento? Cinquecento, surely, Baron?” Blackmore shrugged his shoulders. “A lovely thing, in any case.
Bellissimo!”
Prance said, smiling at it. “One would not have thought it would suit so well in a Tudor saloon.”