Murder at Newstead Abbey (23 page)

Luten was relieved when Coffen straggled in, his buckskin trousers and topboots somewhat the worse for mud. “Took a tumble,” he explained. “I had to give Jessie Belle a good going over in the stable before coming in. Bad enough to lame your own nag, but when you’re riding someone else’s, you feel like a Johnnie Raw.”

“How is Jessie Belle?” Sir William asked.

“Not lame. She was startled by a hare is what happened, but her ankles are all right.” He looked around the room and said, “Where’s the others?”

“Lady Richardson is showing them the gallery,” Luten replied.

“That’d be Prance’s doing. Nothing he likes better than a picture. Unless it’s a new jacket.” He accepted a glass of wine, took a gulp and turned to his host. “I daresay you heard about Vulch sticking his fork in the wall?”

“Yes, I heard it in town yesterday. I stopped in for a pint.”

“Did the lads there have any idea who had done him in?”

If the question upset Sir William, you would never guess it from his face. “The consensus is that he tried his card tricks with the wrong fellow.”

The others soon returned from the gallery. Lady Richardson made a minor fuss over Mr. Pattle when she heard his tale of taking a tumble, and while she talked, he examined her slippers. Looked about the right size to him. This was only confirmation, for he had meanwhile found an actual shoe to measure.

They parted on perfectly amiable terms.

“I hate to give up my pet theory,” Prance said as they drove home, “but if she’s not a Redley born and bred, I’m a Frenchman. She’s the image of her papa, and knows all the family history the way only family members do. She knows something about art. Nessie wouldn’t be so well informed. And she plays the piano too, after a fashion.”

“Perhaps she’s just learning to play,” Corinne suggested. “She sounded pretty shaky on those scales, and it was only the C scale. That’s the first one I was taught.”

“No, we’ve been barking up the wrong tree,” he insisted. “And all because she wore her skirts unstylishly short when she arrived from Jamaica, and didn’t want Corinne to know she frequented a local modiste. We’re back to the beginning.”

“Coffen may have discovered something,” Corinne said.

“What is there to have discovered at Richardsons’ stable?”

“He mentioned looking for blood stains.”

“He’ll not find them. They’re innocent.”

Coffen beat them home and was waiting for them in the salon. “She’s the one was in your library right enough, Byron,” he announced, flourishing the footprint on the back of Cromwell’s letter, now sadly crumpled. “And plus she was out in some muddy place lately. She had a pair of riding boots at the back door of the house, waiting to be cleaned off. They matched the print I got in your library.”

“We now believe Lady Richardson is who she claims,” Byron said, and explained about the family resemblance.

“Then what was she doing going through your letters on the sly? There’s something havey-cavey afoot here. There might have been some other reason for her to kill Nessie. P’raps Nessie had something on her, some other murder or what have you. Would she have been playing around on Sir William, I wonder? Her son, might he be a by-blow, and Nessie aware of it.”

“I can’t see old William cutting up too stiff over that,” Prance said. “He seems so lethargic.”

“The only thing that puts any spark in him is his son, though,” Luten said. “He’s extremely fond of Willie. That’s the reason they came back to England, to give Willie an English upbringing. If he thought Willie wasn’t his child ...”

“I didn’t see any indication on the boy of that Redley nose,” Byron said. “And in any case, that would only prove Lady Richardson is his mama. It says nothing of his papa.”

Coffen considered all this a moment, then said, “I don’t see how Vulch could have twigged to it if Willie was a byblow. And anyhow I thought we were agreed that a woman couldn’t have handled Vulch’s murder by herself. If she’s in it, so is Sir William.”

“Or some male accomplice, at least,” Byron said. “If Vulch weren’t the victim, he’s the one would spring to mind. And as we’re now considering adultery on the lady’s part, I’m glad she was already enceinte when she arrived, or my name would arise again.”

Coffen narrowed his eyes. “You wasn’t out the night Vulch was killed,” he said. “Not that I’m saying you’d any reason to shoot Vulch. Nothing of the sort. Why should you?” He directed a penetrating stare at Byron as he spoke.

They all smiled at Byron to disassociate themselves from Coffen’s hint. Luten said, “We don’t actually know that Vulch’s murder and the gold he amassed have anything to do with the body on the island. He seems pretty universally unloved.”

“I don’t believe the Richardsons had anything to do with either murder,” Prance said. “Vulch was probably killed by someone he was playing cards with.”

“If that’s the case, we’ve got to find out who he was playing with,” Coffen said. “I’ll have a word with Tess. The Green Man’s the likeliest place he would have picked up someone. The locals won’t sit down with him, so it must be a stranger.”

As he arose, Mrs. Ballard tugged at Corinne’s elbow and held a whispering session with her. When she had finished, Corinne said, “Have you considered the possibility that Vulch is Willie’s father? Lady Richardson could have had an affair with him in London.”

Prance stared as if she’d claimed the boy’s papa a devil. “That passes the bounds of possibility,” he said. “Let us not sink into utter foolishness. She’s very aware of her social position. She might have an affair with a duke or earl, but surely not with a Vulch..”

“We didn’t really know him. What do you think, Coffen?” Corinne said, turning to Coffen.

Prance frowned at Mrs. Ballard. He knew where the idea had come from. The lady was revealing a side of her character unsuspected in the past, due, no doubt, to her reading all those marble-covered gothics. He must make sure his novel was not submitted to the Minerva Press.

Coffen replied bluntly that, “She wouldn’t touch Vulch with a pair of tongs.”

This seemed to settle the question. He was so eager to be off that he decided to take his luncheon at the inn, where he had to wait until the lunch crowd dispersed before he had any privacy with Tess.

“Don’t they feed you up at the Abbey then, Mr. Pattle?” she said with a saucy smile as she took away his plate.

“Not as well as you feed me here. I do like a good bubble and squeak. You heard about Vulch, I expect?”

“That I did. There won’t be many tears shed for the likes of him. An ill wind that blows no good, as they say. Since I can’t give him back his shawl, I’ll keep it.”

“Why not? It looked dandy on you. Was he in here the night he was killed?”

“He dropped in around three that afternoon, not at night.”

“Did he meet anyone, any traveler?”

“No, we didn’t have no strangers in that day. He set by himself, looking out the window with a smirk on his ugly face, like he’d won the lottery. Whatever scheme he was hatching, it was the death of him.”

“So it seems,” Coffen said. “I wonder now, who will come into Vulch’s house and his mount, what they call his estate? He had no family, I understand.”

“Not since Minnie was killed. Nor he had no friends either. The crown’ll grab it, mark my words, unless it’s seized to pay up any bills he owes.”

A pair of farmers came in and settled themselves by the grate. She snapped up the generous tip Coffen placed on the table and left to serve the newcomers.

He rode home, deep in thought. At three o’clock Vulch was alive and well and smirking at some plan. What happened between three and whenever he was killed? That probably happened after dark. The remains of gammon and egg in the kitchen suggested he had gone home and made himself a supper. A supper for one, there was only one plate. Someone had called on him after supper, posing as a friend, shared an ale, and shot him. And likely made off with the gold in the chest. That suggested that his caller knew about the gold. Coffen couldn’t believe Vulch had broadcast it, so whoever it was had probably given it to him. Vulch’s smirk might have been caused by thinking he was going to wring more money out of his victim. The victim couldn’t or wouldn’t pay, and killed him.

And despite what Luten said, Coffen still thought it had to have to do with the body in the grave. That’s when it all started, when he found that body. If it wasn’t Lady Richardson, who was it? Was it Nessie?   He felt in his bones that it was, but he was damned if he could think why she had been murdered. Well, he’d just have to wait and hear what Black had to say. A good man, Black. Sharp as a needle and thorough. He’d pick Minnie Vulch’s brain clean. She’d end up telling him things she didn’t even know she knew.

Black, deprived of his beloved mistress in London, was sunk deep in gloom. He couldn’t be rushing to open doors for her, to stoke up the fire of whatever room she wished to use, to fetch her a shawl or a glass of wine. He couldn’t even keep an eye on the other members of the Berkeley Brigade for her, as he usually did, since the whole lot of them were gone.

The days dragged by. He scanned each morning’s post with the eagerness of a lover to see if she had written making any small request of him. His spirits soared when he saw his name written in her dainty script. It would alleviate his grief to be able to perform some duty for her during her absence.

He knew before he opened the letter that it was more than one page, and his heart throbbed. Could it possibly be she wanted him to join the party at Newstead? He opened the letter with trembling fingers, and when he saw the two closely written sheets, he called a footman to replace him at the door and went into the drawing room to read it undisturbed.

He felt closer to her in
her
room than in his own little chamber near the front door. Black was no scholar, his writing was a trifle uncertain, but his reading was excellent. He had no difficulty understanding her hastily written letter. Before he reached the bottom of the first page, he decided that, whatever he discovered, he would take the news to her ladyship in person. It was hard enough to have her so far away, but to know a murderer stalked the grounds where she walked!

He clamped his black hat on his black head, drew on his black greatcoat and whistled from the doorstep for a hackney coach to drive him to Wild Street. He re-read the letter to familiarize himself with the details while he was trundled through the busy London streets, mindless of the noise and traffic beyond the window. By the time the carriage pulled up at the fading façade of a rooming house in the theater district, he knew what he had to find out. He was familiar with all the shabbier areas of London from the checkered past of his pre-butler days. He knew when he saw the list of female names posted inside the door that the women within would call themselves actresses but their stage was likely to be their bed, where they performed for an audience of one, poor creatures. There would also be wardrobe workers and theatre cleaners.

It was by no means certain that Minnie Vulch would be out of bed at ten o’clock, but he climbed the dusty flight of stairs and rapped on the door of number three. To his surprise, the door opened immediately and an exceedingly plain-looking woman past the first blush of youth opened the door. An unlikely orange halo of hair, the color fresh out of a bottle and the curls fresh out of their papers, bounced youthfully around her platter face, which had, along with a bad complexion, teeth too large for her mouth. It seemed malicious of nature to have loaded so much contumely on one female.

Nature had been kinder to her below the neck, however. She was well rounded and showed off her form in a tight-fitting apple green gown worn lower in the front than ladies wore them in day time, and garnished with strings of glass beads that no lady would be caught dead in at any time.

Her smile of welcome faded when she saw Black. “Oh, I was expecting someone else,” she said.

Black assumed his classiest voice and said, with a lift of his hat, “Have I the honor of addressing Mrs. Vulch?”

She put one hand on her hip, eyed him up and down and said, “Who wants to know?”

“My name is Mr. Black. I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Mrs. Vulch. It’s about your husband.”

She rolled he eyes. “Oh lord, what’s he been up to now? Got hisself arrested, I expect? You’d best step inside.”

He was familiar with the arrangement of living in one room. The sofa that performed double duty as a bed, the grate that supplied inadequate heat and cooking facilities, the small table and chair tucked away in the farthest corner with the food, dishes and tea pot pushed to the back of the table, the curtain stretched across the alcove on a string to hide the clothes. All of it crammed into one room distempered in a bilious green. Minnie kept her room tidier than most women of her unfortunate sort.

“If it’s money he’s after, I haven’t got none to spare,” she said. “He’s already living free in my house. It’s robbery, that’s what it is.” She sat on the bed cum sofa and indicated that Black should join her, which he did. “Where have they got him locked up, and what does he want of me?”

“Your husband isn’t in jail, Mrs. Vulch. I’m sorry to have to tell you, he’s dead.”

Her mouth fell open, the blood rushed from her face, and a howl like a banshee rose from her throat. “Dead? Oh no! Oh God, no!” She threw her head on Vulch’s shoulder and sobbed, while he patted her back and made soothing noises. After the worst of her grief had run its course, she sat up and wiped her eyes and nose with the handkerchief Black supplied her.

 “I thought you was him when you knocked, for he said he’d be coming to London this very week. I expected him today, and then to hear this news.” She straightened her shoulders and asked in a hard voice, “Who killed him?”

Not what happened to him, not how did he die, but “Who killed him?” It occurred to Vulch that the fancy dress and clean room might be preparations for the husband’s visit.

“Why do you think he was murdered?” he asked.

" 'Cause I know Vulch. It was that dirty business he was mixed up in, wasn’t it? I told him he’d get hisself killed, but would he listen to me? Oh no!”