Sheri Cobb South (16 page)

“I wonder why she was up and about so late at night?” Pickett removed the cover from a silver chafing dish. “Something to do with Mr. Meriwether, I’ll wager.”

“Very likely. But what will you do next, now that you must acquit Sir Gerald? You can hardly go prowling about the countryside ransacking the neighbors’ libraries and rummaging through their ledgers.” She frowned in sudden suspicion.
“Can
you?”

“Alas, no,” conceded Pickett. “I’ll have to look for more indirect evidence. Did anyone present at dinner that night appear to have an urgent need for funds?”

“No, but then, this is not London,” pointed out the viscountess. “One can live quite comfortably in the country on no more than two hundred pounds per annum.”

Pickett, who had never possessed such a sum in his entire life, let this observation pass without comment.

“Does anyone appear to have come into a sum of money recently?”

“It is difficult to say, as I had no previous acquaintance with any of them except Lady Anne.” Lady Fieldhurst considered the question for a long moment. “What about Robert Kendall?” she suggested at last.

“The dandy? I wouldn’t have thought he had the brains to plot such a scheme.”

“He is no intellectual, I grant you, but he is not without cunning. If you could but hear the barbs he throws at poor Mr. Meriwether—”

“
‘Poor
Mr. Meriwether’?” quoted Pickett. “Do you mean that literally or figuratively?”

“Both, I daresay. But if you are picturing him in the role of blackmailer, pray think again! It is Mr. Danvers’s position, not his purse, that Mr. Meriwether had reason to covet. If he had attempted blackmail, it would have been to coerce Mr. Danvers into an early retirement, and perhaps a recommendation to Sir Gerald that he—Mr. Meriwether, that is—be given the post.”

“Whereas Mr. Kendall—?” prompted Pickett.

“Mr. Kendall favors a style of dress which is extremely expensive, and which his father despises. I can’t see Lord Kendall giving his son an allowance that would enable him to indulge his deplorable tastes, can you?”

“Since I’ve never met the gentleman, I couldn’t say,” said Pickett, refilling her cup. “It sounds like a reasonable assumption, though. Anyone else?”

“What about Miss Grantham?”

“The governess? But you said she was potty on him!”

In fact, Pickett was not at all certain her ladyship was not roasting him again, but she answered him with every appearance of earnestness.

“It would not be the first time a man had been murdered by a woman who fancied herself in love with him,” she pointed out with unarguable logic. “Suppose Miss Grantham finally realized that her ambitions in that direction were hopeless. In three years—four at the most—Miss Susannah will leave the schoolroom, and the Hollingsheads will have no further need of Miss Grantham’s services. She will find it most difficult, at her age, to find a new position.”

“Surely the Hollingsheads would offer her some sort of a pension,” suggested Pickett.

“They may, of course, but they are under no obligation to do so. Perhaps, having witnessed their cavalier treatment of Mr. Meriwether, who has the supposed advantage of kinship, Miss Grantham could not feel sanguine about her own expectations.”

“And so, having somehow discovered the skeleton in the vicarage cupboard, she sets about building herself a tidy little nest egg at her false lover’s expense.”

“Something like that. Only I suspect Mr. Danvers would be much shocked to hear himself described as Miss Grantham’s lover, false or otherwise. He appears to have given her no encouragement at all—unless you consider his requesting her to read that massive tome of his as evidence of amorous intentions.”

“No, but that raises another question: why would he make such a request of a woman who was blackmailing him?”

“Perhaps the demands for payment were arranged in such a way that he did not know his blackmailer’s identity. Or,” she added with mounting enthusiasm, “perhaps the request was not a request at all, but a form of clandestine communication.”

“Pound notes slipped between the pages?”

“Yes, or a letter refusing payment and informing her that he intended to make a clean breast of the matter.”

Pickett frowned. “It’s possible, but it seems—I don’t know, overly dramatic. Like something you might see on the stage at Drury Lane.”

“My dear John, remember we are speaking of a spinster lady of advancing years and limited income. High drama would
not
be considered a disadvantage. In fact, I daresay she craves it almost as much as she does security—perhaps even more so.”

“I can’t say I like Miss Grantham as a blackmailer any more than I like her as a murderess, but I’ll bear it in mind,” Pickett promised. “Now, who else?”

Lady Fieldhurst sighed. “We are rapidly exhausting the possibilities. I can’t imagine Lord Kendall in the role of blackmailer, as he is a Justice of the Peace—”

“A corrupt magistrate? Stranger things have happened, I assure you.”

“—While as for Mr. Carrington, I fear I know very little about him. According to Mr. Meriwether, he has only lived in the area for a couple of years, so he is still a stranger by local standards.”

“A couple of years,” echoed Pickett. “That would put him arriving here at about the same time Will’s adoptive parents died.”

“I suppose so,” said her ladyship, much struck. “Is there a connection?”

“I don’t know—perhaps not. But I think I should visit Little Neddleby and poke around a bit.”

The viscountess raised a hand to forestall the inevitable question. “And you will naturally need a day off for this excursion! Very well, you know I must grant it. But what, pray, are you looking for?”

“Anything I can find about Will’s past and anyone who might have known about his true parentage. If I can find out who knew, I’ll know who would have had the means for blackmail.”

Lady Fieldhurst set her cup down on its saucer with a
clink
and made as if to rise from the table. “And while you are doing that, I shall see what I can discover about the mysterious Mr. Carrington.”

Pickett, finding himself shirking his duty, moved quickly to hold her chair for her. “How will you do that?”

“I have an excellent idea,” declared her ladyship, smiling mischievously up at him. “We widows are so very lonely, you know, and it is such a comfort to have a man to whom we may turn for companionship.”

“I
hate
that idea,” Pickett muttered to her retreating back.

* * * *

Immediately upon exiting the breakfast room, Lady Fieldhurst was appalled at her own audacity. What had possessed her to volunteer to play the coquette for a veritable stranger in whom she had not the slightest amorous interest? Surely, she told herself firmly, it was the duty of every citizen to see criminals brought to justice. Therefore, she was doing no more than her duty in helping further Bow Street’s investigations. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that Bow Street had kissed her passionately the previous evening (for although a strict interpretation of the evening’s events must insist that
she
had kissed
him
,
there was no denying the fact that he had most certainly kissed her back) only to leave her alone with a murderer in the vicinity. Very well, then, she would obtain what information she could from the gentleman in question, and if John Pickett should return from his wanderings to discover that she had been foully done to death, it would be no more than he deserved.

Having resigned herself to perform her duty as an Englishwoman, Lady Fieldhurst set out to locate Lady Anne in order to gently press her hostess into setting a date for one of the proposed sightseeing expeditions. While the viscountess was prepared to flirt with any number of gentlemen for a sufficiently worthy cause, she found the prospect of doing so at Hollingshead Place, where John Pickett might be hovering within earshot at any given moment, daunting in the extreme.

She had not far to look for Lady Anne, for as she neared the drawing room, she heard that lady’s voice itemizing the details of Miss Hollingshead’s approaching Season, to which Emma returned monosyllabic replies.

“—Your presentation at Court, of course, and my brother, your uncle Lord Claridge, has promised to host a dinner in your honor that evening. Ah, my dear Lady Fieldhurst,” she said, looking up at the viscountess’s entrance, “I wonder if you might spare your John to us this morning? The plans for Emma’s Season, you must know, are proceeding apace, and I wish to have him measured for a suit of Hollingshead livery.”

“Mama—”

However out of favor John Pickett might be at the moment, the thought of him clad in the scarlet and gold of the Hollingshead servants was too repugnant for Lady Fieldhurst to contemplate. “Oh! You—you have spoken to him, then?”

“Mama, I don’t think—”

“I have not broached the subject with him yet,” admitted Lady Anne. “I can see by your face that you think me a trifle premature, but I know young people and, if you will forgive my saying so, no matter how loyal he may be to your interests, it would be a very unusual young person who would prefer the sobriety of a house of mourning to the gaieties of the London Season.”

“Mama, I don’t think you should attempt to hire Lady Fieldhurst’s footman away!”

Lady Anne blinked at the vehemence of her daughter’s protest. “Good heavens, why not? Should he choose to leave her services, I will of course see that she is well compensated for the loss.”

“You don’t understand,” Emma Hollingshead continued. “He is—they are—oh!” With a little cry of embarrassed frustration, she fled the room.

“What do you suppose has come over the girl?” her fond parent wondered aloud.

The moment of reckoning, it appeared, was at hand. Lady Fieldhurst took a deep breath. There was no need for her to feel embarrassed, no need at all. This was, after all, precisely what she had wished the midnight visitor to believe, in the hopes of covering up more sinister motives. “I fear I am to blame, ma’am. Mr. Danvers’s tragic—accident—has affected me very deeply, coming so soon after my own husband’s untimely death. My footman is aware of my distress, and was attempting to—console me—when your daughter surprised us in the library.”

“I see,” said Lady Anne. “I need not ask, of course, what form this consolation takes. I daresay I should have surmised as much when I learned you had sent for him. However little I may condone such unions, I would not presume to dictate to a guest. I must insist, however, that any such liaisons conducted beneath my roof be carried out with the utmost discretion. My daughter already has a number of foolish ideas about love and romance without filling her head with notions of a grand passion belowstairs.”

For one brief moment Lady Fieldhurst wondered if her hostess’s interest in hiring Pickett sprang from similarly carnal motives but rejected the notion as absurd; however susceptible that lady’s daughters might be to the tender passion (and Susannah clearly was not immune to Pickett’s charm), the viscountess could not imagine Lady Anne indulging in any amorous activity beyond closing her eyes and thinking of England.

“Of course. I deeply regret the incident, for I would not wish to give Miss Hollingshead false ideas of what to expect once she is married. I daresay I should have returned to London as soon as I, er, felt the need for John’s companionship,” Lady Fieldhurst continued disingenuously, “but I confess to a reluctance to leave Yorkshire without having first explored the beauties of the countryside. What a pity the weather has been so uncooperative! I always feel one cannot truly claim to have spent a holiday in the country until one has scrambled over the stones of at least one picturesque ruin.”

The effects of this gentle hint were all that the viscountess might have wished.

“I fear your entertainment has been shockingly neglected,” confessed Lady Anne, once more the gracious hostess. “I am at fault in keeping you tied to the house, for in spite of your widowed state, you are nearer my daughter’s age than my own, and no doubt thirst for some novel form of amusement. You must allow me to make it up to you.”

Lady Fieldhurst instantly demurred, but her hostess insisted, just as the viscountess had known she would. By the time Lady Fieldhurst returned to her room that evening to dress for dinner, she was able to inform Pickett that he might have his day off; she would have no need of his services the following day, as she was to accompany a party of pleasure-seekers to Knaresborough to explore Mother Shipton’s Cave.

Chapter 9

Which Finds John Pickett Trudging About the Countryside

John Pickett awoke at dawn and rolled over in bed with a groan. He’d had twenty-four hours in which to wallow in the memory of Lady Fieldhurst’s kiss; now it was time to get back to the business which had brought him to Yorkshire in the first place. As he threw back the bedclothes, however, he could not shake the feeling that he was chasing after mares’ nests. He had no real proof that the vicar was being blackmailed at all and no reason to suppose that a visit to Little Neddleby would reveal the identity of the blackmailer even if such a person existed. No, his time would be far better spent accompanying her ladyship to Knaresborough and seeing that the male contingent, particularly the enigmatic Mr. Jasper Carrington, kept a respectful distance.

So that was it, was it? Muttering something under his breath about a dog in the manger, he sat up and reached for his breeches. He had best away to Little Neddleby with all possible speed; the sooner he solved this case and returned to Bow Street, the better off he would be.

The familiar feel of his comfortable brown serge coat and gloriously unpowdered hair did much to improve his outlook, and his spirits were further lifted when he entered the servants’ dining hall to find Mrs. Holland descending upon him with the light of battle in her eyes. It was, he reflected, truly amazing what one kiss could do for a man’s confidence, even when the kiss was prompted by expedience rather than affection.

“And where, pray, do you think you’re going, dressed like that?” the housekeeper demanded, waving a contemptuous hand at his unliveried person.