Strange Capers (2 page)

“Good day to you, ladies,” Mickey said, lifting his hat. I could swear his brogue becomes stronger by the year. “What brings the ladies of Thornbury into town?” His eyes, as he spoke, were laughing in Rachel’s direction, not mine.

Rachel was beyond the time of life when a handsome young bachelor smiled on her in real pleasure. I, on the other hand, was accustomed to his flirtation and felt a little miffed that I was not receiving it. It meant no more to me than a passing breeze, but it was a small pleasure I had grown accustomed to.

“Oh, Mickey, I thought I saw your boat out in the water just a moment ago” was Rachel’s answer.

“You did, surely. At least it should be on its way home by now. I climbed off down at the harbor and came for a strut through town in hopes of pleasuring my eyes with a sight of you.”

Rachel looked just a trifle nervous somehow, which was ridiculous. My attention to the interchange between the two of them increased. I noticed that Mickey was looking from the old used-bookstore to Rachel to the parcel in her hands, and his smile stretched a shade wider. “Planning a cozy evening reading by the fireside, are you? What book is it you’ve bought, Lady Savage?”

“A Bible,” she answered curtly, and clutched the book more tightly.

This was patent nonsense. She already had a Bible, and if she had never seen one in her life, she wouldn’t
buy
one.

“A Bible, is it? I’m very much interested in old Bibles myself. Could I have a look at it then?”

“No, I’m afraid we’re in a bit of a hurry today, Mickey,” Lady Savage answered. “Come along, Constance. Willard will be waiting for us.”

“The, ah,
Bible
is for Willard, is it?” Mickey asked in a mischievous voice. “He’s a blessing, is Willard. There’s a man who’d do anything he was told to, milady, and no questions asked. But you
will
just bear in mind, won’t you, that it’s myself who mentioned to you the riches to be found in the Good Book?” He turned to me then, his eyes fairly dancing in mockery. “And have you taken up Bible reading as well, Constance, my love?”

“I’m a devout reader,” I answered swiftly, hoping he would speak on to reveal what he was talking about.

“Aye, of every foolish novel that comes out.”

“Come along, Constance,” Rachel repeated, and took my arm to leave. Her pace was not much short of running.

I was entirely mystified, for in the usual way it takes a good deal more than a Mickey Dougherty to disconcert Rachel. She didn’t dally for a minute in any of the other stores, either, but went straight to the hotel for the gig.

When we were seated in it, I asked her what Mickey had been talking about.

“Who knows what that rattle has in his mind?” she answered sharply, but the sharpness was meant for Mickey, not me.

“What did you really buy in that shop? I know it wasn’t a Bible,” I replied.

“Just an old history book about this area. It has some references to Thornbury in it. I thought I might send it as a gift to Lord Aiglon to put him in a giving mood.”

“I see,” I answered, though I didn’t see at all.

She had never felt it necessary to oil him like this before. Why was she doing it now? Of course there was the projected stay in London. That might account for it. I had never heard that Aiglon was the least interested in history, but then an old book was the sort of thing whose price was indefinite. She’d pay a few pennies and offer it as a priceless antique.

“Was it Mickey who discovered the book?” I asked.

“Yes, he mentioned seeing it to me last Sunday. Actually, he said he planned to buy it himself, and was a little put out that I beat him to it.”

This sounded completely plausible. It was the very sort of trick for which Rachel was famous. I accepted her word for it—in my guileless and innocent fashion—forgetting that she was such an accomplished thief. I thought it was only the book she had snitched from Mickey’s fingers. As I look back on it, I remember that Rachel was particularly talkative during the remainder of that trip. She chattered like a magpie about nothing in particular. She distracted me, and she must have been very distracted herself, too, for she didn’t think to ask me for her mail.

It wasn’t till we were home and having our tea that I remembered her letters and gave them to her. She opened and read two of hers while I read mine from home. It was Prissy who had written to me. She is only one year younger than myself and the closest to me in temperament. I felt some lonesomeness as I read of the family’s doings. I would go home when Rachel went to London next spring, and if Prissy married the young man whose description filled two pages, I would stay at home. My two brothers were at school now, and the house would be less full. I could be useful there.

I was startled out of my ruminative state by a strangled “Aagh!” from Rachel. I looked in alarm to see she was reading the letter bearing Aiglon’s frank.

“What’s the matter? Is someone dead?” I asked. Her face, an alarming shade of red, faded before my very eyes to rose, to pink, to bone-white.

“Worse!” she managed to choke out. “Aiglon is coming to Thornbury!”

I suspect my own color faded just as rapidly. “When?” I asked.

“Tomorrow.”

We exchanged a guilty stare. I felt an urge to jump up from the table and run and hide. Rachel must have felt even more culpable, but such was her sangfroid that she only called out “Willard” in a little fainter voice than usual.

Rachel is really a marvel of efficiency. Even before Willard came shuffling into the room, she had recovered her wits sufficiently to begin laying plans and preparing strategies to cover her larceny.

“The carpet for the front stairs must be the first matter of business,” she said.

“Leave it, Rachel. You posted that note asking for money only today. He won’t expect to see it done yet,” I advised.

Her nose pulled downward as she braced herself to confess the whole. “Actually, I said I had had it done already and enclosed a bill. He will have received my letter before he leaves tomorrow. He says he will be arriving around dinnertime. Aiglon will be driving his curricle in this season—fifteen miles an hour, over the sixty-mile drive. We shall have to give Willard a hand with the laying of it.”

“How are we to make it look new?” I asked.

“We’ll keep the lights low,” she said, glancing again at the troublesome letter.

“Why is he coming? Is there some special reason?”

“To rusticate—he wants no company. Well, that’s something at least. He won’t be expecting a round of parties. He’s having his yacht sent down. That looks like a longish visit ...”

“Rachel, about the dovecote,” I reminded her. That loomed in my mind as the worst of her schemes, but she had her explanation for it in the twinkling of an eye.

“Vandals. Vandals knocked it down, and it was such a mess we just had the stones hauled away. There is that pile of stones at the back of the garden where half the dry wall fell down five years ago. The sea gulls made such depredations on the doves’ eggs that we decided the coast was no proper place for a dovecote. What else? The saloon curtains were paid for over a year ago, so their condition can be explained by the malign sea air.”

“What room will you put him in? The blue guest room would be the likeliest spot if it had curtains and a canopy. The other guest rooms are small.”

“Yes, we have the best rooms ourselves, those with a view of the sea. I really think...Would you mind terribly to remove to the little yellow room at the back, Constance? It will only be for a week or so.”

“Of course I don’t mind. It is Aiglon’s own house after all, but he must plan to stay longer than a week if he’s having his yacht sent down,” I pointed out.

“Longer? We’ll be rid of him in three days,” she prophesied merrily, and laughed.

There was a febrile excitement about her during that meal, which I put down to Aiglon’s visit. God knows it would have been enough to put any ordinary person into spasms of fright, but I think now that the visit wasn’t the cause of it at all. Looking back, it seemed a happy or anticipatory sort of excitement.

The thing I remember most about that night is helping Willard haul the blue carpet downstairs and hang it on the clothesline at about nine o’clock. Rachel, who took a supervisory position, had lights fixed in the backyard to allow Willard and the servants to beat the carpet into newness. While they beat, I measured the front stairs, and when the carpet was as clean as a fifteen-year-old carpet with several grease stains could be, we laid it in the saloon and cut it into strips.

Before any of us were allowed to lay our heads on our pillows that night, we had to install it. There was a tremendous commotion of hammering and running for sharper knives and scissors to cut through the thick rug. Willard’s spirit was willing but his forearm was weak, so the stable boy and I ended up wielding the hammer. Other than the strange bellying at the curve of the stairs where we couldn’t get it to lay flat, it didn’t look too bad. Certainly not new, but not bad. At one o’clock in the morning, the job was done, and we were allowed to retire with the reminder to meet at seven in the morning to begin last-minute preparations.

Bleary-eyed and stiff, and with a throbbing thumb where the hammer had hit me, I straggled upstairs to bed. It was only after I lay down that I wondered why Aiglon was coming to Thornbury at this time. His being with the Foreign Office made me wonder if he was to take some part in the anti-Napoleon preparations. On that score, I wasn’t unhappy to have an able-bodied man in the house. There were wicked stories circulating in the neighborhood as to how French soldiers treated their victims—especially female victims. Of course Aiglon was a lord and a government official, and this might induce the French to treat his household with some latitude. On the other hand, the French had a particular hatred of the nobility.

I reviewed what I knew about Aiglon from having heard him spoken of for five years. His real country seat was in Hampshire, not Sussex. It was called Westleigh and, according to rumor, was a magnificent heap. If he wanted to rusticate, why did he not go there? All my thoughts confirmed that he was coming on military business. Although he was invariably spoken of as a fashionable rake and rattle, it seemed to me that his having taken a government position showed there was more to him than that. It was spoken of as an important position as well, some sort of liaison work between the government and the military.

I also knew that Aiglon was a bachelor, though he had skated near the edge of engagement with a few ladies since I’d come to Thornbury. I, a fairly poor connection, was not in the least hopeful that he would become so enamored of me during his brief visit that any romance would develop. But if he turned out to be handsome, a pleasant flirtation was not impossible. It was on this stray wisp of a happy thought that I finally slept.

I believe Rachel slept even more poorly than myself. I heard her door open at some time during the night. It was raining and pitch black outside. I wondered what detail she had remembered and risen out of her bed to attend to. I heard her tiptoe past my room, but she hadn’t lit a candle. She went downstairs, and I fell asleep again before she returned.

The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the sodden, gray sky. Perhaps Aiglon will delay his visit, I thought optimistically. I didn’t know him then, and thus had no way of suspecting his single-mindedness once he had set his course of action.

The rest of the day was one of busy, organized confusion. I had to remove all my personal effects from my room and take them across the hall to the yellow guest room. That done, I gave Aiglon’s room a good cleaning with beeswax and turpentine until the furniture gleamed. Meg, the kitchen girl, was set to sweeping the carpet with tea leaves sprinkled to keep down the dust.

Rachel spent some time in the kitchen overseeing a feast to tempt the palate of a London rattle. I was assigned the job of setting the table for dinner. I enjoyed that, but having to go out into the garden to cull flowers in the pouring rain was less pleasant. I was a little annoyed to notice that one of the servants had made free with my waterproof coat and pattens. The coat was still damp and had mud splattered around the hem. I mentioned this to Rachel in passing when she came to approve the dinner table.

“You mustn’t blame Meg, Constance. Actually, I borrowed it myself,” she admitted. “The roses look a bit skimpy, don’t you think?” she asked, surveying the centerpiece. She rooted in the basket of discards and stuck a few pieces of greenery amidst the blooms. “There, that’s better.’’

“What are you serving, Rachel?” I asked. I was a little miffed that she’d worn my coat and gotten it dirty when she might as easily have put on her own. But that, I suspect, is the secret of her elegance. Her clothes are protected from rough wear.

She named an assortment of delicacies: turbot, fowl, a ham, and side dishes. While she spoke, I found myself wondering when she had been out and why. I asked about it, but she gave me her annoyed mare’s look. “I went to put a few stones where the dovecote used to be,” she answered. She is such a clever liar that she couches all of her remarks as if to indicate that the lie is a fact. The dovecote was never anywhere but in her mind and in a letter to Riddell.

“You got mud on the hem of my coat,” I said.

“Give it to Meg to clean.”

Meg had so much to do that I took the coat upstairs myself. I noticed that the mud on the inner side had hardened to blobs of earth. It was still wet on the outside, as I had worn it to cut flowers, but along the inner hem it was bone dry. I must have accused Rachel unjustly. That mud had been there for hours. It must have been there overnight.

At the time, I had no reason to suspect that Rachel’s nocturnal ramble had taken her outdoors in my coat, and she certainly didn’t say so. I was privy to most of her crimes, but this one she had kept to herself. Only Willard knew what she was up to, and Willard would gladly have gone to the stake before he’d say a word against Lady Savage.

As the afternoon wore on, orders flew like sparks from Rachel’s lips, and the servants, including myself, hopped to execute them. A fire was laid in the grate; wine was poured into decanters and one was taken to Aiglon’s room; lamps unwittingly lit too close to the old-new stair carpet were extinguished; other saloon lamps were adjusted, moved, and moved again to allow some rays of light without showing too much detail of the moldering curtains.