Death Among the Ruins (4 page)

 

 

T
he day following saw no wind, and the city cautiously awakened to brittle sunlight. It was cold, though. Walking their horses through Green Park after a good ride, Belinda and Arabella passed that farm that was so amusing to visit in the summer, when one had a mind to play the dairymaid and milk a cow.

“Are you certain you wouldn’t like to curl your fingers around a nice, warm cow teat?” asked Arabella.

“Yes, I am certain,” Belinda replied, stooping to pick up a brilliantly colored leaf. “My gloves are
not
coming off until we reach home. The mere thought of exposing my hands at these temperatures makes me want to shriek!”

The fall foliage was particularly fine that year, and Arabella marked, with pleasurable surprise, just how the trees were effecting their seasonal adjustments. Some turned red or gold or flaming orange on the bottom first, the colors gradually creeping upward, like a blush. Others began their transformation at the top, and the change seeped down from there. Still others altered their outer leaves first, and she even found some that were changing in random clumps.

Belinda was not bothered with the “how” of the leaves, as all her attention was for the moment focused upon collecting the prettiest.

“Are these for your album?” Arabella enquired.

“No,” said her sister. “I am making a billy-box.”

Belinda was in the habit of decorating small receptacles at the end of her love affairs. Named for the first man ever to inspire their construction, they were packed with memorabilia from the lately beloved, and might contain anything from billets-doux to withered apple cores, including sketches not good enough for her album, miscellaneous locks of hair, nail parings, and tobacco pipe dottle, tapped out and left on a saucer. These collections, once complete, were duly buried in the garden, and Arabella had once made the observation that future history buffs, digging in the area of Brompton Park, would get the thrill of their lives when they uncovered Belinda’s beautiful memory coffins, and then feel so disappointed upon opening them and discovering the unfailingly mundane, and occasionally disgusting contents, that for the sake of their mental health they would be obliged to take up some other hobby without the attendant risks of extreme emotional fluctuations.

But Belinda had not had a serious affair for some time, unless one counted Lord Carrington. And one
couldn’t
count him, after all, as he had feet that splayed out like a duck’s, and cut a ridiculous figure on the dance floor.

“I don’t require one just now,” she explained, with reference to her boxes. “But I like to stock them up, so that I need not feel pressured to make a billy-box when I am prostrate with grief. This one will be useful should I ever have occasion to terminate a romance in the autumn.”

“How many have you at present?” Arabella inquired.

“Five or six.”

“Would you let me have one?”

“Why? You think they’re silly!”

“I think they are beautiful,” said Arabella gravely. “I merely deplore the waste of burying such beautiful things in the ground, crammed with, if you’ll pardon me, nothing but trash. However, in the event that you will vouchsafe to give me one, I promise to fill it with lovely items and take it to Mr. Kendrick. He has a cold just now, and wants cheering up.”

“Oh! By all means! He shall have the box I am currently working on! It is to be covered in autumn leaves, with gilded acorns, silver pinecones, and yards and yards of copper-colored ribbon! How very thoughtful you are, Bell!”

The horses blew air through their noses, as though to contradict Belinda’s estimation of her sister’s noble motives.

The young women walked on for a time, until at last, Arabella said, “No. It is rather selfish, actually. You see, I have just decided that the rector shall accompany us to the Continent. There is no doubt at all that he will come if I ask him, and taking his utter compliance with my wishes for granted makes me feel rather guilty. However, if I preface my request with a present, I think I shall feel less so.”

“But why should you feel guilty?”

“Better you should ask why I want him.”

“Well, then, why do you?”

“Because I foresee that you and I shall go off on all sorts of junkets in an effort to recover my statue. We shan’t want Charles with us—you know how he can be—and yet there is no telling what mischief he will get into, left on his own.”

“So . . . you want Mr. Kendrick to look after Charles.”

“I shall pay for his passage, his room, and all of his wants,” replied Arabella defensively. “Besides, Mr. Kendrick is fond of Charles. It will seem more like spending time with a cherished companion than caring for a dangerous lunatic.”

“And yet, Mr. Kendrick will be joining us for the sole purpose of basking in your presence. It will vex him exceedingly to watch you going off without him.”

“I know. I am a dreadful woman, am I not?”

“Yes,” said Belinda. “Yes, I suppose you are.”

 

 

J
ohn Kendrick, Rector of Effing (who was sometimes called “vicar,” although this wasn’t strictly correct), lay coughing peevishly under a mound of blankets as his housekeeper entered with a bowlful of soup on a tray. She was the solid, square-ish, no-nonsense type, and there was not a shred of sympathetic understanding in her voice as she thumped his pillows and asked whether he felt up to receiving a visitor.

“Visitor?” the rector ejaculated. “How could you possibly think I might? My throat feels like the cat’s scratching post and my nose is as blocked up as a miser’s chimney!”

“All right, then; I shall tell Miss Beaumont that you are too ill to see her.”

“Miss Beaumont?” he asked. “Miss Beaumont is
here?
Well, for heaven’s sake, Mrs. Hasquith, why did you not
say
it was she? Show her in, by all means!”

Privately, Mr. Kendrick owned that he would not have engaged Mrs. Hasquith had he been permitted the freedom to chuse his own staff. But she was a relic of the previous rector’s, and had come with the house.

“The rector is too ill to see anyone, ma’m!” shouted Mrs. Hasquith over the banister, making certain her employer should hear her. “He says you can come back in a fortnight.”

Arabella was quite nonplussed by this news. But before she could address the grizzled head that leered down at her from above, a roar of protest erupted from the sickroom.

“
Thought
that would get him,” muttered the housekeeper with a grim smile. “Come upstairs and go in, miss, if you please.”

Arabella found the poor reverend coughing weakly from the effort of his bellow.

“Hullo, Mr. K.,” said she, plumping her offering down upon the bed. “I have brought you something to help wile away the hours until you are well again.”

To his intense delight, the invalid found all manner of items inside to soothe and amuse him.

. . . There was a deck of cards:

“Oh! I am not supposed to have these, you know, but I suppose, if I only play with myself and don’t gamble, it is bound to be all right.”

Arabella could not help smiling as she momentarily pictured the rector “playing with himself.”

. . . A flask of “cold medicine”: “Cook put this up for you,” Arabella explained. “It’s an old family recipe.”

Kendrick pulled out the stopper and sniffed the contents, which were sufficiently pungent to penetrate his blocked nasal passages.

“Brandy?” he enquired.

“I really don’t know what Mrs. Moly puts in there. The ingredients are secret. It is wonderful stuff, though. She always makes some for Belinda and me whenever we are under the weather.”

. . . A few good books (not Bibles).

. . . Newspapers.

. . . Dice and a cup: “Miss Beaumont, you are trying to lead me astray!”

. . . A little clasp knife, made in Switzerland, with all manner of clever attachments, which Arabella intended to borrow as soon as possible.

. . . A packet of tea, with a lemon and a small bottle of honey.

. . . And finally (this was Charles’s contribution), a book of improper jokes, entitled
Very Bad Stories.

“Ah!” cried Kendrick, delightedly stroking the cover. “Do you know, this reminds me of a joke I heard once, about an unpleasant old nun. She mistreated the girls who worked in the laundry . . .”

“Laundry?”

“A Magdalene laundry, it was . . .”

“Forgive me, Mr. K., but this does not sound at all the sort of joke I might appreciate. Doyle, my chambermaid, labored for years in one of those terrible places. And I doubt whether she would enjoy this story, either.”

“Oh, yes, I know, but if you will just bear with me . . . the girls revenged themselves on the nun by adding extra starch to her habit, you see.”

“It is so good to find you thriving and healthy again, Mr. Kendrick,” said Arabella. “From your note I expected to find quite the opposite. I suppose you will be out of bed by tomorrow?”

The rector seemed to shrink before her eyes.

“Heavens, Miss Beaumont! I . . . I do not think so! I am feeling quite . . .”

“ . . . well enough to tell jokes, and sufficiently hardheaded to force them upon your disobliging company,” she finished, her eyes twinkling.

“Oh. But that was just a momentary flash of good health, you know, at the unexpected pleasure of seeing you. No, I really am quite seriously ill; this happens every autumn. I am susceptible to river miasmas.”

“That
is
a shame.”

“Yes. Thank you for saying so.”

“Because, you see, Charles, Belinda, and I are leaving for Italy Tuesday week. I had hoped to find you well enough to accompany us, as our guest. But I suppose you are really too ill to be moved.”

There was nothing Kendrick could say, and so he said nothing, but his face was an eloquent record of the interior agonies he was undergoing. Arabella toyed with him for a bit whilst she gathered up her gloves and prepared to leave the room. Then in the doorway she half-turned and said,

“If, by some miracle, you are better by the time we leave, perhaps you would care to join us.”

 

 

U
nlike most persons of her station, Tilda Crouch, Lustings’s scullery maid, could not conceive of anyone with a better job than herself. Of course, Tilda’s wits were not all they might have been, but the fact that she was so happy in her work compensated for any discrepancy between this particular girl and her brighter but less satisfied counterparts in other households. Nevertheless, a scullery maid’s lot is neither pleasant nor easy. So, when Arabella informed Tilda that henceforth she was to feed the birds in the aviatory, the child was ecstatic.

Readers of long standing will recall that the aviatory was Arabella’s combination aviary and conservatory: a magical paradise of exotic plants and tropical birds, with a columned rotunda in the center. The task of feeding the birds had formerly devolved on the cook, but when Mrs. Molyneux actually suggested
roasting
Arabella’s little bulbuls and precious bee-eaters, the mistress had decided to re-organize the duty roster.

There was, surely, no happier scullion in all England. The birds were happier, too, for Tilda didn’t just feed and water them; she actually sat and spoke to her charges, and they, in turn, always had time for her, and never told her she was silly. The bolder ones perched unafraid upon her head and shoulders, and Tilda often appeared in the dining room now—for she was being trained to wait at table—with bird droppings in her hair. The scullery maid considered the aviatory to be a good place, a haven from the world, where no one reproved her, however kindly. And sometimes, despite the noisy avian chatter and oppressive humidity, the girl found it so restful here, that she actually . . . nodded off . . . just for a few . . . moments.

 

Naturally, Doyle was disappointed not to be going.

“But who is it will be lookin’ after you and Miss Belinda, ma’m?” (Arabella’s
femme de chambre
had been spoilt through having on several occasions accompanied her mistress to Bath. Now the little chit apparently expected to be taken to the Continent, as well.) “You’ll be needin’ somebody, surely, and if it isn’t to be me, it’ll be some sneakin’ foreigner, most like, who’ll sell you into white slavery and the Lord knows what-all!”

She was packing Arabella’s toiletry case, fetching its specially designed comb, scissors, tweezers, nail file, shoe horn, back scratcher, sleeping tablets,
sal volatile,
and tooth powder from various places around the room, and because each item had its own compartment, and no two compartments were the same size, the task was less like packing than assembling a jigsaw puzzle in three dimensions.

“White slavery!” cried Arabella delightedly. “How exquisitely diverting! Should you like that, Bunny?”

“Should I like what?”

Belinda was trying to pack a lavender beaded evening shawl so that it should be neither crushed nor snagged in transit, and she had only ever been able to concentrate her attention upon one thing at a time.

“Being sold into white slavery?”

“Oh, probably. The harems of the Orient are said to be lavish to the point of decadence. And then, of course, I should get to be the pasha’s favorite wife or concubine or whatever it is, and tell the other women what to do.”

Arabella was sorting through her silk stockings, checking for holes and then discarding or rolling them up in pairs, accordingly. They had been custom-made for her, and were longer than was usual, since that courtesan supreme, that styler of trends and setter of fashions, had proclaimed knee-high stockings to be unflattering. The leg was shewn to greatest advantage, she insisted, when one’s stockings—particularly dark-colored ones—extended to mid-thigh. Locating the garter up there was fetching, too.

“No;
I
shall be the favorite, Bunny,” she said. “
You
could be second favorite.”

“Oh, well. We shouldn’t both be sold to the same pasha, in any event. A set of brothers, I should think. Then you could be preferred in your harem, I should be exalted in mine, and we would both of us have heaps of eunuchs to do our bidding.”

“But as it is,” said Doyle sourly, “you will both of you be on your own, as far as help goes, without so much as a eunuch between you! I cannot imagine how the pair of you will ever survive in them foreign parts!”

“A eunuch between us?” asked Arabella.

“Foreign parts!” cried Belinda. “I say! Do you think we shall experience any?”

“Without doubt. The Italians are said to be an extremely amorous race. Attractive, too.” Arabella sighed, regarding the shoe she was wrapping up. “Do you suppose they’ll have started wearing heels again on the Continent? I absolutely detest these dull, flat slippers!”

Doyle had finished with the toiletry case, and was now using a series of tiny silver funnels to fill a collection of leather-clad traveling bottles with eyewash, face creams, and scent. Frustration had been mounting within her, and at last she dropped the funnel, turned toward her mistress, and stamped her foot. Such a gesture, in any household but this one, would have immediately earned her the sack.

“My point exactly,” said Arabella. “You see? Stamping one’s foot looks ridiculous in soft, flat shoes! For such a gesture, one really requires a raised heel!”

The chambermaid was practically in tears now.

“Madam! Miss Belinda!” she cried. “My rightful place is with you ladies! What am I to
do
if I stay behind?”

Arabella saw at last that the poor thing was actually quite provoked. She also realized that a hand with a bottle in it, shaking under the influence of strong emotion, was almost certain to result in a waste of expensive scent.

“There! Do not be vexed, Doyle! You can keep things tidy here for our return, and catch up on your mending. If you like, I shall ask Mrs. Janks whether she would enjoy having a maid for herself whilst we’re—”

“HELP! HELP!”

Tilda hurtled down the passage toward the kitchen staircase, as though all the scimitar-wielding eunuchs in the East were trying to slice off her behind.

“Mrs. Moly! Mrs. Janks!
Help!”

She nearly tumbled down the steps in her haste, and the cook and housekeeper met her at the bottom of the stairs.

“Why, Tilda! Whatever is the matter?”

By the time she was able to speak, the rest of the household had run downstairs, too.

“Snake!” She gasped. “In the aviatory!”

“Snake?” asked Arabella. “But that is preposterous! Describe it!”

“I only saw its tail, miss. It was orange, with stripes round it.”

“Stripes
round
it?”asked Belinda. “Do you mean rings?”

“Yes, miss. And . . . and it was hairy.”

“Snakes are not hairy,” said Arabella decisively.

“But it
was,
though. It was fair covered in fur!”

“Tilda, my girl,” said Mrs. Janks firmly. “Has them stable boys been giving you funny things to drink, again?”

But Arabella had been meditating on the facts, as she was ever wont to do. “Fur?” she asked suddenly. “And you only saw the orange tail, you say? Quickly, everyone! To the aviatory! It’s a cat!”

It was indeed a cat; a big ginger tomcat that made no attempt to hide from the wild-eyed women who burst in upon his solitude. In fact, he walked graciously out to greet them, waving his tail, as much as to say, “Welcome to my aviatory. What do you think of it?”

Mrs. Molyneux picked up the animal and bore it away.

“Well! This is most peculiar!” said Arabella. “How do you suppose that creature came to be in here?”

As if in reply, a loud whistle cut through the background bird chatter. Fisto the mynah, former resident of the morning room, had finally come to live in the aviatory despite, or actually because, he was such an uncanny mimic. He had grown quite tame with familiarity, and usually flew straight to Arabella’s shoulder whenever she visited. Not today, though.

“Fisto,” Arabella called. “Come here, sir, that I may stroke your head!”

But the mynah bird remained in the palm tree, flitting from branch to branch in agitation, and shrieking his vulgar whistle.

“Has the cat upset you, darling?” said Arabella, moving toward him. “It’s all right. Cook has probably drowned the nasty thing by now. Come, Fisto. Let Mama smooth your feathers.”

But as soon as she drew close, the mynah dropped from the tree onto the ground. And Arabella, leaning down to him there, discovered an empty space where one of the glass panes should have been.

“Ballocks! Bunny, come see this!”

The practical Belinda snatched up a pair of umbrellas before dashing across the room to her sister, and the two stood in silence beneath them, inspecting the damage. Then they blocked the opening with a large rock, to prevent any of the birds from escaping.

“That’s got it,” said Fisto in a deep voice.

A remarkable talent of this wholly remarkable bird was his aptitude for reproducing the voices of individuals. Those present now heard him discourse in the gruff tones of a common navvy.

“What you want to do is put the cat in easylike. See?”

And now the bird’s voice rose to a tenor: “Can I leave ’im in the sack, Stan?”

“Naw, ’course you can’t leave ’im in the sack! What’ve you got, shit for brains? If the sack stays tied up, ’ow’s he gonna get out to eat the birdies?”

“But what if he bites me, Stan?”

“Untie the sack, then put the sack in the winda, and squeeze ’im out gently. Like paint from a tube.”

“I know that voice!” cried Mrs. Janks indignantly. “It’s Stan Biggs! Lady Ribbonhat’s groom! He’s always making that lowbrow remark about brains!”

“Lady Ribbonhat!” Belinda fumed. “What a low, contemptible woman! When she finds she cannot legally wrest this house from us, she vents her spleen by turning a cat loose on Bell’s beloved birds!”

Arabella regarded her avian fauna with a mixture of affection and relief, as Mrs. Janks took a lump of sugar from her apron pocket.

“You’ve done a good job, Fisto,” said the housekeeper approvingly. “Who’s a clever bird, then?”

The mynah flew to her wrist and accepted his reward.

“But I don’t understand how they managed to remove the window pane so neatly,” said Arabella.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Janks. “They used a glass cutter, I expect.”

“What is that?”

“A diamond blade, miss. Mounted in a handle.”

“Really? You mean a contrivance that cuts glass like scissors cut paper? Without leaving any jagged edges at all? What a wonderful idea! I shall have to get one before we leave!”

“You will have to think up some suitable form of revenge, too,” said Belinda as they strolled, thoughtfully, toward the exit.

“Oh, I shall. But not now,” said Arabella carelessly. “After all, the cat has done no harm, and you know what the Italians say about letting revenge cool to room temperature before ingesting.”

“The Italians said that? I thought it was Talleyrand.”

“He may have said it, too. It is impossible to track the exact source of a proverb.”

“Bell, I do not understand you,” said Belinda. “Why aren’t you furious?”

“I am, really. But since we are speaking of proverbs, another springs to mind: ‘Before embarking on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’ But I would rather not, you know; I should prefer to let Lady Ribbonhat dig her own. That way, there need only
be
one.”

 

For the next week, Lustings was upside down with preparations for the journey. The sisters talked of Italy, dreamt of Italy, and Arabella had Mrs. Molyneux prepare Italian meals, instead of the usual French ones, that they might accustom themselves in advance to the unfamiliar cuisine.

The large library table was put into service as a map center, so that Arabella could chart their route. They would be sailing from Plymouth to Spain, where a British navy squadron was patrolling Spanish waters.

“We shan’t put into port there, but will take on supplies mid-ocean,” she explained. “With any luck, one of the admirals may ask us to dine.”

“Lovely,” murmured Belinda. “A battleship! Full of men! And ourselves the only women for leagues and leagues in any direction!”

Belinda was unabashed in her admiration of the male animal, and especially partial to
groups
of men, preferably young ones, mutually engaging in manly activities. She liked uniforms, too. But only the officers wore those.

“Then,” Arabella continued, “our ship, the
Perseverance
—aptly named, don’t you agree?—will pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, sail on to the Mediterranean, and so come at last into the Bay of Naples.”

“Will it be safe, do you suppose?” Belinda asked. “Shall we be allowed to dock there, despite the fact that the queen is Napoleon’s sister?”

Arabella looked up sharply. “I hope you are not having second thoughts at this stage,” she said, tapping, with her finger, the Isle of Ischia. “I provided you with numerous chances to decline to accompany me when you were first informed of my intentions. I should not be going at all, if I did not suppose you were coming, as well.”

“I have not changed my mind,” said Belinda hastily. “I was just curious.”

“We shall be perfectly safe. Mr. Soane says that the king of Naples is very cozy with Britain, just at present.”

“And how long are we to stay there?”

“Well, I shall probably find my bronze at once, you know, and then . . .”

“How?” asked Charles, entering the room. “When you don’t even speak the language?”