Death and the Courtesan (14 page)

“What is ‘blackmail’?” asked Neddy.

“That is what it’s called when you threaten to expose somebody’s secret, or reveal something shameful or criminal about them, unless they agree to give you what you want,” Mr. Sheridan explained. “Usually what you want is money, but occasionally it is goods or services.”

“Oh,” said Neddy. “So I blackmailed you yesterday, Aunt Bell, when I threatened to tell Miss Worthington you were leaving unless you let me come with you in the landau.”

Fortunately, Constance, who was speaking to her server about the fish course, missed this remark, and on hearing the assembled company break into spontaneous laughter rightly assumed that she would not have understood the joke, even if it were explained to her.

“The murderer might have been anybody, really,” said Mr. Lamb. “Many people had reasons for wanting her dead. I rather expect they will pin it on you, though, Miss Beaumont, because they’ve got your paper knife, and that is the only evidence they
do
have. If you haven’t an airtight alibi, I wouldn’t give a brass pin for your acquittal.”

“That will do, Mr. Lamb!” cried Belinda, with a rare display of indignation. “This is my birthday party, not the Spanish Inquisition!”

“Quite right, Bunny,” said Arabella. “I officially declare the subject closed!”

“Oh, wait, though,” said Constance. “Did you ever find the sailor?”

“Yes, and no,” Arabella replied. “We had no sooner established his identity than we learnt he’d sailed for Borneo, where he will almost certainly be eaten by savages before he can come back to testify. And that is all anyone is going to say on this topic.”

“Are we allowed to discourse on
related
topics?” asked Rowlandson, smiling.

“That depends. What were you thinking of saying?”

“Only this: If all of us were marooned on a desert island, whom would you eat first?”

“Oh, I should start with Miss Belinda,” said Mr. Hunt, who was seated next to her. “So plump and succulent, like a little duckling!”

The first course being brought in at that moment, the company shouted with mutual delight at the dish on offer: a platter of roast ducklings.

“Have you ever tasted human flesh, Selwyn?” asked the earl as he tucked into his bird.

“Matter of fact, I have. In Africa, you know.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell us that it tastes like chicken?”

“Not a bit. More like veal.”

“Do you think our bodies really taste like veal, Mr. Hunt?” Belinda whispered, blushing a little.

“Only the calves,” he replied with a smile, reaching under her gown and squeezing the back of her leg.

As her guests passed into the drawing room and the supper dishes were cleared away, Arabella went out onto the terrace. Mr. Lamb’s cheerful allusions to her certain doom had depressed her spirits, and she felt she would like to have a few moments alone. But this was not to be.

“Miss Beaumont, are you feeling quite well?”

“Quite well, Mr. Kendrick.”

The rector came over to stand next to her, resting his elbow on the balustrade.

“I want you to know that were it not for my spiritual obligations, I should have called Lamb out for being so tactless.”

“Called him out? Wouldn’t that have been going a bit far?”

“Well, perhaps,” he admitted, with a self-deprecating smile. “But surely, you don’t have any real cause for worry? Even if you don’t solve the crime, I can’t imagine they could hold you accountable for it. You’re famous throughout the land!”

“Yes, which is precisely
why
they would like to hang me. Wonderful publicity, you know. There always is, when they execute a woman or a celebrity, and I happen to be both. Think of the opportunities for instructive sermons! For selling newspapers! For hawking souvenir gallows during the public spectacle! Don’t worry, Mr. K.,” she added, seeing his expression. “I
do
expect to solve it, you know.”

“I hope you will permit me to continue to offer my services.”

“You anticipate me, sir. I was just thinking that perhaps you should reconsider your position. After all . . . you could jeopardize your career!”

“I do not think so. For offering to help the generous patroness who paid for our new chancery roof?”

“You exaggerate, Mr. Kendrick! I merely
helped
to pay for the Effing roof!”

She leaned against the balustrade and smiled at the stars. “No friend of those Effing Sunday school children could fail to do as much.”

Arabella looked enchanting out here, in her diamond tiara and black-and-silver-striped gown, with her shoulders gleaming white in the moonlight, above the little tassel that hung from each capped, puffed sleeve. She was so noble in her suffering, so greathearted, and so solitary.

“Miss Beaumont,” said Kendrick. “Perhaps this is not the ideal moment in which to say this, but I . . . that is, if you . . . if you think you could be happy as my—”

“Mr. Kendrick! Arabella! What are you doing there?” shrieked Constance, coming through the French doors. “It’s time to cut the cake!”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall that defined the Lustings demesne, a handful of men began to unload the contents of their wagons. They worked silently and in the dark, lest a noise or a light betray their presence to those within, with scarves tightly wrapt round their mouths and noses.

Inside the house, though, a spirit of openness and good cheer prevailed, and the birthday confection was a work of art—all over pink icing, with Belinda’s name spelled out in pale-green sugar.

“My sister Fanny had a cake last week,” said Eddie, “with six candles!”

Whereupon Constance, who was more than a little tipsy, felt she should object. Getting up from the table, she tiptoed unsteadily to her hostess’s chair and bent down to whisper in her ear. But in any event, Constance was not discreet. The entire company heard her:

“I hope I am as open-minded as the next person, my dear, but isn’t Fanny rather young to be having sex scandals?”

“
Six candles,
Constance,” said Arabella. “Now pray, sit down, so that Bunny may open her presents.”

Constance was wearing a white bandage draped across the top of her head, “to be prepared,” as she put it, in case Arabella should try to shoot her again. She was also wearing a black pelisse over a white gown and bright orange lip rouge, so that she looked like an enormous gentoo penguin. This, her hostess reflected, was a slight improvement over the infant-in-swaddling-clothes look and the scuttling-polecat look effected by Constance’s scramble from the bedroom, but the woman’s idiocy was beginning to get on her nerves.

The usual custom of providing brandy and cigars for the men, who remained in the dining room whilst the women removed themselves to some parlor to drink tea, was not observed on this occasion, for Arabella had no intention of spending an hour sequestered with Constance. As far as the hostess was concerned, the more persons on hand to prevent Miss Worthington from jumping naked into the shrubbery, or to dissuade her from (intentionally) dressing up like a rabbit, the better. So everybody retired to the drawing room, though Hunt, Lamb, Dudley, and Sheridan (Hunt the Lamb, Dudley Sheridan!) lingered in the passage with Rowlandson, to examine Arabella’s collection of his rarer prints. These were ranged along the rich green walls in ornate gilt frames and pertained exclusively to The Great Subject. Arabella felt no compunctions about setting them out where everyone could enjoy them, and her guests were appreciative of this attitude. Because, as Rowlandson explained, most of the people who purchased copies of these particular prints were gentlemen who kept them locked away in a drawer and only took them out when alone.

Eventually, all the guests found their way to the drawing room and settled on the floor there with cushions, cake, and glasses of port, whilst Mr. Sheridan presented a phantasmagoria, or magic lantern show (which could have been dirty, but wasn’t), for the general entertainment.

Afterward, as the children were being led off to bed, the company was so comfortable on the floor in the dark that they lingered there, and Constance suggested they hold a séance for Euphemia’s spirit, using the Indian Ojah mat which Sir Geoffrey had given Belinda.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Fielding, curtsying, for shew, before company. “Miss Eddie is calling for her story.”

“I must ask you all to wait till I’ve come down again,” said the hostess, and she went up to Eddie’s room, where she sat in the chair next to the child’s bed and took her little hand. Their fingers interlaced.

“You’re going to hear this sooner or later, dear,” said Arabella, gravely, “and I’d just as soon you heard it from me first.”

“Are you going to tell me the facts of life, Aunt Bell?”

Her aunt regarded the child with surprise.

“Good heavens! Don’t you know those already?”

“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.”

“I should think so, too, considering the family that you come from! No, I was going to tell you ‘The Parable of the Curious Hen.’ It’s not a pretty story, but it has the merit of being a highly instructive one.”

“Is it a real story, or have you made it up yourself?”

“Yes. There was once a hen, who yearned to see the wide world, or at least, the bit of it that existed beyond her own farmyard. She used to complain and cluck about it all the time, and her friend the duck was jolly sick of listening to her.

“ ‘You should be happy with what you have,’ said the duck. ‘For there is nothing but danger and treachery Out There.’

“But the hen disregarded the duck’s good advice, and one day she ran away into the woods.

“ ‘Here it is,’ she muttered, for the hen was always talking to herself, ‘the wide world! Hmpf! Can’t say as I think much of it—it’s dark in here, and the bugs taste nasty.’

“ ‘Do they?’ asked a weasel, who was passing by. ‘I don’t eat bugs, myself, but I think
my
food is exceptionally tasty.’

“ ‘Is that so?’ asked the hen. She had never met a weasel before and didn’t know the first thing about their feeding habits. ‘Well, I’m nothing if not adventurous, sir! Perhaps we could have dinner together sometime!’

“ ‘Now that is what I call a capital idea,’ said the weasel. ‘Come along, and I’ll introduce you to my mother.’

“But when they arrived at the weasel’s burrow, his mother saw her stupid son in the company of a plump chicken, which he hadn’t bothered to kill, or truss, or anything, and she lunged out with bared teeth, worried lest their dinner should escape. The hen, who could fly a little, flew up into a tree, and sat looking down on the weasels, panting.

“ ‘Now, why did you do that, Mater?’ asked the weasel, angrily. ‘Couldn’t you see that the hen was coming to us of her own accord?’

“ ‘You know nothing about it!’ snapped his mother. ‘Hens must be tied up! They bolt at the slightest provocation!’

“ ‘That one believed herself to be our guest.’

“ ‘Ha! No chicken in the world could be so stupid!’

“ ‘She was, though. Congratulations, madam; you have just deprived us of a splendid, risk-free roast chicken dinner!’

“The hen, hearing all this, learnt a great deal from it, and sent up a prayer to the god of the fowls: ‘I have been a stupid chicken, indeed!’ she sobbed. ‘But if You will let me leave this forest alive, I promise to go straight home and never talk about leaving again!’

“She waited until the weasels had gone and then flew down to try to find her way home. But it was late by then, and chickens’ homing instincts, never strong to begin with, aren’t worth a tinker’s damn in the dark. The hen was soon caught and eaten by a fox.”

“Is that the end of the story?” asked Eddie.

“That is the end of the hen’s story,” her aunt replied, “but you haven’t yet heard what happened to her friend, the duck. The second part of this tale is about her, and it is called ‘The Duck Who Stayed Behind.’

“Soon after the hen disappeared, a new servant was assigned to the fowl yard. This woman was a lazy slattern, and the poor, neglected duck spent days, and sometimes weeks, pent up in the duck house without seeing daylight. Eventually she developed foot rot and softening of the bill, which latter affliction made it nearly impossible to eat—on the rare occasions when there
was
any food, that is. And you may imagine the stench in there!

“ ‘Well,’ thought the duck, ‘although this isn’t what I would call a pleasant existence, at least I am safe from the wicked world in here.’

“But there she was wrong. As a result of all the suffering and privation which she had undergone, the duck stopped laying. And one day the servant hauled her out by the neck, plucked her naked whilst she was still alive, which hurts like anything, and then chopped her head off. Now go to sleep, darling.”

Arabella’s stories usually sprang from her own immediate circumstances, and on her way downstairs she pondered the origins of the tale she had just told. Primarily, she was feeling intense resentment toward the unjust turn things had taken. Arabella had started out disadvantaged by bad parents, had been plunged into poverty, had found an alternative to starving, and finally had pulled herself and her family into a very agreeable, if socially unacceptable, mode of living, all through her own efforts. Now it seemed she was to be destroyed at last, and through no fault of her own. Like the chicken in the story, she had taken a chance and braved the dangers, only to be broadsided by the unforeseen. If she had chosen the duck’s path, however, she would have been plucked and roasted long before this. Life was unfair. To women, anyway.

She returned to the drawing room in a thoughtful mood. Her guests had unrolled the fortune-telling mat in her absence and set out the odd-looking pointer. Mr. Hunt and Belinda, with their fingertips touching upon this, were waiting for something to happen.