Death and the Courtesan (19 page)

She went through the motions automatically, without being mentally present for any of it. She was doomed. All her hard work had come to nothing in the end. She would never be able to prove her innocence now. And then she overheard the regent on the sidelines, discussing herself once again.

“See her, Brummel? The one dancing with the Danish ambassador? That’s the radiant little murderess we’ve been hearing so much about! Ha! She won’t be looking quite so radiant when she’s dancing at the end of a rope, though, will she?”

T
he rising sun discovered an exhausted Arabella, sitting despondently on the end of her bed and removing her dancing slippers. It was quite clear to her now that “Prinny” had arranged Euphemia’s murder after she threatened to expose him. It was also clear that he fully intended to let Arabella hang for it.

Once again, her thoughts turned toward death. Was there an afterlife? Mr. Kendrick thought so; Lucretius did not. According to her favorite poet, death was the absolute cessation of existence. And yet Lucretius had committed suicide. Arabella shuddered to think of him—of anyone—submitting voluntarily to permanent oblivion. She was much more comfortable with his views on
existence:
“Avoid pain. Pursue pleasure and beauty.” Well, she had done that, hadn’t she? My life has not been a long one, she reflected, but most of it has been perfectly splendid.

A straying sunbeam had lit a fire in the deepest recesses of her red glass elephant, whose humped back and head protruded from the box on the floor. She lifted it out. This is one of the things that has
made
my life so splendid, she thought, turning it in her hands and admiring it from all sides. It really was a most exquisitely wrought piece. She placed it on her nightstand, where it would always be the last thing she saw before blowing out her candle.

Once the elephant was removed, the remainder of the box’s contents were revealed—what the auctioneer had called lost an’ found hobjects—and with half her mind absorbed in her own melancholy affairs, Arabella began to sort through these. A pocket watch, a ring . . . She was struck by something and went to the boudoir to check her notebook, taking the box with her. Yes, Euphemia had listed these items in her ledger. Apparently, she had placed them in this box herself, owing to their universal adherence to a particular concept. Apparently, they were assurances left on account by cash-poor clients:

The watch was tarnished and, as Euphemia had noted, didn’t work. But any fool could see that it was silver. Evidently, the creditors had given this box a lot number without inspecting the contents!

Next was the gentleman’s handkerchief, which Euphemia had evidently exchanged with its owner for one of her garters. Love tokens? There was a
G
on the handkerchief. And the family crest of the Dukes of Glen
deen
. Interesting. Euphemia had once held Puddles in thrall. Or this might just as easily have belonged to his father. Poor man. It was not surprising that he should have preferred Euphemia’s company to that of Lady Ribbonhat.

Next, Arabella examined the denture: an upper plate, shaped like a palate, to which four porcelain front teeth were attached. This was coated with some sort of carbon residue—soot, most likely—which came off on her fingertips. But when she put the plate down to wipe her hands, a yellow gleam showed through where her fingers had been. Gold! The creditors had been careless indeed! She wiped away the rest of the soot and had a closer look. Eighteen-karat gold and stamped with a goldsmith’s mark. The teeth had been very realistically done, but for some reason, the artist had left a gap between the front two. She checked the ledger, again: “gold plate—fraudd venturs—alley.” “Gold plate” made sense, now. It was a
dental
plate, not a dinner plate, but “fraudd venturs”? In an alley? What was that supposed to mean?

Obviously, the “spektakels” were of no value, except to their owner. These had not been left on account, according to the ledger, but simply forgotten by one of Euphemia’s clients.

The next item was that intaglio ring. Purple glass, showing an amorous couple engaged in the dog position. Hold on . . . one of them
was
a dog. Interesting. And finally, the miniature portrait of a handsome young Regency buck. The thing was exquisitely executed but mounted in a rough wooden frame that wasn’t even gilded. Well, thought Arabella. I shall give this to Eddie, so that the child will at least have
something
of her father’s. For it was a portrait of Charles.

The entries all made sense to Arabella now, except for the denture, which, owing to the gold, was clearly the most valuable thing in the collection. Arabella decided to follow up on it, and wrote forthwith to the vicar of Effing:

[Here she painstakingly copied the mark on the dental plate.]

Just as she was finishing, there was a knock.

“May I come in, Aunt Bell?”

Neddy’s sharp, wicked little face appeared around the door. “I must talk to you. It’s terribly important.”

“Important to whom, Neddy, to you or to me?”

“Well, to
me,
of course,” he replied. “But if you don’t hear me out now, I shall just keep dogging you until you give in. You know what I’m like.”

Arabella sighed. She did know. “Very well. What is it?”

The child let go his hold of the door and swaggered over to her like a little bantam rooster. He walks just like his father, she thought. He was still in his nightshirt, and Arabella realized, with a start, how early it was.

“I heard Mother telling Sarah-Jane that you refused to lend her five thousand pounds to start up her business. She said you were a tightfisted hussy. I told Mama I was going to tell you what she said unless she gave me a puppy. But she wouldn’t. So I have. That’s the way blackmail works, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Neddy,” said Arabella. “That is exactly how it works. But the decision to reveal incriminating information should always be very carefully considered. For instance, if it is going to hurt
you,
as well as your victim, you may wish to review your position. In this case, it was ill-bred and extremely stupid to come and tell me this. Why have you done so? And how could you do such a hateful thing, to Polly, of all people?”

Neddy gave a contemptuous snort. “I’m not going to let her off, just because she’s my
mother!
”

Sometimes, a casual phrase, uttered by a person unconnected with one’s own problems, can illuminate the darkness and reveal the truth to us in a blinding flash.

But first things must come first.

“Fair enough, then,” she said. “Do you enjoy these visits to Lustings?”

Neddy shrugged. “Better here than at home, I reckon. Food’s better.”

“Well, I don’t suppose it will matter that much to you then, but now that you have created bad blood between your mother and me, you shan’t be coming here anymore.”

Perhaps Arabella’s words had as strong an effect upon Neddy as his own had produced upon her a moment before, for the boy suddenly burst into tears, whereupon his aunt, beyond words irritated by his selfishness, stupidity, and wretched, peevish wailing, promptly banished him from her presence.

Once the quiet atmosphere of her boudoir was restored, Arabella considered Neddy’s illuminating remark: “I’m not going to let her off, just because she’s my
mother!
” If this comment were attributed not to Neddy but to Oliver Wedge, it changed everything. For Arabella, with little experience of the criminal world, had taken it for granted that sons did not murder their mothers. Especially not good Catholics. But Wedge was not a good Catholic. Hadn’t she seen him with her own eyes, eating meat on a Friday? Nor was he a good son, to let Euphemia live in that rattrap when he possessed ample means of getting her out of it. The man was fully capable of murdering his parent! If Neddy, a mere child, made no distinction between his mother and the rest of the world, then why should Wedge?

But just because he
could
have done it didn’t mean that he
had.
So what had actually happened? Arabella opened the blue notebook and wrote:

It made sense. Having arranged with Euphemia to publish her memoirs, Wedge had spent lavishly, anticipating huge dividends: a Thomas Lawrence portrait, beautiful clothes, Waterford crystal, and a bigger office at a more fashionable address. But Euphemia had double-crossed him by sending a circular letter to the would-be victims, pledging to destroy her notes on their peculiar personal habits in return for cash. When Wedge discovered how he’d been duped, he had hired a sailor to steal Arabella’s paper knife, and then used it to murder Euphemia.

But how had Arabella come into it? Why would Wedge hire someone to steal
her
knife, having never met her?

She stared, unseeing, at the denture on the desk in front of her. At the denture. The denture that . . . Arabella grabbed Euphemia’s open ledger: “gold plate—fraudd venturs—alley.” And then, as if a veil had lifted and floated away from her eyes, she saw: “Gold plate—for adventures—Ollie.”

Of course! Wedge had given his gold denture plate to Euphemia as an advance on the memoirs! He . . . went to her room for the manuscript, and she . . . had nothing to give him. She had already spent all her blackmail takings—on gambling, on drink, who knows? Euphemia had a talent for wasting money. So she had made up a dummy manuscript, probably. Tied up some bills or something in brown paper and handed it over. She must have! Because he had given her those teeth. The same teeth he was wearing when Tom Lawrence painted his portrait. The portrait that was still wet when Arabella had been in his office two weeks ago! By the time she had met Oliver Wedge, he was wearing another set, made by somebody else.
That
was why he had looked different in the portrait: His teeth had been larger, with a gap between the front ones.

Wedge had sworn to her that he had never seen the memoirs. Well, that had been true, because it had never been written. But he had also said he hadn’t seen Euphemia since February. And that had been flatly contradicted by the dental plate’s presence in the elephant box. Oliver Wedge had been lying through his teeth.

“M
rs. Janks,” said Arabella, coming into the kitchen. “Have we still got the newspapers from two weeks ago?”

“Yes, my dear, some of them,” replied the housekeeper, pulling her spectacles down her nose. (She had been trying to read a receipt book of Mrs. Moly’s, but the French was beyond her.) “They’re on the lower shelf in the pantry, left-hand side. But they aren’t all there; I use ’em as I needs ’em, for wrapping fish scraps, an’ that.”

“Mmm! Fish! How good that sounds! But you . . . don’t have them
all,
Mrs. Janks?”

“Not there I don’t. But if this has anything to do with your murder case . . .”

“It has everything to do with it!”

“Well, I’ve saved clippings for you, miss, from all the papers as ever wrote about it, since the first day. They’re up in my room, pasted in an album.”

“Oh, Charlotte!” cried Arabella, giving her an affectionate squeeze. “You
are
a wonder! May I see them tonight?”

“Whenever you wants ’em, miss, they’ll be there for you. I put the word out to all the servants in all the houses as I know, to save them articles for me.”

“Do you have
The Tattle-Tale’
s, too?”

Mrs. Janks made a face. “Yes, miss. Even them ones.”

“You,” said Arabella, “are quite simply
the
most indispensable housekeeper in London, and I am doubling your salary, as of today.”

As Mrs. Janks began to protest this, for form’s sake, someone could be heard fumbling with a key at the service entrance. A moment later, Cook entered the kitchen with her market basket and plumped it on the table.

“ ’Allo, Meez Beaumont,” she said. “I ’ave brought beautiful lemons from ze market, and ze freshest buttair we ’ave evair ad!”

“Ooh!” cried Arabella excitedly. “And fresh fish, too, I’ll be bound!”

“Non!”
replied the cook. “Zee feeshing boats ’ave not come in. A zquall at sea ’as kept zem far out. Deed you feel like feeshing, yourself, mademoiselle?”

“Hmm, I suppose I could do. In fact, that is a capital idea, Mrs. Moly! I have a sudden fancy for fresh fish!”

But she was checked in the act of retrieving her rod and creel from behind the kitchen door by a loud wolf whistle issuing from Fisto’s cage.

“The gardener’s boy has arrived, ma’am,” said the parlor maid, opening the door from the corridor. Over Fielding’s shoulder, Arabella could see the young rajah, unhooking Fisto’s cage.

“There you are, Moses! Let us go up to the breakfast room. I have taught Fisto a new verse for today. The prompt is ‘La Ribbon Hat.’ ”

“. . . is terribly fat,” Fisto chanted, as they all went upstairs.

Moses grinned. “I reckon that bird’s as keen a pattering slang cove as ever came out of a toffkin, ain’t he, miss?”

“Er, yesss . . . ,” said Arabella. “But not half so keen a patterer as
I
am, you know, for it was me thought up the verses and taught him to say them.”

“. . . And
you’re
not half so clever as Casanova was,” said Belinda, entering the morning room with a basket full of lupines. “For
he
was the one who had this idea in the first place! Besides,” she added, arranging the flowers in a tall vase, “Lady Ribbonhat is
not
fat. She looks something like a raisin.”

“I know, but such women never feel thin enough. Just hearing someone say that she is big makes her worry that she might be.”

“Well, but seventeen stone? That is so outrageous even
she
won’t believe it.”

“I had to use ‘seventeen,’ or the verse wouldn’t have scanned. Besides, have you ever really looked at her head? It’s enormous! I figure that her head weighs twelve stone all by itself, and then, we’ll figure in another five, for the rest of her . . . that comes out to seventeen. Anyway, I can’t stop to gossip now; I must go out and catch dinner.”

 

One of the nicest things about Lustings was the stream meandering through its 2.5 acres. Not only was it picturesque—the Beaumont sisters and their artist friends often painted the views to be had from its banks—but it also contained succulent fish, which delighted in the rushing eddies and shady pools and often stopped here on their way downstream.

There was nothing Arabella loved more than to come outside by herself in the summer and think solitary thoughts whilst she angled. On this occasion, she had removed her shoes, propped up her pole within easy reach on an x-shaped block designed for the purpose, and leaned her back against a tree whilst simultaneously smoking a cigar and reading a book.

“Miss Beaumont? Miss Beaumont, are you somewhere hereabouts?”

“Damn!” muttered Arabella, shutting the book and laying aside her cigar. “Yes, Mr. Kendrick! Over here!”

The rector fought his way through the shrubs and bracken, to arrive at last, panting, by her side.

“Do you think it wise to be out in the sun?” he asked her, brushing himself off. “You’ll go brown, you know, if you aren’t careful.”

“But I
am
careful; I have a large hat on, as you see, and I am sitting in the shade.”

“Pray, do not let me interrupt you; we can talk whilst you fish.”

“Have you ever fished, Mr. Kendrick?”

“No, as a matter of fact. I don’t believe I have.”

“I guessed as much. Fish will not bite during conversations, for they are shy creatures, and highly temperamental. If one should make a noise, or move about, they scatter and hide.”

“Oh, yes?” said Kendrick. His mind being preoccupied with other matters—for he had noticed Arabella’s shoes lying next to the cigar and was furtively admiring her attractive bare feet—the import took some time to sink in, and she waited for the light of comprehension to dawn upon his features.

“Oh! Oh, I say! I
am
sorry for having interrupted you, Miss Beaumont!”

“That is quite all right, Mr. Kendrick; your assistance with this case means more to me than all the trout in the world. I assume that is why you have come?”

“Yes, it is! . . . Er, does it really?”

“Indubitably.”

She patted the grass beside her, and the rector unhesitatingly joined her there.

“Well,” said she, “what have you discovered? I hope I have not sent you on a wild-goose chase?”

“On the contrary! I took your excellent drawing to Bond Street, where it was at once identified as the mark of Claudius Ash. I had only to cross the road and walk down a few doors to find the very man himself!”

“Well done, Mr. Kendrick! Your efficiency is admirable!”

“I am gratified that you think so, Miss Beaumont. Well, I recalled what you had said about discretion, so I told Mr. Ash that I was thinking of getting a denture made for my elderly mother. I said I heard that he had once made a splendid one for a Mr. . . . Mr. . . . ‘Wedge,’ he said. ‘
The Tattle-Tale
editor.’ He came to the point very nicely, I thought.”

“He did indeed!”

“I had expected that I would have to draw him out cunningly, but not a bit of it! The man would not
stop
talking! False teeth is a subject very near to his heart, it seems. He said that Wedge’s plate was just a prototype—his only effort so far, but he thinks he has hit upon a good idea. Gold, you see, is soft—for a metal—and non-corrosive, so it may be more comfortably worn in the mouth than many other materials. He hopes to manufacture them one day. Ash has always been fascinated by what he termed ‘the problem of teeth,’ and when I made the mistake of complimenting him upon Wedge’s plate, which I have not in fact seen, he launched into a description of the porcelain dentitions, and told me how he’d been able to make them so lifelike as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. He’d added a gap because Wedge had told him that his own teeth—which, by the way, were knocked out by a fellow he wronged—had had such a gap. I had a bit of a narrow squeak when Mr. Ash wanted to know all about my ‘mother,’ whether she needed upper and lower replacements or just an upper, because, he said, lower ones were more difficult to make and he hadn’t ever done those before.

“But having already jeopardized my soul by telling one lie, I damned it entirely by telling another. I promised to bring the mater round and let him look inside her mouth, which I don’t think I will, you know, as she died when I was seven. I can’t suppose it would be very pleasant for poor Mr. Ash.”

“Oh, that is capital!” cried Arabella delightedly. “You have done very well indeed, Mr. Kendrick!”

“Have I?” he asked, favoring her with a melting glance and lifting her hand to his lips. “I am . . . as always, your most devoted admirer, ma’am, and inexpressibly happy to have been of service to you.”

“Then perhaps you would like to be in on the capture? I am now almost entirely certain that Oliver Wedge is our murderer.”

“What, that scoundrel?” cried Kendrick. “I might have saved you a great deal of worry, then! If I had known that you suspected him, I should have named him at once as the culprit!”

“You would condemn a man without proof?”

“Such a man as he could not possibly be innocent!”

“It sounds as if you know him quite well.”

“Not in the sense of being his ‘chum,’ if that’s what you mean. But the man
is
known to me, and as you have already seen, he has made a decidedly ill impression!”

“But why?” asked Arabella. “What has he done?”

“He seduced my brother’s fiancée, a sweet, innocent girl of seventeen summers, a girl so cloistered by her family as to think that babies were bought at the fair, like horses. She knew nothing of this wicked world, Miss Beaumont, nor of men, until she crossed paths with Oliver Wedge.”

At this point, there was a sharp tug upon the fish line, and Arabella grabbed the pole, eventually landing a four-pound bream.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kendrick,” she said, rebaiting her hook. “Pray, continue. How did she meet Mr. Wedge?”

“Well,” said he, “the unfortunate child had been keeping a diary throughout her courtship, filled with all her little maidenly hopes and feelings. It was her intention to present this book to her future groom as a gift, professionally printed and handsomely bound, and she had the great misfortune to take it to Wedge for that purpose.

“Her family always made sure that she was accompanied when out of doors by a chaperone. But a simple, elderly woman is no match for the devil! Wedge was easily able to separate the two females, and with the old one locked out, he effectively had his way with the young one in a back room.”

“How like him!” sighed Arabella. “I mean,” she said, rousing herself at Kendrick’s expression, “that your story tallies exactly with my own impressions of the fellow. Then what happened?”

“My brother called him out, but Wedge ran away. Hayward chased the scoundrel through the streets, caught up with him at last, and knocked his teeth out. He hurt his own fist quite badly, too.”

“And what of the girl?”

“How do you mean?”

“What happened to her?”

“Lord knows.”

“What! Didn’t your brother marry her, after all?”

“Of course not! He couldn’t after . . . after Wedge had been there before him!”

“Oh, I see. It wasn’t a love match, then.”

“I don’t know whether it was or not. I am not especially close with my brother. But I don’t see that it signifies.”

“Don’t you, Mr. Kendrick? And yet, if I were to renounce my profession this minute, and swear never to have anything to do with it anymore, what would you say?”

“I should ask you to marry me.”

“Have you any idea how many lovers I have had?”

“No! Nor do I want to know! I would ask only that I be the last.”

“Yet your brother’s fiancée had only had a
single
encounter. You seem to keep one set of standards for yourself, Mr. Kendrick, and quite another for the rest of the world. Tell me, if that unfortunate young woman had been
your
fiancée, would you still have married her?”

“I suppose so . . . yes, I believe I would have.”

“And yet you never thought to censure your brother for his cruelty toward a blameless girl, who was ruined as the result of finding herself in a dangerous location with poor supervision? If that poor child can be blamed for anything at all, it is only of loving your brother enough to want to give him her diary.”

The rector blushed.

“I am forced to admit that I had not thought of it in that light before,” he said quietly. “Dear me, you are perfectly right, Miss Beaumont. I failed to do my duty to my brother, or to save that young girl from unjust blame and ignominy. I am deeply ashamed of myself.”

“Well, you belong to the times in which you live, Mr. Kendrick, and escape is exceedingly difficult for any of us. But as long as you remain willing to examine your attitudes, and revise your opinions when necessary, I shall ever hold you in the highest esteem.”

“Oh, Miss Beaumont! Do you hold me in high esteem? Do you, really?”

“Entirely, Mr. Kendrick,” Arabella replied, handing him her second wriggling fish. “Now, here is what I am thinking: I shall hide you and the two Runners in my boudoir, and invite Mr. Wedge up to my bedroom. He will think, you know, that I am asking him up there to . . . but I must employ this ruse to be certain of his coming.”