Her Beguiling Butler (15 page)

He stood his ground.

When the others had gone, he strode to the door and closed it.

“Finnley, that is all. You may go.”

“You cannot dismiss me so easily.”

“Of course I can, sir.”

He walked to her, took her hands and pulled her against him. “Don’t Alicia. Let me stay with you.”

Tears sprang to her large luminous eyes. “Why? There is no future for us. I now agree with you. You should be relieved.”

A pain sharp as a knife cut through his head. Anger blossomed and he was shocked at it. Could nightshade heighten his anger? He suppressed it and focused on Alicia. “My dear, how can I leave when I care for you?”

She struggled backward from his embrace. “I cannot indulge myself any longer in the illusion of that. You were the one who told me you could not remain forever as my butler. And I? I did not realize—“

In the depths of her violet eyes, sorrow loomed.

He shook with despair. “What did you not realize?”

“That any scandal would hurt you too. I’m sorry. I thought too much of myself and not of you at all. How selfish of me.” She walked to the far end of the room. “You fear for your livelihood. I understand.”

“No, no!” Alarmed, he strode after her. “I fear for your life!”

She laughed, incredulity on her face. “Ridiculous.”

He was appalled at what he’d revealed. Now she would fear for her safety and without him present, she’d have no one to protect her. “You must let me come with you. Wherever you go.”

“Dear Wallace,” she said, melancholy in her voice. “Leave me. Today, tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest, whenever you are most prepared. I will have a reference waiting for you.”

“I care not for any reference, Alicia.”

“But I do. You shall have your due.”

“I beg you—“

She put up a hand. “Do not. My mind is made up.”

She set her jaw. It was as if she’d aged from woman to matron in one breath. The sour determination in her eyes astonished him.

She was her own authority.

And he knew he could not move her.

Only with the truth. The evidence. The name of the murderer in her house.

He had to learn that. Quickly.

He’d learn what Preston did on her day off. That would be a start.

So when he stood on the corner of Wapping High Street and watched Preston enter an old and decaying wooden house, he was astonished at the address. And speculated on the reason she visited this particular den of iniquity.

The next morning, Finnley excused himself from the house, telling Mrs. Gordon that he had to pay a personal call. She didn’t ask for details as it was not her wont to be intrusive and he escaped the house after breakfast.

Well out of sight of the Crescent, he hailed a hack and requested he go to the Home Office. There, Finnley asked for Lord Winston.

“You’re here early, Beaumont.” His supervisor looked tired this Monday morning. Winston was in his sixties and worked far too many hours. “Do sit. Have news, do you?”

“Some.” Finnley accepted a cup of tea from Winston’s hand. “Two matters, both about the two servants we discussed last week.”

“The footman and the lady’s maid?” Winston took his chair near the fire.

“The same, yes. Grimes the footman told me he came from Maidenhead straight to London in August. But he’s told a maid next door that he comes from Kent.”

“And what have you to report about Lady Ranford’s maid, Cybil Preston?”

Finnley put down his cup and saucer on the nearby table. “She followed me yesterday morning to the house next door. I had a conversation with the butler of that establishment and it seems she might have overheard me.”

Winston’s mouth curled in a wry smile. “Servants who snoop are the norm.”

“No. But it made me wonder what you might have learned about either one of them. I’m in a rush to solve this mystery one way or another.”

“Urgent, eh? Have you business elsewhere?”

Finnley nodded.
Why not tell Winston?
Over the years, the man had served as a model figure of a man. Finnley certainly had no example of any repute from his father. “I consider leaving the force.”

Winston’s bushy brows rose. “Intriguing. Is there a prime mover?”

“You could say so, yes.”

“When you began with us, Beaumont, it was because you were so damned good at tracking thieves of Army supplies. We needed your expertise with the Marine Thames force, certainly to train our recruits. You alone cut losses on cargo stolen from the London docks by thousands of pounds. Westminster, China traders and the West India merchants will be forever grateful.”

“And prosperous.” Finnley smoothed the fabric of his breeches.

“So then. Don’t want to catch gangers on the docks any longer? A change of heart, is it?”

Of a sort I never thought to have.
“You might say I’m growing older, thinking of going home to Beaumont Hall.”

“A worthy endeavor.”

“Is it? I haven’t been in so many years, the tenants might faint at the sight of me.”

“Or welcome you with open arms. Despite your failure to grace them with your presence, you have ensured that your estate manager helped them prosper.”

“It was the least I could do, given how my father never noticed nor cared for them.”

“He was more interested in gambling on the success of shipping ventures.” Winston sighed. “But that is in the past. You have a new future that I expected you would one day embrace, willingly or not. But you are now your uncle’s heir. Sad about his son.”

“Yes, I like him tremendously. My uncle adored the boy. But all of us in the family knew he would not live to a ripe age.” Newport’s only child, dead two years ago, had never advanced into normal maturity. Edward had passed away at twenty, but had acted forever six years old, brash and childish but happy. “I realize that as my uncle progresses in years he will need me by his side to learn how to manage his estate. I accept that. In fact,” Finnley said, smiling because he’d come to love Alicia, he recognized it as true, “I welcome the opportunity.”

“Well!” Winston slapped his hands on his knees. “Sounds splendid to me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“All the more reason to get to the bottom of this mystery in the house.”

Finnley agreed. “Did you learn anything from your men about Grimes or Preston?”

“I did. You will not like it.”

“Tell me.”

“Grimes did live in Maidenhead but left three years ago for Kent. Dover to be precise, where he worked in the port as a gangman. A year ago he was run off for stealing cargo. He returned to Maidenhead, worked as a footman for a few months, got the reference and came to London. Here, he quickly got a job in the household of Number Ten Dudley Crescent.”

Finnley snorted. “Any idea of what he stole?”

Winston shook his head. “None. Is that important?”

“I’m not certain.”
Depends on whether he is connected to what I learned about where I saw Preston go yesterday afternoon on her jaunt.
“What news do you have about Preston?”

“A less attractive picture, I’m afraid.”

“How would I have suspected?” Finnley said with sarcasm.

“She did attend a servants training school and yes, she did go straight away to work for your Lady Ranford after that lady’s marriage to Lord Ranford.”

“I sense a negative statement.”

“Indeed. Prior to that, Preston lived in a house near Wapping High Street hard by the West India docks.”

“The West India docks is a squalid part of town.” Finnley rubbed a hand over his mouth and considered what he’d seen the maid do yesterday. “She went there yesterday afternoon. Walked over to Oxford Street and hailed a hackney. She climbed down in front of a ramshackle house yards from the river. I don’t know who owns the house or why would she go there. Do you?”

Winston shifted in his chair. “One Lord Ranford visited often to meet with those shippers to whom he’d given money. We know the man who lives there is Chinese and and a smuggler.”

“Preston would go there for no good,” Finnley said.

“Well, Beaumont, we always thought Ranford went there because he kept a woman there as his doxy. Thanks to you we now know her to be Cybil Preston. But asking around neighbors, it seems she is not that at all.”

Finnley frowned. “What then?”

“His daughter.”

“Dear lord.”

“Born on the wrong side of the sheets to a West Indies woman of no family or wealth. But Ranford’s daughter, nonetheless. And she has quite an array of friends who would make you hide your purse as she passed.”

Finnley licked his lips. No wonder the woman was cold to one and all. Except Alicia. Why? Simply to keep her job? “Does she seem to have any income from Ranford?”

“Not that we can find. He left her no allowance in his will.”

“Which means her position as lady’s maid would be important.”

“Except for one thing.”

Finnley stiffened. “What’s that?”

“Her special friend who lives in the house. He is half Chinese and half English, an exotic breed of cutthroat. He was a renegade
cohong
in
Canton until he escaped decapitation by their magistrates six years ago. With a band of henchmen, he came here to live and, yes, he still trades in stolen goods.”

“On our docks,” Finnley concluded.

“Right you are. William Wan-Li is his name and he’s been living in that house on the docks ever since Lord Ranford died.”

“Ranford gave him the house?”

“Ranford’s name is still on the books as owner.”

“And Preston?”

“Visits him each Sunday on her half day,” Winston said. “Afterward, she goes with him along the docks and into the Rookery to sell a certain white powder.”

Finnley’s head reeled. Preston had access to opium. And opium was debilitating, addicting and caused headaches. “Opium. By god. The substance can be deadly.”

“And it is legal to buy it,” Winston scoffed. “One day that must change.”

“But won’t any time soon. The free traders will not permit it.” Finnley mulled over the mounting evidence that the symptoms he himself experienced might be those of opium poisoning. Should he be looking for opium poisoning instead of nightshade?

Was Preston dosing him with it? Addicting him?

He got to his feet. “I must go home.”

“Be very careful. Preston is in the Radford house for no good reason. Revenge on her late father, perhaps?”

“And the butler for knowing too much? Other than that, she sounds as if she cares for Lady Ranford.” Finnley had been inclined to believe her. “And she just wants a fine house in which to lay her head at night.”

“Watch what she does. Where she goes. What her routine is.”

Finnley agreed. He had only two days to do that. “Thank you, Winston, for all of this. I’ll discover what she’s doing.”

“Please do. And while you’re at it, get a few witnesses to the act, will you? I’d love to cart her off to gaol.”

That afternoon, Finnley claimed a headache all in an effort to watch Preston take up her tea time duties in the kitchen.

She seemed eager, happy, humming a ditty under her breath as she checked what Sweeting had laid out for her to deliver to Alicia. But he saw no white powder in her hands. No slight of hand. No odd occurrence.

If Preston had been adding opium to his tea, he had no evidence of it.

But since they were alone, he took the opportunity to speak with her.

“Preston, I have thought about your words the other day. And I appreciate your concerns. I have my own and wonder if you would tell me what you thought of Lord Ranford’s valet.”

“Devoted to his lordship.”

“But not to the house?”

She pursed her lips, frowning. “He’d served Ranford for so many years that I doubt he knew any other kind of loyalty.”

“Why run off without a word? Or his salary? It’s strange.”

She locked her gaze on his. “I agree. But he was an odd bird. Kept to himself. Ate with us but that was all. Never visited. If you’re asking if he had odd habits, I’d say no. He didn’t drink or smoke or—“ She waved a hand. “He was here. Ever here at Ranford’s beck and call. When he disappeared, we put it down to his grief.”

“And Norden the butler?” He died of a broken neck. “Did you like him?”

“He ran a good house. Yes, sir. I liked him. But he was, as we say, strict. I didn’t mind.”

“Did anyone else?” Finnley had to know what she thought of others on the staff.

Preston glanced toward the kitchen, her gaze straying back to his. “Two did.”

He inclined his head toward the kitchen. “In there?” he whispered.

She nodded, her eyes dead. “Excuse me, will you, sir? I must take this to my lady.”

He watched her go. His time in the house was short and alarmed at what Preston had intimated, he decided to write to Winston to ask him to trace the cook and her scullery maid.

He retired to his rooms, wrote it in haste and sought out Grimes. He found him in the boot room, talking with Dora the scullery maid. He summoned him into the hall for a private conversation.

“Take this to the Home Office, Grimes. And wait for a reply.” He handed over two shillings. “This is for the hack.”

The footman surveyed him with startled eyes. “Home Office, eh? You don’t want to call out Connor to take me?”

“You should know enough not to presume you can take the family coach. Do this now. And know that I expect your confidence on this matter. ”

“Confidence?”

“Yes, unless you like to tell me why you have told me lies about your past.”

Grimes stared at him. “No, sir. I don’t, sir. I wish to stay here and serve you.”

“Then go.”

“Aye, sir.” The servant left the room with speed and a curve to his shoulders that denoted shame.

Finnley had other things to think about than the footman. Most notably he had to ensure that he no longer ingested any food here whose preparation he did not supervise. And the same for Alicia.

He took up residence in the kitchen at the table, claiming a need to inhale the steam. “I have a problem breathing,” he said to Sweeting with the officiousness of a lord.