Death at Bishop's Keep Page 15

  The butler sniffed. “I have not,” he said with grave dignity. “Are you the police?”

  “No,” Charles said, “I merely—”

  “Pray remove your foot, sir.”

  Charles held his ground. “I would like to inquire of other members of your household. Perhaps your mistress—”

  The butler’s right arm disappeared behind the door and reappeared again with a silver-tipped cane. “Your foot, sir,” the butler said, and stabbed Charles’s toe smartly.

  The third door, which Charles approached with trepidation and a slight limp, was not answered at all. The fourth, however, was opened by a middle-aged man whom Charles took by his dress and manner to be the gentleman of the house. He was apparently on his way out, for he wore a velvet-collared chesterfield and held one end of a leather leash, the other end of which was attached to a fluffy white poodle about the size of a lady’s muff, furiously yapping. When he saw Charles, he looked alarmed.

  “If it’s the money you’re after,” he said over the dog’s din, “I have already—”

  “I am not a bill collector,” Charles said with dignity.

  “Good,” the man said. He looked down, obviously flustered. “Be quiet, Precious.” The poodle ducked behind the man’s ankle and glowered at Charles, continuing to bark. From somewhere within the house, a woman’s voice fretfully commanded, “Take that dog out of here, Frank, before my brain explodes.”

  “Yes, Irene,” Frank replied nervously, over his shoulder. “Precious and I are just leaving.” He looked out at the gray drizzle. “Is it raining?” he asked Charles.

  Charles held up his photo. “Have you seen this man?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” Frank said, giving the photograph barely a look. He reached behind the door and Charles stepped back quickly. But when his hand reappeared again, it held only a gray bowler and an umbrella.

  “Are you sure?” Charles persisted. “It is a matter of some importance. The police—”

  “Frank!” The female voice was loudly petulant. “Can’t you manage to do even one simple thing? Get that dog out of—”

  “Yes, my dear,” Frank replied, putting his hat on his head. Precious launched a swift sortie at Charles’s trouser leg. He retired to the top step. Frank yanked the dog back, stepped out of the door, and closed it behind him. “Never saw the fellow,” he muttered, pushing past Charles. “I say, old chap, I really must be off.”

  Charles stared at him. A jaunty trio of peacock feathers was inserted into the band of trim that encircled Frank’s bowler. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if one were broken. He was seized by a sudden excitement. “Pardon me,” he said, gesturing at the hat, “but I wonder if you would permit me to have a look at those feathers.”

  Frank frowned. “Feathers? I don’t know about any—” He apparently recollected them, for he reddened and, still holding the leash, snatched off his hat and pulled out the cockade of feathers. Precious took advantage of Frank’s inattentiveness to lunge at Charles’s shoe.

  “Do the feathers have a special significance?” Charles asked. “Perhaps—”

  “I tell you,” Frank said loudly, “there are no feathers!” He stuffed them into his pocket, jammed his bowler back on his head, and put up his umbrella. He walked smartly away, dragging Precious with him. As he did so, a gentleman wearing a caped Inverness came toward him. The two were apparently acquainted, for as they passed on the sidewalk, Frank tipped his gray bowler and the other inclined his head. As the man in the Inverness drew nearer, Charles saw that in his lapel was fixed a cluster of peacock feathers.

  26

  “It’s worse than wicked, my dear, it’s vulgar.”

  —Punch

  Charles was fully soaked by the time he retrieved Bradford’s horse from Taylor’s Livery Stable, but the rain stopped as he rode back to Marsden Manor, his portfolio under his arm. He was able to contemplate the outcome of the morning’s inquiry in the pale light of an afternoon sun, as he rode under trees that scattered raindrops with every breeze.

  But there was regrettably little to contemplate. His efforts on Queen Street had come to nothing—well, almost. There was still the matter of Frank’s feathers to be looked into, and those of the man in the Inverness. Surely some significance lay in those odd lapel decorations. For the moment, he couldn’t imagine what it was, and although Charles was resourceful, he had been pulled up short. Hunting a single peacock feather was hard enough. Hunting one peacock feather in a blizzard of peacock feathers was much harder. Still, he was confident. Something would come to him.

  Something did, but not quite in the way he might have imagined. To Charles’s surprise, the Marsden stable yard was crowded. The indoor and outdoor servants were standing in a circle, talking and gesturing excitedly. As he dismounted and turned his horse over to a groom, he saw that everyone was looking at a motorcar, a Panhard-Levassor with a forward-mounted vertical engine, tiller steering, and a red parasol canopy. An elegant machine.

  “Charles!” Eleanor cried breathlessly, running up to him with Patsy behind her, and, to his surprise and quickly stifled pleasure, Miss Ardleigh. “Whatever do you think?”

  Charles regarded the motorcar with interest. He had considered buying a similar model the year before, but its engineering problems had deterred him.

  “I doubt,” he said, “that you bought this in London. The Honorable Thomas Milbank must have favored us with a visit.”

  “Indeed he has,” Eleanor said. “Have you and Mr. Milbank met?”

  “Actually, yes,” Charles said. “Last autumn, on the occasion of his driving this car through Windsor at the speed of fourteen miles an hour.”

  “Fourteen miles an hour on the road?” Miss Ardleigh was aghast.

  “Indeed,” Charles said.

  “But what about the Red Flag Act?” Eleanor asked. “Did the police not arrest him?”

  “No, blast it,” drawled a lazy voice. They were joined by a tall, thin young man in a khaki-colored twill dustcoat, leather helmet and goggles and leather gloves. Bradford Marsden accompanied him.

  “Hello, Tommy,” Charles said cordially.

  “Hullo, Charlie,” the young man said. They shook hands.

  “They did not arrest you, Mr. Milbank?” Patsy’s tone and glance were openly admiring, and Charles wondered if he might be about to experience a reprieve from the matrimonial sword Lady Marsden and her daughter were holding over his head.

  Milbank took off his helmet and goggles. “They were meant to, but I’m afraid the pater’s connections discouraged ’em.”

  “Which is not to say,” Charles said to Patsy, “that Mr. Milbank’s action was anything but heroic. Quite the contrary. He deliberately flouted the law.”

  “Mr. Milbank’s father,” Bradford explained to Miss Ardleigh, “is Lord Howard Milbank. He is influential in Whitehall circles. The police were understandably reluctant to collar his son and haul him off to jail like a common criminal, even though he volunteered.”

  Miss Ardleigh looked confused. “I’m afraid I don’t understand any of this,” she said. “What did you do wrong, Mr. Milbank? And why should you have wanted to be arrested?”

  Milbank unbuttoned his dustcoat. “It’s the Home Office, y’ see, ma’am. Rules of the road. Parliament has set a speed limit of four miles an hour in open country and two miles an hour in towns. And a man has to walk twenty yards in front, carrying a red flag.”

  “It’s to ensure the citizens’ safety,” Patsy explained excitedly to Miss Ardleigh. “Motorcars go so exceedingly fast that—”

  “Safety be damned,” Milbank said with a snort. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. It’s the commercial interests, y’ see. The railroads, chiefly. They fear competition.”

  “So Mr. Milbank has made a cause of it,” Bradford told Miss Ardleigh. “He travels about, lecturing on the promise of the combustion engine and breaking the law wherever he can.”

  “Breaking the law!” Patsy cried, wide-eyed. “How wonderf
ully wicked!”

  “Right,” Bradford said emphatically. “Shouldn’t wonder if he’ll be arrested yet.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder,” Charles agreed affably, glancing once more at Patsy. He was gratified to see the blush on her cheek as she looked at her new hero. Eleanor’s eyes, as well, were fixed on Milbank. Miss Ardleigh, he saw, merely looked thoughtful.

  “I suppose the combustion engine will make some people very rich,” she observed, stepping back to look at the machine with a critical eye.

  Milbank and Bradford Marsden exchanged glances. “To be sure,” Milbank said, “provided that the Home Office takes the blinders off before it’s too late. The Self-Propelled Traffic Association, of which I am proud to be a member, is trying to persuade ’em.”

  Bradford looked somber. “What do you think of the chances, old man?”

  Milbank shrugged. “Could be worse,” he said. “We could be trying to bargain with the Royal Navy.”

  There was a commotion on the other side of the stable yard, and the lookers-on began to scramble. “I demand to know the meaning of this!” a voice roared. Charles turned. It was Lord Marsden, striding formidably across the yard in his riding clothes.

  With a look of trepidation, Bradford stepped forward. “Let me present the Honorable Mr. Thomas Milbank to you, Papa. He has stopped on his way back from Cambridge to show us his—”

  “The dis-honorable Mr. Milbank,” Lord Marsden thundered. He raised his riding crop in a threatening gesture. “Sir, I’ll thank you to get your bloody contraption out of my stable yard. It’s scared the horses and fouled the air. And there’s not been tuppence of work out of anybody since you got here.” He glared at the motorcar. “Not only wicked, but vulgar,” he muttered.

  “But Papa,” Eleanor objected hurriedly, “we’ve asked Mr. Milbank to stay to tea.”

  “Didn’t ask me,” Lord Marsden snapped, and stalked off.

  Bradford looked chagrined. “Fearfully sorry, old chap,” he muttered. “The guv has no love for motorcars. But I didn’t think he would be insulting.”

  “Not to worry,” Mr. Milbank said comfortably. “I’m continually being insulted. The motorcar has a way of stirring men up.” He buttoned up his dustcoat. “Should be off, anyway. Dining in Colchester tonight. Friend of mine—actress—has removed there from London. D’you know her? Mrs. Farnsworth. Florence Faber, she was, when she was on the stage.”

  “Oh, yes,” Miss Ardleigh said unexpectedly. “My aunt introduced me to her last Saturday. Quite an interesting lady.”

  Eleanor stared, her sensibilities obviously shocked. “An ... actress? And you found such a person ... interesting?”

  Miss Ardleigh smiled. “I did indeed,” she answered. “It was at her house that I met Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries—and Oscar Wilde, as well.”

  “Dear Kathryn,” Eleanor said with a nervous turn of her head. “Murder mysteries and Oscar Wilde. You constantly amaze me.” She paused, seeming to reflect. “But then, you are an American. I suppose that is the explanation.”

  “Doyle and Wilde, eh?” Milbank remarked with a laugh. “That’s Florence Farnsworth, to be sure. She dares to be both wicked and wonderful at once, and everyone flocks to her. What a creature.”

  What a creature indeed, Charles was thinking. The object of his attention, however, was not Tommy Milbank’s Farns-worth, but Miss Ardleigh, absorbed just now in her conversation with Eleanor. The woman at once intrigued and exasperated him. Stumbling onto the dig as if by accident, pretending that she had chanced into the railway station in search of a timetable, intruding upon his investigation of Prodger, finding that fragment of feather—blast it, the woman was ubiquitous! The more he thought about her, the more outrageous her behavior seemed to him. It was a wonder he had been able to get to Queen Street and back today without her turning up.

  While the women talked, Bradford pulled Milbank aside. “I wonder, Milbank,” he said, lowering his voice, “if I might drive into Colchester with you. I have some questions about motorcars. In particular, about Mr. Harry Landers. He has acquired a number of patent licenses and is planning to float a new company, which he calls the British Motor Car Syndicate. Are you acquainted with him?”

  Charles turned his attention from Miss Ardleigh to Bradford. Harry Landers? If his friend was involved with that charlatan, no wonder he had been worried of late. Anything Landers turned his hand to be likely to prove a confidence game.

  Milbank jerked on his helmet. “To be sure, I know Landers,” he said. “Wish I didn’t, either,” he added.

  “I think we had better talk,” Bradford said quietly. “I’ll get my coat.”

  A few minutes later, Charles watched Bradford and Tommy Milbank drive off, accompanied by the vulgar belchings of the motor, the exultant shouts of small children, and the excited yapping of the manor dogs. Eleanor picked up the skirt of her green dress. “I suppose we might as well go in to tea,” she said with evident regret. “Although how Papa could be so rude—”

  “Yes, he was rude, wasn’t he?” Patsy said, frowning. “I can’t think why.” She shook her golden curls, clearly nettled. “Mr. Milbank is such a handsome gentleman.” A veiled glance at Charles suggested that her remark was intended to inspire jealousy.

  Charles responded with a quick smile. “Handsome and rich,” he said agreeably. “The Milbanks, of course, hold quite a prominent role in society.” Patsy lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

  As they turned toward the manor house, Miss Ardleigh adroitly allowed the sisters to move ahead and fell in step with Charles. Although he was perfectly disposed to be irritated with this forward behavior, which so nearly resembled her brash intrusions of the past few days, he could not help noticing that the pale gold of her wool costume, reminiscent of champagne, was striking against her mahogany hair. And if he had not been distracted by the odd compound of irritation and admiration that swirled like an alchemist’s brew inside him, he might have been prepared for the observation that followed her greeting. Instead, it startled him.

  “I wonder,” she remarked, “whether the portfolio under your arm contains the photographs of which we have spoken.”

  Charles clutched his portfolio tighter. If he had looked into his feelings at this moment, he might have remarked that he was holding on to it exactly as a drowning man holds on to a life preserver. But he did not. “As a matter of fact, it does,” he said stiffly. “But I do not think it is especially prudent to—”

  “You promised to show them to me,” Miss Ardleigh reminded him. Her sidewise glance seemed oddly merry, as if she were making fun of him. “You think my interest... wicked? Or vulgar?”

  “Neither.” He frowned. Actually, he found her interest both disconcerting and stimulating, but he could hardly tell her that. He settled for a caution that, even to his ears, sounded remarkably like something Sir Archibald or Lady Henrietta might say. “They are, after all, the photographs of a dead man.”

  “To be sure,” she said. She turned her head. “Please do not think me callous if I say that the man’s condition, while piteous, will not distress me, Sir Charles. And I hardly think that at this point it can distress him.”

  In spite of himself, Charles almost smiled.

  “Of course,” she added gravely, “if showing the photo to me would offend your sensibilities ...”

  Charles opened his portfolio and pulled out a photograph of the dead man, stretched out on his back, hands resting on his midriff, and another of the wheel tracks.

  Miss Ardleigh paused on the path and held the photograph in one gloved hand. A flicker of guarded recognition crossed her face. The corners of her lips tightened imperceptibly. She glanced up.

  “Have the police progressed in their inquiries?”

  “Frankly, no,” Charles confessed. “You know as much as do the police. The only physical clues are those we discovered in Prodger’s chaise—a peacock feather and a fingerprint. I doubt that even Doyle’s ingenious Holmes could make
much of either.”

  “Indeed,” she said in an easy tone, brushing back a lock of rich auburn hair that escaped across her cheek. But she was still studying the photograph, as if memorizing it.

  “The local police,” he said, watching her closely, “appear to have reached the limit of their resources. Unfortunately, Inspector Wainwright refuses to call in the Yard. I gather that he had some former difficulty with them.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Have you enjoyed any success in your pursuit of the feather?” she asked.

  “None,” Charles said, “although I have seen similar feathers in the lapels of two men. I plan to continue my search.”

  “I see,” Miss Ardleigh said, handing back the photograph. “And the ring the dead man is wearing—does it seem to you to be significant?”

  The scarab ring? Charles realized that he had not considered the import of the ring’s motif in any detailed way, interested as he had been in the problem of deciphering its inscription. “If it does,” he said honestly, “I did not think to inquire into it.” He turned toward her, hoping to flush out her interest with a direct question. “Do you have a particular reason for your inquiries, Miss Ardleigh?”

  She half turned away from him, and there was another silence. When she finally spoke, it was not in answer to his question. “I have a thought, Sir Charles. I suggest that you show the photograph to Mrs. Florence Farnsworth, in Keenan Street, Colchester. She may perhaps be of assistance to you.”

  “Mrs. Farnsworth,” Charles said. “Is that not the lady of whom Mr. Milbank spoke a moment ago?”

  “It is,” Miss Ardleigh replied, and began to walk in the direction Eleanor and Patsy had taken, leaving Charles standing in the path.

  The finality in Miss Ardleigh’s words made it clear that she intended to conclude the interview, and a deep frustration added itself to Charles’s initial irritation and discomposure. From her reaction to the picture, he judged that she knew something about the dead man. She had even appeared to recognize him, or something about him.