It’s not that I object to self-assured men, not really. And although flirtation can be tiresome, I have learned to live with the fact that for a certain generation of men—men who’ve been schooled away from their sisters and mothers, and never learned how to converse with the opposite sex—hearty jests and an exchange of suggestive glances with any other male present was the best they could do. My habit was to remind myself that some men never got over the handicap of not being women, and keep my mouth in a tight-lipped smile.
Ronnie’s mother had taken care not to underscore my own lack of satin and diamonds, although she had put her hair up, its silver threads winding like Nature’s tiara amidst the dark background, and wore a necklace of small rubies that sparkled in the electric light.
She smiled, looking distracted, and reached out to straighten a fold in the silk wrap she had lent me. “You look very nice, Mary.”
“I look like a bluestocking without a dress allowance.”
“A very pretty bluestocking. Is that the gong?”
Distracted, or worried? For some reason, we were waiting at the end of a corridor, facing a plain wooden door. Lady Dorothy now reached for the handle and we passed into the main house as the gong’s reverberations were fading. The long dining table was laid with three places. With a gesture towards the chair on the far side, my hostess took up a position behind the chair across from that one—and stood, her hands on the chair’s back, waiting.
The Lady Dorothy—daughter of a duke, widow of an earl—waited in this oddly servile position as if she was well accustomed to it, but just as I was about to pull out my own chair and plunk myself down, The Most Hon Marquess of Selwick came through the doorway. The butler sprang to seat him, then came around and pulled out my chair while the footman pulled back Lady Dorothy’s.
“Evening, Miss Russell,” the Marquess boomed. “See you’ve fallen for this fad of chopping your hair. Pity, I remember it was charmin’.”
And I remembered how he had found an excuse to touch it, at the wedding, claiming there was a bit of leaf caught in it.
“Oh, it got in the way when I was fixing the motorcar.”
He looked startled, which was what I had been intending, but the look quickly gave way to something dangerously close to a leer. “You don’t say. Fine figure of a girl like you, I’d like to see you bent over a fender.”
Even the servile version of Lady Dorothy had to object to that. “Edward! Miss Russell is Veronica’s University friend.”
“But the gel’s married, isn’t she? Not too many blushes left to her.”
His brother’s widow stepped in before I could choose which verbal skewer to run him through with. “Miss Russell has come to see if she can find any clues as to where Vivian might have gone.”
“Clues—hah! You make her sound like a Miss Christie sleuth.”
I smoothed my napkin across my knees. “Not Baroness Orczy? Lady Molly, perhaps?”
His blank stare suggested he was not a fan of the Baroness’ detective. My polite smile caused him to harrumph and reach for his glass.
Restored by drink, he attacked the soup that had been laid before him, not waiting for either of us to take up our spoons. I winced at his first slurp, and at every one that followed, wishing I had some crusty bread with which to drown the noise. As he clattered the spoon against the bottom of his bowl, I tossed out a topic of conversation, thinking he might chase it rather than the last scraps of carrot.
“I understand that felicitations are in order, my Lord. For your fiftieth birthday. I hope your party was satisfactory?”
“Have to do such things, it’s expected, even if it costs an arm and a leg. At least my sister didn’t pull her disappearing stunt beforehand, turn everything on its head.”
Well, if the man was so obliging as to bring up the topic, I was happy to run with it. “So where do you think she’s gone?”
“Probably on a ship to South America or something.” He shoved his plate away, causing the butler to step briskly forward.
“Do you think she convinced the nurse to go along?”
“I do. And then tipped the woman overboard the minute they set off.”
I shot a startled glance across at Lady Dorothy, but she was intent on straightening her silver. “Really?”
“Violent little minx, my sister. Looked like butter wouldn’t melt, twist you around her finger, but she was a flirt when she was small and vicious when she grew up—she came after me half a dozen times, once with a poker. Bled like Billy-o! See the scar?” He parted his hair, although I could see nothing past the lumps and discolorations of his mottled scalp.
“Artists, you know,” I said, keeping my irritation in check. “Temperamental sorts.”
“Art? You mean her scribbles? Kept her out of mischief, I suppose—you gels need a hobby, don’t you, until you’re married? Not that she’d ever marry, what with Bedlam and all. But I never saw her do anything I’d want to hang over the fireplace.”
I glanced down at the fork in my hand, idly contemplating what his scalp would look like with four neat holes to punctuate the bash-mark, but it would appear that the butler was well accustomed to the reactions of outraged guests, since he chose that moment to appear at my elbow and insert his dark arm into my field of vision.
I let go the fork, and dropped my hands to my lap as the oblivious Marquess drivelled on about a painting he’d helped a friend buy recently down in London, some Renaissance battle piece the size of a room with rearing horses and slashing swords, you could see the muscles and blood, now that was art, wouldn’t you say, Miss Russell?
“So they tell me. Are you often down in London, my Lord?”
“I get down occasionally. Not as much as I’d like—I’ve let out the London house to a bunch of Americans. God knows what they’re doing to the place, parties and whatnot with Reds and Negroes, bugger-boys and those idiotic Flapper girls. Probably using drugs and sticking their damned chewing gum on my Regency tables.”
Lady Dorothy murmured a protest at the word bugger, but I nodded solemnly. “Yes, Americans can be tough on the furniture.”
“Ought to be shot, all of them.”
“What, Americans? That seems a bit excessive.”
“No, the Nancy boys! Have you any idea—”
“Edward, please.”
The poor woman was so close to tears, I had to lay my teasing aside. “I’m curious, my Lord, why did you let out the house if you prefer to live in London?” I knew why: he couldn’t afford to keep it up. But I wanted to hear his reason.
“Responsibilities. Selwick needs a master. Place like this doesn’t run itself, you know. Tenants need a firm hand. And there’s Dot, here—she doesn’t have anyplace to go. I’m guessing the gel and her boy will end up here sooner or later.”
Dot, I suspected, would be as happy to be given free rein here, just as the gel, Ronnie, might have come back with little Simon long before this were it not for her overbearing uncle. As for the tenants…
“So what do you grow, here at Selwick? Not really wheat country, is it?”
“Um, well, some wheat. I think. Seem to be a lot of sheep.”
“The Baileys make a lovely Double Gloucester,” Lady Dorothy offered.
The Marquess brightened. “Yes, cows do fine, on some of the farms. And lots of pigs—nice bacon for the breakfast table, I’ll say that for them. Rents keep falling, of course—farmers always complaining, but you don’t see them starving, do you?” He laughed.
In fact, the children of farmers were the first to go hungry come drought, flood, or disease, although I bit back the remark.
Come to that, my topics of dinner conversation seemed to be growing as thin as my smile. We’d failed to find common ground in literature, art, or agriculture, and I refused to offer up my own interest in religion on the altar of his ignorance. What did th
at leave? The Fawcett search for a lost civilisation in the Amazon? Churchill returning us to the gold standard? The Scopes arrest? No, not that—I doubted this…person followed any news from America other than horse races and who was boarding a ship for Southampton.
Normally, given a choice between politics and sport, I would dredge up the names of some cricket players or make enquiry as to a preference for dry flies versus wet when it came to the local streams—but honestly, I could not be bothered.
“So tell me, my Lord, what’s the political situation hereabouts?”
Ronnie’s mother made a choking noise and reached for her glass. The butler and footman straightened a bit where they stood. The candles seemed to flicker briefly before they rallied—but the Marquess of Selwick looked first astonished, then ecstatic.
“The political situation? Political situation? A year ago I’d have called it somewhere between laughable and tragic—but at least we’ve got rid of that MacDonald looney and his Bolshevik friends, we can start pulling this country together again. Not that Baldwin’s all that much better. He and his cronies have no idea what this country needs. Have you been watching—no, of course you haven’t, women don’t—but I tell you, there are some interesting things going on in Europe these days, things we could learn from. The damned League of— What’s that?” He glared at his sister-in-law, whose objection to this curse had been marginally more assertive, but went on, regardless. “The League of Nations, they’re going to bleed us dry. You ever heard such nonsense as comes out of that lot, tying us to what other countries want us to do? They can’t even get the Krauts to pay the reparations they promised—ought to hand over some of their land to the Frenchies, if that’s what it takes. Not that the French can run anything more complicated than a vineyard. But you look at Italy, now. That feller they got in there is going to pull things together!”
Dear God: could the man possibly be talking about Benito Mussolini? The self-declared Duke of Fascism and Founder of the Empire? Who had graced his inauguration as dictator back in January with a speech claiming responsibility for “all the violence”—including, apparently, one particularly brutal kidnap and murder of a political opponent by his Fascist Blackshirt supporters?
As soon as I had my breath back, I interrupted him, with a mildness that would have had Holmes edging warily back, but which went straight by this inbred peer. “He is a Socialist, you know?”
“What’s that?”
“Mussolini. Or he was. First a Socialist, then an anarchist, and a Marxist, until he read Nietzsche and declared himself one of the Übermenschen. He then tried to decide whether he was violently in favour of neutrality or violently in favour of war, but in the end he decided to declare a pox on both their houses and be violently in favour of himself and whatever struck Benito Mussolini’s fancy at the moment.”
The Marquess goggled, either at my argument or that the young female at his table had dared to make one, then rallied with typical male bluster. “Oh, I’m not saying he’s the man for our own country—even Baldwin admits Britain’s in no danger of falling in line behind a damned dictator. But the Italians are a Mediterranean race, hot-blooded in love and war. People like that want a strong man to control them. You know, talking about politics, I’ve been to a couple speeches lately, there’s some of us here in this country thinking we could do worse than to take a page out of the Italians’ book.”
I found myself staring, open-mouthed at his naïveté. The response to a festering sore was not to extol its virtues, but to lance the thing and let the poison bleed out. The people of Italy would soon enough realise what they had, and set about lancing their Duce—one hoped before the poison spread beyond its borders.
Then my host went a step too far.
“But why the deuces are we talking about this? Granted, you women are like Italy, better with a strong man in charge, but politics isn’t something you need to worry your head about.”
Even the candle-flames shrank for a moment, such was the electricity gathering around the clueless man at the table’s head. He gouged up a clot of potatoes with his fork and slapped it into his mouth while three of the other people in the room froze in their places and the fourth gripped her knife so hard the silver creaked.
I took a breath: remember, this is Ronnie’s mother cringing across the tablecloth from me. Ronnie’s mother, who was dependent on this…imbecile’s good will. Ronnie’s mother, who could be charged with collusion were I to drive this piece of silverware…
I forced my hand to open and leave the weapon behind. I placed my linen napkin on the table. I lowered my hands to my sides and felt the butler leap into place behind me, pulling out my chair. I rose, and addressed my laden plate. “Terribly sorry, I seem to have developed a case of the vapours, you’ll have to forgive me, good night.”
He scrambled to stand but I was out of the room before his chair had scraped back. I could hear Lady Dorothy’s rushed voice behind me but in moments, I was on the safe side of the door to the east wing. When my hostess came in, two minutes later, she found me at the drinks cabinet with an already-empty glass in my hand.
I gave her a bemused look. “Do you know, I don’t believe I’ve been that angry in a very long time.”
“It’s as well you didn’t bring up the Suffrage question.”
“I can imagine.” I refilled the glass and asked if I might pour something for her.
“Oh, perhaps a drop of the pear brandy?”
I gave her a generous slug of the poisonous-looking yellowy-green substance, and retreated to a chair by the fire. When my pulse rate had cooled somewhat and the sharp edges of fury had been softened by three ounces of 100-proof solvent, I raised my eyes to her. “Why do you choose to stay here?”
Her gaze darted around the room, evidence that she was not prepared for bluntness. I drew back a degree, to say, “That is, it can’t always be comfortable, to be around a man of such…strong opinions.”
“Oh, but I’m not around Edward, not all that much. He and I have our separate realms here, and I only see him—that is,” she corrected, opting for her ladylike reticence. “It is true that my brother-in-law and I are not always in agreement, but he’s been quite generous, in permitting me to remain here.”
“You could go elsewhere.”
At that, finally, she lifted her head to face me. “This is my home, Mary. My husband loved Selwick above any place on earth. I feel close to him here.”
What was it with the Beaconsfield women? Ronnie wouldn’t come back to Selwick, where she’d grown up, because she and Miles had lived in London, while Ronnie’s mother wouldn’t go home to her Ducal brother because this was where she and her husband had lived. I was fond of my own situation in Sussex, the flint house that Holmes had lived in before me, but I couldn’t imagine demanding to stay on there without him.
Or could I?
In any event, there was not much to say to her wish to remain here. And I was glad I had not responded in anger to the monstrous attitudes of the Marquess—although I would like to have driven my fork into him.
But the idea of stabbing the Marquess was a bit too close to a recent case of blood on my hands, and I moved towards less fraught ground. “Why did the Marquess never marry?”
“Oh, but he did. Goodness, that was ten—no, nearly fifteen years ago. When the old Marquess turned seventy, he more or less chose someone for Edward to marry. Nice girl, too young, I thought, and a bit…simple, but pretty enough, in a brunette kind of way. My brother-in-law has always preferred light-haired girls,” she added. “Juliette was her name. Her people own a house up near Berkshire, so Edward knew her. She died in childbirth.”
I made one of those vaguely apologetic noises, then asked if she thought the Marquess would marry again, adding, “Without a son, won’t the titles lapse? I’d have thought that would matter to him.”
“I’m pretty sure he w
ill, yes. Lily tells me Edward’s been seeing a fair amount of two or three of the neighbours whose daughters are of a marrying age. One must hope the wife he ends up with isn’t too young.”
Her mind was clearly taken up with thoughts of the consequences of the Marquess’ theoretical marriage, causing her to forget the age difference in my own. Although in fact I agreed with her: if a young girl had to cope with marriage to a surly misogynist, there ought to be some bright sides to his personality.
I kept an eye on the level in my companion’s glass, as we talked about nothing much. When she had put about an inch inside her, bringing colour to her face and relaxation to her shoulders, I gently turned matters to her sister-in-law.
“Thank you for letting me look through Vivian’s rooms. Have you seen her sketch-books?”
“Those journals on her shelf? No. Or at least, not in some years.”
“There’s one drawing you might like to see. It’s in her last one, the only journal that doesn’t have a date on the outside. You could always tell her that I brought it to your attention, if she wonders how you came across it.”
“A drawing of what?”
“You and your husband. He’s in uniform.”
Her face opened with a look of wonder. “Oh yes! I remember—we sat for Vivian, while she did it. It took ever so long, my foot went to sleep and Tommy kept making jokes and I would laugh and she would get cross with us moving. Such a lovely afternoon that was.”
I could see the sadness about to overwhelm her, so I hastened to shove the conversation in a new direction. “Did you notice anything missing from your sister-in-law’s rooms, after she left here? Apart from the jewellery?”
“I didn’t really look. Lily made up the rooms afterwards; she might have noticed.”
“I shall ask her.”
“Do you mind—could it wait till the morning? I’d like to help, but I’m really very tired.”
Vivian Beaconsfield had been gone five days now; another few hours would make no difference. So I spent the evening with a madwoman’s sketch-journals, attempting to see the world through her eyes.