Кейси Майклс - The Butler Did It

“I am not making a push for Thornley, Mother Clifford,” Daphne protested, but she did not look the older woman in the eyes. “Doesn’t he have the loveliest posture? Samuel always slouched so.”

Emma added two sugars to her tea. “Grandmama, remember, we are not to specifically mention the marquis in public unless forced to do so, and then just to say that he is our unfortunately absent host. Thornley was adamant about that. I think the poor man must be strapped for cash, which is the only explanation I can find as to why he leases rooms to perfect strangers for the Season. We were even quite vague with Lady Jersey on her single visit here, as you might remember, although she is much too interested in herself to notice where she is when she’s telling all and sundry how very wonderful she is. But we must protect the man’s reputation.”

“Humph. If it’s his reputation he’s worried about, you’d think he’d at least vet whom he leases to better before allowing them to run tame in his household.”

Emma put down her spoon very carefully, trying to hang on to her composure. She had two choices: ignore what her grandmother just said—hinted at—or ask the woman what she meant. She must be feeling daring, or else the fog had muddled her mind, because she then took a deep breath and asked, “What have you done this time, Grandmama? Waited until either Mrs. Norbert or Sir Edgar went out and about, and then pored through their belongings?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Emma. Your grandmother would never do any such thing. It would be unladylike, and too shabby by half,” Daphne scolded, brushing pastry crumbs from her skirt. “Would you, Mother Clifford? Sneak about, that is, and poke into drawers and such?”

“Here’s a lesson for you, Daphne. You, too, Emma. Never ask questions you wouldn’t want to hear answered.” Fanny shook off Emma’s silent offer of tea (a move meant to shut the woman up, at least for a few moments), stood, and headed for the drinks table. She picked up the decanter of sherry, made a face at it, then poured herself two fingers of port.

Daphne looked to her daughter, her eyes wide. “She wouldn’t…she couldn’t go poking about in…she—oh, Lord, she did, didn’t she? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Tell me!”

“She did,” Emma admitted to her mother. Why hadn’t she waited until she and Fanny were alone, before opening this particular jar of worms? “But,” she added quietly, “I believe that was yesterday.”

Emma looked at her grandmother as that tiny, always energetic woman sat herself down once more, and decided she had to know everything, now. “What was on today’s agenda, Grandmama? Waiting until one of them fell asleep, and then prying open his or her mouth, to count teeth?”

“A good hiding, Emma, I’ve always said you should have had at least one during your formative years. Don’t badger an old lady, all right? If you behave, I may make you happy and tell you that I have been badly served for my inquisitive nature.”

“You got no reward for your nosiness, you mean,” Emma interrupted. “Good.”

“A dozen hidings wouldn’t have been enough,” Fanny said, sipping at her port. “But I tell you, I’m extremely disappointed. Mrs. Norbert, after a careful investigation of her belongings—oh, Daphne, close your mouth before a fly lands in it—is a seamstress.”

Emma blinked. “Well, yes, she said as much, Grandmama, that first night at dinner. A seamstress who came into some inheritance or another. She doesn’t wish to enter Society, but only to be treated like a lady for a few months, being waited on, eating well. She hasn’t tried to hide her past. What of it?”

Fanny rolled her still bright-blue eyes. “A seamstress, Emma. You know what that means. Or, what it usually means, not that old hatchet face would have been more than a penny-a-poke gel, up against some slimy warehouse wall.”

Daphne dropped her teacup—it shattered against the edge of the table—before slapping her hands over Emma’s ears. “Mother Clifford! I’ll not have you saying such things with my innocent daughter here. Or with me here, come to think of it. Samuel always said you had a mouth that needed a good scrubbing with strong soap.”

Emma calmly reached up and removed her mother’s hands, unfortunately just in time to hear Fanny go off on one of her favorite jaunts—that of riding up and down her daughter-in-law’s tender sensibilities.

“Oh, stubble it, Daphne. You knew what I meant, which shows you to not be as pure and ladylike as you wish you were. You couldn’t have been, living with Samuel and his constant peccadilloes with various bits of the muslin company. That, dear girl,” she ended, looking to Emma, “would be whores, lightskirts and, once, when he was particularly flushed from a win at the tables, a kept woman he lost in the next run of his usual bad luck.”

“You never liked him. Your own son.” Daphne sighed deeply. “And to that, Mother Clifford, I can only say For Shame.”

Emma had enough of her mother in her to be at least marginally horrified, and enough of her grandmother in her to have to remind herself not to laugh out loud. Suddenly, Mrs. Norbert seemed a safer topic of conversation. “How…” she asked at last, “…how do you know Mrs. Norbert is a seamstress, Grandmama, rather than a…a seamstress?”

Fanny sniffed. “Her sewing basket, for one. Packets of pins and needles, a well-worn darning knob, a full set of workmanlike scissors. That basket isn’t for show, I tell you. It has been used. That,” she said, “and the fact that her underclothes and nightwear are of sturdy, oft-mended spinster quality. Meaning,” she ended, looking to her daughter-in-law, “they were never meant to see a man, just a long, cold winter.”

“So you did sneak into her room and look in her drawers,” Daphne said, slowly catching up.

“Looked at ’em, picked ’em up and inspected ’em,” Fanny said (as Emma gave in and began laughing), then downed the remainder of her port. “I had so hoped she’d been a streetwalker, even a kept woman. But she’s a demned seamstress, which makes her about as interesting as the mud fence she so greatly resembles. But I have hopes yet for Sir Edgar. There’s something about that man that screams out to be investigated.”

Emma sobered. “Grandmama, you will not be looking at his drawers, understand? I won’t have it.”

“And I’m not interested in his drawers. He’s older than dirt,” Fanny shot back. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry, gel. I just want to know our fellow tenants. Or are you looking to get murdered in your bed?”

Emma sighed in the midst of picking up shards of very fine china cup and looked to her mother, who was going rather pale. “She doesn’t really mean that, Mama.”

“Yes, she does,” Fanny said, winking at her granddaughter. “There we’d be, dreaming sweet dreams, and bam, eternal rest, with sewing scissors sticking out from between our ribs. Or maybe a pillow over our heads, pressed there by Sir Edgar, who is really a bloody murderer who, even as we lay there, cold and dead as stones, spends the rest of the night going through our drawers.”

“She doesn’t really mean that, either, Mama,” Emma said as Daphne clutched an embroidered silk pillow to her ample bosom. “Grandmama, you’re impossible.”

“And I pride myself on it,” Fanny said, standing up to go refill her glass. “Except, of course, you’re so easy, Daphne. I really wish you’d give me more incentive to tease you. But, then, I’ve got other fish to fry here in London, don’t I? And them I’ll tease to much better effect.”

Emma laid the pieces of broken china on the tea tray and sat back once more, to stare in her grandmother’s direction. “What are you planning, Grandmama? We’ve got some funds left, but probably not enough to bribe your way out of the local guardhouse. And, come to think of it, we’d first need to take a family vote as to whether or not we’d wish to spend our last penny saving you. I’d consider that, Grandmama, as I know where my vote would go, and Cliff still hasn’t quite forgiven you for making him ride all the way here inside the coach with us.”

“You should both thank me for that. You know what would have happened if he rode up with the coachman. He’d have found some way to take the ribbons, and we’d all be dead in a ditch right now.”

“Dead, dead, dead,” Daphne lamented, still clutching the pillow. “Have you no other conversation today, Mother Clifford?”

“I do, Daphne, but you don’t want to hear it. Now, Thornley told me that all social events have been postponed again because of this fog, which leaves us at loose ends this evening, again. I’m bored to flinders, frankly, so what I thought was that we could corner Sir Edgar, all three of us, and press him for a bit of his history. You know. Where he was born, who his father was, why he keeps several extremely large, heavy trunks hidden behind the locked door of his dressing room. I saw them go up the stairs when he arrived, but they’re sitting nowhere they can be seen. He has to have locked them up for a terrible reason.”

“Let’s talk about locking you in your dressing room,” Emma said succinctly, ringing the small bell on the tea tray, at which time Thornley appeared in the doorway, just as if he’d been standing right outside all along, waiting for the summons…and hearing every word the ladies said.

“You rang, Miss Clifford?” Thornley inquired, already picking up the tea tray, and not appearing at all surprised to see that one of the marquis’s priceless china cups was now in seven uneven pieces.

“Yes, thank you, Thornley,” she said, laying her damp, tea-stained serviette on the tray. “I was wondering—” she looked straight into the man’s eyes “—do you happen to know the whereabouts of Mr. Clifford?”

Thornley, eyes quickly averted, looking somewhere in the vicinity of the portrait of the late Marquis and several of his hounds that hung over the mantel, said, “I believe he is resting, Miss Clifford.”

“He’s still in bed?” Emma sighed. “It’s nearly gone five, Thornley. What time did my brother get in this morning?”

“I couldn’t really say, Miss Clifford,” Thornley said, still avoiding her gaze, even as she stood—which didn’t come close to putting her on eye level with the man, but she’d hoped to at least be able to read his expression.

But Thornley had no expressions, other than Proper, and possibly, Prudent.

“Very well, as I know he accompanied my brother, I’ll ask Riley,” Emma said, brushing past him as she headed for the stairs. She stopped, turned back toward the pair of sofas. “Mama? Do you have another penny?”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Clifford,” Thornley said stiffly. “Riley escorted Mr. Clifford to a…a sporting event last evening, and they returned here at approximately six this morning, Mr. Clifford rather the worse for wear. Riley has been reprimanded, Miss Clifford.”

“A sporting event?” Fanny asked. “What was it? Mill? Cockfight? Oh, wait. A sporting event, you say, Thornley? Or a sporting house?”

Emma watched as Thornley’s ears turned bright red. Poor fellow. He could keep his spine straight. His expression never betrayed what he might be thinking. And she hadn’t really needed to see his eyes. Those ears of his were a dead giveaway.

“Ah!” Fanny crowed, punching a fist into the air. “Good for him, and about time, too!”

Daphne, who had come within Ames Ace of swooning into the cushions at the thought of being murdered in her bed, now gave way to the blessed darkness that swam before her eyes.