The Hazardous Measure of Love: Time Into Time Book Five Page 9

  ‘Certainly. I will be at home.’ Luc watched the older man walk away. ‘I wonder what that is about.’ He shrugged. ‘Ah well, Prescott has a great deal to concern him and I had no plans for this afternoon.’

  Chapter Eight

  We were all sitting in the drawing room after luncheon – Luc, his mother, James and myself. Kit had gone up to Jermyn Street to return a shirt on the grounds that, on close examination, he was not happy with the quality of the stitching.

  We had talked ourselves to a standstill on the subject of the inquest and Luc and his mother had moved on to discussing whether or not to try and find another young man to assist with the twins, who were still too young for a proper tutor, but were more than enough to exhaust the most sprightly of nannies, nursemaids and grandmothers.

  ‘There are Adrien’s younger cousins,’ I suggested. ‘Although the only one I have met – Jerald – appears to be something of a gambler, so he would not be suitable. Quite a pleasant type, but immature, I thought.’

  ‘George and Percy are about Adrien’s age,’ Luc said. ‘I will ask Adrien how they are situated when he is slightly less preoccupied. Or some of his university friends may have suitable younger brothers.’

  Wilkins came in. ‘Mr Prescott, my lady.’

  ‘Show him in,’ Lady Radcliffe said, and stood to offer her hand when he entered. ‘My condolences on the loss of your nephew. A very shocking thing. You know my younger son, I believe. Cassandra, may I present Mr Alexander Prescott? Mr Prescott, Miss Lawrence, a friend of the family from America.’

  I went and shook hands, then we all sat down and gazed expectantly at Adrien’s father.

  ‘I had not intended disturbing you, Lady Radcliffe,’ he began.

  She waved that aside, quite deliberately ignoring his discomfort at the presence of the rest of us. ‘If this concerns your unfortunate nephew, please feel quite free to speak in front of all of us. Miss Lawrence and James were both with Radcliffe when he saw the body and I have nerves of steel, I assure you.’

  Alexander Prescott gave her a dubious look, but cleared his throat. ‘If you are quite sure, Lady Radcliffe… Adrien tells me that, as well as that unfortunate matter when he was part of your household, Lord Radcliffe, you have considerable experience in getting to the root of, er, situations.’

  ‘Murders, you mean?’ I asked encouragingly.

  More throat clearing. ‘Well, yes. Which led me to wonder, that is to enquire whether…’ His voice trailed off. he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘The whole family will be at Tillingham Hall. There is always the possibility that the crime was committed by a servant, or some criminal intent on burglary, but there is no getting around the fact that…’ He ran out of words again. ‘I was hoping that your expertise might throw light on this.’

  I know Luc is an earl, of course. But I had become used to that and it always took me aback when he got on his dignity and behaved like a top-lofty Georgian aristocrat.

  Now, one brow rose and his voice chilled by several degrees. ‘Is it possible that you believe I can be hired like some Bow Street Runner to investigate your family assembled under your roof?’ he enquired.

  ‘Good heavens, no! You quite mistake me. I was simply hoping for advice.’ Mr Prescott ground to a halt and I felt sorry for him. He was clearly in great distress – unless, of course, he was the killer and a very fine actor and this was a subtle double-bluff.

  ‘We could hardly come and stay in a house of mourning,’ I said. ‘And that is what it would take, is it not? The ability to observe everyone, to talk with them, would be essential. It is not as though you would all be together in London, is it?’

  ‘Of course you are correct, Miss Lawrence.’ Prescott ran one hand over his face. ‘I do not know what I was thinking – only that this is a nightmare and Adrien spoke so admiringly about your powers of deduction, Lord Radcliffe.’

  Luc’s hackles appeared to have subsided as rapidly as they had risen. ‘We would wish to help for many reasons. Murder is always abhorrent and Lord Tillingham was a neighbour, besides which, Adrien has earned any support we can give him. But, although it is true that I have been involved in a number of similar situations, I cannot see how I can help with this, given that you are hardly hosting a house party.’

  James, who had been sitting silent opposite Luc looked up and said, ‘Rook’s Acre.’

  Mr Prescott blinked at him and I was not surprised. It seemed a complete non sequitur. Then Luc smiled. ‘Of course. That would answer very well.’

  ‘What is Rook’s Acre?’ I asked.

  ‘A house, in Buckinghamshire, very close to the Tillingham family seat. It belonged to one of Matthew’s godmothers, Lady Alleyn, a close friend of my grandmother. She died at the beginning of the year, leaving the house to Matthew, and I have been meaning to visit the place and make decisions about how it should be managed.’

  Matthew was the younger of Luc’s twin sons – by ten minutes, apparently. Everything that was entailed would go eventually to Charles, now Viscount Chevening, and Luc had clearly selected godparents with the hope that they would leave the younger boy property to bolster his estate as an adult. The same thing had happened for James, who was the heir to his godfather’s estates in Leicestershire. Luc would doubtless settle other property on Matthew, but legacies from godparents would be of great value to a younger son.

  ‘It would be excellent for the boys to be out of London now the hotter weather is here,’ Lady Radcliffe said placidly, as though we were discussing village fetes and country rambles and not murder. ‘And I would welcome the change. Perhaps, as a neighbour, I can be of some support to the ladies of the household. I have often observed that a little dilution is a good thing in family crises.’

  If Alexander Prescott was acting, he deserved an Oscar: I could swear actual tears of relief appeared in his eyes. ‘That would be a great consolation, ma’am. My wife is quite overset by this. We were all exceedingly, er, fond of my nephew.’

  Yes… but the realisation that you and your sons are now in direct line of inheritance for a title, lands and wealth is going to dawn on you sooner or later, I thought. That might mitigate the grief a little. Or it might add a burden of guilt to an innocent person’s mourning, I added, more charitably.

  ‘I will have Wilkins begin preparations directly,’ Lady Radcliffe said. ‘There is a skeleton staff there, but the butler is elderly and they have been used to serving an even more aged widow. They will need assistance. James, will you and Mr Lyle be joining us?’

  I could see James thinking it through. ‘I believe Kit should go back to his post with my godfather,’ he said. ‘He can manage without both of us, but we have left him long enough and one should return. I would have gone too, but can I be of help..?’ He cocked his head at Luc who nodded.

  ‘Thank you, James, I would appreciate it.’

  ‘I imagine you will be accompanying the coffin?’ Luc asked Mr Prescott.

  ‘Yes. We set out tomorrow before dawn. My brother will wish to receive it and I do not want him to have to do so after dark.’ He got to his feet. ‘I greatly appreciate your support, my lord. Lady Radcliffe. If you will excuse me now.’

  We waited until we heard the front door close. ‘He angered you, Luc,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Unreasonably, I confess. I simply find myself unable to warm to the man.’

  ‘You think him guilty?’ Lady Radcliffe asked. ‘It seems improbable to me. After all, he could easily have entered through the garden, tapped on the window and his nephew would have admitted him. Why show himself in the way that he did?’

  ‘To make himself seem innocent?’ James wrinkled his nose as he thought it through. ‘He was close at hand because of the reception and perhaps it seemed safer to make a point of calling at the house.’ He shrugged. ‘But if I was the guilty party the last thing I would want is the pack of us descending on the family with our noses on the scent.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a bluff,’ I suggested. ‘He invites yo
u to investigate, Luc, but in such a way that it would seem insulting. You refuse, but think he must be innocent or he would not have done it.’

  ‘Whatever his motives, it will take us out of Town and allow us to assess Matthew’s inheritance.’ He grinned at me. ‘An expedition.’

  ‘But not an adventure, I very much hope,’ his mother said as she stood up. ‘I will put our preparations in train. When do you wish to set out, Luc?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said, making her gasp. ‘I do not want to miss the funeral and I have hopes of hearing the will read.’

  Lady Radcliffe threw up her hands. ‘Then do not blame me – or the servants – if we arrive to a dusty house with no proper provisions and find unaired beds, thick cobwebs and the servants carousing in the cellar!’

  ‘I had best write to Godfather,’ James said. ‘Kit can move back to my set at Albany for the day or two it will take him to finish all our errands here.’

  ‘I will see what I can do to help your mother,’ I told Luc.

  ‘Thank you. And I will go to the mews. I suspect we will need to hire another coach for the supplies.’ I heard him counting aloud as I went out. ‘One for the boys, their nursemaid, Nanny Yates. One for Mama, James, Cassie and me. One for staff. No, two more…’

  * * *

  I don’t know how we all did it, but by eight the next morning the coach full of staff and bedding, with the footmen seated on top, followed by the coach occupied by Cook, her assistants and hampers of provisions, were already on the road. Behind them was Luc’s curricle with a groom driving, another with a gig for James and two more men leading riding horses.

  Garrick and Carola were remaining in London. As he said, someone had to manage the business of the earldom while Luc was gadding about enjoying himself.

  We had breakfast and went to the two waiting carriages. The boys were fizzing with excitement that was only quelled when Luc promised they could take it in turns sit up with William the second coachman when we were out of London and on to quieter roads.

  I had wrapped the evidence boards in brown paper and string, securely fastened with red sealing wax, and they had gone ahead with the other luggage under the care of the first footman. I had overheard Wilkins threaten him with permanent damage to his wedding tackle (not exactly how he put it) should they be misplaced, damaged or opened.

  Wilkins had been left with the task of talking to the Tillingham staff, on the grounds that informal chats with neighbouring servants might extract more information than any of us might elicit. He was also going to discover whether any of the other households around the Square had encountered intruders or had suffered break-ins.

  I very much doubted that they had, or, if something had occurred, that it was connected with the Tillingham murder, but the questions must be asked. ‘We haven’t done anything about the footman that Lord Tillingham dismissed,’ I said, snapping out of my meandering thoughts about whatever it was Sherlock Holmes had said about eliminating the impossible. Or was it the possible? Or was that Occam’s Razor?

  ‘I asked Garrick to see if he could trace him through the domestic agencies,’ Luc said.

  ‘He appears a more probable suspect than some random housebreaker,’ Lady Radcliffe agreed, looking up from the book she was reading. ‘But I fear someone in the family does seem the most likely culprit.’

  ‘Or Madame Vallaint,’ I said. ‘She strikes me as being the epitome of the woman scorned, especially if the Viscount did not satisfy her demands for diamonds as a pay-off.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Lady Radcliffe closed the book, keeping one finger in to mark her place. ‘I suspect that she would be more inclined to keep him alive so she could torment him with incessant demands for farewell gifts. I do not say that she might not have lost her temper and struck out if she had encountered him and they had argued violently – although that does not sound like Lord Tillingham to me – but I do not see her plotting such an undramatic and secretive murder.’

  I was not so sure. I could imagine Madame getting into the back garden (although my mind did boggle a little at the thought of her climbing the gate), tapping on the window and then, when she had been admitted, attempting to seduce the Viscount back into her arms. If he had spurned her then she might have seized the paperknife and struck a fatal blow fortuitously, without knowing the right place at all. But no, we had eliminated the paperknife early on, I recalled.

  ‘The weapon. What about the weapon? We never looked for that, did we?’

  Luc, who seemed to be following my thought processes – not always an easy task – nodded. ‘I did ask Grainger to check that all the kitchen knives were accounted for.’ He hesitated. ‘And they were. Assuming we can trust Grainger, that is.’

  On that unsettling thought we all went back to our various occupations. Lady Radcliffe re-opened her book, James was playing against himself on a traveling chess board, Luc was reading a stack of correspondence and making notes and I was staring out of the window because I could never get enough of Regency sight-seeing.

  I knew Luc kept a copy of a road book and a map in the door pocket of the coach, so I dug those out and studied them.

  Which way would we go? Surely up what is now the Edgware Road to Bushey, then Watford – ‘We are going to pass through Welhampstead!’

  ‘We are.’ Luc looked up and grinned at my excitement. ‘It is the last stop to change horses, so we will not linger, but I promise we can return to visit: it is only fifteen miles or so from Rook’s Acre.’

  We made the first change at The Abercorn Arms in Stanmore, then again at The Bell at Two Waters. I became laughably over-excited at seeing the horse-drawn canal barges on what I called Grand Union but which James told me was called the Grand Junction in that time.

  Then I asked Lady Radcliffe if we could change sides so I could look out for Snook’s grave on Boxmoor Common. There was no sign of it and I remembered that the white stone over the highwayman’s last resting place was a relatively modern addition. All three Franklins were bemused by my interest.

  ‘Why mark a highwayman’s grave?’ Lady Radcliffe wanted to know.

  ‘Because they have a romantic reputation.’

  James snorted.

  ‘And we don’t have them anymore in my time. At least, not galloping about on horseback. And don’t tell me that they aren’t at all romantic in real life, any more than pirates are – I know all about Dick Turpin roasting landladies over the fire to force them to tell him where they had hidden their savings.’

  That led to questions about crime in my time. I didn’t feel strong enough to embark on explanations about cybercrime, but they were surprised about sentencing policy – no hangings, no transportation, no treadmills – and were interested in prison reform and the treatment of young offenders.

  That occupied us as far as The Crown and Anchor in Welhampstead and I fell silent, too busy taking in the differences in my home town to talk coherently about penal reform. The others put up very patiently with me pointing and exclaiming, ‘I live down there!’ and ‘I never knew there was a pond!’ and, ‘Oh look! Stocks!’ but, when I collapsed back from the window once we had rolled out of town, they were all smiling indulgently.

  ‘Sorry. But it is exciting.’

  ‘It is,’ Luc agreed. ‘I want to visit London when I am next in your time.’

  We drove through Berkhamstead and Tring and turned north on more minor roads, with the Vale of Aylesbury on our left and the Chiltern Hills, covered in a green froth of beech trees, on our right.

  It was just past one when we finally rolled to a halt in front of a handsome stone-built manor house. It sat in the middle of an ancient moat, the banks of which now sloped gently down and were dotted with weeping willows, and was surrounded by shaggy lawns and overgrown shrubbery. Beyond the moat were pastures, but Luc pointed at the hedges ringing them. ‘That’s the limit of the land belonging to the house.’

  The carriage with the boys arrived as we were climbing down and Prestwick, the decid
edly tottery butler, descended the front steps to greet us. I could almost hear him creaking. Our staff had already arrived, he informed us. Luncheon would be ready the moment we called for it and hot water was, at that very moment, being sent to our chambers.

  The twins shot off to look at the ducks on the moat, pursued by both nursemaid and nanny.

  ‘Let them run,’ Luc said. ‘They have been cooped up for over four hours.’ Then he too broke into a run as one of them – Matthew, most likely – took hold of a hanging branch and began to swing over the water. James swore and ran too.

  ‘My nerves cannot stand it,’ Lady Radcliffe said, laughing. ‘All four will probably end up in the water in a moment. Come along, Cassandra, let us go and find our bedchambers and tidy ourselves.’

  Chapter Nine

  After luncheon Luc sent a note to Alexander Prescott to tell him that we had arrived and to enquire about the arrangements for the funeral. I was disappointed not to be able to attend, although I knew that upper-class females were considered too fragile to cope with the trauma of the graveside, but Lady Radcliffe said that while the men were at the interment we could call on the ladies of the house to offer sympathy and support. And, she pointed out, once there, we could sneak in to listen to the reading of the will. Luc intended telling Alexander that his own presence to observe this ritual was essential for the investigation.

  Then we set up the evidence boards in a room that could be secured and the family, with me in tow, set off to investigate young Matthew’s new house.

  He and his twin were profoundly uninterested in the number of bedchambers, the state of the roof, the condition of the gardens or the effectiveness of the kitchen range. They wanted to explore the cellars, the attics and, most definitely, the moat.

  ‘Please, Papa, may we have a boat?’

  ‘Not this time,’ Luc temporised. ‘We do not know yet how deep the water is. We may need a punt or we might be able to use a rowing boat. But, unless I have your word of honour, both of you, that you will not go within six feet of the edge without either Uncle James or myself, then there will be no boat of any sort, ever.’