3-Book Victorian Crime Collection: Death at Dawn, Death of a Dancer, A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
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the immediate family were present, including Stephen. He was sitting on a chair beside his mother’s sofa, showing her something in a book. Lady Mandeville was smiling, more animated than I’d ever seen her, as if he were a lover instead of a son. When James went running to her, she hugged the boy as she usually did and spoke to him, but still with half her attention on Stephen. Celia was sitting by the square piano painted with swathes of roses and forget-me-nots, but didn’t look as if she’d been playing it. She said good evening, mostly to Betty rather than me. Mrs Beedle was by the window, sewing as usual, and Sir Herbert was standing by the fireplace, reading letters and paying no attention at all to the rest of his family. Henrietta, who hated to be ignored, went over and stood beside him.
‘Papa, may I have a puppy too?’
She said it in a wheedling lisp, so at first I wasn’t sorry when he ignored her and went on reading.
‘Papa, may I …?’
He gestured to her to be quiet. Lady Mandeville called across from the couch.
‘Henrietta, come here and stop bothering your father.’
Anybody could tell the letter was annoying him. His face was going red, his shoulders rigid. But the child wouldn’t budge.
‘Cowards. Miserable, temporising pack of damned cowards!’
He shouted it at the top of his voice, crumpled the letter and threw it into the empty fireplace. As he turned, his elbow caught Henrietta on the side of the face. He might not have intended it, but when she cried out and went sprawling on the carpet, he made no move to pick her up.
‘Herbert, the children …’ Lady Mandeville protested.
James had started to cry and was clinging to her, so she couldn’t get up and go to her daughter.
‘Damn you and damn the children.’
Betty and I ran to Henrietta. Sir Herbert cannoned into Betty and almost knocked her off her feet as he made for the door to the hall. As he went out, I heard him giving an order to the footman about hock and sandwiches in the library. By now Henrietta was howling and even Charles was biting his lip and looking scared. Mrs Beedle was the first of the family to recover.
‘Henrietta, please stop that noise. Celia, see to James. Betty, have you arnica ointment in your room?’
She wanted the children out of the drawing room, back to the safety of the schoolroom and, in spite of James’s reluctance to leave his mother, we managed it.
We calmed the children, fed them bread and milk and put them to bed. Henrietta had a bruise developing on her jaw where her father’s elbow had struck. Betty and I didn’t discuss what had happened until we were sitting at the schoolroom table over a pot of tea.
‘Is he often as bad as that?’ I said.
‘He’s always had a black temper, but it’s been worse in the last few months. A lot worse.’
‘How does Lady Mandeville stand for it?’
‘What can she do?’
‘She could leave, couldn’t she? She must have family or friends.’
‘And lose the children? Children are a father’s property, remember. If she walks out of here, she’ll never see them again. So what choice has she got?’
‘Can’t anybody do anything? What about the son? He seems fond of his mother.’
Betty gave me a look. I had the impression that what had happened downstairs had made a bond between her and me.
‘Mr Stephen’s part of the trouble. If it weren’t for him, she might stand up for herself more than she does.’
‘Why?’
Betty took her time deciding whether to answer, finishing her cup of tea and swirling the dregs round to look at the pattern the tea leaves made.
‘After university, he took up with some bad company and got himself into debt.’
‘Gambling debts?’
‘Mostly. Other things as well. He doesn’t have any money of his own, of course, not a shilling. So …’ She hesitated, looking into her cup. ‘He got put into debtors’ prison.’
She whispered it, her eyes scared. I was perhaps not quite as shocked as she expected me to be. The fact was, some of my father’s friends had been put into debtors’ prison from time to time and seemed to regard it as no worse an inconvenience than an attack of fever or rheumatics.
‘Not even the gentlemen’s part of the prison,’ Betty insisted. ‘In there with the common criminals without even a blanket to cover himself and rats running over him. And Sir Herbert let him stay there for three whole weeks.’
I thought of Stephen’s elegant manners and quizzical eyebrows failing to impress the rats and did feel rather sorry for him.
‘Lady Mandeville was on her knees to Sir Herbert, literally down on her knees, begging him to have her son out,’ Betty said. ‘He could have settled the debts ten times over and hardly missed it, and everybody knew that. But he wouldn’t do it, not until Stephen had learned his lesson, he said. Ever since then, she’s been terrified. That was what started … you know.’
She tipped a hand towards her mouth, as if holding a glass. She might have said more, but Henrietta was crying out and we had to go to her. What with that and James wetting his bed, we had a hard night with them, and it was past one in the morning before they were all three sleeping. Betty said she’d listen out for them, so I could go upstairs.
I didn’t sleep because I was too scared about the journey I must make in the morning. At first light, before even the earliest maid could have begun her cleaning duties, I crept down the back stairs to the drawing room and retrieved from the fireplace the crumpled letter that Sir Herbert had flung there. It was the kind of thing that spies did, after all. I took it back to my room to read. It had the address of a gentleman’s club at the top and was in small, cramped writing.
Dear Mandeville,
Yours of the 23rd ult. has only just come to my hand. I am writing in haste to urge you to desist from this most dangerous folly. You are aware of the extent to which I share all the concerns of yourself and others about the deplorable weakness of the present administration and the threat to our dignity, profits and rights of property which must inevitably result if they continue cravenly to appease the masses. But there are remedies which are more perilous than the disease and, if I understand your hints aright (which I am very much afraid I do, greatly though I should wish otherwise), your proposed cure is one such.
If in the past my too-great warmth on such subjects has led you to the erroneous conclusion that I might in any way support what you propose, I can only apologise for unwittingly misleading you. Bluntly, I want no part in this. If indeed a wrong was done, then it was done twenty years ago. To attempt to right it in these changed times would be no service to our country or to him you wish to serve. Let him not cross the Channel. If a pension must be discussed, then – provided that stretch of water remains for ever between him and England – I might be prepared to say a word in certain ears. Otherwise I must ask you not to correspond with me on the subject again.
Believe me, your most alarmed well-wisher,
Tobias
I added a postscript to the note I’d written to Blackstone and sealed up the letter along with it. Then I put the note and Celia’s letter into my reticule and went stocking-footed down the back stairs so as not to wake the maids.
Even so early in the morning it was unthinkable to walk down the main drive, with all those windows watching me. The back road was reassuring by comparison. After passing a big, lightning-scarred