The Ashford Affair Page 34

  Clemmie leaned her elbows on the table. “I’m surprised they’re not battering down your door.”

  The marquess—Tony—made a deprecatory gesture. “They wouldn’t if they knew the size of our overdraft.”

  Clemmie laughed huskily. Amazing what one could do once one didn’t care anymore. She briefly toyed with the image of the look on Paul’s face if she told him she was out with the Marquess of Rivesdale. He would, as the phrase so elegantly went, be shitting bricks. That really would be a great big up-yours, if she followed in the path of her grandmother and married a Marquess of Rivesdale. Everything solved for her, no one asking her why she’d left CPM—who would when there was a handsome Brit in the picture? They could ride off into the London smog, happily every after.

  Whoa. What in the hell was she thinking? The word of the day, folks, is rebound, she told herself, and took another swig of her water. Not rebound from Dan—that had been over long ago—but rebound from the firm.

  “Besides,” Tony said, “how many of them would be artwork come to life? I always rather fancied her,” he added. “The lady in the portrait.”

  He was smiling still, but Clemmie’s imagination painted his smile in sinister colors. There was something a little too gothic about it all, the man in love with the painting on the wall.

  “She’s nothing more than canvas and pigment,” Clemmie protested, “an image on a wall.”

  “She was a real person once,” said the marquess. “A rather smashing one, actually.”

  Smashing hearts. Clemmie thought of her mother and Aunt Anna, of Granny Addie. Whoever this Bea was, she’d left them all shattered in her wake.

  “We don’t look that much alike,” Clemmie said shrilly.

  “No, you don’t,” said Tony disarmingly. He leaned back in his chair, propping one ankle on the opposite knee. “There’s something very different about you. Something…”

  “American?” suggested Clemmie.

  He grinned at her and she felt herself relaxing. “Yes, that’s most likely it. Your features are very like, but—” He scrutinized her face, not rudely, but with an almost childlike curiosity. “You don’t look at all the same, somehow.”

  “My teeth are probably better,” said Clemmie before wondering whether one should really make dentistry jokes to a Brit. Not that Tony’s teeth were that bad, just slightly yellower than she was used to.

  Tony shifted in his chair, rummaging in a leather portfolio case. He drew out a handful of yellowed newspaper clippings. “Those papers I wanted to show you—they’re about her, actually. There were wedged away in the back of a drawer. At first, I thought they were just lining, but then I took a closer look, and—well, I thought you might be interested.”

  With a courtly gesture, he handed the clippings across the table. Clemmie’s breath caught in her throat. Uncrossing her legs, she leaned forward, fanning the papers out across the table, feeling the old paper crackle and break.

  Marchioness Murdered! blazed one headline.

  Peer’s Daughter Missing ran another, more circumspect.

  “Good Lord,” said Clemmie. Bea stared out at her from the yellowing print, smirking at the camera in a fox fur stole that went up right beneath her chin. Clemmie quickly shuffled through, scanning for the relevant bits, oblivious to the man sitting across from her, the social chatter at the neighboring tables.

  No wonder Granny Addie had kept it all quiet all these years. They weren’t just talking spouse swapping.

  Lady Beatrice Desborough had gone missing from a safari in Kenya in 1927, missing, believed dead. Her husband was suspected … suspected.… No. Clemmie didn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it.

  Not Grandpa Frederick. That was Grandpa Frederick’s grainy face in that picture, and there was another, a copy of the picture of Bea and Grandpa Frederick on the ship. A HUSBAND SCORNED? ran the caption.

  In the very, very small print, it mentioned that the deceased’s sister had stayed behind to look after her orphaned children. They’d gotten Granny’s name wrong as well as their relationship; they had her as Adele rather than Adeline. Miss Adele Gillcott.

  “Are you all right?” asked Tony. “You look rather pale.”

  “Where’s that drink?” Clemmie all but grabbed her gin and tonic off the waitress’ tray. She took a fortifying swig. “No, it’s just—wow. I didn’t know things like this happened.”

  “It’s not the only famous murder to have happened in Kenya,” said Tony helpfully. “There was also the Earl of Errol.”

  He went on, outlining the circumstances of that case and the book based on it while Clemmie stared at the clippings, trying to make sense of them, trying to reconcile what had happened in Kenya decades before she was born with the people she had known, the people who had kept the shampoo out of her eyes and helped her with her homework.

  There were ten clippings in all, each successively smaller as it became clearer and clearer that the police weren’t about to make an arrest.

  Death by misadventure was the final verdict.

  “They never solved it, did they?” She broke into his monologue.

  Tony looked quizzically up at her. “The Earl of Erroll?”

  “No, this one.” Clemmie tapped the clippings with one bitten nail. “The Desborough murder.”

  “I don’t believe so,” said Tony, slightly disconcerted. A smile spread across his face. “They needed that Belgian chap on the case.”

  “Or Miss Marple,” said Clemmie abstractedly. “Who do you think did it? Not the Errol murder—this one.”

  “Well,” said Tony, making an effort to play along, “the most likely suspect would have been my grandmother, but she was back home in England—and she’d probably have gone in for poison, nothing quite so messy as wild animals.”

  Clemmie mustered a feeble smile, since one seemed to be required. “Of the people on the scene?”

  Tony tilted his head, making his hair go flop. “My money is on the husband. They’re nearly as bad as butlers when it comes to committing murders.”

  The husband. Clemmie remembered Grandpa Frederick in his old fedora and tweed jacket, with that ridiculous walking stick, standing at the base of a rock in Central Park, watching her as she clambered up, holding on to her ice cream for her.

  “They do say the spouse is always the first suspect, don’t they?” she said a little wildly.

  “It sounds like he had motive,” said Tony. “All those other chaps and all that.”

  Impossible to suspect Grandpa Frederick of murder. On the other hand, what did she really know of him? What did she know of anyone? They’d all been lying to her for years. Clemmie swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.

  “I prefer the Frenchman,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  Tony frowned. “I believe he went off to France and married the woman his parents chose for him. I did do a bit of poking around, out of curiosity,” he confessed. “It gave me something to do while the plumber was unstopping the downstairs loo.”

  “And what about the other potential murderer—this Vaughn person?”

  “He died in a plane crash not long after.” Tony looked thoughtfully at the condensation rings left by his drink. “They didn’t come to a happy end, that lot.”

  Clemmie remembered Granny Addie and Grandpa Frederick sitting with their heads together by the old black-and-white television in the den, arguing politics together. She remembered the way Granny Addie slipped the best pieces of meat onto Grandpa Frederick’s plate, the way Grandpa Frederick had held the door for Granny Addie. They’d always been Clemmie’s image of the perfect couple. They’d always seemed so happy.

  Clemmie stared down at her hands, bare of rings, unadorned except for her watch. She was, she realized, more than a little bit tipsy on the one G&T. Not having eaten since yesterday might have something to do with it. She hadn’t been hungry.

  “Perhaps some of them did. Eventually.” She looked up at Tony,
the marquess. “My mother was one of their little girls.”

  Confusion chased across the marquess’ face. “But I’d thought you’d said she was a sort of cousin.”

  “It’s a long story. But no. She was my grandmother. The one who was murdered.” It felt bizarre saying it, claiming her. Clemmie would have thought it would have given her a sense of ownership; instead, it just felt empty.

  “Oh,” said Tony, and his drink slopped over the sides of the martini glass. He looked at her and she wondered what he was seeing. The woman in the portrait? Or an American woman well on her way to getting sloshed on one G&T? “Well, that does make us rather more closely related, doesn’t it? Your grandmother might have been my grandmother.”

  If she hadn’t died in Kenya. But she had died in Kenya and Addie had come to New York and somehow everything had gone all topsy-turvy. For the better, Clemmie’s mother had said. For the worse, said Aunt Anna. Clemmie didn’t know whom or what to believe.

  Murder, screamed the headlines of the articles.

  “Here’s to grandmothers,” said Clemmie, and clinked her glass against the marquess’. “Whoever they may be. I don’t know about you, but I could use a second round.”

  Obligingly Tony raised his hand and ordered another round of drinks.

  Kenya, 1927

  Addie woke in the wee hours.

  The covers were twisted around her, damp with sweat. Addie lay blinking in the dark, shaking off the last vestiges of a dream. She had been with Bea. They were in Nairobi, but it was a Nairobi that didn’t look at all like the Nairobi Addie knew, more of an Eastern bazaar out of a book, with lush tents and rolls of silk and lamps hanging from chains. There were people tugging on their dresses, chanting, “Come buy, come buy.”

  She turned to look for Bea, but Bea had gone, slipped off into the bazaar. Addie tried to follow, but there were hands plucking at her skirt, her sleeve, her belt, holding her back. “Come buy, come buy.” Ahead, she could see, faintly, the flounce of Bea’s skirt, whisking around a corner. She could hear Bea’s laugh, like silver bells.

  Addie pulled free, desperately twisting and winding, Bea’s laugh always just ahead, always just ahead of her.…

  Addie struggled up into a sitting position, shivering in the midnight cold. It was useless to try to sleep now; she knew that from experience. It seemed bizarre that outside the rest of the world went on, the crickets chirped, an owl hooted, an animal called. Out in the fields, the coffee was growing; in the huts, babies cried and men snored; and yet Bea was dead and would wake no more.

  Addie drew her dressing gown around her. It was cold at night, so cold. She had never noticed it before—probably because, before, there had been no impetus to wander the night, listening to the lonely calls of nightjars and the squawk of a small animal in the most dire of distress.

  She wasn’t the only one who walked the night. There was a light where there oughtn’t have been, coming from the dining room. Addie padded to the doorway in her bare feet, tying the sash of her dressing gown over the silk pajamas that had been Bea’s gift to her, made to Bea’s own design.

  In the dining room, Frederick sat at the long table by himself, a crystal glass in front of him, a decanter in easy reach. The generator went off every night at midnight and the electric lights with it. Frederick had lit the heavy silver candelabra that stood in the center of the table. The candles cast a flickering light across his face, dancing over the stubble on his chin, hiding some shadows and creating new ones.

  He reached for the decanter, drawing out the stopper.

  “You should go to bed,” Addie said softly.

  The stopper clattered against the neck of the bottle. “Good God. You scared the life out of me.”

  The decanter had been nearly full when Addie went to bed. Now it was down below the halfway mark. “You’ve had enough for one night.”

  “Enough? There isn’t enough whiskey in the world.” Addie watched from the door as he splashed more into his glass. “All the whiskey in the world couldn’t wash me clean.”

  He was talking gibberish. “You need your rest. For the girls.”

  “The girls.” Frederick turned the glass around in his hand, watching the candlelight play off the amber liquid. “They’re going to take them away from me, Addie.”

  Addie ventured into the circle of candlelight. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Frederick lifted his head. “They think I did it. That detective. He’s going to pin Bea’s death on me.” He blinked at her, having trouble focusing. She hadn’t seen him this sloshed since England, since those nightmare nightclubs. She didn’t like it. “If they hang me—you’ll take the girls, won’t you? Don’t let them go to Bea’s witch of a mother. I wouldn’t let her near a dog.”

  “No one is taking the girls away. Frederick.” Addie slipped into the chair beside him, leaning forward along the polished table. “Frederick, look at me. They can’t hang you for something you didn’t do.”

  Frederick’s elbow knocked the decanter. Addie caught it just before it went over. “Why not? It’s happened before. Our own local Lestrade over in Chania has decided it. He thinks I conked Bea over the head and strangled her with her scarf, then dumped her for the animals to eat her.”

  Addie couldn’t think of anything to say. She was speechless.

  “It’s a nice little plot, when you think about it.” Whiskey sloshed as the glass swayed in his unsteady hand. “Crime of passion and all that rot. I saw Bea carrying on with Vaughn and Fontaine and I made plans to bump her off. I shared the tent with her. I had the best opportunity. Motive and means all in one. Get out the black cap and build the scaffold.”

  Addie shook herself free of the image of Bea, senseless, being dragged through the woods. It was all nonsense, sheer nonsense.

  “And you’re just going to let them do that?” Addie said sharply. “For heaven’s sake, Frederick, enough! This is pure self-indulgence. If you don’t care to defend yourself, do it for—do it for the people who care about you. If you had motive, so did Vaughn and Fontaine. Are you so anxious to protect them?”

  Frederick blinked at her. “The inspector…”

  “Has nothing. Nothing but speculation. You didn’t do it,” Addie said firmly. “That’s the important thing. Don’t go turning yourself in for something you didn’t do. That’s not nobility; it’s stupidity.”

  Frederick shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “We fought that night. The inspector knows about it. I told him. Had to. Didn’t want it to look like I was trying to hide.”

  Addie leaned forward, the sash of her dressing gown biting into her waist. “Frederick, what happened that night? What really happened?”

  It had been eating at her since that night, the look on Frederick’s face at dinner, the sound of their raised voices, the scratch on Frederick’s face. She didn’t, couldn’t, believe he would have been so cold-blooded as to hurt Bea—at least, not intentionally. There had been that horrible crash. If Bea had cut herself, if she had been badly hurt, if it had been an accident—it was too horrible to be thought of, but she had to think of it. She had to know. They couldn’t go on like this, starting at shadows.

  “I heard you fighting. And something smashed.”

  “A looking glass,” said Frederick dully. “Bea threw her looking glass at me. The one with the silver backing. It smashed against my trunk. Seven years’ bad luck.”

  “Why did she throw a looking glass at you?”

  “Why did Bea do anything?” Frederick swayed in his chair. Addie put out a hand, but he caught himself. “It was late. She’d come in around three in the morning. She’d been with someone—I could smell it on her. I don’t know whether it was Vaughn or de Fontaine. It might have been both for all I cared.”

  Addie schooled herself not to react, her heart aching for both of them, for Bea and for Frederick.

  “She taunted me with it.” Frederick stared out into the darkness. Addie wondered what he saw there. Bea? “S
he’d never done that before. Oh, she’d had affairs, certainly, but she didn’t rub my nose in them.” He shook his head, confused. “It was almost as though she wanted to make me angry.”

  “And she succeeded?” Addie said softly.

  Frederick’s grim expression was all the answer she needed. “I told her I wanted a divorce. I told her that I could divorce her, or she could divorce me, I didn’t much care which. I told her I was in love with you.”

  Addie’s nails cut into her palms. She forced herself to unclench her hands finger by finger. “What did Bea say?”

  “She laughed.” Frederick put his hands to his temples. “I can still hear her now, laughing, laughing.… And she said, she said”—his voice rose in a vicious mimic of Bea’s—“‘I’ve already tried divorce, darling. It’s a dead bore.’”

  The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock.

  “It deteriorated from there.” Frederick’s voice was flat. He reached to pour himself another shot of whiskey. This time, Addie didn’t object. “I told her I’d divorce her whether she liked it or not. She told me she’d like to see me try. I—”

  “Yes?”

  “I called her a lying whore.” Frederick’s face twisted with self-loathing. “I told her that she was no better than a cat in heat and that no court in the world would back her against me. I told her that the girls would be better off without her.”

  “Oh.” Addie’s hand rose to her lips. “Oh.”

  Frederick went grimly on. “I told her they’d be better off with no mother than a mother such as she. And Bea—and Bea said—” He drew a long, shuddering breath. “She said that she’d be only too happy to oblige.”

  Addie’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. There was nothing to say.

  “I can’t get that out of my head. You know what Bea was when she got an idea in her head. And that night—she was high on something anyway. Gin, cocaine. God only knows. She laughed at me. She laughed and said she’d be only too happy.” Frederick set down his glass with a clatter. “I killed her. I didn’t do it with a cudgel—or that bloody scarf!—but I killed her all the same. I drove her out there.”