Ashworth Hall Read online

  Now he would ride back to Ashworth Hall and sleep beside Charlotte in one of the great guest bedrooms with its four-poster bed and embroidered linen and a fire in the grate. He would not douse himself quickly in the icy water from the pump, but ring a bell, and a manservant would bring him ewers of steaming hot water, enough for a bath if he wanted it. He would have a separate room in which to dress, and then breakfast would be as much as he could eat, with a choice of half a dozen different dishes. He would have silver knives and forks to use, and a linen napkin. And he would sit with people for whom this was the usual and familiar way of life. They had never experienced anything else.

  But after he had finished he would not leave for the schoolroom he had been permitted to share with Matthew Desmond, nor for the numerous small tasks around the estate, safely taught or supervised by someone older. He would bear the responsibility for solving the murder of a minister of government, a man whose life he had been sent to safeguard in the first place … and failed.

  He leaned against the stable wall, his feet in the comfortable, familiar-smelling straw, and heard the horses moving contentedly in other stalls on the farther side.

  He had already introduced himself to the coachman and explained to him that Greville was dead. He had wondered whether to try to keep it from him, and decided that if he were a loyal servant, he would tell a stranger little of meaning if he thought his master still alive.

  “Describe for me the incident when you were driven off the road,” he asked.

  The man spoke haltingly, searching for words, all the time his browned hands were working with the leather and soap, rubbing, relishing. His account was in all essentials, exactly the same as Greville’s. He also remembered the eyes of the other driver.

  “Mad, they looked ter me,” he said with a shake of his head. “Starin’, like.”

  “Pale or dark?” Pitt asked.

  “Pale, like light coming off water,” he answered. “Never seen a face like it afore. Nor again, I ’ope!”

  “But you had no success in finding where the horses came from?”

  “No.” He looked down at the harness in his hands. “Din’ try ’ard enough, I reckon. If we ’ad, p’raps Mr. Greville’d be alive now. Lunatics, them Irish. Course, not all of ’em. Young Kathleen were a good girl. Couldn’t ’elp likin’ er. I were real sorry when she went.”

  “Who was Kathleen?” It probably did not matter, but he would ask anyway.

  “Kathleen O’Brien. She were a maid ’ere. Not unlike our Doll, she were, only dark; dark as night, wi’ them blue Irish eyes.”

  “Was she from Ireland?”

  “Oh yes! Voice as soft as melted butter, an’ sing real lovely.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Six month.” His face closed over and his shoulders tightened.

  “Why did she leave?” Pitt could not dismiss the thought crossing his mind that she could have had relatives—brothers, even a lover—who were passionate Nationalists.

  “There weren’t nothing wrong wi’ Kathleen,” the coachman said, keeping his eyes on his work. “If yer thinkin’ she ’ad summat ter do wi’ that, yer wrong.”

  “Why would she have?” Pitt asked quietly. “Did she leave here with a bad feeling? Did she have cause?”

  “I’ve got nothing to say, Mr. Pitt.”

  “Did you drive Mr. Greville in London as well, or only here?”

  “I bin up ter Lunnon lots o’ times. There in’t much proper carriage drivin’ ’ere when both the master and mistress is up in town. John can do all o’ that. Learn ’im a bit.”

  “So you would drive Mr. Greville in London?”

  “I said so.”

  “Do you know Mrs. Easterwood?”

  No answer was necessary. The hesitation gave him away, then the angle of his body, the way his fingers stopped on the leather, then started again, digging into it, knuckles white.

  “Were there many like Mrs. Easterwood?” Pitt asked quietly.

  Again there was silence.

  “I understand your loyalty,” Pitt went on. “And I admire it … whether it is to Mr. Greville or his widow ….” He saw the man wince at the word. “But he was murdered, struck over the head and drowned in his own bath, left there all night for Doll to find him in the morning, naked, his face under the water—”

  The coachman jerked his head up, his eyes narrow and angry.

  “You got no call ter go tellin’ me that! It in’t decent for folks ter know—”

  “Folks don’t know.” Pitt reached across and passed him a clean cloth. “But I mean to find out who did it. It wasn’t just one man, because the coach driver with the staring eyes isn’t at Ashworth Hall. There was also a good man murdered in London, a decent man with a family, to keep this secret. I want them all, and I mean to have them. If I have to learn some squalid details about a few women like Mrs. Easterwood, and a good deal about Mr. Greville that the public don’t need to know, then I will.”

  “Yes sir.” It was grudging. He hated it, but he saw no alternative. His hands clenched over the harness and his shoulders were tight.

  “Were there others like Mrs. Easterwood?” Pitt asked again.

  “A few.” He kept his eyes on Pitt’s. He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Mostly up Lunnon way. Never wi’ wives of a friend. He’d not take anything what’s theirs. Only take them as is willin’—” He stopped suddenly.

  “And don’t count,” Pitt finished for him, remembering the tone of Malcolm Anders’s letter.

  “There’s nobody what doesn’t count, Mr. Pitt.”

  “Even whores?”

  The coachman’s face reddened. “You got no place to go calling any woman a whore, Mr. Pitt, an’ I don’ care who you are, I won’t stand ’ere an’ listen to it.”

  “Even girls like Kathleen O’Brien? Lie with anyone to better their chances and—” Pitt too stopped suddenly, seeing the rage and the hurt in the man’s eyes. He had gone too far. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. He meant it. He could picture the story. It would be one of a dozen variations on the old theme, a handsome maid, a master who was used to taking anything he wanted and did not think of servants as people like himself, with tenderness and dignity or honor to be hurt. The distinction would not even be intentional.

  “She weren’t like that.” The coachman glared at him. “You’ve no place saying it!”

  “I wanted to provoke you into honesty,” Pitt confessed. “What happened to Kathleen?”

  The man was still angry. He reminded Pitt of the coachman where he grew up, taciturn, loyal, honest to the point of bluntness, but endlessly patient with animals or the young.

  “She got dismissed for thievin’,” he said grudgingly. “But it were because she wouldn’t have no one touch ’er.”

  Pitt found himself relaxing. He had not realized until that moment that he had been clenching his hands so hard the nails had scraped his palms, and his muscles ached.

  “Did she go back to Ireland?”

  “I dunno. We gave ’er what we could, me and Cook and Mr. Wheeler.”

  “Good. But you are still loyal to Mr. Greville?”

  “No sir,” he corrected. “I’m loyal to the mistress. I wouldn’t ’ave ’er know about them things. Some ladies know an’ can üve with it, others can’t. I reckon as she’s one as couldn’t. In’t nothing sour in her, or some would say realistic. You won’t go telling her, will you?”

  “I won’t tell her anything I don’t have to,” Pitt answered, and he said it with regret, because he knew it did not mean a great deal. He wished he could have given the assurances the coachman sought.

  They rode back through the gathering dusk, the light dying rapidly in the autumn evening, and Pitt was profoundly glad he was not trying to make his way along the hedgerows and through the woods alone. There was little wind, but even so the air was growing colder all the time, and the sharp prickle of frost stung his nose. Twigs snapped under his horse’s hooves and its breath
was white against the gloom.

  It was over an hour and a half before they saw the lights of Ashworth Hall and rode into the stable yard to dismount. In the past Pitt had always had to unsaddle his own horse, walk it cool, rub it down and feed and water it, sometimes Matthew’s horse as well. He felt remiss, uncaring, to hand it over to someone else and simply walk away. It was another reminder of how far he was from his origins. Piers, young and slender and full of pain, did it as casually as a man takes off his jacket in his own house.

  Pitt followed him in through the side door, scraping his boots on the ornamental cast-iron grid set there for the purpose.

  Inside the house was warm, even the hall seemed to embrace him after the sharpness of the night air. A footman was waiting attentively.

  “May I fetch you anything, sir?” he asked Pitt first, to Pitt’s surprise. He had momentarily forgotten he was a personal guest, Piers only an addition, and a younger one. “A hot drink? A glass of whiskey? Mulled wine?”

  “Thank you, a hot drink would be excellent. Is Mr. Radley out of his meeting yet?”

  “No sir. I venture to say that they have been going rather better than expected.” He looked at Piers. “May I get a hot drink for you also, sir?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Piers looked at Pitt. He had not asked him what he was going to say. He had already asked for his discretion once, and he had no idea what the coachman had told him. “I’ll go up and see Miss Baring.” He looked back at the footman. “Is she with my mother, do you know?”

  “Yes, sir, in the blue boudoir.”

  “Thank you.” With only another glance at Pitt, he went upstairs and disappeared around the turn of the staircase onto the landing.

  “I’ll have my drink upstairs too,” Pitt instructed. “I think I’ll have a bath before dinner.”

  “Yes sir. I will have some water brought up for you, sir.”

  Pitt smiled. “Thank you. Yes, please, do that.”

  It was Tellman who came with it. He did it with a very ill grace indeed. The only reason he did not splash water all over the floor was that he might have found himself mopping it up afterwards. He would be delighted, however, if Pitt were too stiff the next day to move without pain.

  “I learned a great deal,” Pitt said conversationally, undoing his cravat and laying it on the side table. He began to unfasten his shirt, moving behind the screen which was set up to keep the draft from the door off the bath.

  “About what?” Tellman asked grudgingly.

  Pitt went on undressing and told him about Mrs. Easterwood and those others like her, about Kathleen O’Brien and what the coachman had said, and not said, about her dismissal.

  Tellman stood leaning against the marble-topped table with jug, bath salts and soap dishes on it, his hands deep in his pockets, his face grim.

  “Seems like he earned himself a few enemies,” he said thoughtfully. “But girls who are wrongly treated don’t come back and murder their masters.” He moved to keep himself on the other side of the screen from Pitt or the bath. “If they did it would probably do away with half the aristocracy of England.”

  “It would put a fairly swift stop to the abuse,” Pitt said with a shiver as he stepped into the hot water. It was delicious, and he had not realized until that moment quite how cold and stiff he was, or how very tired. It had been far too long since he had done anything so physically strenuous. He eased himself into the steaming, fragrant foam. “I doubt it had any relevance,” he went on more seriously. “But we have to consider the possibility that Kathleen O’Brien may have had Nationalist, even Fenian, relatives, and been more than willing to offer information. Heaven knows, it seems she had cause.”

  “Does it matter?” Tellman opened one of the jars of salts and sniffed it curiously, then wrinkled his nose at its effeminacy. “It was someone in this house now who killed him. It certainly wasn’t a disgruntled husband or Kathleen O’Brien. He would have known them. Anyway, we’ve been told the background of everyone here.”

  Pitt had no choice but to speak to Eudora. When he was dressed again, not having seen Charlotte, who was busy assisting Emily entertain Kezia and Iona, he went to Eudora’s sitting room and knocked.

  The door was opened by Justine. There was a flicker of hope in her eyes, and she searched Pitt’s face and was uncertain what she saw, except that it would hurt. Piers was not there. Presumably he was still in his bath, or dressing for dinner.

  “Come in, Mr. Pitt.” She opened the door wide and stood back. She was dressed in deep purplish-blue and was so slender she should have looked fragile, yet her grace instead gave the impression of strength, like a dancer’s. It was so easy to understand why Piers was fascinated with her—she had such beauty, arrested suddenly and startlingly by the uniqueness of her nose. He could not even decide whether it was ugly or merely different.

  Beyond her, Eudora was sitting in one of the large chairs beside the fire, close to it, as if she were cold, although the room was warm. There was no color in her skin, for all the vividness of her hair. She looked at Pitt guardedly, without interest, as if all he could say would be necessary but tedious, and already familiar.

  Justine closed the door behind him and he walked in, without invitation sitting in the chair opposite Eudora. He had thought about this during most of the long, cold ride back to Ashworth Hall, but it still was difficult to know the least painful way to say what he had to, or judge how much could not be held from hen Some of it would become known anyway, and better she learn it privately, and before others did.

  The more he looked at her face in the firelight with its gentle lines, its lovely eyes and lips, the more he despised Greville for his betrayals. He knew the judgment was harsh even as he was making it. He had no idea what she was like within such a close relationship, how cold or critical, how silently cruel, how disdainful or remote. And yet he made the judgment just the same, because his mind and his instinct told him different things.

  “Mrs. Greville, I read all the letters and papers in Mr. Greville’s study and spoke to the coachman about the incident on the road. I understand why he did not show us the letters before. They are of little use, just very general threats, and unsigned. They could be from almost anyone.”

  “So you found nothing?” She sounded as though she were unsure if she were disappointed or relieved.

  “Nothing from those letters,” he amended. “There were others, and events which emerged from speaking with the servants.”

  “Oh? He did not mention other threats to me. Perhaps he was protecting me from the worry.”

  Justine came back towards the fire.

  “I am sure he would. He would not wish you to be afraid if he could avoid it.”

  Eudora smiled at her. It was obvious the two women had already formed a bond in grief. Justine had barely known Greville, but she seemed deeply sensitive to the loss.

  “Do you remember a maid you had called Kathleen O’Brien?” Pitt asked.

  Eudora thought for a moment. “Yes, yes, she was a very handsome girl. Irish, of course.” She frowned. “You don’t think she had anything to do with Fenians, do you? She was from the south, but she seemed a very gentle girl, not in the least … I suppose it is absurd to speak of a servant as politically minded. Are you saying she might have been passing information about us to others?” Her face made her disbelief plain.

  “She may have had brothers, or a lover,” Justine pointed out.

  Eudora looked unconvinced. “But the attack happened quite some time after she had left us. She could have told them nothing they could not have gathered for themselves merely by watching the stable yard. I won’t have Kathleen blamed, Mr. Pitt, without very good evidence. And she certainly was not here this weekend. I have seen Miss Moynihan’s maid, and Mrs. McGinley’s. No, this has nothing to do with Kathleen.”

  “Why did she leave you, Mrs. Greville?”

  She hesitated. He saw the lie in her eyes before she spoke.

  “Some family matter. She we
nt back to Ireland.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She looked at him with wide, unhappy eyes.

  “She was charged with thieving.” He said what she would not.

  Justine stiffened, but her expression was unreadable.

  “I don’t believe she was guilty,” Eudora said, but her eyes avoided Pitt’s. “I think it was a misunderstanding. I wanted to—” She stopped.

  Did she know? Did it matter anyway? Was it necessary to injure her still further by despoiling her husband’s memory in her mind? He would much rather not. She looked so crushed already, so easily hurt. Perhaps it did not matter.

  Justine had moved closer to Eudora, facing Pitt.

  “Surely you don’t think this girl had anything to do with it, do you?” she said very calmly. “Even if she went back to Ireland and was a sympathizer with nationalism, even if she told people she had been in service in Oakfield House, she couldn’t have told them anything of value. Mr. Greville was killed here, and the attack on the road could have been anyone, but it wasn’t a woman.” Her eyes were very straight and level.

  “No, that is perfectly true,” Pitt conceded. Expressed as she had, it dwindled into insignificance. “Mrs. Greville, do you know a Mrs. Easterwood?”

  “Yes, slightly.” Her expression belied the cautious tone of her voice. She did not care for her. Either she knew about or suspected Greville’s connection with her, or she knew her reputation.

  Perhaps sensing some nervousness in Eudora, Justine moved an inch or two closer and put an arm protectively across the back of the chair.

  “Are these people who might have given information about Mr. Greville’s movements, Mr. Pitt?” Justine asked, her tone still polite but with a thread of warning in it. “Do you believe that knowing who they are will lead you to the person in this house who actually committed the murder? Or to whoever killed the poor man in London? Whatever they said was probably unwilling, and they won’t even remember to whom they spoke.” She smiled very faintly. “It was no intruder, that you already established through Mr. Tellman’s questioning of the other servants. It is a political crime, because of Mr. Greville’s stand for peace and the skill he brought to the conference table. Someone wants peace only on their terms, or continued violence.”