Page 53 of Beyond the Grave
I cleared my throat. "Mr. Edgecombe?"
The man jerked and twisted. He pushed back his cap and peered at me from beneath droopy eyelids patterned with red spidery lines. It was difficult to determine his age. The brown hair poking out from beneath the cap bore no gray, and he had smooth if somewhat slack skin except beneath his eyes, where it was dark and puffed. If he was under thirty, he wasn't aging well.
I smiled but he didn't smile back. "I'm sorry to wake you—"
"You didn't." His top lip curled up in a sneer. "I was just sitting here, enjoying a drink and doing nothing, as usual." He lifted his empty glass. Going by his slurring, it wasn't his first. "Who're you?"
"Charlie Holloway." I came forward and stood where he didn't have to twist to see me. "I'm an acquaintance of the dowager Lady Harcourt's."
"Charlie's a boy's name."
"It's short for Charlotte."
"Prettier." He appraised me, but I bore his scrutiny and didn't duck my head like I wanted to. He lifted his glass in salute, and went to take a sip, but remembered at the last moment that it was empty. He muttered something under his breath that sounded very much like a crude word I hadn't used in months. "The dowager isn't here," he said. "She never comes here. If you were an acquaintance of hers, you'd know that."
"I didn't say I was calling upon her."
His back straightened, and he grunted as he gave me yet another appraisal, this one quicker. It didn't leave me feeling like I needed to bathe.
He adjusted the blanket over his lap, pulling the edge up to his stomach. Neither it nor the blue and gold striped smoking jacket hid his paunch. "Why are you here?"
"The dowager has asked my employer to look for her stepson, Andrew Buchanan. He has disappeared."
"So I heard. Marguerite and Donald have gone to London to help with the search. Not that they'd be much help," he added with a mutter.
"I've met them. And you're right, they've been of very little assistance."
He gave me a rueful smile and a nod of approval. "I don't know why the fuss. Buchanan's a grown man and a rakehell at that. His shoes are probably parked under a whore's bed, or in an opium den. Perhaps a whore in an opium den. Does that shock you, Miss Charlotte Holloway?"
"No. I've been to opium dens. In fact, I smoked opium once." It was perhaps more accurate to say I'd accidentally inhaled the smoke of others' opium pipes, but he didn't need to know that.
His brows rose. "Is that so? It seems you're more worldly than me, and I got up to a thing or two before my accident." The grim smile softened his appearance and tugged at my heart. So he hadn't been born with legs that didn't work.
"What sort of accident?" I asked.
"You're bold, for a mere slip of a thing."
"So I've been told. You don't have to answer it if my question upsets you. I was simply curious."
"Curiosity can get a girl into trouble."
"So I've discovered," I said with a wry twist of my mouth that he matched with one of his own.
"Riding accident. I fell off my horse at home. My home, not this one."
"But you live here now?"
He nodded. "Have for a year or two. What month is this?"
"Late October."
"Then it's been one year and nine months. The days all blend into one, when you've got nothing to do but sit in this contraption and watch the world pass by out the window." He smacked the arm of his wheelchair then dragged the same hand through his hair, knocking off his cap.
I picked it up and handed it to him. He snatched it from my grip and slapped it back on his head.
"Don't you have something better to do than stand there and talk to me?"
"No. I'd like to ask you some questions, if I may. Since all you do nowadays is sit and peer out windows, I think you may be of help to me."
