Page 104 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
“Of course.” Uncle Herbert sounded sour. “And you decided not to say anything about it at the time because…?”
“It wasn’t my place to say anything. It didn’t pertain to the investigation, and besides, how was I to know that you didn’t already know? You knew about the other matter.”
“The other matter was entirely different,” Uncle Herbert said coldly, and this time it was Sammy who made the noise.
He apologized immediately, and I imagined that both Tom and Uncle Herbert must have given him identical death glares. When I stole a glance at Crispin, a corner of his mouth twitched in response, so he must have thought the same thing. Christopher’s hand was still in mine, limp now, and I gave it a comforting squeeze. He slanted a look my way, and I smiled back, as reassuringly as I could. It took a second, but then he managed a smile in return. Crispin glanced over, noticed the byplay, watched for a second, and looked away again.
Inside the room, the conversation went on.
“Tell me about Maisie Moran,” Tom said.
“What’s to tell?” Uncle Herbert sounded resigned. “She was a parlor maid at Sutherland House. A few years older than me. Beautiful girl, one of the Black Irish. Bright blue eyes and black hair. I was just down from University. I imagine I thought I seduced her, but it was probably the other way around…”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Crispin’s mouth curve in what looked like sympathy, or perhaps rueful memory of his own experience. Laetitia Marsden wasn’t Black Irish, not to my knowledge, but she had bright blue eyes and black hair, and she had definitely once seduced him.
“I didn’t know there was a child,” Uncle Herbert added. “I didn’t know my father knew about the affair, either. It was never mentioned, until one day I got up to Town and she wasn’t there. I can’t recall what he said when I asked—just that she was gone, I think; moved on to a different situation—but from the way he said it, I could tell it was because of what had happened between us. But by then I had met Roslyn, so I didn’t think much about it after that, what with the courting and the wedding and then a couple of years later, Francis…”
He trailed off, and for a moment there was only silence. Then— “I never heard from her after that. My father never brought her up again. I didn’t, either. If I had known…”
“You would have done something different?”
There was a beat, just a second of silence before Uncle Herbert said, “No. I wouldn’t have done anything different. I didn’t want to marry Maisie. I had fallen in love with Roslyn by then. I wouldn’t want to change anything about my life. But if I had known that there was a child, I would have made sure it was taken care of. She probably thought I’d abandoned her to cope on her own.”
“I imagine your father made the situation clear,” Tom said. “He paid her quite a lot of money to go away and never darken the doorstep of Sutherland House—or Hall—again. She wasn’t thrust into poverty or made to live in the gutter.”
Uncle Herbert didn’t respond to that, but I thought I could feel a lessening of tension in the air, as if a weight had been taken off his shoulders.
“She married,” Tom added, “and used the money to buy a public house. Over time, she and her husband had two more children. From all I can gather, she’s had a good life. Your son?—”
“Don’t call him that.”
There was a moment’s pause before Tom’s voice came back, still calm. “He went to war, along with his younger half-brother. After the war, he approached your grandfather for a job. I don’t know whether there was any coercion involved, or whether that was a promise that had been made originally. That when the child came of age, he’d have a position waiting for him at Sutherland.”
Incredibly cruel and blind of old Duke Henry, if so. To make the child who should have been the firstborn son of the house work for them as a servant instead.
Unfortunately, that didn’t mean it couldn’t have happened that way. Henry hadn’t been known for his charity or generosity of spirit.
“Grimsby?” Christopher mouthed, incredulously, and I made a face. It made sense, I supposed. The old Duke had been strangely lenient with his valet, when he hadn’t been known for forbearance with anyone else, not even his own family members. He had basically let Grimsby run wild: had let him take over the use of the motorcar (and Wilkins) and roam all over England digging up secrets about the other family members with no oversight whatsoever. They had been in London every other week, it seemed, following Christopher around. Grimsby’s notes had had page upon page of minutia about Christopher’s rather uninteresting doings: taking tea at the Savoy and shopping at Fortnum and Mason. I had been followed, too, and of course Grimsby had had a fine time gossiping with the servants at Sutherland House about all of St George’s shenanigans.
He had been alive until late April this year, so he could have met and seduced Abigail the April before. He hadn’t struck me as someone who would appeal to a young girl in a romantic way—I had found him a rather reptilian sort, with his flat, black eyes and slicked-back black hair—but there’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.
And then my train of thought was derailed when, on the other side of me, Crispin scrambled upright with a silent curse and took off running. At first I couldn’t imagine why, but then my ears picked up the sound of the motorcar turning into the driveway on the other side of the house, and I understood. Wilkins must be arriving, and Crispin had said he’d be there to meet him.
Tom would want to talk to the chauffeur about what Grimsby had been up to while in London last year, I supposed. Wilkins would be the only one who had any information about that.
Christopher arched his brows at me, and I shook my head. “Nothing to worry about. Just Wilkins with the motorcar.” And a bottle of gin for St George.
He nodded and settled back down.
Inside the study, the conversation went on. “I think,” Tom said thoughtfully, “that this accounts for everything. He is unquestionably the grandson of the Duke of Sutherland, as much as Francis and Kit and Lord St George are. He had access to your father’s Crossley, which is a black motorcar, as Abigail Dole noted on her list. With your father’s goodwill, he could easily have been in London and at the Hammersmith Palais in April of last year. We may be able to confirm that if we ask the staff at the Hall or at Sutherland House. He spent time in the trenches, so could have brought back a trench club at the end of the war…”
All that was true. However, Abigail’s list had had the words ‘fair hair’ and ‘blue eyes’ on it, and those didn’t fit Simon Grimsby at all.
Besides, Grimsby was dead. I had seen the body, in the heart of the garden maze at Sutherland Hall in April. There was no question that Simon Grimsby was dead.
So how could he be here, committing murder?
And then there was a brisk knock on the study door and the sound of Crispin’s cheerful voice—“DS Gardiner? Here’s Wilkins to see you,”—and suddenly it all rearranged itself in my head with a clatter.
