Christmas with Death / first chapter and links

 Christmas with Death

Christmas is for Miracles, Merriment, and Murder.

Christmas 1919 should be a joyful celebration. The Great War is over, and Isabella is at home with her friends Cecilia Arkwright and the brothers Madoc and Gawen Tarrant. They expect a lean Christmas, however, until an invitation to the country manor of Emberley arrives.

Sir Reginald and the Malvaise family fill their grand house with friends, acquaintances, and business associates. With money tight, Isabella and her friends enjoy the rich meals, hot fires, and comfortable rooms. Yet rumors of affaires and drug addiction as well as accusations of blackmail sour the holiday atmosphere.

They plan to leave before New Year’s Eve, then Isabella discovers the body of a fellow visitor, shot dead in an ice-skimmed pond.

With multiple motives and suspects, will Scotland Yard solve the crime before Isabella is the murderer’s next target? Will an imperfect murder be impossible to solve?

Chapter One :: December 1919

Gawen Tarrant dropped the rope-tied box before the sofa. Madoc promptly propped his feet on it.

Isabella shut the flat’s door then maneuvered around Gawen’s tall form. “Cecilia is not going to be pleased.”

“They told me to clear out her husband’s office.”  He dropped onto the chintz chair then tossed the silk pillow with its embroidered brown and pink tulips to his brother. Madoc flipped it to the other end of the sofa.

“Nigel is no longer—Cecilia is not collecting this things. She’s trying to divorce him.”

“A crate of books will come after the Christmas freight traffic is over.”

“She will definitely not like that. After she closed out their Mayfair flat, the shipping cost to send his possessions to his parents emptied her bank account. She recovered a little of her money when she sold their furniture, but then she sent half of that to his parents as well. Now you bring her another cost.”

He shrugged. “She’ll have to swallow the expense or store Arkwright’s things here.”  Gawen loosened his tie and collar then propped his feet on the box. “Any tea going?”

Isabella didn’t complain or sigh, just slipped into the tiny kitchen. Rain slicked the square window to the fire escape. As she set the kettle to boil, she heard the brothers talking. She didn’t try to listen; Madoc would tell her what she needed to know. She stared out the window, peering past the ironwork to the distant lights twinkling in the darkness. Then she shrugged off her gloom and began setting out the tea things. Gawen may have come when he thought Cecilia would be away, but Isabella expected her back soon. Fresh biscuits and Mrs. Kittner’s meat pasties covered a white plate. The kettle whistled as she stuffed the tea ball with fresh leaves.

She bore the tea tray into the sitting room and aimed it for the box. The men hastily removed their boots then grabbed for the meat pasties. Isabella sat beside Madoc and poured three cups.

Gawen eyed the empty fourth cup. He said nothing, just dropped two biscuits onto the saucer and scooped up another pasty. “These are good.”

Isabella watched his huge bite that took off one crimped corner. “Mrs. Kittner in the third floor flat. She gives us a daily dozen to earn extra cash. I do wish you hadn’t brought more of Nigel’s things, Gawen. I hoped Cecilia would cheer up over the holidays.”

“What’s the matter?”

Madoc brushed crumbs off his cardigan. “Bad news from her solicitor.”

“About the divorce? Her husband’s in a Greek gaol for conspiring to commit murder. He’s obviously not a worthy husband. What’s holding the decree up?”

“Nigel refuses to admit to any adultery while on the archaeological dig, and her solicitor says that’s the only reason for which the marriage can be dissolved. His or hers.”

The ginger biscuit cracked. Half fell into Gawen’s teacup. “Not her adultery,” he snapped. “Her reputation should be kept intact. I can’t believe Arkwright is so lost to honor.”

“That’s the reason she was crying yesterday,” and Isabella didn’t mistake his wince. “Today she’s off lunching with friends in the hopes they’ll help her forget for a few hours.”

Madoc snared a fourth pasty. “We can give depositions, Bella, you and I.”

“I could—.”

“No, not you.”  Madoc shut down his brother’s offer. “Not if you intend to have any relationship with her after the divorce is granted. We might enlist Professor Standings and his wife.”

“They’ll talk about her flirtation with me,” Gawen growled.

“Flirtation only. As long as you two aren’t seen as a couple until after the divorce. Castlereagh and Matthews can give depositions as well. They won’t talk about her flirtation with you. Matthews probably didn’t even notice.”

Gawen still hadn’t eaten his third pasty. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come today.”

“You are her husband’s colleague,” Isabella pointed out. “You’re delivering his possessions. And you are the brother of Madoc who is seeing me.”

Madoc squeezed her shoulders. “More than seeing you, Bella. I’m going to put a ring on your finger.”

Happiness glimmered in her pale blue eyes.

Gawen set his saucer down and stood up. “Cecilia needs to give her solicitor options. You need to tell her what we’ve said.”

“Tell her yourself,” for they heard light footsteps hurrying up the third flight of stairs to the fourth-floor flat.

The door opened then shut quickly. Cecilia stepped into Isabella’s view when she hung her umbrella on the four wall hooks. “Goodness, it’s wet. Rain every day for a week.”

She gave her hat a shake then placed it on the glass-topped Demilune table that had once graced the marble-floored entry in the Mayfair flat she had shared with her estranged husband. She shed her raincoat then paused as she reached to hang it on another hook. She bit her lip then hung her coat over the dripping umbrella. Her heels clacked on the bare wood floor as she came into the flat.

Cecilia stopped when she saw Gawen. “I didn’t know you were expected.”  Then her gaze fastened on the rope-tied box that Madoc’s feet had reclaimed as an ottoman. She glanced at Isabella, who started to explain the arrival of Nigel’s things only to be interrupted by Gawen.

“I came to pick up a box that Madoc brought me.”  His boot nudged the box while his bright green eyes challenged his brother and Isabella to contradict his lie.

“Do sit down. Have some—more tea,” she added when she saw the cup he’d abandoned. “Mrs. Kittner’s meat pasties are very good.”

“They are indeed,” Madoc said and reached for another.

Isabella pushed his hand away. “You’ve had four. Gawen’s had three. Leave some for Cecilia.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m still stuffed from that luncheon.”  She towed over one of the straight-backed chairs from the drop-leaf table that they used for dining. Then she bent her head over the steam from the teacup and closed her eyes briefly before she sipped. “Ah. Good and still hot. Sit down, Gawen,” she repeated.

He resumed his seat but sat on the edge. When pressed, he took another pasty then held out his cup for more tea. “I thought we could dine at Guiseppi’s around the corner, the place you told me about, Madoc, when you rang about this box.”  He frowned at his brother.

They discussed dinner while Cecilia had a pasty and a second cup of tea. Then she interrupted. “I don’t believe this is a box that Madoc brought. What’s in it, Gawen? More of Nigel’s things?”

Honesty battled with his lie and won. “Out of his office. The dean required that it be cleared before the New Year.”

“He had more than that box in his office at St. George’s.”

“The books are coming after Christmas—but if you’ll give me his parents’ address, I will have it routed straight to them. The University will pay the freight. That is where you are sending his things? I can send this box there for you.”

“No. Leave it. I want to sort through his journals. His parents shouldn’t see—.”

“I purged anything that looked nefarious.”

“That’s good of you, but I would still like to go through the box. Knowing me, I will pull out one or two things. Besides, I like that box. We can put an old shawl on it, Isabella, and keep it right there as a coffee table.”

“A great idea,” she agreed promptly. “Now, I expected you back an hour ago. What delayed you?”

“A lucky meeting and a most fortunate invitation. Fortunate for all of us.”

“How fortunate?” Madoc asked. He finished his tea and held his cup for more.

“Do you have plans for the next fortnight?”

He nudged Isabella. “Just being here.”

“Will you want to go to your grandparents?”  This time she looked at Gawen.

“Not until mid-January, when they want us to come for Grandmother’s birthday. They’re planning a quiet Christmas and New Year.”

“That works,” Madoc said.

“Will you want to see your Grandfather Chadwick over the holidays?”

“I’m still persona non grata, I think, because I refused his job in the shipping office. Gawen may go,” but his brother grunted a negative.

“Then the invitation is fortunate for all of us.”

“What are you talking about, Cecilia?”

“Do you remember Greta Ffoulkes? Tall woman. Lovely clothes but wrong color palette, I think you said. With a nose. You met her at Tony Carstair’s gallery.”

“Brunette? All dramatic in gold when she should have been in silver?”

“That’s the one. She was at Tilda’s.”

“I thought you went to Chelsea, not Mayfair.”

“I needed a fitting. Greta was there, picking up a new frock. She wanted to hear about my adventurous autumn, but she had no time. So, she has invited me and my friends—since I said I couldn’t abandon my flat-mate alone in London, so dreary—and we are to drive down on Christmas Eve to her family’s home.”

“Drive where?”

“Emberley, the Malvaise estate. It’s in Cumbria. We are invited for the fortnight of Christmas to Epiphany.”

“Who is we? Who did she invite?” Madoc asked.

“My flat-mate and her fiancé. And I hoped Gawen would drive us in his automobile. She said four of us would be fine.”

“Not I,” Gawen quickly refused.

“But you’ll be alone at Christmas.”

“We want you with us,” Isabella coaxed.

“You boxed yourself in, brother,” Madoc added and nudged the tea tray table.

His mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a grimace. “I think I am boxed in.”

“Perfect,” Cecilia smiled, smug that her plan had come together. “We’ll have a late breakfast on Wednesday then leave before 11 o’clock.”

“Pasties from Mrs. Kittner?” Madoc asked. When he opened his blue eyes wide, Isabella could see him as a little boy, eager for a kitchen treat.

Cess laughed. “Of course. Breakfast, then we’re on the road. We should reach Emberley by tea. Greta said the family will attend a late Christmas Eve service at the parish church, and we are expected to attend that, so be prepared.”

. ~ . ~ . ~ .

Yawning, Isabella came back into the flat to see Cecilia reach deep into the box Gawen had carried in hours earlier. “Cess!  You said you would leave that for tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning I am off to my solicitor with Madoc’s idea for depositions to prove Nigel’s adultery. I’ll leave this box on the landing, and contact the local carrier on my way.”

“I’ll help you repack it.”  Isabella tied her wrapper before she knelt.

“Sweet of you, but don’t you have to be up early to go to the theatre?”

“Early for Mr. Adderholt is 1 p.m.”  She looked at the items spread around the box: files, journals, a portfolio, and the sundry paraphernalia that people somehow accumulated. “Did you find what you were looking for? What is it?”

“A framed photograph of me. From before our marriage. I inscribed it ‘All my love,’ more fool me. I was such a starry-eyed innocent. Nigel kept it on a narrow table at the window. He said the sun wouldn’t fade my photo, but I think he liked to keep his back turned to me.”

How do I answer that? She looked at the neatly stacked items. “I don’t see a photo.”

“Because it’s not here. I know it was in his office before we left for Crete. I moved it out of the sunlight. Perhaps Gawen overlooked it.”  She returned the manila folders to the box.

“Maybe Gawen kept it.”

Cecilia paused then shook her head so hard that her dark hair slipped free of the silk ribbon tied at her nape. “Don’t get my hopes up, Bella. If he kept it, he would be interested in me. If he were interested, he wouldn’t ignore me most of the night.”

“He would if he wanted to guard your reputation. Before you came in, he did say how necessary that was.”

“Did he? No. I would still prefer that you not raise my hopes. He certainly didn’t want to spend a fortnight in my company. He was still protesting our Christmas at Emberley as we walked back from the restaurant.”

“Look at the obstacles before him, Cess. He wants you, but you’re still married. He has to wait on your divorce before he can court you. If he doesn’t, your reputation suffers. And he’s a university professor, still bound by the Old Guard’s traditions and censures. I think he stole your photograph to keep for himself. To give himself hope.”

“Hope? Any way that we can come together would need a miracle. I don’t think Gawen took the photograph. I think the maid broke it and swept the bits into the dustbin.”

“Choose to be optimistic, Cecilia.”

“I could be if Gawen did not persist in a ‘merry war’ between us.”  She closed the lid and tied the ropes. “Help me push this onto the landing.”

They pushed, slippers sliding on the bare wood. By the time they pushed the box against the balusters, out of the way of the landing and the corkscrew steps climbing to the attic, they were out of breath and giggling.

Isabella straightened and tugged her wrapper back to decency. “I thought we wanted to keep this box.”

“Bother. We were. That’s what four glasses of wine at Guiseppi’s will do.”  She linked her arm with Isabella’s. “We’ll get a crate from the attic and pack his things in it. Has Madoc heard from that engineer?”

“He’s to come in after the New Year and get his orders.”

“Is he worried?”

“He hasn’t said so, but I think he is.”  She locked the flat door, even though they trusted their neighbors and the house doors front and back were kept locked. She always locked up at night. “He needs to work, and managing a crew of men is something he does well.”

“Nigel’s recommendation about his work on the dig would be useless even if we could wrestle a recommendation from him. I think he wants to rot in that cell.”

“Madoc doesn’t need his recommendation. He has Professor Standings and Gawen’s, and Mr. Tredennit saw him direct men that he didn’t even know to finish a job in a few short hours. I think that may be more helpful than any recommendation.”

“He tells you nothing of this, though, does he? Our close-mouthed men.”

“You are just as close-mouthed. You said nothing all evening about Greta Ffoulkes. I thought you would regale us with information over dinner.”

Cecilia primmed her mouth. “There’s very little to tell.”

“Greta Ffoulkes. From an old family. An old estate. You must know more than that.”

“She is willing to invite a soon-to-be-divorced woman with a husband gaoled in Greece to her family gathering over the holidays. She wants someone there with greater gossip potential than her own affairs. That’s all I need to know, Bella.”

Put like that, Isabella realized that was all she wanted to know about Greta Ffoulkes.

 

Chapter 2 ~ Christmas Eve

After a long afternoon of winding roads and narrow village streets and flocks of sheep, they reached the red-bricked stout columns of Emberley, two miles beyond the village of the same name. Gawen turned through the open gateway. The Crossley automobile puttered along the drive through the trees for several more minutes. Then the woodland ended, and the manor confronted them at the top of a long, straight drive. Isabella gaped at the massive façade, twice as large as any Federalist-built house in America, five stories and too many chimneys to count dotting the roofline. She’d seen several such manors in England, many of them much larger, but finally, finally was her chance to stay with the true British upper-crust. The idea excited her.

Gawen swept the Crossley up the drive and rolled slowly over the gravel to the forecourt.

From the backseat, Isabella offered, “She could have just been trying to fill the house.”

“Meet people before you give them the best motives,” Cecilia cautioned.

Madoc turned to look at them, blanketed but still cold in the open back seat. “What are you two on about?”

“What have you gotten us into, Cecilia?” his brother asked.

“It’s an old family is all. I met the dowager Malvaise only once, in London, just after Nigel was appointed General Linley’s aide at the War Office. She cut me dead.”

“She may not have recognized you.”

“Greta had just introduced me to her. Old witch. She’ll be here—if she’s not dead. And Sir Reginald with his new bride. He lost three sons in the War. There’s a fourth, but he’ll be after a spare for the heir.”

Gawen braked with a jerk that spewed gravel before the grand entrance. “I thought these people were friends.”

“Free meals for fourteen days and thirteen nights. Warm rooms. Soft beds,” Cecilia said cheerfully as Gawen helped her from the backseat. “That I would like to see the old witch roasted with the chestnuts is neither here nor there.”

“Marron glacé,” Isabella murmured. She gazed at the bricked edifice and hoped the chef would serve up the dish at least once during the holidays. “Sugared chestnuts. Then she’s roasted and served up sweet.”

They were laughing as the door opened. A dark-suited butler emerged, somehow looking formidable even though the black-lacquered door dwarfed him. He was followed by two footmen in a griege livery with darker grey edging on collars and cuffs. Someone—not Greta, certainly—had a dapper eye.

“Mrs. Arkwright?” the butler intoned.

“And my guests,” Cecilia said promptly, “as Mrs. Ffoulkes agreed. Miss Isabella Newcombe and the Tarrant brothers.”

“Very good, madame. I am Thompson. Mrs. Ffoulkes and several friends have journeyed to the village, but the dowager and Lady Malvaise remain in the conservatory off the blue sitting room. I am instructed to inquire if you would wish to join them or remain in your rooms until tea.”

“When is tea?”

“Five o’clock, madame.”

“I think we shall beard the lioness in her den before retreating to our rooms, Thompson.”

“Cess!” Isabella hissed, but her friend merely smiled. The butler remained dour.

After driving in an open auto for hours, Isabella wanted to fix her hair and freshen up, remove her hat and renew her lipstick, but she had to follow them into the house. Once inside, she forgot what she wanted to do, caught up by the grandeur.

The entrance hall had the classic paneled walls and waxed floor. A large marble-topped table, graced with a tall Ming jar, centered the hall. Ancestors marched up the staircase, but Thompson led them beyond the entrance, turning down a side hall just past the staircase.

The side hall ran the length of the wing, ending in a dark-paneled door. Before they reached it, the butler stopped and opened a door. He led them into a room with blue wallpaper and blue upholstery and blue-toned carpets, gilded mirrors and golden pulls on painted furniture and polished brass fittings at the fireplace. Thompson carried on without pausing to a glazed wall with a single glassed door. Through the windows Isabella could see greenery, ferns and acacia palms. He opened the door to the glass-encased room beyond. “Mrs. Arkwright and her guests,” he droned.

Before he finished his piece, Cecilia had drawn a cool mantle about her, assuming a haughty guise that would have repelled Isabella had she ever encountered it. Several women and men were seated around the plant-filled room, but Cecilia stepped down onto the black-and-white tiles and crossed to the women seated at the center of the winter paradise.

“Lady Malvaise,” she addressed the stiff-backed woman in heavy tweeds. “We met in London, back in ’15, I believe. May I introduce Miss Isabella Newcombe, an artist and—.”

The dowager held up a long-fingered hand, so pale the blue veins were prominent and so thin it looked like bone covered only by skin. “You will only have to introduce these people at tea and then at dinner. We are not all gathered.”

“It pleases me to introduce my friends. As I was saying, this is Miss Newcombe, an artist. Her fiancé Madoc Tarrant. His brother Gawen Tarrant, a professor at St. George’s University. He is also an archaeologist.”

Her dark eyes flickered over the men. “Like your husband?”

“No, he is much more honorable than my soon-to-be-ex-husband.”

“You are divorcing that husband of yours? First intelligent thing I’ve known you to do. Going back to your maiden name? Hetheridge, wasn’t it?”

“I believe the accepted form of address will be Mrs. Cecilia Arkwright.”

The dowager’s dark gaze flashed over Gawen. “You won’t style yourself that way for long. This is my daughter-in-law Lady Loretta Malvaise. She was a Halliwell.”

She looked to be mid-twenties, like Cecilia, but any resemblance ended there. The younger Lady Malvaise held her body in a slight lean, her head slightly turned, her cigarette holder inches from her mouth, both painted a vermilion, stark against her skin and the grey wool dress and cardigan she wore. Her dark hair was in a smooth chignon that an older woman would prefer. It was a studied portrait, and Isabella wondered how often Lady Malvaise was so deliberate in her clothing and poses. The dowager, looking ancient beside her daughter-in-law, still appeared more alive with her glittering eyes and commanding presence.

“How do you do?” the young woman said, with rounded vowels that spoke of an equally deliberate education.

“You and your friends are not our last arrivals,” the dowager said. “Has Thompson shown you to your rooms yet?”

“No, my lady.”

“I see. Mrs. Arkwright, you may be acquainted with my son Cleveland. His wife Milly. She is an American. Philadelphia. Godfrey Hunsted.”  Each person nodded as the dowager introduced them. “His wife accompanied my granddaughters and their friends to the village. And Wyatt Williamson. Your artist should speak with him.”

In a far corner, almost hidden by lush ferns, a newspaper lowered, and the man said, “Not another artist. I am on holiday. Tori promised.”

Wyatt Williamson the noted art critic could skyrocket new artists and skewer the poseurs. Yet at this depressive tone, Isabella’s flutter of anticipation dropped to the floor.

“We will have yet another artist soon,” the dowager informed him, “and you will have to acknowledge that this one is a true artist. He is quite celebrated. St. John Lamont.”

The man groaned. “Already we have Dadaism, and now you bring Cubism. God forbid. You don’t paint the ugly, do you, Miss Newcombe?”

She could barely see him for the green fronds. “At the moment I am to paint the backdrop at the Chelsea Garden Theatre for a new production of The Tempest. ‘O brave new world that has such people in it.’”

He leaned forward. Frizzy white hair straggled over his collar and shoulders. His grey flannel suit looked too large for his shoulders. A narrow chin and a hooked nose completed his picture. Yet he smiled. “Refreshingly honest. You and I must talk.”  Then he leaned back and put up his newspaper.

And Madoc squeezed her hand.

The dowager’s lips curled upward then flattened. “We are to be thirty for dinner. Thirty-two tomorrow. The vicar and his wife will join us for Christmas dinner. Their presence, I daresay, will not improve the tone of the conversation. Now, I believe you will wish to freshen up before tea. Promptly at five, if you please.”

They trooped to the hallway. As they returned to the entrance hall, Cecilia whispered, “I never know where I am with that woman. She makes me feel nine years old.”

“Seven,” Gawen said, “with muddy knees to my trousers.”

“And a frog in my pocket,” Madoc added.

The brothers grinned at a childhood memory.

Thompson stood at the base of the staircase. He cleared his throat. “If the ladies will be so good, your rooms are on the second floor, to the left. The gentlemen are on the third, also to the left. You will be met.”  Then he pursed his lips and waited, a black-clad statue until they reached the first landing and continued on to the second flight.

“A tightly controlled household,” Isabella whispered.

“And we’re as controlled as automatons,” Madoc returned. “Not certain I care for that.”

“Free meals. Warm rooms. Soft beds,” she reminded, and he chuckled.

. ~ . ~ . ~ .

A footman directed them to the expansive drawing room for tea. Maids stood with several teapots at the ready. The dowager Malvaise poured and handed out the teacups, giving each taker a direct look. Isabella arrived behind the others. At first she felt like the automaton Madoc had named. Upon seeing the available pastries, both sweet and savory, tartlets and petit-fours, Isabella found it difficult to begrudge her obedience.

A woman crossed to greet the four of them, and Isabella tore her attention from the upcoming food. She recognized Greta Ffoulkes, exactly as she had remembered her. The woman wore an unfortunate dress of slime green that reflected on her skin. Isabella’s simple periwinkle jumper and brown flannel skirt might be plain, but it flattered where that green jersey dress did not. The deep brown cardigan tossed over her shoulders could not mitigate the slimey color.

Remembering Greta’s gold dress at the gallery show, the artist in Isabella wanted to draw her aside and create a more flattering palette.

“Cecilia!”  She opened her arms wide as she neared them then drew in her wings and merely brushed cheeks. “Grandmother told me that you had arrived.”  She opened her eyes wide as she surveyed them. “Now, which of these is your flat-mate?”

“Miss Isabella Newcombe.”

She stepped forward and offered a hand. “Mrs. Ffoulkes—.”

“You must call me ‘Greta’. I hear one of these handsome men is your fiancé.”

Madoc gave a little bow.

“Are you the professor?”

“I am. Gawen Tarrant,” and he stuck his hand out.

She had ignored Isabella’s offered hand, but she took Gawen’s then slid her own up his jacketed arm. “Quite handsome. I do love green eyes. I will steal you away.”  She waved, and a couple separated from the group beside the windows. “Phyllida!”

A young woman seated beside the dowager looked around.

Greta gestured for her to come. “My cousin Phyllida. Very sweet. Out last year. Don’t let her scowl put you off. Stop frowning, Filly;  you’ll have wrinkles before you’re 30. This is Madoc Tarrant. Introduce him around, dear. And Cecilia, I give you to my little sister Alexa,” a darker brunette than her sister and with green eyes Greta must envy, but equally slim, equally pale, equally assured of her world. “Alexa is not out. Miss Newcombe, Isabella, I think you will go charmingly with Captain Portman.”

And she bore Gawen off.

Madoc and Cecilia were towed away.

Captain Portman drew on his cigarette as he scanned her. Isabella tilted up her chin and gave him an equal scrutiny. His build was square, his chin was square, his haircut was square. His handkerchief in his pocket was folded to make three neat triangles. “Miss Newcombe. Or may I call you Isabella? I’m Jack.”

“Hello. Greta said captain. Army or Navy?”

“Army. American?”

She had thought her accent faded. “Yes. You have sharp ears. Have you known Greta long?”

“We were close once upon a time, when the world was still green.”

She knew better than to ask of his recent past, but that comment was designed to provoke a remark. She obeyed the provocation. “You don’t look like a doomed romantic.”

He gave a short bark of laughter. “I like you. Shall we walk about, as the Australians say, and introduce you? You won’t remember many names, but Greta likes to think her methods are the best ones, and it’s easier to give in.”

“Do you know everyone here?”

“I know the Malvaise tribe and their current attachments. A few others. We’ll muddle our way through, and you can introduce me to your friends. I already know Cess.”

“From when the world was still green?”

He shot her a quick glance. “Just so.”  He stopped at the dowager, who handed him tea that he passed on to Isabella. He also let her choose a tartlet and a petit four for the edge of her saucer before taking a cup of tea for himself. “Now,” a hand on the small of her back, he guided her away, “where were we?”

“You know Cess.”

“Exactly right. Have you known her long?”

“We met in October. On Crete. At the dig.”

“The ill-fated dig.”

“If by ill-fated, you mean that it was plagued with a thief who didn’t hesitate to commit murder, then yes.”

“Her husband’s in gaol there. Theft and accomplice to murder, I hear.”

“You are well informed.”

They stopped at the first group. His quiet “Tori” commanded attention, and a young woman close to Isabella’s age broke off her chatter. She wore a red day-dress with a persimmon and gold shawl flung over her shoulders. Dangling carnelian earrings matched the carnelian combs holding back her pale hair.

“Jack. Is this Greta’s invitation to our holidays?”

“One of them. Victoria, may I present Miss Isabella Newcombe?”

Once more she  repressed the urge to curtsey. The young woman had her grandmother’s presence. She had missed the nose by a fortunate circumstance, and Isabella had to refrain from looking for Greta to compare noses.

Portman continued his introductions. “Attached to Tori is her fiancé Tommy Gresham. Currently a playwright.”

“Currently?”  Overly thin, even to his moustache, the young man drew on his cigarette. “What are you?”

“Artist.”

“Artist?”  The man to his right leaned forward as if to see her better. “Oil or watercolor?”

“Both. Primarily watercolor.”

“Women do seem afraid to work in oils,” he chuckled, and she didn’t like him from that point. “Anything in a gallery?”

“At Tony Carstairs, in Soho.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to check that out when I return to London.”

“So will I,” Jack Portman said, and she flashed him a smile.

“I’m Stephen Pettigrew. My work is in several galleries.”  He placed a flat-fingered hand on the man beside him. “This is Calum Eliot. He likes acting, don’t you, Cal?”

Mr. Eliot winced then offered his hand. His gaze flickered briefly to Portman.

“Are you on stage?” she asked.

“I don’t have a role yet. I’ve been auditioning, and the directors claim to like my readings, but—.”

“I’ve told him not to worry. Everyone’s flooding onto the stage now. And Tommy’s writing the perfect part for you. It will elevate you above the masses.”

“Trust Tommy, Calum,” Tori urged and gave a pat on his other arm.

“And we’re off,” her escort said. He steered her to another group. Older people this time. He pressed hard to push her into insinuating into the tight circle. When he crowded in beside her, the silver-streaked blond on his left had to give ground.

Their arrival had killed the conversation.

“Sir Reginald,” Portman said, indicating the silver-haired man with piercing green eyes he had gifted to only one daughter and the Malvaise nose he had cursed another daughter with. “May I introduce Miss Isabella Newcombe, a friend of Mrs. Cecilia Arkwright?”

The battery of eyes never ceased. Isabella gave a brief curtsey.

“Lady Malvaise,” he named.

Side-by-side with her husband, the wife’s youth was glaringly apparent, yet she spoke with the ease of a seasoned hostess. “We met earlier, didn’t we, Miss Newcombe? Did you have an opportunity to look from your window?”

“The garden must be glorious in spring and summer, Lady Malvaise.”

“Mr. Malvaise,” Portman continued around the circle, “and his wife. Filly is their daughter.”

The couple nodded. He did not have his brother’s silver, but he sported last decade’s whiskers along with baggy corduroys and a leather-patched cardigan. His silver-streaked wife was expensively-dressed and bejeweled, ears and neck and wrists and fingers.

“The Ryders, Douglas and Rosamunde. And this is Godfrey Hunstead.”

The couple murmured greetings. The stocky man smiled. Liking his cheery eyes above his ruddy cheeks, Isabella smiled back.

“My wife’s taking tea upstairs.”

“By which Hunstead means,” Portman said in her ear as he steered her to the third group, “that his wife’s upstairs with a different tipple.”

They were headed for the far end of the room where three sofas boxed the hearth. Madoc stood at the edge of a sofa, with his escort lingering at his elbow. He had his arms folded, his legs braced apart, his posture when he confronted something or someone he didn’t like.

The girl—Filly—tugged on his arm. He allowed himself to be turned back to the room. When he saw Isabella, he smiled, but then he saw Portman’s hand on her. He slowed, but Filly towed him relentlessly back to the elder Lady Malvaise.

And Isabella focused on new group. Which one of them had kindled Madoc’s temper? Two older men and two older women sat on sofa across from each other while two younger persons sat at either end of the third sofa.

Portman launched into his introductions. “I’ll start with Mr. Buxton,” an angular man in grey silk. He offered no smile with his nod, just an assessing survey. “This is Miss Isabella Newcombe, Philip. And his wife Maureen,” a bone-thin woman who didn’t look up from her jangling bracelets. “Their son Anthony.”

The young man’s grin warmed up the angular features he’d inherited. And he stood up, showing manners. “Tony, please. Mr. Tarrant, Madoc Tarrant, just informed us that you are his fiancée.”

Portman’s hand shifted, but he didn’t remove it. Isabella wondered what he was thinking. “Yes, we are betrothed.”

“No ring,” Mr. Buxton judged.

“I don’t need a ring to feel engaged to Madoc.”

“I understand you two didn’t meet until October, when he was off on that dig with his brother instead of working for his grandfather.”

A comment like that would have sparked Madoc’s anger. She tilted her head and continued to smile. “I think dire circumstances must strip away the social veneer and give us the true person. I certainly may not know everything of my fiancé’s past, but I know he is honorable and reliable, strong of mind and steady of character.”

“Strong? Steady? He doesn’t have a job. I understand he rejected his grandfather’s offer of a position in the main office.”

This was the man. Isabella did not like to fight battles, but she wouldn’t back down from this one. “Yes, he refused that offer. He was de-mobbed in June, and he did not want to chain himself immediately to a windowless office. He does have a job, though, Mr. Buxton. He reports there after the New Year.”

“You surprise me.”

She opened her eyes wide. “How so, Mr. Buxton?”

“Your defense of him—.”

“Oh, come, Philip,” the other older woman said, “leave the young lady alone. She’s not been here more than a couple of hours. I’m Lottie Crittenden, Reggie’s sister. I publish Modern Woman. You may have read it. We’re at all the London newsstands. And this,” she pointed at the young woman sharing the sofa with Tony, “is my assistant, Alicia Osterley.”

Miss Osterley removed her black-framed glasses and smiled with a squint as she polished the lenses using the hem of her skirt.

“Which leaves Wyatt Williamson,” and Portman indicated the straggle-haired art critic.

“Last but not least,” Williamson said, neither cheerfully nor mordantly. “I have recalled your work, Miss Newcombe.”

Her eyes opened wide again, this time without false innocence. “You have?”

“You have a watercolor I found interesting in Tony Carstairs’ gallery. He sold it, unfortunately.”

“Fortunately for me, Mr. Williamson. Was it the mountains in Crete with the foothills covered in dittany?”

“A shoreline. And I’m glad to hear you’ve sold more than one but disappointed that I missed this other painting.”

“I delivered two more canvasses to Mr. Carstairs just yesterday, sir. A small oil and a watercolor of the size of the shoreline.”

“Then I must visit Carstairs again. I would be pleased to have one of your works in my collection.”

Her heart pounded at the praise. “Thank you, Mr. Williamson.”

Portman made their apologies and led her away, back to the dowager and her tea tray, where her friends waited.

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Gathering Ideas

 So here I am, gathering ideas for The Bride in Ghostly White, a Gothic mystery of the Victorian age ... and the ideas that are swirling are for Nedda Courtland, secretary to the wealthy, mystery-solver of the Jazz Age.

Color me surprised.

Digging into Death / First of the Novel and Links

 Has the Love of her Life Beguiled Her Straight into Death?

Isabella, a damsel not in distress, arrives at an archaeological dig and discovers love and murder. 

Digging into Death

Chapter 1 :: Saturday, October 4

If ever a maiden needed a hero, Isabella did.

Crete was the famed birthplace of Zeus, the god who granted supplicants’ prayers. Standing on the steps of the Heraklion Hotel, Isabella hoped her hero appeared before a blood sacrifice was necessary.

She plunked down her suitcase on the hotel steps and fanned her wide-brimmed straw hat.  In ancient Crete the rulers had offered shelter and protection to strangers.  Yet in the closed faces of the passers-by, intent on their errands, she did not see any hospitality offered to a foreign woman alone.  She needed a recognizable and friendly face.  She didn’t see one.

Men talking, engines sputtering, horns blaring, dogs barking, donkeys braying:  after the hotel’s quiet, the cacophony assaulted her ears.  Men poured past the steps with scarcely a glance at her.  Most wore the dark Cretan jacket and loose breeches, although a few suits testified to modern Europe’s inroads on island culture.  A few women in unrelieved black walked along the dusty road, but they ignored the lone foreigner on the hotel steps.

Isabella saw no one familiar and definitely no one who looked like the reincarnation of a protective god and certainly no one who could rescue a stranded governess.

Then a demigod emerged from the hotel.  Like Apollo, god of light and knowledge, his golden hair glinted in the morning light.  And Isabella recognized him:  Nigel Arkwright, one of the English archaeologists.

Prof. Arkwright had dined with her erstwhile employer on Tuesday night.  Last night, in the bar, she’d seen him order one whiskey after another.  This morning, though, her panic when the hotel manager confronted her about her bill had cast him from her mind.  But he could give her help.  Although Isabella despised encroachers, she couldn’t let this god-given opportunity slip away.

As he reached the last step, she dropped her heavy suitcase in his path.  “Prof. Arkwright, hello.  I’m Isabella Newcombe.  We met when the Harcourt-Smythes visited your dig last weekend.”

His mouth compressed, which didn’t bode well for her start.  Last evening’s drinking might have been too deep for an appeal to his English gentleman’s code.  A hangover this morning wouldn’t help her.

He cleared his throat.  “I remember you.  You were the governess.”  He looked past her, scanning the road.  “American governess, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, I was the governess.”  She stressed the past tense.  She hitched her satchel strap higher on her shoulder.  “They discharged me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss, but I’m in a—.”

“No, you’re not sorry.  You do not care.  You don’t know me well enough to care.  You don’t know me at all.  And that is the crux of my problem, Prof. Arkwright.  Besides my former employers, no one knows me here, and no one cares.  I am in a foreign country, surrounded by foreigners, and I do not have enough money for my passage home.”

“Your appeal should go to your employer, not to me.”

“No matter what circumstance, I will not return to him.”  She hoped the bright glare hid her flaming cheeks.  “Two weeks’ wages and a letter for his bank in Athens were all that Mr. Harcourt-Smythe gave me.  I can repay you once I reach Athens.  I do have the funds.  My problem is here and now.”

“Surely someone—.”

“I am completely alone, and I might as well be penniless.  Then I saw you.  I thought Providence had sent you to be my rescuer.”

“Miss Newcombe,” he settled a pith helmet on his gilded hair, “I don’t believe I qualify as a rescuer.”  The narrow brim shaded his eyes.

She hated this intruding role she’d been thrust into, but she played it with the desperate energy that stressed its truth.  “Here am I, stranded and virtually penniless.  Here are you, an English gentleman in the midst of an important dig.  You must have need of a helper.  Someone who can catalog items or type notes or—or do something.  Surely an extra pair of hands can be useful somewhere.”

A horn honked.  Prof. Arkwright looked around.  An army truck jolted along the street.  He glanced back at her as he stepped down to meet it.  “Miss Newcombe, I’m not in charge of this dig.  Gawen Tarrant is.  I have no power to hire anyone.  And he has no liking for tourists who need their hands held.”

“Professor, I am desperate.  I will do anything.  Please, say you’ll help me.  Please don’t abandon me.”

The truck jerked to a stop and bounced when the driver pulled the brake.  Leaving the motor running, he jumped out.  The professor started to the front of the truck.

“Prof. Arkwright?” Isabella pleaded.

He looked back at her as he dropped a baksheesh into the young man’s hand.  Then he dug into his pocket for another coin.  “Ari, shove Miss Newcombe’s case into the back.”

Isabella nearly sank with relief, but Prof. Arkwright had already reached the driver’s door.  Ari lifted her heavy suitcase and swung it into the back.  The professor revved the motor impatiently, and she clambered gracelessly into the passenger seat.  He released the parking brake.  The truck jolted off.  She looked back.

Ari stood waving on the bottom step.  Behind him, the Heraklion Hotel loomed, substantial but unwelcoming to a single, penniless woman.

She wasn’t sure which appeal to the gentleman’s chivalric code had changed Prof. Arkwright’s mind, and she wouldn’t ask.  As the truck jounced over furrows and eroded ruts, she worried about her unsecured suitcase bouncing in the back, but she didn’t ask about that either.  The roar of the engine hid the grumbles from her days-empty stomach.

Close to Heraklion they had smooth driving, yet a few miles outside the capitol the road had fallen into disrepair, a casualty of the recent war.  It became disreputable as they rolled the miles around the north of Mount Dikte.

As he drove, Nigel Arkwright’s jaw jutted pugnaciously.  When they left the main road, the way disintegrated into a cart track winding through the eastern foothills of the mountain that guides still claimed had been the birthplace of Zeus.  Snow already frosted its heights.

The professor ground the gears as they halted for herds of sheep and workers repairing an eroded irrigation ditch and children playing in the tiny hamlets.  The roosters and chickens scattered ahead of the truck.  Not once did he speak to her.

Isabella clamped her jaw to keep from biting her tongue.  She wanted to ask about the passing landscape or about the dig at Knossos and why Arkwright’s group wasn’t working the famous site.  A look at his undimmed frown daunted her.

From the visit last weekend, she knew that Arkwright and his colleagues worked two obscure sites far from the four better-known digs of Knossos, Phaestos, Mallia, and Gurnia.  Compared to those, this expedition could hardly carry an official name.  Only Zeus’ own mountain gave grace to the sites.

Isabella and the Harcourt-Smythes had arrived at the dig after a pouring rain had collapsed a wall.  Muck the flat color of cement had covered everything and everyone.  The artist lurking inside Isabella had taken the mud and exposed foundations and imagined a country palace, braced against the bleaching sun and African winds.  Her two charges had distracted her from that past.  The busy archaeologists had barely acknowledged their unexpected visitors.

As Prof. Arkwright man-handled the truck over the road, Isabella stared at the craggy rocks of Mt. Dikte, scarred with ravines and pocked with tumbled boulders.  These English archaeologists might not be the answer to her prayer.  Should she have looked for a different rescuer?  Should she have waited?  She remembered two married ladies at the dig but no single ones.  The dig would still be busy, and she was an imposition.  Would they welcome her at all?  Would they give her a chance to earn her passage to England?  Or had she only delayed the inevitable?

Last night she had wanted to scream with fear and frustration.  Instead, she paced through the early hours as she tried to work out a solution to her unexpected unemployment.

This late in the year, few archaeologists remained on Crete.  She had planned to search each group out;  if they had failed her, she would approach the English construction crew working on the roads or haunt the antiquities museum.  Yet a search took money, and she needed to hoard the pittance that was her only protection against the world until she reached Athens.  And that was before the hotel manager demanded she pay from Tuesday through Friday.

Nigel Arkwright had seemed a gift from the gods.  If he weren’t, she had still gained time to contrive a less desperate solution.

The god Apollo was steering his sun chariot to its westward descent when they arrived at the dig.  Arkwright jolted his mundane chariot to a stop.  The professor set the hand brake but left the motor running.  As she reached for the door handle, he said, “At least you can be silent.  After this morning’s deluge, I wasn’t certain.”

“I was desperate, Professor.  If I had not convinced you, I don’t know what I would have done.  The hotel manager had decided I was a disreputable nuisance once he learned that Mr. Harcourt-Smythe had discharged me.  I must thank you once again, Prof. Arkwright.”

“I haven’t helped yet.  That’s not in my power.  As I said, I’m not in charge here.”

“Yes, you mentioned Professor Tarrant.  He wasn’t here last weekend.”

“Gawen Tarrant was at Knossos on a shared week, our fourth this season.  You may have seen his brother, although he tried to avoid your party.  Tourists are a nuisance who interrupt our work.  Your arrival will interrupt us again.”

She sucked in a breath.  “Thank you for the warning.”

“Our work requires training and education, Miss Newcombe, so you will not waltz into a position.  My wife sorts and catalogs the daily finds at the palace site.  Prof. Standings is in charge of the temple site;  his wife assists him there.  Tarrant handles his own notes, as do I.  I don’t know what Standings does.  The students will not need a secretary.  Unless you can contrive a job before you meet Tarrant, you will soon return to Heraklion.  All the chatter in the world won’t change his mind.  Indeed, you will find it decides him more quickly.  That, too, is a warning.”

Speech delivered, he shoved open the truck door and strode away, shouting to a worker to drive it up to the house.

Isabella slid out as the worker slid behind the wheel.  He flashed a grin as she snatched her hat.  The truck jerked.  She grabbed her satchel and slammed the door, and the truck rattled off.  She watched it wind around the cedars on the curving climb to the village.  Only when it vanished behind the trees did she remember her suitcase.  Yet her possessions were a minor worry.  Clothes and a few trinkets would not give her a job on this dig.  With her lack of experience, any work she found would likely be at their leased house.  Her cooking could not rival the savory dinners a village woman had prepared on Saturday and Sunday.  Two other village women took care of cleaning and laundry.  Isabella’s prospects looked worse and worse.

Her spirits wilting, she trudged after Nigel Arkwright.  Then she reached the dig.

The lower site was the ancient palace.  From the earlier tour she remembered that the archaeologists had excavated a complex foundation, a well, and a refuse tip, buried for centuries by a mudslide.  Farther up the hillside was the second site, a temple tumbled into ruined blocks.

Her employers had not wanted to climb up to the temple and had loitered around the palace site.  When Mrs. Harcourt-Smythe complained that it did not look like a grand palace to her, let alone a country manor, Prof. Arkwright had launched into a description of primitive life.  Isabella’s charges, the two girls, had immediately lost interest.  The entire family had had glazed expressions when the lecture had concluded.

 Smiling in remembrance, Isabella meandered around the excavation.  This time, no whining twosome distracted her.  Each separate chore fascinated her.  Diggers cleared out the mud from the earlier wall collapse.  Pickmen used their tools to distinguish a wall from centuries of mud.  Two English students dropped a plumb line to measure the wall’s height.

Her fingers itched to record the scene.  She rummaged in her satchel for sketchbook and pencil.  For several breaths she merely watched, then she tried to transfer the energy to the page: the pickmen, the two students, Arkwright gesturing to a worker carrying a brace.

“Well done.”  The woman at her shoulder startled Isabella.  “In a few minutes you’ve reproduced our dig.”

A wide-brimmed hat preserved the woman’s creamy skin from the intense sun.  It also framed the angular bones that gave her a singular beauty.  Dust and sweat had not touched her starched blouse and trim tan skirt.  With a yellow scarf tied in an ascot, she looked like an advertisement for the chic sporting woman.

Isabella offered a brighter smile than she felt.  “Thank you, Mrs. Arkwright.  The dig is fascinating.  History brought into the present.”

“Say that to Gawen Tarrant, and he may let you stay.  Come into the shade, Miss Newcombe, before this sun melts you.”

Isabella stowed her sketchbook then followed Cecilia Arkwright beneath a long tarp.

The woman walked around rough tables covered with sorting trays and settled onto a campstool.  She idly fingered the potsherds in the nearest tray.  “My husband told me of your straits.  What will you do, Miss Newcombe?”

Isabella fanned her hat.  “Wilt even more until I collapse under this sun.  Mrs. Arkwright, when I saw your husband this morning, I thought I had a brilliant solution.  I fear the gods may have blinded me instead of granting my plea.”

“Did you pray for guidance?  Well, we shall see if your solution was divinely inspired or not.  Bring over a stool, and help me sort these.”

Isabella spilled the story of her dismissal as she sorted broken potsherds from a basket into trays.  By the time the sun sank toward the horizon, her gloves were soiled by centuries’ old clay and she’d learned that pottery revealed its age as distinctly as sculpture did.

“It’s like a puzzle, isn’t it?  Sorting by the color marks and the thickness and the slip.  Are the pieces ever re-assembled?  I think that would be incredibly frustrating.  A puzzle with no clues as to size or shape, and most of the pieces missing.”

“Hunting a job, Miss Newcombe?”

She stiffened at the unfamiliar voice.  Wilted she may have felt, but steel straightened her spine as she stood to confront her next challenge.  “Professor Tarrant, I presume?”

The oblique allusion to the great African adventurer earned his grin, a white flash in a face tanned by the fierce sun.  Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his startlingly green eyes were a brilliant shock.  A tall man, with arms obstinately folded, he loomed over her.  “Archaeology is not a treasure hunt but an exploration into our origins.”

“Gawen, Miss Newcombe has had a few difficult days.  You shouldn’t bombard her with your favorite lecture.”

“We have all had difficult days, Cecilia.  I’ve wasted a week at Knossos, and I return to days lost due to a mudslip and tourists, one of whom won’t leave.  Walk with me, Miss Newcombe.  Leave that,” he ordered when she lifted her satchel.

“I won’t, Professor.  I can’t.  My money’s in it.”

“Fool woman.  You should have the money on you, not in a bag for any street urchin to wrench away.  Hand it over.”  He unbuckled his belt.  When she stood disbelieving, he snapped, “I won’t steal your money.  I’ll keep it safely until you leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”  She had hoped for a week or more, not just one night.

“Tomorrow unless you convince me otherwise.  Now, your money.”

To refuse would further blacken her chances.  She handed over her purse.  He snapped it open and extracted the folded pound notes.  “How much?”

She named her woefully small sum as she returned her purse to the satchel.

His eyebrows lifted then dropped back to a scowl.  She was relieved his perpetual frown could break, albeit briefly.  “That’s all the Harcourt-Smythes paid for keeping their two screeching girls in line?”  He stuffed her folded bills into his money belt.

“You saw us?  When?”

“At Knossos on Monday.  How often did you want to strangle your charges?”

Isabella primmed her mouth.  “Not once, sir.  A governess inculcates good behavior as well as knowledge.  However much I deplored their shrill voices and reprehensible conduct, I could do no more than remonstrate with them to behave better.  My personal preferences as to strangulation remained but a dream.”

Cecilia Arkwright applauded.  “Well said.  I hear my own governess.”

Tarrant snorted.  “If you talked that way, no wonder they misbehaved.”  He finished buckling his belt then swept an arm to have her precede him.  “Is that a week’s wage?  Where are your other wages?”

“Two weeks’ wages.  I had other money with me, but I had to pay my hotel bill, an expense I did not expect.  Mr. Harcourt-Smythe banked the rest of my salary.  In with those bills is a letter from him to his Athens banker, explaining the transfer of my remaining wages.”

“Useless here, isn’t it?  Why didn’t you protest?  Throw a schoolgirl’s tantrum and let those brats taste their own behavior?”  Although he limped, Gawen Tarrant set a rapid pace.  “Or are you too much the pattern of propriety?  And if you are that proper, why were you dismissed?”

Isabella stumbled on the path he’d chosen away from the site.  He steadied her.  She forced herself to meet those hard green eyes, even as color flooded her cheeks.  “Perhaps I am too much a pattern of propriety, sir.  I have several times found it necessary to rebuff Mr. Harcourt-Smythe.  I found it necessary to refuse him more vigorously both before and after his wife discovered him in my bedchamber Tuesday night.”

The path angled up the hillside.  Spreading oaks gave partial shade.  “Before and after, Miss Newcombe?  Did his wife not dismiss you on the spot?”

“Mr. Harcourt-Smythe offered a different employment after she dismissed me.”

Gawen Tarrant stopped under an oak’s partial shade.  Her severe gray suit offered no armor against his scathing glare.  “I trust he offered you considerably more money.”

“I did not give him an opportunity to name a sum, sir.”

“You should ask much, much more.”

The blush burned her cheeks.  “I do not know what opinion you have of American women, Prof. Tarrant, but I do not seek that employment.  I have never—.”

“You did tell Arkwright that you were desperate enough to do anything.”

“I’m not that desperate,” she spat.

As if her vehemence confirmed a silent question, he nodded and resumed walking.  “You are not that desperate yet, Miss Newcombe.  You will be if you do not quickly find employment.  You are far from your passage back to England.”

“Yes, I know.  I hoped to find work here.  I can read ancient Greek and Latin.”

“We are digging earlier than the glorious Greeks.  We’ve excavated below the Minoan culture that Arthur Evans uncovered at Knossos.  Arkwright’s in his realm.  We will soon dig deeper.”  At her blank look, he shook his head.  “You do not even know what that means.”

“I can learn.”

“We operate on a lean budget, Miss Newcombe, unlike some archaeologists who spend their personal fortunes on a dig.  The treasure-hunters focus on Egypt, lusting for a find like Schliemann’s at Troy.  Standings and Arkwright won’t fund your salary.  Any money you would earn here must come from the Tarrant account, and that is not a rich one.  So in the morning you will return to Heraklion.  I will ensure your return to the mainland.  That expense I can shoulder for you.  Then you must seize on some other English gentleman for charity;  the British School at Athens is flush with them.  Or you may return to Harcourt-Smythe.”

“Never.”

“Never to him?  Or to that employment?  How many times did he come to your room?  How many times did he force himself on you?”

“My father was a fan of American football, Professor.  Perhaps you know the game?  That taught me all the protection I needed.  As for the rest, it is none of your business.”  She stalked ahead.

Even with the limp, he quickly caught up to her.  Those green eyes blazed, like Zeus preparing a thunderbolt to blast an impertinent mortal.  “It’s my business if I make it so.  I run a respectable dig, Miss Newcombe.”

“Yet you dare accuse me—.”

“Do I believe you or Harcourt-Smythe, a wealthy businessman?”

“A predator on defenseless women!”

“According to Arkwright, Harcourt-Smythe wants to discuss an antiquities deal with me.  He proposed it Tuesday evening, when Arkwright dined with him.  He will return soon.”  She gaped at him.  He prodded.  “And find you here.”

“Do you doubt me, Prof. Tarrant?  I do not lie.”

“You misread me, Miss Newcombe.  Through the business he wants to contract, I can have a leverage on him.  I can force him to re-hire you.”

“Only to have his advances foisted on me again?  No.  Besides, he would abandon me, perhaps in much more dire circumstances, as soon as he is beyond your sphere.  That service from you I will not request, Prof. Tarrant.  I and my propriety will find another way home.”  She whirled away.

He caught up at the last incline to the village.  “My apologies, Miss Newcombe.  I did not intend to offend you.”

“That is a lie.”  Even though her energy was flagging, she didn’t slow down.  “You designed every word to provoke me.”

“Guilty as charged.”

That stopped her.

He grinned, like a little boy who had tricked her.  His stern expression melted away, and he looked as young as the apprentice archaeologists.  “The house with the blue doors, Miss Newcombe.  Tell our housekeeper Dorcas that I sent you, and she will make you welcome.”  Then he headed back, skidding a little on the slope before it leveled off.

Isabella watched his hike back, a smooth gait even with a limp.  He had accused her twice, to satisfy an inner test she couldn’t divine.  He said that she would leave tomorrow and offered the means, then he hinted that she might stay longer.  She didn’t understand him.  As fickle as Zeus, he flashed punishment then seemed willing to protect a stranger seeking the dig’s hospitality—however briefly he extended the obligatory welcome.

She didn’t dare toss his assistance back, as much as she wanted to.  His “guilty as charged” had sapped her anger at his offensive questions.  She didn’t know what to do.

The wind picked up.  She held her hat in place and surveyed the dig.  Not a large excavation, like the one Arthur Evans had conducted at Knossos or Schliemann’s extensive digging at Troy.  The quartering ropes in carefully measured sections looked scientific, as had the sorting of potsherds:  dark glaze to this tray, earth-red in the other, unmarked bits in the third.  A logical method to uncover the site’s secrets.  As Gawen Tarrant’s well-chosen shafts had uncovered her secrets.

The professor had reached the dig.  He spoke to a dark-haired man she hadn’t met.  The other man turned, giving orders to the workmen.  They began to stack their tools.  Several unrolled a covering for the roped excavation.  Gawen Tarrant spoke next to Arkwright and the two younger men before ducking beneath the tarp.

Isabella remembered her money.  She would have to speak to Prof. Tarrant to retrieve her wages, but she would refuse to play “Miss Gratitude”.

She resumed her climb to the village.

The path plunged through a stand of cedars before it gained the hill, then it skirted an olive grove as it worked around a large house.  From the size and the terra cotta roof tiles, she guessed it was the one leased for the dig.  The blue doors confirmed it.  She smiled at those doors as she had last Saturday noon as she walked with the Harcourt-Smythes from their camp beyond the village.  Blue was an understatement;  the paint was a bright Egyptian lapis.  The blue was repeated in the tilework of a sparkling pool that centered the inner courtyard.  Like an ancient Roman villa, the house surrounded the courtyard.  She had wanted to explore, but their visit was confined to the entrance, the courtyard, and a long room that combined the sitting and dining areas.  Now she was to have her chance.

She rang the bell.  As she waited, she glanced at the village that straggled along the hillside.  A half-dozen families could have lived in this house.

The housekeeper Dorcas did not seem surprised at her re-appearance.  She left Isabella in the courtyard then bustled away along a covered hallway to the kitchen.

Sinking into a chair near the pool, Isabella trembled as much as the breeze-stirred leaves and water.  She had used her last energy of the day.  The spurt of anger and frustration that had buttressed her from the dig to the house evanesced.  The drone of bees increased.  The sun on the white-washed wall looked bright and brighter, then it blackened, and she melted like wax.

 

 

Chapter 2 :: Saturday, October 4

A cool cloth covered Isabella’s eyes.  Distant voices echoed but not clearly enough to distinguish the one she dreaded.  A bird trilled.  A gentle breeze cooled.  She wanted to lie quietly in this peace but dared not.  Holding the cloth, she sat up and swayed.

“Careful.  Don’t move too quickly.”  The man’s voice, deeper than Gawen Tarrant’s, yet with the same lilt of Welsh beneath the public school accent.  The mattress sank, and a strong arm bolstered her.  “Drink this.”

She removed the cloth to see an enameled cup advancing.  She barely caught her breath before the cup touched her lips, and she had to drink.  The whiskey burned its way down her throat.  When her coughing subsided, the man leaned her back onto the bed.  She blinked at this rougher version of a Tarrant and remembered that the professor’s brother was on this dig.

“What happened?” she whispered.

He set the cup on a side table.  In the time he gave himself before answering, she noted several differences to Gawen Tarrant.  This rugged version had a tanned face marred by a stubbly beard.  Dark hair curled over his opened collar.  And bright blue eyes framed by thick lashes every girl would envy.

She had to look away before he captured her heart.  Lamplight left much of the room in shadow, but she spotted her satchel on a low chest behind him.

“Better now?  Or is the room still spinning?”

She blinked, trying to marshal her scattered thoughts.  “No, no, it’s—.  I’m sorry to have caused more trouble.”  She liked his blue eyes.  The lamplight gave them a mesmerizing brilliance.  By contrast, his brother’s vivid green eyes had seemed cold, indifferent to her plight.

“You came the other day with the Harcourt-Smythes.  Don’t tell me they’re back.”

“No.  No, just me.”

“And have you abandoned the terrors?”

At the apt naming, she responded to his smile before her spirits sank again.  “I no longer work for them.  I was dismissed Tuesday night.  They left the hotel the next morning.”

“Have you eaten since then?  No?  Well, that explains your faint.”

“I fainted?”  Disgust at her weakness flattened her voice.

“Call it a swoon.  The heat and the climb uphill combined with three days without substantial food.  You were bound to swoon.  Why didn’t you eat at the hotel?”

“I need every pound to pay my passage home.”

“Yet you spent more days at the hotel.”

“Mr. Harcourt-Smythe said that he had paid my room through last night.  The hotel manager told me this morning that he had not paid it.  I thought myself blessed when I managed to coerce Prof. Arkwright into bringing me here.”

“I see.  You twisted his arm and marched him to the lorry.”

The sally won him another smile.  Isabella’s affinity for this Tarrant grew.  He was passing from stranger to friend, and she still didn’t know his name.

That thought woke her caution.  His touch to the damp curls around her face jangled an alarm bell.  He might scowl and inspect her like a specimen on a pin, but she knew her pulse fluttered in her throat and her cheeks burned at the hint of intimacy.

“I want to sit up.”

“Not yet.  You may be dizzy.”

She wriggled.  “I don’t know you.  Not your name or who you are—.”

“And you have recovered enough to remember propriety.  I see I made no impression at our first introduction.  I’m Madoc Tarrant, Gawen’s brother.”  Spying her puzzled frown, he added, “I was covered with mud the first time.”

She remembered then, despite the two terrors’ distraction.  During their tour they had watched workers digging out a wall half-covered by the recent mudslip.  Arkwright had called a man’s name, and he had straightened to acknowledge them.  Taller than the other workers, the mud had given him anonymity.  His eyes had flashed white in his muddy face, then he’d bent back to work, giving them his broad shoulders.  Muscles had rippled under his mud-slick shirt.  Mud had plastered his trousers to his legs.  Artist she might pretend to be, but then and now embarrassment colored her face.  Isabella wriggled again.

“Lie still, Isabella.”

Her name on his well-shaped mouth did not help her composure.  “How did I get—?  Where am—?  I was on the terrace.  What happened?”

“Our housekeeper Dorcas found you, and I was first back, luckily for you.  I carried you here, to my room.  It’s the quietest in the house.  Dorcas did the rest, not me.  Your modesty remains untouched.”  His flashing grin reassured her.  “Dorcas would still be hovering if the others hadn’t returned, demanding dinner.”

“I must thank her.  And you.”

“No thanks are necessary, Miss Newcombe.”

“Please, I must sit up.”

He helped her, tucking a pillow behind her.  Then he walked around the bed to the window, open to the night air.  The bird trilled again.  A dog yapped unceasingly.  Madoc Tarrant’s profile was sharply defined against the darkness.  High brow and straight nose, square chin bristly with the day’s whiskers.  The only trait he didn’t share with his brother were those blue eyes, but no one would ever confuse the two men.  Tall, dark and handsome.  If Nigel Arkwright were Apollo, which god was he?  Hades?  Then which god was his brother?

“What brings you to the dig, Miss Newcombe?”

 

Read more in the novel Digging into Death by M.A. Lee, at these links.

Ebook and Paperback at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXPRKHM

Ebook only at Worldwide Distributors https://books2read.com/u/bzdM72

 

The Hazard for Spies / 1st Chapters and Links

 Read below for the opening chapters. Find LINKS at the End.

Book Description

A young constable tracks treacherous traitors. A spinster hopes to find a killer. Will murder destroy their chance for love?

Conrad Hoppock left his village and the girl he secretly loved for a chance at a better livelihood. He joined the London constabulary and began working with the Bow Street Runners. Now he hunts the master spy stealing information for Bonapartist France. His search sends him undercover in a lawyer’s office.

When Phinney Darracott’s sister and brother-in-law died, their children whispered “murder”. She dismissed that claim as unreasonable terrors caused by the tragic loss. Yet after repeated burglaries and an arson that destroyed their home, Phinney believed the whispers. Now she wants justice for their murders.

The clues lead her to London. There, she disguises herself as a cleaning maid for the very law office where Conrad is disguised as a clerk. Phinney’s young niece Elise and the street urchin Vic secretly pursue a different tangle of clues to the murders.

In the night hours, when all is still, Phinney prowls for the evidence. Then she encounters Conrad.

And the lawyer at the center of the tangle of clues is shot dead while they watch from their hiding place.

Can Conrad discover the identity of the French mastermind? Will Phinney’s single-minded pursuit lead her into the murderer’s snare? Will the children be caught and sold into London’s underworld?

Will they discover the connection between past and present murders?

Or will two bullets allow the murderer and the French master spy to continue their work against the British government?

Opening Chapters

Chapter 1

A hand dropped on Vic’s shoulder. He stopped scratching his picks through the lock’s resisting tumblers.

The round moon cast her silvery eye over the alley. Soon she would drift beyond the narrow walkway

between the buildings. The silvery light would travel with her, leaving the alley dark except for the golden gleams peeking through the cracks of Elise’s shuttered lantern.

Her light hand lifted from his shoulder, and he returned to his work, figuring out the tumblers on the heavy lock safeguarding the warehouse side door.

She bent close, her breath a warm wisp across his cheek. “How much longer? That’s the third pass by the watchman.”

“Nearly there,” he lied. He didn’t know if he could get past this lock, rusted after long months in rain and cold. He fumbled for a heavier pick.

She huffed, and Vic knew she hadn’t believed him.

Times like this, the job chancy and the watchman vigilant, Vic missed the known of Liverpool. The escape routes, the likeliest hiding places, refuges from stout fists, the constable who would turn eyes elsewhere. He didn’t like London’s crowded buildings and sooty streets, the seething markets, the constant noise even in the deeps of night. He’d stay, though, till they found the information that Elise and her aunt Phinney hunted.

The strong wire pick Bessy worked past Hook and Fine to reach the last tumbler, stiff with rust. Vic gave a jerky twist. The tumbler resisted then “creached”, the word Ollie had taught him for the soft screech of metal giving way to his picks. As the lock swung from its shackle, he caught it, cold in his hand, rough with rust.

Elise snatched up the shuttered lantern. Her sharp elbow moved him aside. The door opened into darkness with a glow of light off to their left. That was street-side, where the front office would be. The light lured the unwary, but Vic knew better than to head for it, for the light meant watchmen resting between their patrols.

High windows admitted the moonlight. The silvery radiance might illuminate the night sky, but they would need stronger light to find their way through the warehouse. Stacked crates formed haphazard walls, and piled on and around them were boxes, trunks, and barrels, too many to count.

Elise glided over the bricked floor, smoothed by years of use. She didn’t open the lantern shutters, but light streamed around the metal plates, joined badly, repaired worse, but still better than candlelight that would signal a watchman. Cautious skittering started off to his left. Rats, the big London ones that stared before running to hide, considering attack rather than flight. A good mouser would have a battle against London rats.

She reached back, grabbed his coat, and hauled him inside. He shut the door gently.

“Lock?” she hissed.

“Pocket.”

She dragged him a few steps before Vic planted his feet. “Come on,” she demanded.

“Where to?” he retorted, keeping his voice equally low. “Can’t see nothing.”

“We’ll use the lantern upstairs. The windows are shuttered there.”

“Steps or ladder?” He didn’t like ladders. Rickety things weren’t kept in repair until someone fell and died.

Elise snorted, “Stairs. In the middle,” but she didn’t sound sure.

“This the right warehouse?” he questioned, not for the first time.

“Come on,” she ordered, and he followed because she still had his coat bunched in her fist.

Elise had explained her plan on the day after they arrived in London, almost ten days ago. Her aunt Phinney was off talking to her friend, the matron who offered them rooms in her mission. Hank had hared off to the kitchens, pretending to focus on fresh scones. Emissary to the house, he brought back all snippets of unusual information. In less than a day he had formed an instant friendship with the cook, a lean African woman that Vic had trouble understanding but who turned out food better than he’d ever had in his short life.

Drawing Vic to the double entry for the residence quarter of the mission, Elise sat him on the floor beneath the coats to lay out her plan. She claimed her father had had a second office where he kept important documents. She sketched a plan to find the building on a Church Garden Street near the river. They would break in at night then go through the documents until she found her father’s murderer.

Vic listened. He saw problems with the girl’s plan, not least that they were little more than children and they would be running the London streets when the criminals were about. He didn’t anticipate that she had the street name wrong. That problem took a week of cautious questions to discover it was Kirkgardie rather than Church Garden. Then they discovered the street ran a long ways beside the river. More days were lost walking and searching. More days passed before Elise spotted the blocky building with its unpainted plank walls warping in London’s moist air. “That’s it!” she cried then clapped her hand over her mouth.

No one had heard her. That was luck. They scouted round, counting windows, locating doors. Vic liked the narrow side door with its thick rusting lock, proof that few people paid any attention to the door. He didn’t like the watchmen patrolling the exterior. More men would be inside, that he knew, but her elation infected him. He scouted for a couple of days and a couple of evenings on his own, learning the men’s routines, before he agreed to break into the warehouse.

Neither of them mentioned anything to Phinney. They didn’t want the young woman to worry. She would be frantic if Elise or Hank went missing. Vic came up with a good story in case she questioned him. But Phinney hadn’t noticed. She’d been gone herself. “A job,” she told them at breakfast, “cleaning offices. We should pay Mrs. Stowbridge something for taking us in, giving us rooms and food. I’ll be working in law offices near the Old Bailey.”

Vic thought nothing of it.

Elise stared at her boiled egg like it turned her stomach. “Which lawyers?”

“You wouldn’t know them, dear.”

“Papa was a lawyer here in London before he moved to Liverpool, only a few months before he and Mama—died.”

Phinney bit into her scone. It crumbled, and she caught the pieces in an open hand. “Yes, Rosie wrote me. Peter was in London more than at home. Did you wish to go to his old office?”

“No. He closed that office.” Her blue eyes met Vic’s.

“I remember,” her aunt said, still chasing crumbs. “Rosie said that he had opened the office in Liverpool where his primary client was based. Everything else was stored at the house in Merrybush.” She sipped her tea. Lifting the quilted cozy, she picked up the teapot and offered to warm the children’s cups before re-filling hers.

“Which lawyers are in the building, Aunt Phinney?”

“I suppose you might know them, especially after our stay at Parton March. The ground floor is all clerks, of course, and reception. A large firm of barristers has the entire first floor. Clements, Pickard, and Quincy. Do you know that firm?” After Elise shook her head, Phinney set aside her teacup. She named other firms housed on the second floor. Her eyes tracked an invisible line. “Third floor. Phipps and LaVesque. Titterstone and Montjoy. Fulbright.”

Vic’s mind stopped at Titterstone and Montjoy. Those two were at Parton March when the murders and attempted murders had occurred and been solved. Titterstone was the mustached man who had ordered another man to kill Joe and Button. Joe had hired Vic to break into a locked office in Liverpool. An office from which Elise had taken a file.

And now he was sliding over the worn bricks, following Elise deeper into the warehouse, to break into her father’s office and read more files.

She walked fearlessly along a side aisle, and he gradually made out a flight of stairs leading up. The warehouse was like a huge cave, with moonlight filtering through windows higher than a second floor. Riverside, though, was a balcony running the building’s length. One steep flight of steps climbed to the balcony, and the silvery light revealed doors opening off the elevated walkway. The rooms that opened off the walk overlooked the Thames. Vic remembered those windows with their weathered shutters. None opened to admit good daylight.

Beneath the balcony were deeper shadows, more scratching rats. He didn’t want to go there. He tried to gauge how far along they were. The warehouse had one massive door opening to the street and a long dock to load cargo into a boat.

Vic slowed as they neared the stairs. “You sure?” he asked as the steps creaked under them. Even in the darkness the floor looked a long way down. “Don’t seem like the place for an office.”

Moonlight shone on her pale face, glinted in her sun-yellow hair. “I remembered.”

He wouldn’t argue with memory.

Elise was ten, two years younger than him. He didn’t know how she remembered something from when she was only eight. Hank was eight and couldn’t remember nothing unless his sister drilled him on it. Sitting in the dark double entry, coats brushing their heads, the floor cold under his rump, he had listened to her plan to find the warehouse, creep into her father’s old office, and discover the reason her parents were killed.

Vic didn’t point out that this office could be closed, the documents removed, the furniture sold in the two years since her parents’ deaths. That’s what had happened to her father’s office in Liverpool. He just agreed to help.

Yet he worried about the watchmen and the documents Elise planned to read. He worried about Phinney cleaning the offices of Titterstone and Montjoy, on the same hunt as her niece to find who had killed Peter and Rosie DeChambeaux.

And Joe and Button were now dead, because they broke into an office in Liverpool.

Killed by a man hired by the lawyer Titterstone.

 . ~ . ~ . ~ .

 Phinney tucked a dark tress back under the ruffled mobcap that topped her disguise as a cleaning maid.

Light glowed down the hall in a side office. While no one was present, someone obviously worked late. A clerk from the ground floor, she had guessed as she picked up crumbled paper that had missed the dustbin. She smoothed out the documents that had a clerk working into the small hours then folded them and tucked them into a pocket for later perusal.

The other offices needed only a cursory cleaning. She used the master key given her by Mr. Gregory to re-lock each office as she finished. “Never can be too careful, not with lawyers and their documents,” the older man had said, his esses whistling through a missing tooth. “You keep everything locked good and tight, Mrs. Coates.”

Phinney had nodded and accepted the key with a solemn promise to keep it on her person.

She didn’t grin at this unexpected luck until Mr. Gregory headed off to deal with a creaking shutter.

Her luck continued to hold. She had only the two top floors to clean while Mrs. Gregory took the bottom two. Mr. Gregory fixed problems, did the heavy work, and maintained the cellars with its large coal bin.

As she slipped into the offices of Titterstone & Montjoy, Solicitors, she gave a fleeting thought to the children, sleeping soundly at the mission. She had tucked up Hank then reminded Elise to put aside her reading before the downstairs clock struck the eighth hour. Bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief, her niece complained but acquiesced. Vic had a primer and pencil, working on the alphabet that Elise was trying to teach him.

Vic might not be family, but he formed part of their little family now, the three children and her, alone against the world.

Vic had warned them to flee from Liverpool. After trouble with press gangs, Phinney hadn’t hesitated to hustle them onto the first coach out of the city. The boy had then protected their journey to Parton March. Once they were settled, seemingly safe, Phinney had tried to leave the children at the estate. She hadn’t reached the neighboring village before she demanded the carter return her to the house. She couldn’t leave them with strangers, even if the strangers seemed trustworthy.

Now she stood in the offices of Titterstone & Montjoy, convinced the two upstanding attorneys were criminals.

She had lucked into the job as cleaner. Mr. Gregory accepted her disguise as a war widow desperate to support her three children.

At Parton March, she had avoided any interaction with the two lawyers, there to serve their wealthy client as he determined his heirs. Even with murder and attempted murder, she kept herself and the children closeted, well away from the family and guests. She knew of George Titterstone and Kennedy Montjoy from Rosie’s correspondence. Her sister poured out in a letter that Peter’s father had involved himself in another contretemps on a business venture. In resolving the issue, the son had fallen out with his father and severed the connection when they left London.

Phinney only vaguely remembered those months before her sister and brother-in-law were killed. Working as a governess of four children had consumed all her energies. She barely had a half-hour each day to herself. Her meals were taken with the children. Her employer required daily reports of the children’s progress and weekly proof of that progress. The older girl was a dreamer; the twin boys were pranksters who preferred fishing and roaming to Latin and ciphers, and the youngest girl would sneak to the kitchen for a sweet from the cook. She had tucked Rosie’s letter in her reticule and forgotten it—until she drew it out at the Lintons.

She shook herself mentally. Brown studies were an indulgence. She had offices to search.

A whisk over the surfaces with her duster, then she carried her lamp into Mr. Titterstone’s inner office. Last night she had searched Mr. Montjoy’s office. She wanted one document with Peter’s name or even his father’s, Pierre DeChambeaux. One document, to prove she was on the right track.

The kneehole desk had six drawers, three on each side. Mr. Titterstone had double-framed windows at his back. His partner had only one window and the smaller of the two offices. Mr. Montjoy’s window view, however, looked toward the park at the end of the block. On a fine day he would see treetops and catch glimpses of flowers. Mr. Titterstone overlooked the street and the red-bricked building across the way, yet he had an inner closet with a narrow bed, washbasin, and shelving for boxed documents.

George Titterstone also worked more cases than his partner. A dozen labelled boxes were stacked on shelves to one side of the room. Phinney eyed those case files and wondered how long a perusal of each would take. She might need several nights to work through all of the files.

Tucking her cleaning basket with rags and wax polish beside the shelves, she approached the desk, choosing Mr. Titterstone’s side. She quickly scanned the stacked ledgers and the documents inside folders, careful not to disarrange them. Her father hadn’t liked any of his papers moved, especially when he prepared a sermon. Phinney had picked up items, dusted underneath, then replaced them, all without the Rev. Darracott spotting the removals. Finding nothing, she tugged on the center drawer. It didn’t budge. Slipping fingers under her mobcap, she withdrew two hair picks and set to work on the simple lock, mentally thanking Vic for his lessons.

When the clock in the outer office chimed the half-hour, Phinney climbed from her aching knees and glared at the desk. Nothing. Not a single paper with the name DeChambeaux. Only a couple of files had dates preceding the carriage accident, but those were innocuous statements about an estate called Ridings in Little Houghton, inherited by Sir Charles Audley from his uncle. Mr. Titterstone had jotted a half-page of notes about the classics scholar who was decoding Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Rosetta Stone. Three words in a different hand appended the note: Poutaine, cipher, key.

She slipped the note back into the file box, telling herself the intervening years would have resolved any issue. Yet those three words niggled at her as she searched the other drawers. Hands on her hips, she considered retrieving it, yet even as she reached for the drawer, the door to the outer office opened. Hurriedly, she grabbed up a cleaning cloth.

When Titterstone’s office door opened, Phinney stayed crouched beside her basket and pretended to dust the bottom shelf.

“Here. Who are you?”

She straightened. Without looking in the man’s direction, she bobbed a curtsey. “The cleaner, sir.”

“I hadn’t—you are here alone.”

Phinney stiffened. “The Gregorys are below, sir,” she snipped. “This floor is my duty. And the one below.”

“It can’t be.”

At the confusing comment, Phinney chanced a look to see a tall, broad-shouldered man, black hair and pale skin, blue eyes so pale they looked like tinted glass. Her mouth dropped open.

Conrad Hoppock laughed. “It is you.”

 Chapter 2

Life kept surprising Conrad. Phinney Darracott in a maid’s mobcap that hid her dark curls was a welcome surprise, one of the few. Her piquant features had the same archness as nine years before. An engulfing apron hid her slender frame. While his star had been ascendant, though, hers had plummeted after her father’s death. Governess, he remembered. Now a maid cleaning offices?

Conrad wiped away his grin. “Josephine Elizabeth Darracott, I never expected to see you.”

“Again? I think I heard an again.”

His lips twitched, wanting to stretch wide. Phinney might be down, but she remained plucky. “Never I said. And meant it.”

“You expected I would remain in Brize Norton until I dried up like a wheat crop left unharvested, all brown and useless.”

“No, Phinney. No!” Rather than impress this girl who had once fascinated him, he had offended her. “I returned to Brize Norton a couple of years ago. My condolences on the deaths of your parents.”

Her mobile mouth twisted. “I was gone by then, working as a governess until my sister—.” She stopped. Her visible swallow hurt his own throat.

“I heard that, too. Your sister had a child, didn’t she?”

“Two. Elise and Henry. Hank, we call him.”

“They’re with you?”

“Of course!” Her gaze dropped to the rag in her hand then swept around the office. “You work for Messieurs Titterstone and Montjoy?”

He hesitated only a second then told the official lie. “I clerk for them. I’m working on a brief now.”

“That’s your lamp burning in the side room down the hall?”

“Yes.” He didn’t know what else to say. “Are you—?”

Voices came from the hallway, muffled by the outer door he’d had the sense to shut.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

A key scraped in the lock.

He quickly pressed the inner door nearly shut then grabbed Phinney’s arm and her lamp. She squeaked as he hustled her to the closet. “Open it.”

She obeyed, as eager as he to hide.

He crowded behind her into the closet and yanked the door shut as the men’s voices came louder. They had entered the anteroom. Conrad blew out the lantern and set it away from the door.

At the plunge into darkness, Phinney squeaked again and grabbed his arm. He clapped a hand over her mouth as light gleamed along the cracked door. He shifted a little, hoping for a view of the room.

Phinney staggered and grabbed his forearm. She pushed at his smothering hand. “Sh-h,” he warned before he removed it. The gleam of light illuminated her pale face. Those large expressive eyes were closed. Her lips were parted. He wanted to kiss her—a stupid wish, really, with men coming into Titterstone’s office. Yet that old desire pushed him. Well aware of the distance between a plow boy and the vicar’s daughter, his fifteen-year-old self had controlled the yearning. He didn’t want the vicar’s cane planted across his back. The desire’s resurgence didn’t surprise him—but his job demanded he discover whom Titterstone met after-hours. That was as much a deterrent as the vicar’s macassar cane.

He looked away from temptation and peered through the thin crack between door and jamb. He could see Titterstone’s desk. The man must have brought in a candle, for the light jumped around as if a breeze wisped over the flame.

“You threw your lot in with the wrong people,” the lawyer said. A creak came, and Conrad saw him turn his chair and sit.

Grey superfine wool entered his line of sight. “I never expected Napoleon to lose.” A man’s sleeve. Not as tall as him, for the shoulder was well below Conrad’s eye-level.

“What do you want, sir? Do take that chair. How may I assist you? What are your needs?”

“This isn’t a need; it’s a necessity. I must return to my life here in England.”

The man moved. Conrad saw the desk with its stack of ledgers, the array of files, loose papers strewn over the blotter. The inkwell gleamed like champagne in the shifting candlelight.

“Sir, how is your return to England possible? Too many people know you. The Westover family, especially Lord Alex who once counted you a dear friend. Lord Costell, who has recently inherited. The Wilsons, the Armitage brothers. These men move throughout society.”

“They continue to drink the elixir of privilege while I inhabit drafty garrets and rat-infested apartments. I weary of being the foreigner that everyone can identify and of whom they attempt to take advantage. That life is no longer for me. I will return here to live.”

“I do not advise it.”

“Come, Titterstone, advice is not what I seek. Possibilities are. I appreciate your and Mr. Montjoy’s efforts to keep me from being tried in absentia. On my return I need not live in the cream of society. I can inhabit the shadows ... as my uncle does.”

Conrad sifted through the snippets of information, trying to divine the man’s identity. Alex Westover had a friend named James Costell. The brothers Michael and Lucas Armitage walked the fringes of society, accepted in the tonniest ballrooms but also familiar with the gaming dens and streets of blue ruin. They worked for London’s spycatcher, Sir Roger Nazenby. That name wasn’t widely known.

This man—who was he? When had he fled England? What crime had sent him to the Continent?

“My uncle does very well for himself,” the man said, and Conrad realized that he had missed Titterstone’s reply. Phinney stood statue-still against him, barely breathing, her fingers still clutching his arm.

The chair creaked. Titterstone’s arm rested on the blotter.

Phinney angled her head, trying to see more. Conrad tightened his hold, wanting to draw her away from the door.

“You would be content with that shadowy life?” The lawyer played with a letter knife, lifting it to turn and slide through his fingers only to turn it again and let the tip land in the blotter. “You should consult the Boss, not me.”

The Boss? Did he mean the Boss of London? The man who ruled the criminal underworld?

Talk of a shadowy life now made sense.

Another creak, a different sound than the lawyer’s chair. “The thing is, Titterstone, I owe my uncle a great debt. Not a monetary one. A debt that is much more difficult to repay. He will not support my plans until I repay him. He wants everything equaled out.”

“I am well acquainted with the Boss of London and his idea of equaling debts. I am not, however, in the business of intangible usury, Mr. Malbury. I will work with you on tangible debts.”

“Intangible usury? You sound like the lawyer you are, Titterstone. I do not expect you to advance me any funds. Neither does my uncle. He definitely does not need more money.”

“I do not think—.”

“My father is in ill health.” The younger man rode over the lawyer’s protest, calm words that still plowed ahead like an ox working up a muddy hill. “My uncle’s message to me, notifying me of his steady decline, prompted my return. At the appropriate time, this office can ensure the estate’s funds will be funneled to me. You and Montjoy do still retain my letter of intent to that effect.” He paused, and Titterstone must have nodded, for he continued, “At the appropriate time, I will provide this office with my new location and my new name. Neither is yet decided. I am not the imbecile you believe that I am.”

After he had turned the letter opener several times, Titterstone cleared his throat. “Your father may recover.”

“Not according to my uncle.”

“Have you seen him?”

“My father? Of course not. White Hall has agents watching their residence, as if they think I am foolish enough to walk brazenly to the front door. Three years since my departure, and they still watch the house.”

“I meant, have you seen your uncle? Have you spoken with him about your return?”

“Ah, therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? You and Montjoy have attempted to conceal your connection to Boss Malbury and other nefarious rulers, such as the master of Liverpool.”

Titterstone dropped the letter opener. “I have had no contact—.”

“My uncle knows that you were in Liverpool a few weeks ago. He knows the reason. He is curious about the contents of that file taken from a certain solicitor’s office near the waterfront. A file that he knows you were so intent on concealing that you required Stevens to kill the two men who broke into that office for you. Joe and Button. Or did you bother to learn their names?”

Phinney jerked and began trembling.

His arm still around her shoulders, Conrad braced her against his chest. He stared at the mobcap ruffle that blocked his view of her face. What does she know about Liverpool and two murdered men? Information about those murders would please Chief Constable Evans. Not only could Titterstone be connected to murders by the assassin Stevens, but the theft of this file offered another avenue of inquiry. Yet Phinney apparently knew something about the theft and those two murders. His chief would want her interrogated. Conrad didn’t want to.

I’ve just found her. I’ll lose her again.

“What does Boss Malbury want?” the lawyer demanded. Rather than be quelled by Malbury’s information, he had stubbed up like an ox that refused to plow another furrow. “What is this intangible usury he demands?"

LINKS

Worldwide Distribution through Books to Read, ebook only

Paperback and ebook from Amazon

View the Trailer:  https://youtu.be/YrnFtNhzwQs

Interested in the whole Subseries about Tracking French Spies?

1. A Game of Secrets > the book description, links to purchase, and the opening of the novel at this blogpost
2. A Game of Spies > 1st chapters with our heroine and hero, the book description, and links to purchase in a blogpost
3. The Dangers for Spies > 1st chapters, links to purchase, and the book description, all in a blogpost
4. The Key for Spies > a loosely-connected novel, for this one is based in northern Spain rather than Regency England. More of a stand-alone, this story of a British officer and a lady leading Spanish guerrillas against French occupation is more about warfare than the ballrooms of high society London. The opening, a book description, and links to purchase at this blogpost
5. The Hazard for Spies (this blogpost) ~ the conclusion to the subseries.

Want to Read More with Vic and his Friends?

• The Hazard of Secrets, which introduces Vic, Elise, and Hank and a bit with Phinney: Our main characters Clarey and Jem feature in this blogpost from earlier this year. (Links included!)