I stood in the beam of morning sunshine that slanted through the skylight in Bloomfield’s airy, soaring foyer and I considered a question: Where would Anaximander Silforth keep his truly important papers? The range of possibilities was daunting, because the man presented himself as everything from a hounds and horses country squire, to a doting if dunderheaded husband, to—from my perspective—a shrewd, even cruel, criminal.
Plain sight was one possibility.
The Bloomfield safe was another, assuming Banter had one.
Silforth’s dressing closet, his wardrobe, the tail pocket of his hunt coat…
“Easier to ask where he wouldn’t hide an insurance policy,” I murmured, deciding the public rooms probably belonged on that list. The nursery suite was another unlikely location, because little scholars were ever happy to poke their noses into inconvenient places.
Where, where, where?
Eleanora, basket over her arm, came through the front door. “My lord, good day. I wondered if you’d leave at dawn.”
What sort of greeting was that? “I depart tomorrow. My tiger has just made the journey from London to Caldicott Hall, and the lad is not as tough as he wants the world to believe.” True of many soldiers as well.
She undid the ribbons of her plain straw hat. “We could send him along later if you’d rather be quit of us.”
“I appreciate the offer, but Atticus takes a dim view of allowing me loose on my recognizance for long. Were you delivering more tisanes?” The basket once again held only a wad of toweling.
“Honey, this time. Osgood’s beekeeper is the envy of the shire. Winter will be here before we know it, and every mother in the neighborhood appreciates a store of Bloomfield honey when the coughs and colds start up.”
“Thoughtful of you.”
She started for the steps that wound down into the provinces of the domestic staff. “Lizzie is the thoughtful one. I simply carry out her wishes.”
I wasn’t about to confide in Eleanora regarding my findings in the woods, but I could put a question to her and expect an honest answer.
“Where does Silforth spend most of his time when he’s in the manor house itself?”
She paused, hand on the newel post. “He’s not here much, and even less so if Banter is in residence. Nax is up before the sun, though Lizzie likes for him to stop by the nursery of an evening. He also occupies the head of the table at supper if Osgood is absent.” Offered with a damning neutrality of tone.
“What about when Banter is in residence? If it’s pouring rain, where does Silforth go to read the racing forms or the Hounds and Horses Gazette?”
“He reads The Times too. Wants to educate himself about current affairs in the House of Commons.”
Dreadful notion. “The family parlor?”
“Good heavens, no. Nax smokes a pipe. Lizzie tolerates the stink of hounds, but she claims smoking should be a pleasure gentlemen enjoy in solitude or in one another’s company.”
Was Eleanora prevaricating, or did she honestly not know which of Bloomfield’s sixty-seven rooms abovestairs had the honor of hosting Silforth’s leisure hours?
“The smoking parlor, then?”
“Yes, I suppose. He will do some reading there on rainy evenings. Even in dreary weather, he haunts the kennel and the stable. Tack can be inspected in any weather. A hound can be drilled on commands even under a threatening sky.”
I decided that a more direct line was in order. I was leaving in less than twenty-four hours, after all. “Where would Silforth keep important papers?”
She arranged the toweling in her basket. “Baptismal lines or the deed to his acres?”
“Precisely.”
She started down the steps. “With his solicitors, I suppose. He might have asked Osgood to put them in the safe, but I don’t see Silforth asking Osgood for so much as a spare handkerchief.” She paused on the landing and looked up at me. “Don’t feel you’ve failed, my lord. The situation here is beyond daunting. I should know.”
She disappeared into the bowels of the house, leaving me frustrated and disappointed. Eleanora despised her brother-by-marriage. If anybody should have been pleased to see me find the loyal hound who’d supposedly wandered off from his doting owner’s side, it was she.
Though she’d all but chivvied me on my way… or had she?
“Eleanora!” I hustled down the steps with indecorous dispatch. “Eleanora, one more question.”
She emerged from a passage that ended in what was clearly the main kitchen. The scents of cinnamon and baking bread filled the air, and I was abruptly famished.
“My lord?”
“Where does Silforth keep documents pertaining to the hounds? Pedigrees, medical records, bills of sale, that sort of thing?”
She peered at me with evident concern. “In the kennel, where the hounds dwell.”
Well, of course. In the kennel, where Banter, curious footmen, nosy chambermaids, children, and even Lizzie would not intrude.
“Good to know. Please make my excuses if I’m not at table for lunch.”
“You missed breakfast, my lord. Let me at least have Cook make you a sandwich.”
I knew from experience that a forced march on an empty belly was a recipe for bad fortune. Men stumbled, deserted, went into the bushes with every intention of rejoining the column after heeding nature’s call, and fell asleep leaning against a tree.
“Cheese and bread will do, with my thanks.”
I waited at the bottom of the steps rather than intrude into the kitchen, and Eleanora shortly reappeared with two cheese and butter sandwiches, along with a flask of cider.
“Do join us for dinner,” she said. “Banter should have to look in the eye the guest he’s tossing over the curtain wall.”
“Banter is coping as best he can. Don’t be too hard on him.” Then too, the barbarian tossed over the curtain wall could show up in the castle’s wine cellar as soon as the sappers had completed their tunnel.
I jaunted off for the kennel, devouring the sandwiches as I went. The offering barely dented my hunger, which meant the delay in my plans had been justified.
When I arrived at the kennel, Mac was not in evidence, and about half the hounds appeared to be from home as well. Thank you, kind fates. I let myself into the middle lodge and was greeted by the quiet whining of a new litter in search of sustenance.
By a hearth that still sported a low flame, a bitch in a whelping box lay on her side, her brown eyes fixed upon me, while six minuscule puppies tried to affix themselves to her.
“Your ladyship.” I knelt to offer her my hand to sniff. She observed that courtesy and expressed no further interest in me. She had more important matters to focus on.
I was about to rifle the battered desk positioned under a window when the door swung open, and Mac presented himself, his scowl worthy of Grendel after a long night of pillaging.
“What are ye aboot, milord?”
“Meeting the puppies, of course, and searching for proof of felony wrongdoing.”
“And did Silforth ask ye to make a snoop o’ yersel’?” Mac countered, closing the door and inspecting Lady Patience and her offspring. He tugged a blanket up around the edges of the box, gently patted her ladyship’s head, and rose to resume his attempts to intimidate me.
I wasn’t in the mood for Mac’s nonsense. “Osgood Banter, owner of Bloomfield, invited me to investigate Thales’s disappearance. A review of the documentation kept on Thales and his packmates will serve that purpose.”
Mac watched the puppies doing their blind, determined best to paddle and scoot toward sustenance. He moved two, switching the one on the end for a central position along her ladyship’s belly and putting a more robust specimen where the smaller pup had been.
“Ye aren’t looking for Thales,” he said, straightening. “Ye’re looking for trouble.”
Why were the two synonymous? “Do you know where Thales is, MacNeil?”
He took his pipe from a pocket of his venerable shooting jacket and gestured toward a pair of disreputable-looking chairs in the corner of the room.
“I have my suspicions,” Mac said, lowering himself into the chair nearest the hearth. “But I’m not confident of ’em, else I would have spoken up.”
“Lest Maisie take a wooden spoon to your backside for keeping silent?”
“Oh, there is that, and there is the fact that a great sum of money is now tangled up in Thales’s disappearance, and Silforth has a whole shire full of enemies, not the least of whom is the same fellow who set you to searching for Silforth’s prize hound.”
I took the wooden chair at the desk rather than risk a permanent coat of dog hair on my otherwise spotless breeches.
“You suspect Banter of doing Thales an injury? MacNeil, explain yourself.”
“People talk, my lord. Banter has reason to hate Miss Lizzie’s spouse. Banter and Lizzie were to be wed at one point, you know.” As Mac spoke, he went through the ritual of filling his pipe, his hands moving with rote familiarity.
“I did know,” I replied, “but the family matchmakers tossed that plan out, and Silforth benefited.”
“And then Silforth turned out to be a poor bargain, and now there’s ill will in every direction.” He scraped out the pipe bowl and tossed the leavings into the fire.
I considered Mac’s hypothesis, which at first glance held hints of credibility. “Banter knows where on this estate to secret a stolen hound,” I said. “He is familiar enough with Thales to have greeted the dog quietly in the woods on the morning of Thales’s disappearance. Banter has reason to resent Silforth bitterly. I grant you the circumstances provide us that much of a basis for speculation, but I have no evidence to support your theory. Banter himself summoned me urgently to search for the dog.”
“Because Miss Lizzie insisted you be sent for, and now he’s sending you away.” Mac pinched some tobacco into the bowl of the pipe and tamped it down with his thumb.
“What does Banter gain by stealing the dog?”
“The satisfaction of watching Silforth fail to find his treasured possession, the knowledge that something precious has been moved out of Silforth’s reach.”
Mac wanted me to believe Banter would take his frustrations out on an innocent animal, which I found… unlikely. Banter’s heart was spoken for, and not by Lizzie Silforth.
Though he was fond of her, and watching Silforth raise George would have frustrated a saint.
“If Silforth learned that Banter had stolen Thales,” I said, “Silforth is in a position to retaliate.” I could envision Banter taking the dog, if I tried hard enough, but he would never murder the dog out of spite.
Mac snorted and looked about on the hearth as if searching for something. “You think Silforth would involve the law? You, the former reconnaissance officer who can apparently solve all of society’s riddles, haven’t found hide nor hair of the beast, more’s the pity. You have no evidence against Banter, and Silforth has less than none. If Banter wanted revenge, purloining Thales was a neat way to hit Silforth in a vulnerable spot.”
I rose to fetch him a spill from the jar on the mantel and got a glower for my efforts when I handed it to him. I returned to my seat, feeling like a scholar who’d bungled a recitation.
Mac lit his pipe, and fragrant smoke curled up. The puppies were quiet now, and I wondered if they’d always associate the scent of the pipe with safety and warmth.
“I will consider your theory,” I said, turning on my seat to face the desk and open a drawer. “I want to reject your suspicions of Banter out of hand, but logic is in your favor, based on available facts.” Logic favored Banter as the culprit less than it did Sir Rupert and his cohorts, Mrs. Joyce, and Silforth himself. Nonetheless, antagonizing Mac would serve no purpose, and I knew of the grave in the woods, while Mac might not.
Or he well might.
“Aye,” Mac said. “A dirty business. If you’re looking for the sales contracts and whatnot, they’re arranged by year in the right bottom drawer. Pedigrees are left bottom drawer. Some aren’t quite current—Mrs. Ladron lost a young bitch from Thales’s litter just this week to some noxious weed or other—but I save working at the documentation for when the weather turns foul.”
He wreathed himself in smoke, while I leafed through folder after folder of family trees and legal maunderings. Thales had been part of a litter of four. Two brothers had gone to the Atherton Moor Hunt in the Midlands. The female had been sold to Mrs. Ladron for an exceptionally tidy sum plus first pick of the first litter.
The widow must have wanted that puppy very badly, and the poor creature had apparently lived but a short life.
By the time I was famished again, I’d seen two insurance policies. One on Mac’s life, his sister named as beneficiary, and one on Silforth’s morning horse, the brute who’d cleared every fence he’d been put to.
Not a single hound had been insured, but I’d at least learned the name of the firm Silforth dealt with—Dewey and Blaydom.
“Not finding what you seek?” Mac asked after I’d gone through every document in the desk.
“Nothing relevant whatsoever.” I rose, more preoccupied than frustrated.
“Admitting defeat is hard,” Mac said, pushing to his feet. “You tried, my lord. We all appreciate that, even if we don’t act like it.”
Another earnest extension of forgiveness to hurry me on my way, and the day only half gone.
“Thank you for that gracious sentiment,” I said, taking one last look at the puppies. In a fortnight, their eyes would be open. A fortnight after that, the bolder among them would be sniffing at a saucer of warmed milk with the smallest bits of meat.
Banter and Arthur would be on the Continent by then, and Bloomfield might well be in the hands of a blackmailing, cheating scoundrel.
Tempus fugit.
I took my leave of Mac and turned my feet in the direction of the village. My peregrinations aided my cogitations—solvitur ambulando, as the old philosophers said—and before I arrived at the Pump and Pickle, I reached a satisfactory conclusion regarding Mac’s foray into a theory of the crime.
I knew this for a fact: Osgood Banter would never set up his son—or any innocent party—to be a pawn in a game unfolding between grown men. Thus Mac’s notion that Banter would harm Thales made little sense. The instant Silforth suspected Banter of harming the dog, Silforth would exact yet still more from Banter than he already had. If Silforth had no suspicions regarding George’s antecedents, then Lizzie, the staff, or the tenants, would become his next pawns of choice.
Banter would not risk that outcome any more than he’d play skittles with young George’s happiness.
Either Mac wanted me to think ill of Banter, or he didn’t know about George’s patrimony.
Mac had been in Banter’s or Silforth’s employ for years. He had to know the suspicions regarding
George’s origins.
Ergo, Mac was trying to incriminate Banter—who was almost as much a victim as Thales—for some unworthy purpose. The person with the best reason to point fingers at an innocent suspect was the actual culprit of course.
Interesting.
I gained the steps of the Pump and Pickle just as the mail coach thundered into the yard. The ballet of the hostlers and teams, both of whom well knew their jobs, had fascinated me since boyhood. The swap was simple: One team, complete with all its harness, was freed from the coach. Another team, also in full harness, was backed into the traces. A few buckles, straps, and chains were tended to, and then the coach was clattering out of the yard and on to its next destination.
The whole business could take less than a minute, during which time one mailbag was tossed down, another tossed up, and flasks and food were handed up to the box as well. Artillery crews worked with the same exuberant precision, delighting in their skill even in the midst of battle.
“Why must people be such conscientious correspondents?” Mrs. Joyce asked, collecting the mailbag from a groom. “It’s as if we have nothing better to do than write to each other by the hour. Good day, my lord. You look in need of a drink.”
In my present state of fatigue and hunger, I did not dare tangle with strong spirits. I had slept fairly well the night before, but I hadn’t slept nearly enough.
“Meadow tea, if you have it.”
“Quaint. Shall I serve you in the ladies’ parlor?”
“You shall serve me on the back terrace, if you don’t mind, and I’d like to put a question or two to you.”
She led me into the common. “I’m sure a reconnaissance officer can find his own way to the terrace.”
“Former reconnaissance officer.”
She waved a dismissive hand and turned for the kitchen. Was I imagining her testy mood, or was she less than cheered to see me? I wanted to call after her to please include some sandwiches with my meadow tea, but she’d already passed into the kitchen.
I took a different seat than the one I’d occupied when Hyperia had joined me on the terrace. The view was the same—grazing livestock, green hills, westering sun—but my head hurt, my eyes stung, and I had reached the forced march part of my sleuthing itinerary.
I chose the shadiest spot I could find. Every soldier who’d ever taken the king’s shilling hated forced marches, and for good reasons.
“My lord’s meadow tea.” Mrs. Joyce put a single sweating glass before me, crossed her arms, and remained on her feet.
I rose and held the chair next to mine. “Please do join me. I promise not to take up much of your time.”
Her gaze suggested she’d heard that assurance on previous occasions, but she obliged me anyway. “You have questions. More questions.”
I resumed my own seat. “I do. What’s troubling you?”
She surveyed the grazing horses like a general examining a potential battlefield. “At the next meeting of the board of aldermen, the rules will be changed so Silforth will be eligible to run for a vacancy. Sir Rupert says letting Silforth run and lose will silence the man, while I say…”
“What you truly want to say is packed with profanity, isn’t it?”
“The aldermen cannot be so stupid as to think Silforth will sit quietly at the meetings and make no trouble.”
Clearly, the aldermen were that stupid—that naïve or that intimidated. I considered my hostess and what I knew of Silforth.
“He will start,” I said, “by suggesting that the inn, the most prosperous business in the village, be taxed for some purpose or other.”
She swiveled her gaze to me, eyes glittering. “Either that, or Silforth will let me know that such a development is under discussion—a discussion he will have somehow instigated. For some modest consideration, Silforth will speak against imposing such a tax.”
Modest consideration. She gave the words their most prurient connotation.
“Does this little exercise in extortion and sexual bullying culminate with you selling him the inn?”
She rubbed her forehead and brushed a glance over me. Her gaze held equal measures of rage and the sort of fatigue of the spirit independent women doubtless accepted as the price of male envy.
“I will burn down my inn before I let him have it,” she retorted. “My husband taught me how to run a tidy, profitable hostelry in good times and bad, and I’ve done right by the Pump and Pickle. The aldermen will not do right by me.”
I sipped my tea, which hit my parched throat as a serving of ambrosia. “You are sure Silforth will be elected?”
“Maybe not on the first attempt, but yes. He will prevail. He will mutter to the shopkeepers that Sir Rupert has been running the village for his own purposes long enough. He’ll whisper to the yeomen that the shopkeepers have had it all their own way, and it’s time more was heard from the families doing the hard work of feeding England. He will present himself not as the greedy interloper, but as the solution to ills that have plagued the English village since William sailed over from Normandy.”
“His plan to build a toll bridge will be just the start?”
“A toll bridge? The ford serves us all well enough, but for the occasional storm. A toll bridge. Lovely.”
“And if you threatened to expose him as a philandering boor who’d prey on his wife’s sister?”
Mrs. Joyce was quiet for a moment, probably wrestling with a heap of foul language, some of which might be directed toward me.
“If I made those accusations, my reputation would never recover, and Eleanora’s would suffer as well. Silforth knows that. I have a pew three rows back from the altar at St. Nothhelm’s. I’m on the ladies’ charitable committee, and I can call on any goodwife, and she’ll be pleased to receive me. Silforth can take that away because I was stupid enough to trust his discretion.”
I well knew how the talons of guilt could dig into the mind and never let go. “Had you turned him down flat, he’d likely be even more determined to get his hands on your inn. Men like Silforth excel at creating situations where others have no good options. I saw plenty of them in the officers’ ranks. Sir Rupert is changing the aldermen’s rules because Silforth has threatened him somehow. Depend upon it.” I punctuated my conclusion with a long drink of my cool, minty tea.
“How could anybody threaten Sir Rupert? He’s been a fixture here for years, and while nobody precisely likes him, he’s decent to his cattle, a conscientious landlord, and a doting if overbearing husband. He was a fair-minded and practical magistrate, and now he is Squire Lumpkin with a tiresome collection of stories from his time in India.”
“Think like a schoolyard bully whom Headmaster cannot expel, Mrs. Joyce. Sir Rupert, like most landowners, is doubtless living on credit. If Silforth starts rumors that Sir Rupert is rolled up, the mortgage will be foreclosed on, et cetera and so forth. When a man with Silforth’s agenda starts to dig, few of us are immune from censure.”
I, however, was beyond the reach of Silforth’s schemes. My reputation was already battered, my military record public knowledge. My vulnerabilities related to my ducal brother and, indirectly, to Banter.
And all they’d done, as far as Silforth could prove, was kiss. All Mrs. Joyce had done was indulge a widow’s prerogatives. All Sir Rupert had done—much as I found him tiresome—was tend his acres in the face of disobliging weather and postwar market fluctuations.
No real crimes committed, but in every case, a reputation and worldly security in peril, because Anaximander Silforth was an arrogant bully.
“You’ve been digging,” Mrs. Joyce said. “What have you found?”
A grave in the woods that I’d excavate before sunrise tomorrow. “Tell me about the firm of Dewey and Blaydom. I gather they’re in the insurance line.”
“Do We Bleed ’Em? They are setting themselves up to be the Lloyd’s of the turf. Sir Rupert had one of his beagle bitches insured, and now everybody in the local hunt has a policy on a hound or two. Rank stupidity, if you ask me. A competition of pure vanity.”
Insurance companies made money by having a better grasp of the odds than their customers did. “Let me guess. The policies are priced to appeal to aristocratic ostentation, and they end well before the insured approaches his or her dotage.”
I finished my tea and could have downed several more servings.
“Precisely. You pay a fortune up front for your hound to be insured for, say, three years at double the value of your premium. At the end of three years, you have nothing but an older hound and the right to brag about how much store you set by him. I’m told the Melton lordlings spend a fortune insuring their morning horses on the belief that an insured horse will never put a foot wrong. An expensive superstition, if so.”
“Is Thales insured?” And should I have put the question in the past tense?
She collected my empty glass. “I suspect so. Silforth is nothing if not vain, and… Oh.”
I watched as the possibility of insurance fraud dawned upon her. For the first time, her eyes held a hint of a smile.
“You’d need to produce the body of a hound who was known to the whole shire to collect on that policy, my lord. Thales is merely missing. Ergo, no funds will be forthcoming.”
I was all but certain I knew where Thales reposed. “A man who will murder his own dog will forge affidavits swearing to that dog’s death by misadventure.” He’d probably even collect a similarly worded affidavit from his loyal kennel master, a groom or two, and even Sir Rupert.
Mrs. Joyce sat up, my empty glass in her hand. “This grows very ugly. We are just a pleasant little village muddling along as best we can, and then Silforth arrives and… I don’t suppose you’d like to buy an inn?”
I patted her hand. “Keep your eye out for any correspondence from Dewey and Blaydom. Until they put a bank draft into Silforth’s hands, I’m simply speculating for my own entertainment.”
“The mail is private,” she said, rising.
I pushed to my feet as well, though my hips resented the effort. “Silforth is probably counting on your integrity to keep his scheme hidden. The mail might be private, but the mailbag itself hangs in plain sight the livelong day.”
She looked me up and down. “So it does. You need to rest, my lord. You’re like a stalwart morning horse on the final run. He’s beat to flinders, but when the horn sounds, you cannot tell him to stand down. He’ll gallop off with you, though he ought not to have a single fence left in him.”
Her analogy was apt. “I used to be that morning horse, until I came to grief on an obstacle I never saw in my path. One doesn’t forget such spectacular ignominy.”
As I trudged back to Bloomfield, I pondered Mrs. Joyce’s comparison. In the mountains between Spain and France, I’d hared away from camp in the still watches of the night, hoping to keep my older brother safe. In the present circumstances, Banter’s life was arguably at stake, as were livelihoods, reputations, and the wellbeing of a community. Arthur had all but ordered me to return to Caldicott Hall. Hyperia had certainly urged caution, and here I was again, on my own behind enemy lines, thinking I alone could turn a doomed mission into a success.
Pride goeth… A daunting and sobering realization, and Mrs. Joyce was right: I was exhausted, famished, and much in need of a nap if I was to spend the night robbing a grave.