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It was almost fully dark by the time that Marianne reached home once more. She was starving. She’d missed the main evening meal, so she crept silently past the drawing-room door and into the kitchens, where she was swallowed into the warm embrace of Mrs Cogwell’s domain. Ann and Nettie, two very giggly maids, were sitting by the fire, darning socks and discussing men. They subsided when Marianne first entered, but relaxed and quickly forgot her presence. Anyway, Marianne was just a few steps up from being one of them, if rather large steps, and everyone knew it; she never even tried to put on airs and graces.
Emilia de Souza came in from the servants’ hall with a stack of dishes, and Nettie who was one level below Ann – Nettie being the laundry-cum-scullery maid and Ann being the slightly more elevated kitchen-cum-housemaid – jumped up to take them to the scullery. Emilia caught Marianne’s eye as she passed the table, and held her gaze.
“Is everything all right, Emilia?” Marianne asked.
Emilia nodded, but she kept on looking, and Marianne took the hint. She thanked Mrs Cogwell for the food, and shouted a farewell to Nettie and Ann, and left by the back ways to get to the garden wing, and she was not surprised to be followed by Emilia.
“Does something ail you – or your mistress?” Marianne asked as soon as they were alone in the cold corridor and screened by the green baize door.
“I am perfectly well, as always,” Emilia said. “But I am bothered by some change in my mistress’s demeanour.”
“How so?”
“She seems – don’t laugh – thoughtful.”
Marianne did nearly laugh. Yes, a turn for the intellectual would be a startling and concerning change indeed. “Emilia,” she said gently, “she is helping me with that most fiendish investigation. I rather think you already know about that.”
“I do know about that, yes, but there is something else on her mind. Oh, perhaps it is the investigation that weighs heavy upon her. But she is secretive, and has taken to peering around corners, and craning her head to see what her husband’s correspondence is. I suspect that she suspects that her husband is...”
Marianne’s laughter had gone quite cold by this point. “Emilia,” she said sternly, “what exactly do you suspect?”
“I cannot believe it. I shall not utter it. Mr Claverdon adores my mistress. It shines from him. It always has. And he is an honest and upright man. I do not know where she got this idea from, but it is eating her up.”
“Has she said anything at all to you?”
“No, not a word. I think she seeks evidence first. Please talk to her. For don’t we all know that if you look for something hard enough, in another person, you will see it, eventually? Whether it is there or not?” And Emilia turned away to blink rapidly, and Marianne saw the history of a failed love affair there, and put out her hand to comfort the young woman.
Emilia smiled slightly, and composed herself. “Forgive me,” she said. “And I do hope that I am speaking out of turn and that this is all my imagination.”
“So do I,” said Marianne, and she knew that it was not. “I will speak with her. Go on, now. Do not worry.”
***
MARIANNE AVOIDED BREAKFAST the next morning, and she went straight back to the hotel in the town where she had seen Claverdon visit Anna. She strode past the man on the door, and up the stairs, walking with a confidence that made people step out of the way.
She used the same pattern of knocks that Claverdon had used. It was a while before the door opened. Anna was in a state of undress, wrapped in a long silk gown, with her hair tumbling around her shoulders, and no paint or powder on her face. Her left cheek was creased slightly, and she blinked her pink eyes sleepily. “How – what? Miss Starr?” She started to close the door but her reactions were slow and befuddled, and Marianne pushed her way rudely into the hotel room.
“Tell me what Price Claverdon is to you. Are you aware that the man is married?” Marianne said. She stood herself squarely in the centre of the room, with her hands on her hips, taking the attitude she had seen in the governess when scolding the children.
The room was comfortable but small, and served as a sleeping area as well as a space for day to day living. It was only intended as a stop-over for a relatively wealthy traveller, not as somewhere to stay for any length of time. It was crowded with fine clothing and books and papers. Anna stayed by the door, her hand on the knob, the other hand clutching her robe firmly closed. “How dare you enter my private chamber! I will call for help,” she hissed, keeping her voice noticeably low and in very little danger of calling for anything.
“Tell me what Price Claverdon is to you!” Marianne repeated. “Oh, please do call for help – I shall have your evil practice exposed and you will be ejected onto the street. This hotel would not care to be revealed as a place for certain women to ply their trade, would it?”
Anna’s eyes were shining, but Marianne thought that she was not near tears – this was an angry woman, not a distressed one. She flared her finely chiselled nostrils and stared at Marianne. Then, as she woke up properly and thought about the situation, her expression turned to one of confusion.
“One moment, Miss Starr. You ask me about Price Claverdon – but what is this man to you?”
“He is my cousin-in-law, and the head of the household.”
“You ... live with him? Your household?”
“Yes. He was kind enough to take my father in when he became ill. And as I am unmarried, I live there as well ... it is not so unusual,” she added. “Why do you look so? Does this make any difference to your immoral actions?”
“It ... does,” Anna said slowly. She was pale of skin anyway, but to Marianne’s eyes, she seemed even more strained. She let her hand drop from the door handle. “Miss Starr, I have to tell you that you are here under quite false information. There is not a hint of an affair between Mr Claverdon and myself. There, I said it. The word itself. There is no criminal conversation happening. As far as I know, he is a loyal man to his wife. Your sister?”
“My cousin. But he came here...”
“I respect you and your education, Miss Starr. I am telling you the truth. It was a business matter only.”
“What business have you with him?”
“An arrangement, only. Oh, this does not make sense to you, does it? I find myself alone here, in London, Miss Starr, and in need of all the friends that I can get. I cannot tell you why, but I am an outcast, and I must find a way to survive. If you knew, you would understand and perhaps even forgive me. But Mr Claverdon is nothing but a businessman to me.”
Marianne opened her mouth to say, Then you are the blackmailer, but the door was flung open, inwards, with such force that it struck Anna and sent her tumbling to the carpet, her robe fluttering, exposing her long white nightdress. Marianne rushed to help her up, out of sheer instinct, and both women were standing together when the intruder strode into the middle of the room.
He was a tall and broad man with a large bushy beard, unkempt and sorely in need of a trim, though his clothes were very fine and well-cut. There was a military air to his jacket but the insignia on his epaulettes were unfamiliar to Marianne.
As was his language.
He barked something out to Anna, very roughly, and she shrank back against Marianne. She shouted back at him, in the same language, a guttural one with rolling r’s.
Marianne’s hand slipped into her handbag which hung from her arm. Her fingers touched the hilt of her pistol and it gave her strength, tinged with the fear that she might have to finally use it, and she did not know how she would manage that. She could not kill a man. She would aim for his legs, she decided.
The man was shouting again, and he gesticulated to the clothes on the bed. Anna was shouting back, their words tumbling over each other, and pointing to the door. She clearly wanted him to leave.
Marianne stepped to one side and pulled her gun out. She held it straight, with her other arm bent to make a kind of rest. She pointed it at his chest, and slowly cocked it.
The man opened and closed his mouth, but this time no sound was coming out.
Anna squeaked.
“Get out,” Marianne said, pitching her voice low to avoid any hint of a wobble. “You won’t be the first man that I have shot,” she added.
The look of fear in his eyes was gratifying. He snarled one more thing at Anna, and fled from the room.
Anna collapsed to her knees. “Lock it! Lock the door!”
Marianne looked down at her. “I do not know what trouble you are mixed up in, but I am warning you, that you are to have nothing more to do with Price Claverdon.” She went to the door, and pulled it open dramatically, jumping out into the corridor with her gun still raised, in case the man was still in the corridor. He was not, but a maid squealed and ran away.
“Lock the door yourself,” Marianne said, and shoved the gun back into her bag as she walked away.
***
THE LANGUAGE HAD BEEN unfamiliar to Marianne, who was schooled in Italian and French, and quite a bit of schoolboy Latin, due to her studies. She had never made any grand tour, nor even visited anywhere further afield than the Isle of Wight. Still she had heard every language of the world spoken at some time or another in the streets of London – the whole globe passed through the greatest trading city on earth, after all. She rolled the accent around in her memory. It had seemed very close to what she knew of German. It was a dialect of that language, or Russian, perhaps, or something similar from that part of the world.
And Anna had spoken it too, without hesitation. Marianne had wondered before if she had the trace of an accent, and now she knew: Anna was definitely not an Englishwoman born, though she might have spent much of her life here. The comment about her education at Cheltenham might have been true.
So what was going on? Marianne made her way back to Woodfurlong quickly. She had promised to help Claverdon, but how could she do that if he would not tell her the whole truth? But then, the help that he wanted from her amounted to nothing more than money.
If he was having an affair, rather than being blackmailed, she could understand now why he didn’t want to tell her any more.
It was not impossible, Marianne thought, for him to be doing both – having an affair and being blackmailed. The question then became, was Anna the other party in both of those situations? Or should Marianne be looking for yet another player in this sorry game?
At any rate, Claverdon was lying, and he was risking Phoebe’s good reputation. Marianne would not have him make a fool out of her cousin.
He was also risking losing everything. And that included Woodfurlong, and then where would Marianne and her father live?
***
SHE ASKED MR BARRINGTON, the butler, if Mr Claverdon was still at home, and he said yes, but he was in the morning room with his wife. Marianne sighed with frustration. She went upstairs and changed her clothes, which took up a good half an hour, and then prowled around the public rooms downstairs, awaiting the emergence of her cousin and her husband.
She could hear no raised voices so they were not arguing. Marianne hoped that Emilia had not said anything to Phoebe. She stalked up and down the hallway, and her ceaseless aimless movements unsettled Ann who was polishing the wooden bannisters.
Marianne eventually went outside, intending on taking a turn around the gardens, as it was a dry day with a light breeze and not too hot. She took a newspaper with her. She scoured the foreign pages for anything to do with Prussia.
It was the link, she was sure of it. Anna was either from that region or had lived there; she had met George Bartholomew there. Something had happened – an affair, most likely – and he had been dismissed. So he had come home, and she had ... what, followed him?
Then there were missing pieces. Marianne tried to fit together Jack Monahan’s pursuit of her, Price Claverdon’s affair with Anna, and the strange antics of Edgar Bartholomew and his ultimate death.
There was nothing in the newspaper. She folded it up and tucked it under her arm. She had just completed a circuit of the house and was heading across the wide front lawns when she noticed a man striding up towards the house, with a dark blue top hat, and a cane swinging jauntily at his side.
She knew that manner of confident walking.
She ran down the steps to intercept him before he reached the house.
“You should not be calling here!” she told him angrily. “Were you not warned off before? Come away. Come down to the road. If anyone should look out of the windows...”
Jack Monahan grinned at her. She could have slapped that toothy smile right off his face. “I am only calling to ask when the dinner party is to be held. There is a matter of some urgency. Now we are friends, you may tell the butler that I am welcome here, surely?”
“I am waiting for my cousin to set the date. She is awfully busy, you know.”
“I hardly think so.”
“Why are you so frantic? Why here? Why me?” she demanded. “I really haven’t believed a word you’ve said.” The experience of the previous few days had left Marianne feeling frazzled. She almost didn’t care that she was coming across as a strident harpy. She had no need to impress this man, anyway. He had shown himself to be a liar.
“I helped you,” he reminded her.
That was true.
“Come away from the view of the house.”
Monahan allowed himself to be led. She walked quickly but he kept pace with her easily. “I need to get to know Price Claverdon,” he said at last. “I know of him. But I need to get much, much closer to him.”
Claverdon, again. Just what was her cousin-in-law doing?
“But why?”
“I cannot say. I would not want to prejudice the investigation that I am involved in. You understand that, don’t you?”
She stopped walking. He spun around to face her. She was at the very end of her patience. She said, with tones of doom in her voice, “Mr Monahan, I have had enough. I have made a promise to a dead man to discover the truth about his father. I have a business that I am neglecting, which bodes ill for my future. I have a father who needs me, and a good friend in difficult circumstances who likewise demands my time. Your ridiculous and childish attempts at seeming to be intriguingly mysterious are simply tiresome. You are wasting my time. Speak plainly, or go away. I know you worked for Lord Hazelstone and I know you were dismissed. I know you are up to something. Now, will you tell me who you are and why you are doing this? For I have a busy day ahead of me.”
Monahan sighed. He had lost his cocky attitude. He leaned his hands on his cane in front of him, and mulled her words over.
“As you wish. But I must warn you, that this knowledge comes with a price.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. She really could not care any less.
“If you know who I really work for, it puts you in danger,” he went on. “Are you sure?”
“Danger?” she said, almost laughing at him. “You have no idea of my past few days. Go on.”
“I work for the government,” he said.
“And...?” It’s another lie, she thought. How utterly tedious. And I’ve promised to get this man invited here to a dinner party!
“That’s it,” he said.
“Well, I am not terribly impressed. I have met government men,” she said. “All it seems to mean is that you like long dinners and even longer words.”
“I am employed in a clandestine capacity,” he said. “I undertake necessary but unpleasant tasks that would not do to be revealed in public.”
She shrugged. “You are some sort of spy, then.”
“In a sense, yes. A domestic one. Amongst other things.”
“Jolly good,” she commented blandly. “I do not know what Claverdon is to do with this.”
But she did know. It was now becoming more obvious even to her.
He had given away his company’s secrets, he had said. And now he was being blackmailed.
If Monahan was telling her the truth, then the authorities already knew what he had done.
And he was going to be dealt with – secretly.
She shivered. That could mean anything, but certainly nothing good. She had to cancel the dinner party invite. Surely Monahan was going to cause a scene: she could not allow that.
She trudged back up to the house, and was apprehended by Phoebe in the hallway.
“We have set the date for the dinner and the invitations are all sent out,” she said. “Including to your Mr Monahan. Isn’t that good news?”