“Reardon has done this before,” Arthur said, his boot propped on the bottom rail of the fence overlooking a hog pen. Contrary to popular opinion, members of the porcine species were tidy creatures, dividing their quarters into dining room, sitting room, privy, and park. They wallowed in mud—not in their privies—to stay cool and were otherwise fastidious about their persons.
“Viscount Reardon has previous disappearances to his name?”
The sow sharing quarters with a dozen rambunctious piglets ambled over for a scratch about the ears. She would have done the horse artillery proud, if they’d had the sense not to eat her.
“Not exactly disappearances,” Arthur said, obliging the sow. “Reardon falls asleep beneath a starry night, or wanders the countryside drunk on the vivid hues of wild flowers. Until a couple years ago, his absences meant we’d all turn out to literally beat the bushes, and then he’d trundle home that evening, his loyal hound panting at his side. I thought he’d outgrown his errant tendencies.”
The sow nuzzled Arthur’s hand. Another man—another duke—would have ceased petting the pig. Arthur switched to scratching her other ear.
“The dog worries me.” I shrugged out of my jacket, lest the sun burn it from my shoulders. “If you are planning to elude creditors, for example, you don’t take your dog.”
“Maybe you do, if that dog is your most loyal companion.”
How innocent Arthur was. “No, you do not, lest the dog be confiscated for resale to the bear pits to settle your debts. Then too, dogs require food and water. They require regular access to the out of doors. They mark you as different from all other travelers. People forget what sort of hat the man sitting next to them in the common wore, but they will recall his dog.”
“That should make his lordship easier to track. Do you not recognize this sow? She’s all grown up now, but you named her.”
I took a closer look at big ears, white coat, and pink snout, and damned if the sow didn’t appear to smile at me. “Guinevere?”
“The very same. She’s a good mum and keeps the young sows in line. Pillar of the community and all that.”
Pigs were smart, smarter than dogs in the opinion of some hog farmers. Pigs had a homing instinct to rival any pigeon, and they could remember a location where they’d found food years ago.
Guinevere appeared to remember me. She bumped at my hand, maybe the porcine equivalent of a greeting. I obliged by scratching both of her ears at once, and she tipped her snout up, just as she had when I’d offered her this same sort of attention when parting from her to go off to university.
“She has to be ten or twelve years old.”
“Fourteen. Not our oldest breeding sow, but venerable. She has earned her pension, though Hopwood thinks me daft for pensioning a perfectly edible hog.”
“Dukes are permitted their little foibles.” Guinevere, having received her due, toddled off to slurp at the water trough. Each day, the trough was drained into the muddy wallow and fresh water provided for drinking. In this heat, a sizable creature like Gwenny would drink almost constantly.
On that thought, I took out my flask.
“I’m inclined to leave Lord Reardon to his foibles,” Arthur said, watching the sow at the trough. “Getting the whole parish in an uproar when he’s likely spent the night at some coaching inn… He would not appreciate being treated like a schoolboy.”
The lemonade was tart, cool, and half gone by the time I offered Arthur my flask. “You must make some sort of effort.”
“Why?” He took the flask and emptied it. “I’m a duke, as I’ve been reminded. I can give the fellow a day or two to canoodle with his light-skirts or capture the beauty of mating dragonflies.”
Arthur was hot and troubled, and I knew not what bothered him. “If you take that attitude, then you allow any witnesses’ memories to grow dim, and if we are to get any relief from this heat, thunderstorms are inevitable.”
“I like a good, loud storm.”
Innocent, innocent, innocent. “You would not like good, loud storms if you had any memory of French cannon booming out the doom of half your fellow soldiers. The more pressing problem is that rain will obliterate most signs of Lord Reardon’s perambulations, and that considerably reduces the chances of finding him.”
Arthur pushed away from the fence and handed me my empty flask. “Why are you drinking lemonade?”
“Because it’s blazing hot.”
“You avoid spirits?”
We stuck to the shade of the orchard, which in drought years could be shallowly flooded by virtue of proximity to William’s Creek. Arthur was careful not to abuse that privilege. The creek turned the local mill wheel, fed the village pumps, and watered a good portion of the neighborhood’s livestock.
“I had a bout of forgetting yesterday.” I turned across the orchard toward the creek. “Hyperia was with me, and I had my little card in my pocket.”
“I’m… sorry.”
“I’m encouraged. An hour later, I was fine. Hyperia knew exactly what to do.”
The shade was heavenly, and a number of spotted hogs were enjoying it with us. They lounged against the cool of the orchard’s stone walls, panting gently.
“Encouraged?”
“A very short bout. At university, I went a whole day in a fog. I wasn’t entirely over it until the next morning. I avoid overindulging in spirits because that, too, can cause forgetfulness. I can’t see a connection between the two kinds of memory loss, but one doesn’t tempt fate.”
“Sometimes I envy you the forgetting.” Arthur opened the gate on the stream side of the orchard, and we were greeted by the placid burbling of William’s Creek. “Forgetting battles and captivity can’t be an entirely bad thing.”
“Forgetting one’s name rather outweighs any benefits of forgetting wartime, and then there’s the rush of recollection, when it all comes home to roost.”
“Harry?”
“Harry most of all.”
“That’s why you will find Lord Reardon, because you could not find Harry.”
I longed to take off my clothes and immerse myself in the cool, clear water, but time was of the essence.
“I did find Harry, trailed him right into the French garrison. I could not rescue him, though. Had he been a little less honorable, we might both have made it out of that fortress.”
“He would not betray his country?”
“So the French commandant told me, but half of what that man said was lies, the other half untruths.” I knew that French officer as Girard, but in my mind, he was Lucifer’s handmaiden. I’d been warned that he was now sporting about among the English, having fallen heir to a barony. “Let us put old business aside. You are the closest thing to an acting magistrate, and Lord Reardon is missing. Ergo, you must do something.”
“Or Lady Clarissa will be on our doorstep daily, wringing her hands and swooning into my arms?”
I took out my notebook and jotted another possible motive for sending Reardon into temporary hiding. Clarissa as a guest was an occasional penance. Clarissa as a woman seeking aid to find her brother was entitled to storm Caldicott Hall repeatedly.
“She’s not awful, Arthur, and if you went missing, I would be distraught.”
“I will not go missing.” Arthur offered that not as a reassurance, but more of a lament. What on earth was wrong with my brother, and where had he got off to at first light?
“Will you come with me to Valmond House? I want to interview anybody who might have seen Reardon decamp, have a look around his apartment, and get a start on tracking him.”
“Then I’m deputing you to take those very steps. I’ll send Demming to nose around the old quarry. He’ll be discreet and thorough.”
The quarry, dating from at least Roman times, had been forbidden to every child in the shire. The best swimming was to be had there, of course, but the lip subsided from time to time, and thus on a tragic day in centuries past, some youth had lost his life in the dark depths of the small lake that half filled the old diggings.
His ghost was said to haunt the place, which only made it more attractive as forbidden territory. “You should drain that damned thing.”
“No telling how deep it is, and draining a quarry is expensive. Besides, we need some sort of reservoir for the dry years, and the quarry serves. Go interrogate the Valmond grooms, and I will not expect you for supper.”
I left Arthur perched on the orchard wall, gazing at the depths of the creek. I roused Atlas from his shady napping place, refilled my flask at the creek, and let Atlas have a good long drink too. I’d need to detour to the house for a few necessities, and given the building heat, I’d have to content myself with cursory questioning of the Valmond staff—enough to establish the general direction in which his lordship had taken off—and then I’d best get tracking.
Because rain was a constant threat, I’d likely be at that thankless task all night.
Reardon’s studio had the predictable northern exposure, tall windows, and high ceiling. Artists used pigments that could be toxic if inhaled for too long or at close range, and light was as necessary to a painter as air was to a bird of prey.
“He works in here by the hour,” Lady Clarissa said, coming into the room with me. “Reardon was very fast. He said a proper painter wasn’t to be that quick, lest the public think him facile rather than talented. Why can’t an artist be both?”
“Did the viscount paint through the night on occasion?”
“Often, which is why he has so much material for the exhibition. If it wasn’t for Susan, I’d take most of my suppers alone.”
Lady Susan was the youngest sibling, not yet out, according to Hyperia. “Is Lady Susan available for questioning?”
Clarissa picked up a sketchbook and opened it. “You make it sound as if she’s a first former who knows how the frog got in the matron’s bed.”
“Clarissa, please don’t touch anything. Reardon all but lived in this room, and details I find here can yield insights.”
She set down the sketchbook. “Such as?”
I moved about, looking for what wasn’t of a piece, for what didn’t fit. “My father’s desk, a beautiful old relic, had a succession of burns down the right side. He’d lay a cheroot on the edge, such that the ashes dropped onto the carpet, and forget he’d done so. The carpet and more especially the desk suffered repeatedly.”
“And he could afford to abuse an antique, is that your point?”
Something about the whole room was off, but what? “When was Reardon most recently painting in here?”
“Night before last. He was up quite late, which is why I was surprised to learn he’d gone rambling on only a few hours’ sleep. What is the significance of the late duke’s marred desk?”
“In isolation, those burns might say merely what you conclude: He could afford to disrespect an antique. Those burns also tell us that His Grace would rather stay up until he was exhausted, poring over ledgers or correspondence, or simply swilling brandy, rather than join his duchess abovestairs. Perhaps those scars tell us he wasn’t welcome to join the duchess. Maybe they suggest that the estate accounts vexed him to such a degree that he took his ire out on an otherwise lovely piece of furniture. No one fact is dispositive of the whole man, but a dozen facts can yield an insight.”
The studio lacked the sense of industry I associated with an active workshop, and it also didn’t… smell right.
“You’ve aired the room out?” The windows were cracked as I spoke.
“Of course.”
Dratted woman. That was why even the scent of linseed oil was barely noticeable. “I asked you to leave the space untouched. You opened the windows, organized his brushes, tidied up the worktable, likely swept…” I continued my inspection and came upon a bouquet of dead yellow irises in the dustbin. “In fact, you meddled with the entire room.”
Clarissa assayed her version of the timid, helpless smile. “Well, I didn’t want you to see what a slob Reardon could be. He’s very particular about his art, but not about his personal effects. Boots by the door, gloves tossed onto the mantel, pocket watch set on the end table. He focused on his paintings, and it’s as if that exhausted his capacity for routine or organization.”
I lifted the wilted flowers from the dustbin. “Had you left these in their vase, I might have known how recently they were picked. Because yellow irises love water, I know a few places to look for them, and thus I’d have some ideas where to find fresh sign. In the alternative, I’ll find no fresh sign and have a list of areas I need not study further, because Reardon went there earlier in the week and had no interest in those locations yesterday.”
“That bouquet was starting to wilt,” Clarissa said. “Yellow irises are supposed to be cheerful—Reardon said they symbolized his passion for art—and they made me so sad. I can’t just sit here, pretending all is well, working on blasted needlepoint, when my only brother might be dead.”
She hurled the word at me as she flung herself into my arms. The last thing I wanted was to waste time comforting a woman I didn’t much like, but Clarissa’s distress was genuine. I patted her back and fumbled for my handkerchief, and at the first opportunity, I stepped back to hand it to her.
“How wilted were the irises, my lady?”
She gave me a look that said rumors of my mental deficiencies had not been exaggerated. “The flowers should have been tossed out the day before yesterday.” She sniffed delicately and dabbed at her eyes. “They were well past their prime, Julian, and that is exactly the sort of thing Reardon would not notice.”
I led her to a window bench, one of few places to sit in the whole studio. The breeze wafting in was warm, but at least it was moving air.
“What else did you tidy up?” Lady Clarissa would not trust staff to put Reardon’s sanctum sanctorum to rights.
“His sketchbooks. He leaves them open to work from, and sometimes…” She began folding my handkerchief in quarters on her knee. “He does anatomical studies.”
Nudes. “Of anybody in particular?”
“Mostly just parts. Hands, feet, ears. What can be so fascinating about an ear, for pity’s sake?”
I left Clarissa to her prevarications and began sorting through the row of sketchbooks marching along a worktable. Reardon had devoted three whole books to anatomical studies, but in the next volume, the sketches took a decidedly erotic turn.
“Was he involved with Mrs. Probinger?”
Clarissa rose and gave me her back. “She modeled for him. I don’t know if he felt sorry for her because she’s widowed and needed the money, or whether there was more to it.”
I finished inspecting the sketchbooks, finding everything from village portraits to a view from the lip of the quarry, to multiple renderings of a droopy-eared, brindle hound with enormous paws. I tucked one of those into my pocket.
“Could Reardon and Mrs. Probinger have eloped?”
Clarissa turned to face me. “Run off? I suppose so, but they can’t marry. Mama would never stand for it. Reardon will be an earl, and he will marry according to his station.”
Clarissa hadn’t married according to her station, at least not yet. Was she that determined to snabble a duke? Was she wearing the willow for Harry, despite all appearances to the contrary?
Her unwed state was a puzzle, but not relevant to the instant inquiry.
“Your well-intended efforts to protect your brother’s privacy might have made it impossible to find him, my lady. I’m off to the stable, and I hope somebody there saw which direction Reardon took when he left Valmond House yesterday morning. Unless you know?”
She shook her head. “You won’t say anything to His Grace about Mrs. Probinger?”
“Waltham is essentially our acting justice of the peace. If it turns out Mrs. Probinger did Reardon an injury because he was preparing to throw her over for some wealthy Town heiress, then His Grace will have to know.”
Clarissa took the wilted flowers I’d left on the worktable and dropped them back into the dustbin. “It won’t come to that. It cannot come to that.”
If she continued to interfere with my investigation, it well might come to that, or worse. “I’m away to the stable. I cannot insist that you work on your embroidery, but calm and logic will get you further than random poking about. If any detail occurs to you that might shed light on Reardon’s situation, send for me. Please do not go nosing into corners and obliterating evidence.” Again.
She looked on the verge of fresh tears, so I excused myself and had a footman direct me to his lordship’s room.
“Don’t go just yet,” I said when the fellow would have withdrawn. “I assume the whole staff knows his lordship has taken French leave?”
“We’re a bit worrit, milord.” The footman was young, and his livery fit him loosely. “Himself does like to ramble, but it’s been a while since he forgot to come home.”
Quaint phrasing. “Does Lord Reardon use a valet?” Not every gentleman did when in the country. Formal attire was required far less frequently, and the estate laundresses and seamstresses could be trusted to handle masculine clothing competently.
“No valet, sir. The earl’s man did for Lord Reardon when the family went up to Town. I look after his boots and such when he’s down from Town.”
My escort showed me into a comfortable two-room suite—sitting room and bedroom with dressing closet—that looked out over the shallow lake. This side of the house got the full brunt of the afternoon sun, but the windows had been opened here, too, and the ceilings were a good twelve feet.
Nowhere along the lake’s banks did I see any obliging splashes of yellow flowers.
“Take a look at his lordship’s dressing closet,” I said. “Tell me if you see anything missing.”
The footman made a job of it, counting items in the clothes press and peering into the jewelry box. “We’re down a couple of shirts, milord, though those could be in the laundry, along with some underlinen and a cravat or two. I don’t see his shooting jacket either.”
A shooting jacket was cut loose to allow for handling a long gun, and while it kept off the damp, it wasn’t a heavy item of apparel. More for autumn than winter.
“Nothing else is missing?”
“His lordship doesn’t have much in the way of jewelry. He’d sooner spend his money on fancy paints and art books. Nothing missing that I can see.”
The fancy art books were neatly shelved in the sitting room, which was an orderly, slightly worn space. I peered into the waste bin, finding it empty.
“Lady Clarissa told you to tidy up in here?”
“As soon as she came back from the Hall, though there wasn’t much to tidy. The bed was slept in.”
“No breakfast tray?”
“We set out the morning meal in the servants’ hall by six o’clock, and his lordship would have helped himself to something on the way out the door. Not one for standing on ceremony.”
“Who would know in which direction he tramped?”
The footman ran a finger around his loose collar. “Stable lads, most likely. Gardeners might. They like to get an early start when the heat’s coming on.”
“And Lord Reardon took the dog?”
“Aye, sir. That wretched hound goes into a decline when his lordship goes up to Town. We’re hoping the dog goes to London with his lordship for that art show. The beast pines and mopes like a rejected runt.”
Interesting. “What is your name, my good fellow?”
“Blaylock, sir. I’m cousin to Demming what works at the Hall.”
“Thought I noticed a resemblance. You’ve been most helpful, though I cannot say the same for Lady Clarissa. In her efforts to keep busy, she’s destroying valuable evidence and making it harder for me to locate our missing viscount. I realize you cannot be expected to order her ladyship about—”
“It’s worth me life to remember me place, milord.”
“—but if you and the staff would keep an eye on her, I’d appreciate it. She’s going through a difficult time, and she and Lady Susan might benefit from a little more attentiveness.”
Blaylock gave me a very unfootmanlike look. “I’ll have a word with Mrs. Aimes, shall I? Suggest the young ladies could do with looking after?”
“As long as somebody is looking after Mrs. Aimes too. Is she at home?”
“Off to the village. The annual fete is next week, before the family goes up to Town. Mrs. Aimes and the vicar’s wife are plotting over pies and sack races and so forth.”
“Somebody’s got to do it, I suppose. I’m off to the stable by way of the garden. Would it be possible for the kitchen to put together a few sandwiches for me?”
“Mrs. Felders will be pleased to oblige, my lord.”
“Thank you, Blaylock. You’ve been most helpful.”
I took a last look around Reardon’s rooms, and again, my sense was that the space was too tidy, too organized, but then, the real man had likely been in evidence in the studio before Clarissa took to fussing for the sake of appearances.
“Demming speaks highly of the Hall,” Blaylock said, his tone wistful. “Says the Caldicotts are fair and generous.”
“We try to be.” Though what point was Blaylock dancing around?
“Don’t suppose there’s lack of indoor help at the Hall, His Grace being a duke and all?”
For a footman to show any sort of discontent with his post was extraordinarily disloyal, though Blaylock was trying to be subtle.
“Lady Clarissa would take it amiss if we poached her best staff away.”
“I do well with horses, sir, and I spent time in the garden with me uncle. I’m not much for the stepping and fetching, but a footman’s job is inside work, and I thought…”
I waited, trying to look sympathetic rather than appalled. Surely, Blaylock was new to his ill-fitting livery to be offering me this confession under his employer’s very roof?
“I thought I could make a go of it,” Blaylock finished miserably.
“You’re willing to return to outside work?” A social and financial demotion, but I was reminded of Atticus’s disdain for livery he thought he’d have to pay for himself.
“Aye. I don’t mind hard work, but the footman’s job isn’t what I took it for.”
Perhaps the footman’s wages weren’t what he’d taken them for? A few pounds a year wasn’t much—London wages were higher—but those pounds came with an allowance for beer, candles, and more, usually. Also very light duties on Sunday and a midweek half day.
“I’ll have a word with His Grace. We tend to keep the staff we have, but younger fellows have been known to decamp for London or the New World without much notice.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ll see myself out.”
“I’ll send your tucker to the stable.” Blaylock marched off smartly, and I tarried behind to have a look through Reardon’s desk and night table.
I also examined Lord Reardon’s second pair of field boots. His footprint would be a good inch shorter than my own, his right heel worn down slightly on the outside, and he probably tended to walk with his weight on the outside of the foot rather than on the inside.
Nothing of further interest came from my snooping, and the stable lads could tell me only that Reardon had disappeared into the woods at first light. He’d traveled along a web of game trails, farm lanes, and footpaths that connected Valmond House to Caldicott Hall, the village, and any number of neighboring properties.
The afternoon was half gone, and I had only a hundred miles or so of possible trails to inspect. Jolly hell.
My last stop before embarking on that task was the Valmond House gardener’s cottage. After inquiring generally about the need for rain—“Aye, milord, we could use a mite,”—the misery caused by the heat—“the hydrangeas suffer so,”—and the possibility of an early autumn—“We live in hope, good sir. We live in hope,”—I got ’round to the reason for all the pleasantries.
“Where is the nearest patch of blooming yellow irises, Mr. Simpkins? A mature patch, plenty of blossoms, and at the height of their beauty.”
Mr. Simpkins stroked a beard that would have been the envy of the King of the Elves. “Aye. A patch with plenty for picking, the best on offer, not a few bold specimens. When the trail from the park approaches the village, you take the left turning, away from the green. Another hundred yards, and you’re along the creek, right at the foot of the Probinger property. Big patch there, and a right pretty sight they are too.”
Well, well, well. I thanked him for his time and left him stroking his beard while I set out to familiarize myself with Lord Reardon’s tracks. He and the loyal hound were easy to pick up—the path from the stable was dusty—but then I lost them on the grassy stretches approaching the village.
No worries, though. As I ate the last of my sandwiches and fed Atlas a few bites of carrot, I found clear signs of his lordship’s recent travels right near the patch of irises on the Probinger property.
Quelle surprise, as my old nanny would have said.