Addie racked her brain, what little there was left of it, trying to figure out where Lucas might have gone. What could he be thinking of? His disappearance only pointed to his possible guilt.
And it just wasn’t like him to be irresponsible. To be dishonorable. Rupert sneeringly called him Saint Lucas. Was there even such an historical personage? Addie was certain if Lucas had been forthcoming with Inspector Hunter that they could resolve his role in Pamela’s life without incident. But now…
So, Lucas was imperfect. Everyone was, except maybe for her mother, who possessed enough dignity and duty for the entire Kingdom. Perhaps, since Addie was so close, she should motor over to the Dower House and see how she and Cee were getting on. Inspector Hunter made it clear she was superfluous to requirements here.
And who knew? Mama or Cee could have some ideas as to where Lucas went, and they wouldn’t blab it all over creation that he was missing.
Addie informed Beckett that she was taking her car to visit her family instead of going down to breakfast, and that if anyone wanted her, they need only phone. The dowager marchioness had made improvements to her manor house inspired both by her stay in New York and Addie’s own renovations of Compton Chase last year. Electrical circuits and new plumbing might not be feasts for the eye, but there was apparently plenty of new paint and wallpaper too. Addie was remiss not going sooner, but ever since they came back from New York in March, it had been one thing after the other.
Four murders, for example. Cee’s recuperation from her poisoning. Addie’s inability to tie up life’s loose ends and move forward.
She spoke briefly to Trim, who had her car brought from the garage to the studded Tudor front door. Imagine all that the door had witnessed, Addie thought. Pamela’s death was just one of many in a property this old. It almost made her long to live a house in one of the new “garden cities” that were sprouting up everywhere. Everything was fresh and clean and lacking any unpleasant history whatsoever. No garderobes or chamber pots or established multigenerational mouse families or priest holes or blocked chimneys, all the dubious delights of antiquity.
Definitely no ghosts.
The drive through the familiar winding country roads was lovely. Hedgerows were lush with berries and birds, bursting with early summer bounty. Addie and Lucas had come this way with their nannies in pony traps for years to play with Sir Hugh, who’d been a baronet from the age of three. It must have been difficult for Evelyn, managing alone, raising Hugh to become the fine man he was. God knows, widowhood was not for the fainthearted, even without a dead husband to haunt one.
Idly, she wondered what Rupert was doing, half-surprised that he hadn’t slunk into the passenger seat at the last minute. She hoped whatever it was turned out to be useful, although she couldn’t approve of his current methods. Imagine! While Mr. Hunter was in the bath…Addie shook the image out of her mind with some difficulty.
She passed the main gate to Broughton Park, steadfastly keeping her eyes on the road. She couldn’t help the pang she felt for the loss of her childhood home, but there was primogeniture, primed to prick the air out of one’s female balloon. Her cousin Ian was a nice enough fellow, but rather boring. What he needed was a young wife to shake him up, like Pip would do to Lucas. Addie would give matchmaking some thought once her current situation returned to some semblance of normalcy. Marriage might not be for her, but she was open to its advantageousness for others.
She turned down a long, mowed lane. Her mother still used the front gate out of habit when she left the estate, so this road’s maintenance left something to be desired. She had to concentrate on avoiding the rabbit holes, and a fox dashed across mere feet in front of her, causing her to stall the car. Far across the open field, Addie spied the crenelated roof of Broughton Park, and looked away.
The car was finally coaxed to life. Up ahead was the perfectly lovely Dower House, a much more modest dwelling, yet still worthy of the Dowager Marchioness of Broughton. Lush red roses obediently climbed the facade, and tubs of scarlet pelargoniums lined the wide slate walkway in precision order. Her mother must have come out with a tape measure when her gardener set out the jardinieres.
The door sprang open before Addie could get out of the car, and she was enveloped in her sister Cee’s arms.
“You’ve got smut on your nose, and you look exhausted!”
“Thank you, Cecilia. It’s nice to see you too.”
“I’m only trying to be helpful, Adelaide. Have you come to save me again? I promise I won’t vomit this time.” Last March, Cee had required some medical intervention when she was accidently poisoned at the Savoy, an anomaly, Addie hoped. The Savoy’s reputation for its cuisine was very well-deserved. But one could die there without consuming food and drink—a few years ago an Egyptian prince was shot dead by his disgruntled wife.
“What do you need rescuing from now?” Addie laughed, hugging her sister tighter.
“Mama, of course. She’s on the warpath. Again. She disapproves of Paul, you know, even if his father is an earl. He’s completely out of the succession—he has five older brothers and who knows how many nephews, can you believe it? One would have to drown them all in a sack like kittens for me to become a countess, but I told her I don’t care. I don’t! What is more admirable than saving lives, I ask you.”
Cee had a penchant for falling in love with peculiar ideas and unsuitable men, but Addie didn’t think Paul Kempton quite qualified for that description. He was an engaging young doctor with all his hair and teeth, and a promising career ahead of him. One day he might have an exclusive office on Harley Street, especially if he was married to a marquess’s daughter, and she said so, extricating herself from Cee’s embrace and straightening her hat. She’d deal with the smut later.
“Tell Mama that. Do you know what her latest scheme is?” Cee shuddered. “She wants me to marry Ian.”
“Our distant cousin Ian, the current Marquess of Broughton?”
How odd that Addie had been mentally pairing him up with a mystery girl just minutes ago. But Cee? That required further thought.
“The very same. Really, all she wants is to get back into that house and run things again. She must think I’m a pushover! I told her I’d rather die than marry him.”
“Don’t joke, Cee. Death isn’t funny.”
“Pish posh. If I have to stay buried in the country much longer, I will die and be glad of it.” She looped her arm in Addie’s. “What brings you here? I thought you were with the Fernalds for the week.”
“Well, a real death, actually. I don’t know if word has traveled, but Pamela died on Sunday afternoon.”
Cee stopped in her tracks on the front walkway. “What? How?”
Addie was surprised that her sister wasn’t aware—gossip usually spread like wildfire in this part of the world. “The police believe she was poisoned.”
“Poisoned! Police? What kind of a mess are you in now? Is that gorgeous guy from Scotland Yard here too?”
“Hush. He is. And perhaps we shouldn’t make too much of it in front of Mama.”
“Oh, that’s easy. She went down to London on the train yesterday morning. No wonder the phone was ringing off the hook. She must know—she knows everything. I thought it might be Ian and told Carstairs not to answer it.”
Carstairs was her mother’s very proper butler, and Addie imagined he was dreadfully conflicted respecting Cee’s wishes. In Carstairs’s world, all doors were opened and all calls answered with great dignity. He was almost as perfect as Addie’s own butler, Forbes, whom she stole away from both her mother and her cousin when Ian moved into Broughton Park.
“Why would Ian be calling you?”
“Because Mama has put a bee in his bonnet. He thinks I have a pash for him! Crikey! He’s got that gray tooth, you know.” Cee stuck her tongue out, then swept it across her own remarkably white teeth as if to make sure they were all still there.
“It’s toward the back, isn’t it? Perhaps he can get it capped. It shouldn’t be disqualifying. He’s nice enough.” If, as she’d thought earlier, a little boring.
“You can marry him then.”
“I’m not marrying anyone,” Addie said, as Carstairs opened the front door, giving her a very correct bow.
“Good morning, Lady Adelaide. How nice to see you. It’s been too long.”
“I know. I should have called first. I’m sorry to have missed my mother. How have you been?”
“Well, my lady. Shall I have Cook send up coffee and cakes?”
“That would be lovely. I left Fernald Hall without stopping down to breakfast and I confess I’m starved.”
Her mother’s cook was more than up to the challenge, and Addie expected delicious things would appear shortly. She and Cee went into the sun-drenched morning room and settled into freshly upholstered leaf-green armchairs, admiring the garden view flanked by new gold-shot silk curtains.
“So, who’s the mustache-twirling villain at Fernald Hall?” Cee asked. She was a touch too enthusiastic for Addie’s comfort.
“I’ve no idea,” Addie said, removing her gloves. “Plus, the three Mr. Dunns found the body of a soldier who vanished in 1916. So, that’s two deaths in two days.”
Cee clapped her hands. “Right up your alley! What does Inspector Hunter have to say?”
“Not much to me. He thinks both murders are related somehow. I’m really not so sure. I say, Lucas hasn’t come by here today, has he?”
Cee frowned at the change of subject. “No. Should he have?”
“He left the Fernalds rather abruptly. I just wondered—he talked the other day about going to see you all and Ian.”
“Well, if he’s at Broughton Park, I wouldn’t know. I’m not spying there through binoculars like Ian does here.”
“Cee! What a thing to say!”
“He does! He has a telescope on the roof too. I’m afraid to sunbathe in the garden.”
“You’ll only get freckled anyway. Coco Chanel may design beautiful clothes, but she’s ruining her skin.” The French designer had caused a sensation after getting sunburned on a cruise a few years ago, and modern young women everywhere were throwing off their hats and clothes with abandon in order to resemble farmworkers.
“Oh, you’re such a spoilsport. You sound just like Mama.”
Addie was irked by the criticism but knew it was true. She had a tendency to summon her mother’s spirit when she least wanted to, although it warded off Mr. Cassidy with some success.
She listened to her sister complain about their mother and Ian for the next five minutes, until Carstairs entered with a heavily laden tray that could have fed several famished sunburned farmworkers. And then she listened some more, as her chewing was preventing her from taking much part in the conversation. Once she had eaten more than her fill, she told Cee that she was going to phone Ian.
“You can’t! Well, if you do, tell him I’m not here. Or that I’ve got measles or something dreadfully contagious.”
“We’ve already had measles. You were six and I was twelve. We were as red as postboxes head-to-toe.”
“He won’t know that. What do you want to talk to him for?”
“I wonder if he has any idea where Lucas went.”
Cee returned her coffee cup to its saucer with a clatter. “Gosh, you don’t think he killed Pamela, do you? Not your Lucas.” She paused. “Well, he used to be.”
Even her sister gave Addie men that didn’t belong to her. “Of course not. But he needs to come back to Fernald Hall. Mr. Hunter is questioning everybody with no exceptions.”
Just then, the doorbell rang. Cee leaped up. “I know it’s him! I’ve got to hide.”
“Who’s him?”
“Ian! I bet he was peering through his telescope like a…like an eagle and saw you drive up.”
Addie supposed it was possible, if unlikely. Surely their cousin had better things to do. “Eagles don’t require telescopes, Cee. But go out the garden door and then inside through the back hall. Lock yourself in your room. I’ll tell him it’s your time of the month.”
Cee’s expression was a sight to behold. “Adelaide Mary Merrill, you will not! I don’t want him thinking of any part of my body, especially not down there! Honestly, you are a horrible sister even if you let me vomit all over your fingers.”
“Go, go. You’re wasting valuable time.”
Cee rushed out into the garden and Addie stopped herself from laughing. She knew what it was like to be pursued ardently by a man one wasn’t truly interested in. She’d had a near-miss with Lucas, and now—
Now, she was the pursuer, and the man wasn’t interested in her.
Carstairs appeared in the open doorway. “Lady Adelaide, the Marquess of Broughton is here. Are you and Lady Cecilia receiving?”
“Of course! Bring another cup, please. But my sister is feeling somewhat indisposed at the moment and has gone upstairs.”
“What a shame. May I bring her anything?”
Addie hated to lie. “I don’t think so. She’d just like some peace and quiet for her…for her headache. Do I still have a smudge on my nose?”
“I wasn’t going to mention it, but yes. No, a little to the left.”
Addie examined her napkin. Motoring in the countryside could be a dirty affair, even if one was not held at knifepoint.