A Suspicious Affair (3 page)

“He most likely will, from all I hear. Ah, one more question, milord, then I’ll let you get back to your pacing. Uh, packing. The clerk downstairs didn’t happen to notice your comings and goings this afternoon. Could you tell me where you might of been a few hours before dinner?”

“A few hours before—Devil take you, too, you long-nosed snoop!” Kimbrough rose and stomped to the door, flinging it back on its hinges with a loud slam. “Get out before I boot you out. I’m a bloody magistrate, you clunch, an ex-officer of the King’s army, for heaven’s sake, and a peer of the realm, for what that’s worth. I wouldn’t kill even that misbegotten maggot over a soggy acre or two!”

Jeremiah stood and shuffled toward the door. “I ain’t the only one with a suspicious mind, so to speak. They have a bet on you at White’s.”

“You mean I’m part of this bumblebroth? Hell and tarnation!” The earl smashed his fist against the door, making a substantial dent in the heavy wood. “Blast! That’s just what I despise most about this town. They’ve nothing else to do but ruin reputations and stir up scandals. Scandal’s just what I wanted to avoid, with a young sister to fire off soon.”

“Denning never made advances to that sister, did he?”

“I wouldn’t have let that rotter within a mile of Bettina. And no, I never dallied with Lady Armbruster either. Damn your eyes, I didn’t kill Denning, but I sure as hell might rearrange your nose for you if you’re not out of my sight at the count of five!”

Jeremiah was gone by the earl’s barked “Three.” Alone in his little parlor except for the soft sounds of his son’s breathing, it occurred to Dimm that his lordship never had explained where he was at the time of the murder. The devil was in it now. He’d have to go back and ask that question tomorrow, too. Dimm wrote
Kimbrough
at the bottom of his list. Maybe the earl would be gone by the time he got to it.

*

Jeremiah yawned. He should go up to bed, with tomorrow like to be another long day. But his bed was cold and lonely since Cherry had passed on, may she rest in peace, and his thoughts were all of her up there. Snugged in his chair downstairs he could keep mulling the Denning case. Gor’blimey, all those suspects, motives, and theories, and not a one of them feeling like a good fit. Something was missing, if he could just put his finger on it. He picked up his charm and dangled the rock on its string until the stone fell to the floor with a clatter that startled him awake. “Old fool,” he muttered, “putting yourself to sleep like that German quack.”

He sat up, wide awake. That was it: putting himself to sleep. The duke could have killed his own self! His nibs would love it!

Chapter Three

Suicide? That’s the most ridiculous idea yet,” the grieving widow declared. “Arvid was too mean to do us all such a great favor.”

Duchess Denning had agreed to meet with the representative of Bow Street at eleven that morning. She was reclining on a couch in a parlor done in the Oriental motif. Jeremiah felt an unaccustomed stab of envy—not for the vast reaches of the gilded chamber, nor the thick carpets, priceless vases and lacquer-work cabinets, but that the lady had her feet up on dragon-crested cushions, a blanket tossed over.

“Doctor’s orders,” she’d apologized for not rising to greet him at the door. “Swelling, don’t you know.”

He did indeed, and not just from his Cherry’s five pregnancies, God keep her soul.

The duchess was going on: “Besides, what possible reason could Arvid have for taking his own life?”

Dimm looked around again at the opulence of the room, the pretty young wife big with child, and wondered himself. Her Grace was understandably haggard, her face drained of color by the black shawl over her shoulders, and her pale hair pulled back in a loose, untidy knot, but he could see the fine cheekbones beneath the added weight, the fine blue eyes. Yes, she must have been a Diamond of the first water, but there was something even more attractive about a woman in her condition. To his way of thinking, at any rate. That duke was more of a fool than he thought. Dimm cleared his throat and consulted his notes.

The coachman had earlier given his considered opinion that the duke habitually took a pistol along when he was involved in dalliance, which was to say most times he called for the closed carriage. Suchamany angry husbands and irate fathers had been scared off by the sight of that very same pistol, the driver swore. The butler confirmed the coachman’s testimony. So the weapon was likely in the deceased’s possession, not brought to the scene by someone else. “It’s only a possibility, Your Grace. Another avenue what needs to be explored, that the deceased ended his own life because of the scandal over his discovered affair.”

“You cannot have done your homework, Mr. Dimm, if you honestly believe my late husband gave a thought to public censure, before or after he acted.”

Dimm nodded. That was what everyone said. “Still, there be reasons what are less obvious sometimes. Like His Grace’s health might have been failing. Or mayhaps he suffered financial losses no one knew about yet.”

The duchess merely raised an expressive eyebrow. Dimm had to admit his brilliant notion was not quite so convincing by the light of day. The duke’s secretary refused to hand over his late employer’s books and bank statements, not without a writ of investigation, but the figure he gave, just a rough estimate, the cully claimed, was more than Jeremiah Dimm would see if he snabbled every crook on every reward poster from here to kingdom come. By about a hundred times. And the mortician who was laying out the body upstairs found nothing amiss with the duke’s physical remains, except a great gaping hole in the chest, of course.

“’E was tuppin’ ’is ladybird, wasn’t ’e? An’ ’is own wife’s breedin’. Can’t say that sounds like a fellow about to stick ’is spoon in the wall.”

Dimm couldn’t say it either. He did have to make one last, feeble effort at solving the case with the minimum of inconvenience to any of the other highborn suspects. “Maybe he got remorse.”

“And maybe pigs will fly,” the duchess replied. “Besides, suicides cannot be buried in consecrated ground. What would you have me do, lay the Duke of Denning in a corner hay field? Arvid
is
going to Berkshire to be placed in his family’s crypt alongside his father. My aunt is already having palpitations of the heart over spending another night with Arvid there upstairs, so we are leaving tomorrow to get on with the thing, unless you either come up with a suicide note or a warrant for my arrest.”

“Now, there be no call to—”

Marisol held up a hand. “No, I have heard all the rumors flying around. I even know the odds being wagered on my guilt or innocence. The servants are very good about that kind of thing, you know. I did order the newspapers burned so my aunt and brother need not read the scurrilous attacks in the gossip columns nor see the outrageous cartoons. But I do know I am your likeliest prospect.” She tossed back her head in a haughty gesture that only served to disorder her hair more. “And I do not care. Do you understand, Mr. Dimm? I do not care what anyone says. I am going home to have this child. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“Home being…?”

“Oh, not my home. That’s been sold off ages ago, if you are afraid I’ll escape your clutches in the wilds of Lancashire. I’m going to Denning Castle, in Berkshire, where Pendenning children have been born for centuries.”

“I understood you hardly ever visited there.”

“That was Arvid’s choice. He hated the country, disliked having to give up the pleasures of Town life, the high-stakes gambling and the high-flyers.”

“And you, ma’am? You like the country? Begging your pardon for asking so many questions, Your Grace. It’s me job, you ken.”

Marisol nodded her understanding. “Berkshire is beautiful. All rolling hills and trees, flowers and farms. I loved it at first sight. I never lived in a city until my presentation and my marriage, you see.”

“Yet you adapted something wondrous,” Dimm noted, recalling what he’d heard about her triumphal Season, her standing among the hostesses of the
haut monde.

“I was raised in the country, Mr. Dimm, not in a stable. My father might have been improvident; he was still every inch a gentleman. My mother’s family could trace their ancestors to William the Conqueror.”

So could Dimm’s. His forebears were the chaps carrying all the gear and picking up after the horses. “I meant no offense, Your Grace. Just wondered why, if you liked the country so much, you made your home here in Town.”

“You didn’t know Arvid. I told you, he found the country dull. And he liked having me near him, he said, so he refused to let me live apart. He forbade the servants to help me, and they would have suffered terribly if I had disobeyed.”

“Jealous type, was he?”

“Of me?” She looked down at her ungainly figure. “I am not quite the goddess to inspire passion, am I?” Marisol stopped to think a moment. “No, Arvid was more possessive than jealous. At first I believed he saw me as an ornament, part of his collection of
objets d’art.
Then I became an asset to the smooth running of his household. Recently…?” She shrugged. “Recently he was just more perverse. He knew I wanted to be gone from London. That was enough to make him decide to stay.”

“So you argued.” That was a statement, not a question.

“So we argued,” she acknowledged.

“And were you jealous of him?”

“Of his affairs, you mean? Of his birds of paradise and his opera dancers and Lady Armbruster? Why don’t you simply come out and ask if I killed him, Mr. Dimm?”

“Because his nibs at Bow Street says that ain’t the way to handle duchesses, Your Grace. But since you was the one what mentioned it, did you shoot the duke when you discovered him in the carriage with your next-door neighbor?”

“No, Mr. Dimm. I did not. I was no more jealous of Nessie Armbruster than I was of Harriet Wilson. My husband was a known womanizer when I married him, and a constant philanderer later. It never mattered before. It certainly never mattered after. In fact, I was more than happy when he took his attentions elsewhere.”

“I see,” said Jeremiah Dimm, wishing he’d never embarked on this line of questioning. For that matter, he wished he’d been given the Carstair case instead. What was a simple ax-murder or two compared to this mare’s nest? No wonder all those newspaper chaps were camping in Portman Square. He wiped his suddenly damp forehead and took up a new line of inquiry. “Do you have any idea who sent that note, Your Grace? Might be that whoever wanted you to find your husband in the carriage meant to throw suspicion your way.”

“No, I have no notion whatsoever. The butler said an urchin brought it, and no one had any reason to detain him at the time.”

“And you don’t recognize the hand?” Dimm held out the folded sheet.

Marisol took the letter reluctantly, as one might take a worm meant for fishing bait. She dutifully reread the message and studied the writing. “No, I’m sorry, it’s unfamiliar to me. The script does look feminine, though a bit crude, as if disguised.”

“You think it could of been one of your friends, passing on unpleasant news?”

“My so-called friends have never hesitated before about keeping me informed of Arvid’s little peccadillos. They usually gave me the news to my face over tea, mixing a little spite with the sugar.”

“But it must have been someone as knew you’d be home.”

She shrugged. “That wouldn’t be hard to surmise. A woman in my condition hardly goes for curricle rides in the park at the fashionable hour.”

Dimm took back the note, folded it carefully, and placed it securely in the inner pocket of his waistcoat. “Notice anything unusual about the message?” he asked.

“You mean how the person misspelled
lying? Your husband is lieing, with a lady in the carriage alley,”
she quoted from memory. “I remember wondering if he was lying there injured, telling a falsehood, or carrying on some liaison. Knowing Arvid, I guessed correctly, it turned out. Either my correspondent is a poor speller or undecided which crime was worse.”

“As in some other woman altogether he might have promised the moon?”

Marisol shook her head. “I’m sure I do not know the latest
on dits
concerning Arvid’s affairs. He could have had any number of mistresses. What he might have promised them besides money is beyond my imagination.” She removed a ring from the chain around her neck. “I already had this, for all the joy it brought me. Even if my fingers were too swollen to wear it.”

The duchess looked about to weep. Dimm hurried on: “So you went outside, even though it was a biting raw day and you had to go down that fiercesome tall stairwell in the hallway, then out and acrost the lawns. How come, Your Grace, if you didn’t care?”

“I didn’t go down for the confirmation. I went because I wanted something. I didn’t think even Arvid could deny my request to leave for the country when he himself was found so much at fault.”

“Were you surprised that the female was Lady Armbruster?”

“A bit, since I had thought we were by way of being friends, but her reputation was none too steady.”

“Neither were her nerves, it seems, shrieking and carrying on like a banshee.”

“Yes, I wondered why she was so distraught, once I had time to think. Surely she must have known I’d never have bandied her name around, but dallying with a married man in his own driveway had to be a chancy thing at best.”

“Do you think she came back to the carriage after you left, and shot Arvid? The duke, that is. No disrespect, ma’am.”

“I wouldn’t have thought she could hold the pistol steady enough, the way she was carrying on when she ran away. But why would she have shot her own lover? Even as high-strung as Nessie is, she must have known that couldn’t stop the gossip. I’m afraid I cannot explain her actions. You’ll just have to ask her yourself.”

Dimm scratched his head with the pencil. “Now that’d be a fancy piece of investigation, even for Bow Street’s finest. I suppose you didn’t hear all the news making the servants’ grapevine after all. Lady Armbruster got up last night and took herself another dose of laudanum, then another, and another. She’ll be pleading her case at the pearly gates, not Old Bailey.”

Marisol gasped and clutched at her chest. Dimm leaped to his feet, ready to race for the bell pull.

“No, no,” she said, halting him in mid-wince, “I am all right. Just let me catch my breath a moment.”

Dimm was all apologies for breaking the news to her that way. “Deuce take it, I should of known better. Are you sure I can’t call for your woman or your aunt?”

“Aunt Tess is prostrate with the vapors already. I’d not have her disturbed with more ill-tidings. And Tyson is busy with the packing. Heavens, I cannot decide which is harder to comprehend: Nerissa Armbruster taking her own life…or killing herself over Arvid, of all things.”

“If you don’t mind, Your Grace, could you answer a few more questions?”

“Certainly, Mr. Dimm, if you think it will help. Be sure I’d like to find my husband’s murderer as much as you.”

The Runner consulted his book. “What do you think of Lord Armbruster?”

“As a dance partner or as a killer? No, please forgive my levity, sir. I am just a trifle addled right now. Perhaps a sip of Madeira, if you’d be so kind to pour.” She indicated a decanter and glasses on the Chinese fan table. “And please join me.”

When Dimm was reseated, thin-stemmed crystal goblet gingerly in hand, the young duchess gave her opinion of her next-door neighbor. He’d always seemed a courteous, soft-spoken gentleman when they’d met socially, she said. Of an age with Arvid, he had a much more refined air about him, making Nessie’s preference for Arvid even harder to believe. Marisol had an even harder time picturing Lord Armbruster in a rage, shooting a fellow nobleman. “Doesn’t he have an alibi? That’s what you look for, isn’t it?”

Dimm consulted his pages again. “Well, he does and he doesn’t. He says he was visiting a friend, but he ain’t giving up the friend’s name. We located his pied-a-terre—that’s a love nest, don’t you know—but no one in the neighborhood seems to recall who meets him there.”

“Obviously a lady whose husband is less tolerant than Lord Armbruster. But there, if he was meeting his own light-of-love, what complaint could he have with Nessie? Not enough, surely, to murder her paramour. If he feared a cuckoo bird in his nest, he’d have done better to shoot his wife, if divorce was too distasteful.”

Dimm drew circles with his pencil. “Stap me if I’ll ever understand the gentry and their ways. Don’t none of them keep to their vows?”

“I did, sir,” Marisol answered with that touch of arrogance he was coming to recognize as the duchess on her uppers. She might be of an age with his daughter Sarah and friendly-like to a nobody like Jeremiah Dimm, but she was a lady through and through, right down to that steel in her backbone and that slightly long, straight nose in the air.