“Sally was a monster,” Anthea agreed matter-of-factly. She turned toward me with a bemused gleam in her eyes. “She actually tried to blackmail me once. Claimed to have compromising photographs of Douglas. I told her to publish and be damned. Never heard from her again, of course.”
“Only way to deal with such vermin.” Swann gave his wife’s knee an encouraging pat. “All I can say is that Sally must’ve learnt some clever party tricks at her anatomy lectures. From what you’ve told me, she couldn’t have got by on looks alone.” He waggled his eyebrows at Anthea, then raised her hand to his lips. “But we shall not allow Sally the Slut to spoil our evening. I hereby declare the moratorium at an end. You may discuss the dragon to your heart’s content, my darling. I’ll go up and have a word with Lucy.”
“Thanks, old boy,” Anthea said, and as he left the room she added, “He’s much better than I at bucking Lucy up. She won’t let me come within ten yards of what’s really bothering her.” She raised her palms toward the ceiling, concluding with a bittersweet smile, “A mother’s lot is sometimes not a happy one. Now, then ...” she continued, rising gracefully from the couch, “Lucy said you might enjoy seeing the documents she’s collected concerning Julia Louise. If you’ll come over to my work area ...”
For the next hour, Anthea, Nell and I played a game of historical show-and-tell, with Anthea keeping up a running commentary as she displayed her treasure trove of family papers. There were letters, legal notices, and calling cards, bills from dressmakers, hatmakers, jewelers, and scent shops—a fascinating blend of professional and personal details that would lend Anthea’s biography a sense of immediacy.
“Julia Louise was a widow from Bath who took London by storm,” Anthea explained proudly. “I hope that today’s young women will regard her as a role model.”
As I examined yet another authentic-looking deed to number three, Anne Elizabeth Court—this one in Sir Williston’s name—Toby Treadwell’s admonition came back to me: “They made fakes back then, too, you know.”
They also destroyed documents, I told myself. I looked up at the portrait, at Julia Louise’s high forehead and steady brown eyes, and noticed for the first time a certain hardness in the way her mouth was set. Julia Louise, I thought, had done a number of unpleasant things to promote her family’s interests. Had she stolen her ward’s property as well?
She’d been gung-ho to move the firm to London. A building located near the Inns of Court would have proved a sore temptation. Had Julia Louise succumbed? Had she buried Sybella’s deed in the firm’s vast files and replaced it with a made-to-order copy?
I felt my heart begin to race, and quickly gave myself a mental shake. I was arguing way ahead of the facts. Anthea hadn’t mentioned Sybella’s name, and none of papers suggested that Julia Louise had ever been anyone’s legal guardian. I pulled my gaze away from the portrait and reminded myself firmly that Nell’s belief in Sybella Markham was based on nothing more substantial than a hunch.
Anthea shared Lucy’s low opinion of Julia Louise’s younger son. “Lord William, like my late husband, was a sneak. The moment his mother’s back was turned, he was off seducing the chambermaids.” She paused, as though she felt the need to clarify the point. “You see, it wasn’t the sex that appealed to Douglas so much as the sneaking around. I sometimes think he fancied himself a secret agent. It kept him from having to grow up, I suppose.”
“Did Lord William seduce Sybella Markham?” Nell asked.
I caught my breath. It was a frontal assault so bold that only Nell would have dared it.
“Sybella Markham is a figment of poor Williston’s imagination,” Anthea said. “Although we all believe she’s based on his pretty, young wife.” That, too, seemed to remind her of her late husband, because she went on talking about him, as though she wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. “The thing that made Douglas’s affair with Sally the Slut so pathetic was that she was neither young nor pretty. A tomato on sticks, I promise you. And those eyes ...” She gave a theatrical shudder. “I’d always thought of brown eyes as warm, but hers were cold as ice and hard as flint.”
I laid the deed aside, feeling as though I’d been yanked unceremoniously out of the past and thrust into the present. I’d heard those words before, and recently, too. “A hard-eyed hag?” I said slowly. “A little round dumpling of a woman?”
“Oh, I like that.” Anthea smiled appreciatively. “Yes, perhaps ‘dumpling’ is more accurate than ’tomato.‘ After all, she used a dark-brown rinse to conceal her gray hair, not a ginger one.”