A Curious Beginning

“Someone wanted to get to you,” he went on. “They wanted you so badly they broke into your cottage. They followed you to London and they killed Max.” He softened his voice marginally. “Veronica, who would want to kill you?”


“No one! You have known me for a handful of days, and yet I would wager you know me better than anyone else now living. I am as you see me. There are no mysteries here, Stoker,” I said, almost regretfully. “I wish that I could rend the veil and expose some great secret that would justify what has been done to the baron, but I cannot. I am a spinster reared in a collection of uninteresting villages scattered across England. I write papers about natural history and I collect butterflies and I indulge in harmless love affairs with unattached foreign gentlemen. I know no one; I am no one. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity,” I added helpfully.

“There was no mistake,” he returned, his mouth tightening a little. “Someone wanted to harm you—so badly that they were willing to bludgeon an old man for the privilege. You know something.”

“I know nothing,” I insisted, but even I could not deny that whatever had befallen the baron seemed to touch upon me, albeit tangentially. “He did say he knew my mother,” I told Stoker. It was a slender offering of peace, but it was all I had to give.

“Who was your mother?”

I spread my hands. “I have no idea. But if you and I are going to get to the bottom of this, we must stop playing at distrusting one another.”

He curled a lip. “That’s rather like a horse thief lecturing the farmer on locking the barn door, is it not? I have come to a conclusion. You insist that you know nothing. I do not believe you. There is a possibility we may both be correct.”

“Go on.”

“It is just possible that you know something you do not realize you know.”

He turned his head, and I noticed the way the lamplight burnished his hair. It had a blue gleam in this light, coal black but with something glimmering in the depths. It was a shame that such hair should be wasted on a man, I thought idly. Any fashionable woman would have given fifty pounds for a wig made of it.

“Veronica?” He waved a hand in front of my face. “Pay attention when I am lecturing you. You can woolgather later.”

“Very well. I admit, I have been less than forthcoming. I am done with it. Ask me what you like. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I ask only the same courtesy in return.” He opened his mouth, but before he could protest, I went on swiftly. “And I promise to ask only questions that may be pertinent to the investigation. You may keep your own secrets. Are we agreed?”

I put out my hand, and after a long, agonizing moment, he took it.

“Agreed. And as a pledge of good faith, you will take the first turn. He made no effort to find you after your first guardian, Miss Lucy Harbottle, died. It was only after her sister died and left you quite alone that he took the trouble to come to you. That begs the obvious question, what changed with Miss Nell Harbottle’s death?”

I considered a moment. “Well, it left me finally and irrevocably alone in the world. I planned to leave Wren Cottage and begin my travels anew. But he could not have known it. I told no one save the vicar, and that only minutes before the baron arrived.”

“Something else, then,” he prompted. “What of your inheritance? Did Miss Nell leave you money?”

I smothered a laugh. “Hardly. There were a few notes and coins in her household box, but I left those behind to compensate the landlord for the damages.”

“Bank accounts? Investments? Jewelry?”

I shook my head at each of these. “The sole household account was in both of our names and has a current balance of sixteen shillings. I have a little money of my own for traveling, but I keep it in a separate account. As to investments, there were none, and Nell did not wear jewelry save a cross that I buried with her. She had never left it off as long as I had known her and it did not seem right to bury her without it.”

His gaze was bright and inquisitive as a monkey’s. “Was it valuable?”

I shrugged. “Not in the least.”

Stoker gave a gusty sigh. “What else? What could have brought them together?” He seemed to put the question more to himself than to me, so I sat quietly, letting him think.