A Curious Beginning

I must have looked surprised, for she paused, and when she spoke again her voice was softer. “I love my brother dearly, Miss Speedwell, but I am not blind to his faults. He would be less than useless at murder. He has no stomach for the gritty realities of life. He couldn’t even bring himself to talk about the baron’s death with me. One of the advantages of being a lady,” she said with a sudden wry twist of her pretty mouth. “Gentlemen seldom like to discuss unseemly things with us.”


“But unseemly things are often the most interesting,” I pointed out.

“Indeed.” She gave a sudden smile, illuminating her face like a rainbow after a storm. “But we have more pressing matters to speak of than my brother. Is it possible to prove that you were not at the baron’s house on the night of his murder?” she asked Stoker.

“Well,” he said, tugging a bit at his collar, “in point of fact, I was with someone.”

“Excellent!” she said, but almost as soon as the word fell from her lips, she followed Stoker’s glance to me and gave a little sigh. “If you spent that evening together unchaperoned, I am afraid the damage to Miss Speedwell’s reputation will render her a less than desirable witness to your whereabouts.”

“Oh, that is the least of our troubles,” I told her with a wave of the hand. I outlined—as briefly and delicately as clarity would permit—my previous romantic entanglements. “So you see,” I finished, “the Queen’s Counsel would label me a harlot and discount entirely any alibi I could provide. Also, I suspect leaving Little Byfield in the company of a gentleman I had only just met and spending the night with him in the privacy of his carriage would not be received at all well.”

True to the maxim that a lady never betrayed shock, Lady Cordelia merely inclined her head. “Is there anything else?” she inquired pleasantly.

Stoker covered his face with his hands. “For the last several days we have been living as man and wife in a traveling show,” he said, his words muffled.

Lady Cordelia gave a brisk sigh. “Well, I don’t suppose you could have managed things much worse unless you had actually been found standing over his body with the fossil in hand.”

Stoker winced, dropping his hands. “Is that what killed him? A fossil? The newspaper gave no details.”

Lady Cordelia’s sympathy was very nearly palpable. “I sent only the edition with the briefest account. I thought it might be less painful for you to hear the details from a friend rather than read about them in some sensationalist story.” They exchanged a look of understanding. “But I will tell you whatever you need to know. As far as the murder weapon is concerned, the investigators established it was a rather heavy piece of something—a shell, I think it was.”

“An ammonite,” he said flatly. “It was a fossilized shell. I know the one. He always kept it on his desk. What was it, then? A crime of opportunity?”

She shrugged. “The inquest determined it was murder by person or persons unknown. Signs of a brief struggle, and immediate flight when the housekeeper, Mrs. Latham, came to investigate.”

“Was she harmed?”

“She was pushed down quite roughly and hit her head. She remembers nothing, only an impression of darkness and pounding feet. But she will be all right. She has gone to stay with her sister in Brighton,” she said in the same distracted tone. She fell silent a moment, then roused herself, her manner suddenly brisk. “I think it best if we do not apprise his lordship of your presence here just yet. He returned from Cornwall with me and is locked in his study, wrestling with a rather thorny paper he is writing for the Journal of Antiquity. He would not thank me for the interruption. We will hope that by the time he is finished, the matter will be resolved. In the interim, you must stay here in the Belvedere.”

“Are you certain we will not disturb his lordship?” I asked.

“My dear Miss Speedwell, when my brother is engaged in his writing, you could walk into his study unclothed and take a nap upon his desk and he would not notice. Besides, we cannot hope to hide you from him forever. Merely until we can choose a propitious time to tell him. Now, I shall require a scarf or glove. Some piece of raiment that I may use to introduce your scent to the dog.”

I unwrapped the bit of scarlet silk I had worn at my throat and handed it over.

“That will do nicely. If you happen to see a creature that looks like an overgrown bear roaming about, that is Betty. Once she has your scent, she will not harm you.”

“Betty?”

“Short for Betony,” Stoker informed me. “His lordship’s sheepdog from the Caucasus. Two hundredweight on a lean day.”

“Heavens,” I murmured.