A Tall Dark Stranger Read online

  She watched from the front window as McAdam rode up on his bay mare, then went to the door to speak to him. When she returned, she said, “He’s going directly to the water meadow. No word of any robbery in town. He wants that note, Lollie, It is evidence.”

  Lollie decided to put it in the oven with the door open to dry it. Unfortunately, Betty closed the door, and it was dark brown by the time the mishap was discovered. When Lollie tried to pick it up, it fell to pieces. McAdam stopped in for a word after viewing the corpus delicti.

  McAdam is a short, balding little man with sharp brown eyes. We tease Auntie that he has a tendre for her because he once carried her parcels two blocks to the carriage in Chilton Abbas.

  We told him all we could remember of our first meeting with Stoddart and of seeing him with Maitland before we spoke to him. He said he’d have a word with Maitland. Lollie told him about finding the body that morning. McAdam chided Lollie for searching the man’s pockets and was, of course, not happy to learn the note was now a pile of ashes. Lollie was able to give him the message word for word and even duplicated the printing, which did much to mitigate McAdam’s wrath.

  That is how we passed the morning. Immediately after lunch Auntie remembered she needed a few yards of muslin and put on her bonnet to go to Chilton Abbas. The muslin, of course, was a pretext for going to the drapery shop to retail our adventure to her friends and to learn of any new developments. You have no notion of the importance of gossip in the parish if you imagine for a moment the carriage got away without Lollie and myself in it.

  Chilton Abbas is a typical Hampshire village, built around a crystal-clear chalk stream, with a common green complete with duck pond, a High Street, a church, an inn, a tavern, a cluster of shops and houses, and a manor house (occupied by the Murrays) at the end of High Street.

  We stabled the carriage at the inn. Lollie went to the tavern and Auntie and I headed to Mulliner’s Drapery Shop. We hadn’t gone six feet before we were stopped by Mrs. Davis, the vicar’s wife and most arrant gossip in the parish.

  “I hear you’ve had a busy morning, Maude!” she exclaimed, her cabbage green eyes aglow.

  She invited us in for tea, but Aunt Maude wanted a larger audience and opted for the drapery shop. There, in a dark aisle between the ells of muslin on one side and ribbons and buttons on the other, the ladies of the parish clustered like birds in a treetop, chattering.

  Miss Addie Lemon, my particular friend, drew me toward the window. Being unattached ladies, we wanted to keep an eye out for gentlemen passing on the street while we gossiped. I, having firsthand information, opened my budget first. Addie listened eagerly, blue eyes wide open as she gasped and exclaimed at all the proper places.

  “Oh, my! What a turn it must have given you. Was it horrid?” And later, “Betty baked the note! Well, I never. What had McAdam to say about that?”

  She was not without information of her own to impart. “You heard about the money, of course?”

  “Only a mention of it in the note,” I replied.

  “Five hundred pounds! They say Stoddart had it put in the safe at the inn when he first arrived, then late yesterday afternoon he took it out. He didn’t leave the money in his room, for McAdam searched it from top to bottom and there wasn’t a sou in it.”

  “Were there guests staying at the inn?”

  “No one suspicious. They say there was a cockfight in an abandoned barn last night and Stoddart was there, along with half the men from the neighborhood. He might have lost the money on a bet. But it’s only a rumor, mind. Oh, and there’s been a stranger spotted about town. A tall, dark gentleman. Someone says he was seen talking to Stoddart.” Such vague on-dits were only to be expected. I paid little heed to them.

  We were so engrossed in our conversation, we nearly missed Maitland. It was Addie who spotted him first, heading toward the drapery shop. We knew he would not enter that female den and began primping our hair. We managed to be leaving the shop just as he passed by.

  “Ladies,” he said, lifting his curled beaver and bowing.

  Morris Maitland is so marvelous a creature, I can never quite make up my mind what part of him to admire first. The sun glinted off a golden wave of hair that fell forward when he removed his hat. His blue eyes shone like sapphires; his teeth sparkled. Maitland in the flesh always outdid memory. His blue superfine jacket hugged his broad shoulders. His buckskins were spotless, and little gold tassels bobbed on his gleaming topboots.

  Addie overcame her breathlessness first. “Miss Talbot was just telling me you know Mr. Stoddart, the man who was murdered,” she said.

  Maitland gave me a mock frown. “So it is you I have to thank for McAdam’s call,” he said. “I would hardly say I know him. I caught him trespassing on my property yesterday morning. He explained that he was out walking and lost his way. We shared a cheroot and he told me about a boxing match he’d seen in Winchester.” This jibed with what Stoddart had told us.

  “He didn’t mention that he was looking for his relatives’ graves?” I asked.

  After a frowning pause, Maitland said, “I believe he did ask the way to the graveyard. He mentioned he was from Bath. I have relatives there myself, but he didn’t happen to know any of them.”

  “That would be because he wasn’t from Bath,” I informed him.

  Maitland’s eyebrows rose. “Is he not? I’m sure he said Bath....”

  “Oh, yes, he said Bath, but I doubt he’d ever been there. He knew nothing of the place.”

  “Where was he from?” Maitland asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you hear about the money?” Addie asked him.

  He hadn’t, and she had the pleasure of telling him. Not to be outdone, I told him about the note. He displayed a suitable degree of interest in both stories. Addie mentioned her theory regarding the cockfight. Maitland admitted he had been there and said he had not seen Stoddart.

  Altogether, we monopolized Maitland for quite ten minutes, to the consternation of the other village maidens. Before leaving, he inquired if we planned to attend the spring assembly and asked us both to save him a dance.

  We returned to the drapery shop in a state of high elation and bought new ribbons to impress Maitland at the next assembly. Mrs. Davis invited Auntie and myself for tea again and we accepted this time. As we were to meet Lollie at four-thirty, we could not remain long.

  We were home by five. We neither had company nor went out that evening. I did some painting and went to bed early. As I lay in the dark, I thought of Stoddart, who would soon be moldering in the ground. He hadn’t seemed like a spy or an evil man. Pretending he was from Bath wasn’t reason enough to be murdered.

  I knew Lollie planned to involve himself in the case, and I decided that I’d do anything I could to help him.

  Chapter Four

  With a murderer in our midst, I decided to do my sketching close to home the next morning. Lollie was busy about the estate and we couldn’t spare George to accompany me. I was just strolling through the park with my sketch pad and watercolor box trying to decide what to sketch when I heard the clatter of hooves. Looking through the trees to the road, I saw our neighbor, Beau Sommers, was coming to call. Another gentleman was with him.

  Five years ago the sight of Beau would have sent my heart racing in delight. At a callow seventeen I could imagine no greater enchantment than a kind word from Beau. His curled lip and air of cynicism had seemed the height of sophistication to me.

  Now that I have some small experience of men and the world, I recognize him for what he is. A gazetted flirt, a fribble, a here-and-thereian who gives each new generation of ladies a fling as they put up their hair and let down their skirts.

  I had my inoculation at seventeen. He still calls from time to time, when he is in the suds and fears he may need my dowry. I expect when he is about forty he will marry some youngster for the sake of an heir, but I doubt he will ever provide his lady with a tame husband. He is tall and well enough b
uilt, with dark hair and brown eyes. The cut of his jacket and the arrangement of his cravat are of more importance to him than the profitable management of his estate, Beauvert.

  When he espied me, he and his friend came forward and dismounted to greet me. I suspected at a glance that Beau’s friend was cast from the same mold as himself. The fashionable cut of his blue jacket of Bath cloth and the intricate folds of his cravat suggested it. He wore his curled beaver at the same cocky angle, tilted over a lean, tanned face. Like Beau, he rode a prime blood bay. And, like Beau, his eyes examined me with a purely physical interest.

  “Miss Amy,” Beau said, lifting his hat. For a period of two weeks five years ago he had called me Amy. Miss Amy was the compromise he settled on, halfway between the formal Miss Talbot and the friendlier Amy. Its unsuitability didn’t bother Beau. I have no elder sister; I am Miss Talbot to my acquaintances, Amy to my friends.

  “Good morning, Beau,” I replied, not because I wanted to foster any intimacy, but because everyone called him Beau. I had done so for years.

  “May I present Mr. Renshaw, an old chum from university.” Beau had attended Oxford for one year.

  Renshaw lifted his lids, bowed, smiled a well-practiced smile, and said in a bored drawl, “Charmed, Miss Talbot. Beau has been singing your praises so loudly, I insisted he introduce me.”

  His eyes toured from my head to toes and back up again while I scarcely had time to glance at him. Yet I felt I had been thoroughly assessed as a physical specimen in that brief second.

  The first thing I noticed when he removed his hat was a scar above his left eyebrow. The white scar, shaped like the blade of a scythe, stood out against his swarthy skin. His dark eyes were hooded, giving him a lazy look, as if he were still half asleep. His thin lips curved in a cool smile.

  He would have been more handsome without that theatrical air of ennui. His build, I noticed, was impressive. His well-cut jacket sat easily on his broad shoulders. His buckskins lay flat against a firm stomach.

  “How do you do,” I said coolly, and offered him my hand. Being caught in mid-bow, he looked at it as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it but finally took it and gave it a limp shake.

  “Now you see for yourself I spoke no more than the truth,” Beau said to his chum. They both gazed at me with feigned admiration, as if I were Helen of Troy. I knew I looked a sight in my dowdy painting gown and an old straw bonnet. I began to suspect that one of them had an eye on my dowry. “Did you ever see such eyes, Renny?” Renshaw murmured unconvincingly of sapphires and cornflowers.

  “I assume you’re referring to cornflower leaves, Mr. Renshaw,” I said. “My eyes are green.”

  He had the grace to blush at that, before casting an irritated glance at his cohort. Had Beau told him I had blue eyes? Was he blind, that he couldn’t see for himself they were green?

  “Miss Amy would know all about flowers and leaves,” Beau said. “Did I mention she is a consummate artist? She paints weeds.”

  “Wildflowers,” I corrected with my own tinge of irritation.

  “May we see what you’ve been sketching, Miss Talbot?” Renshaw asked, glancing at my sketch pad.

  “I shall have a word with your aunt while you show Renshaw your pictures,” Beau said, thus inviting himself into the house. The gentlemen exchanged a conspiratorial look.

  I either had to ask them both in or remain alone with Renshaw. When I saw the small, predatory smile settle on Renshaw’s lips, I felt vaguely threatened and said, “Won’t you both come inside?”

  “Too kind,” Renshaw said, swallowing his annoyance.

  Beau carried my paint box. They walked their mounts up the roadway, where the gardener’s helper took the horses around to the stable. Beau spoke of the murder. It was the main topic of conversation in every local household that day.

  “I hear you and Lollie actually found the body,” he said. “What an unpleasant experience! And I wager you didn’t even have a bottle of hartshorn in your paint box.”

  “Oddly enough, I went out without it that morning,” I replied. I thought Renshaw’s lips quirked at my reply, but I couldn’t be sure. He turned his head aside just then.

  Once we were in the saloon, Beau made a great fuss over Auntie, telling her she looked younger every time he saw her and suggesting that hard work must be good for ladies.

  “I manage to keep busy,” she allowed.

  “The devil finds work for idle hands. Have you read any good palms lately, Miss Talbot?” he inquired, as if hands were books.

  “There is no such thing as a bad palm, Mr. Sommers. One must not blame the gun for killing the hare. The palm, like the gun, is but the instrument. Hands are the mirrors of the soul. They only reflect what is within.”

  Renshaw’s air of ennui changed to mild interest. His lazy eyes opened wider. “Except in the case of the left hand, surely. The left hand indicates what you were born with. The right hand is what you have made of your inherited tendencies.”

  “Very true,” Auntie said, moving her chair a notch closer to his. “Except in the case of left-handed folks, when the reverse holds true.”

  “What is your view on the reading of people who are ambidextrous, Miss Talbot?” he inquired.

  I examined him suspiciously, finding it odd that a fashionable fribble should be interested in palmistry. He appeared to be perfectly serious.

  “Everyone favors one hand or the other,” she stated categorically. “When in doubt I toss the subject a ball of wool. Whichever hand he puts up to catch it is his dominant hand. He has only trained his passive hand to do his bidding.”

  “That’s very interesting! I was of the opinion that whichever hand was happier holding a pen was the deciding factor.”

  “But then there are people who can write equally well with either hand,” she pointed out. “Take Mr. Majors now, the solicitor’s son-in-law.”

  The two palmists discussed their avocation for a few minutes. I was not disappointed, but I was just a little surprised that Renshaw paid no attention whatsoever to myself. It was not long before tea was ordered. I saw that Renshaw was going to be a welcome addition to Auntie’s circle. But as we were waiting for the tea, he made the error of offering his hand for a reading and he fell from favor.

  “Oh, dear, a fire hand!” Auntie exclaimed.

  Long palm, short fingers. Renshaw was nothing else but a bustling busybody, a show-off, volatile and bad-tempered. There is little good to be said of a fire hand. It is the pariah of hands. Even the fine emerald on the smallest finger of his left hand couldn’t save him.

  I could see plainly that Renshaw was frustrated by his fall from grace. He looked a question at Beau, who hunched his shoulders. It was then I began to suspect Renshaw’s interest in palmistry was assumed, to make himself welcome at Oakbay. I could see no conceivable advantage to ingratiating himself with my aunt except to have access to the house—and to me. Definitely he had designs on my dowry and was devious enough to have invented this ploy to make himself welcome.

  After the tea arrived, the subject of palm reading was forgotten.

  “It is odd Mr. Sommers hasn’t brought you to call before, Mr. Renshaw, as you are such old friends,” my aunt said.

  “Renny has been in India, working with the East India Company,” Beau explained.

  “That’s very interesting,” she said. “I have a brother with the E.I.C. He doesn’t actually work in India. He is with the administration office in London. Whereabouts were you stationed in India?”

  “In Calcutta,” Renshaw replied. “I was acting as liaison between the head office and the office in Calcutta.”

  “Perhaps you know my brother, Hillary Talbot?”

  After a frowning pause, Renshaw said, “I’ve seen the name on letters, but I haven’t met him.”

  He spoke on a little about the heat and monsoons and markets and such things as everyone back from India mentions.

  “A man can do very well for himself in India,” Auntie said
in a considering way. Her eyes slid to me. Fire hand or not, a nabob might provide a husband. If a water hand couldn’t control fire, what could?

  “It is the nawabs who make the colossal fortunes you hear of, ma’am,” he told her. “I have returned to England to make my fortune.”

  I own I was surprised that he admitted to a lack of fortune. That was no way to make himself welcome at Oakbay.

  Beau laughed, a high, unnatural laugh. “Why, you are giving the ladies the notion you’re a pauper, Renny.” Then he added to my aunt, “Renny’s papa left him a very tidy estate in Kent. A hop farm. That is why he returned from Calcutta.”

  Renshaw tried to look modest.

  “I expect you’ll be returning to Kent very soon to look after your business,” she said.

  “Yes, very soon. Having been away from England for so long, I wanted to look up my old friends first.”

  “I shouldn’t waste too much time if I were you. An estate doesn’t run itself. It has to be watched over closely.”

  “I have a steward, but I plan to return soon. There is one cousin in particular I want to see. I have a message for him from a lady in India. An affair of the heart. I heard he was on a walking tour in this part of the country.”

  “A walking tour, you say?” I asked, thinking, of course, of Stoddart. “What was his name?”

  “Matthew Bennet. Why, have you .?.”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t recognize the name.” He looked at me with sharp interest, as if waiting for me to say more.

  “I’ve convinced Renny to stay with me until the assembly on the weekend,” Beau said. “There is no saying, Matthew might show up.”

  Beau engaged my aunt in some local gossip and Renshaw turned to me. “You were going to show me your sketches, Miss Talbot,” he said.

  The pad I had been carrying was a new one. It had nothing in it except the few sketches I had made at the water meadow and the loosestrife in the orchard. I opened the book and showed him the fritillary. The composition was lopsided. I had drawn it on the left side of the page, leaving space for other sketches of the flower as it opened and faded.