A Tall Dark Stranger Page 5

  “You’re hard on me. I am only seeking your approval, a kind word ...”

  I found myself becoming intrigued by Renshaw in spite of my aunt’s warning. Everything about the man suggested wealth and privilege. His jackets, the emerald on his finger, the team and sporting carriage—all were of the first stare. His manner, too, was easy without being insinuating. Best of all, he could laugh at himself.

  Yet by his own admission his career in India had not been distinguished. It was not gentlemen of wealth and privilege who were sent to India but younger sons with their way to make in the world. Renshaw must have known he would inherit his papa’s estate. Why had he gone to India at all? Perhaps the hop farm was small. The only other explanation I could think of was that he had been escaping some scandal. That was easy enough to believe of any friend of Beau’s.

  But if there had been a scandal a decade ago I felt Renshaw had changed. He spoke almost wistfully of settling down, marrying. Unless, of course, it was all an act. He had either been acting when I first met him or he was acting now.

  To lead the conversation toward India, I asked, “Was it in India that you became interested in palmistry, Mr. Renshaw?”

  He glanced at me with a perfectly frank expression. “No, Miss Talbot, it was in Hampshire, when Beau told me your aunt is a devotee. I try to make myself agreeable to strangers. Your aunt had read Beau’s palm and he briefed me on a few points. Pity he hadn’t remembered the significance of a fire hand.”

  “You’re very frank!”

  “I am coming to the conclusion that there is no point in trying to con you, ma’am. Those green eyes see too much.”

  “Why should you want to con me or, indeed, anyone? Surely that is not the way to make yourself agreeable to new acquaintances.”

  “That is a perfect example of what I mean. Here are we, a fairly handsome young couple, driving in a new curricle with a spirited team on a lovely spring day and you refuse to feel romantic. You insist on talking common sense.”

  “It takes two to talk sense, Mr. Renshaw. Why should you want to con me?”

  “It also takes two to flirt, Miss Talbot. Why do you refuse to flirt? I am eligible—by which we both understand my pockets aren’t to let. I have a good character. My face may not set every heart aflutter, but taking into account the spring season I had hoped for something more than mere common sense.”

  “I take leave to tell you, Mr. Renshaw, that you are a weasel. I repeat, why should you want to con me?”

  “And you, ma’am, are a badger. I was not trying to con you. Any bachelor will tell you the way to a young lady’s heart—or at least company—is via her chaperone. Beau said your aunt was ‘crusty’ and suggested she was not vulnerable to compliments but to an interest in palmistry. You see what a deal of trouble I’ve been to, only to get you into my carriage. And what thanks do I get? Common sense. Nothing but common sense. Really, Miss Renshaw, I expected better of an artiste.”

  That explanation was a mite too flattering to swallow holus-bolus, but I knew I would get nothing better from this prevaricator. “Pity Beau hadn’t warned you of the danger of a fire hand,” I said.

  “Next time I shall read the tea leaves and give your aunt back for that estimate of my character.”

  “Oh, are you taking Auntie to tea? She didn’t mention it.”

  He emitted a long, exasperated sigh. We drove a few miles east of Chilton Abbas, then he turned the curricle around and we drove back toward Oakbay Hall. I picked up the whip, just fiddling with it to give my hands something to do. Taking into account our delays in the village, it had been a long enough drive for a first outing. I expected we would go directly home. But as we passed the church, Renshaw drew off the road and stopped.

  “The water meadow where you did your sketches is behind the church, I think you mentioned?”

  I hadn’t mentioned it, but he might have learned it from Beau. “Yes.”

  “It sounds fascinating. Could we have a look at it?” I felt a shiver to even think of that place. Yet it held a fascination as well as repugnance. I wouldn’t go there alone for some time, but I felt safe with Renshaw.

  “Very well, but there is not much to see.”

  “I think you mentioned a graveyard.... That is ‘a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.’ “

  He came to a dead stop. “Oh, Lord! What an asinine thing to say! You’ll think I’m planning to misbehave. I promise you I am not. The lines are from a poem.”

  I looked at the whip, thinking it would provide a weapon—not if Renshaw misbehaved. I wasn’t really concerned about that. But if the murderer had returned to the scene of the crime ...

  “You shan’t need that. Word of a gentleman,” he said, and removed the whip from my fingers. Setting it aside, he alit and helped me down from the high seat of the curricle.

  Chapter Six

  There is some enchantment in a water meadow. The atmosphere is so soft and moist. The very air looks green from the surrounding trees and grass. Light from the water plays on the vegetation, giving a magical sense of movement to the stillness.

  On arrival, all seems silent, but if you stop a moment and listen, there is a veritable symphony of nearly inaudible sounds. The buzz of insects, the rustle of a leaf as it is moved by the breeze, an occasional chirp of a bird, and the louder splash as a frog leaps for a gnat.

  As my eyes toured the greenery for a likely candidate for sketching in the future, I forgot Renshaw for a moment. When he spoke, I gave a little leap of surprise.

  “It’s very peaceful here,” he said. There was a tinge of reverence in his tone, the sort of hushed voice one hears in church. I sensed that he appreciated the simple beauty of my outdoor cathedral and liked him better for it. He spied a snakehead and went toward it. “This must be where you were sketching,” he said.

  “No, it was farther to the right.”

  He went along and found the very plant I had sketched the day we met Stoddart, close to the spot where Lollie had found his body the next day. I noticed Renshaw peering into the bulrushes beyond. I knew what he was thinking.

  “That’s where my brother found the body,” I said.

  “Is all this your land, Miss Talbot?”

  “The water meadow separates our land from Mr. Maitland’s. The property line runs down the center.”

  His eyes gazed across the water, up the incline, and soon discovered the shepherd’s hut. When I mentioned that Lollie and I had seen Stoddart there with Maitland, nothing would do but Renshaw must see it. And I was just curious enough that I went along with him.

  There was little enough to see. The sod hut, with its perishing thatched roof, was a square of six or seven feet on all sides. The only opening was the doorway. As the place had been abandoned for years, any creature comforts had been removed. All that remained was a bed of straw in one corner. Renshaw made straight for it.

  “This is new straw!” he exclaimed.

  A pile of fresh straw had been placed on top of the old. “I expect some tramp has spent the night here. Perhaps that is how poor Mr. Stoddart was killed,” I suggested.

  Renshaw lifted up the new top straw and examined it. Then he lifted something out and held it up. It was a length of a lady’s blue ribbon about a foot long. There is nothing much to distinguish one blue ribbon from another. There must be two dozen local ladies who wore ribbons similar to the one Renshaw held between his thumb and finger. In fact, Mrs. Murray had been wearing blue ribbons yesterday when Aunt Talbot was reading her palm.

  “It seems the tramp got lucky,” Renshaw said.

  I gave him a cool stare for this piece of impropriety. “You aren’t in India now, Mr. Renshaw. Indian manners aren’t appreciated here.”

  “You do the Indians an injustice. They are extremely polite. But not even they are so polite as to honor a vagrant in the manner this ribbon suggests.”

  “It’s perfectly obvious some serving girl has been meeting her beau here,” I said, displeased w
ith this broad talk.

  He handed me the ribbon. “Very nice ribbon for a serving maid,” he said.

  It was a satin ribbon, richer than could be purchased in Chilton Abbas. Mulliner’s keeps a thin, skimpy satin ribbon. Not narrow in width, but flimsy. It soon loses its shape. The shade of this ribbon was also richer than could be had locally. And there was a hint of purple in it, sort of a periwinkle shade.

  “Ladies often give their older ribbons to their servants,” I said. “I trust you aren’t suggesting a lady was using the hut for a trysting spot.”

  “So far as I know there are no ladies living on this property. Maitland is a bachelor, is he not?”

  “Yes. And before you say it, Mr. Renshaw, I am the lady living closest to the hut. I assure you I did not—” His startled stare told me I had defended my fair name unnecessarily.

  “I never suspected it for a moment. You stand much too high on your dignity, ma’am. What I am wondering is whether you happened to give this ribbon to one of your servants.”

  “I did not. A lady with green eyes doesn’t usually wear blue ribbons.”

  He dangled the bit of ribbon by my face. “It would look well with your hair, though,” he said. I jerked my head away. “Well, well. I believe we have a clue here,” he said, and folding the ribbon up, he put it in his pocket.

  “You should give it to McAdam.”

  He ignored my suggestion. “While we’re here, shall we have a look at the graveyard?” he said.

  “I’ve had enough of an outing for one day, but as you are so interested in Mr. Stoddart’s murder, the graves he was looking for belonged to the Fanshawes. There’re no such graves in our cemetery.”

  We began the walk back to the carriage, with the graveyard looming ahead on our right.

  “I own I’m intrigued by this murder,” he admitted. “What could be serious enough for one human being to kill another—outside of the folly of war, I mean?”

  “I believe you’ll find man’s ego is usually the cause. As you have just come from India, I’m sure you’ve seen examples of it” He looked a question at me. “I’m referring to suttee, the delightful notion men have that their widows should hop on the funeral pyre and join them in the hereafter.”

  “Why, that is really a compliment to the ladies, ma’am. Their spouses can’t do without them even in the afterlife.”

  “A high price to pay for a compliment! If it is the wife who dies first, the husband doesn’t repay in kind. He manages to get along very well—with another wife.”

  “It’s a cruel custom, but you can’t lay it in my dish, Miss Talbot. It was done long before I went to India and will no doubt continue now that I’ve left. In fact, I’ve never seen it myself. Each society has its own customs that often seem bizarre to outsiders. The French eat frogs; we eat cows; the Indians immolate their widows.”

  “The customs are hardly comparable!”

  “I doubt a cow would see the difference. They’re God’s creatures, too.” He scowled at me and added, “And, yes, I do eat beef.”

  “I didn’t ask!”

  I was surprised he didn’t mention that the English were trying to ban suttee. Uncle Hillary had more than once spoken hotly on the subject. The Raj was dead set against suttee.

  “You’re probably right to suggest man’s ego was at the root of the murder, however,” he allowed. “A blow to his purse or his pride—either one could be the reason. Perhaps a lady is involved.”

  “It’s not usually ladies who murder.”

  “Not by means of stabbing, at least, though I don’t acquit the fair sex of deadly passion,” he said. “It’s more usual for a lady to use poison. But I said only involved—as the cause, was my meaning.”

  When I didn’t reply, he said, “All right-thinking men cherish their wives above rubies, you must know. To have a wife stolen demands some extraordinary revenge.”

  “The same revenge that’s customarily exacted when a man cheats at cards, in fact.”

  “Or is sold a jade disguised as a goer,” he added, failing to acknowledge my point.

  “Why do you assume Mr. Stoddart stole some man’s wife? He didn’t strike me as that sort.”

  “Unflirtable, was he?”

  “He seemed nice. If a lady was involved, which we don’t actually know, it might have been some man’s daughter or sister.”

  “That had occurred to me. I didn’t want to risk offending you again. You would fit into the category of sister. You have me treading on eggs, Miss Talbot. I had forgotten how thin an English lady’s skin can be—and how pretty,” he added, stopping to gaze at my cheeks. “Like rose petals.”

  He reached out one finger and touched my cheek gently. “A blushing rose.” I felt the heat flush to my face and immediately suggested we continue on our way.

  “Must we, just when things were getting interesting?”

  “You promised to behave, Mr. Renshaw,” I reminded him.

  “So I did and so I shall, ma’am, or you’ll think me no better than I should be. Shall we blame it, like all my other lapses, on India?”

  “You’ve lost that excuse, sir. You told me the Indians were excessively polite.”

  As we returned to the curricle, Renshaw said, “You mentioned the name Fanshawe. I heard a rumor that Mr. Stoddart left a book at the inn bearing the name Harold Fanshawe.”

  “Where did you hear that? I heard nothing of it!”

  “One of the ladies you were kind enough to introduce me to mentioned it. Her name was Carter, I believe. You were speaking to that pretty blond lady at the time. Miss Lemon, I think the name was.”

  Minnie Carter was a reliable gossip. Her upstairs maid had a cousin who served ale at the Boar’s Head.

  “Do you think he was using an alias, that he wasn’t Mr. Stoddart but Mr. Fanshawe?” I asked. I noticed, but didn’t mention, that Renshaw had found the time to assess Addie’s charms in the few moments we had spent with her.

  “It was an old book. It might have been in the family for some time, perhaps belonging to his grandfather or an uncle. Does Mrs. Murray have a large family?”

  “I don’t know. In the three years I’ve known her, I’ve seldom heard her mention her family, except that she has a sister married to a solicitor in Norwich. Oh, and I remember she once mentioned a brother in London, but his name is Henry. I’ve never seen him.”

  “You could mention the name Harold Fanshawe to her.”

  “I’ve already mentioned Mr. Stoddart. She was at Oakbay when Lollie and I returned from the water meadow. She didn’t recognize Mr. Stoddart, either by name or description. In fact, I mentioned Mrs. Murray to Stoddart as well and he’d never heard of her, to judge by his lack of interest.”

  As we were leaving the meadow, we saw a small funeral cortege filing into the graveyard and stopped to look at it. There had been only the one death in the parish recently.

  The paucity of mourners bespoke the death of a stranger or a person of no importance. There were only the clergyman, the beadle, the sexton, and the innkeeper’s son. The last one, I expect, was there because Stoddart had been staying at the Boar’s Head. They all looked more impatient to get on with their own lives than sorrowful at the death.

  “That must be Mr. Stoddart they’re burying,” I said. “They didn’t waste any time in doing it.” I felt a pang for Stoddart, cut down in his prime.

  Renshaw removed his hat. I bowed my head, and we waited until the little procession had passed, then stood at the lychgate a moment. Although there were no official mourners, it wasn’t a parish burial. Stoddart had a proper coffin and was taken to a burial plot that had already been dug. An unknown corpse without funds would have been buried with less ceremony in paupers’ field.

  “I wonder who arranged the funeral,” Renshaw said.

  Isaiah Smogg, the gravedigger’s son, stood beside us. I didn’t notice him until he spoke. He was a brash, redheaded, freckle-faced lad of twelve or thirteen who didn’t hesitate to eavesdrop and even jo
in in a private conversation. If he had been wearing shoes, no doubt he would have joined the mourners.

  Isaiah is fleet of finger and foot. It is a common spectacle in Chilton Abbas to see him careering down the street clutching some purloined item under his ragged shirt, with one or other of the merchants shouting after him. He will end up in Newgate if he isn’t shot first.

  “Mr. Maitland done it,” he said, and spat between his teeth. “Paid for the service and lot and box and all since Stoddart was done in on his land. A fine gent, Mr. Maitland. He tipped Pa a quid.”

  “That’s Mr. Maitland all over,” I said, beaming in approval. In fact, I was astonished at his having even thought of such a thing. It might equally be said that Stoddart had met his end on Oakbay property, but it had never entered our heads to arrange his burial.

  “Is Maitland always in such a rush to perform his charitable works?” Renshaw asked me in a quizzing way.

  “Pa said it might be best to wait,” Isaiah said, “in case Stoddart’s folks showed up. But Maitland, he said, ‘Not likely, is it? The sooner the man’s buried, the sooner forgotten,’ and gave Pa a quid.”

  “Quite right,” I said, and took a step onward.

  Isaiah turned his bold eyes on Renshaw and said bluntly, “You’re the gent staying with Mr. Sommers. I seen your sporting rig in town—with her in it,” he added, tossing his tousled head at me. “A dandy rattler and prads, mister.”

  “Thank you. I don’t believe I caught your name.”

  “Everybody knows me. I’m Isaiah, ain’t I? I’m named after the Bible. I’m a profit.”

  Renshaw held his face perfectly sober and said, “I’m happy to meet you, Isaiah.”

  “You didn’t say who you are.”

  “I’m Robert Renshaw.”

  “You’re brown as an Injun. How’d ye get so brown? Are you a sojer from Wellington’s army?”

  “No, I’ve been in India.”

  Isaiah turned his eyes to me and gave a cocky laugh. “You don’t want to marry this ‘un, Miss Talbot. Them Injuns burn their wives.”