Lady Rights a Wrong Read online

  Anne gave a small smile and nodded. “Now, I am sure I asked you to call me Anne.”

  There was the sudden roaring sound of a motorcar coming to a stop outside the open window. “Are you expecting someone?” Cecilia asked.

  “Not at all,” Anne said with a puzzled frown. “In fact, I’m quite sure everyone who can wants to stay far away from us right now.”

  Cecilia followed her to the window and went on tiptoe to peer over the taller woman’s shoulder. She took a surreptitious sniff of Anne’s perfume. It wasn’t her mother’s roses, nor the green-white scent of the letters, but something almost citrusy, like her own mother’s scent. It didn’t seem to be the smell left behind on the torn fragments of letters.

  Outside the garden gate, a new Renault motorcar had just come to a halt, dust clouding around it. A uniformed chauffeur emerged and opened the back door for a tall, lean man in a perfectly tailored gray cashmere overcoat and black silk hat. He tilted back his head to study the cottage, and Cecilia saw he was quite handsome in a hawkish way, with sharp cheekbones, a blade of a nose, and a graying mustache.

  “Who is that?” Cecilia said, watching as the man unlatched the gate and strode up the path as if he owned it.

  Anne’s lips tightened. “That,” she muttered, “is my father. Mr. Henry Price, Esquire.”

  * * *

  Several minutes later, Cecilia herself hurried along that same walkway to the garden gate. The chauffeur leaned against the hood of the car, smoking his cigarette as the village rushed past on its own errands. It was a fine, cloudless autumn day, but she shivered a bit after the chill Mr. Henry Price seemed to carry around with him.

  He had been everything that was polite when he heard her name, but it was clear her presence was not needed in Primrose Cottage any longer that day. Even Anne, who had begun to relax a bit, had gone rigid again, her cheek carefully turned up for her father’s pecking kiss, her eyes full of caution. Cecilia had a hard time picturing Amelia Price with such a man at all. Surely, it was no wonder they had gone their separate paths in life.

  Yet Nellie had said Mr. Price hated all the gossip. He did seem a thoroughly conventional sort, and if he had built his career on service to the royal family, he would be very careful of his reputation. Would he have become so angered by his wife’s work, her public life, that he would do away with her? Cecilia had heard too many tales of men doing just that with unsatisfactory wives.

  But the police had arrested the thief with Mrs. Price’s ring. Surely, that would put an end to any other avenues of investigation. Maybe a theft was the answer, though it seemed such a small and ridiculous fate for a grand, larger-than-life woman like Mrs. Price.

  Cecilia turned at the end of the lane and headed toward the village green, and then the rows of fine brick and stone houses behind iron gates just beyond. She didn’t have much time before she had to return to Danby, and she wanted to call on her grandmother. Her father had said the dowager would remember the gossip about the long-ago Season when Mrs. Price was the Diamond of the debs. Cecilia was sure that was true; her grandmother never forgot anything at all, even when one wished she would.

  The dower house was at the end of the lane, a fine old Georgian place with white shutters at the windows and a large, beautiful garden around three sides. Two gardeners were working on the very last of her grandmother’s prize-winning roses for the season, harassed by Sebastian nipping at their heels and growling. The butler greeted her at the door and led her toward the drawing room at the back of the house, where she could hear voices.

  So her grandmother wasn’t alone. The Bateses’ lawyer, Mr. Jermyn, was with her, some papers spread on the alabaster table in front of them. They sat on a pair of Jacobean tapestry chairs her grandmother had taken from Danby when she left, along with carved cabinets, porcelain ornaments, and Dutch still-life paintings. It was all very grand, very old-fashioned, very intimidating—much like her grandmother herself.

  “I’m so sorry, Grandmama. I didn’t realize you had a caller,” Cecilia said.

  “It’s only Mr. Jermyn, my dear, come to have me sign some papers, and I insisted he stay to explain them to me,” her grandmother said as Cecilia kissed her powdered cheek. She smelled of old-fashioned violets. “I cannot keep it all straight in my mind now, you see. Old age.”

  Cecilia and Mr. Jermyn exchanged a small smile. Nothing ever escaped her steel trap of a mind, and everyone knew it.

  “Indeed, I was just leaving, Lady Cecilia,” Mr. Jermyn said, gathering up the papers and tucking them neatly into his valise. “I must take some of these into Leeds myself by the late train.”

  “Mr. Jermyn’s office has been so terribly busy of late,” the dowager said, clucking in sympathy. “I am sure Mrs. Jermyn worries about you being so run off your feet.”

  Mr. Jermyn grimaced. “She has expressed a thought or two in that direction, Lady Avebury, but I don’t mind the work in the least. We may have some relief in the office soon, at any rate.”

  “How so?” Cecilia asked. “Are your clients becoming less demanding?”

  He laughed. “What do you think, Lady Cecilia?”

  She laughed, too. Not with her own family as his chief clients. “I fear it is too much to hope.”

  “No, we may have another attorney soon to take on some of the more junior clients. I just received a letter from a man called Mr. Montgomery Winter asking about a position. Though his last place was with a larger London firm, so I’m not sure why he is seeking a change to the north.”

  “Mr. Winter?” Cecilia said, surprised. The Winters were looking to leave London and stay in Danby?

  “Do you know him?” Mr. Jermyn asked.

  “No, not at all. That is, I’ve met him, but not for any length,” Cecilia said. “I’ve spoken with his wife, and I would also be surprised to hear they wanted to settle so far from Town. Mrs. Winter seems very, well, London-fied. She is Mrs. Amelia Price’s daughter, you see.”

  Mr. Jermyn’s brow rose. “Amelia Price? Is Mrs. Winter a suffragette, then?”

  “Oh no. The very opposite, I would say.”

  “Well, I am looking forward to meeting with the man, anyway. A bit more time at home would not go amiss with Mrs. Jermyn, if there were someone competent to lighten the load at the office. Good afternoon, ladies.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Jermyn, and thank you,” her grandmother said. She waved Cecilia to his abandoned seat. “Now, my dear, do stay for some tea.”

  “I can’t linger very long, Grandmama. Preparations for the church bazaar are at a fever pitch at Danby.”

  Her grandmother chuckled. “Oh yes, I do recall those days. I do not envy your mother. Are you hiding out here, then?”

  “Yes, I must be. But I also wanted to ask if you remembered the Season before Papa married Mama.”

  “Of course I remember it. The year Lord Frederick Cavendish was murdered by those wild Irishmen, so dreadful. And the Football League; it was all the men could talk about, tiresome at dinners. And the Married Women’s Property Act, which set off this wildness we have now. Why do you ask?”

  “Papa says that Amelia Price was quite the deb of the Season then. She was Miss Merriman then, I think.”

  “Miss Merriman? Oh yes! She was very pretty, I’ll give her that, but quite the minx, even then. Drove her own phaeton in the park! And let Lady Bryanston’s monkey out of its cage at a party, such a to-do that was. Your father did dance with her once or twice more than I would have liked, and I admit I was a bit relieved when his attentions turned elsewhere.”

  “To Mama?” Yet Cecilia remembered the tales that her grandmother had not quite taken to the slightly middle-class Emmaline at first.

  “Not quite yet; there was Lady Muriel Repton-Smythe-Smythe first. Now there was a girl with a steady head on her shoulders. But she married Lord Merton and hied off to India, and then your mother came along.” />
  Cecilia was fascinated by the glimpse of her parents’ long-ago past, but she knew she had to get home soon. “And then Miss Merriman married Mr. Henry Price?”

  “I suppose so.” Her mother’s lips pursed as she remembered. “I do recall now it all happened quite quickly, and was rather a surprise. Everyone said she had a viscount or some such on the hook, and then she married an attorney instead. Of course, the man did come to be a very trusted adviser to Queen Alexandra, but at that time no one had heard of him. It was probably her father’s misfortune that took her there.”

  “Her father’s misfortune?”

  “He had lost most of the Merriman money, you see, in some absurd Brazilian silver mine scheme. The family had done quite well for themselves before that, and with her looks and dowry everyone thought she would do well. Then—pfft! It was gone, and the girl married off. It was said Mr. Price had to pay the dowry rather than the other way ’round.” The dowager shook her head. “I am very glad your grandfather never engaged in such nonsense. Left my dower in the five percents, very sensible.”

  Yes, and now those “sensible” investments meant Patrick had to marry an heiress. But Brazilian mines probably wouldn’t have been the answer, either.

  “And then she turned suffragette, I suppose, and got herself killed in our very own village,” her grandmother concluded, with a dismissive thump of her walking stick on the Axminster carpet. “Typical. Let that be a lesson to you, Cecilia.”

  Cecilia wasn’t sure what sort of lesson it could be, unless it was “don’t marry for money, or decades later you will be killed.” Or “don’t invest in dodgy mines.”

  “Of course, Grandmama. No mines.”

  “Now, tell me more about the bazaar. Has your mother figured out how to keep everyone from each other’s throats this year?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The day of the inquest was gray and drizzling, battering down the last of the summer flowers in the garden. Cecilia wiped at a foggy spot on the car window with her gloved hand and peered out, thinking that the day was quite appropriately gloomy for the backdrop to an inquest. She wished Jack could have come to give her some comfort, but cats wouldn’t be allowed in official inquiries.

  “Oh, look, you’ve left a spot on your glove,” her mother clucked. She took Cecilia’s hand in hers and brushed futilely at the navy blue suede, just as she had when Cecilia had mussed herself in the garden as a child.

  “I don’t think the coroner’s jury will be looking at my gloves, Mama,” she said, though it was true that she had dressed carefully for the day in a suitably somber dark-blue dress and coat and an unadorned gray velvet hat. She had never attended an inquest before; it was equal parts terrifying and interesting.

  “I don’t know why Colonel Havelock asked you to be there anyway,” Lady Avebury tsked. “To think—an earl’s daughter at a public inquest! What is the world coming to?”

  Cecilia thought her mother was beginning to sound quite a lot like her grandmother. “I was there soon after the body was found,” she answered. “I’m sure they just want as much information as possible, in the circumstances.”

  “Cec is quite right, my dear,” her father said. “They must be thorough whenever there is a suspicious death, and we don’t want uncertainties hanging over Danby’s head in any way. Better to get it over and done with. And luckily, there wouldn’t have been the chance of going out shooting today anyway, not with this beastly weather.”

  “Oh, don’t remind me,” Lady Avebury groaned. Once the bazaar was over, a shooting party that included the Duke of Strenton was expected at Danby, and Cecilia’s mother was already going into a whirlwind planning it.

  “Anyway, I’m sure Cecilia will do wonderfully,” Lord Avebury said. “She has a good, cool head on her shoulders, just like her mother. Don’t you, Cec, dear?”

  “I’m not sure about that right now,” Cecilia murmured. She did feel rather sick to her stomach at the thought of speaking to the room.

  “She could have just written them a letter to be read out before the coroner,” her mother said.

  Collins brought the car to a stop near the Crown and Shield, where the inquest was to be held. Other motors, as well as a few horses and carts, were already parked in the gravel driveway.

  Cecilia smoothed her gloves one more time and followed her parents into the pub, where she had so rarely been before. But she had only a moment to avidly study the dimly lit interior, the polished bar, the array of glasses behind, the tables arranged next to the hazy, old-glass windows, the smoke that lingered in the air, before they were ushered up the stairs to a room at the back of the building.

  It was a plain but very large room, usually called into service for meetings and dances, which was good, as it was packed full that day, rows and rows of chairs lined up in the dusty light under the heavy smell of damp wool and smoke from the fireplace at one end.

  At the other end were two tables set up facing the rows of chairs. Colonel Havelock and a tall, portly, gray-haired man who was probably the coroner sat at one, papers spread before them, and the jury sat at another long table off to the side of the room. As Cecilia and her parents took their seats near the front, she studied the crowd for familiar faces. Mr. Jermyn the attorney soon joined them, in case she was in need of any advice, and Mr. Brown sat behind them with a reassuring smile.

  She saw Anne Price, sitting with Nellie, Harriet Palmer, and Cora Black, their mourning clothes like shadows as they whispered together. Behind them sat the Winters, Monty seeming quite distracted as Mary fiddled with the fringes on her black velvet jacket. Henry Price sat next to them, handsome and austere, but also seemingly in his own world, far away with his own thoughts. Mr. Talbot sat at the back, where Collins joined him after parking the car. Cecilia waved at them.

  Lord Elphin was there as well, sitting by himself in a back corner, his arms crossed, his red face thunderous. She wouldn’t have thought he would be interested in the death of Mrs. Price, unless it was to dance about the demise of a dreaded suffragette. Maybe he had been summoned because of the behavior of his men after the rally? Cecilia was just glad he didn’t have his bully-band with him now.

  “Mr. Jermyn,” she whispered to the attorney before the proceedings could begin, “is that Mr. Winter over there, the one who applied for a position with you?”

  He glanced over and nodded. “Yes, indeed. We are to have tea with him tomorrow and gauge his suitability.”

  “Do you remember the name of the office where he worked in London?”

  Mr. Jermyn tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Bird and Wither in Middle Temple.”

  “Good morning, everyone,” Colonel Havelock said, bringing the hushed murmur of the room into silence. “Thank you for taking the time to render assistance in these terrible circumstances. Remember, this is not a trial, merely an occasion to pose additional questions to clarify and expand any previous statements made. The jury will then render a judgment on whether this death was natural or suspicious so we may move forward. Now, this is the county’s coroner, Mr. Lancing, who attended at the scene.”

  Mr. Lancing shuffled his papers and cleared his throat. “The deceased, Mrs. Amelia Price, was of good health, aside from some scarring of the liver. Upon examination, I determined she had been dead for approximately four hours when she was found. The cause appears to be a contusion to the head, leading to a broken neck and various cracked ribs upon landing at the foot of the stairs, we assume. There was bruising to the left side of the torso, and the fingernails were torn on the left hand, as if she reached for the railing of the stairs. There were also score marks on the wooden rails.”

  Cecilia remembered how Mrs. Price’s sash was torn away on the left, as if someone had grabbed it to pull her close—or push her away. Where had that scrap gone?

  “What we must determine today,” Mr. Lancing continued, “is if Mrs. Price died of an accident
, or by misadventure or unlawful killing.”

  “To begin, the court calls Miss Anne Price to the stand,” Colonel Havelock said. Anne rose and made her way to the stand, or rather the table, that was laid out for witnesses. She did not look left or right, just moved with a careful, quiet dignity.

  She was calm and composed as she answered questions about her mother’s last night. The rally, returning to Primrose Cottage, everyone retiring except her mother, who usually did stay up later to go over what had happened with her speeches. Anne’s room was at the back of the house; she had heard nothing out of the ordinary. Her sister and brother-in-law had visited briefly, but she thought she heard them leave soon after, and no one else came to the cottage. Nellie was called next, and confirmed Anne’s account, as well as stating that yes, Mrs. Price did sometimes have a nightcap of wine or brandy when she went over her speeches.

  The maid trembled a bit and fumbled over words at times, as if emotions threatened to overwhelm her. But her answers were clear and firm. It was Cora who sobbed into her handkerchief, breaking the intense hush of the room. Anne nudged at her and shoved a clean handkerchief into her hand.

  “We next call Lady Cecilia Bates,” Colonel Havelock said as Nellie retook her seat.

  Cecilia drew in a deep, steadying breath and made her way to the witness table. One of the jury members that she knew, the milliner’s husband, gave her a small smile, and her mother watched her closely, worriedly. Anne nodded at her, and she knew she had to do her very best, for Mrs. Price.

  “Lady Cecilia,” Mr. Lancing said, “you were at Primrose Cottage the day of these events, were you not?”

  Cecilia smoothed her gloves carefully. “Yes. I had been to Mrs. Price’s rallies, and she asked if I would call on her. I didn’t know what had happened until I arrived at the cottage.”

  “Do you know why she asked you to call?”

  Cecilia thought it was probably to recruit an earl’s daughter to the Union, but she shook her head. “Not really, no. But the Prices seemed quite nice—Mrs. Price offered to teach me to ride a bicycle. And I was in the village that day, the—the day Mrs. Price died, so I went.”