Murder Most Fair Page 3

  I slowed my steps, noticing how much more she leaned on me with each passing moment. Fearing her legs might give out completely, I leaned my head closer to whisper. “Shall I ask Sidney to assist you up the stairs?”

  She offered me a flicker of a smile even though her face was pale with strain. “As much as I would enjoy being swept up into the arms of your handsome young man, I’m sure I can do it on my own. If you help me,” she added, and I took a firmer grip of her arm, bracing her elbow.

  We climbed with plodding steps, but eventually we made it to the Primrose bedchamber, where my great-aunt’s maid had already turned down the bed and was now in the process of unpacking her valise. She hastened over as we entered and assisted me in settling Tante Ilse onto the bed. In the soft glow of the bedside lamp, I was surprised to discover the maid was even lovelier than I expected. A tendril of brown hair, the soft shade of a fawn’s pelt, had escaped from its pins to trail along her jawline. Although she was overly thin, her sunken skin forming hollows in her cheekbones, her complexion was the smooth and creamy shade and consistency that society women paid hundreds of pounds trying to achieve. Long curling lashes shaded her wide amber-brown eyes. She spoke to my great-aunt in German, her voice an airy soprano, asking if she wanted her medicine.

  “Nein. Nicht jetzt,” Tante Ilse responded, patting the girl’s hand where it clutched hers. Then she dismissed her, asking her to fetch her a glass of water.

  “Did Mr. Parson show you the stairs that lead to the kitchen?” I piped up to ask the maid in German as she rounded the bed.

  She turned to me in surprise, perhaps not having expected me to know the language, or dare to speak it. She nodded.

  “Mrs. Parson will be making arrangements for a room for you, as well. Though I suspect she has her hands full preparing dinner at the moment.”

  She nodded again and then hastened out of the room, almost as if she could not wait to escape. I stared after her for a moment, puzzling over what I had said to unnerve her.

  “Never mind Bauer,” Tante Ilse told me, returning to English. “She has gotten a little shy since we arrived. I don’t think she anticipated all of the unkindness.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if her English had failed her or if she was deliberately understating the matter. Animosity was the word I would have chosen.

  “And you did?”

  She blinked open her eyes to gaze up at me. “Oh, yes. I knew how it would be.”

  “I’m sorry . . .”

  “Nein, Liebchen,” she interrupted, gripping my hand. “Es ist nicht deine Schuld.”

  It might not be my fault, but I still felt somehow that it was. She stared up at me, the firm will she had always possessed shimmering in her eyes, and waited until I nodded in agreement—though it was more acceptance on my part—before relaxing her gaze.

  She breathed deeply as she settled deeper into the bedding, her fingers trailing over the floral counterpane for which the chamber had been named. The pale yellow flowers speckled across the white background matched the primrose shade of the room’s walls. In the spring, they bloomed in the meadow to the west of the cottage, which could be seen through the window, but by mid-November there was little to see but grass and gorse.

  While her eyes were closed, I sank down in the chair next to the bed, taking the opportunity to scrutinize her more closely: The lines etched into her face, even in repose. The sunken appearance of her eyes and the paleness of her lips. “Your maid mentioned medicine?” I ventured in German, half afraid of her answer.

  “It is nothing,” Tante Ilse responded in English. “I am almost eighty years old. If you were my age, you would sometimes need medicine, too.”

  My mouth curled reflexively. I supposed that was true. But my great-aunt had always seemed so indomitable. “Would it be easier to speak in German?”

  “No, I need the practice.” She crossed her hands one over the other at her waist. “And I have learned that it is always better to speak the language of the country you are in, so that they do not believe that you are conspiring against them.”

  I flushed. Not at the truth, for I had operated with the same understanding during the war, whether in neutral Holland or German-occupied Belgium. Nothing made one stand out more or aroused more suspicion than speaking a foreign tongue. However, I had never thought to have the same implication made within my own country, especially when speaking with my own family member.

  She opened her jade-green eyes. “Your husband,” she began uncertainly, but then her thoughts seemed to change course. “You understated how good-looking he is,” she murmured almost in scolding, before adding anxiously, “He will not mind that I am here, will he?”

  “No, of course not.” I reached for her hand, hastening to reassure her, though there was no “of course” about it. For all I knew, he minded very much, but I wasn’t going to let my great-aunt suspect such a possibility. Not for a moment. “He knows how much I’ve missed you.”

  But the look in her eyes told me perhaps she already knew more than I was saying. “I would not have come, not like this.” Her gaze drifted to the side, and her voice turned pensive. “But sometimes you must seize the opportunity when it is presented, lest it slip away.”

  I wasn’t certain where her thoughts had gone, but it wasn’t to a happy place. “How bad was it?” I finally dared to ask, not knowing how to voice it any other way. In any case, she knew what I meant.

  “Very bad,” she stated succinctly. A moment later she inhaled a ragged breath as if to rally herself to give a more complete answer. “Between the crops failures and the blockade, and after our army commandeered almost all of our supplies, nobody had anything. It improved a little when the treaty”—she nearly spat the word—“was signed, and the blockade ended, but not enough. Nowhere near enough.”

  In such conditions, money mattered little. Not when there was nothing to be had.

  “And with cousin Gretchen gone . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence, but the implication was clear. There was no more family in Westphalia for her to rely on. Not when her two grandnephews had already lost their lives fighting for the German Army.

  She nodded.

  My heart ached at the realization there was no one left in my grandmother Lina’s family. No one but her own offspring living in England. Großtante Ilse had never had children, and Groß-onkel Carl’s daughter and her sons were now dead.

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this in your last letter?” I asked, having known she was being deliberately vague about her living conditions, but not to this extent.

  “Because you could not do anything.” Her expression turned stern. “And because I know you too well, Verity. You would have stormed into Germany after me, which would have led to catastrophe.”

  I frowned. “Why would it have led to catastrophe?”

  “Because my neighbors already distrusted my English connections.” She paused, and I could tell there was more. Her brow furrowed, perhaps irritated she’d spoken so rashly and unsure whether to continue. “And . . . because of the threats.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Threats?” I repeated, struggling to control how aghast I was. “You’ve received threats?”

  She lifted her head, tugging at the fur stole that was still draped around her shoulders. I helped her remove it and then crossed the room to lay it on the oak bureau while she resettled, smoothing the coat of her red-brown woolen travel ensemble. A strand of pearls rested against her neck, peeking out of the gap in the collar above her silk blouse. When finally she clasped her hands over her abdomen again, I knew she was ready to speak. And that she was more rattled than she wished me to know.

  “At first, I thought it was just a few boys, upset by the unguarded gossip from their elders, and the fact that the war ended before they were old enough to fight. The threats were childish enough. Words painted on a shed wall or scribbled on rocks thrown through a window.”

  These didn’t sound childish to me. A rock hurled throug
h a window? What if it had struck her or Bauer?

  “What words?” I asked.

  She shook her head, brushing them aside as if they were of no consequence. “But then the letters showed up on my doorstep. Letters threatening that they knew what I’d done. That if I didn’t leave Germany they would tell everyone.”

  There was no accusation in her gaze as it met mine, but I felt the blood draining from my face anyway.

  “What you’d done?” I choked on the words. “Do you mean . . . when you helped me?”

  “Maybe,” she hedged.

  My anger with myself and irritation at her reluctance to incriminate me made my words terse. “Could it be anything else?”

  She withheld her response, as if she already knew the self-recriminations spinning in my head, but I hardened my glare, compelling her to speak the truth. “No.”

  I turned away, fighting to restrain my emotions. “Then this is my fault,” I bit out, my jaw taut with repressed fury. “I never should have told Captain Landau about you. I never should have agreed to his plan.”

  “Verity, mein Liebchen, you could not have known.”

  “But I should have.”

  The words dropped into the room like two rocks tossed into a still pond, their truth rippling outward like waves on the water. But what was done, was done. They couldn’t be taken back, no matter how much I wished it.

  I pushed to my feet, no longer able to sit still, regardless of how rude it was to pace about the room while Tante Ilse reclined. “Someone must have seen us.”

  “I think it more likely that they saw the second man.”

  I whirled around to face her. “What second man?”

  Her brow pleated. “The second deserter.”

  I stared back at her in astonishment.

  “Your captain may not have told you.”

  “No, he didn’t tell me!” I pressed a hand to my forehead, my face flush with fury. “He sent a second deserter to you?”

  “Yes, a few months after the first man.”

  I couldn’t believe Captain Henry Landau had done such a thing. I couldn’t believe he’d placed my great-aunt in such danger. I’d been reluctant to impose on her the first time, to expose her to such a risk, but at least I had been there.

  “The man told you Captain Landau sent him?” I asked, struggling between dismay and disbelief.

  “Yes. Although . . .”

  I arched my eyebrows at her hesitation.

  “That morning when he showed up just before sunrise and told me who he was, I admit I was alarmed. The first time was such a risk, you know. I didn’t want to repeat the experience.”

  I could well understand that.

  “So I told him he could stay in the curing shed for the day, but that night he had to go.”

  “And did he?”

  “Yes, he was polite and respectful, and followed my orders. But still . . .”

  I nodded, letting her know she needn’t say more. “I am sorry, Tante Ilse,” I said, sinking down on the chair beside the bed again and reaching for her hand. “I should never have come to you. And I certainly never intended for anyone else to.”

  “It is all right.”

  “But it’s my fault you’ve been run out of your home.”

  “I wanted to leave anyway. There is nothing left for me there. Nothing but sad memories.” Her voice trailed away as her gaze shifted toward the ceiling, seeing something I couldn’t see. Something from her past she didn’t share with me.

  I drew breath to ask her further questions about the threats, but she lifted her hand to halt me. “I’m tired, Verity,” she murmured, reverting to German. “I would like to rest now.”

  I straightened, releasing her hand. “Of course,” I replied, for what else could I say? She did look exhausted. I’d contemplated this multiple times since her abrupt arrival. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more she simply didn’t wish to discuss. Though her eyes were closed and her features smooth, there was a watchfulness to her, as if she held herself immobile rather than simply relaxing.

  Deciding that restraint was the better part of valor, at least in this instance, I pushed to my feet. “I’ll have a dinner tray brought up to you. Let my staff know if you or Bauer need anything.”

  And I would say something to the Parsons to be certain they obliged, if not with a smile, then at least with goodwill.

  I joined Sidney and our other guests in the dining room, though I struggled to focus on the conversation. My thoughts kept returning to my great-aunt, and the threats and the second deserter she’d told me about. I wanted nothing more than to pick up the telephone and track down Captain Landau to demand answers. But such conversations were not conducted over the telephone. Not when someone could be listening. Especially when one had a name to put to that potential listener.

  After all, we already feared that Lord Ardmore had somehow tapped the telephone at our flat in London, or bribed one of the switchboard operators to listen in for him. What was to stop him from doing the same at our cottage?

  An hour later, I excused myself while Reg, Daphne, Max, and George played another hand of whist. When the door opened to our bedchamber a short time after that to admit Sidney, I was still standing before the vanity, my fingers fiddling with my teardrop moonstone necklace.

  He paused to look at me, his dark hair gleaming in the light of the gas lamps, before quietly shutting the door and crossing the room to stand behind me. “You’ve been distracted tonight.”

  His fingers brushed lightly over the skin at the base of my neck, undoing the clasp of my pendant. I’d already removed the silk scarf I’d draped around my neck earlier, revealing the faint bruising still barely visible from a man’s attempt to choke the life out of me five weeks prior. As the chain came undone, his lips swiftly followed, trailing soft kisses across the marks, and making my skin pebble and warmth pool in my abdomen. He released the ends of the necklace, allowing them to cascade over my shoulders into my open hand still clutching the moonstone.

  I pivoted in his arms and lifted my finger to trail it along his square jaw. The bristles of his facial hair were just beginning to show. “Yes, well, I had good reason to be.”

  His hands came to rest on my hips. “What did your great-aunt have to say?”

  “A number of things,” I mused, my thoughts returning to her haggard face. I sighed. “None of them happy.”

  “Judging by this little line between your brows”—he pressed his thumb to my skin there—“I would wager some of it was troubling.”

  I lifted my gaze from his full mouth to his deep midnight-blue eyes. “And you would be correct.” There was no use denying it, particularly when I wished to discuss it. My mind had been circling around and around it without any greater clarity. Perhaps Sidney would see something I couldn’t. Though it meant admitting to another assignment I had undertaken for the Secret Service that I’d hoped never to have to relive, let alone admit to my husband. Not already knowing what his reaction would be.

  I reached out to set my necklace on the vanity, gathering myself before diving in. “She told me she’d been receiving threats.”

  This didn’t seem to surprise him, but then again Sidney was very good at suppressing his reactions when he wished to. A by-product of his time spent on the battlefields and in the trenches, I suspected, when one false twitch could see you killed.

  “What type of threats?” he queried.

  “Childish ones.” I scowled, still not agreeing with her assessment of the earlier threats as harmless. “And then not-so-childish ones.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked wryly. “That’s not a very helpful description.”

  “I know.” I stepped out of his arms, pressing a hand to my forehead as I crossed the room to sink down on the edge of our bed. “But I need to tell you something—something that happened during the war—before it will make sense.”

  If my words had unsettled him, he still didn’t show it. Instead he reached out his
arm to lean against the oaken bedpost, gazing down at me expectantly. “Go on.”

  I dropped my gaze to the Savonnerie rug, gathering my thoughts and trying to decide precisely where to begin my tale. “You’ve met Captain Landau, and you know when I was sent to Rotterdam I often took my orders from him.” I looked up at his face to be certain he was following. Landau had been in charge of the military section there, tasked with organizing intelligence-gathering networks within the German-occupied areas and collecting what information from them that he could on German troop and supply movements, among other things. Periodically, I had been dispatched over the border into Belgium, past the heavily guarded, electrified fence, to liaison with these networks, as well as some of the Secret Service’s own agents, or to gather other targeted intelligence.

  He nodded.

  “Well, from time to time, he would be approached by or stumble across German deserters wandering the streets.” Holland being a neutral country, the German soldiers merely needed to escape across the frontier between it and Belgium. This hadn’t been an uncommon occurrence, especially as the war dragged on and Germany’s situation deteriorated. “Sometimes they had useful information to sell him. Sometimes German Intelligence tried to fool him by sending him fake deserters with false data.” I shrugged. “Landau said it was all part of the job, and reason enough to keep his sword and intellect sharp.”

  Sidney loosened his tie and pulled it from his collar. “I suppose it was no more distasteful than some of the things we field officers were forced to do.”

  I gazed up at him as he tossed the tie over a chair and removed his coat, wondering if he would elaborate on what he meant. Censoring his soldiers’ letters? Disciplining them for infractions he himself disagreed with? Following orders he knew would result in the deaths of hundreds of his men?

  When he didn’t speak, I forced myself to continue.

  “One deserter in particular made a strong impression on him. A fellow named Heinrich Becker. Landau felt that he wasn’t selling him information simply for a few gulden, but because he had a grievance against the German authorities. He confessed that he had a wife and three children in Berlin, and that they were barely surviving on turnips and watery potatoes. On his last leave, when he’d discovered how pale and gaunt his family was, he told Landau he’d vowed to desert to Holland and find work in order to send money back to his family. He asserted that he had a greater obligation to his family than the kaiser, and Landau thought his words were sincere.”