“How very gracious of you and I am thankful for your understanding. Yet ...” Mrs Dymchurch inhaled and held her breath for a moment, steadying herself. “My dear Lady Calaway, everyone knows that your husband is a gentleman-detective, a private enquiry agent of sorts.”
“Indeed he is. Have you need of his services?” And mine, she could not help adding in her head.
“No, thank you. I wanted to ask whether he was currently engaged in any investigations? I do find it all so terribly interesting.”
“We are here to spend the festive season with family,” Adelia told her, carefully not answering the question with a lie. “But I am sure that Lord Calaway will be delighted to talk with you about the business of detecting at dinner tomorrow night.”
“Ah, well, I was not sure that I ought to raise those kinds of topics at a dinner. And, there is a more delicate matter. I am specifically interested – just because I have heard yet more unpleasant rumours – as to whether he had been asked to investigate me?”
“Oh, dear lady, do try not to listen to rumours.”
Frustration flitted across Mrs Dymchurch’s face. She knew that Adelia was avoiding the question.
“Lady Calaway, can you please tell me if I am the object of suspicion? I simply cannot bear it. As you yourself observed, things have been so very difficult for me lately.”
Adelia hid her smile. Mrs Dymchurch was not an accomplished manipulator. She could learn a thing or two from Charlotte. She was laying the emotion on far too thickly; if she’d only asked one question and left it at that: am I the object of suspicion? then Adelia would have been obliged to answer it.
Instead Adelia was able to respond to the other remarks that Mrs Dymchurch had made after her main question. She said, “I am so sorry that you have been finding things difficult...”
There was a tap at the door. It inched open and Adelia stopped talking. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Mrs Dymchurch was growing red in the face and it was a mix of anger and frustration.
But the look on the face of the maid was far, far worse.
“My lady. Lady Calaway. You need to come and attend to your husband immediately.”
Adelia was on her feet before the maid had even finished her sentence. With the barest of nods to Mrs Dymchurch – “Please do excuse me, I am sure you understand” – she was running out of the room and after the maid.
All was chaos in the entrance hall. It was quite a large space, designed to make an impression upon callers at the expense of having somewhat smaller rooms around it on the ground floor. Even so, it was now crowded. Theodore and Robert were hanging on to one another, and they were flanked by two police constables, a woman holding a baby, two youths in decent suits and low-crowned hats, and a man dressed much like an itinerant preacher complete with a painted sign around his neck about the forthcoming end of the world.
Adelia ignored the strange pantomime cast and ran up to Theodore. His right eye was swollen and nearly closed, and there was a livid red mark on the side of his face that was already becoming a purpling bruise. His coat was torn, and he had lost his hat. At his side, Robert was struggling to stand upright, wheezing and clutching at his chest.
Charlotte flew into the hallway, crying aloud.
One of the police constables stepped forward. “There was an altercation, my lady, but rest assured we shall be looking into the matter.”
The preacher howled something about the Book of Revelations and was shushed by the woman with the baby, who was shifting her weight from foot to foot and looking around. The moment that she caught Adelia’s eye, she descended upon her. “My lady, what a terrible thing to have happened, and I just wanted to let you know that I didn’t hesitate in calling for the police to assist and I have come here just to assure myself that these honourable gentlemen are safe at home once more, though it is a mile or more of walking in the rain to get home, yet I ask for nothing more than a coin to buy bread for my babe...”
Adelia had already sussed out the woman’s intentions. She wanted to see to Theodore but she wanted to clear the house of this rabble of random onlookers even more, so she bawled for Smith. Smith was approaching even as she opened her mouth, already halfway towards them with a purse of money fetched from upstairs. The woman was paid off, and the preacher too though Adelia was unsure what he felt he had contributed to proceedings. The two young men said he was merely in the habit of “following any excitement in case of the Rapture” which was illogical explanation enough. Their role had been to pursue the miscreants involved in the attack but they had soon lost them in a shabby rookery of narrow alleys and foetid slums. She paid them too, though they protested against it before leaving swiftly.
She would have happily paid the policemen to go away as well, but they were keen to leave as soon as they saw the men were in safe hands and needed no financial encouragement to disappear.
“Oh!” said Adelia, momentarily distracted. “Smith, Mrs Dymchurch is in the
