Death At Epsom Downs

Kate nodded, understanding the distinction in rank and importance-and in loyalty. “Thank you for letting me know what you’ve heard,” she said.

“Well, I don’t s’pose it’s the kind of thing you can write in your piece fer The Strand,” Amelia replied doubtfully. “And some of it might not be true. You know ’ow servants love to talk.” She gathered up her mistress’s clothes. “But where there’s smoke there’s usually fire, I allus say.” And with that sage remark, she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Kate soaped a sponge with the lavender soap that lay in a crystal dish beside the tub, thinking about Amelia’s report. She was not troubled by the morality of Lillie’s relationship with the Prince or even that she had borne a child by him. If one spent one’s time and energy passing moral judgments on members of the Marlborough Set, there would be little left for more creative or productive pursuits! It was widely known that the Prince could never bring himself to finally put out the flame of a royal romance, and if there were a daughter (even one passed off as Lillie’s niece), the actress might have her own reasons for keeping the embers burning. And Kate couldn’t judge Lillie harshly for attempting to run her household on nothing, when most of the gentry were doing exactly the same thing.

No, what concerned Kate was Margaret’s more troubling allegation-that her employer had been involved in the murder of her husband. Kate would have dismissed this charge as the wild talk of a malicious servant if she hadn’t overheard a reference to the same deed in the bitter exchange between Lillie and her male visitor that afternoon. Was it possible that the charge was true? Was the world-famous actress the kind of woman who could consent to the murder of a troublesome husband who refused to give his wife a British divorce?

But the moment Kate framed the question, she instinctively felt she knew the answer. While she could not say whether the charge was true or false, she knew it was possible that Lillie had done this thing, and it was this possibility that was beginning to intrigue her. The more she understood about the woman, the more she realized that her acting career might not be limited to her appearances on the stage. Every moment of her life might be a performance, every gesture carefully theatrical, every encounter a dramatic scene-all of it counterfeit, none of it real. In one of her real-life dramas, Lillie might well have played the role of an accomplice to murder, with as little thought to the real-life consequences as she would have given to roles she played on stage. Perhaps she had imagined a reality in which this action was absolutely essential to her life and well-being, and therefore justified. Perhaps she had performed for so long, for so many different admiring audiences, that she had lost all sense of what was true and real.

But while this was an intriguing idea, especially for Beryl Bardwell’s novelistic interests, Kate told herself that surely she must be wrong. Surely no one could be onstage every moment. There had to be a real person behind the scenes, some core that was fundamentally and essentially Lillie-not the actress, not the courtesan, but the woman. What was it? Where was it? In what corner of Lillie’s life was there one true thing? If Kate could find that reality, that truth, it would be worth writing about!

Kate’s thoughts were interrupted by a polite knock at the outer door of the suite. Amelia went to answer it and returned in a moment with an envelope on a silver tray. “A message for you, m’lady. The footman brought it up.”

Kate dropped the soapy sponge into the water and reached for a towel. “For me? Open it, Amelia.”

Amelia opened the envelope, took out a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to her mistress. The note was from Charles. There were only three short sentences, but they made Kate forget all that she had been pondering:

I’ve located Patrick, my dear, well and happy, or as happy as boys may be who must work for their living. I’ll send a cab for you at ten this evening. If you can get away, you shall see him for yourself.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Behind the Great Horse

“And what do you think of it all, Watson?” asked Sherlock Holmes, leaning back in his chair.

“It seems to me a most dark and sinister business.”

“Dark enough and sinister enough.”

The Adventure of the Speckled Band Arthur Conan Doyle

Patrick had been so shocked at the sight of Lord Charles Sheridan standing in the door of the tack room that he had turned nearly white. But his quite understandable fear of being tongue-lashed or lashed in earnest for running away from school-or even worse, that he might be sent back-had begun to disappear with Lord Charles’s first mild words. This gentleman who treated him with such grave courtesy was still his friend, however disappointed he might be at his abysmal failures of discipline and stick-to-it.

But as Patrick lay on his narrow straw pallet in the airless loft and waited for the other lads to fall asleep, it occurred to him that perhaps it was not Lord Charles’s expectations he had failed so miserably to satisfy, but merely his own unrealistic hopes-in which case it didn’t matter, for Patrick had already come to terms with his inadequacies. This comforting thought, together with the anticipation of pouring out his fears and his anger-and yes, even his guilt-into his lordship’s compassionate ears, lifted his spirits. While he wasn’t exactly jubilant, he was on the way to feeling that he was not, after all, entirely alone in the world.

Down in the stable, Patrick heard the soft, snorting whuffle of a horse, and he thought again, uneasily, of Gladiator. Jesse Clark and Lord Hunt had been out on Southfields that day, along with the usual motley crew of bookmakers’ touts, to watch the colt. Of course, there had been no repetition of that frightening business with the bottle, but Patrick was unhappily aware that it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened again-probably at the end of the week at Newmarket, where Gladiator was entered in a ten-furlong handicap. But what could he do to prevent it? How could he protect his magnificent horse from such a barbarous and dangerous offense?

Anxiously, he slipped his hand under the pallet and felt the rough lip of the floorboard he had pried up and the sharp splinter of wood he had wedged into it, as notice to himself of any attempt at the discovery of his hiding place. The splinter was still there. His cache was secure, although the question of what to do with it still remained. But Lord Charles had said that he wanted to know about what had happened to Gladiator. Perhaps it could be given to him. The thought brought a little comfort.

When the last lad had started to snore, Patrick climbed noiselessly down the ladder and through the unlatched door at the back of the feed room and then along the footpath that led down Long Hill to Bury Road to Newmarket High Street. The path was familiar and the quarter moon, a ghostly frigate silently adrift on a rippling current of cloud, gave almost enough light for him to see the whole space of open hills and down to the town, where the gas streetlamps were shrouded in an opaque wrapping of low-lying mist.

Patrick was an imaginative boy, and it seemed to him that there was something sinister about the rivulets of mist and fog that twisted and curled like live snakes across Railway Field and along the foot of Long Hill. He drew back, shuddering, when an owl swooped low over his head and he heard the beat of the heavy wings lifting into the dark. Perhaps it wasn’t an owl after all, but the sinister ghost of Hawkes, the highwayman who had often ridden the Bury Road, relieving drunken stragglers of the money they’d won at the race meeting. Perhaps-and he cringed at the thought-it was Johnny’s ghost, angry at him for failing to warn him about that stuff in the bottle, and what it had done to Gladiator. Or perhaps it was his own guilt, sinister and dark, riding over him like a ghostly winged shadow.

The boy was glad when he reached the first gaslight on the High Street, where the evening revelers were weaving their celebratory way from pub to pub. He knew better than to go along the street, however, for both Pinkie Duncan and the head lad-an older fellow named Grins-frequented the taverns and gambling dens of