Death At Epsom Downs

breakfast, and she had fully expected to find her gun when she opened that drawer.

When at last Lillie spoke, her voice was ironic. “Beryl, I must say you are right on one count. Lord Sheridan is certainly a ‘rare’ man-although not, I think, in the way you meant.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said sincerely. “He was unpardonably rude. But he was only trying-”

Lillie began to pace across the room. “I know what he was trying to do,” she said bitterly. “He was trying to wring the truth out of me-or at least, the truth he wanted to hear.” She turned and held out her hands with a look of pure appeal. “I swear to you, Beryl. I learned of Alfred Day’s death from you, this morning. And I had no idea that the gun was gone. Everything I said to Lord Charles was the truth.”

“I know,” Kate said simply. Whatever the reasons Charles had for coming here, she trusted that they must be important. Perhaps she could help him by finding out what he could not. Perhaps she could persuade Lillie to tell her-

“Well, thank God for that,” Lillie exclaimed, casting her eyes upward. “But you must convince your husband, Beryl. You must! Imagine the scandal if I am accused in court of murdering a bookmaker, on top of all my other sins!” She closed her eyes and clasped her hands to her breast. “Even if I were acquitted, the Prince could never again be able to give me any notice. And if it came out that-” She stopped. “I would be ruined,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Utterly and eternally ruined.”

“If I am to convince Charles of your innocence,” Kate said in a practical tone, “I must know all the truth. For instance, I must know who might have taken your gun-besides the servants, that is.”

“It was a servant,” Lillie snapped. “I’ve never trusted them, none of them. They steal and gossip and-” She threw up her hands. “Why, the person who is serving as my temporary lady’s maid here cannot even dress hair! One is such a victim of one’s servants.”

“You saw the gun yesterday, you said. Who besides the servants has been in this room since yesterday morning?”

“Well…” Lillie frowned. “You, of course. And Dick Doyle and Tod Sloan, whom you met here. But I can’t think why either of them would want to take my little pistol. It makes no sense.”

Kate thought about the enormously fat man and the slender young jockey. Both of them were involved with racing, and Alfred Day had been a bookmaker. Surely they had known the dead man, and might have had a more sinister connection with him. But there was something else.

“I was in the garden yesterday afternoon,” she said, “and saw a gentleman leaving the house. Was he in this room alone? Would he have had an opportunity to take the gun?”

The change in Lillie’s face was so subtle that if Kate hadn’t been watching closely, she would have missed the tension in the mouth, the almost imperceptible narrowing of the eyes. But when Lillie spoke, her voice was light and easy.

“Oh, that was just Spider,” she said, with a careless toss of her head. “And he wasn’t in this room at all-we met and talked in the library.”

For the moment, Kate did not challenge Lillie’s lie. She remarked, instead: “Spider-an odd nickname.”

“I give nicknames to all my male friends,” Lillie replied. She frowned. “It had to be one of the servants, I’m sure of it. It wouldn’t be the first thing they’ve stolen. Jewelry, silver, pieces of valuable lace. One never knows what will go missing next.” She returned to the sofa and sat down, an irritated look on her face. But there was something else, too. Was it apprehension? Fear? Had Lillie realized that her afternoon visitor had taken the gun?

“Well, then,” Kate said, “let’s try a different angle. You’ve known Mr. Day for some time, I think you said. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?”

“Who didn’t want to kill the man?” Lillie retorted, arranging her skirts around her. “He had enemies everywhere, not just in Newmarket.” She became scornful. “In London, he was nothing more than a common thief, dealing in stolen goods.”

“A fence, you mean?” Kate asked, wondering how Lillie had come by this information about Mr. Day, and whether Charles knew it as well. “Like Harold Knight in ‘The Duchess’s Dilemma’?”

Lillie sat suddenly very still, pinching a fold of silk between her fingers. “Yes,” she said slowly, “now that you mention it. He was a fence, like Harold Knight.” She lifted her chin, regarding Kate with a guarded expression. “In fact, I must confess that when I read your story, Beryl, I was sure that you had known someone like Alfred Day, perhaps even Day himself. After all, the names Knight and Day-” She shrugged expressively.

Kate gazed at her, and suddenly into her mind came the tale of Lillie’s missing jewels and the similarity she had already noted between that story and the “Duchess’s Dilemma.” Did Lillie Langtry fear that she might have some secret knowledge about those gems? Had the actress invited her to Regal Lodge, not to discuss the staging of her story, but rather to determine how much she knew about the theft of Lillie’s own jewels?

She gave an uncomfortable laugh. “I do assure you, Lillie, Harold Knight is not a real person. I’m afraid that my acquaintance is rather limited when it comes to criminals. I made him up.”

“But the two are so much alike,” Lillie persisted, an odd tension in her voice. She eyed Kate narrowly. “Even the manner of their deaths is similar. Don’t you see?”

The hair on the back of Kate’s neck prickled. She hadn’t thought of it until this moment, but what Lillie said was true. In the play, the man who had sold the duchess’s jewels had been shot to death when he and one of the other thieves had fallen out-a just reward for his many evil deeds.

She smiled a little. “Art and life frequently mirror each other. The events may be similar, but Harold Knight is an entirely fictitious character. I assure you, Lillie-there is no connection between him and Alfred Day. None at all.”

Lillie’s eyes held hers. “And the duchess? Did you make her up, too?”

“Not exactly,” Kate said, and saw the involuntary flare of Lillie’s nostrils, the pulling-in of her breath. She leaned forward. “The duchess is modeled after one of my neighbors, you see, and the theft in the story was based on a real event that occurred several years ago. The lady’s emeralds were taken and pawned by her son to buy some worthless stock, and were only thought to have been stolen. In real life, they were eventually redeemed and returned to their owner.” What she didn’t say was that the neighbor was Bradford Marsden’s mother, Lady Marsden, and that Charles had written a check for five thousand pounds to redeem the pawned emeralds and keep Lady Marsden from learning what her son had done.*

* The story of the missing Marsden emeralds is told in its entirety in Death at Gallows Green.

“I see,” Lillie said, relaxing almost imperceptibly. “So there was a real event behind your story, after all. Perhaps that’s what gave it the ring of truth.”

“Yes,” Kate said, with a rueful sigh. “In fact, I’ve often regretted having drawn the duchess so near to life. While it is tempting to take real people as the models for one’s characters, it may be dangerous to blur the line between fiction and reality. Someone who knows the facts might be misled by the fiction, or a reader of the fiction might be deceived by taking invention for the truth.” She took a deep breath. This discussion gave her the opportunity to make her intention clear-and an understandable excuse. “That is why I must tell you that I cannot allow you to stage the story,” Kate added. “If the owner of the emeralds were to see it or hear of it, she might feel betrayed.”

If she were disappointed, Lillie hid it rather well. In fact, she was clearly relieved.

“Now that you’ve put the matter in those terms,” she said brightly, “I understand completely. When one’s artistic work is important to one, one does not want it misinterpreted.”

“Thank you,” Kate said. “Now, might we go back to my question? Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill Mr. Day?”

Lillie pulled her brows together. “I really do not think-”

The drawing room door opened and the butler reluctantly stepped in. “Mrs. Langtry-”

Lillie turned, suddenly angry. “Oh, what now, Williams?” she cried. She seized a velvet cushion and fired it at him as hard as she could. “Can’t you leave us alone for an instant?”

Williams raised his arm to deflect the cushion that would otherwise have struck him squarely in the face. “Miss Jeanne Marie is here, ma’am,” he said, with infinite dignity.