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She swung the riding crop, startling the horse and narrowly missing its head. She seemed quite oblivious of the animal, and fortunately it was sufficiently well schooled. It remained close to her, measuring its pace obediently to hers as she moved very slowly along the path.
“Of course,” she agreed jauntily. “Who do you wish to know about?” She shrugged her beautifully clothed shoulders. “Myles is fun, but quite worthless—but then some of the most attractive men are, don’t you think?” She turned sideways to look at him. Her eyes must have been marvelous once, very large and dark. Now the rest of her face had so altered they were grotesque.
He smiled very slightly. “I think my interest in them is probably very different from yours, Mrs. Sandeman.”
She laughed uproariously for several moments, causing half a dozen people within earshot to turn curiously to find the cause of such mirth. When she had regained her composure she was still openly amused.
Monk was discomfited. He disliked being stared at as a matter of ribaldry.
“Don’t you find pious women very tedious, Mr. Monk?” She opened her eyes very wide. “Be honest with me.”
“Are there pious women in your family, Mrs. Sandeman?” His voice was cooler than he intended, but if she was aware she gave no sign.
“It’s full of them.” She sighed. “Absolutely prickling like fleas on a hedgehog. My mother was one, may heaven rest her soul. My sister-in-law is another, may heaven preserve me—I live in her house. You have no idea how hard it is to have any privacy! Pious women are so good at minding other people’s business—I suppose it is so much more interesting than their own.” She laughed again with a rich, gurgling sound.
He was becoming increasingly aware that she found him attractive, and it made him intensely uncomfortable.
“And Araminta is worse, poor creature,” she continued, walking with grace and swinging her stick. The horse plodded obediently at her heels, its rein trailing loosely over her arm. “I suppose she has to be, with Myles. I told you he was worthless, didn’t I? Of course Tavie was all right.” She looked straight ahead of her along the Row towards a fashionable group riding slowly in their direction. “She drank, you know?” She glanced at him, then away again. “All that tommyrot about ill health and headaches! She was drunk—or suffering the aftereffects. She took it from the kitchen.” She shrugged. “I daresay one of the servants gave it to her. They all liked her because she was generous. Took advantage, if you ask me. Treat servants above their station, and they forget who they are and take liberties.”
Then she swung around and stared at him, her eyes exaggeratedly wide. “Oh, my goodness! Oh, my dear, how perfectly awful. Do you suppose that was what happened to her?” Her very small, elegantly gloved hand flew to her mouth. “She was overfamiliar with one of the servants? He ran away with the wrong idea—or, heaven help us, the right one,” she said breathlessly. “And then she fought him off—and he killed her in the heat of his passion? Oh, how perfectly frightful. What a scandal!” She gulped. “Ha-ha-ha. Basil will nev
er get over it. Just imagine what his friends will say.”
Monk was unaccountably revolted, not by the thought, which was pedestrian enough, but by her excitement at it. He controlled his disgust with difficulty, unconsciously taking a step backwards.
“Do you think that is what happened, ma’am?”
She heard nothing in his tone to dampen her titillation.
“Oh, it is quite possible,” she went on, painting the picture for herself, turning away and beginning to walk again. “I know just the man to have done it. Percival—one of the footmen. Fine-looking man—but then all footmen are, don’t you think?” She glanced sideways, then away again. “No, perhaps you don’t. I daresay you’ve never had much occasion. Not many footmen in your line of work.” She laughed again and hunched her shoulders without looking at him. “Percival has that kind of face—far too intelligent to be a good servant. Ambitious. And such a marvelously cruel mouth. A man with a mouth like that could do anything.” She shuddered, wriggling her body as if shedding some encumbrance—or feeling something delicious against her skin. It occurred to Monk to wonder if perhaps she herself had encouraged the young footman into a relationship above and outside his station. But looking at her immaculate, artificial face the thought was peculiarly repellent. As close as he was to her now, in the hard daylight, it was clear that she must be nearer sixty than fifty, and Percival not more than thirty at the very outside.
“Have you any grounds for that idea, Mrs. Sandeman, other than what you observe in his face?” he asked her.
“Oh—you are angry.” She turned her limpid gaze up at him. “I have offended your sense of propriety. You are a trifle pious yourself, aren’t you, Inspector?”
Was he? He had no idea. He knew his instinctive reaction now: the gentle, vulnerable faces like Imogen Latterly’s that stirred his emotions; the passionate, intelligent ones like Hester’s which both pleased and irritated him; the calculating, predatorily female ones like Fenella Sandeman’s which he found alien and distasteful. But he had no memory of any actual relationship. Was he a prig, a cold man, selfish and incapable of commitment, even short-lived?
“No, Mrs. Sandeman, but I am offended by the idea of a footman who takes liberties with his mistress’s daughter and then knifes her to death,” he said ruthlessly. “Are you not?”
Still she was not angry. Her boredom cut him more deeply than any subtle insult or mere aloofness.
“Oh, how sordid. Yes of course I am. You do have a crass way with words, Inspector. One could not have you in the withdrawing room. Such a shame. You have a—” She regarded him with a frank appreciation which he found very unnerving. “An air of danger about you.” Her eyes were very bright and she stared at him invitingly.
He knew what the euphemism stood for, and found himself backing away.
“Most people find police intrusive, ma’am; I am used to it. Thank you for your time, you have been most helpful.” And he bowed very slightly and turned on his heel, leaving her standing beside her horse with her crop in one hand and the rein still over her arm. Before he had reached the edge of the grass she was speaking to a middle-aged gentleman who had just dismounted from a large gray and was flattering her shamelessly.
He found the idea of an amorous footman both unpleasant and unlikely, but it could not be dismissed. He had put off interviewing the servants himself for too long. He hailed a hansom along the Knightsbridge Road and directed it to take him to Queen Anne Street, where he paid the driver and went down the areaway steps to the back door.
Inside the kitchen was warm and busy and full of the odors of roasting meat, baking pastry and fresh apples. Coils of peel lay on the table, and Mrs. Boden, the cook, was up to her elbows in flour. Her face was red with exertion and heat, but she had an agreeable expression and was still a handsome woman, even though the veins were beginning to break on her skin and when she smiled her teeth were discolored and would not last much longer.
“If you’re wanting your Mr. Evan, he’s in the housekeeper’s sitting room,” she greeted Monk. “And if you’re looking for a cup o’ tea you’re too soon. Come back in half an hour. And don’t get under my feet. I’ve dinner to think of; even in mourning they’ve still got to eat—and so have all of us.”
“Us” were the servants, and he noted the distinction immediately.
“Yes ma’am. Thank you, I’d like to speak to your footmen, if you please, privately.”
“Would you now.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Sal. Put those potatoes down and go and get Harold—then when ’e’s done, tell Percival to come. Well don’t stand there, you great pudding. Go an’ do as you’re told!” She sighed and began to mix the pastry with water to the right consistency. “Girls these days! Eats enough for a working navvy, she does, and look at her. Moves like treacle in winter. Shoo. Get on with you, girl.”
