High Rhymes and Misdemeanors Page 21

“Petah, dahling!” exclaimed Lady Venetia, beckoning them forward with a long, ivory cigarette holder.

  “Lady Vee,” returned Peter, moving forward to kiss the proffered wrinkled cheek.

  Wow, thought Grace, gazing about herself in fascination. They could have stepped through a time portal into a Regency drawing room. The striped satin wallpaper, green brocade settee, black lacquer spinet: the room was perfect in every detail. Two decrepit Irish wolfhounds lay in front of the marble fireplace over which hung a huge oil painting of Lord Byron looking down his long, perfect nose at them.

  In fact, the room’s only anachronism was Lady Venetia herself. She was about eighty years old, tiny and birdlike. Her hair was jet black, and had been bobbed in the style of the roaring twenties. Her lips were ruby red. She wore a black beaded dress although it was just after noontime, and her red-taloned hands were encrusted with jeweled rings.

  “And this must be…?” Lady Vee gestured vaguely with the cigarette-holder wand. “I’m sorry dear, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “This is Grace Hollister,” Peter introduced.

  Grace was offered a doll-sized hand in the royal manner. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to kiss the paw or curtsy. She settled for a firm handshake. Lady Vee winced imperceptibly.

  “My deah, we’ve heard so little about you,” she murmured. She looked Grace up and down, from the sage canvas pants to the white oversize knit shirt, and having summed her up, arched her penciled brows in disbelief.

  Here we go, thought Grace. God help the woman Peter actually got involved with. She directed a dark look his way.

  “You’ve had some little bother with the police, I believe? Nothing serious, I hope?”

  Peter returned languidly, “The usual. Every time a bicycle goes missing they come to me.” He shrugged as though it were no great concern.

  “A bicycle?” Lady Venetia seemed to think this over. “Dear, dear. I suppose it’s your wicked past catching up with you.”

  He had turned the full battery of his smile on Lady Vee and the old crone simpered like a girl. “I do hope you’ve brought word of that mummy case you promised me.”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  Lady Vee pouted. When she had been sweet sixteen that sort of thing had probably been very effective. Nowadays it was scary.

  “Actually,” said Peter, folding his long length onto the forest-green brocade sofa, “we’ve come to draw upon your scholarly expertise.”

  “Have you? How flattering.” Lady Venetia’s birdlike gaze darted to Grace and then away again. “You will stay to lunch, won’t you?”

  “I’m afraid we’ve made plans,” Peter regretted.

  “Allegra will be so disappointed.”

  The verbal Ping-Pong continued. One of the wolfhounds groaned and rolled onto its side. Or perhaps keeled over dead. Whichever, Grace empathized. She tried to contain her impatience, studying the room they sat in. Lady Venetia’s entire body of work stood behind glass-fronted doors. The Barbara Cartland of the pseudo-intelligentsia?

  Every conceivable book on Byron weighted Lady Vee’s shelves. A bronze bust of the Wicked Lord stood on a pedestal by the window. Grace was convinced that they had come to the right place.

  “Such a pity you missed the Huxleys’,” Lady Vee was saying, slanting Grace a certain look. “Mimi Kenton-Kydd was simply ravishing.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Peter replied.

  Grace yawned.

  On it went. Lady Venetia flirted outrageously, Peter fenced. Lady Venetia rang a bell and sherry was served. Grace decided Peter had the patience of a saint—or a Machiavelli.

  “Now you must tell me what little thing I can do to help you, Peter, my dear,” Lady Vee said at last. “Are you thinking of writing a book perhaps?”

  “Actually we were curious about one of your books,” Peter said. “That Hour Foretold.”

  Lady Venetia continued to smile, but Grace caught the flicker of her beady eyes.

  “My masterpiece,” she murmured.

  “In the course of your research did you happen across any reference to—”

  “To…?” Lady Vee cut in quite sharply.

  “To some item of value associated with Augusta Leigh? Perhaps a gift from Byron?”

  “What kind of gift?”

  “Jewels?”

  “Jewels?” Was it Grace’s imagination or was there a hint of relief in Lady Venetia’s expression? “Not that I recall. Of course B. was a generous man.”

  “No family jewels?”

  “I’m sure you don’t mean that the way it sounds.” Lady Vee smiled coyly.

  Even Peter looked slightly uncomfortable.

  Lady Venetia refilled her sherry glass and mused aloud, “I suppose there were the Wentworth jewels, but they would have been the typical heirlooms of a noble house. You would be more a judge of that kind of thing than I.” She gave Peter a sly smile. “I can’t remember any particular reference to Byron’s mother’s jewels, nor the Milbanke woman’s. No, Peter, my deah, I really can’t think of any jewels associated with Byron. Why?”

  “What about a missing manuscript?” put in Grace, disregarding Peter’s look of displeasure.

  Lady Vee nearly choked on her sherry. “Manuscript? What manuscript?”

  “We were hoping—”

  “No manuscript,” Peter cut in. The look he shot Grace reminded her of the look she used with great effect on her unruly tenth graders.

  “But Miss Hollister has said—”

  “Miss Hollister has old manuscripts on the brain,” Peter said with less than his usual charm. “They are her forte, you see. She’s a highly respected professor of Romantic literature.”

  This exaggeration had an instant effect on Lady Vee, who froze, the thimbleful of sherry an inch from her lips. “Indeed?” she managed.

  “Yes,” said Peter. “Her help has been invaluable.”

  “Inval…?” Lady Venetia blinked. “You mean in regard to these…these jewels?”

  “Now that would be telling,” Peter returned with a coyness to match Lady Vee’s. He set his sherry glass aside and rose in a fluid movement. Grace had to admire both his poise and his sense of timing; the old woman was practically goggling her dismay. “A friend of mine believes such an item may soon come on the market.”

  “If such an item exists, and were to come on the market, I would be very much interested,” Lady Venetia said. “I would hope our many years of friendship would entitle me to the right of first refusal?”

  Peter, already strolling toward the doorway, tossed back casually, “You will certainly be one of the first to hear from me.”

  They were halfway down the grand marble staircase before Grace got out, “There! You see, I knew—”

  “This isn’t proof.”

  “You know darn well—if you don’t believe she’s involved, why did you set yourself up?”

  “I didn’t. I was already set up. Delon was murdered in my house, remember?”

  Grace found it difficult to argue, trotting to keep up with Peter’s long strides.

  They went out through a brick courtyard. A section of the original stables had been converted to a garage. A silver Rolls Royce was parked in the drive. The chauffeur knelt beside it, polishing the sparkling chrome work.

  Grace barely spared the man a glance, then did a double take and stopped in her tracks.

  Peter’s viselike grip started her moving again.

  “Did you see—” She tried to look back over her shoulder.

  “Later.”

  A wall of hedges shut the courtyard from sight. They climbed into Peter’s Land Rover. Peter started the engine.

  “Didn’t you see who that was?” Grace demanded, turning to stare at him.

  “I saw.” Peter reversed smoothly in a wide arc, one arm across the back of the seat.

  Grace was gazing in the rearview disbelievingly. “But Peter, it’s Mutt!”