Sonnet of the Sphinx Page 9

  “There was a crowd of us. Bunny Hooper-Smith, Johnny Mallow, Eden, old Fenwick, Aeneas Sweet, Cherry Ford—”

  “Fenwick?” Grace fastened on this. “Fen?”

  Lady Vee smiled a snarky smile. “Fenwick Archibald. What acharactaah! ” Which was surely yet another instance of the pot calling the kettle black.

  “Do you mean Professor Archibald in charge of the conference? Or would this be his son?”

  “The same.” Lady Vee added dryly, “Don’t plant us all six feet under quite yet. As I recall, Aeneas Sweet was in relatively good health until you came along.”

  That remark was beyond outrageous, but Grace refused to be sidetracked. “I take it you’re no longer on good terms with Professor Archibald?”

  “Paugh!” In one word Lady Vee summed up both her professional and personal opinion of her old chum.

  “What happened?”

  The faintest smile touched the scarlet lips. “Wediffaahed over Byron’s decision to put the child Allegra in the convent at Bagna Cavallo. Fenwick believed that Byron acted selfishly, that he should have handed the child over to her mother, in effect to Shelley’s menagerie.”

  Clare Clairmont, Byron’s lover, had been Shelley’s sister-in-law. As Cordelia had noted at lunch, Clare (who changed her name from Jane to Clara to Clare to Claire) enjoyed a ménage-à-trois with her half sister Mary and Percy Shelley—when she wasn’t in pursuit of the ever-elusive Lord Byron.

  Grace deduced, “Professor Fen was a Shelleyan?”

  “Correct.”

  There could be no doubt, then. Professor Fenwick Archibald was the expert that John Mallow had relied on to authenticate the poem.

  “He was a tad older than the rest of us,” Lady Vee reflected. “He must be a thousand years old by now. The son of the Nether Wasdale vicar. Poor as church mice, but good stock.” She shrugged a bony shoulder.

  Grace barely paid attention to this, too excited over the knowledge that “tetchy old Fen” was indeed still alive and could possibly shed light on the Shiloh letter. She need no longer worry about what had become of John Mallow. Still, curiosity prompted her to ask, “No one ever discovered what happened to John Mallow?”

  “After he ran off with Arabella Monkton, you mean?”

  “Who?”

  “Bella Monkton.” The beldam’s eyes glistened. “Don’t tell me you imagined there was some mystery to Johnny’s lope?”

  “Isn’t there?”

  Lady Vee chortled. “Not a whit. At least, none except how Johnny could prefer Bella. She was a rather intense girl, though pretty enough. Not a candle to Eden, but some men do go for those gypsy types.”

  “But he deserted, didn’t he?”

  Lady Vee looked nonplussed. “I…I really don’t…he was in the Special Air Service, you know. Newly formed.”

  Which meant exactly what?

  That she believed John Mallow had rejoined his regiment after running away with Bella Monkton? That while the notion of infidelity could be entertained, the idea of desertion was too scandalous?

  “Did they marry, then?”

  “Who?”

  “Arabella Monkton and John Mallow.”

  “I suppose they might have done.”

  “You mean no one knows?”

  “I’m quite sureI don’t know.”

  “What became of Eden Monkton?”

  Lady Vee relaxed perceptibly. “She married Aubrey Mason. Nice chap. Pots of money. Not our crowd.”

  Damned with faint praise, Grace thought.

  Lady Vee seemed to look back in time. “Eden died in ’68, a couple of years after Mason.”

  “I see.” She hesitated then plunged. “Do you suppose the family—?”

  Lady Vee made an exasperated sound. “Do stop trying to be discreet, mydeah . You’re no good at it. You want to know about the baby, Jack. Eden kept him. There were two other children by Mason, Marcus and Sophia. The house and everything else went to Jack. Satisfied? Now, whatis your interest?”

  Good question. Grace was torn. There was a strong chance Lady Vee could shed light on the Shiloh letter, but Lady Vee had proven a persistent and unprincipled rival in Grace’s first adventure. Where academic glory was concerned, Lady Vee could not be trusted any more than a junkie could be trusted with a gold watch.

  And so Grace…lied.

  10

  Zipping down the highway in the Aston Martin, Grace tried to convince herself that she enjoyed the summer wind through her hair, but she actually found having that mop in her eyes sort of annoying. She shifted gears, and the car easily overtook a dawdling Ford Mondeo packed with children and dogs and parcels. Tourists—the Lake District roads were congested with them this time of year. Then Grace grinned. She was beginning to sound like a native.

  As she overtook another car, she caught a glimpse of herself in her rearview mirror. Her hair had entirely escaped the morning’s hairpins. It looked like Cousin It would be meeting Peter for drinks at the Cock’s Crow.

  A scarf, she thought vaguely. She needed to invest in a couple of chic silk scarves à la Audrey Hepburn. If only her other problems were as easily taken care of. But after all, the problem of what had become of John Mallowwas already resolved.

  Mallow had not mysteriously departed with the Shelley poem. He had simply run off with his fiancée’s sister and—probably wisely—dropped out of sight. Grace supposed she could verify whether he had ever returned to his regiment, but what had become of him was no longer an issue.

  The issue was the Shelley poem. And the most obvious explanation for why no one had heard anything about it was that tetchy old Fen had taken one look and dismissed it as a fake.

  Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask him. It would be interesting to hear his thoughts, and perhaps he knew the ending to the story. Grace was a girl who liked all the loose ends tied up. She could hardly wait to tell Peter what she had learned.

  Peter, it turned out, had news of his own.

  Not that he gave any hint when he rose to greet her as she came into the pub. As always, Grace’s heart lifted at the sight of that tall figure. There was a sort of silly pleasure in being the companion of the most attractive man in the room.

  He greeted her with a casual kiss and pulled out a chair. Whatever other qualities he might lack, he had lovely manners.

  “I thought we might eat here tonight.”

  “It’s fine with me.” They usually did have one meal a week at the pub. Grace had come to enjoy the casual evenings socializing with their neighbors and catching up on local gossip.

  Tonight the talk revolved around the murder of Hayri Kayaci. Local opinion was that the Turk had been dispatched by someone in town for the arts festival. It was clear that no one wished to consider the possibility that he had been killed by one of their own.

  Grace received sympathy for having discovered the body, and some gentle ribbing. She was coerced into giving her account of finding the body for the crowded room, which she did, uncomfortably aware of Peter’s ironic gaze.

  When they were at last able to move to a table of their own to eat their steak-and-mushroom pie, she filled him in on what she had learned from Lady Vee. Peter drank ale and ordered Grace drinks and listened. He was a very good listener.

  “I’ll be gone for a few days,” he mentioned casually, as they were on their way out the front door after their pleasantly uneventful evening.

  Grace stood stock-still. The decision seemed a sudden one; he had given no hint of it at dinner. Not that it would have been easy to get a word in edgewise; she did tend to dominate the airspace when the subject turned to literature or her beloved Romantic poets.

  “Oh?” She couldn’t help a flash of unease.

  Peter’s thin mouth twitched with humor. “Don’t fear. I’m not pulling a runner. It’s merely a buying trip.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She wondered how the police would view this sudden jaunt.

  He leaned forward and kissed her. “Be a good girl.” Then with a mocking smile,
he added, “Ah, but then you’re always a good girl, aren’t you?”

  Sunday’s church bells pealed sweet and silvery in the cool morning.

  Grace had taken to going to church during the last few months, though she wasn’t sure what her Unitarian parents would make of her Church of England connection.

  Generally Grace found inspiration and peace in the homely sermons of the vicar. That morning she was intrigued by his argument that the lost sheep was dearer to the Lord than the sheep that followed unquestioning, although her thoughts kept straying from the spiritual plane and back to the morning edition of the paper.

  Kayaci’s murder was still front-page news inThe Clarion, where the usual lead stories had to do with the condition of local roads and the struggle to preserve the endangered native red squirrel.

  According toThe Clarion, the police had interviewed local antique dealer Peter Fox and—gulp—visiting academic scholar Grace Hollister.

  The paper had gone on to detail Grace’s role in two previous homicide investigations and her part in restoring a valuable article of historical and literary interest to the British Museum.

  There was a smudgy and not very flattering photo of Grace taken at the previous year’s Christmas pantomime.

  She couldn’t decide if she was more rattled at being connected with yet another murder investigation, or the fact that the photo made her look about ten pounds heavier than she was.

  Why was all this attention being focused on her and not Peter?

  Not that she wanted Peter to be the focus of anyone’s suspicions, but she felt uncomfortable with her center-stage role.

  Remembering the teasing at the pub the previous evening, she wondered if others were taking note of how often she had been the first to arrive at the scene of a crime. In crime novels the person who found the body was always considered a prime suspect; Grace hoped that was not true of real life.

  She recognized Detective Inspector Drummond as she was filing out of the church. He nodded with distant courtesy, and belatedly, Grace nodded back.

  She had never noticed Drummond at the services before, and she thought she probably would have. He was awfully good-looking in a lantern-jawed way, and he did have a sort of stiff-necked presence. She wondered briefly if he was there in some official capacity. But no, he left the church, got into a silver sedan, and drove off. With relief, Grace watched him navigate the narrow crowded street and disappear. She was fair-minded enough to know her antipathy was mostly due to a guilty conscience—though not as guilty a conscience as Drummond was liable to imagine.

  Grace got in her own car and headed out of the village. She had started supplementing her income by writing articles for literary and small magazines back in the States. With Peter out of town, it seemed the perfect afternoon to make a long-postponed visit to Hill Top Farm, the home of beloved children’s author Beatrix Potter.

  As Grace drove, it occurred to her that this would have made the ideal outing for Cordelia. Briefly she considered phoning up Brougham Manor, but at the last minute she decided to hold off making any commitment to Big Sisterhood.

  Hill Top Farm was located in Near Sawrey in Ambleside. The trip from Innisdale to Ambleside was definitely not for the fainthearted. Although it was only about an hour’s drive, the winding road was hair-raisingly steep and had several hairpin bends. In many spots the road was only wide enough for one vehicle. Blind curves made passing impossible for all but the most reckless drivers.

  Grace was a confident driver, but she resolved to start for home before it was dark. She did not fancy trying to negotiate these curves half-blind.

  At last she reached Near Sawrey. Putting the top up on the Aston Martin, she left it in the car park next to the Tower Bank Arms and walked the hundred yards or so to the museum.

  The farmhouse looked like something out of a Beatrix Potter storybook, and in fact, Grace soon discovered the seventeenth-century stone house and classic cottage gardens had provided inspiration for Potter’s work.

  Potter bought Hill Top in 1905 with the royalties from her first books, written while she still lived with her parents in London. Many of her first and best-loved stories were written in the small house with the rambling rose framing the front door.

  It was a charming place. Grace wandered around the gardens, which were sweetly and nostalgically scented by honeysuckle and other blooms. Foxglove, sweet Cicely, lupine, peony, lavender, and philadelphus grew in luscious abandon. Like all true cottage gardens, this one was a combination of pretty and practical. In the kitchen garden, vegetables, fat strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, and rhubarb looked ready for the picking. The air hummed with bees and the murmur of literary acolytes. Grace made notes and waited her turn to go inside the tiny house.

  Once inside, she filed through the rooms that had been home to Potter and her husband William. The cottage was crowded with Potter’s wonderful antiques, and Grace paused to admire the oak spinning wheel stationed before the fireplace.

  She had the odd sensation that someone was watching her and she glanced up from the spinning wheel. The room was packed with sightseers, but no one seemed to be paying Grace any special attention.

  She moved on to a display of photos, watching the glass for the reflections of the people behind her. But there was nothing to see. No one showed any interest in her.

  Grace moved on, noting the collections of Chinese and English porcelain, oil paintings and tinsel pictures, the antique dolls and children’s tea sets. Hill Top had been left to the National Trust in 1943 with the proviso that it be kept exactly as Potter left it, complete with her furniture and china. It remained the most visited literary shrine in the Lake District.

  Afterward, she went next door to the gift shop and bought copies of Potter stories for her nieces. She had not seen the girls in nearly two years, and as she painstakingly picked out the little books, she was again swept by that yearning for home and family.

  Studying the delicate watercolor illustrations brought back fond memories of these gentle tales. Grace smiled faintly, glancing throughThe Tale of Jemima Puddleduck . She had nearly forgotten the story of headstrong but naive Jemima who had had a life-changing experience after making the acquaintance of a civil-tongued and foxy, but decidedly dangerous, stranger.

  Flipping through the familiar pages, she read,When she reached the top of the hill, she saw a wood in the distance. She thought that it looked a safe quiet spot.

  Think again, Jemima, Grace thought wryly.

  After making her purchases she went next door to the Tower Bank Arms for a late pub lunch. The Tower Bank Arms had appeared inThe Tale of Jemima Puddleduck as “a small country inn.”

  She ordered ale and pheasant pie. The pheasant was interesting and not, in Grace’s opinion, in the least like chicken. She jotted down notes on her visit and relaxed, sipping the last of her ale, listening absently to the local chatter.

  It was easy to lose track of the hour, and by the time she walked back to her car it was nearly six, and the long, lingering English twilight threw shadows across the grass.

  Again, Grace had that odd feeling that she was being watched. Unlocking the Aston Martin, she glanced around the car park, but again there was nothing to make her uneasy. Families were loading children into car seats; cars were pulling out onto the highway.

  She got in the Aston Martin and started the engine. It purred into life, and she shook her head at the vague notion that had formed there.

  The evening sky had deepened to indigo streaked with yellow. In the distance, the silhouetted mountains looked black and volcanic.

  Grace ignored the scenic beauty around her and concentrated solely on her driving. The road home staggered up and over Greencrag Pass, uncoiling in a treacherous descent around Lake Swirlbeck. It would not smooth out until the homestretch, at least forty-five minutes away.

  She cruised along, testing her brakes several times before she reached the really steep part of the road. There was no logical reas
on for her nervousness; she was a competent driver, the car was handling well, and it was not as though she had actually seen or heard anything strange.

  The only other cars on the road grew impatient with her caution and passed her, red taillights disappearing into the dusk.

  The road grew steeper, rising up, up, up, and falling sharply away. She was reminded of the Hokusai woodblock of the men in the fishing boat trying to crest the great wave.

  Concentrating on the tricks and turns of the road, it was some time before she noticed headlights growing larger and larger in her rearview mirror. Grace slowed, looking for a place to pull off, but the road was too narrow, with a lake on one side and mountain on the other.

  The other car was now right on her tail, headlights blinding in her mirror. Grace tapped the gas, making the Aston Martin leap ahead. The road wound sharply; she could see the lake sparkling behind the bushes and trees. She spared a glance in the rearview but it was too dark to discern the make or model or the car. She had the impression of a large dark sedan, but most cars seemed oversized in comparison to the Aston Martin.

  Headlights blazed behind her once more, and there was a sudden, appalling bang. The Aston Martin rocked, then righted.

  Grace’s breath let out on a half sob, her hands tightening on the wheel. She forced herself to stay focused on her driving. One mistake could land her in the water or the mountain, and at that speed, either could be fatal.

  She accelerated to stay ahead. Another bump could send her into a spinout that would send her fishtailing into oblivion.

  Thank God I didn’t bring Cordelia, she thought, sailing around another curve. A detached corner of her brain noted how beautifully the sports car cornered each turn. She would never have dreamed of putting it to this kind of test.

  Decelerate in, accelerate out.She could almost hear her father’s voice, recalling her earliest driving lessons.

  Would they never be past the lake and onto straight highway, where she might be able to put some distance between herself and the other driver? The road continued to snake through the hills as far as her headlights could reach.