An Improper Death (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  Chapter Fourteen

  Zack didn’t greet Alexandra with his usual enthusiasm when she returned to him and Lucy. He was, she supposed, pouting because she’d scolded him and hadn’t allowed him to follow her all the way to the house. She gave him an affection pat on the head, nevertheless and immediately felt something sticky on her hand.

  When she looked down at Zack’s magnificent back from the saddle, she saw that the black and white hair of his coat was matted and stuck together in spots, and bits of black grass and dry leaves clung to him.

  “Zack, what have you gotten into?” she asked, both puzzled and amused. At the sound of his name, he glanced up at her and wagged his tail. Obviously he was ready to forgive and forget since the sound of her voice was pleasing rather than scolding. Alexandra laughed. “You’re a naughty boy. You had to get into something messy to get even with me for not allowing you to come along didn’t you?”

  His answer was a throaty bark and another wag of his tail. He remained happy all the way home, in spite of the biting wind that had come up as the sun sank lower on the horizon.

  With her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face, Nancy demanded to know why Zack was so dirty as soon as they entered the house.

  “Something he found in the woods, I think.” Alexandra sounded distracted as she started up the stairs.

  “You’re a dirty boy, I’d say,” Nancy said to Zack, and then, when she saw the direction Alexandra was headed, spoke to her. “If ’tis John Killborn you’re looking for, you won’t find him. Mr. Forsythe took him to the constable, just as he said he would.”

  Alexandra stopped, realizing that she was immensely saddened to know that John was back in custody, in spite of the fact that she’d both encouraged and expected it. Perhaps, she thought, it was Jane’s reaction to the news that her son had been wounded that made her feel the way she did.

  “Of course,” she said absently and turned toward the parlor.

  “I’m going to give this animal a bath before I get back to the kitchen.” Nancy spoke as she pulled Zack along by the skin on the top of his neck. “You’re a messy thing, you are,” she said, speaking to Zack and wrinkling her nose.

  Zack responded with some of his vowel-like growling that sounded for all the world like a protest.

  “Don’t bother with the kitchen. I’ve not much of an appetite for supper. I’ll just fix myself a cup of tea,” Alexandra said. But Nancy couldn’t have heard her as Zack’s growling protests grew louder.

  Alexandra sat down in the parlor, determined to relax and forget about the death of Admiral Orkwright. She picked up the book she’d been reading aloud to Nancy each evening. The novel was a new one, Portrait of a Lady, by the American writer, Henry James. She was captivated by the American woman in the novel, Isabel Archer, and by seeing Europe and Europeans through her eyes. When she tried to read it now, however, Isabel seemed more tiresome than captivating, and she found herself unable to concentrate. She set the book aside, feeling restless. It was not as easy as she had hoped to put aside thoughts of the admiral and the mystery surrounding his death. Why was John so worried that people would blame his mother for the admiral’s death? Why would Annie, or anyone else, try to kill John? Would Constable Snow try to arrest Annie after he’d heard the story from Nicholas and John? He would surely bring Rob in for questioning. It would seem that if Nicholas had, indeed, told him of their suspicion of Annie, that would certainly have given the constable plenty of time to get to Gull House to question the housekeeper by now.

  It occurred to her then that she had never had the opportunity to speak with the constable as she planned. She’d been interrupted and intercepted by Nicholas, who had insisted on driving her home so that he could see John.

  Perhaps now would be a good time to speak with Snow. If she hurried, she might be able to reach his office before he left for the day. She took some matches from the mantle and her cloak from the hook in the hall and called out to Nancy that she was leaving for a walk.

  There was no response from Nancy, who probably had not heard her over the growls and tremendous splashing noises Zack was wont to make at his bath. That was her own good fortune, Alexandra thought. If Nancy had heard her, she would insist she not go out again, at least not without her.

  Alexandra wouldn’t take time to have the boys saddle Lucy again, since the hardworking little mare was probably enjoying her oats and settling in for the night. She would walk into the village and have her talk with the constable. If it was terribly late when she finished, she would ask him to escort her home.

  The wind was damp and biting as she made her way to the post near the stable where she kept a lantern, but at least there was no sleet this time. It was not quite dark enough to warrant a lantern, but the February light would slip away quickly enough.

  She had progressed only a short distance into the edge of the village when she saw the constable astride his gelding. He was several yards away, and apparently headed out of the village, yet far enough to her right that their paths would not cross.

  She called to him twice, until he heard his name and turned his head toward her. “Constable Snow, I should like a word with you,” she called. Snow stopped his horse and turned to face her, but he made no attempt to advance toward her. It was left to her to walk to him.

  “Are you all right, Dr. Gladstone?” he asked when she was closer.

  “Quite.” She set her lantern on the ground and rubbed her gloved hands together to try to warm them. “I wanted to inquire about young Killborn. Is he—?”

  “It was not a mortal wound, as you of course know. He will recover.” Snow’s interruption left her with the feeling that he wanted to be rid of her. “I’ve notified Newgate, and he will be transported there within a few days.”

  “Yes, of course.” Alexandra hesitated a moment. “I assume Nicholas instructed you as to the circumstances of his being wounded.”

  Snow’s answer was a curt nod of his head.

  “And he told you that my stable boy pursued the one who wounded John and may have, in fact, identified the same.” She could see the breath that carried her words evaporate into nothing.

  “Dr. Gladstone, please rest assured that I have the matter well in hand.”

  It was a dismissal, of course, but her curiosity would not allow her to be dismissed so easily. “The boys were quite certain it was Jane Orkwright’s housekeeper, Annie, they saw fleeing through the woods. I must say I was surprised.”

  There was no response from Snow, which left Alexandra feeling nonplused. She was about to pick up her lantern and resign herself to not learning anything of the progress of his investigation when he surprised her by speaking.

  “Thank you, Doctor, for your ministration to the prisoner’s wounds and for seeing that he was properly brought back to the gaol.”

  “No need to thank me, Constable. I was simply doing my duty.” Alexandra kept her voice as cool and formal as his.

  “The young man, I’m afraid, is in a state of mind to trust no one.” Snow’s remark sounded as if he were thawing, which surprised Alexandra.

  “Quite so.” She was cautious, not sure where he was leading her.

  Snow seemed nervous and pulled back on the reins unintentionally, making his gelding stomp his feet, reluctant to step back. “I don’t suppose he told you anything that would be…” He stopped speaking, appearing uncharacteristically unsure of himself.

  Alexandra waited a moment before she spoke. “You were perhaps going to ask if he said anything that would be revealing or pertinent to the death of his stepfather?”

  Snow cleared his throat quietly and hesitated briefly before he spoke. “Precisely.”

  Alexandra was silent again, knowing she appeared to be contemplating it, when in fact she was contemplating Snow. What had John said to him that bothered him so? Was he afraid John had told her something he didn’t want her to know? Snow had always been an immensely private man, even in the days when she was a child and he’d been he
r tutor and the village school master. But she had never thought of him as the type to have dark secrets as some had suggested. There were rumors that he regularly visited some unknown woman in London. Then there was Edith Podder’s speculation that he was in love with Jane Orkwright. Whether or not any of that was true, there was undoubtedly something bothering him now about what John might or might not have said.

  Finally she spoke. “He seemed to be inordinately afraid that his mother would be blamed for the admiral’s death. He said that you would eventually blame her as well. He seemed to think it was his duty to protect her.” She watched Snow’s face in the lantern light, but he showed no emotion. There was only a slight tightening of a muscle in his jaw. “What did he mean by that?” she asked.

  Snow’s glance moved to an undetermined point in the distance. “I have no way of knowing,” he said, as if he were speaking not to Alexandra, but to himself.

  “Surely you don’t still believe there is nothing suspicious about the admiral’s death.”

  Snow brought his cool gaze back to Alexandra, still looking down at her from his horse, as if he were a king looking down on a subject. “My profession demands that I work with concrete facts, and I have had none to make me suspicious.”

  “Not even the fact that Jane Orkwright believes her husband could have been murdered?” Alexandra was well aware that her question sounded bold and disrespectful.

  Snow’s eyes narrowed with what she took for anger, suggesting he had taken the question the same way. “Mrs. Orkwright has not told me about any such suspicions,” he said. “Perhaps you misunderstood.”

  “I did not misunderstand, sir. And, to belie your insistence upon concrete facts, you just admitted to me that you thought John might have revealed something to me pertinent to the admiral’s death.”

  “You are a very intelligent woman, Dr. Gladstone. And I very much admire your skill as a physician, but I suggest you leave the dubious practice of mind reading to the charlatans and the intricacies of law enforcement to me.” With that he laid the reins against the gelding’s neck to turn him away. Before the horse could be completely turned, however, Alexandra spoke again, challenging Snow.

  “Do you also choose to ignore what Mr. Forsythe told you? That John said he came here to settle a score?”

  Snow stopped the turn and looked down on her again. “Are you suggesting that John Killborn murdered his stepfather?”

  “No, I am suggesting that there is more to this than you seem willing to admit. Why would John say that? And why would Annie try to kill him? Doesn’t it strike you as odd that there is so much dangerous behavior among the family and household of Admiral Orkwright?”

  “You are overwrought, Dr. Gladstone. Perhaps it’s understandable when one sees so much death and illness and when one’s profession keeps one continuously subjected to households where gossip and speculation are rife. I suggest you ask Nancy to prepare one of your formulas for you. Something to soothe you. Perhaps the concoction you gave Miss Hargrove.” With that, he turned and rode away from her, headed in the direction of his own cottage.

  Alexandra watched him ride away, seething. After complimenting her on her intelligence, he had soundly insulted her by suggesting she was hysterical. It was well known that Lucinda Hargrove, a spinster, was given to hysteria. Alexandra had treated her with a mixture of lobelia, capsicum, and compound spirits of lavender, and the young woman’s much talked about hysterical fits had subsided. It was Alexandra’s belief as well as the belief of certain others, that her cure could well have been because of something other than the formula, however. Approximately the same time she had prescribed the medicine, Lucinda’s controlling and tyrannical father died. Lucinda had then taken to receiving a gentleman in her home from time to time, even, it was rumored, into the late hours of the night, and her erratic and histrionic behavior had become an effusive and giggling agreeableness.

  It was more than insulting that Constable Snow had suggested that Alexandra, who, at thirty, was also a spinster, might have a similar diagnosis.

  Alexandra’s anger continued to burn all during the short walk home. She was still angry when she opened the door and was greeted by a damp, but eager and exuberant Zack. His bath, in spite of his protestations, had apparently lifted his spirits, even if it hadn’t entirely cleansed his coat of the sticky matter. The bath had done nothing to improve Nancy’s mood, however. She stood behind Zack in her soaked apron and with her honey-colored hair pulled loose from its pins so that it hung in damp strands over her unsmiling face where a bit of suds still clung to her chin.

  “Never again!” she said to Alexandra by way of a greeting.

  “I beg your pardon,” Alexandra said.

  Nancy shook her head. “Never again will I attempt to bathe the beast. Not even if he falls into a coal bin. Not even if he falls into a dung heap. Not even if he—”

  “No further elaboration is necessary, Nancy. I take your point. You’ve made it clear before when you’ve had to bathe him.”

  “But I mean it this time. Why, you’ve no idea,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “It is easier to bathe an elephant! He argues with me, he does! About getting into the tub. And then there’s the tremendous splash when he finally makes up his mind to get in. But that’s not the end of it, oh no! He thinks ’tis great sport to splash more with those enormous paws of his. Big as meat platters, they are. And then there’s the shaking, near drowns a body when he sends that water out from all that hair. There’s a foot of water on my kitchen floor, and…”

  Nancy went on for several minutes more about the perils of bathing Zack. She kept on until she was shivering in her damp clothes and grew even angrier when Zack gave another shake to rid himself of the last droplets that clung to his coat, sending the water all over both she and Alexandra.

  Alexandra finally sent Nancy upstairs with instructions to change into dry clothes. When Nancy was gone, she went to the kitchen to brew tea and to make a sandwich of cold tongue, then went upstairs to knock on Nancy’s door. Nancy opened it wearing a fresh kitchen dress of dark muslin.

  “What’s this?” she asked, looking at the tray.

  “Your supper, Nancy.”

  “My supper? But where is your own?” Nancy accepted the tray in spite of her protest.

  “I’ve no appetite at the moment.” Alexandra moved into the room and, without waiting to be asked, seated herself in one of the chairs near the fireplace.

  Nancy sat in the other chair facing Alexandra. “Oh yes, I certainly know what you mean. All that’s been happening—the admiral drowned in ladies underwear, someone shooting at our patients! Why ’tis enough to take any decent person’s appetite.” She took a hearty bite from the sandwich.

  “And the constable seems paralyzed, unable or unwilling to act.” Alexandra studied the blaze in the fireplace as she spoke. Zack pushed the door open with his nose and came to lie at her feet, warming himself by the fire. For a moment Alexandra let herself be lulled into relaxed contentment until Nancy spoke again.

  “There’s some who say old Snow has his reasons.” She put her sandwich aside for a moment and leaned toward Alexandra. “Do you think ’tis true? That he’s in love with Mrs. Orkwright?”

  “I have no way of knowing that.” Alexandra’s voice was a little too harsh. “It’s only gossip, and it does not become either of us to indulge in it.”

  Nancy studied Alexandra’s face for a moment. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, I say. And don’t you find it odd that he hasn’t called Rob in for questioning? ’Tis as if he wants the whole thing to go away.”

  “Eat your sandwich, Nancy,” Alexandra said with growing impatience. “And tell me, when did you ever bathe an elephant?”

  “Hmphff,” Nancy said with a disdainful glance at Zack before she took a bite of her sandwich. Then, still chewing, she touched her napkin to her lips and said, “Annie’s the mystery, I say. You figure that one out and you’ll understand the whole lot of it.”

 
“Perhaps you’re right.” Alexandra spoke without much conviction and without moving her eyes from the hypnotizing blaze in the fireplace. Then she glanced at Nancy and, with her weariness evident in her voice, said, “When I saw Annie earlier at Gull House she showed no sign of having been out roaming and shooting at anyone. She was extraordinarily calm and collected.”

  Nancy shook her head. “She’s an odd one, that one.”

  “And we still haven’t come up with a truly good theory for why she would want to kill John,” Alexandra said.

  Nancy was uncharacteristically silent for a long moment. Finally she spoke. “Now that I think of it, I wonder if he tried to give me a reason. Still…it doesn’t make sense.”

  “What do you mean?” Alexandra sounded even more tired.

  “After you left for your rounds, and as Mr. Forsythe was trying to get John out of bed and into the carriage, the young man said something. Something odd, now that I think of it.”

  “Odd?” Nancy had gotten Alexandra’s full attention.

  “Yes, Mr. Forsythe had asked him, of course, if he knew of any reason why Annie would want to kill him. ‘So ’twas Annie did it and not the coppers,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ he says. ‘The old she devil’—his words, mind you, not mine. ‘The old she devil has always wanted both of us out of the way.’ Now of course Mr. Forsythe asked him what he meant by that, but he wouldn’t say. Then, just as the carriage was leaving, young John stuck his head out the window and said to me, ‘It must have been Will.’ Said it in a whisper, he did, as if he wanted no one else to hear it. But what did he mean?”

  “Why haven’t you told me this?” Alexandra demanded.

  “I didn’t think it was important. He seemed to be a bit out of his head. You’ve seen patients like that, of course. Especially when they’re taking laudanum. But now that I think about it, I wonder….”

  Alexandra stood, suddenly agitated. “We must talk to him again. As early as possible tomorrow, before he’s sent off to London.”