An Unmourned Man (Lady C. Investigates Book 1) Read online

  An Unmourned Man

  Lady C. Investigates - Book One

  By Issy Brooke

  Text copyright 2016 Issy Brooke

  All Rights Reserved

  1845. England.

  Somewhere in a flat Cambridgeshire field.

  Chapter One

  Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook – the dowager wife of a deceased knight – turned away to hide the inappropriate smile on her face. She supposed that she ought to offer a reassuring comment to the young lady’s maid. Ruby was in a rather fragile state. She was holding back her retches as politely as she could, her curvaceous frame shaking, but it was a plain fact that no one could carry a hangover with any kind of grace.

  “What age are you? Twenty, twenty-one?” Cordelia said, musingly, as she gazed over the unfamiliar parched fields. “You must have an exceedingly feeble liver, girl. You must try Mr Peeble’s Salts; I used them all the time at your age. They have a remarkably curative effect. If you can tolerate the stinging sensation, that is.”

  Cordelia’s advice didn’t spark an outpouring of gratitude from the maid. Cordelia turned to see the well-dressed girl bending double, her hands on her knees. Ruby thrust her head into a patch of cow parsley by the side of the unpaved road, and began to make indecorous noises as an outpouring of another sort occurred.

  Cordelia moved a few paces back, and looked into the clear and cloudless sky, carefully allowing Ruby the dignity of throwing up alone. It seemed the thing to do, though such exact circumstances had never been explicitly covered at her European finishing school. When in doubt, use discretion, Cordelia reminded herself. I learned that quite well during my short marriage.

  There was a stifled sob.

  Poor girl. Though her illness is of her own making. I should give her a moment to recover. Cordelia discretely looked around to study the strange, dull landscape. It was mostly flat and utterly tedious. They were on a dusty road that was quite wide enough for two carriages though it didn’t lead anywhere important, other than Hugo Hawke’s fine country estate, Wallerton Manor. Here, the road terminated abruptly, as if marking that to arrive at the caddish gentleman’s abode was the pinnacle of an achievement – which it was, as a break to the unremitting monotony of the ironed-out fields. There had been so little rain this August in Cambridgeshire that the fields of crops to either side of the road were yellow and wilting. In an effort to escape the heat of the day – and to escape the stultifying claustrophobia of being someone else’s houseguest – Cordelia had taken to walking in the area only a few hours after dawn. This morning, she had determined to visit the small town that lay two miles away. For a woman as hale and hearty as Cordelia, though she was in her mid-thirties and way past the prime of her womanhood, it was still no more effort than a mere stroll around a boating lake in a London park.

  For Ruby, who was fifteen years her junior and operating on a severe sleep deficit, the expedition was torture, and walking past the window of a cottage where the goodwife was frying bacon had been the final straw for her tender stomach.

  Hence the unloading thereof.

  “Are you quite done, girl?” Cordelia asked as Ruby straightened up and wiped her mouth with a lace-edged handkerchief she plucked from her sleeve.

  “Yes, my lady. For now,” she added darkly, her fine auburn brows briefly lowering. She stared at the now-soiled handkerchief with distaste, and tried to fold it up small, but decided against tucking it back into her sleeve. She held it carefully between thumb and forefinger. “Are you quite set upon the town this morning? My lady?”

  “Absolutely. Do not think me unkind, Ruby. At your age I, too, was socialising and drinking all the night long and I could still attend a pre-hunt breakfast the next morning. Sometimes I had not slept at all yet I could be as fresh as a flower.” Cordelia paused. She was a robust sort of woman, unfashionably sturdy, who had never been likened to any sort of plant. An oak tree, perhaps. “I always found the fresh air did me more good than anything else. It would soon shift the weariness of a long night’s dancing.”

  “I wasn’t exactly dancing,” Ruby muttered. She patted her hair, dropped the stained handkerchief into the long grass, retrieved her dark blue bonnet from where it had fallen, and pulled her short white gloves back on. She straightened up and looked down the road to where the first scattered houses of the town could be seen. “I’m ready, my lady.” She spoke with more resignation than deference, a sigh at the edge of her words.

  Cordelia strode on vigorously and Ruby lagged a half-pace behind, close enough to be annoying to Cordelia that she wasn’t walking alongside but nor was she trailing at a suitably respectful distance.

  Neither here nor there; that summed Ruby up completely.

  Ruby had only been in Cordelia’s service for four months, and this was the first significant trip away they had embarked upon. While they had been at home, Ruby had faded into the background, becoming one of the many staff that kept the pointlessly large house running. She had been a well-bred upper housemaid who made a good impression on her house steward, Neville Fry.

  Oh, the house. Cordelia’s home for the past six years had been a draughty mansion near London, called Clarfields. And for five of those years, she had ruled it alone as a widow. Now, that blissful interlude was going to have to end. She had ignored the impending change stubbornly but it was no use; something had to be done.

  Because she had not inherited the house. Of course, she received jewellery and clothing and money and stocks and bonds, like most women did, and she had learned to make the most of her investments. But her husband had struck at her even in death by making his estates over in trust to Hugo Hawke, and simply allowing her a few years’ grace before she re-entered the marriage market.

  Hugo had invited her to his manor to “discuss the delicate matter” and she had accepted. It was time to accept some of the many invitations that had built up since she had been officially out of mourning, and she may as well start with the man who held her whole future in his large, firm hands.

  She liked Hugo. But she was not sure she trusted him. But then, after Maxwell, why would she?

  She returned to the present. The visit had seemed like an ideal opportunity to get to know her new maid better, and her usual lady’s maid was due some time off. Ruby had therefore been promoted. Possibly – it was transpiring – beyond her capabilities.

  Cordelia had quickly learned that Ruby’s chequered employment history was probably not due to the currently changing status of domestic staff. With increased opportunities for folk in factories and mills, household staff could pick and choose the best positions, and it was getting harder to convince good servants to stay in service. In Ruby’s case, however, Cordelia realised that she was probably working her way through her previous Master or Mistress’s wine cellars – and male staff – with equal enthusiasm and alacrity.

  But Cordelia decided that Ruby was trainable. She was quick and smart and just hard-working enough to not be called lazy. On they went, the silence broken only by distant birdsong and Ruby’s frequent heavy sighs. Cordelia had to admit to herself that her claim she was being “kind” to the maid by making her walk was not entirely true.

  The young woman needs to learn either temperance, or cunning self-management, she thought. I had learned to disguise a hangover by the age of nineteen. All one needs is Mr Peeble’s Salts, much strong coffee, a well-constructed and supportive set of undergarments, decent face powder in a variety of shades, and in the worst of cases when one must absolutely appear untouched, a few coca leaves. The effect of a moment’s chewing is a thing of wonder. Truly, nature provides marvels. I hear it is recommended when one climbs mounta
ins. Shall I ever climb a mountain?

  She shoved her daydreams aside. She didn’t have the right shoes for that climate. “Come along, now, girl. Don’t dawdle,” Cordelia said as they drew nearer to the outskirts of the red-brick country town. It was a change to look upon houses that did not have a thick smog hanging over them.

  “My lady,” Ruby muttered in a tone that left much doubt as to the meaning. Yes my lady or no my lady was equally likely.

  The road had begun to sprout junctions and side roads, and Cordelia slowed her relentless pace to look down each one, curious about their destinations. She always wanted to go down the road she ought not.

  Now Ruby had drawn ahead, keen to reach the town and then get home again, where she would no doubt crawl into a ball and feel sorry for herself. Cordelia wondered whether she should declare that they were to head into Cambridge for a day of shopping.

  Now that would be unkind.

  They began to see more people on the road and in the fields and cottages now, setting up to be about their day of work. There was a gang of navvies up ahead of them, but they turned off along a part-paved toll-road. A farmer in a cart of hay trundled past from behind. Two women and a herd of geese, the birds’ feet coated in tar to protect them, stood by the side of the road, talking as the birds milled around, never straying too far, as if held together by an invisible rope strung around them.

  Ruby was still a pace ahead of Cordelia now, but she stopped abruptly as a rider on a horse approached them from the town.

  “Now there’s a pleasing sight,” Ruby remarked, and sucked in her belly.

  Cordelia clicked her tongue in annoyance but she, too, looked at the dashing figure with appreciation. “Ah,” she said. “It is the doctor.”

  He seemed shabbily dressed, his coat open to show his shirt, and he wore no waistcoat. He was a virile figure, the sort that students would paint in their history paintings at the Academy. He ought to have been wrestling a python not riding a placid chestnut mare.

  “Good morning–” Cordelia began but he didn’t slow his pace. He half-stood in the stirrups and tipped at his hat, but did not smile nor speak as he trotted briskly past, his eyes already sliding past her to fix upon the horizon beyond. He didn’t look at her enough to have recognised her.

  “How rude,” Ruby said, staring after him, her hands on her hips. “It was as if you were not there.”

  Cordelia shrugged. “That is most men’s reaction to me at my time of life,” she said.

  “My lady! No, I shall not hear you say that. You have many suitors. You receive so many letters, and callers, too...”

  “Only because they believe that I am wealthy. Until that point, of course, I am easily ignored.” Although that wasn’t exactly true, she had to concede. Her height and her broad shoulders made her stand out even among a group of men. She was noticed … but rarely considered interesting. Only the temptation of money gave her an attractiveness to a certain type of man. And she had far less than the world liked to suppose.

  She wasn’t going to brood on it. That solved nothing. Ruby began to say something placatory and untrue, but Cordelia stopped her, saying, “It’s perfectly fine, girl. Such invisibility, of a sort, can be a source of amusement.” She watched the disappearing figure. “Now, that is interesting. Where do you suppose he is going?”

  “To attend a patient,” Ruby said. “And that would probably account for his lack of respect to you.”

  “He was riding with no real haste. He was distracted, not urgent. He has turned left; do you recall that narrow track? I am convinced that it leads nowhere but the river. Did he seem like a fisherman to you?”

  “You’re right; he seemed like a man preoccupied,” Ruby said.

  “Indeed. Strange are the ways of men, and country men in particular. Well, let us go on.”

  The road had no turnpike on this side of town, and they were soon moving along a busier street, where houses crowded together as if there weren’t hundreds of acres of open land all about them. In London they were tearing down the worst of the rookeries but here they seemed intent upon all living upon one another’s heads.

  “You would have no secrets from your neighbours in these parts,” Cordelia said to Ruby.

  “Indeed not, my lady. But the people here are too poor to have secrets; they barely have bread.”

  Cordelia looked sideways at the maid, wondering about her background; she had arrived in Cordelia’s service with good recommendations but now she was convinced that Ruby’s various previous employers had simply been keen to get rid of her. She was about to ask the manner of place Ruby had been born in, and whether she had had much schooling, when screaming and shouting drew her attention to a side street up ahead, on the right.

  “Intriguing,” Cordelia said and surged towards the noise.

  “My lady, no, please. It will be no more than a fight or a drunkard. Come away.”

  Cordelia strode along, holding her skirts slightly away from her legs with her right hand so that she could walk faster. Her horsehair crin-au-lin was not as large as was currently fashionable – indeed, women’s skirts seemed to be expanding by the inch on an hourly basis, if the magazines were to be believed – but if she chanced a run, she feared she would end up in a tangle of fabric. She rounded the corner and found herself at the head of a side street, on her right, that was closed at the end by a high grassy bank and the river, a hundred yards away. Either side of the street were rows of low, mean cottages, joined in a terrace. And partway down, on the left, the rough wooden door of one dwelling stood open, and all the neighbours of the street were standing around, in various states of dress and undress, and from within the house came a long and continual wail.

  Cordelia pushed past the stupefied onlookers and reached the door.

  Chapter Two

  “Send for the constable!” cried a woman who was half as wide as she was tall, with red chapped hands and a face that was mightily familiar with a gin bottle, judging from the veins on her nose and in her pink eyes. “Robert, you must run to the shoe-maker’s directly. Run, boy! Get gone.” She fetched a solid back-hander across the head of a ragged-haired boy who ducked under it with a practised movement. He launched himself out of the dark cottage room, barging past Cordelia with his sharp elbows akimbo.

  Cordelia stepped fully into the square room, holding her breath, and looked around. It was not her usual haunt and she was curious. Even when she’d made visits to the poor around her own estate, she had stayed away from the meanest of hovels. She had been taught to try to distinguish between the deserving poor, and the rest; it had something to do with how often a wife cleaned the doorstep, apparently.

  This doorstep was grubby.

  But everyone else was gawping, so why not me, she decided when she entered. It was an unremarkable and bare place; the windows were very small, and unlike the step they were polished clean, but the light was filtered through yellowing curtains which were pulled across the rippled glass and it cast a dank atmosphere on the few pieces of solid dark furniture. There were three empty chairs by the fire, though they did not match and one had a missing arm. Along one wall, an open fire with the semblance of a range stood cold and unlit. There was no way of baking there, she thought as she looked, but a cauldron hung on a hook and a toasting-fork was propped by the wood basket. And no coal. But no doubt the occupant got by well enough.

  Narrow stairs led up from the left, and on the back wall there was a door that led out into another room.

  And there was the figure of a man, a solid and fleshy sort, lying on the floor with his legs and arms at angles that spoke of ominous deeds. Yet it was not he that was attracting the greatest attention. There was a woman sitting on the fourth wooden chair in the centre of the room, and her sounds varied from wild screaming until they peaked at a high keening before fading to low sobbing for a few seconds, then returning once more to its unholy crescendo. The woman who had ordered the boy out of the cottage was now by her side, one chapped hand
firmly on the seated woman’s shoulder, holding her down on the chair. The woman might have been wailing in fear, or simply in frustration at being held down.

  “Mrs Hurrell, calm yourself and we shall presently have the answer.” The speaker didn’t have an ounce of sympathy in her rough voice. “Robert will be along with the constable as soon as he may.”

  “But call for the doctor!” the seated woman cried. She had tears running down her face but she was frowning too; there was anger there, and confusion, as much as fear. “What use is the constable? Thomas needs attention; let me go to him. You cannot let him lie there.”

  “I’m afraid there is nothing a doctor might do for him now, Mrs Hurrell. No, you stay sitting.”

  Mrs Hurrell, the crying woman, had been trying to stand but the other woman’s hand upon her shoulder was clearly heavy and firm. Mrs Hurrell subsided back into the chair and glared around.

  There were a half dozen other people crowded into the cottage, and though a few slid curious sideways glances at Cordelia in her fine dark gown, most were transfixed by the spectacle in front of them. All had seen gentry in their time, usually at a distance, and everyone had encountered injury and death, but not all had seen a scene with drama like this, and it was currently the greater attraction.