Like many another child in our neighborhood, Edwardina caught the measles and her mother as you know, cannot bear to be round any type of illness so Sarah Jane has left us to stay with her sister in Wigglesex.
“I did not know Sarah Jane had a sister,” said Belinda.
“She doesn’t. Frank writes rather well, for a constable, don’t you think? Run-on sentences notwithstanding, of course.”
“Which would you rather do,” asked Belinda crossly. “Sit there and pick apart his writing style, or listen to what the man has to say?”
Arabella huffed. “Get on with it, then.”
I found myself obliged to take time off from work in order to stay home with Eddie who was improving for a while, but the disease took an alarming turn for the worse and we almost lost her. Doctor says she is out of danger now, but still very weak and cannot remain at home unattended and I must return to Bow Street or face dismissal. And so I ask, no, I implore you to take Eddie into your home miss until she is well enough to get about and come back again to look after her doting papa.
“Goodness,” said Belinda, letting her hand, with the pages still in it, fall to her lap. “How noble of him! Think of that wonderful man, caring by himself for a child that is not even his!”
“Yes,” replied Arabella, reaching for the egg scissors. “It makes me so terribly ashamed of Charles!”
Their brother, Edwardina’s real father, had been somewhat remiss. In fact, he had never, to their knowledge, so much as set eyes upon his daughter, who had attained the age of eleven years.
“Imagine that brainless Sarah Jane,” Belinda continued, “running away because she is afraid of illness! I never thought very highly of her character anyway, but I am surprised to find her such a coward!”
Arabella snipt the top off her soft-boiled egg and stuck her spoon into the cheerful white and yellow depths. “D’you know what Charles calls these, Bunny?”
“What?”
“Cackle farts. That’s rather good, don’t you think?”
Belinda did not appear to think it was.
“Well, anyway,” said Arabella, “I expect Sarah Jane simply got tired of being a wife and mother, and has run off with an actor or something. Never mind. Frank and Eddie will both be better off without her.”
“Not if poor Mr. Dysart loses his job.”
“There is no question of that. Eddie will come to us until she is better.”
“Oh, Bell!” cried Belinda. “I am
so
glad! You know, you really are a very kind person!”
“I am a very selfish person. If I don’t agree to take Eddie now, then, as you say, Constable Dysart will lose his job, and I shall be responsible for the child for the next six or seven years! An ounce of prevention today is worth hundreds of pounds in upkeep down the line.”
She scraped the last of her egg from its shell and pushed the egg cup away from her.
“You enjoy playing the cynic,” said Belinda, smiling, “but your heart is really as soft as that egg was. After all, you are the one responsible for bringing Sarah Jane and Mr. Dysart together. I think he only married her because he was so fond of Eddie.”
“Pure self-interest again,” said Arabella. “I was hoping that by providing stable home lives for Eddie and Neddy,
I
should be seeing a lot less of them. But I am not very good at matchmaking, apparently.”
Neddy was another of Charles’s by-blows, fathered on a woman named Polly, whom Arabella had introduced to Constable Hacker, another Bow Street Runner. That marriage was not a happy one, either. Nor did Neddy and his stepfather get along.
“Come, dearest,” said Arabella, rising. “It’s time we were on our way.”
Belinda put down her napkin and pushed back her chair.
“Regardless of your motives,” she said, “Frank Dysart has been the saving of our Eddie. You have made a world of difference to her life, Bell.”
The ladies donned their hats and gloves, bid good-bye to the servants, and headed for the porte cochere, where the loaded landau awaited them.
“I am certain that you will find Sir Birdwood-Fizzer to be a perfectly amiable host,” said Arabella. “But he does have one or two harmless vices, and indulging him will make the visit far more pleasant for both of you.”
Belinda had already ascended the carriage via the foldout steps, and was busy settling her little dog upon the seat. “Vices?” she asked. “What vices?”
“Toe sucking,” said Arabella as the driver helped her in. “
His
toes, not yours. (Thank you, Trotter.) Also being told that he is a bad, naughty boy. It is nothing, Bunny; I am confident that you will handle it.”
Trotter shut the door and hoisted himself up to his seat.
“Oh, yes,” said Belinda faintly. “I daresay I shall.”
Unlike Arabella, Bunny was accustomed to bestow her favors only upon gentlemen whom she found attractive, and was consequently disinclined to charge them for the honor. This was a pity, since she was blessed with great personal charm, and might have made a splendid fortune for herself. But Belinda was predisposed toward fidelity and marriage, and that was all there was to that.
“Yes, I am quite certain I shall,” she said again, attempting to harden her voice. “I shall be fine. Won’t I?”
“Brace yourself,” said Arabella.
The carriage started off with a violent jolt, and the passengers were thrown forward. But they were not jostled too badly, having prepared for this ahead of time.
“All right,” Belinda said, raising her voice so as to be heard over the carriage wheels, and the horses’ hooves, and the coachman’s directives to the horses. “Birdwood-Fizzer is a naughty boy. Is there anything else I should know about him?”
“Well,” said Arabella thoughtfully, “he
may
want you to dress like his old wet nurse, and speak to him as though you have no teeth. But probably not. After all, he barely knows you.”
Arrived at last at the Lustings front door, Glen
deen
wondered, idly . . . no, he did not, he wondered
feverishly
whether Arabella were at home. For his mother’s reference to his first love had caused an abrupt resurgence of manly energies, which badly wanted releasing now. He shifted from foot to foot and vigorously applied the rhinoceros-headed knocker,
6
but this only served to increase his agitation, for it made him think of pounding, and horns. In point of fact, his ship would be sailing soon, and it might be
months
before—
Ah! Here was Fielding, come to the door at last! But after handing her his hat and preparing to enter the house, Glen
deen
heard with disagreeable surprise that Miss Beaumont and Miss Belinda had left not ten minutes earlier.
“Your Grace may catch them up if you hurry,” said the maid.
But he did not want to do that. Arabella, busy with family matters, would hardly be in a mood to oblige him just now. The duke whirled about and headed for his gig, savagely kicking a stone along the way that had deliberately placed itself in his path.
“Sir!” cried Fielding, running after him. “Your hat!”
He leaned down from his seat to take it from her. “What day is today?” he asked.
“Friday, your grace.”
“Is it?” said the duke, brightening. “Oh! Then I shall go to Green Park Farm!”
For it was doxie day.
I got yer love letters to that fart
catcher an I knows what I knows but
Pidjin Pollard don’t know do he?
Wat do yeu think he’ll do when he
findds out? drop yeu most like! If yeu
wish me to keep your secret, yeu will
have to pay me £150,000 an I want
£500 on account. I shall send
another letter advising you where to
leave it.
A friend
“There is nothing else for it,” said Arabella, raising her voice over the commotion of the carriage wheels as she folded the letter and re-inserted it into the envelope. “I shall have to track down Constance’s blackmailer myself, and turn him over to the police.”
“Can you deduce anything from the letter?” Belinda asked.
“Oh, yes. Any number of things.”
Arabella had read it over a dozen times since Belinda had given it to her the previous evening, but now she studied it once again, using her traveling magnifier, in order to elicit the appropriate sense of awe from her sister.
“The paper on which it was written is middling good; not the best but certainly not the cheapest available. As for the writer, I should say he was a ruthless man; intelligent, greedy, and dangerous.”
“Naturally, one might assume as much,” said Belinda, “given the fact that he is engaging in blackmail.”
“I am not assuming, Bunny—I
know
. I have established these things based upon the manner in which the fellow forms his letters. You see, a man’s handwriting reveals his character in unexpected ways. For instance,” said Arabella, pointing to the name “Worthington” on the envelope, “the rounded loop on this lowercase G resembles a money bag, which means the writer is greedy.”
“That sounds like something you made up,” said Belinda, stroking the head of her little dog.
“I have not made it up. It is a science. Mr. Leland has been giving me lessons.”
“Who?”
“The bookseller at Hatchard’s.”
“Well, it is an interesting idea,” said Belinda. “But how accurate is it, really?”
“Naturally, I tested the concept, before committing myself to lessons. Mr. Leland agreed to analyze a variety of script samples, which I presented to him, and spotted mine at once. He said I was witty, charming, quick-tempered, and resourceful. Then he evaluated the others, and described the writers to a T.” She took the letter out again.
“Really?” asked Belinda eagerly. “What did he say about mine?”
“That you were loyal, sweet-tempered, and fond of animals.”
“Remarkable!”
“In the present case,” said Arabella, striking her magnifier against the page to recall Bunny’s attention back from self-contemplation, “I have deduced that our blackmailer has made a deliberate attempt to sound more ignorant than he is. Anyone who does not know how to spell ‘you’ or ‘did’ would most likely not know how to spell ‘friend,’ ‘account,’ or ‘advising, ’ either. Then, at the end, you will note that he forgets himself, and accidentally spells ‘you’ correctly.”
“That is brilliant, Bell!”
“Thank you, dear. One thing puzzles me, though. The hand is definitely a forceful, masculine one, and yet there is an oddly feminine component which I cannot account for.”
She pulled a wicker hamper from under the seat and removed a glass from it, along with a decanter of French brandy. The stuff was illegal in England, but Arabella had her sources. She took a sip from the glass, and gazed out the open window at the lush summer landscape.
“Bunny,” she said, “do you know what I want, more than anything?”
“To get your money back from Costanze.”
“Yes, but do you know why?”
“To avoid debtor’s prison.”
“Of course, but I meant, what do I want the money
for
in the long term? You will never guess, so I shall tell you: I wish to live in England, as though it were France!”
“You can’t,” said Belinda. “There’s not enough sunshine.”
Arabella seemed, on a sudden, to be possessed by an overwhelming exuberance. “I want a sparkling life!” she cried. “One that is beautiful and sad, with a wicked vein of humor running just below the surface like a comic opera, with wonderful costumes and a deliberate, sensual musical score, dropping note by note into the pool of a star-filled marble fountain!”
She fell back against the carriage upholstery, like a puppet from which the animator has withdrawn his hand.
“I see,” said Belinda. “And how are you now? All right?”
“Somewhat faint,” Arabella replied. “But I shall be better presently.” She drank off her liquid restorative, right down to the bottom of the glass. “Poor Bunny,” she observed. “It must be so difficult for you, having to live with an artistic temperament!”
“No, not really. I’m told I am rather good-natured.”
“No, you goose! I was referring to
me!
I get these inspirations from French fare, you know—there is a type of small biscuit which affects me in a similar manner—and sometimes I am quite swept away!”
“If only you
would
be!” Belinda grumbled. How was it, she wondered, that despite her own creative inventions—her billy-boxes and dish gardens, her crocheted dog outfits and the Birdwood-Fizzer commission—that Arabella always got to be “the artistic one”? Thereafter, Belinda maintained an implacable silence for some minutes, and her older sister assumed she was sulking.
Arabella was wrong, though. For over a week, Belinda had been searching for a way to acquaint her sibling with a shocking piece of news, but the proper occasion had not as yet presented itself. First there was all the flurry over the club construction, and then this terrible financial setback had arisen. But time was growing short, and Arabella simply
had
to be told before the sisters parted company. Otherwise she would hear it from some other source, and accuse Bunny of deliberate duplicity.
“Well,” said Belinda at last, “as distressing as the situation is, in a way it is good this has happened. Mysteries are the very thing to keep your mind off missing me. And you’re always so clever at solving them!”
“Twice,”
Arabella replied, replacing the decanter in its basket. “I have been presented with
two
mysteries to date, and have succeeded in solving them
twice
. With, I might add, massive amounts of assistance from other people.”
“Right,” Belinda said. “Like Reverend Kendrick.”