This shocking thing which had disturbed the propriety of life at Belmonde was making everyone out of temper and on edge, he thought as he walked on between the yew hedges, followed by the dogs who, sensing a walk, had bounded round the side of the house as he set off. Yet logic dictated there was no compulsion to be unduly upset about the death â even the murder â of a woman none of them had ever set eyes on. Shocked, yes, sad, even, as anyone must be at such a thing. But anything else was surely hypocrisy â even if they found out she had indeed been one of those suffragettes, come to badger Monty, which was quite possible, of course. Inky Winthrop's father, also in Parliament, had lately had a stone thrown through the window of his motor. Fortunately â although it broke the window â it had missed Lord Winthrop and merely knocked off his chauffeur's hat.
Or unless the victim was who Sebastian feared she might be.
Walking down the sloping avenue between the statues, averting his eyes from the dismal collection beneath the Wellingtonia, he found himself by the lake. The sun was out in earnest now and the stretch of water, serene and untroubled, was dappled by coins of sunlight under the trees that shaded the far end, and sparkled brilliantly in the middle, looking fresh and almost irresistibly inviting. He was a good swimmer and knew the lake from boyhood: where it went deep, where the treacherous underwater reeds were, where one could climb out easily on to the bank. He knew how long it took to swim the lake end to end, or to circle
the little islet in the centre, where the mallards nested, and where the old punt, which no one had used for years, lay half-submerged at the edge.
But he was too old to undress and plunge in without thought, to roll himself dry on the grass like a puppy as he and Harry had done as boys. He hesitated, not for long, but long enough, for in the next moment he looked up and saw Louisa on the far bank.
“You came by the back way,” he said, hurrying round to join her. “Another few minutes and I might have missed you â I was on my way to see you.”
“I came that way because I went by the school to see the policeman who's arrived from London.”
“What's he like â the great detective?”
She laughed. “Not quite what you'd expect. He had a flower in his buttonhole. Quite the swell. He says wants to see you later today and then apparently you'll be free to go, so I'll wait and return with you. Another day will make no difference in the circumstances.” She sat on a rustic seat by the lake edge. “Tell me why you wanted to see me?”
“If it's all the same with you, I'd rather walk. I can tell you as we go.”
She took one look at his face and agreed. They set off to follow the dogs, who of their own accord had chosen to lope up the hill behind the house, a path which would eventually join the one he'd taken the previous day. Sebastian let them go where they would, and they seemed to know when they reached the clearing and the Green Man pool that he would pause as he usually did, and ran off on their own pursuits.
He and Louisa found a rock and sat facing the sun. “Well, Seb, what is it you're bursting to tell me?”
He grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”
“To anyone who knows you, yes.”
He told her then what he had told his father, except that he did not feel constrained this time to get it out in a few bald sentences and be done with it. Her reception of his news was more than he could have expected or desired: her eyes glowed, impulsively she kissed him on the cheek, though it was only as a sister might.
“I can't tell you how glad I am. I've been hoping for so long
that you'd find something worthy of you, someday. I must confess I never thought of you as an architect, though now I can't imagine why not. It's so exactly right in every respect. Do tell â what happened, what made you decide.” When she'd had every little detail from him, still smiling, she added, “The mood you were in earlier this summer, I should have guessed. I knew something was up.”
“Such as what? Did you imagine I was preparing to join the Foreign Legion?”
“I was prepared to think anything. You've seemed almost â¦desperate â¦at times. I'm so glad it's nothing like that.” She paused. “But what about your father?”
He grimaced. “What would you expect?” She had received his news with such obvious delight that it made him feel no other person's opinion in the matter counted a jot. He looked down into her glowing eyes. She did not instantly look away, and he felt he could fall into them forever, but he found no encouragement of the sort he looked for there. He almost groaned. “Louisa â” he began.
She stopped him before he could go any further with a quick look that seemed to say to him in more than words: Take care. Don't say anything we might both regret. He obeyed the unspoken injunction. What was the use? Like a fool, he'd ignored the dictates of his own heart, and failed to grasp the best thing in his life, his shining star, and now it was too late. Louisa was set on her chosen career, which certainly wouldn't include marriage, and nothing would deflect her from it. He had heard her say too often that she would never marry, and when Louisa said something, she meant it â did she not?
The silence lengthened. At last she said, “I wish you and Sir Henry were on better terms â but you know â¦I wonder if I dare say? It's hard for you to have lost Harry â but think how hard it is for him to have lost one son, and now, as he sees it â”
“Harry. Oh yes, Harry,” he said, not liking the bitterness he heard in his own voice.
He was going to have to tell her what had been going through his mind. It was what he had intended to do all along, yet he hesitated to elaborate, not from delicacy, for he knew he could be as
straightforward as he wished with Louisa and she would not be shocked, but because in the cold light of day, what he had begun to imagine seemed outrageous. In the end, he said simply, “Harry had a mistress.”
“Hmm. Well, that's hardly the most astonishing thing I've ever heard. I might have been surprised if he had not,” she said drily. “Who was she?”
“That's just the point. I have no idea. Some married woman, most probably, I thought at first.”
It was the most likely explanation for what Harry had confessed to him, since unmarried girls were, of course, strictly off limits for anything but the most chaste of encounters â and then only in the presence of someone else. Chaperoned within an inch of their lives, even a snatched kiss was enough to ruin their reputation and leave them on the shelf for ever. All the world knew that a young man expected his wife to come to him pure and unsullied, though no such strictures applied to the opposite sex, quite the contrary: it was almost de rigeur, within a certain set, for a young man, while searching for a suitable wife, to take a lover, quite possibly from among the young married women of his acquaintance, a situation made possible by the women's husbands turning a blind eye, lest their own extra-marital activities should become suspect.
Such liaisons were an open secret, and yet â¦Sebastian had never heard the slightest whisper â even after Harry's death â of his name being linked with anyone. “I've asked around, but no one knew of any mistress â and Harry was hardly the most discreet of men, was he? I had the fact from his own lips, otherwise I might never have believed there was any such woman, disregarding the fact that he was drunk at the time he told me. Unless â”
“Unless she was not a woman known to his friends.”
“Exactly. You read my mind, Louisa. Though even so, I would have thought someone would have known. An actress, or a dancer, perhaps? He wouldn't tell me her name.”
Not that it had been a matter of any importance at the time â just an
amour
which he hadn't deemed it any business of his to pry into. And afterwards â well, it was over and done with and
any woman who indulged in these sort of affairs would be well able to take care of herself. If she were indeed a married woman, she would not welcome intrusions from him â and if she were an actress, or a Gaiety girl, or anything like that, as he was inclined to suppose must be the case, then she would soon find someone else to be her protector. One suitor more or less could hardly make much difference.
“But supposing she was neither, Sebastian. Or had no husband to support her? Supposing Harry had been keeping her and she was left destitute when he died?” With her quick intuition Louisa had precisely followed his line of thought. “If she were in want â and came to seek assistance from his family? If, in fact, she was the woman who was killed?”
A silence fell. “If Harry had been keeping a woman like that, he would have left provision for her.”
“Would he? He was still young, he hadn't expected to die.”
More than that â would he have allied himself in the first place with a woman such as the one who had been killed here? There had been a distinct whiff of prayer meetings and good works about those clothes. Try as he might, Sebastian couldn't make the leap of imagination required to see Harry taking a mistress who wore a hat like that. In any case, if he had, what could she have hoped to gain from presenting herself to his family? What proof was there that anything between her and Harry had ever existed? What right did she have to claim support from them?
“Do you suppose I should I tell the police? It's nothing more than the vaguest of suppositions, after all.”
“I think we should try to find this woman ourselves. Then if we do succeed, there'll be no need to tell the police because she can't be the woman who's been killed.”
“We?”
“You don't think I'd leave you to do it on your own?”
“Louisa. No,” he said firmly. “It's not to be thought of. I believe she must be found before we alert the police, but finding her is up to me.”
“How are we to start?” she asked, ignoring this.
“I'll think of something. But you are not to be involved.” He was very much afraid he might be going to turn over stones and
reveal things which might better remain concealed, yet at the same time, a bitterness which he did not like had entered into his memories of Harry, which he desperately needed to have cleared away. Exorcised might be a better word.
He was suddenly on fire, with a violent urge to set about the search with the same enthusiasm he had lately been giving to his studies. Harry's mistress must be found, and the idea that the strangled woman had anything to do with his brother put paid to once and for all. And then perhaps he could give undivided attention to his personal life. As to how finding the woman was to be accomplished, he was hanged if he could think how, at the moment. Monty, perhaps, might help. Monty knew everything. But then, the obvious occurred to him. The first person to talk to must, of course, be Sylvia, Harry's twin.
At this same moment, he became aware of the dogs making an unusual fuss around the pool. Dizzy was snuffling and barking, nosing around the rock on which the head of the Green Man was carved. Unnoticed before, he saw that the water had almost ceased to pour through the hole, had in fact dwindled to a mere trickle either side of the big rock. The spaniel was excitedly tugging at something from behind.
“Something's wedged in the mouth,” Louisa said.
Whatever it was, Sebastian realised he could not reach it without plunging into the stream above and getting his feet soaked, which he wasn't about to do. “All right, fetch!” Both dogs immediately began to attack the wedged object enthusiastically, and Sophie eventually had it out.
Long before that, Sebastian sensed what it would be. When it finally came loose, with a gush of water through the hole, Sophie, wet through, dropped it obediently at Sebastian's feet, shaking water all over his polished leggings.
“Good gracious!” said Louisa, “how on earth did that get there?”
Before picking it up, they stood looking down at the stout, tough-looking object, its chunky, serviceable shape, with its rough-surfaced leather, water-soaked but impenetrable, which appeared to have suffered not at all from the attentions of the dogs' teeth. A small-sized Gladstone-type bag, about fifteen
inches long, just big enough for carrying a few papers, or such as a woman might have used. Sebastian was well aware that he probably should not open it, but hand it to the police intact. His curiosity overcame his scruples. He took it and placed it on the rock upon which he and Louisa had been sitting and opened the clasp.
The bag was old, its lining torn in places, but the water had not penetrated the tough leather to the inside, where there were two hinged compartments containing very little: nothing more, in fact, than a shabby cloth purse with coins in it that did not quite add up to a guinea. A folded handkerchief, plain white hemstitched cotton with no embroidery, monogram or laundry mark. A tortoiseshell comb and a few hairpins in a pocket. A small oblong card, painted with roses, pathetically scuffed.
“A scent card,” explained Louisa, sniffing at what was now only a faint memory of the attar-of-roses with which it had originally been impregnated. “To slip into a drawer to perfume lingerie, or rub on your wrists for the fragrance. They're given away as samples. Poor woman,” she added softly. The card, indeed seemed to say more about the woman than her plain and serviceable clothes had done.