Fool's Gold (A Lord Ambrose Mystery) Read online

  This was, presumably, the son of the house whom Elisabeth had mentioned to me; he who was pursuing his studies at the University but had returned home because of the tragedy. Clearly, he required no further identification than the furious battering that he was inflicting on the door.

  Mrs. Romey was by now struggling to pull back the heavy bolts, but the rapid banging nevertheless continued, so that I formed an unpleasing impression of tremendous impatience, rather than an urgent desire for the comforts of home on the part of the hammerer. The housekeeper wrestled with the bolts for a few more moments and then flung open the door, and there came fair bursting in a young man in riding clothes, much splashed and mud-stained, striding across the threshold in his high-topped boots.

  “Cyriack, my boy!” exclaimed Sir Antony, and he clapped his arms about the newcomer, but the young fellow broke free quickly from this embrace, and called out to Mrs. Romey: “Ah, Romey, I’m famished! Here have I ridden from Oxford with scarcely a stop and never a divil of a bite!” He looked about him, and saw myself, who by now had arrived at the bottom of the stairs and was preparing to reascend so as both to avoid what was clearly a family reunion and if possible to rejoin Elisabeth for some morning pleasures of which I did not wish to be deprived by the untimely arrival of this whipper-snapper.

  Sir Antony introduced us. “Lord Ambrose, this is my son, Cyriack, and I will say freely that he is something of a renegade. I confess that my dearest wish is that he would pay more attention to his studies, but there, we cannot always have what we would desire in our children!”

  It was a rebuke, yet said with tones of pride and even humor, of a kind I had thought Sir Antony unlikely to possess, and which demonstrated to me that Cyriack must be a prodigal, or at least a favorite. Turning to his son, the fond father then indicated myself.

  “Cyriack, this is Lord Ambrose Malfine, of whom you will doubtless have heard.”

  The young man swept off his hat in a low bow, revealing a longish tumble of sandy curls, and contrived somehow at the same time as uttering greetings in my direction to edge along the hallway, wiping his hand on his britches rather than offering it me.

  He was a heavily-built youth, who might have had good features and a lively eye, but these were set in a beefy, fleshy sort of face, pouched already, and I guessed it would yield rapidly to dissipation. Some men there are, bulky country lumber such as this lad, whose frame cannot bear the effects even of one night’s carousing; others may spend years in debauchery and emerge as sharp and slender as ever, of which I am the very living proof.

  However, back to my tale. Cyriack appeared to recognize that some basic courtesies were required.

  “Lord Ambrose, I’m delighted to meet you. Of course, yes, you are well-known…I trust, sir, you will forgive me. I’ve done some damned hard galloping and am in no condition for society…”

  My reputation, it seemed, discouraged further attentions from Cyriack. What picture had he formed of me, I wondered? A grim and scarred recluse who had ventured forth a couple of times to bring murderers to justice? And, doubtless, that I was the unsociable hermitical owner of the greatest estate in the West Country—every turnip in three counties knew that.

  Whatever it was, my notoriety had apparently made no favorable impression on Cyriack Jesmond. He followed hard on Mrs. Romey’s heels. She was murmuring, “Very well, then, Master Cyriack, we can find you some cold ribs and pickles…and I think there’s a raised pie in the larder.”

  Dear God! Pie and pickles! My heart sank at the thought of the Jesmond larder. However, Cyriack appeared to find this rustic collation attractive and Sir Antony went with them, gesturing apologetically in my direction, but before the little group left the hallway there was a voice from the top of the stairs.

  “What is the disturbance…Cyriack, is it you?”

  It was Lady Jesmond, clutching a long cashmere shawl around her, with her yellow hair hanging down over her shoulders.

  Cyriack looked up at her. She was standing at the banisters, leaning over the staircase, and there was a kind of tumbled sensuality about her, a sleepiness and disorder that inevitably evoked the bedroom; I fancied I even caught a trace of sweet heavy perfume that drifted down through the still air of the house, a suggestion of sweat and scent that conjured up, or promised, events of the night.

  The young man stared up, a long stare, and she as fixedly returned his gaze. There was silence for a few moments, which seemed somehow to lengthen.

  Finally, Cyriack called out, with an odd formality in one who seemed so quick to haste from the spot, “Madam, I trust you are well, but I beg you to excuse me just at present.”

  With that, he vanished down into the depths of the house—I presume in the direction of the kitchens.

  Lady Jesmond withdrew into her room, but not before I had glimpsed her face, not distressed now, but seemingly hard and impassive.

  An odd household indeed. A shouting, mettlesome son, plainly indulged by his father; a woman exuding sensuality, who appeared not to share her husband’s bed. And upon her countenance—not at all the appropriate expression for an affectionate stepmother welcoming the son of the house home, thought I, as I bounded back up the stairs to Elisabeth.

  CHAPTER 6

  Breakfast at Jesmond Place on that May morning, with the fresh sunlight flickering in the trees around the house and urging country pursuits on those within, was taken in different parts of the building by the various participants in the dramatic events that were to follow.

  Lady Jesmond remained in her room and later on that morning I observed a tray outside her door, partly covered by a napkin, with crusts and coffee-slops on the fine china. I saw no more of her stepson, Master Cyriack, but heard from time to time an outburst of hearty male laughter coming from the nether regions of the house, from which I conjectured that he was entertaining company, or being entertained, in the kitchens. In a place which was nominally at any rate a house of mourning, this did not seem entirely appropriate, but the young master did not appear to be amenable to convention.

  As for Sir Antony, he had retreated to his own room and all I knew of how he broke his matutinal fast was what I learned when Charnock appeared in the dining room, where Elisabeth and I were seated at a country breakfast of sausages, mutton and eggs brought in by Mrs. Romey and left to keep warm over chafing-dishes. With the muttering of apologies which I realized was habitual to him, Charnock piled two plates with food and disappeared up the staircase to the regions above.

  Elisabeth and I were therefore free to converse, and as might naturally be supposed I pressed her to return with me immediately to the safety of Malfine. Zaraband could carry us both; there need be no difficulty in quitting Jesmond Place without further ado, and my urgings were spurred on as well by my recollections of the pleasures we had mutually enjoyed during the night that had just passed as by my anxieties for her safety.

  Again, I expressed my sense of alarm at the oddities in connection with the death of Sir Antony’s former assistant. I asked Elisabeth to describe again the scene she had beheld in Dr. Kelsoe’s bedroom, and she repeated the strange circumstance which she had observed: that the cork top was firmly lodged in the poison bottle, which had been placed on the bedside-table. And she was able to add a further detail, which she now recalled: “Yes, in my mind’s eye I can see the little blue bottle standing beside the bed, with the stopper in place. And it is standing upright on the table, on the white cloth, so it cannot have been thrown there by mischance or accident, as might happen if the young man had raised it to his lips, drained the poison, and then hurled it from him in his agony.”

  “And yet I believe prussic acid to be a most corrosive substance!” I exclaimed. “How could such a thing as calmly replacing the stopper have been possible if the poison was self-administered?”

  “It is very strange, is it not? The poison must have caused an almost instant torment. His mouth and throat were burned—the old physician remarked upon it,” commented Elisabeth.r />
  “The body, I take it, is still lying up in the unfortunate young man’s bedchamber, waiting for the funeral this noontide?”

  “Yes. A woman from the village came to lay him out yesterday. The report has been made to the Coroner, and they do not wish to delay. That, I suppose, is why young Cyriack has arrived from Oxford.”

  “I presume he has special leave from his tutor,” I commented. “I think the vacation has not yet begun, so he should still be at his studies, except for such an extraordinary circumstance as a death in the household. Though I understand he does not apply himself as much as his father wishes—still, I tend to think that a commendation in youth.”

  “Oh, Ambrose, I beg you to say nothing of the sort to the young man himself. I pray you, do not encourage him—he is already of a most frivolous disposition, I understand. I have not met him before, of course, for he was away at Oxford when I came here, but I gather from Lady Jesmond that his father despairs of him.”

  “And what do you think Lady Jesmond herself feels toward this stepson who is barely her younger by a lustrum?”

  Elisabeth answered slowly, frowning as she spoke, as if recalling past conversations. “I had scarce remarked upon it, but she speaks always very coldly of Cyriack, which is unusual with her, for she has a warm and tender heart and is normally quite open-hearted in her dealings with others. But, now you come to mention it, she says very little on the subject of Master Cyriack, and always with her head down or turned away. If she can be said to be ever cold or dismissive, she is so toward him.”

  “Curious, for one would imagine that there might be an affinity between them, on account of their youth alone.”

  “Well, he is only at home in the vacations, so they do not see much of each other, I suppose.”

  “Very likely. But Lady Jesmond and her errant stepson apart, I am anxious about your presence in this house. There has been a death with certain features about it which seem inexplicable, and that would suggest that there might be a risk to any member of the household. If Kelsoe did not die by his own hand, if it was another who re-corked the poison bottle and placed it upright on the table, then that hand may yet have more mischief to work.”

  “But how could someone else have killed him?”

  “Yes, that path is full of difficulties. How came he to drink the poison, unless it was offered in some disguised form? No medical man obediently raises a bottle of blue glass to his own lips, a bottle whose very color shrieks poison and which is distinctly labeled as such, and takes a smart swig of sure and instant agony, on the mere urging of another.”

  “Yet there was no sign of anything else—no glass or cup beside the bed.”

  “So let us for a moment propose that somehow another person contrived to make the young man take the fatal dose. The immediate result would surely have been that Kelsoe would have cried out, would have been instantly seized with spasms of pain, would have tossed his body about. So why did the other person—who had administered the poison and must have beheld the death-throes—not simply hurl the bottle down, as if it had been thrown from the deceased’s own hand in his last agonies? That would have added to the conviction that this was a case of suicide, whereas the stoppering of the bottle and its careful replacement on the table makes us suspect…”

  “Makes us suspect murder.” Elisabeth was pale, but calm, with her usual swift grasp and directness of apprehension.

  “Exactly so. And that is what makes me beg you to leave here and come back to Malfine.”

  “But if I do that, it will mean abandoning Lady Jesmond, and she was in such a state of distress… At any rate, Ambrose, let me stay and support her through the funeral ceremonies. I know she is determined to attend the church and no doubt she and Sir Antony will be obliged to give some hospitality to the mourners, though I fear there will not be many. Dr. Kelsoe’s parents will in all probability be unable to make the journey from Lancashire, for his father is an invalid and it is very unlikely that his mother will travel on her own. So I expect that Sir Antony and Lady Jesmond will of necessity be chief mourners. No, I will remain here, Ambrose, for the time being, and offer them what support I may. Then I will return with you to Malfine.”

  This was the best I could draw from her, though I had my suspicions that Lady Jesmond might not be as afflicted by grief as Elisabeth seemed to imagine. But, as if to echo Elisabeth’s arguments, Mrs. Romey appeared just then and asked her to attend Lady Jesmond.

  “I believe, Miss, she wishes to discuss the arrangements for this afternoon. She has asked me to ensure that we can offer some hospitality to the mourners when they come back from the church and I am setting up a table of cold meats; Sir Antony will be fetching up some sack and brandy from the cellar. Would you be pleased to come to take a look at the larder?”

  Elisabeth rose and moved to the door. I thought that Mrs. Romey regarded me with a frosty eye, but I am used to such sidewise squinnying, especially from respectable personages. My scars incur it and my reputation compels it.

  I might have simply remained for a day or two at Jesmond Place, oozing that general bonhomous neighborly support in time of distress such as is expected at funerals, and afterward returning with Elisabeth to Malfine. That would have been the end of the Jesmond Place affair, and I daresay several lives would have been the happier. But I could not resist stirring up these stagnant backwaters, poking a meddlesome stick into the duck pond of country life.

  The first piece of interfering which I undertook was to go quietly up the staircase, and then, instead of entering my room at the back of the house, to continue up the next flight of dark oak treads to the next floor.

  I found this oddly disagreeable.

  The stairs at Jesmond Place were very old—I mean, the planks themselves. They creaked, of course, but that was not what gave me the sense of unease: rather that they were uncarpeted and so very worn, and the sides of the treads all dusty. Mrs. Romey was either not a particular housekeeper, or she did not often ascend to these regions, and I experienced a sense of distance from the rest of the household, an eerie fancy of climbing up and out of human ken.

  I suffered no particular qualms on account of the body that lay in the upper regions of this old house, for I had seen death in many terrible forms in my fighting days in Greece. Death from thirst, from infection, the slow and agonizing mortality that is the true portion of the hero, as well as the sudden bloody spilling of guts that is called glory on the battlefield. No, dead bodies do not frighten me, nor Elisabeth neither, for it is one of her charms over me that she does not suffer from false sentiment. Some women might have protested against a night of passion such as that which we had just enjoyed, when a dead body lay under the same roof as our deliciously entangled limbs. What twaddle! The delights of life are too short and rare to be sacrificed to hypocrisy, and the awareness of death can only enhance them. They are a kind of victory over mortality.

  I found Kelsoe’s room without any difficulty, for Elisabeth had told me in her second letter exactly where it was: over that of Lady Jesmond. There were two large attics facing each other at the top of the stairs, and I knew that Kelsoe must have had the room on the right. Upon the door of the other attic was a heavy padlock, new and shiny; new also were the timbers of the door itself, strong and close-fitting, in contrast with the ramshackle black old woodwork elsewhere.

  I would have liked to wait till I was sure there was no one about. Yet it must be now that I took a look at him: in a short time the sad corpse would be committed to the worms. The old iron clock downstairs in the hallway had just struck eleven and the funeral would take place at noon.

  There was no point in knocking on Kelsoe’s door, yet I found myself doing so in a kind of involuntary way, as if it would be disrespectful to the dead to enter the chamber unannounced, although the poor young man who lay within would hear no more in this world.

  I therefore rapped on the door.

  And got an answer!

  So surprised was I that it took
me a moment or two before I realized that the voice came from behind me; turning back, I saw the beaky head and narrow shoulders of Murdoch Sandys emerging up the stairwell.

  “Good God, Sandys, you gave me the devil’s own shiver!”

  “Well, my lord, I’ve just arrived here, and finding no one about and the door open, I came into the hall, and looking up the staircase I was in time to see a pair of boots ascending out of sight. You know how particular you are in the matter of your riding boots—they are recognized through three counties, as is your horse. At any rate, after our conversation yesterday, this matter concerning the Jesmonds has been preying on my mind! I determined to follow you here and see if I could be of any assistance. But why is no one about? What a strange household this is, to be sure!”

  “And about to seem stranger still,” I answered, “for there lies in this chamber the body of a young man who may be a suicide or a victim of experimentation, yet who managed to exercise great domestic tidiness in the manner of his demise.”

  By now, we were in the chamber, which was in truth a large attic, with deep-set windows looking out over the grounds and gates of Jesmond Place.

  It was a sweet May morning, and all the sadder for the tragic long thing that lay on the bed, neatly covered with a sheet.

  Sandys and I moved closer to the bed and he gently pulled the sheet back.

  “Aye, poor lad!”

  It was perhaps the truest expression of regret that might be heard over Kelsoe’s corpse, so far from his family and friends.

  The face was a dark purplish color, almost violet. It looked to be swollen and bloated, yet I fixed my gaze upon it and was able to discern that this had once been a handsome enough young fellow, the features being even and regular. The body was already in its shroud, the jaws bandaged up, and Sandys gently undid the wrapper. He prized the mouth apart.

  I opened the casement.

  Sandys was lifting the hand that lay beside the corpse. The fingers were contracted in a claw-like fashion. “The nails, yes.” They were tinged dark blue.