Rules of Murder (6 page)

“Then they should be made to know the truth,” Drew insisted. “I, at the very least, have the right to know it.”

“There are some things she did not wish to have brought up. They are in the past and digging them up now could not benefit anyone. Trust me, son, they have no bearing on this case. She did not wish to have them discussed, and I mean to abide by that now she’s gone.”

“But she
is
gone! How can it hurt her now?”

“You’re a Farthering, Drew. The name means something. Surely you can understand her reasons for keeping it out of that sort of scandal.”

“If she wanted the name kept out of scandal, she should have kept herself out of scandal.”

“There really is nothing more to discuss here,” Mason said, his voice taut. “I mean to honor what your mother wanted. As her husband, it’s my place to protect her interests.”

“Hers or your own?” Drew said, the words barbed. “It’s humiliating for a man to have to admit he’s been cuckolded, I’m sure.”

Mason pressed his lips together and did not answer.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Drew said after a moment. “I sometimes say more than I ought.”

Still Mason said nothing.

“We like to believe the best of those we love,” Drew added,
hating that he had hurt the man. “I know it isn’t easy to accept it when they aren’t always what we think they should be.”

Mason peered at him. “No. No, it’s not.”

“But knowing the truth doesn’t mean we can’t still love them.”

Mason nodded. “So you would rather have the truth, would you? Even when the thing is past and done and changes nothing?”

“I would.”

Again his stepfather peered at him. “How old are you now, Drew? Twenty-four?”

“Yes. Why?”

“So you know why she was being blackmailed, do you?”

Drew nodded, suddenly not as sure as he had been.

“Tell me why,” Mason urged.

“I don’t mean to upset you, sir, but I’m sure you’ve known as well as anyone.”

“About?”

“About her and Lincoln. I’ve no doubt he was taking money to keep quiet about their affair two years ago.”

Mason shook his head. “I’ve told you time and again. There was no affair.”

“And I thought you were going to give me the truth now,” Drew said tightly.

“Will you listen to me, or have you already decided you know everything?”

Drew bit back a hasty retort. Mason had the calm air of a man who was sure of his facts.

“I’ll listen. Of course.”

“You know Lincoln’s father was partners with me and Rushford and with your father when we started the company, back in ninety-eight. Connie and your father had been married only a few months. He was like many young men, then and now, eager to build his empire and his great name. He did it
too, and, as usually happens, paid the price for it. By the time the company was on its feet, he and Connie were practically strangers, and she had no interest in intimacy with a man she rarely saw.”

He peered at Drew again and then continued.

“He poured himself more and more into the business, no doubt hoping she would relent in time and be proud of his success.” Mason smiled a little. “Being ‘in the right,’ of course, she held her ground and kept her distance.”

Again Mason paused.

“You know your father was a good man, Drew. I’d never dispute that with you.”

Drew merely looked at him, feeling a growing uneasiness inside himself, a feeling that he had pressed too far into what he did not truly want to know.

“But he was a man, no more than that,” Mason said. “Even the best make a false step now and again, especially when things aren’t going well at home.”

Drew frowned, less out of displeasure than from the desire to keep his lips from trembling. “What are you telling me? That it was my father who was unfaithful?”

“It was not long after your grandfather died, and I imagine your father was still in need of comfort on that score. He stopped into a little hat shop on the
Rue de la Paix
one night, when he was in Paris on business, thinking to bring Connie back some sort of peace offering. The girl there was sympathetic and kind. He told Connie later that she had a sweet, simple way about her that made him feel he could confide in her.”

Drew’s frown deepened. “Then Mother knew about her. Soon after, I suppose.”

“He and the woman were together only a week. He came back and told Connie everything, begged her forgiveness, and
promised never to stray again. As far as I have ever known, he kept that promise until he died.”

“And Mother never forgave him, I suppose,” Drew said.

“You’re wrong there. She did forgive him. He let the rest of us run the business more and more after that and spent more time with her. She told me later that it was like a honeymoon all over again, even better than the first.”

“That seems little enough for her to pay blackmail on all this time. Granted, it wouldn’t be good for the company if it got out, but it was years ago. I can’t imagine—”

“There’s more.”

Drew didn’t like the look on Mason’s face. “More?”

“Three or four months after your father’s return, he got a letter from Paris, from the girl in the shop.”

“I suppose it was the rest of the old story, then.” Drew turned up one side of his mouth. “She was going to have a child. And wanted money.”

“Not just a child, Drew,” Mason said slowly. “You.”

A
long with breakfast, Anna brought Madeline the news that Constance was dead. Unable to choke down more than a bite of toast and a few sips of hot coffee, Madeline got out of bed, threw on a suitably somber dress, and went to find Uncle Mason. As she headed down the front stairway, she saw Drew cross the marble floor of the entry hall and start up the stairs. He hadn’t seen her yet.

“Drew,” she called, keeping her voice low.

He glanced up at her and just as quickly away.

She called again and then hurried down to him.

“Hullo,” he said, sounding a bit dazed.

She took both of his hands, wishing she could take him into her arms. “I’m so sorry. It must be such a shock about your mother.”

She was surprised by the cynical smile that touched his lips.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

He said nothing more, and for a moment she could think of nothing else to say.

“Is Uncle Mason in his study?” she asked finally, and Drew nodded.

“But the chief inspector is with him. I don’t think they’d let you see him at the moment.”

Poor Uncle Mason. He must be heartbroken.

She looked up into Drew’s eyes, but they refused to reveal anything.

“Is he . . . Is he all right, Drew? This has to be terrible for him. For both of you.”

“I suppose it is terrible. I’m a bit stunned myself. Things are never quite as they seem.”

Puzzled, she waited for him to go on, hoped he would, but he did not.

“Just going to look in on the newborns,” he told her, not quite meeting her eyes.

“I’d love to see them,” she said, “if you don’t think that would upset Minerva too much.”

“She’s always trusted me, and Nick bribes her with sausages, so I think she wouldn’t mind letting us peep in on her.”

She went with him back up the stairs and down the hall to his dressing room.

Minerva, a small tabby cat with very large green eyes, lay at the bottom of the cupboard, still nestled in Drew’s navy cheviot trousers. Her five kittens, their bellies round with milk, slept against her. Two of them were tabby-striped like their mother, two were marmalade, and one was, at present, almost entirely pink through its fine white fur.

“Oh, they’re such little darlings,” Madeline whispered, and Minerva responded with a slow, smug blink of her eyes, as if it were obvious that nothing less was to be expected.

Drew sat cross-legged on the floor, watching the little family. “It goes on, doesn’t it? Life? Look at this little blind fellow,” he said, pointing out the pink one. “Before long, he’ll be snow-white. ‘Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we
may be.’” He smiled again, that cynical little half smile. “And sometimes we don’t even know what we are.”

She got down on the floor beside him, curling her legs under herself and slipping her arm through his, wanting somehow to comfort him.

“Life does go on,” she said. “Even when it’s hard.”

“There’s a mixed blessing.”

After another moment of silence, she turned to him once more. “Drew?”

He seemed lost in thought, so she gave his arm a little squeeze.

“Drew?”

“Sorry. I guess I was just thinking about—about everything.”

“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” she said, though she wanted him to want to talk to her, “but I am a good listener.”

“Yes, I expect you are.” He blinked a few times before he faced her. “I don’t know that you’d want to know what a sordid mess we are here, though.”

She held his arm a little more tightly, remembering the maid’s half-whispered intimations. “Was it . . . was it suicide?”

“The police think she killed Lincoln and then herself over a lovers’ quarrel.” His voice, low and empty, was so unlike his normal voice that she had to look at his face to be sure it was coming from him. “Or, possibly, your uncle murdered him in a jealous rage, and she couldn’t face living without him.”

“No.” Her heart squeezed into a hard, painful knot inside her, but she forced herself to smile a little. “It’s just not true. I know Uncle Mason wouldn’t do anything like that. He couldn’t.”

“How do you know?” he asked, his gray eyes hard. “How does anyone know what someone else may be or do?”

“He’s just . . . he’s just not that way,” she insisted. “He’d never hurt anyone.”

He laughed, but it wasn’t his usual infectious laugh. It wasn’t so nice as that.

“We forget sometimes that parents—even uncles—have lives of their own. Worlds of their own. Sides of themselves we never see and never dream are there. Even when someone describes those lives to us, we can’t believe them. We
know
better.” He jerked his head toward the sleeping kittens. “They know nothing but that she’s there to feed and wash and warm them. They don’t once think of her as a hunter or their father’s mate or our pet.”

“But, Uncle Mason—”

“I’m not saying he’s guilty. I’m just saying one can’t know. One can’t know for certain.”

“I think you can,” she said. “You can see a man’s character in his life. He can’t keep that secret. Not forever.”

“Character,” Drew said, his face marred with an ugly sneer. “Shall I tell you about character? What do you think of this house?”

“The house?” She knit her brow, struggling to follow his splintered conversation. “I think it’s a beautiful house. I love how your family has built it up over so many hundreds of years, adding to it but leaving what was there before.”

“It’s a sham.” There was something rather brutal in his soft voice. “All of it. It looks as though it’s been here since the fifteen hundreds, but it’s barely eighty now. My great-grandfather had it built to look as if the Fartherings had lived in it for the past four centuries. He had the architect design it in three different styles, using bits he’d bought from other old houses about to be torn down, as if it had been added onto over the years. The village was called St. John Woodlea until 1857. That was when Great-grandfather Henry used a little financial persuasion to have the name changed to Farthering St. John. All of it is a sham.” His smile turned bright and brittle. “Like me.”

“You?”

“Ellison Andrew Farthering, heir to Farthering Place, and absolute fraud. I thought I had everything figured out. I knew my father. I knew my mother.” He took a shuddering breath. “I knew myself.”

She didn’t want to press for more than he wanted to tell her, but obviously there was more. “I don’t understand.”

“My mother’s not dead.”

Had he lost his mind? “But—”

“No. My mother is not dead. At least she’s not at Dr. Wallace’s surgery waiting for Marks & Blackistone’s to take her away.”

“What?”

“Constance Farthering Parker, née Ellison, was not my mother. I am the product of a sordid little tryst between my father and a French shopgirl. That makes me a Farthering, certainly, albeit on the wrong side of the blanket.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. What could she say?

“Mother—Constance—Blast it, I never seem to know what to call anyone.” He scrubbed his free hand over his eyes, and she nestled more closely to him. “Anyhow, I always wondered why she never quite took to me. I could tell she wanted to sometimes, especially after my father died, but it never seemed quite the same as it was with other boys and their mothers. After a while, I guess I decided I wouldn’t much take to her, either. I always thought she was jealous of the attention my father paid me. Now I see it was just that I was a constant reminder of his infidelity.”

“How did she manage to make everyone believe you were hers? I mean, wouldn’t the family or her friends have known?”

“She and my father were rather clever about that, it seems. Four months before I was born, he told everyone he had business in Paris, and he took her with him. After my arrival, they
engaged a nurse to look after me and came back to Farthering Place,
fait accompli
.”

“What happened to the girl in the shop?”

He shrugged and then took a faded photograph from his coat pocket. “The police let me borrow this. It was in Lincoln’s things. He was blackmailing Constance over my checkered past. I can’t help but wonder . . .”

She took the picture from him and turned it over. “Marielle. A French name.” She turned it to the front side once more. “And she might be the right age. Uncle Mason couldn’t tell you more about your mother? Not her name or anything? Or whether or not this is her picture?”

“He said Constance never spoke of her except in the most general terms. I’ll contact my solicitors to see what they can find out for me—birth records or anything that might identify my mother. One would suppose she’s still alive somewhere.”

Madeline studied the face in the picture and then Drew’s. “She doesn’t look very much like you. Maybe a little bit in the eyes and nose. It’s hard to tell with these old pictures.”

“They always said I looked like my father.”

She smiled. “He must have been beautiful.”

That made him smile too, but there was bitterness in it. “I don’t know what to make of it or of this blackmail business. Or of Constance herself.”

“She must have felt something for you if she raised you from a baby,” Madeline offered.

“I suppose she did try. She must have tried if she agreed to pretend I was hers in the first place. Maybe it was just for my father’s sake. Maybe it was for her own pride. But still . . .”

“What?”

“She paid Lincoln to keep it quiet. So I wouldn’t know about my father. So I wouldn’t think less of him even if it meant I
would think less of her.” He reached down to stroke the cat, not looking at Madeline. “And I thought the worst of her.”

“Because of Lincoln,” Madeline murmured, and he looked at her again, his expression startled at first and then wry.

“So you heard the rumors, as well. I suppose you were bound to. Farthering St. John is a small place, and the really succulent gossip is too rare to be allowed to die too hastily.”

“She warned me about him,” Madeline said, just then remembering.

“What did she say?” he asked, his expression keen.

“She said I ought to stay away from him, but I thought it was just because she was jealous. He’d been after me all night.”

“Was that all?”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “I suppose one tires of paying blackmail.”

“Do you really think she did it? I mean, do you think she could have?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the lovers’ quarrel theory is wrong, but he was blackmailing her. It must get old after a time.”

“But to kill him that way . . .” She shuddered.

“The police think that’s why she did away with herself. They think she couldn’t bear what she’d done. Still, it’s not typically a woman’s crime. Not with a shotgun like that.”

“It’s so awful.”

“Otherwise, that leaves Mason, but he never thought they were involved in the first place. Even if he killed Lincoln for Constance’s sake, she wouldn’t have known about it yet. Why would she kill herself the same night?” Drew’s face hardened. “Unless he was lying to me about the whole thing. Unless he killed them both.”

“Why would you think that?” she asked, trying not to be
angry with him. “He’s lived here for ten years. You know him. Has he ever done anything to make you think he would even be capable of murder?”

Drew shook his head. “But I thought I knew my father, too. I would have wagered my life on it.” Again he smiled a brittle smile. “On his character.”

“Your father made a mistake,” she said gently. “People do make them, you know, and learn from them. You said yourself how the gossip flies in a small place like this. Don’t you think there would have been talk if there had been more than just the girl in France?”

“I don’t know,” Drew admitted. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, anyway.”

“Sometimes it helps to talk to someone.”

“Talking about it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change who and what I am.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. “You’re exactly who and what you were before. What God made you to be.”

“So I’m to thank Him for making me a bastard?”

She bit her lip, and he was quick to apologize.

“Rather bad form to use that sort of language in a lady’s hearing, isn’t it?”

“Not quite fair, either,” she said, her heart softening once again at the apologetic pain in his eyes.

“No? I think it’s an extremely equitable assessment.”

“So you think God forced your father and mother to have an affair?”

He laughed a little. “No. Put that way, I suppose it would be absurd.”

“I think He makes it pretty clear that He’d rather no one did that kind of thing.” She made bold enough to caress his cheek. “Because He knows the hurt it causes even to the innocent.”

Drew didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move away, either.

“Besides,” she added, “that’s something between each of them and God. It’s not your fault. It doesn’t make you any less precious in His eyes.”
Or mine.

He put his hand over hers, pressing it still against his cheek. Then he pressed her palm tenderly to his lips.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” he murmured, his breath warm against her skin. “Or what to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” she soothed. “Not right now. The police are investigating things, and they’ll figure it out in time.”

He squeezed her hand and then let it go. “Nick will be disappointed. He so wanted to solve a real mystery, but this is a bit close to home for a frolic.”

“Nick will be all right,” she assured him. “I want you to be all right.”

He ventured to pet one of the sleeping kittens, the little pink one he’d pointed out earlier. “Are
you
going to be all right, Madeline?”

“Me?”

“If the police should find out something you’d rather not know, I mean.” He stroked the kitten still, not looking at her. “If your uncle was . . . involved somehow in all this.”

“You said you didn’t think he was guilty,” she protested.

“I said I wasn’t prepared to say he was guilty.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Have the police found something against him?”

“No. Not that I know of, anyway. But it’s possible that they will.”