Unlaced Corset (4 page)

7

Mary

Mary took a deep breath. The ruse, it seemed, had finally worked. She'd waited for days for him to find her in there. Then she would just pick some meaningless fight, an excuse for her to stay cloistered in her room without seeming overly suspicious.

What surprised her more was the steward, Poole. He had apparently been doing plenty of work. It seemed strange for a fellow she had assumed was merely there on pretense to spy on, or even kill, her. Perhaps she had misread the situation.

Perhaps, he was just incompetent. He was looking at all the wrong things; the money didn't mean much to her family. They would make it back, in time, she was sure. If they were a little lower on funds than normal, then that was acceptable. After all, there was a war on, and Derby had not been unaffected by it.

She stepped away from the door and into the room, listening as she did for the sound of anyone walking up the hall behind her. Nobody came. When she was convinced that she was free from prying ears, she reached behind her large, full shelf of books and pulled out a single, unlabeled leather book.

It had been her father's; he had kept it in a table beside his bed, and as soon as things had taken a turn for the worse, Mary had secreted it away in her room. The entire situation had always seemed fishy to her. Her father was not a particularly thorough man, but he had his tendencies, and he rarely let something major pass without noting it somewhere.

Figuring out where, now that was the trick. The only sure bet was that if it mattered to him, he had made one of his strange notes in the journal he kept each night, a fairly perfunctory list of things he had done and his feelings on them. If there was anything that would have the secret to his death coded somewhere in it, she knew, it would be in this.

If she knew, though, then there was little doubt that whoever had set the entire plot into motion would know, just as well. That was why she had taken it, and that was why she had carefully avoided taking it out any time that she might be intruded upon. It had to be her secret, in order to avoid revealing her only trump card. She hadn't expected the chance to arrive so soon—or at all.

Mary flipped the latch on her door, and then settled into her bed. She hadn't even leafed through it, for fear of being caught. Now she felt like a little girl in a candy shop. What sort of surprises would she find? What would she learn?

She opened the journal to a random page and let her eyes run across it. As usual, it was written in his strange, perfunctory shorthand. Most of it meant little to her at first glance. She would need to make guesses as to the meaning, but as Mr. Poole had correctly surmised, she knew more than most people would.

There was Oliver, her father's brother. He had asked to borrow money again, and her father had acquiesced. There was an explanation, noted below, of what the money had been for, but it was densely packed single-letter denotations of words that meant little or nothing: "g m otwf"

She frowned. It was frustrating to try to decipher any of the meaning, so much of it was kept uncomfortably short.

As she flipped through, Mary was surprised to find a full name, written out entirely: "Pearl." There was no explanation for who she might have been, but her father had met this woman in January, and had proceeded to spend a considerable amount of time with her, based on the number of capital 'P's showed up from that point on.

Each time had been followed by a comment, as every note was, and everything that he had done with Pearl had been a wonderful, eye-opening experience.

Mary tried not to think too hard about it. Certainly, it had been a long time since her mother had died. Years, even. She had heard that it was not unheard of for widowers to hire the services of young women, for…whatever they might do. But she was surprised to hear that her father had hired such a woman, and more than a little bit disgusted.

She put it in the back of her mind, and tried to move on with the notes. They went on quite a long ways; this had been his most recent journal, that was certain, and the dates went through the early parts of July, only a week or so before his death. By that point he had gotten sick, a surprisingly fast turn of events that nobody could have seen coming.

Well, she corrected herself, silently. Nobody but the parties responsible for his condition, anyway. That was an important distinction.

Mary set the journal aside. She wasn't exactly sure what she had expected, after all. There was no reason that her father could have known he would die. He mostly wrote about the events of his day, and it wasn't as if he were going to write 'I just found out about a conspiracy to kill me—the butler did it!'

Mary laughed at her little joke. It was impossible to imagine Davis having done anything of the sort. He was too small, too unassuming. There was an almost tangible lack of any of the qualities that made a man a good killer. Unlike Mr. Poole, he simply didn't strike her that way.

There were other ways, of course, that Mr. Poole struck her differently than Davis. He was younger, and stronger, and looked somehow more like a man. She wondered for a moment if he were married, or if he were dating anyone.

Why should that matter? Mary pushed it away and tried her best to think about other things. She had bigger concerns on her mind than some army boy's muscles, or hair, or voice. That she was spending time thinking about these sorts of things wasn't just useless, it was embarrassing.

Then, with a long sigh, she flipped through the pages one last time. There wouldn't be anything she could figure out now, and she was quickly finding that she didn't have the energy to read closely after the theatrics she'd just put on in the library.

The revelations of this 'Pearl' were a further drain on her ability to think rationally about the situation. She'd rather not hear the sordid details of her father's affairs with some hussy. Mary wondered, not for the first time, what on earth had possessed her father to hide his will so carefully.

Mr. Stump had come down to Derby when word had come of her father's death, and he had informed her that while he had written a will—he had witnessed it himself—it had been hidden, somewhere in the house, and until they found it, it couldn't be read. They had turned the house upside-down, and nobody had found a thing.

The idea that whoever had been involved in the plot, whoever she had worried might steal her father's journal, may have found the will and secreted it away for their own nefarious purposes. In fact, it seemed downright likely, but if that were the case, then it didn't matter regardless what it said or where it was hidden. It was gone, now.

If only he had put it in the bank, or left it with someone, then everything would have been so much easier on her. As she flipped the back closed, she noticed something odd about the way that the last page turned. Sure enough, there was something folded into the spine, as if it were some sort of memento.

An envelope, on her father's stationary. It was addressed to one James Poole, in London, at Lisson Grove. The back was sealed with wax, and the front had a large stamp marked on it, that read "Return to Sender."

Entranced, Mary broke the seal. If it were nothing, as simple as a letter of greeting, then she would ignore it. Throw it into the fire. But if it was something…she could apologize later, but it was too important. She opened the envelope, pulled the paper out, and scanned it.

None of the shorthand nonsense, here. Mary pursed her lips. Her father had written this, after all. She would need to bring this to James Poole's attention immediately.

8

James

James Poole stood over his bags once again. It wasn't lost on him how briefly he'd had them unpacked for, and what it meant that he was packing them once again. There was no money, after all. He'd tried, for all the world. He cursed his luck, that he'd been so close and for nothing.

He'd gotten further than he had expected, and that was something he would keep close to his heart. At least he had done more than he had expected of himself. Why, then, did failure sting so badly?

The game had been rigged against him from the beginning. He had known that. He took a deep breath and let it out unsteadily. His eyes stung and for a moment he was worried that he would lose his composure.

He knew, of course, where his problems lie. He'd gotten close enough to taste success, and he knew where the impasse lied, but his effort, however frustrating, to solve the problem had only made things worse.

Mary Geis was an incredible woman, it seemed. A woman of supernatural beauty; when he'd seen her the first time, she had reminded him more of a Greek goddess than an Irish baron's daughter, and that hadn't changed. What had changed was the temper—a temper that brought her ancestry sharply into focus for him.

Certainly, he had been a bit brusque. That was unquestionable. But at least he had made the effort, in the end, to bridge whatever rift had opened up between them. That was more than he could say for her. What's more, he had tried to help her.

James picked his bags up from the bed and set them down on the floor. Then he laid down, still in his clothes, and tried to shut his eyes. As long as he could forget about things for a while, he could pick up the pieces of his life.

His situation was not too dire, he reasoned. Someone would surely hire him, even without the recommendation of his previous employer. After all, he had only been here a week, and then he had worked for no one in particular. He didn't even need to add it to his Curriculum Vitae.

There wouldn't be anyone hiring, at least not in an open way. There were other ways into positions, though. He knew people from his days in University, and a few army friends had gotten out since he had left. They might be willing to stick their necks out for an old friend. It wasn't completely impossible, or even exceptionally unlikely, but as he tried to convince himself, it all rang hollow.

This had been his long-shot gamble, his big chance to turn things around for himself. It was over, now, and in the morning he would be going back to his apartment empty-handed and broken-spirited.

A knock came at the door. It was soft, and for a moment he wasn't sure he'd heard it. He knew who it was, who it had to be. That made him want to answer it even less. He pretended that he hadn't heard it after all and rolled onto his side.

The knock came a second time, and Mary Geis's wonderfully melodic voice carried through the door into the room. It was strange how intoxicating everything about her was, even when she was being difficult. When she cooperated, he thought, it must be so much more.

"Mr. Poole? Are you in there?"

He thought about not answering for a moment, as if to spite her for that afternoon. Turnabout was certainly fair play, he thought, but it seemed a bit unfair of him. After all, he had positively hated it when she had done it to him, what sort of man would he be for doing the same to her?

He sat up and rubbed his tired eyes.

"What is it, Miss Geis? I'll be gone in the morning, and I'm sure that Davis can still be reached in town. In fact, I'll try to turn up his address if you'd like, and I'll call on him and have him come back tomorrow afternoon before I catch the train."

He found, surprised, that he meant it. He was too tired to fight with her; he simply wanted to be left alone in his grief for the night, before he had to go back out and face the world. If the promise of running an errand in the morning would keep her from coming to berate him further, then he would give her the promise gladly.

"Will you please open the door, sir?"

He rolled his legs off the bed and pressed himself upright. The door came open easily. Mary Geis looked like the most beautiful mess he had ever seen. Her hair was in disarray, and her cheeks were flushed. He wondered if she hadn't been crying, but he thought it better not to ask.

"What is it that you needed, Miss?"

"I found something of yours, Mr. Poole, and I thought you should have it."

"What on earth could you have of mine, Ma'am?"

She looked up, hurt by his tone, and he immediately regretted it.

"My father sent you a letter, before…" She trailed off and drew a shaky breath. He didn't ask her to clarify.

"I received no such letter."

"No, the postman failed to deliver it, so it was returned, a few days before his death."

"I see," he said, thinking. What on earth could any of this mean?

She held out an envelope; he could see that it had been sealed, and that the seal had been popped open.

"Did you do this?"

She nodded silently. Her eyes, he saw, were the most beautiful shade of green that he had ever seen. He found himself distracted by them, entranced. It was only with great difficulty that he managed to pull his gaze away from her and back to the letter in his hand.

He pulled it out and scanned it over. The top was certainly addressed to a Mr. James Poole, Esq. The bottom was signed Thomas Lord Geis.

Then, confused, he walked back to the bed and sat down to read it more closely.

'You will wonder,' it began, 'why I thought it appropriate to hire a twenty-four year old steward for a noble house. You would be right to wonder that.'

Lord Geis went on to answer the question he had posed for himself, and James's eyes widened. He had wanted, he went on to say, someone who had no connections in the legal world. Someone who couldn't be tainted. A stranger in every possible way, and that meant someone who was newly graduated.

The details had been left out, in wide swaths. The letter referred to "a certain man or group of men," who were planning something "most foul." Lord Geis would inform him of more in person, but he feared that he was already putting himself, and more importantly, James in danger by sending the letter as it was.

It was postmarked July 10, 1916. James folded the letter back up, and slipped it into the envelope.

"I was gone, that week. I was out west…in Wales, for the week, seeing my father, and…" He let out an unsteady breath. "If only I'd gotten this letter sooner, I might have… You've read this letter?"

Mary nodded. She hadn't spoken since she had handed him the envelope, but had waited in the doorway, silently.

"Mr. Poole." Her voice was soft and shaky. She had been crying, that much was certain, but more than that he realized that she had only barely gotten ahold of herself. She spoke haltingly to maintain what little restraint kept her from falling back into tears. "Does that letter mean…what I think it means?"

"I think your father knew he was going to die. I think you and I both know that whatever he was involved in, it was dangerous." James flipped open his pocket-watch and looked at the time. It was late; too late to start working for the night. "I think we need to get to work immediately, Miss Geis, on deciphering the puzzle of your father's finances. If he was killed he was killed for a reason, and that is by far the biggest question in the house."

Mary didn't say anything, and at first he thought he would repeat himself. In the morning, they would need to work, and she would need to help him. He could feel the buzz of energy in his fingers. The bet was back on; back to work tomorrow morning, and he was closer than ever to solving the Geis family's financial slump. With that, he could solve the mystery, but surely the two were closely related.

After a moment, though, he realized that Mary wasn't only distracted, but hadn't heard him at all. After a long moment of silence she spoke.

"That's absurd, though." She slumped to her knees and leaned against the frame of the door, looking at the far wall but not seeing it. "He didn't become sick until the 14th."