The Serpent and the Scorpion (24 page)

“Why did you not tell Arina before you received her letter?”

“I had decided to wait until I was back in England. I couldn’t bring myself to tell everyone—it was too much. But then her letter arrived, and it angered me that she would be asking for money at such a time. Katya had already received a letter when we first arrived in Jaffa—it distressed her greatly, and she pleaded with me to send funds to Arina. I . . . I refused. I merely believed Arina’s second letter repeated the plea, and I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I blamed Arina’s influence for Katya’s betrayal. . . .”

“Why do you persist in believing your wife betrayed you?” Ursula asked quietly. “I spent a great deal of time with your wife, and I know she loved you and you alone. Despite the rumors, I’m sure there was nothing going on between Katya and Hugh Carmichael.”

“What do you know of such things?” Vilensky responded sharply.

Ursula gave a soft, sad smile. “I just know.”

Fifteen

Thursday morning, Ursula left Gray House early in order to catch the train to Manchester and connect to the ten-thirty train bound for Newcastle. Samuels had left the previous night with Bertie, and Ursula was planning to travel back with Julia by motorcar later that day.

Samuels was waiting at the Newcastle Central Station, rugged up against the unseasonably wet weather. The steamer from Antwerp carrying Julia, Mrs. Millicent Lawrence, her husband the vicar, and her two missionary friends, Misses Norton and Stanley, had been due to dock earlier in the morning, but bad weather in the Channel had delayed it by two hours. Julia, not a good sailor at the best of times, was still a little green when she disembarked and made her way down the gangplank to greet her mistress.

“Mrs. Lawrence, I must thank you again for agreeing to let Julia join you all on the voyage home. I do hope she could be of service,” Ursula said.

Millicent Lawrence looked as hale and healthy as ever, despite the long journey home across the Continent. They had been obliged to break up their return by stopping frequently so as not to exacerbate Millicent’s husband’s lumbago (which, according to his wife, flared up when he was exposed to “papists and foreigners”).

“Julia performed most admirably,” Millicent Lawrence replied robustly. “What with my maid running off with the purser in Cyprus and Violet coming down with food poisoning in Marseilles, we needed all hands on deck, I can tell you!”

Ursula’s lips twitched.

“The fact of the matter is that good help is hard to come by these days,” Millicent continued. “And we’d be quite happy to make it a more permanent arrangement.”

“Oh, Mrs. Lawrence, I couldn’t give up Julia! But I am so awfully glad it all worked out for the best.”

“Well, we certainly knocked the heathen out of her! Why, when she was first aboard the
Esperante,
she didn’t even know her Old Testament from her New. Now you’ll find she can recite the Lord’s Prayer by heart and can list all ten Commandments. She’ll be quite the addition downstairs at Sunday Bible reading, I can tell you.”

“Yes, I’m sure she will,” Ursula murmured, picturing the look of horror on Biggs’s face should Julia dare to suggest
she
prepare the Sunday reading.

“So how are you holding up?” Ursula asked Julia after Mrs. Lawrence and her party had left and while Samuels arranged with the porter to bring Julia’s small trunk over to where Bertie was parked.

“Ooh, I was terribly sick, Miss, all the way across the Channel. But I’m much better now, thank you—and well pleased to be back on dry land, and in England!”

“Well, I know Mrs. Norris has prepared a meat and potato pie for you for supper. I asked her to make your favorite. Samuels, why don’t you and Julia see if there’s a tea shop in that new arcade where you can grab yourselves some luncheon? I’m meeting Mr. Carmichael at twelve, and expect I should be done by half past one.”

“Yes, Miss,” Samuels replied, lashing Julia’s small trunk to the back of the motorcar.

Ursula and Julia climbed in.

“Do you know where this Blue Anchor is?”

Samuels barely repressed a grin. “Yes, Miss. I’ve heard tell from some of the locals this morning that it’s famous for its fish pie and brown ale.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Ursula responded dryly. “Sounds like just my kind of place.”

 
Hugh Carmichael was meant to meet Ursula outside the Blue Anchor. Ursula, wearing a peach-and-white-striped linen suit with a Peter Pan collar and a wide-brimmed straw hat, couldn’t have looked more conspicuous or more “bourgeois” (as Alexei once told her). As she waited, a motley assortment of clientele walked into the pub: a couple of sailors in their Royal Navy uniforms; a man in a brown frock coat, smelling of spice; a young clerk with ink-stained fingers; and an older man with long, white whiskers, in a grubby navy surplus overcoat and knitted cap.

There was a smell of petrol and a squeal of tires as Hugh Carmichael came barreling along the cobbled street on his Douglas motorbike. He wore a long leather coat and hat and a pair of goggles. The motorbike spluttered to a stop outside the pub, and Ursula instinctively took a step back and covered her nose with her lavender-scented handkerchief.

“Hugh, you are a menace!”

“Hello, sweetheart!” Hugh responded with a grin. He took off his hat to reveal a shock of gray-black hair. “Never mind old Daisy here—”

Ursula wrinkled her nose.

Hugh climbed off the motorbike stiffly.

“Are you all right?” Ursula queried.

“Yeah . . . just had a bit of an accident last week. Brakes failed coming down from Marley Hill. I was lucky it was only a few bruises, nothing more.”

“Hugh, you need to be more careful.”

“Sweetheart, when my time’s up, it’s up.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. Not after all that’s happened.”

“Sorry.” Hugh’s face was suddenly sober.

“Shall we?” Ursula prompted.

“Are you ready to sample the Blue Anchor’s famous fish pie?”

“After seeing some of the . . . er . . . clientele entering the place, I think I might wait and eat luncheon on the way home.”

“Miss Marlow, I’m shocked. Where’s your sense of adventure?!”

Hugh held open the ancient wooden door, and with some reluctance Ursula ducked her head and went inside.

The publican found them a seat at the back beneath paneled Elizabethan windows that looked out onto the lane behind the pub. Ladies weren’t allowed at the bar, so Ursula had to remain in the dining room while Hugh went to purchase drinks for them. Ignoring the curious stares of some of the other patrons, she contented herself with watching how the light refracted through the tiny hexagonal panes of glass set in the wrought-iron-framed windows.

Ursula slid her hat off and placed it gingerly down on the window seat beside her. Hugh returned, carrying a pint of brown ale in one hand and a Pimm’s and lemonade in the other.

“The inquest must have been a bit of a shock,” Hugh began.

“It certainly had its moments.”

“So this girl who died in your factory, she was Katya’s sister?”

“Yes, not that Peter Vilensky seems to care, but yes.”

“And that chief inspector from Egypt, he’s now handling the case.”

“Yes, and his involvement indicates to me that there’s something bigger going on—I don’t know what, but it links to Katya’s and Arina’s deaths, of that I’m sure. . . . If only I could prove it.”

Hugh’s face remained impassive.

“You’re still not going to tell me what happened between you and Katya in Egypt, are you?”

Hugh did not reply.

“You don’t have to protect me, you know,” Ursula said.

Hugh took a swig of ale.

“I can’t believe you—,” Ursula started to say, but Hugh gestured her to stop.

“It’s not that I don’t want to find out what happened. I just cannot help you at the moment. I’m fighting for my business here—my very livelihood—and Iris’s inheritance. The shipyard was her family’s business, don’t forget. And Dobbs is forcing my hand. I’ve got the bankers breathing down by neck, Vilensky baying for blood—I’ll spare you any more metaphors, but the long and short of it is, I cannot help you.”

“But two women have died!” Ursula exclaimed. Some of the other patrons started exchanging uneasy glances, and Ursula had to stifle her frustration.

“And there’s nothing that you or I can do to change that. You’d be best to keep well out of it and let this man Harrison do his job.”

Ursula’s pursed her lips, and Hugh drained his glass.

“It’s not that I don’t admire your sense of justice. I do. But people are dying, Ursula—and you need to stop playing Lady Molly of Scotland Yard.”

Lady Molly was Baroness Orczy’s fictional female sleuth.

“You haven’t been talking to Lord Wrotham, have you?” Ursula asked swiftly.

Hugh Carmichael smiled. “No such luck, sweetheart. But I’ll tell you what I really think. I think you should fight for your business just as hard as I damn well am. Fight for your father’s empire. Be the businesswoman I know you can be and rub Dobbs’s nose in it like he was a dog. Then, when you’ve proven all that to society, marry Lord Wrotham, be happy, have lots of children, and godammit, forget about Katya and Arina!”

 
Ursula dined alone at Gray House that evening, sitting at the small dining room table she and her father had shared while she was growing up. Mrs. Norris was no substitute for Cook, but she did prepare a good pie. Served with pickled red cabbage, it brought back memories of her childhood, and for once this provided a comfort rather than a sad reminder of the mother and father she had lost.

Ursula had just finished eating dessert, Mrs. Norris’s sticky date pudding, when Biggs entered the dining room, looking somber.

“Yes, Biggs? What is it?” Ursula asked as she put down her silver spoon.

“Dr. Mortimer to see you.”

“At this time?” Ursula replied with a glance at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room.

“I’ve placed him in the Blue Room.”

Ursula pushed her plate back and rose to her feet, patting her mouth with the linen napkin. “I guess I’d better go to him. You may as well serve coffee in there.”

“Yes, Miss.”

Ursula hurried down the hallway and into the Blue Room.

“Dr. Mortimer!” Ursula exclaimed as she entered. “Is everything all right?”

Ainsley Mortimer jumped to his feet. “Miss Marlow, I’m so sorry to trouble you at such an hour.”

“Please sit down, and there’s no need to apologize. Tell me quickly, though—is it bad news?”

“Nothing . . . nothing like that!” Seeing Ursula’s stricken face, Dr. Mortimer stumbled over his words. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. . . . But I thought you should know—”

Ursula took a seat.

“Should know what?” she asked quietly, dread filling her heart.

“Chief Inspector Harrison has just arrested George Aldwych.”

Ursula sat very still.

“Tell me.”

“George was brought in for questioning yesterday—and the chief inspector, well, he spent hours with him, and then . . . just around six this evening, I received a telephone call. George confessed to lighting the factory fire.”

Biggs entered the room quietly and placed a silver coffeepot and two china cups down on the table.

“I . . . I didn’t like to telephone . . . I wanted to tell you in person, knowing how much of shock it was likely to be.”

“I see. Thank you,” Ursula said hoarsely.

“I would have brought Stacie—but she’s at one of her debating meetings. I’m sure you must think me terribly improper, coming at this hour, alone.”

“Not at all,” Ursula responded mechanically.

“Chief Inspector Harrison wanted to wait till morning but I . . . I . . . thought you needed to know.”

The coffeepot remained untouched.

“What about Arina?” Ursula asked quietly. “Did George—” She couldn’t finish the question.

Ainsley chewed his lip. “The chief inspector told me that George maintains he had no idea that she was in the factory, for what that’s worth . . . ”

Recovering from the initial shock, Ursula offered Ainsley some coffee. He reddened and shook his head, saying, “No, really, I’m fine.”

Ursula was too preoccupied to notice his discomfit. Slowly she poured herself a cup and sat back down.

“What possible motive could George have for lighting the fire?” she eventually asked. “He was always so loyal to my father.”

Ainsley looked even more uncomfortable.

“Did the chief inspector say whether George told him why he did it?” she asked.

Ainsley hesitated.

“Please, Ainsley, I need to know,” Ursula urged.

“George told him he was angry about the kind of women being employed. Called it an abomination. Taking jobs away from decent local women.”

Ursula shrank back in the chair.

“I can’t believe it,” she said softly, more to herself than to Dr. Mortimer. “I mean, he never expressed any of that to me. . . . I even walked through the factory with him—he seemed so shocked. I never, never suspected he could have been involved.”

“I know, these things are so often unexpected.”

Ursula got to her feet abruptly and walked over to the windows that overlooked the back garden of Gray House. It was a clear night, and in the moonlight she could see the wild roses in the hedgerow bobbing their budding heads, almost mocking her in the night breeze.

“Can I speak to him?” Ursula asked suddenly.

“Pardon?”

She turned away from the window.

“Do you think if I went down to the station tomorrow, Chief Inspector Harrison would let me speak to George?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Ainsley replied.

“I want to speak to George. I need—I need to hear it from him.”

“It could be very upsetting for you—are you sure you want to?”