Consequences of Sin Read online

  “The McClintock deal is an important one, you know,” he called out over the engine noise as they turned into Buckingham Palace Road, past Victoria Station and the Grosvenor Hotel. The traffic stopped to let a double-decker bus pull out from the pavement. “It’s a great honor to be given such responsibility. I think it shows how well your father and I work together,” Tom continued. “The new position also provides me with much greater opportunity for advancement, and, as I’ve told your father, I’ve now saved plenty of money to ensure you will be well provided for.”

  “Hmmm?” Ursula blinked. She hadn’t been listening closely.

  Tom turned the motorcar into Eccleston Street and pulled into Chester Square.

  “What do you mean ‘provided for’?” Ursula asked as Tom took off his driving goggles.

  “I mean for a marriage settlement.” Tom shook his head and ruffled his hair with his fingers.

  “What? Me? Marry you?!” Ursula was incredulous.

  “It’s what your father wants.”

  “Oh, I think not!” she exclaimed.

  “He told me just this morning how anxious he was to have you settled,” Tom continued, smoothing his hair back in place. “He hinted that an offer from me would be well received.”

  “Did he, now?” Ursula responded coldly.

  “Yes.” Tom reached over and grabbed her hand. “Oh, Ursula, think of it. I’ve got the money and the opportunity to help your father run his company. Think what a relief it would be to him. To know that his right-hand man will also be his son-in-law. That your inheritance is safe and secure with me. You need never worry about anything. Oh, Ursula, we’d be perfect for each other!”

  “I doubt that very much,” Ursula replied, pulling her hand away. She started to climb down out of the car. Tom leaped out to assist, catching her around the waist as she lost her footing on the step.

  She pushed him away angrily. “Really, Tom!” she admonished.

  Tom’s eyes flickered for a moment before he smiled once more. “Come on, old thing!” he said. “You know it’s for the best. Dash it all, I’ll even let you continue your ‘vote for women’ lark. There’re not many husbands who would do that.”

  Ursula tried to quell her anger. “Tom,” she said firmly, looking him dead in the eye, “I don’t love you.”

  Tom brushed his sandy mustache with his thumb. She could see the boyish charm in his eyes fade, and his gaze grew cold and resolute. “That will change.”

  There seemed to be tension about him now. As if something tightly wound within him threatened to snap and break. Sensing his hostility, she took a step back.

  “Promise me you’ll think about it,” he said with a fixed smile.

  “I shall not promise you anything, Tom,” Ursula replied, and turned away. She ran up the stairs, opened the front door, and closed it quickly behind her. Once inside, Ursula took off her scarf and leaned against the door. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm herself. Really, she thought, I don’t know whether to laugh or scream. Catching sight of Mrs. Stewart making her way down the stairs, she decided it was best to do neither and retreated into the front parlor to think in peace.

  Ursula was curled up on the wing-backed sofa, notebook and pencil in hand. Despite her father’s protestations, she wasn’t about to give up her investigations. She tried to write down some notes, but nothing seemed to make any sense. She was thinking about the night Laura died and trying to decipher the limited information she had. If Laura had died sometime between one and four in the morning, then whatever drug was used must have been extremely powerful. It had left Winifred unconscious for at least three hours. And what of the open window? Surely that was the means of entry, but it would have taken considerable skill to scale the wall and get in through the window. Ursula had once arrived through the rear entrance to the house for a clandestine WSPU meeting and noticed that the white-painted brick wall at the rear of Winifred’s house had nothing but a black downspout from the roof to the ground. There was also a small garden enclosure and an alley running along the back that the delivery vans and carts used. In the early morning, the alley would have been deserted.

  Ursula chewed the end of the pencil lead thoughtfully. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t concentrate on the matter at hand. She kept hearing her father’s furious insistence that she cease her investigation into Laura’s death. She couldn’t in all conscience let the matter rest—she couldn’t stand by and do nothing while her friend was tried for a murder she didn’t commit. Ursula was unsettled by her father’s anger and saddened that she had disappointed him once again. She was further unnerved by Tom’s ridiculous proposal. She put down her notebook with a sigh. She was far too distracted to concentrate.

  The telephone rang in the hall, and Ursula heard Biggs answer it with his usual solemnity (Biggs handled the telephone as if it were a precious piece of porcelain that could shatter and break if not treated with all due respect). Her ears pricked up when she heard him put down the receiver and walk up the hallway to the door of the front parlor.

  Biggs knocked and opened the door. “A Mr. Neville Hackett on the telephone for you, miss,” he said.

  Ursula leaped up and hurried to the telephone that lay perched on the rosewood table at the base of the stairs. “Hello, Mr. Hackett?” she asked, leaning over the receiver.

  “Ursula? Thought you might like to know I managed to get hold of a copy of the coroner’s report. They couldn’t identify the drug in Laura’s body. The coroner classified it as a ‘substance unknown.’”

  “That could be very useful. Anything else?”

  “Only a quick conversation with one of the constables on the case. I chatted him up over a pint or two at the Dog & Otter. Off the record, of course, but looks like what they found at Freddie’s place was some morphine. Nothing else.”

  “So where did this ‘unknown’ substance come from?” Ursula asked.

  “Exactly,” was his reply.

  Nine

  “There,” Julia said, pinning a large silver peacock brooch onto Ursula’s bodice. “That finishes the outfit nicely.”

  “Oh, Julia,” Ursula sighed. “I can’t believe I have to go to this.”

  She still hadn’t quite recovered from the impudence (and imprudence) of Tom’s proposal that afternoon. She wanted neither to attend tonight’s party nor to disappoint her father by refusing to go. This frustration was like a choker around her neck. Each moment she felt as if it were being tugged tighter and tighter, until there could be no escape.

  “Now, miss,” Julia replied with a mock reproving smile, “you know how much this means to your father. You owe it to him to accompany ’im—like a proper lady.”

  Ursula muttered under her breath but nevertheless was reconciled to facing the dinner party.

  She had known her father’s business associates and their families all her life. She had grown up with them, but still she felt somewhat removed and distant from their lives. After over a decade of working together, these men enjoyed a remarkable bond. From childhood, however, Ursula had always been aware that much of what defined this relationship went unsaid. She could never quite identify what it was; she knew only that there was a powerful bond, a solemn loyalty, that seemed to tie one man, one family, to another.

  Sure to be there tonight was Daniel Abbott, Cecilia’s father, who had already established a successful railway network in the Northwest when Ursula’s father first met him in 1879, just before Marlow bought the Preston mills. With interests in America and Europe, the Abbotts now turned their attention to securing a lucrative marriage for their only daughter, Cecilia. Ursula loved how Cecilia flaunted her father’s money and flouted his expectations.

  “Will Cecilia be there tonight?” Ursula asked as she followed her father down the stairs. Julia was trailing two steps behind her with Ursula’s violet evening jacket and gloves in her hands.

  Marlow adjusted the lapels of his best dress jacket as he descended, his coat and gloves neatly f
olded over his arm.

  He did not bother to turn around to answer but merely said, “Seems that Cecilia has gotten involved with a Fabian—this one with even fewer prospects than the last. I expect Abbott’s keeping a tight rein on her at the moment, so Cecilia’s unlikely to attend.”

  Ursula’s mood grew even more dreary at the prospect of an evening without anyone interesting to talk to. There would be no escaping the Andersons. The dinner was being held at their Kensington house after all. Gerard Anderson, a Scot, was as red-faced and stout as his wife, Elizabeth, was pasty and thin. Gerard looked less like an accountant and more like the local publican, but he was her father’s financial adviser and, by his own account, a self-made millionaire (his investments in the Americas having proved extremely lucrative). The Andersons had four daughters. The eldest was Miranda, who was five years older than Ursula. She married a young artillery officer before she gained her majority but was widowed soon after when her husband fell in the Battle of Bakenlaagte in the Eastern Transvaal. Miranda’s constant display of a martyr’s superiority caused Ursula no end of aggravation. Next was Charlotte, only two years older than Ursula. Her decision to join the Sisters of St. Clare had been a cause of considerable mortification for the whole family. The two youngest Anderson daughters, Marianne and Emily, were not yet “out,” and so their potential remained to be seen. But as Marianne was dimwitted and Emily was plain, Ursula wondered if money would be sufficient for them to forge any appropriate connection.

  The sour-faced Obadiah Dobbs would also be at the dinner. The Dobbs family was the only one among Robert Marlow’s business associates to have been blessed with a son. So far Christopher Dobbs showed the greatest promise for carrying on the family business. Obadiah, who went to sea when he was nine, had formed his own shipping line with capital provided by Daniel Abbott and Ursula’s father, after the three met at a Mechanics Institute class in Liverpool in 1881. Although Christopher cut quite a dashing figure, Ursula found his obsession with ships a bore.

  Ursula sighed as she and her father climbed into the backseat of Bertie. She wasn’t sure which would be worse, putting up with the Anderson girls’ banal chatter or Christopher’s bravado.

  She seemed engulfed in layers of patterned silk and velvet and was trying desperately to straighten both her skirt and jacket to make room for her father to sit down.

  “I’ve invited Lord Wrotham as well,” her father said, just as Ursula made herself as comfortable as she could in the narrow seat. She tugged on one of her pearl earrings with an agitated tremor.

  “We may ’ave some business matters to attend to,” her father continued as he eased into the seat and lapsed into the thick Lancashire accent he usually took pains to disguise. “Tha knows how it is…. So, lass, I may send you home early. There’s nowt you’d be interested in anyway.”

  Her father could be so patronizing sometimes! But Ursula was inwardly relieved. This way she would have an excuse to leave early. Lord Wrotham’s presence, however, only served to intensify her annoyance. Her father’s dependency on him irritated her. She felt restless and cross.

  Samuels parked the motorcar outside the Andersons’ Kensington town house and then came around to assist Ursula and her father from the car. In his cap, greatcoat, and leather gloves, Samuels looked the quintessential chauffeur. Ursula couldn’t resist a smile. She suspected that he was only too keen to leave them so he could pop down to the kitchen to share a cup of tea with the Andersons’ new scullery maid, Mollie, who was (according to Julia) the “spitting image” of Lily Elsie, Samuels’s favorite stage actress.

  Ursula took her father’s arm as they walked up to the black enamel front door with the large brass knocker. She looked up at the imposing four-story town house with its redbrick and tiled trim and wondered about the houses that had been demolished to make way for these “modern” mansions. Gerard Anderson had authorized demolition of a row of Georgian terrace houses in order to build this new development. Instead of being impressed by all the electricals and conveniences (why, the Andersons even had central heating!), Ursula felt saddened by the newness of the structure and found herself longing to know the history of the places that had come before, the families that had lived here, their love affairs and deaths. Her father gave her a poke to wake her from her thoughts and hurried her along inside as the door opened and they were welcomed in by John, the Andersons’ footman.

  He led them into the wood-paneled receiving room, where Elizabeth Anderson was waiting to greet them. She was standing between a deep-seated red damask sofa and the Tiffany standard lamp, rubbing the palms of her hands together. Usually Elizabeth took such pains with her appearance, but tonight there was a faint aura of unease about her. She looked uncomfortable in her dress, her hair had been too closely pinned, and the skin on her forehead was stretched taut.

  “Mrs. Anderson,” Ursula said with a smile and a perfunctory bow of her head.

  “Miss Marlow!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “How beautiful you look this evening.”

  Ursula raised an eyebrow but did not comment. Elizabeth Anderson had never complimented her before on her appearance.

  “Are Marianne and Emily not joining us this evening?” Ursula asked with feigned sweet temper. She had already noted that she seemed to be the only daughter present. On the far side of the room, Obadiah Dobbs stood with his back to her. Rigid and unyielding, his taut frame was silhouetted against the lamplight in the corner as he appeared to stare at the newly commissioned family portrait on the wall. Daniel Abbott was sitting in a high-backed chair, apparently absorbed in the whiskey and soda he held in his hands. He occasionally looked up and stared across at Dobbs, but all too soon his gaze returned once more to the drink in his hands. There was no sign of Gerard Anderson, but Ursula noticed how her father immediately left the room after no more than a cursory nod to Elizabeth. Ursula was uneasy; the atmosphere in the room was unlike that of any other dinner she had attended here.

  “No,” Elizabeth replied carefully, “they have gone abroad.”

  “Abroad?!” They might have gone to the moon, Ursula was that surprised. “But who is accompanying them? When did they leave? Where are they going? Papa never mentioned that you were planning a trip!”

  Elizabeth looked unaccountably embarrassed. “Oh, it was quite a rushed enterprise. My sister and her husband were planning a trip to Constantinople, and the girls just simply fell in love with the idea. Miranda’s going over there, too. Just think of it! They only left just yesterday, and the household has been in such a state.”

  “I can’t believe that—” Ursula began, and then she noticed that Elizabeth would not meet her eye. “I’m surprised you agreed to hold this dinner at all,” Ursula continued, watching Elizabeth closely. “You must be exhausted from all the arrangements!” Elizabeth went pink; Ursula suspected that she had replied inappropriately and said no more. How strange this was, that the Anderson girls should all be off on holiday so suddenly—with Christmas just weeks away, no less. Something was gravely amiss, Ursula thought.

  It was then that the footman announced the arrival of Lord Oliver Wrotham.

  To her surprise, Lord Wrotham did not come unaccompanied. He brought Lady Ashton with him, and as they entered the premises, Ursula felt a twinge of envy. She couldn’t help but contrast Lord Wrotham’s cool composure to Tom’s florid eagerness. Lady Ashton also looked so sophisticated and composed in her tight blond curls—a marked contrast to Ursula’s dark auburn hair and nervous energy.

  Elizabeth led Lady Ashton across the room to introduce Ursula as Wrotham made his way to where Marlow and Gerard Anderson were drinking champagne.

  “I have so longed to meet you. My Lord Wrotham has spoken of you often.” Lady Ashton’s voice warbled like a bird’s as she spoke.

  “Really? I find that most surprising,” Ursula demurred.

  Lady Ashton smiled, narrowed her pale blue-green eyes, and took in the room “Now, that’s a particularly fine piece of Sèvres porcelain on display i
n the reproduction Sheraton cabinet. Don’t you think?”

  Ursula nodded and pretended to be looking at a portrait of Elizabeth by the Scottish painter Ranken while she tried to overhear Lord Wrotham and her father’s conversation.

  “We need to talk,” Lord Wrotham said in a low tone.

  Robert Marlow glanced around with apparent indifference. “Here?” he asked.

  “No. But tonight.”

  “That urgent, eh?” Marlow’s voice seemed strained. Ursula could tell that her father was only pretending to be unconcerned.

  “Yes.”

  It seemed Ursula wasn’t the only one interested in what they had to say. Dobbs, who was at the other side of the room, was eyeing her father and Lord Wrotham closely. He took a sip of whiskey as his eyes darted from Lord Wrotham’s face to her father’s.

  Lady Ashton tapped Ursula lightly on the arm. “Tell me, my dear, are you interested in art?”

  “Why, yes, yes I am,” Ursula replied with some surprise.

  “Though I fancy your tastes are slightly different from Elizabeth Anderson’s. What do you think about these avant-garde painters such as Picasso and Braque?”

  “I think their work is very exciting.” Ursula responded with genuine enthusiasm.

  Lady Asthon smiled lazily. “Bizarre cubiques, is it not? You really must get to Paris sometime and see Montmartre. Such an inspiration,” she drawled.

  “Educating Miss Marlow on the value of modern art, Lady Ashton?”

  Ursula jumped at the sound of his voice and Lady Ashton turned to Lord Wrotham with a flutter of her pale eyelashes. “Surely you don’t disapprove? A girl with Miss Marlow’s prospects should be encouraged to keep up with the very latest in art as well as fashion. Besides, I think Paris would suit her very well….” Much to Ursula’s horror, Lady Ashton gave her arm a playful poke.

  “Of course…” Lord Wrotham demurred, giving Ursula a quick bow and offering her his greeting.