Death and the Cyprian Society Read online

  Eddie smiled, but it only made her look anxious, and Arabella reminded herself that the child was ill, after all. “Just as you like, Auntie,” she said. “And you will keep me informed, won’t you? To tell me how you get on?”

  “Naturally. You and I are partners, now.”

  And this time, Eddie’s smile lit up her face like good health and sunshine.

  Chapter 7

  Over the course of the next two weeks, Arabella lost nearly all her friends. Such things often happen when one falls in love, and Arabella certainly exhibited every symptom synonymous with that giddy state: She scarcely ate or slept. Frequently she would go into a trance and not hear a word that was spoken to her. Worst of all, she became an expert on the subject of her affections, and would ramble on interminably about every slightest detail pertaining to her beloved’s outstanding qualities.

  For, though she had a career, Arabella had never held an actual job before, and quickly fell into the novice’s manner of thinking that everything about her place of work made for exciting conversation. Hence, her subject embraced, but was not limited to, customer relations, standard procedures for opening and closing the shop, taking inventory, and quality control. She should no doubt have loved to discuss the chemical composition of the facial creams and hair dyes, as well, but fortunately for everyone else, these were trade secrets, and Arabella had taken an oath never to reveal them.

  Her friends had been supportive at first. But the London season was under way, and there were those who felt they might have had more lavish entertainments from their celebrated hostess than they in fact got. At first, everyone had endured Arabella’s ecstatic descriptions of shelving systems and stockroom routines in the hopes that she would soon settle in and stop talking about them so much. But she didn’t, and at last even her most fervent admirers were forced to admit that she was not going to get over this anytime soon. A few friends who had gone out of town, and who were in the habit of corresponding with her from wherever they happened to be, stopped writing after receiving one or two letters full of nothing but Palais de Beautay minutiae.

  It was easier for the Cyprians. They barely knew Arabella yet, and simply found things to do elsewhere. But in time, her gentleman admirers of long standing came to openly resent Arabella’s fixation, and one by one, began to give excuses for non-attendance at her twice-weekly gatherings. It was a shame, really. The Lustings salons had been famous for their stimulating discussions, and the men lamented amongst themselves the unhappy change that had come over their favorite hostess.

  Arabella scarcely noticed. The imposition upon her free-living lifestyle of a job with set times and daily routines imparted meaning to her days and soothed her restless spirit. Sometimes she nearly forgot what she was really going there for.

  In fact, if it were not for Eddie continually asking questions and making suggestions, Arabella might have devoted herself to the shop completely, and never been heard from again. But Eddie kept her focused—responding patiently to every enraptured description of the business, and the stock, and the customers—by reminding her aunt what this was all in aid of, until the child’s persistence was finally rewarded.

  “Not yet,” said Arabella, in reply to the usual question, “but I believe I now know the room in which Zhenay must keep them, for I have inspected every square inch of the ground floor, including the lab kitchen, where our inventory is cooked and created, and there are definitely no letters there.”

  “You will need to search upstairs, then,” said Eddie.

  “Quite. Of course, I have suspected they were up there all along; they are almost certain to be somewhere in Madame’s bedroom.”

  “Why the bedroom, especially?”

  “Isn’t that where you would keep them, were you a blackmailer?”

  “No,” said Eddie promptly. “I should place them in the right-hand drawer of my boudoir desk.”

  “I am fairly certain that Madame does not have a boudoir,” said Arabella. “Besides, her desk is downstairs in the office, and I have already checked there.”

  “In that case, I suppose I would hide them in my bedroom,” said Eddie thoughtfully. “Underneath the mattress.”

  “That might serve if there were only a few letters. But having observed the behavior of the customers who come into our shop, I feel certain that Madame Zhenay is blackmailing nearly all of them. If my guess is correct, she would have far too many letters to stuff under a mattress. Besides, that would be risky. She probably keeps them in a strongbox. The trouble is, I have no excuse to go upstairs and look for it.”

  Arabella would have to find one soon, however, as her debtors were growing increasingly impatient. She had to keep telling herself, I am all right now. For this moment and this day, I am all right. But when she went to the printers to collect the new CS calling cards, her supply of good moments suddenly ran out.

  Mr. Weems, ordinarily the soul of cordiality, gave her the fish eye as she entered. Arabella surmised at first that he was having an off day, and that it had nothing to do with her, personally.

  “Ah!” she said. “Good afternoon, Mr. Weems! My calling cards, if you please!”

  He drew out a box from under the counter, and lifted the lid to show her the top card: Two golden birds of paradise, facing each other with tails intertwined, against a background of imperial blue, and in the space thus framed by their necks, breasts and legs:

  THE CYPRIAN SOCIETY

  ST. JAMES’S PLACE

  LONDON

  MISS A. BEAUMONT

  Arabella professed herself delighted. As arranged, in lieu of payment, she produced for the proprietor two passes to her new theater’s opening-night extravaganza.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Weems, shoving the passes back at her. “We do this on a strictly cash basis, or we don’t do it at all.”

  Arabella was shocked. “But . . . I thought we agreed . . .”

  “Yeah. Well, it’s different now; the missus said you was practically bankrupt. Besides, she’s not keen to go—says she’d rather attend the Samuel Johnson review at the Haymarket.”

  Taking up the passes again, Arabella turned on Mr. Weems an icy, gray-green stare. “A good businessman never goes back on his word, sir.” Her voice was level, low, and deadly. “I offered you free admission to what promises to be the season’s greatest gala, if not the decade’s, and you agreed to take passes in lieu of payment. That you have gone back on your word is an unforeseen development, as I have known you for an honest and fair-dealing tradesman in the past. But the fact that you and your . . . ‘missus’ . . . have decided instead upon the Samuel Johnson revue does not surprise me in the least. Simple minds are unimpressed by the astounding, and simply astounded by the unimpressive!”

  “It’s not that,” said the printer, quailing before her unassailable supremacy. “We’d just . . . rather have the money, that’s all.”

  “You would rather have the money,” said Arabella, exhaling forcefully through her nostrils, “when you might have been the envy of your circle! The number of tickets is limited, Mr. Weems. We have had a great many applications for them. Had you decided to accept the passes, and then offered them up for sale, you might have made ten times what you are charging for the calling cards. However,” she said, returning the tickets to her reticule, “I am glad this has happened, for these are worth their weight in gold, and I would much prefer to bestow them upon someone who fully appreciates their value. Good day!”

  A short time later, she was sitting in her carriage beneath the plane trees in Berkeley Square, consoling herself with a frozen pineapple mousse brought over from Gunter’s by no less a personage than James Gunter himself. At least he had had the sense to accept passes in lieu of currency, although Arabella might have paid cash for this little indulgence. Indeed, she might have paid for the calling cards, too; things had not got quite so bad as all that. But she was worried, and when Arabella worried, she instinctively curtailed the outflow of all monies whatsoever, excep
ting her servants’ wages. She was reflecting on the possibility that it might be equally unwise to squander her theater passes, when Trotter was hailed by a passing postman, who handed up a letter for his mistress.

  Belinda had written again, and Arabella found herself torn between two pleasures, for she could not wait to read this latest missive from her sister, yet dared not risk setting aside the pineapple mousse on such a warm day. She therefore attempted two options simultaneously whilst the carriage was moving, with predictable results: Drops of melting mousse began to adorn the pages of the letter, but as they only fell on the margins, Arabella did not care.

  Dearest Bell,

  Last week I had a very queer dream, which, given your interest in such matters, I shall endeavor to relate to you as best I can. Well, then, I found myself on a rooftop in Baghdad, admiring the city at dawn. Everything was touched with gold, and one of the minarets was smothered in climbing roses. I thought it very pretty at first, although the color of the roses—a threatening scarlet—bothered me, for some reason. All at once, they began to throb and pulse with a kind of palpable evil. The next thing I knew, Baghdad had disappeared, and the roses were scarlet spots on someone’s skin. My skin! When I woke up, I learned that Sir Birdwood-Fizzer had come over all spotty in the night. It is Measles, and the house is under quarantine until further notice. So I am afraid that I shall not be returning home next week, after all.

  Arabella groaned aloud. Absolutely nothing seemed to be going her way these days. She had been unable to afford Bath this season. She had not found Costanze’s letters yet. And now she would be denied the solace of her sister’s presence until nobody knew when.

  Stop this, she told herself. It’s never as bad as one thinks! Look at all the things I have to be happy about: a beautiful summer; a fascinating new job, which earns me a small but regular salary; the slow but steady return of Eddie’s health . . .

  This last was a mixed blessing, as the child had commenced a terrific teasing campaign to be allowed to go out of doors. But although Arabella was obliged to run risks in her professional life, she was loathe to take chances when it came to her niece’s health, and she stood her ground against Eddie’s sorties with a determination that would have impressed General Wellesley.

  Arabella looked in on her charge as soon as she got home, and discovered the little invalid with her eyes shut and an open book face-down upon the coverlet. When her aunt attempted to remove it, Eddie said, “I am not asleep, you know; I’m thinking.”

  “Are you? What about?”

  “Murder. If a murder were discovered, how should I proceed?”

  “And how should you?”

  “First, I should go to the scene where the crime was committed. That is key. And I should look all over it for anything unusual or out of place which might be important. Then I should hold private conversations with each person who either saw or heard anything, or who lived nearby.”

  “Ah! And what should you ask them?”

  “That would depend upon the circumstances. But mostly, I think, I should just let them talk, and watch their faces and gestures, to see whether they were lying or frightened, or keeping something back. Then I should write up all the details in a notebook, the way you do, so as not to forget anything, and when I had done all I could, I should take the case to my stepfather, and ask for police assistance.”

  “That is impressive, Eddie. Did you just think all this up whilst lying here?”

  “Some of it. The rest came from this book Frank brought me whilst you were out.” She held it up so that Arabella could read the title: Proven Techniques for the Modern Detective. “But now I’m dull, again. I am staying in bed, like you told me I should, but there is nothing to do here.” She sighed tragically. “Probably, I shall go mad.”

  “I don’t think there is much danger of that,” said Arabella, smiling.

  “But there is, though. For instance, before you came in, I was lying here quietly, with my hands folded, thinking the things I have just told you about. When you leave the room I shall go on lying here, but now that I’ve told you what I was thinking, there is no reason to go on with that. So I shall simply stare and stare and stare out the window. Perhaps a bird will fly past. Or a breeze will shake that bough and cause it to bob up and down a bit. I shall observe it through my little telescope. There is a very early peach hanging from a branch out there, which is nearly ripe. Will the breeze be strong enough to shake it off? Probably it won’t. And then I shall put the telescope away and use the chamber pot.

  “Life is so short, Aunt Bell! I might be dead in a week or a month or thirty-five years, but however long I live, I shall always regret having spent so many precious days lying in bed and being dull, when I might have been solving a mystery!”

  “Well,” said Arabella, “I’ll tell you what: If you will consent to lying here for the rest of the day like a good little invalid, then tomorrow I shall allow you to go out of doors. You must agree to stay in a chair, though, and there is to be no excitement; no exerting yourself. The last time I allowed you to come downstairs, you were exhausted for three days afterward!”

  “I perceive your problem,” said Eddie astutely. “You are on the horns of an ethical dilemma, here: Should you confine me to bed, and risk losing me to madness, or allow me to go outside, where I might be excited to death? But I promise you, the former plan incurs the greater risk.”

  “Where did you learn the term ‘ethical dilemma’?” asked Arabella in amazement.

  “From Epicurus.”

  “You’re reading Epicurus?”

  “There is very little else one can do in bed, at my age.”

  Arabella smiled. “Eddie, dear; you may be my brother’s issue, but I suspect that you are actually more like me.”

  “Exactly,” said Eddie, with a smile. “I am the daughter you never had.”

  The next afternoon Eddie was permitted to sit for an hour in the garden whilst her aunt read aloud to her from Grimm’s Household Tales.

  “ ‘Then Sana put the water on to boil, and began to sharpen the knives,’ ” read Arabella, “ ‘for she was preparing to cook the little boy that very day and serve him up for her master’s supper.’ Now, that’s odd, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, rather,” Eddie replied. “I doubt that her master, being told he was eating his ward, would have been happy about it.”

  “No, I did not mean that. Well, that, too, of course, but I was referring principally to the fact that whilst the Grimms seldom give names to their heroes, they almost never give names to their villains, being satisfied with ‘the wolf,’ ‘the witch,’ or ‘the giant.’ And yet this person, the very worst of them all, the cannibal servant, is named ‘Sana.’ I wonder . . .”

  “What, Aunt Bell?”

  “Whether this story isn’t based on a true incident. Not the part further on, where the children turn themselves into ducks and chandeliers; I mean this beginning bit. Was there a cook named Sana, who killed and cooked her master’s stepchild? She might have been an ancestor of Madame Zhenay’s!”

  But Eddie, delighted to be out of doors again, was admiring the natural beauty that surrounded her, and giving little heed to cannibals, with or without names.

  “Look, Aunt Bell! Is that not the cunningest thing you have ever seen?”

  A fledgling was perched upon the uppermost erection of Arabella’s double-phallused Pan statue, frantically fluttering its wings and emitting loud, insistent cheeps. As they watched, the parent bird alighted with a beakful of smashed insects, and proceeded to stuff the buggy porridge down its youngster’s gullet.

  “No,” replied her aunt, who resented being upstaged. “I have seen any number of things more cunning than that!”

  (Nevertheless, it was the first subject she wrote about in her next letter to Belinda: “The weather continues glorious here, and yesterday, Eddie and I saw a pair of tits on Pan’s penis . . . ”)

  Arabella resumed reading aloud from where she had left off. But i
n glancing up a moment later, she saw that Eddie now wore a wide-eyed, fixed expression. Perhaps, Arabella reflected, the subject of pedicide was not the wisest choice for youthful convalescents.

  A second later, Eddie sprang from her chair and commenced scrabbling in the dirt.

  “What on Earth are you doing?” cried Arabella.

  In point of fact, “earth” was exactly what she was doing. It flew in the air as she dug, and in short order, it covered the child’s hands, lined her fingernails, stained the front of her wrapper where she was kneeling in it, and soiled the hem of her nightgown.

  “Look, Aunt Bell!” Eddie cried, holding up a stone the size of a cow’s heart. “It’s Stupid-Looking!”

  “It certainly is,” said Arabella crossly. “You were supposed to remain in your chair and not move!”

  “No! I mean, it’s Stupid-Looking! Neddy’s turtle! Remember?”

  Observing the “stone” more closely, Arabella now saw that it had a face. And a pair of sleepy-looking red eyes that blinked in the sun.

  Two years previously, Eddie’s half-brother, Neddy, had brought a pair of turtles to Lustings, which had promptly escaped into the house. One of them, and Arabella rather thought it had been this one, had later resurfaced in Costanze’s plate of cake, with spectacular, if predictable consequences.

  “He is hibernating,” said Arabella. “Put him back, and cover him up; he’ll come out when he’s ready.”

  “All right,” said Eddie, stashing the reptile in the pocket of her wrapper.

  “No, darling; I meant put him back in the ground.”

  “I shall, Auntie. But not till he’s served his purpose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have an idea about our mystery. It mightn’t work, but it won’t hurt the turtle, either way. Now, where could Klunk be?”

  “Why? Is it a two-turtle idea?”

  “No. I am just wondering what happened to him, because Klunk and Stupid-Looking were such good friends.”