Page 16 of Dead Beside the Thames
On seeing her, Hamilton’s features softened, and his lips curved upward. “Mrs. Adair. It’s been several weeks. The ladies will be delighted to see you.”
“Thank you, Hamilton.” Penelope stepped over the threshold. “The back parlor as usual?”
“Indeed, ma’am.”
She allowed Hamilton to relieve her of her bonnet and coat, then waved airily. “I know my way.”
Hamilton smiled in avuncular fashion and bowed, and she walked to the rear of the front hall and on down the long corridor that led to the ducal family’s back parlor, a room that had always been the family’s private gathering place.
The back parlor overlooked the mansion’s rear gardens, and when Penelope walked into the room, the light from the windows softly illuminated the ladies settled on the long sofas and the many armchairs arranged in the center of the space. She was pleased to see that her favorite grandes dames were in attendance, along with a full complement of the middle-aged Cynster matrons.
She was also reassured to note that no one who was not considered “a part of the family” was present. Although she herself wasn’t a Cynster by either birth or marriage, as she had two Cynster sisters-in-law and a Cynster brother-in-law, she had for many years been considered “one of the tribe.”
The ladies noticed a newcomer and, as a group, broke off their conversations to look questioningly in her direction. Their eyes lit as they recognized who had come calling.
“Penelope!” Honoria, Duchess of St. Ives, their hostess and the natural leader of the middle-aged contingent, smiled in welcome and waved her forward. “How lovely to see you. Come in, my dear.”
“Is this a social call?” Patience Cynster archly inquired. “Or do you have questions for our collective mind?”
Penelope grinned as she joined them. She knew they all delighted in her inquiries, which they took as a challenge to their knowledge of the ton. “The latter,” she confirmed, much to the group’s obvious pleasure.
She spent several minutes greeting and being greeted by those present, which included three of the ton’s more ancient grandes dames—Helena, Dowager Duchess of St. Ives, Lady Horatia Cynster, and the redoubtable Lady Osbaldestone.
With the formalities of her children’s health and most recent accomplishments and the well-being of her family duly reported, Penelope subsided onto a large ottoman that placed her more or less at the focal point of the gathering.
“So!” Lady Celia Cynster regarded her with open anticipation. “What’s your question for us?”
Lady Osbaldestone snorted and tapped her cane on the floor. “In my opinion, we’re in dire need of some meaty puzzle with which to invigorate our brains.”
“Do say you have one,” Honoria advised. “Ton-wise, it’s been rather dreary of late.”
Penelope grinned. “I do have such a query, and the case it’s connected to is liable to cause quite a social brouhaha.”
“Excellent!” Helena declared. “Those are the puzzles we like best.”
“So, dear,” Celia instructed, “start at the beginning. Who’s dead?”
“I suspect you might not yet have heard, but Viscount Sedbury’s body was pulled from the Thames on Sunday. He’d been strangled.”
“About time!” and “What a relief!” and similar reactions echoed through the room. Penelope heard not one single expression of sorrow or even regret. She waited silently for the furor to abate, and her assumption that she wouldn’t need to say anything else to learn more was soon borne out.
“Sedbury, heh?” Honoria exchanged a meaningful glance with Patience. “How telling that I feel so much relief and not a shred of grief on learning that a member of the nobility—a marquess’s heir, no less—was murdered.”
“Indeed.” Patience looked around the gathering. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I find myself quite in charity with whoever managed to bump Sedbury off. He was an out-and-out bad ’un, and the world is a better place without him in it.” Patience met Penelope’s eyes. “I doubt you’ll find anyone in the ton who will mourn his passing.”
Penelope grimaced. “I never met the man, which I find decidedly odd.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Horatia advised. “But given your age, you never having crossed his path socially is understandable.”
Honoria explained, “All the hostesses ceased sending him invitations within two years of him coming on the town. He was an arrogant bore and, indeed, a dangerous case. No one wanted to be responsible for introducing him to innocents, male or female, that he might subsequently corrupt.”
Lady Osbaldestone nodded sagely. “From the first, there was something exceedingly ‘off’ about him.”
“His death is truly the best thing that could happen to his family.” Helena glanced at Honoria. “Do remind me to send Georgina a note.”
“The marchioness?” Penelope guessed.
Helena nodded. “She’s younger than us, of course”—with a wave, she included Lady Osbaldestone, Horatia, Celia, and Louise, the older generation present that day—“but older than our children’s generation. That said, we—the grandes dames and our peers—have always known what a cross Sedbury was for Georgina and her children, and Rattenby, too, to bear.”
