It was close to an hour later that the Ram reached the girl’s small house in St. Austell. The house was filled with light and there were men milling about. He cursed to himself, thought a moment, then left the girl in a narrow ditch some fifty yards away.
He rode home slowly, feeling anticipation for the morrow.
The following morning at ten o’clock, Victoria opened the door to the nursery.
“Torie! Torie!”
Damaris jumped to her feet and scurried toward Victoria. Victoria quickly leaned down and hugged her tightly.
“Torie, I’ve missed you . . . where did you go? Nanny said you wouldn’t come back and then she huffed and said you married the master’s twin, of all the strange things, and—”
“I’m back, Damie. That’s all that matters.”
Suddenly the child stiffened and whispered, “Papa.”
Rafael smiled at the little girl. “Hello, Damaris.”
“You’re not my papa. Who are you?’
“She is direct, if nothing else,” Victoria said, ruffling Damaris’ silky black hair, her father’s hair, Rafael’s hair. And his face. “How do you know he’s not your father, Damie? Doesn’t he look just like your father?”
“No.”
“Have I just been mortally insulted?” Rafael didn’t wait for an answer to his rhetorical question. He dropped to his knees in front of the little girl. “I’m your Uncle Rafael. Can you say my name?”
“It’s a funny name. Mine isn’t.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Damaris is rather unusual, just like Rafael.”
“Rafull,” Damie said. “It’s easy. Papa never comes here.”
Rafael looked up at Victoria, a brow arched in question. When she merely shook her head, he asked Damaris, “Do you mind if I visit you here?”
“No, if Nanny doesn’t mind, but mind you, she has to be in a good temper.”
“This, Rafael, is Nanny Black,” Victoria said, smiling toward the dour old woman. “Nanny, my husband, Captain Rafael Carstairs. Nanny came with Elaine upon her marriage to your brother.”
“Bark off the same tree,” said Nanny Black with a disapproving eye as the young man rose to his feet and offered her his hand. She took it.
“Not according to Damaris,” said Rafael. “She knew immediately I wasn’t her father.”
“Only because the baron never visits the nursery.”
Victoria said to Damaris, who was tugging on her skirt for attention, “Should you like to go riding with your Uncle Rafael and me?”
The little girl shouted with glee. “Nanny. I want to go. I will go.”
“Little terror,” said Nanny Black fondly.
“Have you a proper mount, Victoria?”
“Toddy’s well enough. Since I carry Damaris in front of me, I wouldn’t want to ride that ill- humored brute of yours, Rafael.”
“Gadfly isn’t ill-humored, he’s simply spirited, like my bride. He knows I’m his master and he obeys me, just as—”
“I don’t think Damaris will need a coat, Nanny,” Victoria said quickly, not paying any heed to her husband.
“Should you like me to be your servant until we get downstairs?” With his words, Rafael swung the little girl up on his shoulders. He settled her thin legs on either side of his face and grinned at his wife. “Ready?”
“Damaris,” Victoria said in a clear, very sweet voice, “be certain to hold on tight—to your uncle’s hair.”
Rafael howled, more for Damaris’s benefit than from scalp pain.
“Little terror,” said Nanny Black.
The three of them were met by Elaine in the entryway downstairs. “Where are you taking her?”
“Riding,” said Victoria.
“Mama,” said Damaris, and tugged on Rafael’s hair, “this isn’t Papa, it’s Uncle Rafill.”
Elaine, Victoria noted, looked a bit pale this morning, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. She said, quickly, “Are you feeling all right?”
“No,” said Elaine. “I’m increasing, you know, Victoria.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. It’s just that you look so beautiful, I tend to forget.”
Elaine relaxed visibly. “Do take good care of my daughter, Rafael.”
Rafael winced at a particularly enthusiastic tug on his hair. “If she doesn’t do me in first.”
“Little terror,” said Victoria in her best imitation of Nanny Black, and Damaris went into gales of laughter.
“She does know how to control herself, does she not?” Rafael suddenly looked a bit worried.
Victoria said with a perfectly straight face, “For the most part. Only if she gets excited will she forget—”
Elaine interrupted, “Of course she is perfectly fine, Rafael. Really, Victoria, you shouldn’t tease him so.”
“He deserves it,” said Victoria. “We’re going to Fletcher’s Pond, Elaine, and will have lunch there. I’ll have Damaris back in time for her nap.”
It was Flash who lifted Damaris up to Victoria. “Your name is odd, like Uncle Rafull’s,” Damaris told him from her perch in front of Victoria.
“Rifall, hmmm,” said Flash, giving his captain a drawing smile. “Well, then, little miss, you shall call me Mr. Savory. Doesn’t that add a certain dignity? I’m a proper dignified person, you know.”
“You’re funny,” said Damaris. “I’m ready, Uncle Refill.”
“Yes, ma’am. We will see you later, Mr. Savory.”
Victoria let Rafael go where he wished to. He drew his stallion to a halt every few minutes to view a prospect that he remembered from bygone years. At one point he turned to Victoria and said, “I believe Squire Esterbridge lives just over there. Should you like to visit him and his sterling specimen of a son? Old David, the bully-coward and spineless sod?”
She shook her head, frowning at him. What an odd thing to call David. He’d certainly been gullible, but he’d always been nice enough to her before that long-ago afternoon at Fletcher’s Pond.
They rode finally into St. Austell.
“Ah, nothing has changed, nothing at all,” Rafael said, drawing his stallion in beside Toddy. “What’s happening? Look at that crowd, Victoria.”
Victoria click-clicked Toddy forward and they drew nearer to the crowd congregated just at the edge of the town.
“Stay here,” Rafael said, and Victoria immediately urged Toddy forward, saying over her shoulder, “I know these people. I’ll find out what’s going on.”
Rafael frowned after her, but knew she was right. Actually, when one of the people in the crowd—Mr. Josiah Frogwell—an ancient relic who owned a local inn, spotted Rafael, he immediately said something to the man next to him.
Rafael heard the whispers and the calls: “Baron Drago” . . . “It’s the baron.”
“Mr. Frogwell,” Rafael called out in a loud voice, “I’m not the baron. I’m Rafael Carstairs, his twin.”
The man’s face immediately broke into a smile and Rafael wondered at it. Had his twin alienated the people of St. Austell? How? he wondered. What the devil had he done?
“Welcome home, Master Rafael.”
“The young master’s home.”
Rafael grinned, then spotted young Ralph Bicton, a childhood playmate and the son of the local butcher. He was wearing a bloodied long apron and Rafael guessed he was now in his father’s place.
“Is it really you, Rafael?” Ralph called, striding forward, wiping his hands, thankfully, as he did so.
Their greeting was boisterous until Ralph seemed to recall the difference in their stations. He withdrew a bit, allowing others to come forward. Victoria smiled and spoke, and responded easily even when confronted by Widow Meneburle, a garrulous sausage-curled matron of uncertain years and equally uncertain temper.
Finally, when Victoria could get in a word, she asked, “Why are you all gathered here, Mrs. Meneburle? Is something wrong?”
Mrs. Meneburle, her sausage curls bouncing beside her plump cheeks, stepped close to Toddy and said
in a stage whisper that Rafael had no difficulty at all in overhearing, “It’s those ruffians, Miss Victoria . . . rather, Mrs. Carstairs”—this was said with an arch look—“aye those ne’er-do-wells have ravished poor little Joan Newdowns. Left her in a ditch. Awful, perfectly awful, and the girl can’t tell who they were. They drugged her.” Mrs. Meneburle was excessively pleased at Victoria’s gasp of horror, and added, coming even closer, “Do you know there were horrible bruises on the girl’s wrists and ankles? They’d tied her down and treated her like a trollop. Poor, poor child.”
“But why is everyone standing here?”
Mr. Meledor, St. Austell’s mayor, a florid, balding man who loved nothing more than to hear himself pontificate, said in his rich baritone, “I’m trying to gather information, Mrs. Rafael. We shall discover the identity of these dreadful men.”
“You attribute this rape to the group calling themselves the Hellfire club?” Rafael asked quietly.
“Aye, Master Rafael, we do. They ravish young girls—how many, we have no idea, for you see, they pay the girls’ fathers to do it. Legal, I suppose, but revolting just the same. But then there was the young lady—a real mistake there—she wasn’t just a simple maid but a peer’s daughter, and that made everyone mad as hornets, and now poor little Joan Newdowns. The little maid really didn’t understand, but her ma did and called for Dr. Ludcott. They’d washed her clean, as one might say, but Dr. Ludcott said she weren’t a virgin anymore and there were still signs of blood and men’s seed. It’s got to stop, Master Rafael, yes, sir, it will stop.”
“Don’t forget those bruises,” Mrs. Meneburle said, her eyes glittering.
“Yes,” said Rafael, “it must stop.”
Damaris began to fidget and Victoria quickly said, “Shall we be off now, Rafael? It’s time for luncheon, and Fletcher’s Pond is a good twenty-minute ride from here.”
He looked at her a moment, then said quietly, “I should like to speak to some old acquaintances, Victoria. Would you take Damaris to Fletcher’s Pond? I will join you within thirty minutes.”
She cocked her head to one side, but said quickly enough, “Certainly. We’re off, Damie.”
Victoria heard murmurs as she eased Toddy into a trot. “Aye, Master Rafael will put a stop to this nonsense.” “Good thing the lads back—a long time away.” “But what of the baron?”
“What a mare’s nest,” Rafael said to George Trelion, a young man who now owned his own farm. “I heard that this poor girl was simply the latest in a long line.”
“Aye,” said George, a man of few words. “Hard to know how many.” Rafael now remembered that George had also been a boy of few words as well. He changed the topic, inquiring after George’s family. He managed to ease his way back to the mayor, Mr. Meledor. He remembered how he and Damien used to steal fruit from Meledor’s orchard, and the round of buckshot that had barely missed them one late summer’s night.
“Aye, a horrible thing it is, Mr. Rafael.”
“Have you any ideas at all of the identity of the men involved?”
“Not a clue. There’s a great deal of speculation, of course, always is in these sorts of situations. It’s still everyone’s belief, even the magistrate’s, Sir Jasper Casworth—can you remember Sir Jasper?”
Rafael nodded, picturing a desiccated, bent old man who habitually pursed his lips.
“Well, yes, Sir Jasper believes that all the members of this so-called new Hellfire Club wear masks so that even the members don’t know who the other members are.”
“That would seem wise,” Rafael said, but he couldn’t believe that they didn’t know each other. Impossible, that, but he didn’t disagree.
“Indeed, my boy, indeed.”
“Have they done anything else save rape young girls?”
“They did murder,” said Mr. Meledor in his most portentous voice. “Yes, murder, and that’s how we found out about them paying fathers to rape their daughters. One of the girls died, bled to death, and the father was very upset, you might say.”
“He didn’t say who had paid him for his daughter?”
“He didn’t know,” said Mr. Meledor in some disgust. “Said it was all done through letters. Stupid man.”
“Does anyone have any idea of how many men are involved in this new Hellfire Club?”
Mayor Meledor cleared his throat, a flush creeping up his fleshy jowls. “Well, after that one girl died, another started talking. She said eight men had had her.”
After a while Rafael shook the mayor’s hand, nodded to other folk he recognized, spoke to some old friends, then took his leave. He pushed his stallion as fast as he could gallop toward Fletcher’s Pond.
As for Victoria, she’d managed to dismount from Toddy’s back without oversetting either herself or Damaris. It was a glorious early October day. “Careful not to fall into the pond, Damie,” she told the wriggling small girl, a litany that Victoria doubted ever penetrated the child’s head.
“I want to feed Clarence,” said Damaris.
“You will, love, you will. I can hear him.”
Victoria spread out a blanket beside the tablecloth to wait for Rafael. She was thinking about the horrible rape when she heard his stallion approach.
He dismounted Gadfly beside Toddy and tethered him to a low yew bush.
“Hi, Victoria. Hey, Damaris, do you need more bread for those greedy ducks?”
Victoria said as she looked up at him, “Did you hear the people saying that you would put a stop to all of this?”
“Yes, I heard them.”
“You’re very popular. I can’t imagine why no one ever spoke of you to me during the past five years.”
“I can.” After giving Damaris more bread for the ducks, he eased down beside Victoria. “It’s easy enough to understand. You were Damien’s ward. It was known that Damien and I parted on neutral terms, at the very best. No one would dare speak of me to you, particularly since Damien appears to have inspired resentment. It’s really that simple.” He paused a moment, pulling up a blade of grass and rubbing it between his long fingers. “I heard people referring to Damien. It seemed to me that they disliked him, perhaps feared him, certainly didn’t trust him. Do you know what he has done to inspire such feelings?”
She shook her head. “People in St. Austell have always been kind to me and to Elaine, only just a bit more standoffish with her. I really don’t know.”
“I shall have to find out, I see.”
“Before you become a detective, should you like to eat your luncheon?”
Rafael gave her that smile of his and nodded. He once again counted on his fingers, sighed, and held up one finger.
“It’s just one, Victoria. How would you like to—”
“Rafael. Don’t you dare say what you are thinking.”
17
The stupidities begin when one takes men seriously.
—JEAN GIONO
Rafael was abstracted. Normally, Victoria reflected, whenever he played her lady’s maid, he would kiss her neck, light nipping kisses, and his hands would rove over and around the button fastenings. This evening, however, he planted only one rather perfunctory kiss on her left earlobe, straightened, and absented his mind.
When she sat down in front of her dressing table, she eyed him in her mirror. “All right, what’s bothering you?”
He actually looked startled. “However can you think that anything is wrong?”
She laughed at his bewilderment. “Do you think I’m blind? Do you think I have no knowledge of you at all? It’s rather obvious to me, Rafael. If nothing were bothering you, you would be bothering me until I was swatting at your hands as fast as I could.”
“Ah.” He grinned, and managed something of his normal lecherous look.
“Tell me. Is it the incident with this Hellfire Club?”
Rafael gave it up. He might as well tell her a bit of it. She might have some ideas. “Yes. I just happened to see Dr. Ludcott. He spoke to me of it. It turns out that
the girl, Joan, remembers a roomful of people dressed all in black, their heads and faces also covered in black. Then she was being laid on a long table and went to sleep. Obviously they drugged her.” He paused a moment, looked at the Aubusson carpet intently, and added, “Did you know that Joan Newdowns is fourteen years old?”
Victoria winced. “I knew she was young, but . . . “Oh, God, that’s awful, Rafael. Did she recognize any of their voices? Can she remember anything that might help?”
He looked at her for a long moment, then said, much to her astonishment, “Yes, she did.”
“You’re jesting. Truly?”
“Yes. She’s not certain, of course, but just before she went to sleep, she heard all of them talking—arguing, she thinks. She told her mother she heard David Esterbridge. Dr. Ludcott, when Mrs. Newdowns told him of it, nearly dropped with apoplexy on the spot. He doesn’t know what to do, which is why he cornered me. Who, he was whining, would believe a fourteen-year-old girl?”
“Everyone would if it were anyone other than Squire Esterbridge’s son. Their family’s been practically an institution for generations, and the squire—well, everyone likes him immensely.”
“Exactly. An interesting problem.” Rafael paused, looked at Victoria with a serious expression, and said quite calmly, “As I told Dr. Ludcott, no one would possibly imagine a bunch of hooligans or lower-class ruffians raping a girl the way this was done. Or the way any of the others were done. First, such a group wouldn’t have the money to pay the fathers. No, the ritual and the outward secrecy of the black masks makes it very unlikely. Ludcott agreed, but was very unhappy about it, as you can well imagine. I also suggested to him that he keep quiet about it for the moment. Impossible to confront either David or Squire Esterbridge. A waste of time, certainly, and it would cause an unlimited amount of bad feeling. One also has to wonder why they chose to call themselves the Hellfire Club, aping that infamous group of men some forty years ago. No, it’s wild young men hereabouts who are responsible. And they must be stopped. Thus my obvious distraction, Victoria, at least to you.”