A Suspicious Affair Read Online Free PDF

sheet.
    Marisol took the letter reluctantly, as one might take a worm meant for fishing bait. She dutifully reread the message and studied the writing. “No, I’m sorry, it’s unfamiliar to me. The script does look feminine, though a bit crude, as if disguised.”
    “You think it could of been one of your friends, passing on unpleasant news?”
    “My so-called friends have never hesitated before about keeping me informed of Arvid’s little peccadillos. They usually gave me the news to my face over tea, mixing a little spite with the sugar.”
    “But it must have been someone as knew you’d be home.”
    She shrugged. “That wouldn’t be hard to surmise. A woman in my condition hardly goes for curricle rides in the park at the fashionable hour.”
    Dimm took back the note, folded it carefully, and placed it securely in the inner pocket of his waistcoat. “Notice anything unusual about the message?” he asked.
    “You mean how the person misspelled
lying? Your husband is lieing, with a lady in the carriage alley,”
she quoted from memory. “I remember wondering if he was lying there injured, telling a falsehood, or carrying on some liaison. Knowing Arvid, I guessed correctly, it turned out. Either my correspondent is a poor speller or undecided which crime was worse.”
    “As in some other woman altogether he might have promised the moon?”
    Marisol shook her head. “I’m sure I do not know the latest
on dits
concerning Arvid’s affairs. He could have had any number of mistresses. What he might have promised them besides money is beyond my imagination.” She removed a ring from the chain around her neck. “I already had this, for all the joy it brought me. Even if my fingers were too swollen to wear it.”
    The duchess looked about to weep. Dimm hurried on: “So you went outside, even though it was a biting raw day and you had to go down that fiercesome tall stairwell in the hallway, then out and acrost the lawns. How come, Your Grace, if you didn’t care?”
    “I didn’t go down for the confirmation. I went because I wanted something. I didn’t think even Arvid could deny my request to leave for the country when he himself was found so much at fault.”
    “Were you surprised that the female was Lady Armbruster?”
    “A bit, since I had thought we were by way of being friends, but her reputation was none too steady.”
    “Neither were her nerves, it seems, shrieking and carrying on like a banshee.”
    “Yes, I wondered why she was so distraught, once I had time to think. Surely she must have known I’d never have bandied her name around, but dallying with a married man in his own driveway had to be a chancy thing at best.”
    “Do you think she came back to the carriage after you left, and shot Arvid? The duke, that is. No disrespect, ma’am.”
    “I wouldn’t have thought she could hold the pistol steady enough, the way she was carrying on when she ran away. But why would she have shot her own lover? Even as high-strung as Nessie is, she must have known that couldn’t stop the gossip. I’m afraid I cannot explain her actions. You’ll just have to ask her yourself.”
    Dimm scratched his head with the pencil. “Now that’d be a fancy piece of investigation, even for Bow Street’s finest. I suppose you didn’t hear all the news making the servants’ grapevine after all. Lady Armbruster got up last night and took herself another dose of laudanum, then another, and another. She’ll be pleading her case at the pearly gates, not Old Bailey.”
    Marisol gasped and clutched at her chest. Dimm leaped to his feet, ready to race for the bell pull.
    “No, no,” she said, halting him in mid-wince, “I am all right. Just let me catch my breath a moment.”
    Dimm was all apologies for breaking the news to her that way. “Deuce take it, I should of known better. Are you sure I can’t call for your woman or your aunt?”
    “Aunt Tess is prostrate with the vapors already. I’d not have her