A Fatal Footnote Read online

  Since the restaurant was within walking distance for each of them—Pen coming from home and Maguire from the police station—they agreed to meet at the Sour Grapes.

  It was a wine bar that yearned to be trendy and probably had been twenty years ago but could no longer compare to the up-to-date places in bigger cities like Birmingham, Leeds, or London. The residents of Chumley didn’t care—anyplace that served wine and had a cheese platter on the menu was bloody slick in their opinion.

  Penelope approached the Sour Grapes with a sense of anticipation. She always enjoyed the time she spent with Maguire—their relationship was friendly verging on the romantic. Penelope was still getting over her breakup with her longtime boyfriend, Miles, and, even though she’d been planning to dump him, had been quite stung when he’d dumped her first.

  The weather had turned colder and the night sky was clear with a scattering of stars. Penelope walked briskly, the frigid air freezing the tips of her ears and turning her fingers numb. She pulled her collar up and tightened her scarf around her neck.

  The windows of the Sour Grapes were fogged over and the blast of heat felt heavenly when Penelope pulled open the door.

  The restaurant wasn’t terribly crowded—a few people at the granite-topped bar that ran the length of the room and several of the best tables already occupied.

  Penelope was unwinding her scarf when she felt a gust of cold air and turned around to see Maguire coming through the door.

  He smiled when he saw her.

  “Am I late?” he said breathlessly after planting a brief kiss on her cheek.

  “Not at all. I just got here.”

  A hostess, in a long skirt and a billowy blouse with menus tucked under her arm, appeared and led them to a table toward the back.

  “This way you won’t feel the cold air when the door opens,” she said as she plunked the menus down on the table. “It’s right bitter out tonight. They say we might even get a few flurries.” She put her hands on her hips. “Would you care for a drink?” She looked at Penelope, her head tilted.

  “I’ll have a glass of your house red, please.”

  “And you?” She turned to Maguire.

  “A pint of Newcastle Brown Ale for me.” He smiled sheepishly at Penelope. “I’m not much of a wine drinker, I’m afraid, even if this is a wine bar.”

  “It’s actually more pub than wine bar,” Penelope said, looking around. “I’m beginning to think that every establishment in Chumley turns into a pub at one point or another.”

  Maguire laughed. “You could be right.”

  A waitress in black pants and a white shirt with a short apron tied around her waist brought their drinks.

  Maguire took a sip of his ale and then licked the foam off his upper lip. Penelope felt her heart flutter just a bit. There was something so endearing about Maguire—certainly a big dose of charm along with a boyish quality and a lack of self-consciousness, which was a change of pace from the sophisticated and hard-driving men she’d known in New York.

  “I heard there was quite a scene earlier—someone standing in the middle of the high street protesting.”

  Maguire ran a hand over his face and Penelope heard the slight rasp of a day’s growth of beard.

  “Yes. It seems the woman resented the fact that the new Duchess of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke is an American.” He whistled. “She was quite the nutter. Put up a real fuss when Constable Cuthbert tried to bring her in.”

  “Did you arrest her?”

  Maguire tapped his glass with a finger. “We could have. It would have been within our rights—creating a public nuisance. But we decided against it. The poor thing needs psychiatric help, not jail time.”

  “Did you just let her go?”

  “Not exactly. A social worker arranged for her to get an appointment with a doctor and a counselor.”

  “So you don’t think she’s dangerous?” Penelope hesitated. “Charlotte is afraid that the killer might have actually meant for her to be the target.”

  “Worthington mentioned that. We don’t think it’s very likely, but we’re looking into it.”

  “I imagine this is all keeping you very busy,” she said.

  Maguire let out a gust of air. “Yes. The murder at Worthington House has us all on our toes, that’s for sure.” He ran a finger down the condensation on the outside of his glass. “It seems that the decision has been made that we’re not to be trusted with such a high-profile case. They’ve decided to call in one of the big boys from the Met—the Metropolitan Police—to take over the investigation.”

  “Do you think that’s Worthington’s doing?”

  Maguire leaned back in his chair. “Oh, that’s almost certain. He wants this cleaned up and fast.” He gave a bitter laugh. “He has a honeymoon to go on, after all.” He sighed. “He’s demanding someone with big-city experience.”

  “But you used to work in Leeds before you came to Chumley,” Penelope protested. “Isn’t that a big enough city for him?”

  An odd look came over Maguire’s face. It made Penelope think of a shade being drawn down or a book closed.

  Just then the waitress appeared at their table with a pad and pen in hand.

  “Have you decided?” she said without looking at them.

  Penelope got the distinct impression that Maguire was quite relieved by the interruption.

  * * *

  * * *

  Penelope felt a spark of delight at waking up in her own cottage. Worthington House was terribly grand and filled with beautiful antiques and other expensive furnishings, but she preferred the coziness of her little home on the high street.

  Today she was heading to the Open Book to work on a display she’d promised Mabel she would put together in honor of the wedding of Charlotte and Worthington. She was planning to gather an array of titles dealing with princesses and knights in shining armor from Cinderella to Meg Cabot’s contemporary take in The Princess Diaries.

  Mrs. Danvers scowled at Penelope as she retrieved her coat from the closet in the foyer and slipped it on.

  “I’ll be home again soon enough,” she told the cat, who turned her back and stalked off.

  Penelope did a last check of Mrs. Danvers’s food and water bowls to be sure they were sufficiently full—Mrs. Danvers viewed a half-full bowl with disdain—and then closed the front door of the cottage and headed off down the high street.

  She’d decided to walk—she wanted to stop in at the newsstand on her way to the Open Book. The wind was being playful today—lifting the ends of her scarf and blowing them over her face as if it was some sort of childish game. It wasn’t as cold as the day before, and Penelope held her face up to the sun that was shining down from a clear blue sky.

  She passed the estate agency next to the apothecary and was about to pass the newsstand when she remembered to go in. She thought she would see if the London papers were covering the murder at Worthington House—the local news was usually relegated to the weekly Chumley paper, but this was a fairly high-profile story.

  Pen pushed open the door and paused to catch her breath. The place smelled of newsprint and the slick glossy paper of the high-end magazines like Tatler and Horse & Hound.

  Mr. Channa was behind the counter, wearing a bright orange turban. He greeted Penelope with a respectful nod of his head.

  Penelope scanned the stacks of London papers and chose the Daily Telegraph and, for something more sensational, the Sun.

  Mr. Channa nodded again as Pen dropped some coins into the palm of his outstretched hand.

  “That’s a shame—what happened yesterday,” he said, shaking his head. “Just because the Duke of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke took an American to be his bride?” His expression was troubled. “It brought back bad memories of when I came to this country.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry.”

  “They
did not want us here—the British. Many Indians were immigrating to England at the time. There were protests and riots. One young man—Sanjay Banerjee—was even murdered. It was a terrible time for us.”

  “I didn’t know,” Penelope said.

  Mr. Channa smiled. “As in the famous song by the Beatles, ‘all you need is love’ to make the world a better place.”

  Penelope thanked him and was about to leave the shop when a rack of travel brochures caught her eye. She thought she’d take a few home to study—she really ought to see more of England while she was here.

  She tucked brochures on the Cotswolds, Stratford-upon-Avon, and the Yorkshire Dales into her tote bag and was about to turn to leave when another brochure caught her eye. She pulled it from the rack. There was a photograph of an impressive home on the front and beneath it the text read Winterbourne Abbey.

  Penelope began to read. The abbey had belonged to the Winterbourne family—purchased by the first Earl of Doveshire-on-Tweed, Lord Charles Winterbourne—until recently when it was sold to the National Trust.

  Now that was odd, Penelope thought as she left the newsstand. Why would the Winterbournes give up the family home?

  * * *

  * * *

  Why did they sell? That’s easy,” Mabel said, when Penelope joined her in the bookstore. “The Winterbournes probably needed the money. A lot of those old families found their bank accounts running dry for various reasons—gambling debts, bad investments, rising costs—running those large houses isn’t cheap. There’s a whole host of reasons why they might have had to sell.”

  “But to sell the family home . . .”

  “I’m sure they sold off everything they could before resorting to that,” Mabel said as she straightened a stack of books on the counter—Charlotte Davenport’s latest title, The Regency Rogue. “Like artwork, the family silver, bigger and bigger pieces of their land.”

  “So in other words—”

  “In other words, Tobias Winterbourne has a title but no money.” Mabel raised an eyebrow. “Although he’ll have plenty now thanks to his marriage to Cissie Emmott. She inherited more than enough from her family and I’m assuming some of that will go to Tobias.”

  “So she got a title and he got a fortune,” Penelope said, scanning a nearby shelf for any books that would work for her planned display on princesses and their knights. She pulled a title from the shelf and glanced at the back cover.

  “It’s not as common as it used to be, but it still goes on,” Mabel said, coming out from around the counter. She glanced at the book in Penelope’s hand. “Interestingly enough, a lot of the matches involved Americans—women with money sent abroad to find a husband with a title. They were known as dollar princesses.”

  Mabel leaned against the bookshelf. “It started in eighteen seventy-four when Jennie Jerome—an American—married Lord Randolph Churchill.”

  “Any relation to—”

  Mabel nodded. “Yes. She gave birth to Winston Churchill, the future prime minister.” Mabel brushed a speck of lint from her sweater. “The trend continued up until the Second World War. Marriage to a British nobleman was seen as a shortcut to social acceptance for the women and a welcome infusion of cash for the impoverished nobility.”

  “You don’t suppose that Worthington chose Charlotte—”

  “Oh, no,” Mabel said. “The Worthingtons kept a close watch on their fortune. Worthington has no need for Charlotte’s money, which I gather is rather substantial.” She tapped the book in Penelope’s hand. “Like your fairy-tale princesses’, theirs is a love match.”

  Pen grabbed a copy of M. M. Kaye’s The Ordinary Princess and added it to the stack in her arms.

  Mabel glanced at Pen. “Did you find a copy of The Princess Bride? I think that would be a good addition to your selection.”

  Pen carried the books to the display table set up at the front of the store. She’d covered it with a length of gold cloth she’d bought online. She arranged the books on stands and placed the sign Figgy had made—she was very artistic, Penelope had discovered—in the center along with a rhinestone-covered tiara she’d ordered from a costume shop.

  She stood back to examine the display. She rearranged a couple of the books and straightened the cloth where it had bunched up slightly.

  “What do you think?” she called to Mabel, who had just finished ringing up a sale.

  Mabel came and stood next to Pen. “I like it. It was a wonderful idea, given all the excitement over the Worthington wedding. Very clever.” She smiled at Penelope and gave her a quick hug. “I honestly don’t know what I did without you.”

  Penelope felt a warm glow. She reached out and tweaked the position of one of the books.

  She had a sudden thought. “Do you suppose it was a love match between Tobias and Cissie? In spite of what they each gained because of it? They seem oddly mismatched somehow.”

  Mabel brushed a strand of white hair off her forehead. “I don’t know. I don’t really know anything about them other than that she was known as the Loo Paper Princess in the tabloids. Rather cheeky of them, if you ask me.”

  As soon as Pen was satisfied with the display, she grabbed the papers she’d bought at the newsstand and sat down at the table in the corner where she held her writing group.

  She opened up the Daily Telegraph and scanned the headlines on the front page. There was no mention of the murder of Cissie Winterbourne. She found a discreet headline on the second page and quickly skimmed the article. It was short and there wasn’t anything she didn’t already know.

  Hopefully the Sun would have something more interesting. A glaring headline in seventy-two-point type was splayed across the front page—Loo Paper Princess Cissie Winterbourne Murdered.

  Penelope began reading. The paper recounted the murder in lurid detail—some of it accurate and some of it not but all of it sensational. The story detailed Cissie’s early life—schooling at the Oakwood School for Girls, a year at the University of Bedfordshire, and her arrival in London where she became a muse for designer Molly Goddard, who was known, appropriately enough, for her chiffon “princess dresses.”

  It went on to her life in London—various romances with high-profile men; the opening of her own design studio, Atelier Classique; and finally her marriage to Lord Tobias Winterbourne.

  Several paragraphs were devoted to Tobias as well: his illustrious lineage—descended, albeit somewhat distantly, from King William III—his schooling at King’s College London, his clubs—Brooks’s, the Beefsteak Club, and, rounding it all out, the Turf Club.

  The article was lavishly illustrated with photographs—the Winterbourne wedding; the Worthington wedding; Tobias and Cissie in evening dress attending the premiere of the new James Bond film; and one of them at a party, holding glasses of champagne. The picture brought Penelope up short. Cissie was standing facing Tobias who was shoulder to shoulder with another woman. Penelope realized with a start that the other woman was Rose Ainsley.

  And in the picture, it looked very much as if Tobias and Rose were a couple—not Tobias and Cissie. Had they been?

  She wondered if Charlotte had any idea. Penelope pulled her cell phone from her pocket and punched in Charlotte’s number.

  Charlotte answered on the third ring sounding somewhat breathless.

  “Am I interrupting you?” Penelope said, folding up the newspaper.

  “I’ve just come back from a run,” Charlotte said. “I had to get out in the air to clear my head. My protagonist is being difficult, but I came up with a solution fortunately.”

  Penelope laughed. “I know what you mean.” She thought of the e-mail from her editor still sitting in her in-box but banished the thought. She’d get to it later.

  She asked Charlotte if Tobias and Rose had ever been an item, but Charlotte said she didn’t know. She suggested Penelope talk to Jemima, who had been frien
ds with them a lot longer than Charlotte had.

  Penelope clicked off the call and sat drumming her fingers against the table.

  Had Tobias been dating Rose when Cissie came along? Had he dumped Rose for the loo paper heiress? And did that make Rose mad enough to kill?

  SEVEN

  Penelope hoped she’d be able to catch Jemima while she was still at Worthington House. She didn’t have her cell phone number but instead called Worthington’s main number.

  A very solemn-sounding butler answered the telephone and promised that he would find Lady Dougal for Penelope.

  Pen pictured him tirelessly traversing the maze of corridors that made up Worthington House, peering into rooms and around corners for Jemima. The image made her giggle.

  Five minutes later Jemima’s throaty voice came over the line. She suggested they meet for lunch—she was starving and absolutely dying for a pub lunch—and offered to pick Penelope up in twenty minutes.

  Penelope straightened up her things; put on her coat, hat, and gloves; and went to stand outside to watch for Jemima’s car. It was windy and the wooden sign over the Open Book creaked on its pole as it was buffeted back and forth.

  Penelope stamped her feet and blew on her hands to warm them. She was about to go back inside when a sleek black Mercedes drew up to the curb and stood, purring in idle.

  The car was low-slung and Penelope had to bend nearly double in order to slip into the front passenger seat.

  Jemima put her hand on the gearshift, her massive diamond engagement ring shooting sparks in the sunlight, stepped on the gas, and they pulled away from the curb with a loud roar.

  “There’s a lovely pub just outside of town between Upper Chumley-on-Stoke and Lower Chumley-on-Stoke called the Wolf and the Weasel. They do an excellent ploughman’s lunch and a truly magnificent steak and kidney pie,” Jemima said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Rather plebian fare, but sometimes one wants something straightforward and simple—the sorts of things that Nanny used to make for us in the nursery.”