He returned quickly, his soles clip-clipping on the marble flooring, and Clio followed him down a corridor wide and long enough to play cricket in. It was the sort of home where the owners were aristocratic enough that they probably did.
He showed her into a large and gracious drawing room where Lady Arden sat on a wide sofa facing the door. It was upholstered in primrose yellow, and she occupied the middle seat, an aged charcoal whippet curled up beside her, unbothered by Clio’s arrival. A fire crackled in the hearth. There were more oil paintings in here, and a collection of drawings. Side tables offered homes to an ornate chinoiserie vase, bottles of alcohol, and a gathering of silver-framed photographs. It had echoes of the Brutons’ home but was much grander.
Lady Arden was an older woman, in her late sixties, Clio guessed, beautifully preserved, with exceptional bone structure and glacial-blue eyes. She was slender bordering on skinny and wore jeans and a black sweater, her collar a white lace crown that stood up around the base of her neck, like an homage to Tudor royalty, who, to be fair, she could well be related to. A thick strand of pearls hung over her sweater. The matching earrings were large enough to stretch her earlobes. She smelled of something expensive and exuded confidence from every pore.
“Do have a seat,” she said. “It’s lovely to meet you.” The sentiment in her words didn’t carry over to her tone of voice or her expression, where a trace of a smile appeared only fleetingly before her face settledback into looking stony. There were some women, Clio thought, who had the ability to make you wither in their presence. Lady Arden was surely one of them, but Lillian had been, too, and, in her mentor’s honor, Clio was determined that she would not wilt.
“No, thank you. I’m trying to trace a piece of embroidery that Eleanor Bruton had in her possession, and I heard it might have been here?”
“Who?” Lady Arden said.
“Eleanor Bruton. From the Old Vicarage in the village. I was told she was a frequent visitor here when a relative of yours was ill.”
“Oh, yes. She did visit rather tirelessly. A very boring woman, but my sister-in-law had a high tolerance for life’s strugglers.”
Her snobbery, Clio thought, was so uncompromising, it was borderline magnificent.
“The embroidery belonged to my sister-in-law. She was living with us here while she was ill. Bloody brutal cancer. It ravaged her. Took her very quickly. After she died, the embroidery disappeared. I don’t know where it went, and I don’t really care. It had some sentimental value to her, I believe, but it was very tatty and ragged. I didn’t see what the fuss was about.”
With such an embarrassment of extraordinary objects and artworks around her, Clio supposed this made sense.
“Why was Eleanor Bruton suspected?”
“Visitors who aren’t close friends often have sticky fingers.”
“Was Eleanor close to your sister-in-law?”
Lady Arden shrugged. “Not particularly. She was a church busybody. One of those types whogatheraround the bedsides of the sick and dying to nurture because they haven’t got anything better to do. I shan’t allow it when it’s my time. It’s pure voyeurism, if you ask me.” She shuddered performatively.
“Who noticed the embroidery was missing?”
“That would be my niece. Mostly absent while her mother was dying, quick to arrive when it was time to collect her things, andapparently adept at pushing through probate at record speed. She made a lot of noise about the embroidery because apparently, my sister-in-law had promised to give it to her. She made a tremendous fuss about having had an emotional attachment to it, though you’d have thought we might have seen her more if that were true. Why do you want to know?”
Clio wondered how honest to be. “They have eyes and ears everywhere,” Lillian had said. They were often embedded in powerful families.
“I’m not sure,” she lied. “My superiors don’t tell me everything. I’m just here to ask the questions and I’m very grateful for your time.” She stood. Lady Arden watched her appraisingly, as if skeptical, and Clio felt a ripple of alarm. The man who’d shown her in appeared in the doorway. Had he been listening? Lady Arden nodded at him.
“I’ll see you out,” he said.
Out front, Clio asked, “What’s your role in the household?”
“I’m Lady Arden’s butler.”
“People still have those?”
“Very much so.”
When she reached the bottom of the steps he said, “Someone else came asking about the embroidery.”
He had her attention. “Who?” she asked.
“An academic from St. Andrews University. A woman. She said she was working on historical bookbindings.”
“Did she speak to Lady Arden?”
“Just to me. Lady Arden wasn’t here at the time.”
“When was this?”
