Murder at Marble House(3)
I wondered what role Alva had played in Consuelo’s frantic call this morning. I’d heard rumors—we all had that summer—but I would save judgment until I had the facts from my cousin.
“A good morning to you, Miss Cross,” a youthful voice hailed from the corner of the eastern wing. A young man wearing a tweed cap tugged low over a riot of golden red curls sauntered closer, gazing up at me from the lawn beyond the raised driveway. Swinging a rake in one hand, he nodded in that deferential way servants had, yet in his case the gesture brought a genuine sparkle to those bright blue eyes of his.
“Good morning, Jamie. How are things going? Are you liking it here at Marble House?” This I inquired in an undertone, for if Aunt Alva caught us conversing I’d receive an admonishing tsk, while her newest gardener could very well find himself sacked. It was one thing to trade a quick pleasantry with a footman, but a gardener? Had I been an expected guest, he would not have been permitted anywhere near the front drive until everyone had arrived and been brought safely into the house, lest the sight of a workman offend their sensibilities. In houses such as Marble House, servants learned to perform their duties at both the whim and convenience of their employers.
“Why, ’tis going splendid, and I’ve got you to thank for that, miss.” His earnest reply, with its lovely Irish cadence, acknowledged my role in securing his present employment. Jamie was a friend of my Irish housemaid, Katie, and I’d intervened at her hearty request.
I waved his thanks away. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”
With that I proceeded between two massive, Corinthian-topped marble columns, which always made me feel impossibly small. The double front doors presented an equally intimidating prospect with their grillwork of elaborately wrought bronze. Lifting the knocker that was several sizes larger and a good deal heavier than my hand, I let it fall once, cringing at the echoes resounding on the other side of that forbidding door.
As if I’d been expected, indeed looked for, one of those doors opened immediately. Instead of the porter, however, Grafton, Marble House’s head butler, greeted me with a frown. “Miss Cross, good morning. Are you come to see Mrs. Vanderbilt?”
Did I imagine wariness in those sharply aquiline features? “Good morning, Grafton, and no, I’m here to see Miss Consuelo.”
“I’m afraid she is not at home, miss. Would you care to leave your card?”
“My card?” I narrowed my eyes at the man, at his intimidating six-foot frame, his thick but silvered hair, the arced nose with its resolutely flaring nostrils. He eased backward from the doorway as if about to shut me out. What was going on here? “I don’t typically carry cards when I visit my relatives, Grafton, especially when I’m arriving at the request of my cousin, who called me not a half hour ago.”
“Perhaps she called you from the country club, miss.”
“She most certainly did not. Miss Consuelo was quite clear when I spoke to her. Now, may I please come in, Mr. Grafton?”
His peppered eyebrows went up in an unspoken admonishment: Was I calling him a liar? Good heavens, I might be able to make a footman blush with no more than a gentle good morning, but it seemed Grafton would not be budged by my persistence.
Well, I wasn’t about to turn tail and run either. “Is my aunt at home, then?”
The lines above his nose deepened. “She is . . . however, she is not quite at liberty at the moment—”
Clattering footsteps echoed in the entry hall. “Grafton, who is at the door?”
I recognized the voice. Not giving the servant the chance to block me from view, claim I was a vagrant, and shut the door in my face, I quickly ducked my head around his shoulder. “It’s me, Aunt Alva.”
“Emmaline! Oh, Grafton, don’t be a goose and let my darling niece inside.”
Like Cornelius and Alice Vanderbilt, William and Alva were not my aunt and uncle, but rather cousins several times removed. But with a generation separating me from them, I fell naturally into the role of niece. In all honesty, I’d never been Alva’s “darling” anything until recently, when she’d realized how much of a favorite I was of Aunt Alice’s. From then on Alva became determined to flood me with affection and bestow little favors on me, especially if word of it might reach Alice’s ears.
Still, I smiled and greeted her warmly, letting her enfold me in her sturdy arms and returning her kiss.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Emmaline,” she sang out gaily, her voice bouncing on the cold Sienna marble of the floor and walls. I’d been told the house had been fashioned after the great palace of Versailles, on a smaller but no less grand scale. “I have special company this weekend,” she said, “and I’d love for them to meet you.”