She flapped a gnarled hand. “It cost me not a sou, I assure you. I won it in a game of poker.” Lady Wellie rootled around in one of her boxes until she emerged with a bottle. “Ah! Just what we require.” Dismissing the maids, she opened the bottle and poured us each a measure of clear liquid into thin Venetian glasses no bigger than thimbles.
“Here you are, my dear. Best not to sip it. Have it down in one go,” she instructed. She flung her head back and quaffed it in a quick draught. I followed her example and gasped, sudden stars streaking across the field of my vision.
“What—what—” I croaked.
“Mastika,” she told me. She poured another for each of us and downed her second as swiftly as the first. I took a more gingerly approach and took a considered sniff.
“It smells of pine,” I said in some surprise. I had not perceived this, the first swallow having comprised equal measures fire and regret. But there was a subtlety to the beverage, a not displeasing marriage of resin and herb, and I drank this one off with more appreciation.
“From the isle of Chios,” she said. “In the north Aegean. Charming place so long as one is content to look at windmills from the back of a donkey.”
“I would be,” I assured her. “Although I fear the Aegean is not the most conducive spot to the study of lepidoptery. Not enough in the way of shrubberies.”
“It is conducive to pondering great philosophies,” she countered. “Life, death, the old gods, and one’s own mortality.” It was unlike her to indulge in maudlin thoughts. Indeed, amongst all my acquaintance, Lady Wellie was among the most vigorous and engaged, in spite of her advanced years. But her travels, undertaken to provide her with a change of scenery and renewal of spirits, seemed to have failed to revivify her.
I was on the point of inquiring into the matter when she shook her head and adopted a brisk tone which told me any personal queries would not be welcome.
“Have you made any progress in your latest endeavour?” she asked.
“Mr. Plumtree was able to provide us with the name of the artist commissioned to make the death mask of our unknown Beauty—afellow called Julius Elyot.” Sudden inspiration struck. “I know! I shall write to Sir Frederick Havelock.” Sir Frederick, whose acquaintance we had made during the course of a previous investigation,[*] was perhaps England’s greatest living artist. Few who aspired to earn a living by brush or chisel escaped his notice. But before I could ask for writing paper to dash off an inquiry, Lady Wellie interjected.
“Julius Elyot? Of the Rutland Elyots? With a ‘y’?”
I shrugged. “Yes, that is how it is spelt, but I have no idea whence his people came. We have only just learnt his name.”
“Because if it is the fellow I am thinking of,” she continued slowly, “he is an artist manqué.”
I sat up very straight. “Say more, I beg you.”
She tipped her head, thinking, with an expression that bore a frightening resemblance to the tamarin’s. “The Elyots are an old family, but not particularly distinguished by wealth or important marriages. But cleverness, that they always had in spades.”
“ ‘Had?’ ”
“Yes, they were never very good breeders, if memory serves. Only ever a single son and sometimes a daughter, but never more than two in any generation. Most peculiar.” Her smile was one of feline contentment, and well it might be. There were enough Beauclerks to populate a series of busy villages around the country. She went on. “They did all the expected things—boys sent to good schools, girls launched into Society—but there was always the whiff of eccentricity about them.” She paused to give me a speaking look. “Don’t, Veronica.”
I widened my eyes at her. “Don’t what, my lady?”
“I can hear you thinking. Yes, the Beauclerks have more than our share of eccentricity. We may have a Galápagos tortoise in theshrubbery and a hermit in the garden, but that is no more than any other noble family might have.”
I blinked in surprise. “Since when do we have a hermit?”
“Since I returned from my travels. I brought him with me. A Greek religious, I am told. One cannot be entirely certain since I do not speak any Hellenic dialects, and he only speaks English when it pleases him, but he does seem holy.”
“Where, precisely, in the garden is he living?”
“He ought to have had the hermitage,” she said with a frown, “but Rose has commandeered it for a playhouse, and Rosemorran had no wish to upset her after the loss of her wax doll, so he housed the fellow in the little folly modelled after the Scottish castle.”
Within the circle of follies on the grounds of the estate, those occupied by Stoker and myself were grouped with the Roman temple which housed a convenient and comfortable bath. The others faced us across the duck pond, and chief among these was a tiny pink castle with square towers capped with witch’s hats.
“It will be nice for you to have a neighbour,” she said fondly. “Perhaps you can communicate with him. I believe his name is Spyridon, but I am not certain so best not to use it in conversation until you are sure.”
“I will bear that in mind,” I assured her. “But you were saying about the Elyots?”
“Ah, yes. Eccentric, but not in the usual way,” she said with no trace of irony. “No, they were all terribly clever, the Elyots. Always tinkering with gadgets and arguing about scientific principles. I seem to remember the grandfather coming to blows with Volta after a lecture. Or was it Galvani?” She paused, then shrugged. “One hardly cares. I have known many an Italian who would have benefitted from a good thrashing. But there was some mystery about Julius, I seem to recall.”
My pulses quickened. Here now was a point of inquiry. I leant forwards eagerly. “What sort of mystery?”
She thought a moment, then shrugged. “Devil if I know, my girl. That is the cruelty of old age. One forgets useful things and can remember too many trivialities that ought to be forgot. I cannot tell you any more about the Elyots, but I know what I had for breakfast on New Year’s Day in 1834.” I waited and she grinned. “Rassolnik. A Russian soup of sour cucumbers. I was in St. Petersburg with my uncle. Now, will you have more mastika?” She made to pour, but I rose swiftly. My head was swimming from the two small glasses I had already imbibed.