In the Flesh by Portia Da Costa

Author:Portia Da Costa [Costa, Portia Da]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781459225695
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Not so Secret Secret

“AND YOU’RE QUITE CERTAIN this woman is Edmund Ritchie’s wife?” demanded Eustace Lloyd of the rather disreputable character who sat across from him in the Ten Stars pub in Clerkenwell. Len was an acquaintance of an acquaintance of a friend, and Eustace had been put on to him because he was a known winkler-out of the kind of personal information that figures in public life almost invariably didn’t want winkled out.

“That’s correct, guv. She’s his missus all right, and they don’t make much of a secret of it.”

“I see.” Eustace took a sip of his ale and grimaced. It wasn’t what he was used to, but one had to blend in when one met in places like this. “And how did you find out all this?”

“They’s having some renovations done to the place, and I managed to get myself on the work crew for a day or two…then struck up a conversation with one of the maids. Like you do.”

Renovations?

Eustace frowned. When he’d heard idle talk in a less salubrious gaming club than he normally frequented, he’d assumed that if Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie did have an insane wife, she’d be locked away in some horrible Bedlam, as many such creatures conveniently were. But an establishment that was well maintained didn’t suggested that.

“What are the conditions? I take it the place is an asylum.”

Len paused to take a long swallow of his own ale, then signaled to the barmaid for another. “Well, suh, if Willow Lodge is an asylum, I wouldn’t mind being a loony myself. It’s a cushy number, it is. Good grub, comfy rooms, and the staff on instant dismissal if they don’t treat the inmates soft and sweet. It’s more like a private rest cure for the nobs than a madhouse.”

This wasn’t what Eustace wanted to hear. What prospects for blackmail were there if Ritchie’s wife were being well cared for in comfortable surroundings? Good God, the accursed man was more likely to garner sympathy than censure.

But perhaps not…

“And Mrs. Ritchie? What of her, what is her condition? Sometimes these wives are shut away simply due to some disagreement with their spouses, cruelly incarcerated when in fact they’re quite sane. I suspect that’s the case in this instance?”

Len accepted his new pint of beer, laughing and winking at the barmaid in the process. Eustace wished that the man would get on with it. He disliked this place intensely, with its smells of body odor and cheap gin, and tobacco smoke one could cut with a knife almost.

“Oh no, Mr. Lloyd, she’s a bedlamite all right. Quite demented, so my friend Maisie says. Has to be restrained, does Ritchie’s missus, although they gets nice padded straps, with sheepskin, I believe. She’s quiet on the laudanum, as a rule, but they have to give her it by the bucketful to stop her ravings…and keep any knives and other sharp stuff well out of her reach.

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