by Louise Allen
‘I will go and find some paper from the study,’ I said, leaving him to come to terms with things.
As well as paper, some tacks and writing implements, I brought the Peerage and plonked it down with a thump on the table. ‘I need to sort out the Prescott clan,’ I told him. ‘There seem to be a great number of adult males involved and several who would have a motive.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Carola offered as Garrick came in with his arms full of boards.
After half an hour we had a timeline (vague), a list of what we knew about the crime (not much) and a board full of People Who Might Be Involved (too many).
Carola’s summary of the Prescott families made it rather clearer who stood to gain the title, at least. She read it out to us.
‘The fourth Viscount fathered five sons, one of whom, the second, Archibald, was a soldier. He does not appear to have married and was killed in India. The eldest, Clarence, the father of our murder victim, inherited from the fourth Viscount, only to die of a stoke aged fifty-six in 1806, which meant his son Henry, “our” Viscount, had only held the title for a year.
‘The new Viscount will be the third son, Doctor Frederick, only fifty-two, but, from what you report, not likely to last the year. That leaves Adrien’s father Alexander as the heir apparent.’
‘No,’ Luc interjected. ‘Heir presumptive. If Frederick were to marry, he might father a son.’
‘But he is a sick man,’ James protested.
‘I am not aware that consumption results in impotence,’ Luc said wryly.
‘But who is going to marry a dying man – and an infectious one, at that?’ I asked.
Carola grimaced. ‘Many women would like to be a viscountess and would be prepared to overlook that. Assuming that he doesn’t marry, or does, but fathers no son, then Alexander is the heir and, after him, his eldest son Marcus.’ She peered closely at the tiny print of the Peerage. ‘Ah. He already has two infant sons. After Marcus there are three more sons, of whom Adrien is the youngest.’
‘And if there is some disaster that wipes them all out?’ I asked.
‘Horace, the youngest brother, aged forty-five, inherits. And he has three sons.’
‘Good grief,’ I said faintly. ‘No daughters anywhere?’
‘Apparently not,’ Carola said. ‘Henry VIII would have been green with envy.’
‘So, that gives the heirs likely to have a motive as Doctor Frederick, Mr Alexander and his eldest son, Marcus,’ I said. I pinned up Carola’s chart and then wrote out “Suspect” slips for the three men.
‘All Alexander’s sons would benefit, I imagine,’ James said. ‘Their father will control a vastly increased property and probably various manors which can be divided up amongst them, even if only on life tenancies.’
‘With his cousin’s death Adrien has lost his position,’ I said, chewing the end of my pencil. ‘He needs income and he wanted to make contacts and find influential sponsors for his own political career. His marriage to Miss McNeil depends upon it.’
‘If I were his father, knowing I would inherit in the near future, I would employ him as my secretary – he knows his way around all the business of the viscounty – and I would make sure Adrien had a good enough estate to ensure his marriage. He would be a fool not to want an alliance with a man as wealthy as McNeil for his son. And McNeil will view Adrien’s prospects very differently now.’
‘So, he has a stronger motive than the two brothers immediately senior to him.’ Carola told me their names: Charles and Bertram, and I wrote all three on slips and added them to the Suspects board. ‘Oh dear. Who else is there?’
‘The sacked footman, Campbell,’ Luc said. ‘And the mysterious male bastard. But he cannot possibly inherit.’
Even so I added Mysterious Male Bastard to the board, frowned at it and amended it to Mysterious Male Prescott offspring (barred from inheriting).
‘And Miss Jordan. I am certain she did not want to marry the Viscount.’ I thought about it a bit. ‘But I just cannot imagine her creeping in through the window with a bread knife.’
We all stood and looked at the boards, then sighed, more or less in unison.
‘I hate having Adrien up there,’ I said. ‘But, on the other hand, we can assess any circumstantial evidence against him and, if there is any suspicion cast on him, we will be in a good position to defend him.’
‘I will go and ask him to dinner.’ Luc stood up. ‘I imagine he needs to get out of that house for a while. Could someone lock up the boards in the study?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.
Adrien met us in the hall of the Viscount’s house. He looked strained and about ten years older. ‘Dinner? Thank you, I would be exceedingly grateful. I cannot believe how much work is involved in a sudden death.’
‘There’s no need to change,’ Luc said. ‘Family only.’
Adrien smiled at the implication that he was family too, and I was more than ever desperate to take his name off the list of suspects. ‘That would be a relief – all my clothes are at my lodgings and I have the suspicion that, if I go home, I will just fall on the bed, close my eyes and sleep for a week.’
‘Are there no other members of the family close by who can assist you?’ I asked. ‘Your father has gone to Cambridge, but presumably your Uncle Horace and some of your cousins are still in London.’ I knew it was unlikely that any of the family had travelled on a Sunday.
‘Yes, they are all still in Town,’ he said. ‘But frankly, I don’t think they would be much help. By the time I had explained what needed doing it would be easier to do it myself.’ Someone rapped the door knocker and he turned with a sigh. ‘Now who is that?’
Grainger hurried past with a rapid bow to us and opened the door. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Jerald.’
The young man on the doorstep greeted him cheerfully and stepped in. ‘Is my – Ah, Adrien! And Lord Radcliffe.’ He blinked at us. ‘Ma’am, my apologies, I had just dropped in on the off-chance of finding Cousin Henry at home.’ He looked hopefully at Adrien.
Which one was this? He was younger than Adrien, hardly into his twenties, so he must be one of the sons of Horace Prescott. But why didn’t he know what had happened?
I looked at Adrien and saw a look of dawning horror on his face.
‘Why doesn’t he know?’ I whispered.
‘Oh hell,’ he muttered, then found a social smile from somewhere. ‘Miss Lawrence, this is my cousin Jerald Prescott. Jerald, Miss Lawrence, a guest of Lady Radcliffe. You cannot see Cousin Henry,’ he added, over Jerald bidding me a good afternoon.
‘He is out? That’s a pity. Look, be a good fellow and let me have a few sovs, will you? He promised me he’d lend me ten when I saw him on Saturday. You know how short the old man keeps me.’
‘Your Cousin Henry is dead,’ Luc said brutally.
Jerald laughed, then did an almost perfect double-take when he saw our faces. ‘Dead? How? Oh, the devil – a stroke like Uncle Clarence? They say they run in families…’ His voice trailed off and he sat down abruptly on one of the hard hall chairs. ‘When?’
‘Last night or early this morning,’ Adrien said. ‘We are not certain. There must be a post mortem examination.’
‘At what time did you see him yesterday?’ Luc asked.
‘What?’ Jerald blinked up at us, then seemed to realise that he was sitting whilst a lady stood, and got to his feet. ‘To speak to? Middle of the morning in St James’s Street. I came out of that coffee house just down from Boodle’s and bumped into him as he was turning into Ryder Street.’ He gave a rather sickly smile. ‘Thought I’d touch him for a few sovs, you know how it is.’
‘No,’ Adrien said. ‘I don’t.’
His cousin flushed. ‘I think he had a soft spot for me because I’m the youngest.’
‘Rather, I suspect he did not want the family name connected with unpaid gambling debts.’ Adrien sounded about fifty and thoroughly judgmental.
‘Da – I mean, it isn’t so bad
. But I lost a bit on that horse of his at Newmarket at the second Spring meeting.’
‘Yes, he did rather puff the beast off, didn’t he?’ Adrien said, with slightly more sympathy. ‘But I can’t give you anything: it is Cousin Frederick’s money now and besides, the study’s locked.’
‘Whatever for?’ Jerald seemed to have recovered from his shock a little.
‘Because your cousin was murdered there,’ Luc said.
‘Mur– Who?’
‘We do not know,’ I said, taking pity on him. He was pale and trembling now. ‘Luc, Mr Prescott has had an awful shock. Shouldn’t we find him a hackney carriage and send him home?’
‘No.’ Jerald Prescott sat down again. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment. It is just that I never imagined that she would do it. You know what she’s like…’
‘We have no idea who you are talking about,’ I said sharply. Surely he didn’t mean Arabella Jordan, the only woman in the case that I was aware of?
‘Martine. Madame Vaillant, his mistress.’
‘She was his mistress, but he parted from her two weeks ago,’ Adrien explained. ‘Cousin Henry disapproved of married men maintaining paramours and so he was making the break well in advance of the wedding.’ He grimaced. ‘She did not take her dismissal well.’
‘Did she come here making threats?’ Luc asked.
‘Not exactly,’ Adrien said. ‘It was here – they were having breakfast – that he told her. She attacked him with a fruit knife. Grainger, er, disarmed her before any damage was done.’
‘Then what happened?’ I was frankly agog. Honestly, the rich emotional lives some people did live…
‘She flounced off home and Cousin Henry sent me that afternoon to return the items she had left here. She threw a pot of face cream at my head and I took myself off rapidly.’ He managed a faint smile. ‘I stank of attar of roses for several days; I couldn’t get the stuff out of my hair.’
‘Did he pay her off?’ Luc asked.
‘Inadequately, according to her. There were a number of letters sent.’
‘Is she French?’ The name certainly was, but surely the country was at war with France?
‘Emigrée, so she said. But she might just have been a good actress from Bermondsey. All I know is that she is given to high drama.’ Adrien shuddered. ‘Frankly, I cannot imagine Madame Vaillant managing to arrive unnoticed and then carry out a murder without a great deal of screaming, flouncing and carrying-on.’
‘Why did you assume it was her?’ I asked Jerald.
‘I saw her last night. She was coming out of Little St James and she recognised me. I was treated to an earful of opinions on men in general and my cousin in particular.’
‘She has lodgings there,’ Adrien said. ‘Did she actually utter threats?’
‘Indeed she did! A vivid description of what she wished she had done with the fruit knife to various parts of Cousin Henry’s anatomy. Oh yes, and you are a smug little lackey, by the way, Coz. I made my escape rapidly, as you may imagine.’
The body had not been mutilated. Would a violently angry woman armed with a knife manage to stab a man so exactly and then not give in to the temptation to slash and cut? But a clever one might let her temper cool to ice and then take the opportunity to reinforce the impression that she was out of control when she met one of her victim’s relatives…
I came out of my thoughts to find Jerald bidding me farewell. ‘Wait! Before you go – why was this news to you? I thought your family is in Town for that reception.’
‘I’m not staying with them,’ he said abruptly and turned to the door.
‘We must go too,’ Luc said as the young man left. ‘We will see you at dinner, Adrien.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said vaguely. ‘Grainger will see you out. I must go and discover what my Uncle Horace’s plans are.’
‘The rejected mistress: another name for the suspects list,’ I remarked as we reached Luc’s front door. ‘She does sound almost too suspicious to be true.’
‘I believe we should discuss it in depth in my bedchamber,’ he said.
‘Not my bedchamber?’ I queried, trotting up the steps.
‘Mine has the larger bed.’ He had the key in his hand and was in and striding towards the staircase before the footman could get to the door. I slowed to a decorous stroll, trying not to look as though I was in a mad rush to get my lover into a room with a bed in it and a lock on the door and rip all his clothes off.
We were both laughing when I turned the key and I didn’t have to do any ripping because Luc was already throwing garments off as if they were on fire. ‘It is over two hundred years since I last made love to you,’ he said, kicking his breeches across the room and advancing on me in a highly satisfactory state of rampant anticipation.
‘Get me out of this garment,’ I gasped, struggling with tapes, hooks and a pin which, naturally, found the end of my thumb. ‘Ouch!’
Never say that the Earl of Radcliffe is slow in a crisis. He picked me up bodily, dropped me on the bed, threw up my skirts and pounced. ‘The problem with women’s clothes in your time,’ he said, somewhat muffled by fabric, ‘Is the underwear.’ A pair of very modern undies flew through the air. ‘It is much more satisfactory in my time.’
I had to agree. There are times when rapid access is highly desirable…
Chapter Five
We arrived downstairs for dinner appearing, I hoped, cool, calm, collected and elegant. James took one look at us and sniggered.
I went over to him where he stood with one foot on the fender, surveying the drawing room. ‘And right back at you,’ I murmured. ‘I assume you and Kit are staying in Albany? Even the five-minute walk hasn’t taken the colour out of your cheeks.’
He had taken over Luc’s set of rooms at the exclusive gentlemen’s residence off Piccadilly, although he and Kit spent most of their time in Leicestershire. I did actually succeed in making him blush but, before I could embark on any more teasing, Garrick and Carola came in, closely followed by Lady Radcliffe. A moment later and Adrien was announced.
We had a civilised half hour before dinner, talking of anything but the murder in the neighbourhood, then went through to the Small Dining Room (that’s the one about the same size as my flat) where the circular table had been set up.
‘Thank you, Wilkins,’ Lady Radcliffe said when the soup had been served. ‘We will ring.’ When the footmen had filed out after the butler, she looked around the table. ‘This is a very bad business. What happens now?’
‘I found my Uncle Horace and my cousins at home. They are very much shocked, of course and are making plans to pack up and return to Buckinghamshire in the morning. The doctor has removed… That is, my cousin’s body is with the doctor. I imagine we will hear tomorrow if there is anything he can tell us in advance of the inquest,’ Adrien said. ‘My father should return in time for that, with my cousin Frederick’s instructions for the funeral and some indication of how I am to proceed with the administration of business.’
‘We saw Adrien’s younger cousin, Jerald Prescott,’ Luc told the others. ‘He mentioned another suspect.’ We recounted Jerald’s tale about the fiery Madame Vaillant and my thoughts on her likelihood as the perpetrator of such a silent, efficient killing. No one disagreed with my suspicions that her apparent uncontrolled fury might conceal a colder, more thoughtful plan for revenge, although Adrien, who, of course, knew the lady, looked doubtful.
‘Do many members of your family live in London?’ I asked Adrien, thinking to steer the conversation away from the actual murder for a while.
‘My father rarely comes up, and when he does, he stays at the house in Upper Wimpole Street that he shares with Uncle Horace, who does the same with his family when they visit. My married brothers, Charles and Marcus, live in Buckinghamshire too and Bertram, he is the one immediately before me, is betrothed and lives with our father at present. All of them would use the Upper Wimpole Street house when in Town. And Uncle Frederick, of course,
lives in his college in Cambridge and rarely stirs from there.’
‘They wouldn’t expect to stay with Lord Tillingham, then?’
‘If Mama and Papa, or Aunt Harriet and Uncle Horace come up to Town for more than a few days, then I would expect Cousin Henry to put them up. He rather enjoys… enjoyed, being head of the family, you know.’
‘Gathering the clan about him?’
‘Exactly.’ Adrien flashed me a smile. ‘He could be rather ponderous that way.’
Lady Radcliffe rang for service and the soup bowls were cleared and a fricassee, some poached fish and a dish of collops of veal set out on the table, along with the accompanying sauces and vegetables.
I always had to spend extra time running, or down at the police station dojo, to work off the effects of Georgian cuisine. Goodness knows why everyone wasn’t enormous.
It was nice being here with the family, but I rather missed the evenings in Albany when I had taught Garrick some twenty first century recipes and Luc and James had mucked in preparing veg and stirring pots and we’d eaten with elbows on the kitchen table swapping ideas, sharing thoughts about the current problem.
* * *
I said the same thing to Luc as I followed him upstairs at the end of the evening. Garrick and Carola had gone to their apartment an hour ago, Adrien had returned to Lord Tillingham’s house in the hope his presence might keep the servants calmer and I was longing for my bed. Travelling through time takes a great deal of energy and I couldn’t believe so much had happened since I had landed in James’s arms on the terrace that morning.
Luc turned aside to go to the boys’ room and I watched from the doorway as he bent to kiss each tousled head. It hurt to see the twins, to know that Luc and I were never going to share children. I knew the boys liked me and I played and talked with them, but I always kept a certain distance – a friend of the family, not an honorary aunt. The feminine influence in their lives was their grandmother and, however much I coveted them, I knew I had to stay remote.