Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  “You two didn’t get on?” Will asked.

  Lucian’s eyes flashed. And this from a man who he’d thought understood him, if only a little! But the runner was looking for a villain, and was obviously not concerned where he found one. Lucian didn’t need that kind of thinking interfering in his life.

  An instant later Lucian wore the long suffering look of a man trying to explain himself to an idiot as he answered, “No. He disinterested me, merely. He had few sins, at least none that appealed to me, nor did his virtues. It was mutual. I didn’t care a farthing for him and he knew it. It was my brother whose company he enjoyed, and Louisa he was to marry. Nor are they murderous souls either. I suggest you do exactly as you said—begin your investigation where the crime began.”

  “Crime begins at home, my lord!” Maggie cried, and was about to say more when the door opened.

  Davie came into the room slowly, head lowered, biting his lips in concentration as he carefully carried a plate of seed cakes. Alice followed, smiling broadly. She wore her Sunday frock, and bore a tray with a steaming teapot on it. Annie brought up the rear, bright-eyed, bearing a tray with mugs and napery.

  “Thought you’d like some tea, Missus,” Alice said.

  “Aye, ’tis a terrible cold night,” Annie said, her eyes darting from Spanish Will to Lucian and back again.

  The girls were so excited Maggie thought she might hear their hearts beating from where she sat. “Thank you,” she said unhappily, accepting the inevitable. She’d taught them their company manners, after all. How could they know she’d sooner serve these guests rat poison? “Leave the trays on the table, please. Is the shop cleaned and closed tight?”

  “’Tis, Missus,” Alice said.

  “Clean as can be,” Annie echoed.

  Davie nodded.

  “Then, thank you. I’ll speak with you later. You may go now. …Now, girls,” Maggie finally had to say, because the pair of them stood gaping at the two men in the salon. Well, but who could blame them? Maggie thought. The men looked fine as they could stare. She’d have to lecture the girls about fine feathers again, because these two were very black birds, indeed.

  The Viscount Maldon looked elegant, sardonic and amused. He had just the sort of unobtainable glamour that would fascinate her poor slum-born and -bred girls. But Spanish Will, Maggie noted with horror, was not amused. It was much worse. His cruelly handsome face was intent, his eyes glowed with sudden interest as he gazed back at the girls. It was as though he’d turned on some inner force. Maggie could almost feel its pull. She was glad it wasn’t focused on her—and then infuriated. Because it was centered on the girls. But they were girls!

  Alice was buxom, but it was only puppy plumpness. Annie was still a girl in every sense. Only fifteen and thirteen…although some that age were mothers—but not her girls! Maggie bristled. “You may go now, girls,” she said sharply, to break the runner’s spell.

  They ducked curtseys and fled, leaving the three adults alone again. Maggie turned to the runner, her eyes wild with anger. Lucian watched, bemused.

  “I hadn’t thought of it before,” the runner mused, “but now…I do wonder. Would either of your girls care to walk out of an evening, I wonder? With a man, I mean to say?”

  Maggie couldn’t believe him. She drew a breath to blast him, even if it made him mad enough to invent evidence against her, even if he decided to drag her to the gallows by her hair for it. Even the viscount looked startled.

  But the runner didn’t seem to notice. “Some men like younger women,” he mused, “some like young girls even more. Especially some older men. Your uncle,” he told Lucian, “mightn’t have been visiting Mrs. Pushkin, after all.”

  Lucian’s distant amusement fled. His pale face grew ashen. “How dare you?” he asked, rising slowly to his feet, uncoiling like a cobra about to strike. “I’d offer any other man a chance to give me satisfaction for such a remark, but I expect your profession saves you from that.”

  “You mean a duel?” Spanish Will laughed. “No, don’t wait for me under any oak trees, my lord. I’ll be glad to meet you in the court of fives, with bare fists, but only after this is over.”

  “My girls do not walk out with men!” Maggie cried. She was afire with anger, as well as embarrassment for what she’d thought he’d wanted and almost damned him for. “The most they’ve ever done is simper at boys, they don’t even look at men…” She realized the folly of saying that too late, especially after how they’d ogled the two men she was defending them to. “I know where they are all the time,” she said quickly, “that at least, I can swear to!”

  “A thought,” Will said calmly, “just a thought.”

  “There have been too many of them tonight,” Lucian said, his gray eyes glittering like frost on a windowpane. “Bad enough he was found dead here. I’ve better things to do than sit in a fishmonger’s parlor and hear a Bow Street runner traduce my uncle’s name.”

  Maggie gasped.

  The runner laughed. “Then run along, my lord, do. But know this. I’m not done with the matter, not by a long shot. See, to my way of thinking, men of fortune have been known to lose them. Gentlemen being known for being demons for the gaming table, I’m sorry to say,” he added with a sly look, “and Dame Fortune also so famous for being a wickedly fickle wench.”

  Will turned his gaze toward Maggie. “Lonely widows have been known to have callers of an evening, from every part of town too.” He snapped his notebook shut. “Still, it may not have been someone he knew, that could be. One thing I do know,” he said, very happy with himself now, even though he’d learned nothing new, “if I find the reason he was in this part of London the night he died—I’ll find myself a murderer.”

  “He was not visiting me!” Maggie protested.

  “Still, I suppose that’s all there is to say tonight, my lord,” Will went on, as though she hadn’t spoken, “since you’re not wishful of chatting with a runner or a purveyor of fish stuff, and seeing as how Mrs. Pushkin doesn’t have much to contribute now either.”

  “This is ludicrous,” Lucian said. “If you can’t see further than your fingertips, Mr. Corby, perhaps we can have another runner see to the matter.”

  “Perhaps you will,” Will said affably. “It’s a fine reward you’ve offered, my lord, others will try. But I’m the best.” He rose to his feet. “So, you’ve nothing more to say? I’d hoped you’d both be more agreeable.”

  “What more do you want of me?” Lucian asked.

  “Facts, speculation, information,” Will said, suddenly deadly serious, “something to go on. The less you tell me the more I think you have to say. It’s the way of the world, my lord, think on!”

  “And me? I’ve told you all I know,” Maggie said. “Facts and information, and what good is my speculation when I didn’t even know the man?”

  “Aye,” Will said, dismissing her, his eyes on Lucian, “agreed, Missus, your speculation is not what I’m after.”

  “And mine, of course, holds the key, I suppose?” Lucian said stonily, facing the runner, his hands knotted into fists at his sides.

  Maggie clenched her own fists, trying to hold her anger in. It was her home, her house, and the two of them acted as though she wasn’t even there. But then the viscount had already made it clear he thought she was about as consequential and attractive as a weevil in his porridge, and about as clever as one too. And the runner had promoted her from liar to fool? Before she could mull it over, she looked up and discovered she was the only one still seated. She shot to her feet as though scalded.

  “The fact,” Lucian was saying with a sneer, “is that my uncle was beaten to death at this doorstep. And now you’re trying to lay it on mine? Oh, well done.”

  Maggie frowned, tilting her head as though she’d heard far-off music. Her forehead creased, she scowled and then her eyes flew wide. “That’s it!” she cried, “No, he wasn’t! He couldn’t have been!”

  The men turned to stare at her.

&n
bsp; “He wasn’t killed here,” she said excitedly. “Think back, Mr. Corby, as I’ve just done. The viscount here, his saying that, it made me remember. I should have done on my own,” she said in chagrin. “What was I thinking? But he looked so naked, so…dead. See, I had the girls clean the doorstep after…” She shook her head. “…I saw but I didn’t see, what was I thinking? Oh, I should have known!”

  Spanish Will stepped toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. They were big, warm, strong hands that gripped her firmly. Maggie went suddenly silent, as deadly quiet as though he’d slapped her. Her shoulders went rigid, her eyes widened, and she stared up at him, shocked at the intimacy. He let his hands drop.

  She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “Yes, I was going on, wasn’t I? But here it is. Think back. He was hit on the head, right? Hard—hard enough to…” she looked up at the viscount.

  He nodded. “I saw him, I know, don’t think to spare my feelings, he had his brains dashed in.”

  “Yes,” she said in relief, “so he did. But that couldn’t have been what killed him. The blood,” she told the runner, “there wasn’t enough. Remember? Only a bit, a patch, some, under his head, a stain, merely that, no matter he was hit hard enough to cave his skull in. Yes, it was freezing, but if you cut yourself that deep there’d be blood, lots of it, before you died! And there wasn’t! It’s like with…fish,” she said defiantly, facing the viscount squarely, “you smack them with a mallet whilst their still living—they bleed, even cold-blooded fish will do. But after they’re dead you can slice them and dice them and you’ll only get scales on your hands for your trouble, do you see? He wasn’t killed at my door. Someone just dropped him there, after.”

  The runner closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was smiling. “Mrs. P., you do surprise me. Yes. Of course.”

  “Yes,” Lucian said ruminitively, gazing at Maggie as though seeing her for the first time, his eyes narrowing as he reassessed what he saw. “So it would be, I do see. But,” he added wryly, “I don’t see what difference it would make. At least to me.”

  “Well, it makes a world of difference to me,” Maggie said gaily, smiling triumphantly, feeling for the first time, entirely free. “For if I’d coshed him, the place would be awelter of blood, wouldn’t it, and it wasn’t. I was sleeping when Annie woke me with the news.”

  “But,” Lucian said too softly, “this place often is a welter, is it not? At least, you’ve all the trappings needed to be rid of blood: brushes and water and sawdust and so on?”

  “No,” Will said. “Her girls would’ve heard and their eyes tell me they’re not in the murdering business. They’re far too merry. Hauling him out would be too much for her alone, strong though she may be. And she may be. She doesn’t look it but she’s got muscles in those shoulders—I just felt them,” he added with a hint of a glimmer in his eyes. “She’s strong, but never enough to get a man your uncle’s size out of doors and onto the step. He was dropped there. It was snowing, there’d have been a path made by his passage were he dragged.”

  “A path? It might have been covered by people milling about when he was discovered, there were a great many, no doubt,” Lucian persisted.

  “And how would you know that unless you were here to see it?” Maggie cried.

  “I imagine…”

  “Suppositions. Good,” Will said, cutting them off impatiently, “but if we want to get anywhere they’ve got to be about more than the pair of you. I’ll grant—for now, that it wasn’t Mrs. P. who done for him, and allow it mightn’t have been you, my lord. …For now. But you’ve got to give me more to go on. Both of you.”

  “There is no more,” Maggie said in vexation.

  “Think on, think on, there will be,” Will said. “Or ask around, Mrs. P. You’ve an ear where I don’t. Aye, even me. Your friends, the lovely Mrs. Gudge and the beauteous Mrs. Gow, they won’t give me the right time of day if it doesn’t suit you, though they’ll swear to. And as for you, my lord, there’s more for you too. What exactly was the baron wearing when last seen?”

  “Ask his valet.”

  “Oh, I will, I will, and all his servants besides. But you can ask even more. Your uncle was here. Why? You may find reason to seek me out before I find a need to see you again…though I doubt it,” he added ominously.

  “Maybe we three ought to meet again?” Maggie asked.

  “‘…in thunder, lightning or in rain?’” the viscount murmured to himself.

  “Yes, or ‘when the hurly burly’s done’!” Maggie quoted defiantly. “I can read, my lord,” she said when she saw him check.

  “My apologies,” he said unapologetically, with one uplifted brow.

  “Would you care for some tea?” Maggie asked, motioning to the table, so she wouldn’t be tempted to hit him.

  “Thank you, but I’m afraid I must take my leave now.”

  “Aye, me as well,” Spanish Will said. “But there’s something in what you said, Mrs. P. It may be we all will have to meet again.”

  “Perhaps,” Lucian agreed impatiently. “Is that all for now?”

  “Aye,” the runner said, his thoughts already far away.

  They said good-bye at the door, and went their separate ways. Lucian stepped up into his waiting carriage and took the reins from the youth who held his horses for him. He automatically threaded the reins through his gloved fingers, lost in thought. Meet again? Cooperate with a fishwife? Still, the woman was more intelligent than he’d suspected. But then—when had he ever had to contemplate a fishwife before? And the runner had acted like a friend, and then treated him like a common criminal. And yet, why should he not? There was something to be said for a man who believed nothing he couldn’t prove.

  He cracked his whip and drove off, deep in thought.

  Will raised his shoulders against the snow as he began the long walk to his lodgings. Trust those two? Ha! But there was that grand reward… But a runner cooperate with his two best suspects…? Well, maybe. If it helped to lull them…lulling was a powerful tool.

  He’d already lied to them. He’d laid his hands on the widow’s shoulders for more than soothing her, and all he’d felt was the delicacy of her bone structure. She wasn’t strong enough to lug the guts…he’d been to the playhouse too—he thought smugly, though he was better off with them not knowing that. And he never forgot a thing he heard. That was another powerful tool best kept to himself. But the Bard’s plays were filled with murderous females, weren’t they? So there was no saying she didn’t have a hand in it, was there? And the viscount’s finances needed looking into… Ignoring the cold, impervious to the cutting wind because of his busy mind, he trudged homeward.

  And Maggie Pushkin stood in the doorway and watched them both go off into the snowy night, and wished with all her heart that she’d never see either of them again.

  Chapter Six

  It was a small but tasteful funeral. No one could say otherwise, even if the dead man had been sent to his maker in the most vulgar fashion, no one could say his funeral wasn’t perfectly correct. The horses had been festooned in black, the hearse shone like a dark sun when it arrived at the churchyard, and the mourners assembled at the deceased’s home now were the cream of society. But they weren’t saying much and what they said showed how uncomfortable they were. They didn’t know how to console the bereaved without risking mentioning the shocking reason they were there. That would come later, when they were elsewhere and could finally indulge in all the scandalous conjecture they were trying so hard to pretend wasn’t consuming them now.

  “Good of you to provide your own servants to serve here today,” Arthur told his brother quietly, as the company accepted warming cups of tea, the gentlemen taking theirs laced with brandy. “Uncle’s staff was pretty shaken. I should have thought of it. I’m glad you did. Nice to see you’re already taking up the reins.”

  Lucian raised an eyebrow. “Hardly,” he said. “It was merely that, or have this lot pretending to grieve at my house.
It was simple self preservation; there are no reins to take up.”

  “What?” Arthur asked, his eyes widening. “What’s this? You’ve talked to Uncle’s lawyer already?”

  “No need. Can you imagine Uncle leaving his precious moldering books to me, much less his house and fortune?” Lucian laughed without humor. “Come, my boy, don’t be coy. Didn’t you hear Mama? She was only right. You’re the one he bored to bits of an evening, prosing on about his illustrated beetles or God knows what was in the latest book he bought. I don’t expect or want any of it. It’s all yours now, and welcome to it. Unless, of course, dear Louisa pretended a passion for those tomes filled with insects and fungi. It wouldn’t have been the only passion she’d have had to pretend to with him.”

  “Don’t be so hard on her,” Arthur said, lowering his voice to a whisper, although their late uncle’s fiancée was on the other side of the room. “She’s a good woman, even you can’t say otherwise.”

  “I don’t,” Lucian said lightly. “She has sense and manners. It’s that as much as anything that made the idea of her marrying Uncle so repugnant. I’d thought there were some females who were above selling themselves. She proved me wrong. I hate being wrong.”

  “It’s no time to joke. She seems genuinely upset.”

  They both gazed at the tall slender woman in black sitting by the fire, a throng of relatives surrounding her. “Upset? I should think so,” Lucian said, with a thin smile. “If Uncle had only waited one more week before venturing into Spitalfields on his mysterious errand, she’d have been spared much, and gained more.”

  “Spitalfields!” Arthur gasped. “I thought you said he was found near Bishopsgate!”

  “Bishopsgate, Spitalfields, Seven Dials, Whitechapel, that end of town is a garden of delights, isn’t it? They’re a stone’s throw from each other,” Lucian shrugged. “Well, perhaps a few stones. Who knows?” He gave a fastidious shudder. “I’m not in the habit of visiting such places. God knows why Uncle did.”