Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  Lucian relaxed, visibly. He shook his head. “Your sense of humor, Mr. Corby, is quite beyond me. I take it you enjoy terrifying your accomplices?”

  ”No. Why should I?” Will asked with interest. “Who were you afraid for? Oh. Your brother Arthur? No, I’ve only heard the usual rumors about motive there, and at that, they’re fewer than the ones I hear about yours. Your sisters haven’t got any motives I can see. Now, your Mama terrifies me. She could put down an earl fast as a sick cat, had she a reason to do it. But I doubt she’d slay a brother, even though she was vexed by the thought of his upcoming marriage…but so she was vexed, wasn’t she?

  “Oh, yes,” he said, seeing Lucian’s stunned expression, “I wasn’t jesting, my lord. I suspect everyone. The thing of it is though, some I suspect more than others. Your cousin Sir James was spending money like it was going out of fashion. Leastways, until your uncle was done for. Since then, he’s been prudent as a parson. Not a wager written in the books at his club nor placed at any of the hells where he was known to spend his time. He’s least in sight these days and nights. Sudden changes after a sudden murder make me wonder. I must talk with him. You could make it easier. Will you?”

  “Why should I not?”

  Will fixed him with a steady gaze. “Well, my lord, gentry coves sometimes think their families are sacred, and above the law.”

  “Do they?” Lucian permitted himself a small smile, “But most men think their families are sacred, and if not above the law, then certainly beyond it. Don’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Will said simply, “I have no family. As for sacred? I don’t hold much sacred, except the law—as I enforce it. I do know nobody’s beyond it unless they’re dead. I’d love to discuss philosophy all morning,” he added, rising and reaching for his coat, “but I think we’d best be getting on our inquiries now. My lads tell me Sir James wasn’t seen coming home last night. Where do you think he might be?”

  “Out all night? Let me think… I doubt at any female’s lodgings. He’s not in the petticoat line. Dame Fortune is the only mistress he’s ever had. Not at his club—not all night. Most hells have closed by now, unless he got into some game that’s still running. Some go on for days.”

  “No,” Will said, “he hasn’t been seen at any hell. Not the lowest nor the highest. I’d have heard.”

  Lucian frowned. “His friends are all gamesters…wait. This hour of the morning? Tats. Yes. That is to say, Tattersalls. It’s Monday morning? Monday and Thursday mornings they have auctions. He’ll be there. He might have stayed late, wherever he was, and just gone there. He wouldn’t miss an auction at Tats.”

  “I hadn’t heard he was a whip or a bruising rider.”

  Lucian laughed. “Neither, you’re right. But there’s a betting book there. More important than that, he follows the men who buy horseflesh. It’s worth money to him. You see, he wagers on more than horse races. He takes an active interest in carriage races. He bets on the hunt. Lord! He once wagered as to whether Old Carstairs would buy a team of chestnuts or grays, and won. But he knew Carstairs’ preferences and what was for sale that week because he takes note of things like that. Not all gambling is luck, Mr. Corby. Much of it is observation.”

  “Then he should be a rich man instead of floating on the river Tick, as I hear he is,” Will said. “The news is out, his pockets are to let. The duns are at his door. How observant can he be?”

  “I said not all gambling is luck. If he limited his wagers to his observations, my cousin might well be a rich man. He’s not exactly a fool. Unfortunately for him, he is a gamester. That means he tries his luck as well. He has little of that, I’m afraid.”

  “Then, Tattersalls,” Will said, winding a scarf around his neck. “Nearer your part of town than mine, closer to Hyde Park than Bow Street, any rate. You’ve got your carriage?”

  Lucian checked, then grinned. “Waiting just outside. But you surprise me. Getting spoiled, Mr. Corby?”

  “Aye, but it isn’t just that. A man arrives at a fine establishment like Tattersalls, he needs to step out of a carriage so as not to be unduly noted. When you come with me, you try to slip into my world. The same applies when I go with you.”

  “An excellent point,” Lucian said. “I only wish I’d taken my high perch phaeton. Had I known where I was going, I would have. They appreciate such things at Tats. I can only offer another lumbering closed carriage today.”

  “Too bad,” Will said as they walked to the outer door. “I suppose it’s nicely warmed too? A pity. Not an invigorating ride, like going in your open phaeton, with wheels high as I am? That would have been a rare old treat, with the streets being cobbled with ice today. What a shame you don’t get another chance to skate me around London town hanging on by my fingertips.”

  “There’s always tomorrow,” Lucian said pleasantly, “but I prefer saving my neck even above the joys of risking yours. The roads are glass. Now they’re saying it will get worse before it gets better. Entrepreneurs are testing the ice on the Thames. They’re thinking of holding another Frost Fair if it freezes solid enough. There hasn’t been a really big one since Charles Second’s day.”

  “Frost Fair?”

  “Yes, a fair like St. Bartholomew’s, or Smithfield, only right here, on the river. They had one when I was a boy, but it was only a matter of a few tents and a roasted ox. They’re saying this could be big as the one in the olden times. Tents, amusements, music, dancing, fireworks, food and shops, the lot. All of it on the frozen Thames. Between London Bridge and Blackfriar’s, they think.”

  “Wonderful idea,” Will said approvingly. “Why freeze to death alone if you can get other people to do it with you, and charge them money for it too? Give a clever man a dead cat and he’ll find a way to sell it. But God bless Londoners. They can take a block of ice in winter and profit from it.”

  The viscount’s carriage was warmed by hot bricks, and so well padded and sprung that Will hardly felt the cobbles they were passing over. It was like gliding, he thought as he sat back against the fat leather squabs. “A body could get used to traveling like this,” he remarked as they traveled westward.

  “It’s comfortable, but it takes no skill to drive this ark,” Lucian commented.

  “Aye,” Will agreed, “but I believe a man should find comfort where he can, when he can. Life will bring him challenges enough.”

  Lucian bit back what he was about to say. He realized it was foolish to mention the pleasures of fending off boredom. He doubted Will knew the meaning of the word.

  *

  The horses were being paraded in the open courtyard outside the paddocks before the auction so that potential buyers could see them put through their paces. Will paid little attention to them. He was more interested in the crowd of men watching than the merchandise they were there to buy. All the horses looked prime to him anyway. They came in different colors and had different markings, but they all were glossy, sleek and bright-eyed, worthy of riding, pulling carriages or racing.

  But he knew he wasn’t seeing the same animals the viscount was. He thought of horses as beasts of burden, replaceable machines. Maldon knew them bone and blood. It was obvious from the way he stared, his eyes narrowing as he watched them trot by him. The usual blasé nobleman was rapt. He paused as a gleaming roan came close. Seeing that, so did the groom who led the horse. Almost as though he couldn’t help it, the viscount put one hand on the animal’s muscular shoulder and ran it along its sleek shining side.

  Tattersalls was the most famous horse emporium in London, but like all things for sale in London, a man had to know what he was looking at. Will saw that the viscount knew what he was seeing, and lusted for it.

  The stables were vast and well designed. They were fronted by long arcades where horse and man were kept dry in all weather by high vaulted roofs upheld by rows of white Grecian columns. It gave the place the look of an ancient temple. Tattersalls was built for the worship of horses, and flaunted it. There was actuall
y a small open-air Grecian temple in the courtyard. The altar in its center had a marble statue of a horse mounted on it.

  The barns were huge, clean and well ventilated. Nothing less would do for the exquisite steeds and the gentlemen who came to adore and bargain for them. Will had seen less desire on men’s faces as they picked out women for a night at equally expensive brothels. He was impressed. Then annoyed. He knew too many people who would kill to live in a place half so fine. But then, none of them were worth two hundred guineas to anyone, alive or dead. And that was only for a passable mount, the viscount had said. A hunter would cost more, a good team for a fine carriage even more, and a racehorse more than that. There were over a hundred gentlemen there who looked like they could well afford it.

  But that was only how they dressed. Will knew many might be debtors. The only difference between them and the poor souls he saw in debtors’ prison was that the tradesmen they owed money accepted it as a fact of life. A man of fashion commonly owed his butcher, his baker and his candlestick maker, often not paying his bills for months. His name ensured they’d be paid one day. They had to be content with that. Unless word got out that he was about to lose everything. Then, and only then, would he be dunned, his debtors rightly fearing he’d sell up and leave the country forever.

  The people Will knew wouldn’t get away with owing a butcher three pence for three minutes, even though they’d no more think of flying for the Continent than they would of flying off a rooftop.

  There were less than elegant gentlemen there too. Not all men who knew horses were rich enough to buy them. Will recognized plenty of sharpers and touts. They averted their faces when they saw him. But he wasn’t interested in anything but murder today.

  “See him?” Will finally asked, a trifle testily, irritated by the thought of so much money being wasted. And he saw the viscount was looking at the horses more than at the gentlemen.

  “Hmm? Oh. James. No, nowhere in sight. Sorry, that roan caught my eye. Look at that gait! Still, let’s go ask someone, shall we? Or else I’ll wind up bidding and regretting it. I’m not a man to waste my money, Mr. Corby. But desire does ride me hard.”

  “You’d never catch me putting my hard-earned money on any living thing,” Will muttered. “Bad enough I worry about my own health. I wouldn’t put a guinea into anything that can pull up lame, get sick, or up and die on me.”

  “Easy to see why you’ve never wed,” Lucian commented, and went in search of one of the salesmen.

  The stables were warm and smelled of hay and horse, manure and moist earth. It was a curiously pleasant spring-like smell on a frigid day, Will thought. Lucian went up to a gentlemen holding the reins of a horse. He was so well dressed Will was surprised he turned out to be merely a salesman.

  “Sir James? Haven’t seen him in a while, now you come to mention it,” the man told Lucian. “Not all last week. That’s odd too. Hardly seems like the week’s starting if he’s not here. Is he ill, sir?”

  “No, at least I think not. When did you last see him?”

  “Let’s see… Well, there it is!” the man said, his expression lightening as he was struck by an idea. Then it fell into lines of sorrow. “What a lummox I am not to think on it. The poor gentleman’s grieving. I heard his uncle died, and then I didn’t see him no more. There it is. If you see him, sir, tell him John Granger sends his condolences, as do we all. Poor Sir James must be all cut up. Not like him to miss the auctions.”

  Lucian was quiet as he and Will walked back to his carriage. “He was that fond of your uncle?” Will finally asked.

  “No,” Lucian said simply.

  “Then if he’s all cut up, it’s because he’s all to pieces. Maybe was expecting your uncle’s will to remedy that? I really must speak with him. Now more than ever.”

  “I know you must,” Lucian said in a troubled voice. “As must I. We’d best go to his house. It’s not far. I’m surprised you lost track of him, Mr. Corby. I’d think you’d have all his entrances and exits watched.”

  “I did, and do,” Will said as he climbed back into the coach, “it’s just that no one’s seen him for days.”

  “My cousin, Sir James, in Caroline Mews,” Lucian told his driver, “and quickly.”

  Sir James St. Cloud’s house was in a neat, quiet street, not far from his late uncle’s. It was a narrow three-story house snugged in a row of similar ones. The door knocker was on, which meant, at least, that the owner of the house was still in London.

  “Is my cousin in?” Lucian asked as soon as the door opened. “It’s urgent I see him. Come man, if he’s not here, at least give me his direction. You know me. His cousin, Maldon.”

  “It’s you, my lord, forgive me,” the butler said with obvious relief. “The light was in my eyes. It’s that good you’re here, my lord. For he won’t go out, nor have anyone in. But I can’t see how he can refuse you. It will be that good for him. Your coats? Then, this way, gentlemen, if you please. He’s in the library. He has been for some time. We can get him out from time to time, but…”

  They came to the library. The butler knocked and then opened the door. “Your cousin, Lord Maldon, sir. And a friend. Here to see you. Sir?”

  The room was dim, the draperies pulled closed, but the fire in the hearth gave enough light for them to see the man slumped in a chair near it. His cravat was undone, he sat in shirtsleeves. His jaw showed at least two days’ dark bristles. His hair was rumpled. Thickset and strong featured, Sir James wasn’t a bad-looking fellow when dressed and combed. He was still attractive in a raffish sort of way. Especially when he looked up and greeted his cousin with a wide smile totally at odds with his woebegone appearance.

  “Maldon! Come to solace me, have you? There’s a good fellow.”

  “Come to find out what it is I must solace you about,” Lucian said. “I’d no idea you were that fond of Uncle.”

  His cousin frowned. “Uncle? Oh. Aye. No, I didn’t care a fig for the old bleater, thought you knew that. Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Mr. Corby, from Bow Street.”

  “Zounds!” Sir James said, “a redbreast! Wait—hold on a tick…Corby—that dark phiz—Spanish Will, is it? Pleased to meet you. Heard about you. Who hasn’t? You caught that cully what slit throats over in St. Giles, didn’t you? Aye, and the one what carved up that bit of Muslim at Mother Barrows place, right? And…”

  “James,” Lucian said repressively, “compare notes with Mr. Corby later. What I—we—would like to know is where you’ve been these past days.”

  James’ pleasure faded. He looked down at his boots. “Well, when a chap’s short of the ready rhino, ’specially if he owes a round sum, he don’t want to show his phiz, does he?”

  Lucian sighed. He thought his cousin too old for it, but James considered himself a dashing young man of fashion. It was the rage for such men to speak as though they were from the lowest slums. He thought Will would probably understand him better than he could. He did.

  “Oh, too right,” Will said pleasantly, “but the thing of it is, Sir James, that there ain’t a bailiff nor a dun camped on your doorstep, nor one in sight. Now, it’s my experience that when a fellow’s lacking the ready, his creditors stand two in line on his front step and have three round the back in case he tries to give them the slip.”

  “Snapt!” Sir James said with admiration. “Damned if you ain’t a downy one. No wonder you got yourself such a name. Come, have a seat. Some brandy? It’s the best. I should know, been pulling on it all night.”

  “It’s morning now, James,” Lucian said coldly. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on? And in English?

  His cousin looked guilty. He was almost thirty and acted as though he were seven. He looked it now. “The whole of it?”

  “All,” Lucian said, removing newspapers from a chair and sitting. “But I should tell you Mr. Corby’s interest in your explanation transcends the matter of your debts.”

  “Really?” James said with pleasure. “F
amous cove like Spanish Will interested in me? Well, no sense holding back, is there? Only…I’d prefer if your Mama don’t get her jaws on this, Maldon. I can talk my mother round, but not if yours gets to her first.”

  “Agreed,” Lucian said.

  “Well, the thing is I’d got myself to point non plus. Mean to say, I picked the wrong horse once too often. Played the wrong card. Backed the…”

  “Yes. Understood,” Lucian said impatiently.

  “Had no money, in short,” James said, “and didn’t know where the next sou was coming from.”

  “Why didn’t you apply to me?” Lucian asked.

  “Well, damme, Maldon, had I done, you’d have come through, but you’d have given me a jaw-me-dead, wouldn’t you?” James said irritably. “And I could get that from my Mama, couldn’t I? Anyway, it was beyond that. Owed a lot, you see.”

  “Did you apply to your late uncle?” Will asked.

  James looked astonished. “So that’s what this is about? Lud, no! He was so stiff rumped he made Maldon here look like a merry Andrew! We didn’t get on. Not to say a bad word about the deceased, but he didn’t see anything in me.”

  “You didn’t expect any legacy from him?” Will asked.

  James laughed. “As soon expect one from the man in the moon! He thought me a wastrel. Well, so I am, I suppose. No, I had to find another way out. And I did.”

  “And that was…?” Lucian prompted.

  “Getting married,” James said. “Aye, wish me happy, Cousin. Made it official just last week. It ain’t in the papers yet. They want me to tell my family first, well, only proper. They’ll be a howdy-you-do as it is, worse if I don’t break it to them myself. Only right. But I ain’t got up the nerve, as yet.”

  “Lord, man, who are you marrying?” Lucian asked.

  “Mary Williamson,” James said. “No, don’t go cudgeling your brain, you never heard of her. Father’s a cit. Aye, a mushroom. Common as dirt. But rich as the Golden Ball. Owns a manufactory in the West and a Mill in the North. Thinks the world of his daughter and wants his grandchildren to be good blood. He needed an entry into the upper classes. I’m it. He paid off my debts. So there you are. Haven’t gotten out much since the happy day. Well, trying to think of a way to tell m’friends. And the family. Bound to be problems. By the way, you going to ring a peal over me?”