A Gentlewoman's Guide to Murder

by Victoria Hamilton

  Simeon concluded, I will certainly look forward to any information my usual correspondent might see fit to include for the newspaper.

  She was welcome, in other words, to write a Rogue piece for The Prattler. Emmeline turned back to her companion and her maid, who watched her, tension evident in every line of their faces. “This will not come back to me, and I pray it won’t come back to Molly. Her name has been changed, and even we don’t know exactly where she is. Only Addy does.”

  “But the housekeeper and cook saw you, did they not?” Fidelity asked.

  “Yes, the housekeeper was there in the shadows in the kitchen with the cook when I departed. But it was dark and I wore a mask.” The cook and housekeeper had known to expect her, though. They did not know her name, or at least she hoped that was so.

  As shocking as it was to think it possible that an employee would murder her master, Emmeline supposed she must consider it, though every bit of her being revolted against the notion that a woman would deliver such a violent end on anyone, even one so deserving as Sir Henry Claybourne. It was far more likely that the murderer or murderers were the two men the neighbor saw in the night. Unless … perhaps it was the neighbor himself, reporting strange men abroad while in truth it was he who had killed Sir Henry for reasons known only to himself. However, the watchman had confirmed the existence of the two strange men who beat him, so they had been there.

  Even as she had slipped away into the night, was there someone watching, waiting, using her masked visit as an opportunity to slaughter Sir Henry? The notion chilled her to the bone.

  “Emmeline, I don’t like the look of your brow,” Fidelity said.

  “What is wrong with my brow?” Emmeline felt her forehead, and encountered only some stray curls from her independent hair.

  “It is furrowed, and that means you are thinking deep thoughts.” Fidelity’s tone was edged in hysteria. “I forbid you to think deep thoughts.”

  After years together, Emmeline knew how to calm her companion. “Dear Fidelity, my thoughts are never so very deep,” she said, smiling and keeping her tone light as she took her cousin’s hand and squeezed.

  Four

  She dismissed Gillies, who helped Fidelity to her room. Emmeline then slipped off her night-rail and took the broadsheets to bed to read by candlelight, hoping to acquire some tidbit of information among the conjecture and scandal. There was a time when she would have believed every word in the broadsheet, but she had learned, since starting to write for The Prattler, that not every writer or publisher was as careful as Simeon. Some paid for information—she had given money herself for tips—or made up scandal to order.

  It was the way of the world. Scandal sold papers.

  Among the articles one was useless; she knew it immediately. It was a page of doggerel verse, scribbled by an anonymous hack.

  Murder in Clerkenwell

  Or, The Ballad of Sir Henry Claybourne

  T’was midnight dark when the female masked,

  With bold intent, came stealing fast.

  To the house of Sir Henry Claybourne, knight,

  That she somehow knew was not locked tight.

  Her courage high, her morals ill,

  She stole the child, tho’ no blood did she spill.

  And all was done in the space of a breath.

  … all in the space of a breath!

  Then to further her scourge she did revisit for silver,

  With the sole intent his home to pilfer.

  Against the remorseless she-devil, a haggard crone,

  The doughty brewer did protect his home.

  But his courageous stance was all for naught,

  Though for wife and household, the battle he fought,

  Too bad for the [k]night, his ended in a brutal death.

  And all in the space of a breath … all in the space of a breath!

  Alas, a lass.

  Ridiculous nonsense and terrible even as verse. As the Rogue she must discourage these mistakes and assumptions, in her column, while still keeping her Avengeress self separate. It was a fine-edged balancing act, the continuous battle in her mind for supremacy; was she most the Rogue offering a varied diet of gossip, bald truth, titillation, scandal, and radical politics, or most the Avengeress, rescuing women and children? Which would gain ascendancy, or could she keep them in balance?

  Still, she had a unique advantage. No other writer, nor magistrate, could know with certainty that the masked female who took Molly did not kill the knight. While it may indeed have been chance that Sir Henry’s life was taken that night, it seemed all too possible that his killer had known of the incident earlier in the evening.

  Though they had much wrong, even the doggerel got a few facts correct. Emmeline had entered by a door that was not locked tight, and she had taken the little scullery maid away with her. Who knew about the raid before and immediately after? The cook and housekeeper knew ahead of time, but a household of that quality would have other maids, a potboy, and perhaps a footman. Other servants in the home could have known as it happened, as would anyone watching the house. Sir Henry may have told his wife.

  And … Emmeline’s heart thudded. Her group knew of her plans. In fact, one of them had relayed the message from the Claybourne house that Molly needed rescuing, and received the message that suggested the date and time. She wasn’t sure who, since she had missed the meeting where Molly’s rescue was first discussed.

  She went back to the doggerel verse; something had bothered her about it, sticking in her mind and irritating. She read through it again, and there was the offending word. She was labeled a haggard crone? How offensive!

  “Miss Emmeline,” Gillies murmured outside her door, scratching on it. Her voice was muted by the solid wood between them. “May I speak wi’ you?”

  “Come,” Emmeline said.

  Her maid entered and began to tidy even as she spoke. “I’m troubled, miss, sorely. I canna put out of my mind the danger you’re in.” She gathered Emmeline’s shawl, which was draped over the dressing table chair, and folded it neatly, putting it back on the chair.

  “I’ll be wary, Gillies. I have no wish to be blamed for this murder.”

  Gillies took the stack of broadsheets off the bed and piled them together. But she paused and read the first few stanzas of the doggerel, mouthing the occasional word as she came to it. “What a lot of havering! Why do writers blather on so with such nonsense?” She glanced at her mistress and added, “Begging you pardon, miss.”

  “Anything to sell a broadsheet for a penny. As long as the public likes verse, scribblers will keep producing it.” Emmeline shrugged. “I am sorely offended to be called a crone, though.”

  “Why?” The maid straightened and set the stack of sheets down.

  Emmeline eyed her lined and weary face. “How could I not be offended? A crone is a witch!”

  Gillies shook her head. “Miss Emmeline, no! A crone is a wise woman, a defender, the woman people go to when they have troubles. Where I come from, every village has a crone. While the kirk dislikes it, it’s nonetheless true. If you have troubles with your husband, or are worried for the future, you visit the crone. For a penny, she’ll soothe your worries and give you a potion to make you right. ’Tis only in silly fairy tales that such an honored lady be a fearful hag.”

  Emmeline pushed the blankets down and sat up, hugging her knees. “I suppose I picture them like the witches in Macbeth, stirring a cauldron and chuckling hideously.”

  “Macbeth, miss? I’ve haird of it, but know nothing more.”

  “One of Shakespeare’s tragedies, set in Scotland. You’d enjoy it, as it’s very dramatic and hideously spooky.”

  Her maid was not much of a reader, but she did enjoy plays and so accompanied the ladies every theater evening, whenever there was room in the box. Gillies was an invaluable aid to Fidelity’s comfort and useful to Emmeline, t
oo, as she could fetch, carry, and most importantly listen in on conversations. Most theater patrons did not notice a servant, and the Rogue needed constant sources of information.

  “We will attend the next time it is being put on,” Emmeline continued. “It features three weird, or ‘weyward,’ sisters.”

  “Aye, but miss, those are witches, not crones,” Gillies said, trimming the candlewick. “Witches are evil; crones help folk.”

  Crones help folk. As Gillies exited and softly closed the door, Emmeline turned on her side and closed her eyes. Maybe she was a crone after all. Maybe all her friends were crones. And in any case, who was it who said witches were evil? Men, of course, who held the law in their closed fists, wielding it like an iron rod to keep women and children quiescent. Not all men, of course; only the wealthy and titled. Poor men suffered as much as their women. One had only to look in the gaols and prison hulks, workhouses and sponging houses to see that.

  But still … every man, even the poorest, had rule over his women and children. Men could take up the law or the church, study to become surgeons, enter the military. Women were limited in what they could do to whatever their menfolk would allow. While men studied the healing arts with the approval of the church, women had been stoned for a millennia for brewing healing potions and doing their best to soothe the ill and troubled.

  Her thoughts were full of questions, unfortunately none with answers, and all seemed a way to avoid the troubled vision she had in her mind of Sir Henry, slaughtered like a hog.

  All the long night, Emmeline was haunted by her last view of Sir Henry, scrabbling at the buttons, trying to do up the fall of his trousers, his vast belly dangling, concealing his shrunken penis, his face twisted and mottled with red. As she’d backed away, then turned and fled, she’d heard him roaring that he would find out who she was and retaliate. He knew people, he said. She would pay.

  When she did sleep, it was to be tormented by dreams. She was creeping from Sir Henry’s house, but this time she knew there was someone in the shadows watching with evil intent, and yet she had no way of stopping him. A dark shadow loomed. A menacing presence crept close to her, so close she could hear him breathe. Then she would awaken shaking, and with her heart pounding.

  The whole night was like that: tossing, turning, wound in her bedsheets until she could not breathe, then an abrupt awakening. She’d spent a few hours reading over the broadsheets; the awful crime was vivid in her imagination. While her writing as the Rogue was most often upon scandal and gossip, salacious rumor, and the pomposity of the peers and gentry who ruled their nation, she could not summon the wit to write such a piece. Simeon had invited her to write on the murder, so she penned something different from her usual Rogue-ish column, hoping Simeon would see fit to print it. It was of vital importance to establish the Rogue as a gentleman shocked by the knight’s behavior, but also shocked that someone would take the law into his or her own hands. It would serve, too, to perhaps emphasize the separation between the Rogue and the Avengeress.

  Emmeline then returned to bed and fell into another restless hour of slumber. She awoke to brittle autumn sunshine streaming in the window, and Gillies bringing in her tray with tea and toast. Two newspapers, The Prattler and The Standard, were pressed and folded neatly on the tray. The Prattler’s headline demanded, Is NO Householder Safe? and took the tack that Sir Henry must have gone out to the convenience or to smoke a cigar and was attacked by riffraff looking for an easy mark, perhaps the two assailants who had beaten the watch. Bless Simeon’s heart for trying to protect her, but it seemed terribly naïve to publish such a story, ignoring what was already out there about a masked female and absconding scullery maid. He must publish what he normally would.

  The Standard was direct. Beyond a shocking headline, the story had more information, but could she trust it? It would seem, from the quotes included, that the cook, housekeeper, and Sir Henry’s wife had all been interviewed. But it was unlikely that a writer would have been allowed access to them, and that they would have answered so many questions. The household could be in tumult, with the master slain so viciously, but would Lady Claybourne not be shielded from such rabble as a writer for a newspaper, no matter how much an arm of the ruling class the journal was? The more likely source was the writers’ imagination or secondhand information.

  It struck Emmeline how little she knew about Sir Henry aside from his horrible partiality for girl children. She knew nothing of his family except that he had a wife. Would this loss doom the lady to a life of penury, or was it a sweet release? While he was nominally the head of the household, Sir Henry’s wife would have had the day-to-day duty of running it, and so must have known her husband’s horrible inclinations for abusing girls. Perhaps she hadn’t cared, as long as the servants did their job.

  Emmeline longed to investigate, knock on doors, ask questions, but the danger to her was terrifyingly real. Both as the Rogue and the Avengeress she was going to be suspected of the horrible crime, damned by her own crusading self.

  She arose, donned her ivory lace-trimmed night-rail, and went directly to the small writing desk near the bow window in her room. She scribbled notes to the ladies of her group asking that they meet. She had questions that must be answered.

  After she’d sanded, dried and folded them, Emmeline stacked them neatly to be hand-delivered by Josephs, along with her Rogue column, which was addressed to Miss S. Kinsman—the name she used to send Simeon her pieces—in a refined part of the city. The address was that of a gentile friend of Simeon’s, the fictitious young lady “S. Kinsman,” supposedly an invalid in the household; any mail addressed so would be passed on to him. Given Birk’s spying, every step she took even in her own home must be covert and carefully considered. It was exhausting.

  She sighed wearily and stretched her body, readying it for the womanly confines of the day, the stays that would give her a rectitude of figure if not of behavior. She must discover the truth of the matter and report what she could to her readers. Once more, the knife’s edge ballet she performed commenced, as she kept up a semblance of upright feminine morality while her mind and heart delved into the evil that men—and women—did.

  Gillies helped her into a sprigged burgundy day dress. Emmeline then sat at her dressing table. Gillies undid her nighttime braid and started taming her hair, brushing it back into a knot and coiling curls to frame her oval face.

  “I must speak to the others,” Emmeline murmured. “I was not at the meeting where rescuing the child was first discussed and so am uncertain which one brought her to our attention.” At the time it hadn’t seemed important. All that had mattered to her was the information, the plan, the rescue. She trusted them all; perhaps that was her mistake.

  “Does it matter, miss?”

  “I must find out how they heard about Molly, and who, in the household, was their contact.” One thing was certain, Emmeline thought as she let Gillies perform her magic; she must impress upon them all the need for absolute secrecy. “Gillies, do you perchance know anyone in service near Sir Henry Claybourne’s Clerkenwell home?”

  Her maid ducked her head around to look her employer in the eyes, a worried expression on her lined face. “Why d’you ask?”

  “There is so much I want to know and I don’t know how to find out. The housekeeper or cook: which one of them summoned help for Molly? How long have they been employed at the Claybourne home? Did the Standard journalist actually speak with Lady Claybourne, or is there someone else in the household giving, or more likely selling, information to the newspapers? We well know the value of paid belowstairs informants.”

  Gillies squinted, pursed her lips, and then went back to her task. “You’re not going to try to find out who murdered that filthy beast, are you?” she said, jabbing a pin in to keep a curl in place. “I’d say the good Lord had a hand in it. Sir Henry straight desairved what he got, miss, and I’d let well alone.”


  Emmeline sympathized with Gillies’s viewpoint. However …“It disturbs me how brutal the murder was. I fear that whomever killed him may kill again. It would help if I knew why he was killed, what else in his life may have led to his death. Or was it a crime of opportunity, as Simeon has suggested in The Prattler this morning?” She paused. “I need to know if any of our friends are in danger.”

  “Miss?”

  She brooded for a long moment, then glanced up at her maid’s reflection. “It almost feels like the killer knew I was going there that night to rescue Molly, and that the murder was planned with that in mind.”

  Gillies, her pouchy face drawn and haggard as if she, too, had had a restless night, her hands on Emmeline’s shoulders, nodded. “T’would take a brutal hand to do such a deed, even to one such as he. It couldnae be chance, surely, that meted out his airthly punishment on the same day you entered that house.”

  Emmeline met Gillies’s gaze in the mirror. “It’s a dangerous game I’ve played, speaking of Sir Henry in my article written as the Rogue, and then going after him for Molly’s sake.” She hoped she had not left a trail that would lead from the Rogue to her ladies’ group, and thence to her.

  “P’raps I do know someone nearby.”

  “Who?”

  “A chandler, miss, on Samuel Street; that backs on the same alleyway.”

  Emmeline took a deep breath as Gillies settled a bonnet on her head and fastened it. She eyed herself in the mirror, chestnut brown hair beautifully curled and in clusters on each side of her head, chip straw bonnet trimmed in gold silk ribbon perched jauntily, framing a face neither beautiful nor ugly but somewhere in between, with a long straight nose and intelligent gray eyes. She nodded at her reflection. “Do naught right now until we know more. I don’t wish you to endanger yourself.”