“Do you have no scullery maid, Cook?”
The woman glanced over at her. “No, she …” She shook her head.
“I heard you were robbed and your scullery maid taken away,” Emmeline prompted.
“Aye, and the silver and me best knife stolen the same evening,” she said. “But never mind. What’s done is done.”
She would not be drawn about that evening, and Emmeline feared alerting her, so she complained gently about difficult working situations. With what she now knew of Miss Honeychurch, it was no challenge to grumble of a demanding mistress and dreary life as a companion.
After some back and forth, Emmeline said, “And she’s such a nosy busybody! She knows Lady Claybourne and Sir Henry from before their wedding, but I doubt she’s seen or visited them since. She did not like Sir Henry at all.”
“No one did,” the cook said, cubing potatoes and tossing them in a pot of stock over the open fire. She took the pared carrots from Emmeline and chopped them into uniform sizes, then tossed them in with the potatoes. “’E were a disgusting man, an’ ’er ladyship is well rid of him.”
“Miss Honeychurch says she warned Lady Claybourne not to wed him. I wonder why? I mean, how could she know he’d be a bad husband even back then?”
The cook glanced at her, a dark look in her eyes. “Soom men are twisted from the moment they get that stirrin’ in their nethers. ’E were one of ’em.”
Emmeline was surprised the cook would say as much to a complete stranger. “What do you mean?”
“’E liked girls young, so young they didn’t yet ’ave their womanly troubles, tho’ that never stopped ’im neither.”
Emmeline shook her head with dismay, hoping the cook would keep talking but afraid to urge her on too much.
Mrs. Partridge looked around, then sat on the bench beside Emmeline, her face close, and said, every breath gusting the smell of onions and gin, “’E were involved wiv some bad men, ’e were.”
“Bad men?”
“Aye. They coom to the back door soomtimes, strange men, arskin’ fer the master. Bad men, ’e consorted wiv; I never sed nothin’, joost kept me ’ead down. One of ’em brought that poor child, the one the lady stole away, like a delivery of pies or milk. Not the first time, neither, that feller wiv the doggie brought a girl fer the master. Sir ’Enry ordered a girl and got one perfect: yeller hair, blue eyes, fresh as a daisy.” Her words were scathing, and the image disgraceful.
“That’s terrible!” Emmeline replied, her voice breaking. She would never get accustomed to this, knowing what she now knew about how little girls were used. “How could he do that? Are there others like him?”
The cook nodded. “Aye, there’s a whole group as does it, men all over London ’oo prefer a young girl, an’ not one wiv the French pox on ’em already. Ordered and delivered like a beefsteak or sack o’ cabbages.”
“But why a child?”
“There’s soom men ’oo wanter pluck the most delicate bud,” the cook said darkly. “An’ what more delicate bud is there than a girl so young she don’t bleed?”
“But you don’t know for sure there’s a whole group of men like that.”
“I do know,” the cook bellowed, energized by Emmeline’s dissent. “’Eard the master speakin’ to that feller as brung little Molly here. He said as ‘the others’ would wait their turn, there would be more girls coomin’ later; pretty little things, he said, fresh from the orphan ’ome. Filthy devils.”
Emmeline’s mouth was dry; swallowing was hard. She licked her lips. Though she had suspected it, this was confirmation from the source—the man who delivered the girls—that there were other customers. “Can no one stop them?” Her voice quavered; her heart pounded.
The cook shrugged. “Sir ’Enry said as how it were business now; beyond the men what belonged to the group, they was finding girls for other men now, men as ’eard tell of the company and wanted in.”
“And he said all of this in front of you?”
The cook appeared taken aback by her vehemence and didn’t answer. Emmeline bit her lip, worried she had said too much.
That moment, Noah came back with Miss Honeychurch’s lace mittens in his hands. “Is this them, miss?”
“Yes, those are Miss Honeychurch’s.”
The bell from upstairs rang. Lady Claybourne wanted her tea. Emmeline returned the way she had come, out to the alley, along Chandler Lane, and two more streets over, bending against the increasing wind. As expected, she found Josephs awaiting her and Gillies inside. She felt nauseated and heartsick, not even able to tell Gillies everything until she had found the words for the horror. Everything she learned seemed to make the situation darker and more desperate.
It was late afternoon as they arrived back home to Chelsea, twilight already darkening the Thames as river traffic slowed and folks shuttered their homes and businesses. As she climbed down from the carriage, she spotted Birk in the front window of the sitting room, peering out at her. It was time for the act. In the butler’s presence she tried—though she didn’t always succeed—to be frivolous and gay. She brightened her demeanor, and as they entered she was chattering to Gillies about her poor friend, Miss Kinsman, and how she hated being an invalid, but how it cheered her to have company.
“I didn’t intend to stay so long, but poor little lady … I couldn’t say no to luncheon. However, I am famished, as an invalid’s meal does not suit me. Oh, hello, Birk. Were there any callers?”
“No callers, miss, but there is a rather large package from … your friend, Miss Kinsman.”
Emmeline laughed as gaily as she could manage. “Oh, yes, she had that sent out yesterday thinking I wouldn’t be visiting. She is terminally gloomy, poor thing, sure she is being deserted by her friends.” The package was on the hall table. It appeared rumpled, somehow, as if it had been taken apart and reassembled. Birk did not seem self-conscious, though, and if he had torn it apart it would have been put back together with more care than that.
She had to stop being so suspicious.
Birk tugged at his livery and said, “There is also an invitation for tonight, miss, from your uncle, Sir Jacob. He sent it by hand this afternoon.”
Emmeline took the card from him and crossed to the lamp on the table. “Oh, what fun!” she cried, waving the card. “It is Nut-Crack Night! He has assembled a list of unmarried ladies and gentlemen.”
“Aye, that it is, miss. October thirty-fairst!” Gillies said as she helped Emmeline remove her cloak. “When I was a lass we celebrated, those of us pinin’ aftair a lad.”
Emmeline set the card on top of the package. “My uncle has never celebrated such a silly festival before. He’s becoming a sentimentalist in his dotage. We’ll sit by his fire and toss hazelnuts—to which we’ve given our names—into the blaze.” Depending on whose burned together and whose jumped and crackled, courtship would be smooth or difficult, the old tradition went.
“A grand old tradition, Miss Emmeline,” Birk said, his round face wreathed in a smile.
“I wonder who else he’s invited?” Emmeline nodded to the butler, then kept the smile on her face until she was upstairs, where she collapsed in a chair and put her feet up. “I suppose I must go to my uncle’s absurd party,” she groused.
Gillies took her cloak and hung it on a hook in the clothespress. “Aye, miss. Or he’ll take it unkindly.”
“If I must go, then I will use the evening to do something more than just attend the party. I am revisiting Clerkenwell.”
“Again? We just returned from there.”
“Right now this consumes me. Tommy may have learned more by now, and I won’t waste time, Gillies. I’ll take every opportunity to discover the truth of who killed Sir Henry.”
Twenty-One
Surprisingly, Fidelity was eager to attend Sir Jacob’s impromptu nut-crack party. She and Emmeline had
previously planned an evening in with a new novel, Zastrozzi, by an anonymous author named P.B.S.; the tale promised all the Gothic horror Emmeline relished. That type of book had influenced her character as the Avengeress, cloaked and masked like the banditti of old. But it seemed there was nothing Sir Jacob Pauling could ask of Fidelity that would be too much.
Emmeline knew her uncle had almost certainly invited Woodforde. She suspected that the object of the party was probably to once again throw her into the good doctor’s company. Fidelity and Sir Jacob were united in their eagerness to promote this match, as much as cajoling, urging, and hectoring could be considered promoting. Fidelity loved her cousin and knew of her past sorrows, but thought that marriage to the right man would solve everything.
Emmeline had other concerns than her uncle’s matchmaking that evening, however. Simeon’s latest note, in a package containing more of the most recent broadsheets, alarmed her. The magistrate’s men had indeed come back to The Prattler office that morning to question Simeon. They would, as he had predicted, keep coming back, asking questions. They wanted to know who the Rogue was, and how he was connected to the Avengeress. This came too close to identifying them as one and the same; she had been careless, and would pay for her indiscretion if the truth ever came out. The icy breath of the law was on her neck, and it chilled her to the marrow. Only finding Sir Henry’s killer and sending him to justice would call off the magistrate’s men.
She didn’t know how to go about it other than the stumbling, halting investigation she had been undertaking. So far she knew about Ratter, who had supplied Sir Henry with Sally and then Molly, taking them from the dubious safety of the Pentonville children’s home with the express aid of Mr. Dunstable. She also had a description of the two men who had visited Sir Henry that fateful night: a man with a limp and a Frenchman.
She also had suspicions of the household. Though Lady Claybourne had seemed to grieve her husband’s murder, Emmeline was not convinced of her sincerity. The woman must, after thirty years of marriage, have known what a loathsome toad he was. Would his wife have resorted to such a slaughter, though, so violent and bloody? The poisoner’s dram seemed more effective for a woman than a butcher’s knife.
So too it seemed doubtful that either the housekeeper or cook, one of whom had called in the Crones to aid the little girl, was the killer, but it could have been a follower of either, summoned to rob the home of its silver. Hard as it was to imagine the hard-featured housekeeper or plump and often drunken cook with followers, the lure of easy pickings may have made a man or two overlook their scanty charms. She returned to a thought she had earlier pondered, that perhaps murder had never been the aim; Sir Henry may have surprised one of them stealing the silver and been attacked, though none of the facts she had so far gleaned supported that conclusion.
Having now talked with the cook, Emmeline believed that the summoning of the Avengeress had simply been to save the girl. In which case, the housekeeper and cook were likely not the guilty ones. Emmeline believed that because Sir Henry had sent out two notes after the Avengeress’s visit, and then Ratter—likely from the Rookery—and the other two men had come to see him, those visits were prompted by the notes. She didn’t have proof of this, but it seemed probable, and if it were the case, was it not likely that one, two, or all three had killed him? Who were the other two men, and how could she find them? More to the point, it seemed impossible to both point the magistrate in the right direction and allay his suspicion of the Avengeress.
It behooved her to explore every avenue of thought and not settle on the guilty without proof. Sir Henry’s death could have been the result of a neighborly dispute, a domestic disagreement, or a business venture gone wrong. She must persevere if she was to succeed, and so her plans for the evening must include more prying, more snooping, more meddling.
After a light supper, Emmeline and Fidelity repaired to their rooms to dress. “Gillies, do Mrs. Bramage and Mrs. Riddle treat our new scullery maid well?” Emmeline asked as her maid redressed her hair, which had become untidy after the long day out in the cold breeze of late October.
“Annie? As well as the lass could expect anywhere, I s’pose. She’ll no complain, I warrant. It’s a well-run house with ample food, a warm place to sleep, and an undemanding mistress. Nouw,” she said, patting the neatened hair and meeting Emmeline’s gaze in the mirror, “what d’ye fancy to wear? The gold velvet from last winter?”
“That’ll do,” Emmeline said.
An hour later they headed to her uncle’s impromptu Nut-Crack Night soiree in his elegant St. James townhome. Along the way, Emmeline stopped the carriage and informed Josephs that they would later be continuing to Clerkenwell, despite Fidelity’s protests. She asked that he go there while she was at the party to see if Tommy Jones had learned anything new since that afternoon, and also to gather what other information on the Claybourne household he could.
“Emmie, think what you are planning to do!” Fidelity fretted. “It’s so dangerous to investigate!”
“I can’t leave my fate to chance. Until they discover who killed Sir Henry, they’ll be looking at the Avengeress. I will take every opportunity to investigate, as you call it.”
As she expected, Woodforde had been invited to the party, along with the engaged couples she had met at the dinner party, Mr. Wilkins and Miss Gottschalk, and Mr. Fulmer and Miss Purley. Sir Jacob laughingly took Fidelity as his partner for the evening in the “nut-crackery,” as he called the ostensible reason for the party, and she happily acquiesced. This evening he had gone further in his sociability and also invited Lady Clara Langford and her fiancé Mr. Elijah Jeffcock.
“I didn’t know you knew my uncle!” Emmeline murmured to her fellow Crone in the dimness of the candlelit entry as Gillies removed her cloak and bustled off with it.
Lady Clara gave a tight smile.
Sir Jacob was also in the entry to greet these latest guests; he never could wait for his guests to come to him but must meet them almost at the door. Cheeks glowing red with bonhomie and wine, he chuckled at Emmeline’s surprise and bowed to Lady Clara and Mr. Jeffcock, then put his arm over his niece’s shoulders. “I saw Lady Clara at the theater speaking with you and thought what a lovely and charming damsel. So I forced an introduction with Mr. Jeffcock—with whom I do have mutual acquaintance—whence I learned they were newly betrothed, and sent a note around this afternoon inviting them to this gathering.” He dropped a sly wink and nodded, placing one finger along his nose. “I have always enjoyed getting to know my niece’s friends, and especially so lovely a lass.”
“We belong to the same ladies’ group,” Emmeline explained to her uncle and Mr Jeffcock. “We organize help for the unfortunate.”
“Ah, yes, charity for the idle,” Jeffcock drawled. “Despite that it doesn’t help society one jot, to prolong the lives of the corrupt and lazy.”
Emmeline cast him a disgusted look, which Lady Clara caught. She concealed a quick smile. The others arrived—Woodforde, who had been at a patient’s bedside, last of all—and gathered in the informal drawing room, which was furnished with a rearrangement of low chairs and stools near the ornate fireplace, an imposing relic her uncle had imported from a castle in Germany. As for the furniture, Sir Jacob laughingly described enlisting the aid of his exasperated valet, Pierre, who had thought the whole event was a “follie extraordinaire,” as Sir Jacob drew out with a Gallic flourish. His laughter turned into a coughing fit as the butler brought a tray of port and a basket of nuts.
Her uncle took a long drink of his port, then explained to a skeptical Miss Gottschalk and a bemused Miss Purley about Nut-Crack Night. “We will take turns giving these hazelnuts names,” he said, holding a smooth, glossy russet nut up to the light. “We then toss them into the fire two at a time. If they burn as one, courtship shall be smooth and untroubled. If they pop and leap apart, it presages a bumpier road to marriage. Our pagan forebears w
ere a suspicious lot. Nowadays, of course, this is a social event to bring young ladies and gentlemen together.”
“To matchmake, in other words,” Emmeline said dryly.
Mr. Wilkins laid his walking stick aside and picked up his port, holding it up to the light. “I will go anywhere Sir Jacob commands, to drink his fine port and enjoy his expansive hospitality.”
Emmeline eyed him, wondering how close to the Claybourne family the barrister was, given that he was their man of business as well as her uncle’s. Odd that he hadn’t mentioned it at the dinner party, even as he was lauding the knight.
“Is that not intrusive, Sir Jacob? To matchmake, as you say, or interfere in a couple’s alliance?” Miss Gottschalk asked. She sat on a low stool and carefully arranged her sapphire blue silk moiré gown for best display. Around her neck and at her ears she wore a sapphire necklace and ear bobs that brought out the brilliant blue of her eyes.
She was overdressed for the occasion, a casual event, and Lady Clara looked upon her with scorn, but the young German woman seemed not to notice; or more likely, Emmeline thought, not to care. She liked her for it, and wondered what made such a woman agree to marry a man like Wilkins, so boorish and tedious.
“Of course it’s intrusive,” Sir Jacob said. “But I think that my age and position as a judge allows me latitude. I am like the elderly spinster aunt who is allowed her eccentricities so long as they are well intended.”
Emmeline laughed and told the group a story of her uncle, who visited Malincourt often when she was a child. “It was Christmas, I think, wasn’t it, Uncle, the year you frightened Maria? Yes, it must have been, because I remember you wearing a Father Christmas costume with a long ermine-trimmed robe. Father thought you were extravagant because you brought all of us children sacks of candies and fruits. And you would have us sit on your lap and tell us our secrets. But poor Maria!” She smiled through tears at the memory of her younger sister. “She was so frightened—I think she didn’t know you for the costume—and you tickled her, but she cried and cried! Finally mama had to take her away and calm her down.”
A Gentlewoman's Guide to Murder Page 21