A Gentlewoman's Guide to Murder

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Of course … of course.” Emmeline took a deep breath, calming herself. “Leave him a message here to meet us at Sir Jacob’s. We can walk. We’re only a short ways from my uncle’s house.”

  Gillies dashed back inside, then returned to Emmeline’s side, where she paced on the walk. “Why are we going to your uncle’s, miss?”

  As they walked, quickly because of the cold, Emmeline told her maid what she had learned from Miss Gottschalk about Mr. Wilkins, and what she suspected. Gillies was shocked and troubled.

  “My uncle will be devastated; I don’t know how I can break it to him, what I suspect of Wilkins.”

  Sir Jacob’s home in St. James, part of a long row of newer townhomes, was approached through a black wrought iron gate. Constructed of white stone with an entrance that jutted toward the street and a shiny black painted door, Emmeline surged up the two shallow steps and grasped the lion’s head door knocker, letting it fall with a loud crack like a rifle’s report. It sounded as urgent as she felt.

  Vernon, Sir Jacob’s august butler, opened the door and looked down his hooked nose. He bowed and ushered her in with polished ease.

  “Is my uncle here, Vernon?”

  “Yes, Miss St. Germaine.”

  “I must see him immediately.”

  His face stiff with disapproval at such hasty behavior, he guided her to the drawing room, where she and Gillies sat in silence.

  Sir Jacob, spectacles perched on his nose and a book in hand, hastened through the open double doors. “Emmie, what’s wrong? The family? Fidelity?”

  “No, we’re all perfectly healthy, Uncle,” she said, standing, fidgeting with her gloves and staring at him. She still had no idea what she was going to say.

  He set his book aside on a polished round table by one window, removing his spectacles and setting them on the book. “It frightened me when Vernon would give me no answer other than that you were here and were insistent on seeing me immediately,” he said, reproof in his tone.

  “I’m sorry to alarm you, Uncle, but it is important.”

  “Come, sit!” he said, taking her elbow and guiding her to a chair by the fireplace. “Gillies, you may go to the kitchen and speak with Morag, if you like, or wait in the entrance.”

  “I would like her to stay here because she doesn’t yet know all I will speak of,” Emmeline said. “You may sit, Gillies.”

  Her uncle looked perturbed but said nothing. Gillies took a hard chair to the right of Emmeline’s as Sir Jacob took the chair opposite his niece. “What is this all about, Emmeline?”

  The pale light filtered in through sheer curtains and reflected off his balding pate. Emmeline stared at him, remembering all the times she had sobbed on his shoulder after her mother died, and the many occasions he had protected her from her father’s wrath. She didn’t know where to start, didn’t know how to broach such a delicate subject. If he considered Wilkins a friend, this was going to hit him hard … if he even believed her, which increasingly seemed unlikely. She collected her thoughts, staring down at her gloved hands in her lap, fingering the long, loose ribbons of her bonnet. Her uncle cleared his throat and she looked up, meeting his gaze. “How long have you known Mr. Wilkins, Uncle?”

  His bushy brows joined together over his bulbous, red-threaded nose. “What is going on? Has he said anything to you? Done anything?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  He frowned and shook his head. She watched him for a long minute in silence, but he was not going to answer. Maybe he already had a notion of what she was going to say. “I’m … worried. I had a conversation with someone today; it alarmed me, and … and gave me cause to be concerned about Mr. Wilkins.”

  He looked puzzled. As supportive as he had always been, she well knew that he viewed her as prickly and oversensitive, imaginative, intelligent but flighty. Wilkins was a trusted financial advisor to him, and his word might hold more weight than her suspicions.

  “I have to tell you something, and you may find it shocking.”

  Gillies moved uncertainly beside her.

  “I have learned some things about the murder of Sir Henry Claybourne,” Emmeline continued. “And what he was involved in that brought him to that end.”

  “Sir Henry Claybourne? That … that brewer fellow? Emmeline, you’re not making a bit of sense. What have you to do with that man and his murder? How would you learn anything beyond what we all know from the newspapers?”

  “Gillies, could you close the drawing room doors, please?”

  Her maid did as she was asked and returned to her seat.

  Emmeline took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “I have been helping servant girls escape from situations where men have abused them. Mostly scullery maids.”

  Open-mouthed, he stared into the distance; then understanding dawned in his eyes and he met her gaze. “You are the mysterious lady who stole the scullery maid from Sir Henry Claybourne’s home the night he was murdered?”

  She could back away from it still, say she was part of a group but that it had been another anonymous lady who performed the deed. However …“Yes, it was me.”

  “But that woman … is she not guilty of …?” Warring emotions and confusion shadowed Sir Jacob’s eyes and twisted his features. “But no, you would never do such a heinous act.” He stood and paced to the window, stared out, then turned. His voice gruff and filled with anxiety, he said, “Emmie, I cannot believe you risked your reputation, your family, your very life in such a way! Are you mad? What will Leopold say when he discovers this?”

  “He won’t, Uncle,” Emmeline said sharply. “Not unless someone tells him. I only told you because I trust you. Do you mean to break that trust?” He was silent. “Do you, Uncle?”

  “Why do you tell me this?” he said, turning away from her.

  She felt his disapproval; it radiated from him in waves, and though she disliked being the one to disappoint him, it was her life. She was trying to decide how to explain to him when he spoke again.

  Still turned away, he said, “Why do you ask about Wilkins?”

  “Because I believe he is deeply involved in these matters, and I think he is cheating you.”

  He whirled. “What?”

  “There is something about Mr. Wilkins, beyond his repellent personal traits, his eagerness to exploit the poor, his lack of care for anyone beyond himself and his wealth, that I have distrusted. Even more so now. I have learned today that he has …” She struggled with how to say it. “He has a disgusting predilection for young girls … very young.”

  Sir Jacob turned away again, shoulders slumped. “How do you know this?”

  “That is not my story to tell, but I trust my informant.” Emmeline rose and stalked over to him, standing between him and the window, willing him to meet her gaze. She would not be ignored or disregarded. “Uncle, beyond the murder, which possibly he may be involved in, I have a grave suspicion that Mr. Wilkins is using your business as a cloak for another more sordid affair. I have proof that there has been a business made of obtaining little girls from at least one orphanage and putting them as scullery maids in the houses of men who want to abuse them.” Heat flared in her cheeks and her hands curled in fists at her side. “Sexually, to be completely blunt, if I have not made myself clear.”

  He grabbed the back of a chair for support, then put one large hand over his face and bent over at the waist, puffing as if he could not get his breath. She was alarmed; was he having an apoplectic fit? Her mother, Sir Jacob’s sister, had died of the same weakness.

  “Uncle? Should I send for Vernon?”

  “Ring for some sherry, my dear. It is … if I can believe you, this is a terrible, terrible shock. A betrayal of the deepest kind.”

  “Gillies, go find Vernon and have him bring brandy, not sherry. Uncle needs a strong restorative.”

  Her maid stood,
staring at her, wringing her hands over and over.

  “Gillies, what’s wrong?”

  The maid looked at her, then at Sir Jacob, and then back at her.

  “Go! Fetch Mr. Vernon. Now!”

  Gillies did as she was told, finding the butler and sending him to the drawing room with both brandy for the master and sherry for Miss St. Germaine. But she was not going back to join them. She had a dreadful hunch that she prayed to the Almighty was not true. She headed to the kitchen to see Morag. And to see little Polly, with the golden silky hair and increasingly sad eyes.

  His color improved once he had a sip of the drink. Sir Jacob sat in his favorite chair near the huge marble fireplace with the half glass of brandy balanced on his knee. Emmeline had told him as much as she dared without naming herself as also being the Rogue, who had exposed Sir Henry Claybourne in the first place and who had access to much more information than she, Miss Emmeline St. Germaine, possibly could. Because of what she couldn’t say, her case against Mr. Wilkins was weak. Now they sat silently.

  Finally, Sir Jacob said, “You were always too clever for your own good, Emmeline. Even as a little girl.” A maid had lit the fire and it crackled with flame at first, beginning now to die down to glowing embers, warming them.

  “If I were so clever, I would not have been taken advantage of when I was fifteen.” It was a part of the family history that her uncle knew, how her tutor had seduced her with the intent of forcing money from the family.

  “You should not be embarrassed of that, my dear. It is one of the great ills of our society that it looks down upon a girl for having sexual experience.”

  Sexual experience? She looked up at him sharply. “It was not simply sexual experience. I did not know what I was getting into. How could I? Uncle, don’t you think Rudy took advantage of me?” She had always thought his support of her had been borne of a desire not to see her shamed for her part in the affair. Rudolph Maes had been twenty-nine and she barely fifteen. He had convinced her against her conscience, taken her away from her family despite her doubts—a lonely room in an inn, his body pressed on hers, a belated but emphatic and frightened “no” from her, brief pain and a little blood … then nothing but a cold night alone, weeping, while he went downstairs to get drunk—and then sold her out for five hundred pounds from her father and passage back to Bruges. And she was left to bear all the disgrace of being the daughter who had risked the family’s honor out of a fatal moral weakness.

  “Of course he took advantage of you. Your father should have had him clapped in irons.”

  “But …?” She heard something, some hesitation in his tone.

  “Oh, Emmie, you undoubtedly led him on,” Sir Jacob said, setting aside his empty brandy glass and putting his hands over his paunch, weaving his fingers together. “What are men to do? You’re all so pretty when young, with your pouting and flirtation and softness, and you behave with such enticing manners. Little girls know when they are flirting, the little coquettes! Men cannot be blamed if they become entranced and tempted against their conscience. We are weak in the face of your allure, you see, led to impropriety by pretty girls’ charming seduction.”

  Bile rose in Emmeline’s throat and she swallowed it back. “What are you saying, Uncle?”

  He sighed. “I wonder, is your condemnation of Sir Henry, based on that wild writer’s claims, a reaction to what you went through? You are not those girls, Emmie, those scullery maids you’re so worried about.”

  “No, I was older, for one thing. Just fifteen, but still older than the ten or eleven they are. And I was not abused and discarded, or …” She shook her head, confused by her feelings, the sickening sensation that her uncle would never understand what it was like to be a girl so roughly introduced to sexual relations. Was he right? Was she to blame for what Rudolph had done to her?

  “I didn’t mean in your age, I meant in your gentility,” he admonished. “Those girls are not as sensitive as girls of our class, and so don’t feel things as deeply. They’re grateful to have enough to eat and a warm place to sleep. Do not place yourself among their numbers, for you are not like them.”

  He meant to soothe her, but instead the very marrow in her bones chilled. A long habit of deferring to his judgment and respecting his opinions kept her from speaking. She tried to sort out what he meant. His smile was kind, if weary.

  Gillies entered the room and curtseyed. “Beggin’ your pardon, miss. May I speak to you?”

  “Not right now, Gillies,” she said, still watching her uncle.

  “Please, miss.”

  Emmeline glanced her way. Gillies was white and quivering, her eyes starting from her head like a frog’s bulging orbs.

  “Gillies, mind your manners,” Sir Jacob said gruffly. “Emmeline, you need to have a talk with her; she’s become impertinent.”

  That stirred her into action. She stood. “Gillies is not impertinent. She is wise and kind, and if she needs to speak with me I can assume it is about something of importance.”

  “I worry that you are being taken advantage of by your servants,” Sir Jacob said mildly, but there was tension in his tone, and his gaze had become shuttered, unreadable.

  She followed her maid to the hall beyond the doors. Gillies wrung her hands together, her gaze darting about the cold echoing hall, looking to every corner and then to the doors not quite closed behind them. She crossed, closed the doors more tightly, and turned, her back against them, and yet still she didn’t speak.

  “Gillies, what is it?” Emmeline asked, becoming impatient. “I’m in the middle of … of a difficult conversation with my uncle.”

  “Are ye, nouw?” Her maid’s breathing increased in rapidity and she swallowed hard, her voice rough and brogue thickening as she said, “Mayhap you should ask him what he’s been up to wi’ the wee scullery maid in this house, little Polly—real name Lindy—who was fetched by one fellow named Ratter from that orphanage to work in this house.”

  It was as if a hand pressed down on her chest, or a heavy weight lay on it, all the air pushed out. Heat flooded up until her cheeks burned. Emmeline staggered sideways, dizzy, buzzing in her ears, lights flashing about her. “No, no! Gillies, that cannot be true.” Her voice sounded harsh and grating, odd in her own ears. She began shivering, her whole body shaking; a chill invaded her like a ghastly spirit.

  Gillies grasped her by the arm and guided her to a chair by the wall, pressing her head down. “I shouldna said it so abruptly. You’ll faint unless you take deep, slow breaths.” She held a vial of sal volatile under Emmeline’s nose.

  Her head snapped back and she bumped it on the wall, but the dizziness was passing. She glared up at Gillies. “What are you talking about? How can you say …” She stopped. This was Gillies: steady, stalwart, intelligent. “Explain.”

  Gillies related the basics: Sir Jacob did all the hiring of his serving staff, as Emmeline knew. The previous scullery maid had run away. Ratter, with his small dog, had brought Polly around and Sir Jacob had a look at her and hired her. She was pretty, blonde, soft white skin, pink cheeks, and just eleven, with a sunny temperament that had become darker as the days passed.

  Emmeline tried to deny it, to fend off the suggestion that her uncle was one of them. But she kept coming back to her younger sister Maria—also blonde, with soft white skin, pink cheeks, and a charming laugh—squirming away from him in tears, her refusal to sleep in the nursery alone during his visits … something Emmeline hadn’t remembered until this moment.

  She rose, staggered to a corner, and retched, her luncheon coming up and spilling out onto the marble floor. Gillies found a handkerchief and guided her back to sit down, mopping her brow and then giving her the cloth to wipe her mouth.

  “He’s one of them, isn’t he?” Emmeline whispered hoarsely, her eyes prickly with tears, the buzzing ringing in her ears, her throat corroded by the bile.

&n
bsp; “I’m sorry, miss, truly. But aye, he is.”

  Emmeline shook her head, the welling tears running down her cheeks and dripping onto her hands. “Don’t be sorry for me. He never laid a hand on me, I suppose because I was a dark, fey, wild little thing. Save your pity for that poor child—Lindy, is it? She is, then, little Sarah’s friend who disappeared—and pity all of the others before her.” Emmeline took in a quivering breath. “And save some pity for poor Maria, who I suspect was one of his victims. Let us put an end to this.”

  She rose, steadied herself, took a deep breath, and turned toward the doors. In these last few minutes, standing in this drafty hall, the light from outside breaking up the darkness in long pale bars, her world—everything she had believed about her family, and maybe even her own conviction that she could understand and see evil—had changed. Pain thudded through her temples and the sour smell of her own vomit soiled the air, but there was no ignoring this now. Whatever else she was, she was no coward.

  “D’ye need me, miss?”

  “No. Go.” Emmeline wiped the tears from her cheeks. “If Josephs has come, then take that poor child out to our carriage and I will join you. But first … I have to do this alone.”

  “I’m worrit for you, miss.”

  Emmeline nodded and choked back a sob. “He was my favorite uncle. I mourn the loss as if he had died. But there are things, looking back … I’ll tell you later.”

  Gillies put one hand on her arm and nodded, then was gone.

  Her uncle had retrieved his book and was sitting at his ease, though he didn’t seem easy. He looked up and set his book aside. Something in her eyes warned him as she crossed the room, and he rose from his chair. “Emmeline, what did that pesky maid say that has upset you?”

  “She’s taking little Polly away … Lindy, rather, for that is her real name. She’s rescuing her. From you.”