Mystery Loves Company

by Sheri Cobb South

  “Very well.” Conceding defeat with a sigh, he stepped away from the clothes press. “You may choose. Which is it to be?”

  “Hmm.” She rifled through the garments, considering each one in turn. “Nothing so bright as the mulberry I should think, given the solemnity of the occasion. What do you think of the bottle green?” She pulled it out of the clothes press and held it up for inspection.

  “If that is what you like, my lady, then who am I to dispute it?”

  He dressed hastily in the shirt, breeches, and waistcoat she chose for him, but when it came time to pull on the green tailcoat, she was obliged to lend a hand to coax the close-fitting garment up his arms and over his shoulders.

  “You will want to engage a valet, of course,” she said, smoothing his collar.

  “I will?” he asked, rather taken aback by this revelation.

  “Of course,” she said again. Seeing he was not convinced, she explained, “John, you’ll find that fashionable garments fit much more closely than those you are accustomed to wearing. I confess, I’ve sometimes wondered how you contrived to dress yourself for our wedding.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” he admitted, recalling his struggle with the blue tailcoat he’d worn on that occasion. “Still, you helped me put on that same coat for dinner at your parents’ house—more than once, in fact.”

  “Yes, but you cannot deny that the circumstances were unusual,” she pointed out. “We’d only just married, and hadn’t yet had time to engage additional staff. For that matter, we’d have had nowhere to put servants in any case, since we were living in your Drury Lane flat. But you cannot expect me to valet for you forever.”

  “Why not?” he asked plaintively.

  She continued as if he had not spoken. “Thomas might oblige, if you don’t wish to entrust the care of your person to the ministrations of a stranger. In fact, he would consider it quite a step up in the world. We could then engage another footman to take his place.”

  “I’m not at all comfortable with the idea of ordering Thomas about,” Pickett objected. “After all, I’ve worn the man’s livery.”

  “Yes, in Yorkshire,” she recalled, nodding in remembrance. “And as I recollect, the sleeves were a bit short on you, were they not? Still, Thomas knows you, and likes you, and so is unlikely to look down his nose at you, as a truly fashionable valet might do.”

  “But the expense—”

  “Thomas will need to be given a rise in his wages, of course, but we can well afford it. Besides, his services will cost less than those of a fashionable gentleman’s gentleman. Come, I will make you a bargain,” she said with a provocative gleam in her eye. “If you will engage a valet to help you into your coat in the morning, I will endeavor to help you out of it at night.”

  This offer seemed to clench the matter, just as she had intended. Pickett bade her a lingering farewell, and then set out for the Bull’s Head, albeit not before she had extracted a promise from him that he would tell her anything interesting that happened at the inquest.

  Alone in the bedchamber, Julia watched out the window until she saw him emerge from the house into the street below. Her loving gaze followed his departure until he disappeared from view, then she gave a little sigh and turned her attention to her own toilette.

  A quarter hour’s walk brought her to Audley Street and the Town residence of Emily, the Countess of Dunnington. The butler opened at once to her knock, and all but fell on her neck in gratitude.

  “Lady Dunnington will be pleased to see you, your ladyship—er, madam,” he said in a voice that conveyed a wealth of understatement.

  He led the way to the drawing room where Julia had partaken of many a cup of tea in company with the countess.

  “Julia! Thank God!” declared Lady Dunnington, heaving herself to her feet to welcome her guest. “I thought I should die of boredom. Do come in and sit down.”

  Julia embraced her friend warmly, and then took a seat on one end of the sofa, from which vantage point she surveyed the elegantly appointed room as if seeing it for the first time.

  “What is it, Julia?” Lady Dunnington asked, regarding her visitor curiously.

  “Nothing, really, only—I can remember a time when I sat in this room with John, and I had no idea that, through some quirk of Scottish law, we were legally wed.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Was it really only this past November? So much has changed since then!”

  Emily studied her keenly. “Are you happy, Julia? Do you regret it?”

  “Oh, Emily, how could I? It is true that I sometimes get lonely or bored—I confess, I am too much of a coward to face the prospect of walking in St. James’s Park, where I should no doubt be ogled and pointed out, or else given the cut direct.” Her gaze grew soft. “And yet when I compare what I have lost with what I have gained—no, Emily, I cannot regret it.”

  “And that is what they cannot pardon, you know. If only you had had the decency to suffer for your sins, it would have been very different. Much can be forgiven a woman who breaks the rules only to die a lingering death of some wasting disease, having been abandoned by her lover and left to languish in solitary misery. But you, my dear, had the gall not only to break the rules, but to rejoice in your shame. Why, it threatens the very fabric of Society. Oh! Speaking of fabric—” Emily leaped to her feet as quickly as her increasing girth would allow. “—Mother Dunnington sent the most beautiful little dress for the baby’s christening! I suspect she is angling to have a daughter named after her if it should be a girl, and I suppose we ought to do so, since she is the child’s grandmother, but I cannot bring myself to saddle my daughter with a name like Iphigenia! But let me show you the dress, and you may tell me what you think of it. I’ll just dash upstairs and fetch it.”

  Julia felt compelled to protest. “Had you not better send a servant for it?”

  “Pish tosh!” Emily declared inelegantly. “You are as bad as Dunnington! If it were left up to him, I would sit on the sofa for the next four months with my feet on a cushion. One would think it was my first child, instead of my third.”

  Julia abandoned an argument that she recognized to be futile, and sat back to await her friend’s return. The room seemed unnaturally silent after Lady Dunnington’s departure, the only sound being the ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantel. Julia suddenly realized how very tired she was. The events of the previous night and her early morning awakening all seemed to catch up to her at once, and she raised her gloved hand to cover a yawn. Perhaps if she were to close her eyes for just a moment . . .

  By the time Lady Dunnington reentered the room a few minutes later with a lavishly embroidered gown of whitework on fine batiste draped over her arm, Julia was sound asleep.

  “I’m sorry it took me so long. I thought Cummings had packed it in the—” Emily broke off abruptly at the sight of her slumbering guest.

  Whether it was Emily’s voice that awoke her, or its sudden cessation, Julia returned to wakefulness with a start.

  “Late night, Julia?” Emily asked, arching one provocative eyebrow. “Am I to assume, then, that the education of your enfant prodige is proceeding apace?”

  It would be useless, Julia supposed, to protest that the warmth that flooded her face was simply due to its being flushed with sleep. She had never told Emily in so many words that John Pickett had been a virgin when she’d married him, but she supposed that, given the requirements of the annulment process, it had not been difficult to deduce. “I’ll have you know, Emily, that we were in bed before midnight!”

  Emily nodded sagely. “Of that, my dear, I have no doubt.”

  “I mean we were asleep by midnight,” Julia insisted. “We had gone to the Washbourn masquerade—John was on a case, so you need not look like that—and one of the maids collapsed and died, right there in the ballroom. Needless to say, it brought the revelries to an abrupt end.”

  “Yes, I know about that. I read about it in Aunt Mildred’s Parlour just this morning.”

&nb
sp; “What, already?”

  Emily returned to her vacated place on the sofa, and removed a single printed page from the piecrust table at her elbow. “Here, you may read it for yourself.”

  Julia took the broadsheet and scanned it quickly. Sure enough, a third of the way down the page, “ ‘Lady W— is proving herself to be a Society hostess whom all others will strive in vain to emulate,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Not content with introducing a Bow Street Runner into her social circle, the former Miss M—’s primary entertainment for the evening proved to be the sudden death of one of her housemaids. While Lady W—’s masquerade will certainly be the talk of the Season, one can only hope that competing hostesses will not feel compelled to slay their servants in imitation.’ Oh, poor John!”

  “ ‘Poor John’?” Lady Dunnington echoed incredulously. “I should say rather, ‘poor Lady Washbourn.’ Does it not seem to you that there is a particular malice at work whenever Aunt Mildred mentions Lady Washbourn?”

  Julia considered the matter, and was forced to agree. “Now that you mention it, I suppose there is. One might argue that certain of her targets almost ask to be skewered by Aunt Mildred’s pen—individuals who gamble away obscene sums of money at cards, or couples who are indiscreet in their pursuit of affaires—but Lady Washbourn is guilty of no greater sin than marrying above her station. She is far from the first person to have done so, and yet whatever the poor woman does, even giving birth to a girl instead of the hoped-for heir, is fair game for Aunt Mildred.”

  “Yes, I had thought that last was particularly cruel. As if a woman has any choice in the gender of her child! And by all accounts, Lord Washbourn positively dotes on his little daughter, so if he is not bothered by it, what cause has Aunt Mildred for complaint?”

  “One thing is certain,” Julia said. “Whoever Aunt Mildred is, and however much she may despise Lady Washbourn, she had no qualms about accepting the lady’s hospitality.”

  “Julia! You think she was at the masquerade last night?”

  “I think she must have been. How else would she have known about the incident in time to write about it and submit it to her printer, who then published and distributed it, all in less than twelve hours?”

  “Yes, I suppose you must be right. That narrows the lady’s identity down to, what, fifty women, give or take a few.”

  “You might as well make it an even hundred, for ‘Aunt Mildred’ might well be a man using a female nom de plume,” Julia pointed out.

  “Very true! I hadn’t thought of that. But enough about Aunt Mildred! Tell me what you think of this.”

  Lady Dunnington spread the christening gown over her knees, and the conversation turned to the countess’s approaching confinement. At length, however, Emily noticed her guest’s frequent glances at the clock, and was smitten with remorse.

  “Oh, my dear Julia, pray forgive me!” she exclaimed, conscience-stricken. “I had not thought how difficult this must be for you, unable as you are to have children of your own.”

  Julia placed her hand over Emily’s and gave it a squeeze. “Not at all, Emily. I am genuinely happy for you, truly I am—all the more so because it was John who brought it about.” Seeing Emily’s wide eyes and gaping jaw, she amended hastily, “Not that he is responsible for your condition, of course, but he certainly brought about the reconciliation between you and Lord Dunnington that made it possible.”

  “I should say so! As for my condition, that must certainly be laid at Dunnington’s door.” Her satisfied smile put Julia forcibly in mind of the cat that ate the canary. “One thing must be said for gentlemen of a certain age: they know much better than their younger counterparts how best to please a lady.”

  Julia could not allow this slur against her own very young husband to go unchallenged. “Nevertheless, Emily, there is much to be said for the—the stamina—of five-and-twenty,” she insisted, coloring slightly as she glanced up at the clock over the mantel.

  “There you go again,” Emily accused.

  “Oh, Emily, I do beg your pardon,” Julia said, much chastened. “It is the inquest, you see. It began an hour ago, and I cannot help wondering—” She could not say more without betraying her husband’s confidence. Thankfully, Emily seemed to grasp the situation at once.

  “And you cannot help wondering how things are going for your Mr. Pickett,” she deduced. “Very well, then, go home and wait for him. And if he should return from the inquest cross and out of temper, then take him upstairs and swive him properly, and all will be well.”

  “What an excellent notion!” Julia rose to her feet and looked down at her hostess with a mischievous smile. “You do realize, do you not, that he would be utterly mortified if he knew we were talking about him in such a way.”

  “I do indeed—in fact, that is what makes it so enjoyable. My one regret is that he is not here, so I am denied the pleasure of watching him squirm.” Lady Dunnington regarded her friend with a long, appraising look. “In all seriousness, Julia, however much I might have deplored your decision to marry him, I do believe he has been good for you.”

  “Yes.” Julia’s smile grew soft. “Yes, he has,” she said, and set out for Curzon Street to await his return.

  7

  In Which an Inquest Is Held

  The subject of this discussion, meanwhile, arrived at the Bull’s Head shortly before nine o’clock. He passed through the public room to the more private one in the back, and found that the tables had been shoved against the wall and the chairs arranged in rows. One row of seven chairs stood apart from the rest, and Pickett recognized these as having been set aside for the jury. Adjacent to these chairs, and positioned facing them, was a single chair where those being questioned would sit in turn. As for the other seats, the first few rows were reserved for witnesses, with Lord Washbourn, his wife, and his mother taking up most of the front row. The earl sat tight-lipped, while Lady Washbourn’s face was white and strained. A flash of red caught Pickett’s eye as the dowager countess toyed with the handkerchief on her lap, and Pickett recognized the same large red stone she’d worn the previous evening. He had supposed the ring was part of her costume, but apparently this assumption was incorrect. Now he found himself wondering if it, too, comprised part of the Washbourn rubies and, if so, how she had contrived to retain it when the rest of the set passed to her daughter-in-law. Pickett found little to interest him in the other seats, most of which appeared to be filled with a motley collection of masquerade attendees who were not on the jury, and regular patrons of the establishment. The former had no doubt been lured there by morbid curiosity; the latter, by the desire for liquid refreshment even at so early an hour. Pickett chose a chair at one end of the second row and sat down to await events.

  “Room for one more?”

  At the sound of a familiar voice, one whose native Scots accent was still intact despite years spent living in London and, long before that, America, Pickett looked up into the face of his magistrate.

  “Mr. Colquhoun!” Pickett quickly slid over to the next chair, leaving the one on the end for his mentor. “What brings you here?”

  “Need you ask? Let us say that when my breakfast is interrupted by a communication from the esteemed Mr. Bagley requesting that I instruct my Runners to cease meddling in matters that are none of their concern, I judge it wise to take an interest. No, my lad, let me have the inside chair. I daresay you’ll need to be on the end, so you can get out more easily when you’re called on to testify.”

  “If I’m called on to testify,” Pickett put in bitterly.

  “You will be,” the magistrate predicted confidently.

  Pickett shook his head. “I’m not so sure. Mr. Bagley was not at all pleased to see me at the Washbourn masquerade—never mind the fact that I was the one who instructed them to send for him in the first place,” he added with perhaps justifiable resentment.

  “Bartholomew Bagley is a fool,” declared Mr. Colquhoun, never one to mince words. “His appointment as coroner is
strictly on an interim basis, his predecessor having recently retired, and until he is confirmed in the position permanently—a day I hope I may never live to see—he perceives a threat to his authority behind every bush. He doesn’t want the sort of messy murder case that might jeopardize his permanent appointment.”

  “I should have thought a sensational murder would help rather than hinder his cause,” Pickett observed.

  “A sensational murder, perhaps. But there’s nothing particularly sensational about the death of a housemaid. Then, too, if he can prevent any hint of scandal from wrecking Lord Washbourn’s chances for his own government appointment, Mr. Bagley might acquire a powerful patron.”

  “In other words, I haven’t a chance,” Pickett said bleakly.

  “Make no mistake, Mr. Pickett, you will have your say—I intend to make sure of it—but I doubt you will much enjoy it. I shouldn’t wonder if Mr. Bagley seizes upon any chance to discredit you.”

  Pickett gave a humorless laugh. “He won’t have far to look, will he?” It was a statement, not a question, but one with which the magistrate begged leave to differ.

  “Nonsense! Whatever you might have done before you came to Bow Street, your record since then has been exemplary. You have nothing to fear from the likes of Bartholomew Bagley.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Pickett said with an uncertain yet grateful smile. Mr. Colquhoun, he knew, did not suffer fools gladly (as evidenced by his bluntly stated opinion of the coroner) which made the magistrate’s intervention in the life of a juvenile pickpocket all the more incredible—almost as incredible as the idea that, ten years later, a viscountess (and one, furthermore, who might have had any gentleman she wished) could fall in love with and marry that same pickpocket.

  “Sir,” Pickett began, but whatever he might have said was interrupted when a door on the opposite side of the room opened and seven gentlemen filed in, followed by the coroner himself. The seven took the seats reserved for the jurors with much scraping of chair legs against the wooden floor boards, and it occurred to Pickett that surely never before had the death of a housemaid attracted so exalted a collection of spectators. Once the jurors settled themselves comfortably, the coroner rose. Mr. Bagley looked over the room, which by this time had grown quite crowded, and glared when his gaze fell on Pickett and Mr. Colquhoun. Looking quickly away, he cleared his throat and addressed the gathering.