Mystery Loves Company

by Sheri Cobb South

“Then perhaps you are creating a problem where none exists.”

  “Oh, it exists,” Pickett said. “Whether or not she chooses to recognize it, it exists.”

  Mr. Colquhoun turned to look up at the big clock mounted on the wall behind him. “Be that as it may, it’s much too early in the morning for a philosophical debate on real versus perceived truth.” He turned back to Pickett. “On a related subject, however, what do you intend to tell Lady Washbourn?”

  In fact, Pickett had pondered this question all the way to Bow Street in an unsuccessful attempt to forget the discord between himself and his wife. Along the way, he had determined to prove that he was not so incompetent a creature as the coroner’s inquest had made him out to be—although whether this proof was for the benefit of Lady Washbourn, the coroner, Julia, or himself, he could not have said.

  “That girl was murdered, sir. With your permission, I should like to do what I can to prove it.”

  “According to the jury, she died of natural causes,” the magistrate reminded him, his voice carefully neutral. “ ‘A judgment of God,’ if our friend the doctor is to be believed.”

  “Juries can be wrong, sir, and this one was. You know it as well as I do.”

  The bushy white brows lowered ominously. “You do realize that if Lord Washbourn gets wind of it and lodges a complaint against you, I will have to disavow all knowledge of any investigation—reprimand you—send you back to the foot patrol—possibly even release you, all for the sake of appearances.”

  Pickett nodded resolutely. “I do, sir, and if it should come to that, I will accept any such punishment with a good grace.”

  “Good God, but you’re a stubborn lad!” Mr. Colquhoun grumbled.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” Pickett said with a hint of a smile, “but I learned from a master.”

  A bark of laughter managed to escape before the magistrate contrived to disguise it as a cough. “Impertinent whelp!” He reached over the wooden railing, adding in a more serious vein, “For God’s sake, John, try to be discreet.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Pickett promised, and took his hand.

  9

  In Which John Pickett and Mr. Colquhoun

  Pursue Separate Lines of Inquiry

  Mr. Colquhoun watched through the tall windows until Pickett was out of sight. Once he’d judged his protégé to be well en route to the Washbourn residence in Grosvenor Square, he left Mr. Dixon in charge of the Bow Street Public Office and set out on his own for Curzon Street. He stopped before Number 22 and sent up his card to the lady of the house, and a moment later was shown into the drawing room.

  “Why, Mr. Colquhoun, what an unexpected pleasure!” Julia exclaimed, glancing over his shoulder and beyond him as if expecting to see an additional caller there. “John does not accompany you? Is he—?”

  “No accident has befallen him, if that is your concern,” he assured her hastily. “In fact, he is away on an investigation.”

  “Of course—the Washbourn affair,” she said, nodding in understanding. “It sounds like a thoroughly bad business. But will you not sit down? It is a bit early for tea, but perhaps coffee?” She reached for the bell pull.

  “No, no, nothing for me, thank you,” he said, seating himself on the sofa nevertheless. He regarded her in silence for a moment, then asked bluntly, “Mrs. Pickett, how much did your husband tell you about yesterday’s inquest?”

  “He told me the jury had returned a verdict of death by natural causes, which did not best please him. In fact, he was quite indignant about it, as I am sure you are aware.”

  “And that was all? He said nothing, for instance, about his own testimony?”

  “No.” She considered this omission with growing unease. “Is there some reason why he should have?”

  The magistrate shook his head. “It’s not my place to bear tales. I’m sure he would have told you anything he wished for you to know.”

  “Mr. Colquhoun, you have known him much longer than I have. If something happened yesterday that I need to know about, for heaven’s sake, tell me!” she pleaded.

  He sighed. “How much easier marriage would be if we could crawl inside the minds of our spouses! Very well, Mrs. Pickett, I’ll tell you—but remember, you never heard it from me.”

  She agreed to this caveat, and so he proceeded to recount to her all those details of the inquest which her husband had chosen to withhold: most particularly, how the coroner had seized upon Pickett’s new finery as a way of casting doubt upon first his integrity, and then his competence.

  “He wasn’t going to wear it,” she confessed, conscience-stricken. He would have worn the black coat he reserves for court appearances, but I—well, I’m afraid I made it impossible for him to do so without hurting my feelings.”

  “And so you hurt his instead,” the magistrate pointed out with brutal candor.

  She bristled at the charge. “I should rather say the coroner did! Surely you don’t mean to accuse me of a lack of feeling where he is concerned—why, I gave up everything to be with him!”

  “Of course you did,” he said soothingly. “Everything but your house, and your servants, and your—”

  “That is not fair, Mr. Colquhoun!”

  “No, no, Mrs. Pickett, hear me out. I do not doubt the depth of your affection for your husband—no one who had witnessed your tender care of him following the Drury Lane Theatre fire could do so—but I fear you don’t understand how galling it is for him to be beholden to you for financial support.”

  Given that morning’s disagreement, she could hardly deny the charge. But she was not afforded the opportunity to do so in any case, for Mr. Colquhoun was not finished yet.

  “In fact,” he continued, “from something he said to me at your wedding, I had the impression that he had every expectation of supporting you, rather than the other way ’round. Surely you could not have been so foolish as to withhold the information from him!”

  She cast her mind back to the days in Pickett’s flat following the Drury Lane Theatre fire: the long, tense hours of nursing him back to health, followed by the blissful week between the consummation of their accidental marriage and the formal exchange of vows held at the home of the magistrate. No, she had not withheld anything, at least not on purpose, but she could not honestly say that the matter of money had been addressed. Between the constraints of the sickbed and the pleasures of the marriage bed, there had been little time for (or interest in) serious discussion; in fact, what conversation had taken place had been of the “when did you first know . . . ?” variety so beloved of lovers. Given the severity of his injury, the future had been too uncertain, and the present too precious, to waste a moment of it worrying over such mundane matters as household income.

  “I didn’t ‘withhold’ it,” she insisted. “It’s just that—the subject somehow never came up.”

  “I see,” the magistrate said drily, and Julia colored, fearing he saw a great more than she had said.

  Still, she was quite certain that Mr. Colquhoun was overstating the case. “But it’s so—so absurd! I could show you any number of impoverished gentlemen who married ladies with fortunes far greater than mine, and it bothered them not at all.”

  “Impoverished gentlemen, yes. But I would wager that in most, and very likely all, of those cases, the gentleman in question had something else of value to offer in exchange: a title, for instance, or a large estate, or an ancient lineage. Your husband has none of those things.”

  “And no woman could possibly find anything of value in a clever brain and a sweet temperament, especially not when those attributes are contained within the person of a handsome young man,” she retorted. “Really, Mr. Colquhoun, you presume too much.”

  Mr. Colquhoun lifted a hand in acknowledgement. “Perhaps I do. I suppose it is not surprising that you should view him in such a light; in fact, it is only right that you should do so. But I”—he heaved a reminiscent sigh—“I sometimes catch glimpses of a fourteen-year-old pickpo
cket with a black eye and a broken nose.”

  She laid her hand over his, and patted it in understanding. “I know you mean well, Mr. Colquhoun, and I honor you for it, but I think you are worrying over nothing. It is not as if my jointure is all that large, you know. I can think of many people who have far more, and I daresay you can, too. I should call mine a competence, rather than a fortune.”

  He leaned back against the sofa cushions and regarded her with an appraising expression in his keen blue eyes that made her feel uncomfortably like a miscreant brought before the bench. “Your husband—your first husband, that is—left you an income of four hundred pounds a year, did he not?”

  “Yes, along with a house in Kensington, which I sold in order to purchase this one. If I had been obliged to pay for lodgings out of my jointure, I should have been hard pressed.”

  The magistrate, however, appeared unmoved by this argument. “And if you consider four hundred pounds per annum a mere competence, what would you call twenty-five shillings per week?”

  Rather nonplussed by this question, Julia sought refuge in counterattack. “But Mr. Colquhoun, it’s so—so unimportant!”

  “I understand your first marriage gave you a very poor example of what that institution ought to be, so I will give you one piece of advice: if it is important to one of you—and I can assure you that this is extremely important to him—then it had better be important to the other.” He rose to his feet and held out his hand to her. “Be kind to him, Mrs. Pickett. That is all I ask.”

  * * *

  Pickett, in the meantime, reached Grosvenor Square and sent up his card to Lady Washbourn, who received him in the fashionable drawing room with the formal portrait over the mantel.

  “Your ladyship,” he said, bowing over her hand. “I trust Lord Washbourn is well?”

  She inclined her head. “He is indeed, Mr. Pickett. He has gone out driving with the Four Horse Club today, so I do not expect him back until late this evening. He will be sorry to have missed you.”

  Pickett rather doubted this, but silently blessed the lady’s perspicacity in recognizing his unspoken query.

  “My mother-in-law, too, has taken to her bed, so you find me quite alone today,” she continued blandly.

  Pickett made some patently insincere remark expressing regret at the dowager’s absence, then added, “I trust she is not ill.”

  “No, it is only that she has been greatly upset by Annie’s death.” She grimaced. “Or else by the realization that her son might be a murderer.”

  “You believe she suspects him?”

  The countess shook her head. “If she does, she has said nothing of it to me. But then, I would not expect her to. After all, it would be a rare woman who would take her daughter-in-law’s part over her son’s.”

  “Everyone else seems to be satisfied, then, with the verdict regarding Miss Barton?”

  “Yes.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I only wish I could be so accepting. I keep remembering Washbourn bringing me a glass of ratafia, which I was obliged to set down to deal with a minor crisis in the ladies’ retiring room.”

  “Lady Carrington’s fainting fit,” Pickett said, nodding in understanding. “I remember.”

  She shuddered. “I can’t help wondering if it was the same glass Annie drank from. I suppose I shall never know.”

  Here was the opening Pickett had hoped for. “Lady Washbourn, I await your instructions. If you want me to return the rubies, I will, and you can fob your husband off with some tale of their having been found, but unless you have some objection, I would prefer to do what I can to discover what happened to that poor girl.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pickett. I would prefer it as well. If you would be willing to keep the rubies a bit longer, their supposed theft would give you a pretext for calling from time to time to keep me informed as to your progress.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to call for more reason than that, your ladyship. If I’m to investigate Annie’s death, I must learn more about her life. For that, I will need to question your servants.”

  “But I thought we were agreed that I was the intended victim, and that Annie’s death was no more than a tragic accident!”

  “I think it likely, but by no means certain. Given Annie’s preg—er, delicate condition, there is always the possibility that she was killed by the father of her child.” There was a moment’s awkward pause as he considered how to phrase his next question. “I don’t suppose she was—that is, do you have any idea who the father might have been?”

  “I daresay it was Ben Bradley—one of the stable hands. Annie had been walking out with him for some time, but they could not yet afford to marry. Mrs. Mitchum, the housekeeper, told me she was obliged to speak quite sharply to Annie about slipping out to the mews at night to meet him. I think she expected me to dismiss the girl—in fact, I’m afraid I rather lost face with her when I didn’t—but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for Annie and her beau. It must be very hard on young people of the serving class, having all the natural urges of persons that age, and yet being financially unable to wed.”

  “Did Ben know about the baby?”

  Lady Washbourn shook her head. “I’m afraid you are asking the wrong person, Mr. Pickett. I was not in his confidence.”

  “May I speak to him? I have a few questions I should like to ask.”

  “Of course. You will find him in the mews behind the house.” She reached for the bell pull. “I shall have the butler direct you there, and give instructions that all the servants are to answer any questions you may wish to ask them.”

  “Thank you, your ladyship.”

  The butler arrived in answer to Lady Washbourn’s summons and, upon receiving his orders from his mistress, led Pickett down the stairs and through the servants’ hall (where he was the object of many a curious stare), and finally out the rear door of the house into a small garden. A gate in the back of the garden wall led to the mews, where Pickett was turned over to Jenkins, the head groom, who led the way past rows of stalls. At last he stopped before a stall wherein a strapping blond lad drew a currycomb in long strokes down the side of a fine bay. A black armband was tied about the young man’s sleeve halfway between elbow and shoulder.

  “Ben,” the head groom addressed this individual, “this here’s Mr. Pickett, from Bow Street. He wants to ask you a few questions.”

  The stable hand looked up from his task, and Pickett saw that Lady Washbourn had not exaggerated when she referred to the couple’s youth. In spite of his large size, the boy appeared to be still in his teens. His light blue eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and Pickett thought he’d never seen anyone less likely to have killed his sweetheart and her unborn child. Even if he were not the father, and had been driven to murder his faithless lover in a jealous rage, one look at Ben’s beefy hands was enough to inform Pickett that he could have done the job much more efficiently by choking the life out of her, rather than going to the trouble of not only obtaining prussic acid, but then finding some way to administer it.

  “Thank you, Jenkins,” Pickett told the head groom, nodding in dismissal. Alone with Ben, he added, “You need not stop what you’re doing on my account.” He suspected Ben was not accustomed to idleness, and thought the boy might be more forthcoming if he had something to do with his hands.

  “I’ve never had no dealings with Bow Street before,” Ben said, with another sweep of the currycomb. “What do you want to know?”

  “I believe Miss Barton was a special friend of yours,” Pickett began. “Let me say how sorry I am for your loss.”

  “Annie was more than a friend,” Ben said, swiping the long sleeve of his smock across his eyes. “We was going to be married just as soon as we had enough money saved up.”

  “It’s expensive, setting up household, especially in London,” Pickett remarked sympathetically.

  “Aye, it is at that.”

  Remembering that he was supposed to be investigating the theft of a supposedly stole
n ruby necklace, Pickett remarked, “It’s a shame Miss Barton couldn’t have found Lady Washbourn’s missing jewels.”

  Ben scowled fiercely. “Are you suggesting Annie might have stolen them?”

  “Not at all,” Pickett assured him with perfect truth. “I only meant that, if Miss Barton had discovered them and been rewarded by her mistress, it might have helped your cause.” After a delicate pause, he added, “I understand there was a particular reason why the two of you needed to marry as quickly as possible.”

  “Aye,” Ben agreed, nodding. “The babe.”

  “Then you were the father?”

  It was a tactical error. Ben took a menacing step forward, and it was only through sheer force of will that Pickett held his ground.

  “Just what are you getting at?” demanded the outraged lover. “She was a good girl while she was alive, my Annie, and I’ll not let anyone say otherwise now she’s dead, do you hear?”

  “Of course,” Pickett said hastily. “I meant no disrespect. It’s only that, well, one hears stories about housemaids being put in uncomfortable positions by men who have no scruples about preying on pretty girls—other servants, houseguests, even their employers.”

  “That’s true enough,” Ben conceded, relaxing somewhat. “But Annie was safe enough below stairs, for there aren’t too many fellows on the staff who’d be willing to cross me. As for upstairs, well, Annie counted herself right fortunate in that respect. Lord Washbourn might be a bit of a cold fish, but he’s a good man at heart, and Lady Washbourn is as kind as she can be, for all she ain’t Quality-born.”

  “She certainly is. But you say Lord Washbourn is a good man. What makes you say so?” Realizing how this question must sound, Pickett added quickly, “I mean no disparagement of your employer, of course. I suppose Miss Barton will have given you the benefit of her own opinions regarding her mistress, but I should not have thought your position in the stables would give you much opportunity to form an estimation of his lordship’s character.”

  Ben waved one arm in the direction of the rows of stalls, each with its sleek and well-groomed four-legged occupant. “It’s his horses, isn’t it? No man who treats his animals so well can be what you’d call wicked.”