Mystery Loves Company

by Sheri Cobb South

  It was an interesting standard for judging human nature, but Pickett discovered he could not dispute it. He once again offered his condolences to Ben, then left the stables and returned to the house via the servants’ hall. He had almost reached the stairs going up to the family’s rooms above when he was hailed by a voice that sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Why, if it isn’t Mr. Pickett, from Bow Street!”

  He turned and saw a rather scrawny young woman with wisps of mouse-brown hair escaping from beneath her starched white cap. The left sleeve of her dark stuff gown bore a black armband much like the one Ben had worn.

  “Miss—Soames, is it?” he asked.

  “Lord love you, sir, I’m just ‘Mary’ when I’m working,” she said, twisting her hands in her apron. “But what brings you here?”

  “I just wanted to offer my condolences to Ben, the stable hand,” Pickett said with perhaps less than perfect truth.

  Mary shook her head. “Poor Ben, he’s that cut up over Annie’s death. If you’re thinking he might have had something to do with it, Mr. Pickett, you just put that thought right out of your head. Well nigh worshipped that girl, he did, and wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head.”

  “Yes, that was my impression as well.” In fact, he was hardly listening to Mary at all. His attention had been distracted by the butler, who had unlocked a door just off the hall, pushed it open, and disappeared inside. Through the gap, Pickett caught a glimpse of a small room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves containing gleaming black or green bottles. This, then, was where the champagne and ratafia would have been stored prior to being served at the masquerade ball.

  “Miss Soames,” said Pickett, interrupting a lengthy account of Annie and Ben’s clandestine courtship, “where do Lord and Lady Washbourn buy their wine?”

  She blinked at him in surprise. “Why, from Berry Brothers, in St. James’s Street.” She didn’t add, “Doesn’t everyone?” but her tone certainly implied it.

  “And the butler takes charge of the deliveries?” This much he knew from his own brief stint working incognito as a footman the previous summer.

  “Aye. Mr. Forrest checks the shipment against the invoice, and then makes sure the bottles are properly stored.” Mary’s brief glance toward the room whence the butler emerged at that moment with a dusty black bottle confirmed Pickett’s theory.

  “I suppose the wine cellar stays locked most of the time?” he asked.

  “Aye, and Mr. Forrest keeps the key.”

  Difficult, then, for anyone to slip into the wine cellar and add prussic acid to one of the bottles, Pickett noted, even assuming one might have been able to obtain the poison itself. As master of the house, Lord Washbourn could certainly have got his hands on a key, but his responsibilities as host would have kept him above stairs during the masquerade. Even if his lordship had contrived to duck down the stairs and add poison to one of the bottles before the festivities began, his presence in the servants’ domain would certainly have been unusual enough to attract attention. Then, too, there was the likelihood that the contaminated beverage would find its way to the wrong throat, which Pickett was convinced had been precisely what had happened. It didn’t seem right. It was sloppy, messy, careless —none of which adjectives seemed to apply to Lady Washbourn’s husband, based on Pickett’s admittedly limited interactions with that gentleman. Still, it was worth making inquiries.

  “Tell me, Miss Soames, did anyone—any of the family, I mean—come downstairs, let us say, within an hour or two of the time the masquerade was to begin? To ensure that everything was in order, perhaps, or to make some last-minute changes to the arrangements?”

  “Only her ladyship. She came down about half an hour before the guests was to begin arriving, with orders that her own peach ratafia that she makes special was to be served along with the from Berry Brothers.”

  It was a curious circumstance, Pickett thought, making a note of it in his occurrence book, but he was at a loss as to what significance it might hold. Of course, if it had been Lord Washbourn, instead of his wife, who had issued such instructions, it would have been a very different matter.

  “Did it strike you as, I don’t know, unusual, this substitution?”

  “Oh, no, sir, not at all.” Mary’s curious expression was enough to warn Pickett that he was in danger of tipping his hand. “She’s that proud of her ratafia, you know, for she makes it from a receipt that belonged to her own mama.”

  He thanked Mary Soames for the information, then went upstairs to take his leave of Lady Washbourn.

  “You are welcome to call and make inquiries anytime you need,” she assured him, giving him her hand in farewell, “only—Mr. Pickett, I must beg you not to let my husband discover what you are about. I think—I hope poor Annie’s death will offer me some protection, at least for a while.” She gave him a strained smile. “After all, two sudden deaths in the same household within a matter of days would be rather difficult to dismiss, even for Mr. Bagley.”

  Pickett pondered the possibility of this tragic outcome for a long moment. “Your ladyship, do you think perhaps it might be wisest for you to go away for a bit? I know you can’t return to your father’s house, since he is deceased, but could you contract some unspecified illness that requires sea air, or else discover some need to take the waters at Bath?”

  “I understand what you are saying, Mr. Pickett, but what if my husband were to decide to accompany me? Such a journey might even offer more opportunities than he might find here in Town. Then, too, the dowager’s presence in this house offers a certain degree of protection; after all, no man wants his mother to see him as a monster.”

  “And yet your mother-in-law’s presence has failed to protect you thus far,” he pointed out. He proposed several other scenarios, each more unlikely than the last, by which she might escape her husband, even temporarily, but she remained adamant.

  “No, Mr. Pickett, I must stay where I am,” she insisted, gently but firmly. “Only promise me that if I should die suddenly, whatever the circumstances, you will not allow a coroner’s jury to dismiss it as merely natural causes, or else a tragic accident.”

  Pickett agreed reluctantly, confounded by her determination to remain with a man who was in all likelihood trying to kill her. He wondered if Lord Washbourn’s finances were arranged in such a way that his wife was rendered incapable of supporting herself independently. He supposed he might inquire as to the name of the solicitor who had been charged with writing up the marriage contract, but rejected this notion at once; even if Lady Washbourn knew the solicitor’s name, any attempt by Pickett to question this individual would certainly be reported back to the earl, and would put paid to his investigation—and, quite possibly, to his career as well.

  There was, however, one other person of his acquaintance who was not without experience in these matters. And so, after taking his leave of Lady Washbourn, Pickett turned his feet toward a destination he had not visited in many years: Cecil Street, and the residence of his former master, Mr. Elias Granger.

  10

  In Which an Old Acquaintance Is Renewed

  It was a strange feeling, in a way, lifting the iron knocker on the front door of the house where, only six years earlier, he would have descended the steep and narrow service stair to the tiny basement room where he’d slept. The butler answered his knock, and if the manservant recognized Mr. Granger’s erstwhile apprentice, he gave no outward sign. Pickett handed over his card.

  “John Pickett, to see Mr. Granger,” he said, and had the satisfaction of seeing the butler’s eyes widen in surprise.

  “One moment, John—er, Mr. Pickett,” said the butler, clearly uncertain as to what attitude he should take toward this unexpected guest, given Pickett’s former position in the house. He disappeared into the interior, and returned a moment later. “If you will follow me, er, sir?”

  Elias Granger had grown somewhat stouter and his hair was rather grayer than Pickett remembered, but in
all other aspects, he was unchanged. As Pickett entered the drawing room, the older man cast aside his newspaper and heaved himself to his feet.

  “Well, stap me if it isn’t young John Pickett!” he exclaimed, shaking his former apprentice warmly by the hand. “I’d have known you anywhere, for you haven’t changed at all—oh, you’re a bit cleaner, I’ll grant you that, but otherwise the very same. Come and sit down, and tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself. Are you still with Patrick Colquhoun at Bow Street?”

  “I am,” Pickett said, seating himself in the chair Mr. Granger indicated. “In fact, that’s what brings me here—not that I wasn’t pleased to have an excuse to call on you.”

  “Anytime you choose to call, you can be sure of a welcome,” the coal merchant assured him, then turned to address the butler, who was still hovering in the doorway. “Smithers, fetch a bottle of port, there’s a good man, and young John and I will drink it in friendship.”

  “I thank you, sir, but I’m working,” Pickett demurred.

  “Very well, then. Make it tea, Smithers.”

  As Mr. Granger gave instructions to the butler, Pickett glanced around the room. The walls were still covered from wainscot to ceiling with well-known works by Old Masters, and the bookcases were filled with the calf-bound volumes he remembered so well, volumes that still looked new even after six years; he wondered if anyone had read them since he had left Mr. Granger’s employ. Everything was almost exactly as he remembered it, with one significant difference. When he’d first been brought to this room as a fourteen-year-old pickpocket, he’d thought Mr. Granger’s house a veritable palace, and was quite certain there could be no finer residence in all of London. Having made the acquaintance of the Viscountess Fieldhurst, however, and become at least somewhat familiar with the world she inhabited, he now recognized the paintings as copies of indifferent quality, and the books as more for show than for education or entertainment. In fact, every detail of the house’s interior existed for no other purpose than to lend an illusion of gentility to a family whose fortune was founded in Trade, and a gritty and grimy Trade at that.

  Not that he saw the Granger family’s pretensions as deserving of condemnation; on the contrary, he found much to admire in a man who had enriched himself by his own efforts. In fact, Mr. Granger’s rise in the world was much more admirable than his own. After all, Mr. Granger had worked and invested to build a coal empire through which thousands of homes and businesses were warmed. He, John Pickett, had done nothing more than make love to a lady whom he had adored since first setting eyes on her. As a result, an accidental marriage by declaration had been rendered invulnerable to annulment, and his own fortunes were forever changed.

  He suddenly became aware of an unnatural silence, and realized Mr. Granger had asked him some question for which he was now awaiting an answer.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. “Being in this room again brings back so many memories that I’m afraid I was wool-gathering. You were saying—?”

  “I was merely wondering what brings you here. I believe you said it was connected to your work at Bow Street?”

  “Yes, sir. I wondered if you might be able to give me some insight into a situation that has come up in a case I’m investigating.”

  “I’ll do my best, but I can’t say I know much about crime. I hope you’ll remember me as an honest man.” The merchant’s ample belly shook as he laughed at his own witticism.

  “I do, sir, else I would not be asking your advice. As I recall, at the time I left your employ, your daughter was about to go to her aunt in Tunbridge Wells in the hopes of making an advantageous marriage.”

  There was more than that, of course—much more. Sophy Granger had set her sights far higher than an advantageous marriage; she wanted a brilliant one. Nothing less than a lord would do, and she had not hesitated to say so to the nineteen-year-old apprentice who had begged her to marry him instead. He had not thought of Sophy for years—certainly not since he’d laid eyes on the widowed Lady Fieldhurst—but he was surprised at how clearly all the pain of Sophy’s rejection came back to him, even after six long years.

  “Aye and she did exactly that,” Sophy’s proud papa said, oblivious to Pickett’s long-buried hurt. “Married Lord Gerald Broadbridge, she did, him as is the fourth son of the Duke of Aldrington. Mind you, she was a bit disappointed to learn that she would be ‘Lady Gerald’ instead of ‘Lady Broadbridge,’ and that any son of hers would be a mere ‘mister.’ Still, the boy’s paternal grandfather is a duke, and that’s no small thing.”

  “And the boy’s maternal grandfather is a good man, sir, and that’s no small thing, either.”

  “Bless you, my boy.” He regarded his former apprentice with a look of regret. “Sometimes I can’t help wishing—but that’s neither here nor there. What did you want to know?”

  “I assume marriage negotiations between Sophy—er, Miss Granger—and Lord Gerald must have been fairly complicated—”

  “Aye, that they were, I’ll not deny it.”

  “So I thought you might be able to tell me, in such a case, when a young woman of property marries a gentleman, what terms the woman’s father might include for his daughter’s protection. In plain words, sir, what is to prevent the gentleman from pocketing the bride’s dowry and then getting rid of her?”

  Mr. Granger’s piercing black eyes, so like those of his daughter, narrowed thoughtfully. “Divorce, you mean?”

  “Actually, I was thinking of something rather more permanent.”

  “Bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Granger. “Has some blackguard killed his wife?”

  “No—at least, not yet—but the lady fears that may be his intention.”

  “Who—?”

  Pickett shook his head. “You must know that I can’t tell you that.”

  “No, no, of course not,” conceded the coal merchant with a sigh of regret. “As to whether any precautions were taken that might ensure the lady’s safety, that would depend on what terms were made part of the marriage contract. The solicitor who drew up the agreement would know.”

  “Yes, but even if I knew the solicitor’s name—which I don’t—I can’t be sure any inquiries on my part wouldn’t get back to the lady’s husband. In fact, I think it very likely that they should. I know you can only answer me in the most general of terms, but even that might be helpful.”

  Both men lapsed into silence as the butler returned bearing the tea tray.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to pour,” Mr. Granger said apologetically, picking up the teapot. “My wife succumbed to a putrid fever last winter.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it, sir,” Pickett said with perhaps less than perfect sincerity. Mrs. Granger had never liked him—in fact, Pickett had always had the impression that she fully expected him to steal the silver at the first opportunity—and her presence at this interview would have done nothing to aid Pickett’s cause.

  Once tea and sandwiches had been distributed and Smithers had departed, Mr. Granger leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands over his belly. “Where were we, now? Oh, yes, marriage contracts. I should say that in most cases, it would be to the gentleman’s advantage to keep his wife alive. My Sophy came to Lord Gerald with forty thousand pounds, but I didn’t just hand it over in cash, you know; it’s in the four per cents, and if his lordship is wise, he’ll leave it there and make do with just the interest. In addition, he’s guaranteed five thousand pounds per year for my lifetime, or, if Sophy should predecease me, for hers. Such arrangements are fairly common, so I can only assume your mystery lady’s father would have offered something similar.”

  “And if the lady’s father died at some point after the marriage had taken place, and she inherited his business enterprise?”

  Mr. Granger rubbed his nose. “Well now, that’s a different matter. A married woman can’t own property independently of her husband, you know, so even if the business had been left to her, it would belong to her husband in the eyes of the
law.” This much was no surprise to Pickett, who had acquired legal ownership of his wife’s house in just such a way. “Still, I suppose a cautious man could prevent his son-in-law from getting his hands on it by leaving it in trust for her—that way her husband couldn’t touch the principal—or better yet, leave it in trust for her children and skip over their father altogether, but I’ll admit such a set-up is unlikely.”

  “How so?”

  “Because to put it bluntly, no gentleman needing a wealthy bride would ever agree to take the girl under those conditions. They have mighty high opinions of themselves, these ‘lordships’ do, and if one merchant isn’t willing to cough up the ready in order to see his daughter get a handle to her name, there’s a dozen others that are. Then there’s the girls to consider, too.” He grimaced. “I would have taken a firmer line in negotiations myself, for Lord Gerald struck me as a gamester and a spendthrift—still does, for that matter—but Sophy had the bit between her teeth, and nothing would do but we must give Lord Gerald whatever he asked for, in exchange for the privilege of hearing her called ‘my lady.’ ”

  That sounded very much like Sophy Granger as Pickett had last seen her, and it occurred to him that in being rejected by her, he had actually had a very lucky escape.

  “And if the marriage should fail?” he asked. “Might there be any provision for the lady to establish a separate household?”

  Mr. Granger fairly goggled at the very suggestion. “I doubt there is a man alive of any class who would agree to such a thing! Why would a man make it possible for his wife to abandon him?”

  Pickett merely nodded, for he had expected as much. It appeared his suspicions were correct: Lady Washbourn was trapped in a potentially dangerous situation because she hadn’t the wherewithal to escape.

  “So there is nothing the lady can do except wait, and trust either that she is mistaken, or that I can find sufficient evidence to arrest her husband before his next attempt proves more successful than his previous ones.”