by Tracy Grant
"Do you know of anyone else who might have benefited from Lewis's death?" Laura asked.
"Do I?" Edith's brows rose. "I told you, I scarcely knew Lewis."
"But you know Thomas well. Did Thomas say anything else about his brother? You said he talked a lot about him."
"Yes, he did. But it was mostly about the theatre and the Leveller group and Letty Blanchard. And a bit about how he felt he didn't know his brother anymore."
"Do you think Lady Shroppington might leave her fortune to one of the girls?" Cordelia asked.
Edith frowned. "It's possible, I suppose. But according to Thomas, she's never taken much interest in them. He says he could see her deciding to benefit a distant godchild or even one of her footmen. She can be eccentric, apparently."
"And yet it sounds as if she didn't care for Lewis's entanglement with an actress."
"People can be like that, can't they?" Edith pulled her gray wool scarf tight about her throat as the wind whipped up. "Appreciative of eccentricity on their own terms while still wanting those about them to preserve the forms. What they see as the forms. From what Thomas says, Lady Shroppington was fond of Lewis, but I also think she had a clear idea of the life she wanted him to live. She was indulgent about his sowing his wild oats, as it were, but now she wanted to rein him in and have him conform."
"You sound as though you know her well," Cordelia said.
Edith colored. "Not really. Not at all. I've never met her or seen her. But I've heard a good deal about her from Thomas. And as a governess, I know the type."
"So do I," Laura said. "I used to be a governess. One learns to fade into the background. But that lends itself to observing. And because one fades into the background, people can be careless of what they reveal."
"Yes, that's it precisely," Edith said. "I like teaching. I enjoy the children." She smiled at her two charges. "I can't say I care for fading into the background. But it is intriguing to observe people. One feels alone, but there's a certain freedom to it. A freedom I fear I would give up if I were married."
"I know Lady Shroppington," Cordelia said. "She and my grandmother are friends. She didn't speak to me at the height of my scandalous days, but she's unbent now I'm living with Harry again. I'm not sure whether or not I'm glad she did, but it should help in the investigation. And yes, I can quite see her wanting Lewis to cut a dash and be a bit wild, but expecting him to come to heel when she called. I imagine she may even have had her choice of bride picked out for him."
"Thomas never said so," Edith said, "but I wouldn't be surprised." She drew a breath that had the bite of the January wind. "A part of me desperately wants to marry Thomas. So much so it hurts." She looked from Laura to Cordelia. "I suppose I shouldn't have admitted that to you. Because there's no way I can prove Lady Shroppington won't leave Thomas her fortune. So I've just given myself an excellent motive for murder."
William Carmarthen was in the wings on one side, practicing with a fencing foil. Malcolm couldn't but wonder if it was the foil Colin had found in the wings last night. Not that that necessarily hinted at anything. Will and Brandon had a sword fight in the third act of Mélanie's play.
Carmarthen set down the foil at Malcolm's approach. He had an intent, quicksilver face beneath a shock of chestnut hair. "Is it my turn to be interviewed? I didn't know Thornsby well. I went to the White Rose some nights. I looked in last night, but I left before Thornsby did."
"You and Thornsby were both Levellers."
Carmarthen gave a dry smile. "Along with half the company, and half those who hang about the green room like Thornsby. As I'm sure you know, Mr. Rannoch."
Carmarthen's tone was easy but there was an edge to it. Malcolm took a step forwards, into the shadows of the wings. Roth was talking to Tim Scott across the stage. They'd divided forces to complete the interviews more quickly. "You called on Thornsby the day before he died."
Carmarthen went still for a moment. "Ah. The valet. Should have realized you'd have spoken to him. Yes, I did."
"And he heard you quarreling."
Carmarthen leaned back against a canvas flat that might be Juliet's balcony, hands braced behind him. "Doesn't look good to have quarreled with a murder victim, does it?"
"There can be any number of reasons for people to quarrel," Malcolm said.
"Christ." Carmarthen spun away, then looked back at Malcolm, eyes bright with a combination of grief and anger in the shadows. "I'm sorry Lewis is dead. I mean, one would have to be a pretty cold-hearted monster to wish that on anyone. But we weren't friends. And yes, I wasn't in the best humor when I went to see him the day before yesterday. Though I didn't mean the talk to go as it did."
Malcolm regarded the younger man. "Why did you go to see him?"
Carmarthen was silent for a moment. "To ask him about Letty."
Five words that revealed a multitude. Had he been delivering the line onstage, the subtext behind the name Letty would have been masterful.
"You're fond of her yourself," Malcolm said.
"Of course. I work with her."
"Do you show such concern for every young woman in the company?"
"I—" Carmarthen drew in and released his breath. "Oh, the devil. Someone's probably going to tell you. Can't have secrets in a theatre company. A less adept writer than your wife would say I'm head over heels in love with Letty Blanchard."
"And Letty?" Malcolm recalled Mélanie's suspicion that Letty Blanchard loved someone else.
Carmarthen's mouth curved with memories at once sweet and bitter. "I think she may have had a passing fondness for me. At least, once. When we were—when we were first acquainted. We were Celia and Oliver opposite each other, and sometimes that sort of thing can carry over. But then Thornsby started hanging about the green room. He dazzled her. Or what he seemed to offer did."
"His position?"
Carmarthen's mouth twisted. "Letty looks at Manon Caret and Jennifer Mansfield and sees herself as an actress married to an aristocrat. Perhaps it's not to be wondered at, given that we live our lives making fiction as real as possible, but she doesn't see how incredibly rare Manon's and Jennifer's marriages are. Not the least because they're remarkably happy, but more to the point because gentlemen aren't in the habit of marrying actresses they trifle with. I made the mistake of trying to point that out to Letty, and she fairly bit my head off."
"So you decided to talk to Thornsby?"
Carmarthen grimaced. "Not my most sensible action. But I told him if he had a scrap of affection for Letty he wouldn't trifle with her. We hadn't much in common, but he struck me as decent enough that I thought he might see reason. Instead, Thornsby got huffy. Said he had nothing but honorable intentions." Carmarthen frowned and scraped a boot toe over the floorboards. "At the time I laughed and said that might work with Letty, but it wouldn't with me. But now I have the oddest feeling he may have been telling the truth. That he really did mean to offer her marriage." He cast a quick look at Malcolm. "Do you think that's true?"
"I can't know what was in Thornsby's head. And I can't divulge anything we've learned."
"Meaning you think he might have been going to. Or that he did?" Carmarthen cast a quick glance towards the stage where a number of the company were disposed, sitting on the floor or on rehearsal chairs, sipping coffee or something stronger. He scraped a hand over his hair. "God. I never meant to get between him and Letty. That is—" He stared into the shadows with the air of one scouting a terrain he didn't fully understand. "I don't think Letty loved him. But if she wanted to trade a chance at love for security, that's her own affair. And if Thornsby would have been happy with what she could give him, I suppose that's his. I don't think it would have made either of them happy in the end. But perhaps that's my jealousy talking."
His voice was low and conversational. But Malcolm could hear the taut pain of unrequited love beneath. "Did you tell Miss Blanchard about it?"
"Are you mad? I may not have a lot of pride, but I have a bit. It was up to her
if she wanted to marry Thornsby. I've been avoiding her as much as possible ever since my talk with Thornsby. That's why I left the White Rose early last night." Carmarthen glanced away. "God, poor Letty. Whatever she felt for him—and she may have loved him more than I'd like to admit—she was certainly fond of him. But of course anything I say to her now will come across the wrong way."
"I wouldn't discount the power of comfort, sincerely offered."
Carmarthen dragged his gaze to Malcom's face and gave a twisted smile. "That sounds splendid, Rannoch. But the reality is likely to be angry tirades and accusations that I've ruined her life. I like Letty, you know. Quite apart from—everything else. But the damnable thing about love is that it can make friendship impossible."
"I wouldn't say that."
"If you're going to say you're friends with your wife, that's quite different. You evidently are friends with Mrs. Rannoch, from everything I've seen, and that's splendid. But can you imagine being friends with a former love when the love had burned out or otherwise ended?"
Malcolm thought of Kitty. And then of Raoul and Mélanie. "Yes," he said. "I can. Not that it would be easy. Not that there wouldn't be echoes. But I think one can get beyond them. Or learn to live with them. Or both."
"You're an idealist, Rannoch. Or a remarkable man. Or both."
"Or a deluded fool."
"That too. Though somehow I don't think so." Carmarthen watched him for a moment. "So I'm sure you know that I know I've just given you a motive for having murdered Thornsby."
Malcolm held the young man's gaze in the shadows. "I take it you aren't confessing."
"Good God, no. I abhor violence." Carmarthen cast a glance at the fencing foil. "Offstage, anyway. And all other things aside, I'd never have put Letty in that position." He looked back at Malcolm. "But I suppose I'd say that anyway. If I were guilty. I suppose I'd say anything."
That was quite true. And it was impossible to forget Carmarthen was an actor. A very good actor indeed.
Chapter 12
"If only I could make you see what you—that is, I—Sorry." Brandon broke off and turned to Mélanie and Simon. "I always seem to mangle that part."
"I need to rework the speech." Mélanie looked up from the script. Her play centered on a fashionable married couple who each learned the other was not what they seemed. Very close to home, though neither was a former spy in the play. The hero, Gideon, was in fact a former valet who had taken his master's place—a plot device inspired by Mélanie's father's love of Beaumarchais's Figaro trilogy. The heroine, Fiona, was in fact the mother of the little girl she was raising as her niece. Manon's young daughters Roxane and Clarisse were playing Fiona's secret daughter and the younger daughter she had with Gideon. Manon and Brandon brought Fiona and Gideon to life more brilliantly than Mélanie could have dreamed possible, but Brandon struggled with the scene in which Gideon bared his soul to his wife.
"It's a good speech," Brandon said. "There's just something about it that makes my mind go blank."
"You could always launch into the St. Crispin's Day speech like you did that time you forgot your lines when you were supposed to be sending me off to a nunnery," Manon said.
"That was a rehearsal. And it was bloody hard to keep two versions of Hamlet straight. I had twice the lines you did."
"Don't remind me. I spent an unconscionable amount of time lying on the ground while you wept over my grave. Though I quite liked the speech Shakespeare gave Hamlet in that version. Made it clearer how he felt about Ophelia. Not that I think it's that unclear, in any case."
The four of them—Brandon, Manon, Simon, and Mélanie—had retreated to one of the rehearsal rooms to work on a key scene while Malcolm and Roth conducted interviews. They were opening in four days and had no time to waste. So of course Mélanie needed to be here, working on the play, not interviewing suspects. Which would also put her at odds with the company. None of which shook her feeling of being sidelined in an investigation.
Simon pushed himself away from the wall he'd been leaning against. "Let's take a few minutes. I think it's hard for everyone to concentrate right now."
"You have a genius for understatement, Tanner." Brandon reached for his flask, then set it down. "I think I need coffee. Anyone want anything from the White Rose?"
"You can be an angel, Brandon," Manon said. "The usual. A lot of milk and sugar to hide the fact that it's not French."
"Milk, no sugar," Mélanie said.
Simon reached for his coat. "I'll go with you."
Mélanie gathered up her script and pencil and turned to the door to see her husband standing in the doorway.
"Sorry," Malcolm said.
"No, it's all right." She moved towards the door. "We're taking a break."
"Do you need to talk to one of us?" Simon asked.
"Not yet. I know where to find you." Malcolm flashed a grin at Simon, Manon, and Brandon that couldn't quite erase the fact that while they had all dined at his table, he was interviewing them about a murder.
Manon went to the White Rose with Brandon and Simon. Malcolm joined Mélanie in the rehearsal room. "Is it going all right?"
"As well as it can be, considering we're all thinking about Lewis Thornsby one way and another." Mélanie scanned her husband's face. It was as intense as it always was during an investigation, but there were shadows round his eyes that hadn't been there last night. "Have you learned anything? Anything you can tell me?"
Malcolm gave a faint smile. "There's nothing I can't tell you, sweetheart. But we haven't learned a great deal. Roth and I are going to Rosemary Lane to investigate the address Thornsby's valet saw on the paper he thought Thornsby burned. We may talk to the company more later. So far, our main discovery is that Will Carmarthen admits to having been in love with Letty Blanchard."
"That's not entirely a surprise."
"You knew?"
"Not for a certainty. But I could at least tell he was fond of her, and Manon mentioned it this morning. I wonder—"
"If he was the man you thought Letty was worried about giving up if she married Thornsby? I wondered the same thing. Carmarthen says he went to see Thornsby to warn him off trifling with Letty, only to have Thornsby claim not to be doing anything of the sort. It's possible that confrontation got him to propose to Letty last night." Malcolm leaned against the wall where Simon had been standing a few minutes before. "Whatever Letty feels for Carmarthen, Carmarthen admitted to being quite desperately in love with her. And then admitted he'd just given himself a motive for murder."
"Will doesn't strike me as a killer. Of course I'm a bit biased because I like him. And he's quite brilliant in the play."
"I like him too, and he doesn't strike me as a killer either. But it's a possibility we have to consider."
Mélanie studied her husband. The light from the Argand lamp on a table to one side caught his face from below, making the shadows round his eyes and beneath his cheekbones look even more pronounced. "Darling? You look worried, and somehow I don't think it's about Will."
Malcolm grimaced. "How well you know me. No, it isn't. I like him, as I said, and I think it's possible there's more to his quarrel with Thornsby than he admitted to me. But liking people and realizing they have secrets is part of any investigation." He frowned at a framed poster for The Steward's Stratagem, one of Simon's most successful plays, on the wall opposite. "Kitty came to Berkeley Square this morning after you left. She says she and Lewis Thornsby had a liaison. Well, a night together. That Thornsby wanted to make into more than it was. I don't think she's telling the truth."
That certainly accounted for the shadows. As always, when it came to Kitty and her husband, Mélanie chose her words with care. "It can't have been an easy story for her to tell. Why don't you believe her?"
Malcolm gave an almost sheepish smile. "Because I think St. Juste means more to her than that."
Mélanie watched her husband for a moment. His gaze was fixed on the chipped gilt paint on the table, a former pr
op piece stripped of theatrical illusion by daylight. "Caring for someone—even loving someone—doesn't necessarily guarantee fidelity."
"No. I know that. But—" He shook his head. "Kitty accused me of being a romantic. Of seeing them through the lens of our relationship, I suppose."
"They aren't us, darling."
"No, of course not." Malcolm’s shoulders shifted against the pine-paneled wall behind him. "But I'd swear what's between them is genuine. They're—you've seen them together."
"I have."
"And?"
Mélanie remembered the last time Kitty and Julien had dined in Berkeley Square. Only last week. Kitty taking a sip from Julien's glass of port, Julien flicking a lazy finger against Kitty's cheek. Kitty putting Genny into Julien's arms. Julien wrapping Kitty's cloak round her shoulders. "One can never know what two people mean to each other. How that will impact their ideas about fidelity. Let alone their practice. But—I've felt what's between them too. They're both very controlled people. And I think they both take the relationship more seriously than they'd admit to anyone. Including perhaps themselves."
"Precisely."
Mélanie moved to Malcolm's side and slid her hand into his. "It's still no guarantee of anything, Malcolm."
"No." He looked down at their entwined fingers, his mouth curved in a rueful smile. "I realize that in insisting on the depth and constancy of Kitty Ashford's and Julien St. Juste's feelings—in claiming to know them at all—I look like a fool. And yet—"
"Not a fool, darling." Mélanie reached up and smoothed his hair off his forehead. "It's easy enough to believe in the fidelity of people everyone expects to be faithful. Much harder to believe in those no one expects such behavior from. It takes keen insights."
"Or madness."
"People have been writing keen insights off as madness for years."
Malcolm laughed and kissed her hair. "And of course, if I'm right, it means Kitty's lying about her relationship to Lewis Thornsby. That she'd rather I thought her careless and heedless, that potentially St. Juste did as well, than that we learned the truth." His arms closed right round Mélanie for a moment. When she looked up, his gaze had hardened. "Whatever that truth may be."