“Suicide? Perhaps the man jilted her?”
“Life is not a play.”
“Maybe it was to her. All of those toy theaters she shared with her brother.”
“Perhaps.”
“What did you think of Dubois?”
“A weak character, basically,” Miss Hogarth said. “I do not think he would have been involved. Especially with a wife already. He couldn’t have been engaged to Miss Lugoson. She was no threat to him.”
“I shall take your word for it and move on to other ideas. We need to speak to Beatrice Carley. There is likely to be no one else than her reported best friend who might know her secrets.”
Miss Hogarth inclined her head. “There is the Decker home now. Let us try to hold on to Lady Lugoson’s card. We might be able to use it to good effect with Miss Carley.”
He admired her good sense. “Her mother will block me.”
“Maybe I can see her,” Miss Hogarth said. “I want to do my part to protect my sisters.”
Charles knocked on the door of the gracious three-story home and it was answered by a parlormaid. They reluctantly placed the calling card on a silver tray and watched it disappear into the inner recesses of the house. However, the maid returned swiftly and they were led into a drawing room about half the size of Lady Lugoson’s. Mrs. Decker, one of the last women to spend time with Christiana Lugoson the day before her death, was already in place in front of her fireplace, a tea tray in front of her. Silver winked at her temples, where the black strands of her hair had taken on the tarnish of age, and she wore a slightly yellowed lace cap. Two other ladies, of similar age and dowdy appearance, were together on a settee to her right, but they were murmuring words of departure.
“How lovely,” Mrs. Decker exclaimed upon seeing the fresh influx of visitors.
“We have found you at home,” Miss Hogarth said. “I wish my mother had been free to come with us.”
Mrs. Decker smiled at the departing ladies, then said, “Lady Lugoson sent you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Miss Hogarth said. “I just live next door to her. Mr. Dickens works for my father so my parents allowed us to cross the orchard to speak to her, but then she sent us here.”
“I can keep an eye on one courting couple,” Mrs. Decker said, settling comfortably into her chair with a wink. She gestured to a sofa. “What did Lady Lugoson hope I could tell you?”
“We are trying to retrace Miss Lugoson’s last day,” Charles explained, taking a seat and looking longingly at the teapot while Miss Hogarth blushed and sat next to him.
“Aha. She and her mother were here that day,” she exclaimed.
The maid appeared with a set of fresh teacups and a pot of steaming water. She refreshed the pot.
“We’ll just let that steep,” Mrs. Decker said.
“Miss Lugoson is presenting herself as a rather complicated young individual,” Charles said. “Did you know her well?”
“I am afraid not. We lived in New York for a time so I only knew her as a child, and then again these past few months. I am older than her mother and was not privileged with her confidences, but I liked them both. Lady Lugoson took one of our footmen to be her son’s valet. He was ready for the promotion.”
Now Charles could identify the city scenes richly filling the walls. They were all of American locations. “Have your servants heard of any irregularities in the household?”
“Goodness me, what a question,” Mrs. Decker said, handing around a tray of iced buns.
Charles’s stomach gurgled with relief, and when he passed the tray to Miss Hogarth he saw her scarcely suppressed smile. “We have heard any number of strange stories about both the girl herself and the family.”
“And Lady Lugoson herself sent you here to hear gossip about her own family?”
Miss Hogarth winced. Charles said, “I apologize, Mrs. Decker. I am a journalist by trade and do tend to get ahead of myself.”
“The rough world of politics. I understand,” Mrs. Decker said. Her upper lip pulled away from her gums slightly, exposing the gold bracket of her false teeth. “Lord Lugoson is of course a decade or so away from looking for a wife, but Miss Lugoson’s actions would reflect on his family. Of course, he is the last of his line, so he needs to find a good bride.”
“Do you think she might have been murdered as a result?” Miss Hogarth whispered.
Mrs. Decker let out a sigh, her bosom deflating as she bent to pour the tea. “It is what everyone is thinking, is it not?”
“Are they? Tell us,” Charles urged, a secret thrill in his heart. The maid poured fresh tea into everyone’s cup.
“The way she died made it seem she was poisoned,” Mrs. Decker said. “And poison is very popular these days. Ridding oneself of an unpopular or inconvenient relative is all the thing.”
“You think Lord or Lady Lugoson poisoned her?” Miss Hogarth gasped, then put her hand over her mouth.
She and Charles exchanged a horrified glance.
“I would not have thought either of them had the backbone for it, but if they are casting about for blame, it may be to deflect their own actions,” Mrs. Decker said primly. “For myself, I dearly wish I had returned to New York with my husband and had not had to witness such ghastly suffering.”
Charles ate his bun, stale, and drank his tea, much too weak, in a matter of two minutes. He wanted to leave this house. Why had he not considered Lady Lugoson or her son as the responsible party? Between her possible secret engagement and her planned theatrical career, she was a disgrace in the making to an aristocratic family. He felt such a fool, but also knew that Beatrice Carley would be the best source of information about the relationships within her best friend’s family. “Any final thoughts for us, Mrs. Decker?” he inquired. “How did the ladies seem that afternoon?”
“I can remember nothing out of the ordinary. Miss Christiana Lugoson was sullen, as she often was on calls. I do not think she liked it here because there are no young people in my household. I have been at Mrs. Carley’s gatherings, with the children present, and she presented herself in a much more pleasant fashion.”
“Interesting,” Miss Hogarth murmured. “I wish I had known them.”
Mrs. Decker clicked her false teeth together. “Return to Mrs. Carley. She will be reasonable if you explain that you must retrace Christiana’s last day, since clearly she was given some kind of poison that does not cause immediate death, if indeed poison is the cause of her demise.”
“Such a terrible thought,” Miss Hogarth said.
“I am glad I do not have any young daughters,” Mrs. Decker said. “Another young girl died mysteriously in the parish just last year.”
Charles sat forward, his attention focused entirely on her. “Marie Rueff?” Or would it be another?
Mrs. Decker nodded. “I do wonder if it is some kind of French influence. Monsieur Rueff is French, and Lady Lugoson had a French mother.”
“Really?” Charles exclaimed. “I had not heard that before.”
“Oh, yes. French mother, merchant father.”
“We did know about that,” Miss Hogarth said. “And her sister.”
Mrs. Decker’s eyelids fluttered closed. “Some people simply do not belong. Marrying above oneself can cause so many troubles.”
Charles glanced at Miss Hogarth uneasily, but she seemed serene as she finished her last sip of tea. Mrs. Decker’s teapot was silver, like Mrs. Carley’s, though not quite so freshly plated. Her teacups and saucers were hand painted with pink and gold abstract designs, and looked quite new. “I feel there is a lot you are not saying,” Charles said.
“Not everything is fit for Miss Hogarth’s ears, Mr. Dickens. All I can say is that I do not believe Miss Lugoson succumbed to entirely natural causes.”
“Murder,” Miss Hogarth pronounced with a defiant air.
Mrs. Decker did not respond, just made a humming sort of noise.
“I had better return you to your mother,” Charles said to Miss Hogarth aft
er a minute of silence.
Miss Hogarth and Mrs. Decker both nodded their agreement, and not five minutes later they were back on the street, some ten minutes’ walk from the Hogarths’ home.
“The situation becomes blacker,” Charles said, peering up at the clouds, which had similarly blackened.
“No one seems to doubt that Miss Lugoson met a bad end, but for so many possible reasons,” Miss Hogarth exclaimed, rubbing her mitten-clad hands together. “It is difficult to wrap one’s mind around all the possibilities.”
Featherlight, he clasped his hands around hers. “Our next step is to see Lady Lugoson again tomorrow, though now we have to view her as a suspect as well.”
She pulled her hands away with an admonishing stare into his eyes. “What time will you come? I will have to make arrangements with Mother.”
“Late morning, I hope.” Charles let his hands drop to his sides, but stepped closer, until his breath puffed on her cheek. “Do you look forward to seeing me?”
“Of course, Mr. Dickens.” Her head lifted. “And what other plans do you have?”
“I have to attend the theater tonight but no meetings are on my schedule for tomorrow. However, I have a great deal of work to do. I will make my mark.”
She nodded thoughtfully and began to walk again. They stopped on the street in front of the path to her door. “I have enjoyed this, in a strange way,” she said, turning to him.
He smiled at her. “I am glad you could come with me.”
She nodded. “Until tomorrow.”
He watched the neat figure trot up the path to her door, and saw the light shine through the entryway when another girl opened it to welcome her sister. A cozy home. He would have a similar establishment one day, and he and his family would be regularly received in homes like these.
* * *
Charles walked to Brompton directly from the cobbler the next morning, as he was quickly wearing out his shoes with all these trips to Fulham Road. He collected his smiling Miss Hogarth, still very well aware of the honor of her parents’ trust in him and her willingness to let him pursue her. They walked across the apple orchard to the baroness’s house.
“I feel increasingly strange about this,” Miss Hogarth confessed. “After yesterday’s conversation.”
His side clenched. Had she decided she didn’t want to be courted? “In what way?”
“It had never occurred to me to treat Miss Lugoson’s own family as potential murderers,” she said. “Yet, who is more likely to poison than an intimate?”
He felt a sinking in his knees, from the sheer relief that she had only referred to their quest. “Yet, Lady Lugoson could have argued against us treating her daughter’s death as suspicious. She could have barred us from her door,” Charles said. “There is no way to know.”
“Unless someone confesses,” Miss Hogarth said somberly. “Do you know why I have agreed to keep paying calls and considering the matter, which after all does not concern me?”
“Why?”
Miss Hogarth stopped walking, and turned to him. “You, Mr. Dickens,” she said simply. “It gives me time with you.”
Charles looked at her shining face, pink-cheeked from the wind, blond tendrils flying around her shoulders that had come loose from her bonnet, and his heart seemed to expand. He pressed her hand between his. “What a lovely thing to say.”
She glanced at a pile of blackened leaves, piled into a depression at the base of one of the trees. “It is very forward of me, but I should like to know you better, and you don’t live nearby.”
“I am honored by your interest. I feel the same,” he said, then realized how close they were to the house already. “I wish we had to go on a longer journey.”
“Alas,” she said merrily. “We should go around to the front.”
Before she could speak again, the French doors along the Lugosons’ drawing room opened. He dropped her hand. He could see Lady Lugoson herself gesturing at him.
He and Miss Hogarth walked toward her. At least she wasn’t the sort to report on his inappropriate closeness to a young woman.
“Oh, I have such a headache,” Lady Lugoson whispered, putting a hand to her head, when they reached her. “I must go upstairs, but I wanted to make you welcome first.”
“I am sorry you are unwell, my lady,” Miss Hogarth said, frown lines appearing on her forehead.
Charles peered at the older beauty, looking for signs of Miss Lugoson’s mortal affliction in her mother. Could Lady Lugoson have been poisoned as well?
Lady Lugoson moaned low in her throat. She’d gone pale. “My maid has my drops. When I am like this sleep is the only solution.”
“You have terrible headaches?” Charles asked, concern that she’d been poisoned diminishing.
“For many years now,” Lady Lugoson said, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I had a bad fall from a horse about a decade ago.”
“Would you like me to ring for your maid?” Miss Hogarth asked, once again proving her essential kindness.
Lady Lugoson moaned again. Charles took her arm, leading her to a sofa, while Miss Hogarth went for the bell.
“Let me tell you,” Lady Lugoson said faintly. “That last day, Christiana took breakfast with her brother and me. We paid the call on Mrs. Decker, then she went to tea with her friend Beatrice Carley. She saw the dance master in between.”
“Does that account for most of the time?”
The lady closed her eyes. “No. She would have been alone for over an hour or so in the morning, a few hours in the early afternoon. But after that she dressed for my party. I’m sure she was with her maid because she mentioned having to repair the dress she wore that night.”
Panch came into the room. Miss Hogarth asked him to fetch Lady Lugoson’s maid.
“You will still allow us to spend time in your late husband’s library?” Charles asked.
“Why did you want to use it? I don’t remember.”
“I want to look for herbals, attempt to identify poisons that would fit the situation,” Charles explained.
She rubbed along her cheek, as if to dispel some muscular tightness. “He might have had some volumes. I have no interest in such things, but his mother did. Look for journals, too.”
“Thank you. When you’re better, I might beg you to contact Mrs. Carley and ask her if Miss Hogarth can see her daughter, Miss Carley?”
Before she could answer, Lady Lugoson’s maid came into the room. The woman, of a similar age to Lady Lugoson, made encouraging French noises in the back of her throat as she helped the lady to her feet. She leaned heavily on the maid’s arm, reminding Charles of the night her daughter had died. When Panch returned, he told the butler that they had permission to investigate the library.
Panch looked down his nose at Charles, but gestured them to the doorway. They formed a procession up the stairs to the first floor and down a long corridor toward the back of the house. The late Lord Lugoson’s library was not the cigar-scented, dark-walled aristocratic male sanctum that Charles had expected. Instead, the windows were large and exposed the vista of the rear garden, little more than green and brown at this time of year. The walls were hung with light blue silk cloth, old-fashioned but beautiful.
“Don’t the bindings become sun-damaged?” Charles asked Panch.
“The curtains are drawn unless a member of the household is in the room,” he said officiously.
Charles and Miss Hogarth shared a glance. No one had been here and yet the curtains were open. Not that the light was excellent this day.
“Will you require lamps?” Panch asked grudgingly.
“Yes, please,” Charles said, moving to the bookshelves closest to the light.
Panch lit two lamps that were on the mantelpiece and then went around the room lighting table lamps. Miss Hogarth went to the opposite end of the room and began to look there. After the butler had departed, she approached Charles with two bound volumes.
“These look promising,” she sa
id. “Handwritten.”
“A woman’s handwriting?” he asked, leaving his finger on the binding he’d reached on the second shelf.
She glanced at them. “No. They must be the wrong ones. I’ll keep looking.”
“Panch shut the door.”
She was still looking at the books. “What?”
“The butler, he shut the door. We’re alone in here.”
The old journals slipped through her fingers, and landed on the shelf with a thud. “I should—” Her pupils moved from side to side.
“What? Don’t you trust me?”
“You brought the matter to my attention,” she demurred. “What am I to say if my mother asks? I cannot deny I noticed we were alone.”
“So you want to be with me?” he suggested.
She stepped toward him until her face, pore-less and china smooth, was fully in the lamplight. “You know I do, Mr. Dickens, but without some statement of intention to my parents, I will not dabble in impropriety. I am not some actress, or a spoiled, lonely aristocrat.”
“No.”
She drew herself up to her full, diminutive height. “I am a member of a family privileged to be in the world. I meet people. Father brings them home. Sometimes I even go to his office.”
His lips twisted. “I have rivals for your affection?”
“I am saying that you will not be my only choice. If you let me down, there will be others.”
“How could I let you down?”
“By talking only of lovemaking, and never of anything else,” she said. “I want to know what happened to Miss Lugoson and Miss Rueff. Give me a mystery, Mr. Dickens, and a solution, and I will follow you into places I should not.” She gestured around the room, with a significant nod at the door.
The hair on the backs of Charles’s forearms had risen during her speech. Here was not just a girl who could make a sweet home, and who would enjoy it, but an inquiring mind. Utterly fascinated, he managed to hold back everything he wanted to say, everything that smacked of romantical banter, and only said, “I hear you, Miss Hogarth. I hear and obey.”
A Tale of Two Murders Page 10