A Tale of Two Murders

by Heather Redmond

  “Absolutely,” Miss Hogarth agreed at his side, tightening the ribbon at the top of her cloak.

  Charles set the horse on its way, then settled the reins into a more comfortable position in his hands. He wasn’t terribly easy with his driving skills, as he didn’t do it often enough. “What are your thoughts after that interview?”

  “Murder,” she said promptly, staring straight ahead. “Miss Lugoson liked the theater, and dancing. She was not a girl to go about foraging. She hadn’t been back in Brompton long enough anyway. She was only here from sometime in September.”

  “Long enough to find a lover, not long enough to find some wild teas or mushrooms?” Charles asked.

  “Simply the wrong season for it,” Miss Hogarth said.

  “But something that has a short season, right around Christmas?” Charles suggested. “I don’t know what. Holly berries or something like that?”

  “Or even an Epiphany treat that only comes out that night.”

  “Then we are right back to a bad jam,” Charles said.

  “I know.” She folded her hands into her lap. “That they were both heiresses seems suspicious.”

  “I agree. Let us see what we can learn about her.” He turned the horse onto a street of elegant, cream stucco–fronted terraced houses with lots of decorative iron grating.

  “Absolutely lovely,” Miss Hogarth breathed.

  “I agree. Though I must admit I prefer stand-alone villas to terraced houses, but these are in the first stare of fashion, to be sure.”

  “Knightsbridge,” she said. “I love our dear, rambling house, and the orchards, but you are really somebody if you live in a place like this.”

  “You will have to choose your husband very carefully to find yourself here,” Charles said, the words coming out more harshly than he meant them to be.

  “Indeed,” she said crisply. “But for now, I am more interested in a dead heiress than my future prospects.”

  She did like a mystery. While Charles had an interest in Kate Hogarth’s future prospects as well, that puzzle could be set aside for now. “Did she seem well cared for, this Miss Rueff?” Charles asked. “Dressed appropriately? That sort of thing.”

  “She wore half-mourning every time I saw her. For her mother, perhaps?”

  Charles jumped down, casting about for the usual sort of boys who might keep the horse walking for him, but the truth was, they had no excuse to call on the dead girl’s father. He stared up at Miss Hogarth. “Could we pretend you don’t know that she’s died? Go to the door and call on her?”

  Miss Hogarth tilted her head, her pretty curls brushing the black wool of her coat.

  “Who are you looking for?” said a woman in a practical black dress, approaching them with a market basket on her arm. Her speech was fairly distinguished, and her age made her likely to be one of the house’s cooks or housekeepers.

  “Marie Rueff. A parishioner at St. Luke’s,” Charles said.

  “Why?”

  “A mutual friend has died,” Charles said, thinking fast. “Miss Christiana Lugoson. We wanted to tell her, but our acquaintance is both slight and long ago.”

  “Miss Rueff died herself more than a year ago,” the woman said. “I am Mrs. Appleby, and I work at the house next door.”

  “Goodness,” Miss Hogarth said, her hand going to her throat as she playacted alarm. “I had wondered why I never saw her at St. Luke’s anymore.”

  “It was very sudden,” the woman said.

  “She was such a dear, quiet girl.”

  Mrs. Appleby snorted. “You wouldn’t have thought that if you lived here. Such doings in the wee hours. Horses in the street, shouts.”

  “Marie Rueff?” Miss Hogarth said. “I shouldn’t think so. Why, she was practically a mouse.”

  “Had a man,” the servant said, tapping the skin around her left eye. “Tried to run away with him. Father caught her.”

  “And the man?” Charles asked.

  “Unmarked phaeton. Got away clean,” she said, betraying a hint of Yorkshire in her voice for the first time.

  “My stars,” Miss Hogarth said. “I’d never have had any clue of such a thing. How could she have met a man?”

  “Any pretty girl from a good family with money will attract men,” Mrs. Appleby said. “Monsieur Rueff married an English heiress.”

  “We’d understood Miss Rueff to be the heiress now,” Charles said.

  “I don’t know about any of that. Just that there was a scandal.”

  “How long before she died?”

  “Shortly before Christmas. They must have thought they could get away because Monsieur Rueff had a holiday party. Lots of Frenchies about, all those foreign tongues wagging, but someone saw her leaving, trying to sneak out of the tradesman entrance, and told her father.”

  “He had already been suspicious,” Miss Hogarth said wisely.

  A curtain twitched in the next house and Mrs. Appleby snapped to attention. “I must go. I am sorry for your loss.”

  Charles let her dash down the basement steps. She was unlikely to have known Marie Rueff personally and would be of no use regarding her foraging habit. With a sigh, he climbed back into the trap and snapped the reins.

  “That was not Marie Rueff as described by William in the Chronicle,” Charles said. “He made her sound so housebound.”

  “Likely someone she knew from her intimate family circle,” Miss Hogarth said. “Whether here or in France. A girl in love can always find a way, and a determined fortune hunter will aid her.”

  “What do you think about such a scenario?”

  “It is poison to marry where family has not consented,” she said. “I would never do it. I trust my parents to help me make a good choice.”

  “Otherwise you will never rise to Pelham Crescent?” he asked, turning them back to Fulham Road.

  “Very true.” She tossed her head.

  Charles’s stomach rumbled uneasily. Miss Hogarth seemed to have the spirit of a fortune hunter herself. She would never look at him as a suitor, if he were poor.

  Chapter 16

  Charles set down his pen late that night in his parlor, his thoughts on money and how to get it. He pulled the Elizabethan coin he’d found two nights ago out of his pocket and examined it. It had to be worth something, and what if there were more, turned up by those tree roots?

  He leapt from his chair, startling Fred out of his doze in front of the hearth, and went into the kitchen. After he fetched the largest spoon he could find, he threw on his outer clothes and called for his brother.

  “Light the lantern. We’re going treasure hunting!”

  “You must be mad,” Fred said, but he gathered his coat and the lantern with alacrity.

  Charles straightened his brother’s collar and pulled his muffler over the dimple in his chin. “A bitter night, but no one will be out to watch us dig.”

  “What are we going to do? Rob a grave?” Fred asked, pulling on green mittens that their sister Letitia had knitted for him.

  “I hope not.” He squinted in mysterious fashion. “But I found that coin in tree roots. It just struck me that there might be more. Who knows what the root might have pushed up?”

  “What kind of coins did they have, hundreds of years ago?”

  “I have never forgotten learning one was called an angel,” Charles said, lighting the lantern. “But I don’t know what I found. I should ask someone.”

  “An angel,” Fred said, following Charles out the door. “Were all the coins different?”

  “I don’t think so. Mostly the same.” They walked down the dark stairs, lighting the way with the lamp.

  “Do I get a spoon?”

  “I forgot to take another one,” Charles said. “But we’ll trade turns with the lamp.”

  When they reached the street, Fred began to whistle, a jaunty tune that did not fit any notion of dark deeds. Charles shrugged and added his own whistle.

  When they reached the edge of the field whe
re he’d found the treasure tree, he heard another whistle join theirs.

  “Bother,” Fred said, breaking off. “Sorry.”

  Charles pulled him into the shadow of the closest tree and shuttered the lantern. The other whistle continued for a moment, then faltered. He heard the footsteps, those light ones that had begun to signify trouble to him.

  Stepping away from the tree, he called, “Julie?”

  The steps didn’t speed up, but kept moving forward. Some thirty seconds later, the moon revealed the girl, her red hair down, no bonnet on her head. Not like Julie Saville to take no lack of care with her appearance. Charles opened the lantern. And gasped.

  “What happened?” He handed the lantern to his brother and tilted Julie’s chin, exposing the bruise on her cheek. “Who hit you?”

  “Miss Acton,” she said, pulling away.

  “It’s all right,” he said to his brother. “I know her. She’s an actress. Who likes to follow me.”

  Julie rolled her eyes at him.

  A tree branch caught at the back of his coat. He pulled away. “Why did Miss Acton hit you?”

  “She beat me for questioning Lady Lugoson’s parenting skills.”

  “You made such remarks to her face?” Charles asked.

  “No. I assume you told her.” She sniffed and tucked in her chin.

  “I don’t wish you any sort of harm. I’d never have done that,” Charles protested. “No, someone else said something.”

  “Why would anyone want to cause problems between them?”

  He felt drips on his hat. Moving out from under the tree, he said, “They’ve had a very domestic tragedy on their hands. All kinds of accusations are going to occur.”

  “I don’t want to pay for that. I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t hurt Christiana.” Her voice had lost some of its crispness.

  “She’s in pain,” Fred said. “Should we escort her home?”

  Charles ignored his brother’s suggestion. “Keep your mouth shut,” he advised. “Don’t offer any more opinions. You don’t know anything more, correct?”

  “She was my friend,” Julie whined.

  Bluntly, he asked, “Do you think your mistress killed her? Or Mr. Chalke?”

  She stared at him, then her eyes went to Fred for a moment before returning. “I don’t know what to think,” she said, in a small voice. Then she stood up straight. “But I don’t want to be the next victim.”

  “A slap is hardly a dish of poison,” Charles said. “Poison is sneaky and political. A slap is rage.”

  “So you don’t think Miss Acton did it?” she asked.

  “To kill Miss Lugoson merely to keep her age a secret is silly,” he declared. “After all, she has you onstage with her. That never made any sense.”

  “She isn’t the sort to do very much,” Julie said. “After having a baby meant she’d never marry well, she found herself in the theater because her parents gave her the building. I don’t think she’s ever really tried to make anything of herself.”

  “Isn’t she a well-known actress?” Fred asked.

  “In a third-rate theater?” Julie sniffed. “Watch me go higher than that, and soon.”

  “If you aren’t arrested and transported,” Charles snapped. “For falling in with Chalke’s illegal doings.”

  “What about you?” she demanded. “Out all hours of the night?”

  “I was going to look for more coins. I need a fortune, same as anyone else.” He put his hands on his hips.

  “Can I help?” she asked.

  “No and no,” he said. “I have my brother to help me. Stop following me. Get some sleep for a change.”

  “I don’t sleep much.”

  “Neither do I, but we don’t want you here.”

  She sniffed again, theatrically this time, and swanned off in a gliding kind of walk that made her feet scarcely touch the earth.

  “She’s going to get herself killed or raped, wandering around at night like this,” Fred said. “Shouldn’t we have made sure she arrived home safely?”

  “She knows how to take care of herself,” Charles said. “Actresses aren’t respectable, but they do have the freedom to go places by themselves.” They couldn’t afford to get mixed up with her. The next thing he knew he might be offering her a place in front of his fire and if Mr. Hogarth found out he’d been harboring a pretty little actress like some novelist instead of a respectable family man, he’d lose the man’s good opinion, which was everything at this stage of his career.

  “But she was hurt!” Fred protested.

  “Her mistress did that, not some blackguard. She has a place to go, and she isn’t badly hurt.” Charles put his finger to his lips, and closed the lantern again. When all was silent, he pulled his brother across the field toward the correct tree, then went to his knees on the cold earth next to the root, opened the lantern, and began to scrape with the spoon.

  Fred sat on the thickest of the roots and poked around on the opposite side. Charles could tell the boy was still pouting, but he ignored it. If Fred had his own establishment, then he could house wounded actresses. He convinced himself that Julie had been acting hurt more than really hurt, anyway.

  While they worked, Charles thought about the case. Or at least he tried. His thoughts kept meandering to bright blue eyes and dancing curls. Of Kate Hogarth, not Julie Saville. The girl who wanted to live at Pelham Crescent someday.

  By God, he did have ability to rise to a place like that, with hard work and diligence, and yes, forgoing many nights of sleep. Not only that, he would solve Miss Lugoson’s murder. For now, that would impress Kate Hogarth.

  * * *

  While no postmen came on Sundays, Charles found a note had been pushed under his door when he and Fred arrived home from visiting their family on Sunday afternoon.

  “William Aga proposing a flare-up?” his brother asked, pulling off his hat.

  “Don’t forget that bread and cheese,” Charles said, fluffing Fred’s hair back from his widow’s peak. Their dinner was in his pocket.

  “Right-o,” Fred said cheerfully, pulling out the wrapped packet before he went to stir up the fire. “I hope those coins are done soaking.” He went into the kitchen to check on their tree root findings of the night before. In the dark, and with frozen fingers, they’d been unable to do more than soak some interesting lumps in a pan of water. Then they’d both slept over-late and had to dash for services the next morning, so as not to upset their mother. Charles had found a little extra money for the resoling of Fanny’s and Letitia’s shoes. Fanny had paid for Boz’s new secondhand pair, so he was out of his dancing pumps now.

  Charles pulled off his gloves and opened the note. He whistled when he saw the signature and went to his letter box to prepare a response.

  “What have you got?” Fred asked, returning with a lumpy handkerchief.

  “It’s a letter from Mrs. Carley saying I can now interview her daughter, Miss Carley,” he said. “I never thought the day would come, but I’d still better bring Miss Hogarth. I’ll write her and walk the letter right to the General Post Office on St. Martin’s Le Grand so that she receives it before I arrive.”

  “Don’t the Carleys live in London?”

  “They are at their Brompton house right now. I expect she’s making this as difficult for me as possible. She’s that sort of woman.”

  “Politicians.” Fred’s dimples popped out as he grimaced. “On your way back, can you get some sausages? There must be something open at Smithfield Market.”

  “You know I detest that place. Terrible hygiene.”

  “I need more than bread and cheese,” Fred pleaded. “If my stomach growls all night you won’t be able to sleep either.”

  Charles laughed. “Fine. I’d tell you to stop growing but you have a few years to go yet. Let me write my note and you can show me our coins while the ink dries.”

  “Yes. I just need to polish them up and light the lamps so we can see.” Fred sat down at the table, intent
over his handkerchief while Charles carefully composed his note. He wondered how filthy the cloth was, since their laundry had been in a terrible state when they delivered a bundle to their mother to be washed before they met the family for church.

  After he blotted his note, he rose from his chair and pushed the curtains as far back from the window as he could, allowing for the maximum light. “What have we got?”

  Fred straightened out the grayish cloth and displayed three flat disks. “We really did find three coins.”

  “Like the first one I found?” Charles plucked it from the mantelpiece and placed it on the cloth next to the others.

  “No.”

  “They are all silver, though, whatever they are,” Charles said.

  “Metal’s worth something,” Fred agreed.

  Charles picked one up. All three coins were battered, but some lettering survived around the edges, and the queen was evident. “We must have found the remains of someone’s lost coin purse.”

  Fred handed him another coin. “This one is in the best shape. There is still some beadwork around the edge.”

  “We’ll go out hunting again as soon as the rain stops,” Charles vowed. “Then we’ll take the coins to a dealer and get what we can for them.”

  Fred clapped his hands together. “What will we do with the money?”

  “Maybe some crockery,” Charles said, hoping the money would stretch so far. “Lamps?”

  “Furniture,” Fred said with a laugh. He spread his arms wide and twirled. “Way too much room to move around in here. I can hear an echo!”

  “Exactly,” Charles said. He turned slowly, imagining the room full of plump furnishings and interesting trinkets, a portrait or two on the wall. Maybe a seascape, to remind him of his childhood in Portsmouth. And their feet, well, he and Fred would have fine new shoes. Warm slippers, too. Possibly embroidered by some soft, girlish hand.

  “Now what?” Fred asked. “What are you smiling about?”

  Charles felt embarrassment heating his cheeks. “Little domestic pleasures. Why don’t you finish cleaning the coins, then lock them into my box? I’m going to take my letter to the post office and fetch those sausages. We’ve earned them.”