A Tale of Two Murders

by Heather Redmond

  She led him to the fire, her soft fingers clutched around his forearm. William followed behind, but Charles scarcely noticed as she made him sit in a love seat and then perched at his side, so close that he could see each individual blond eyebrow.

  “Mr. Hogarth should hear the tale,” William said to Mrs. Hogarth, as he took the chair closest to the fire.

  She nodded. “I’ll fetch him and then find ye some food.”

  Charles ignored the sight of William munching on bread, melted cheese, and stewed apples as he told the family what they had seen and been told.

  “Ye don’t suppose the boy had some kind of relationship with Lady Lugoson, do ye?” Mr. Hogarth said, then paused to light his pipe.

  “It’s not impossible, under the circumstances,” Charles said.

  “I think he killed the girl,” William growled, then bit savagely at his bread crust.

  “But you met him. He was a mild sort,” Charles protested.

  The journalist set his empty plate on the armrest of his chair and glanced over at Charles’s untouched plate. “Could have been an accident.”

  “Not after Marie Rueff’s death,” Miss Hogarth said.

  “Could he have killed Miss Lugoson when he found out she wasn’t who the family claimed she was?”

  “She was still an heiress,” William argued. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Charles passed him the plate of food. Miss Hogarth took his hand in hers, placed her other hand over his, and patted him. He felt a jolt of fire run up his arm at the tender touch. When her mother saw what she was doing, Miss Hogarth colored and let him go.

  “I don’t think Horatio Durant killed Miss Lugoson,” Mr. Hogarth said.

  “He claimed he’d been very ill around then,” Charles said, wishing he could stroke his cheek with the hand Miss Hogarth had touched so sweetly, but he didn’t want anyone to notice his sentimentality.

  “Maybe he’d been poisoned as well,” William said. “But survived, due to his larger size.”

  “What an idea,” Miss Hogarth said.

  “‘I miss her. I’m sorry,’” Mr. Hogarth said thoughtfully, repeating the words from the note. “If Lady Lugoson killed the girl, perhaps to make sure the money stayed in her control, is it possible it was because Mr. Durant had agreed to marry Lady Lugoson instead?”

  Charles remembered the angelic face and winced. “His last thoughts were of Miss Lugoson. It’s true that her mother is not old, but she has a son who will soon reach his majority. Why would he prefer her?”

  “She was restarting her political salons, or at least she had intended to. An experienced political wife, instead of an untried young girl with a lot of ugly rumors surrounding her?” Mr. Hogarth suggested.

  “I see your point,” William said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Yes, I rather like that theory.”

  Charles felt a flash of heat at the suggestion that Lady Lugoson had killed her daughter in cold blood. He stood and left the dining room, not able to take the fire or the conversation for a moment longer. When he reached the entry hall, he sat down on the bench above the shoes and let his head drop to his chest.

  A few seconds later, Miss Hogarth appeared and sat next to him. “Aren’t you well?”

  He lifted his heavy head and looked at her. Really looked. The tender concern in her eyes was a balm to him. He instantly felt better. “We live in a great city. So many people, and one does see dreadful things. But the sight of that man, dead like that. And even worse, the place where he had died.” He shuddered. “I need to toughen myself. I am too tenderhearted.”

  “You care about people,” she said. “You liked him. I appreciate your sensibility more than ye know.”

  “I appreciate your kindness,” he told her. “You are the best of girls, truly.”

  Her eyes glistened as her cheeks colored. “What a lovely thing to say.”

  “Someday, Miss Hogarth, I—” The words that had not entirely formed in his head were not born, for their fellow trio of conversationalists were heard in the corridor. The Hogarths appeared at the door into the entry.

  “I thought ye were going to faint dead away,” Mrs. Hogarth said, passing her fingers over his forehead. “We should put ye to bed for the night.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I have to go to Sudbury tomorrow so I’m ready for Sunday’s political meeting.”

  “I don’t think that is wise,” Mr. Hogarth said, “if ye are this ill. William, can ye go to Sudbury instead?”

  “No,” Charles protested, fearful of losing his job. “I will go. I just have to be in a coach for most of a day.”

  “As if that is relaxing,” William jeered. “I will check on you in the morning. If you are still unwell, you can take my meeting in Woolwich on Monday instead.”

  “How are you getting back into town tonight?” Miss Hogarth asked.

  “I think we should ask at Lugoson House next door for a carriage,” William said.

  “I’m willing to brave Panch,” Charles said. He was deeply weary, but elated in parts.

  Miss Hogarth flashed him a smile, giving him the energy to stand and take his coat from the hook. “When will we see you again, Mr. Dickens?”

  “As always,” he said, “sooner than either of us probably thinks.”

  Chapter 21

  Charles and William successfully talked Lady Lugoson’s butler into sending them home in a carriage. Charles nodded off on the drive home and felt quite peckish by the time he arrived. He ate the remains of dinner and shared the Durant story with Fred, as his brother paced in front of the sputtering fire.

  “You look green,” Charles said. “What’s wrong? Are you coming down with something?”

  Fred fussed with his blanket. He’d been asleep when Charles arrived, but came into the parlor when Charles stirred the fire. “I’m not going to be able to sleep after hearing that. Let’s go coin hunting.”

  “I doubt I will sleep well this night either after seeing Horatio Durant’s sad mess, so why try to rest?” Charles said equably. “But you didn’t answer me. Are you ill?”

  “No, but I wish I hadn’t asked about Horatio Durant,” his brother said frankly. “Tales of the macabre are one thing, but this was actually someone you knew. This isn’t a game, all these people dying. None of them much older than me or you, either.”

  “I know,” Charles said, picking up his bowl and taking it to their washbasin. “It needs to stop. Let’s bundle up and go out, shall we?”

  “Fresh air,” Fred said, going to his shoes. “Just what we need.”

  They went down the stairs and reached the street before they’d even finished tying their mufflers, equally ready to get out of the stuffy room.

  “We won’t be able to see much,” Fred fretted as they turned up the street, a small trowel that he’d purchased at a stall leaning against his shoulder. “New moon tonight.”

  “Yet you wanted to go out?”

  “I could see you have one of your headaches,” his brother said. “The fires make it worse.”

  “London makes it worse. Besides, it turns out seeing the body of a suicide is a very hard thing.” Charles pushed that gray skin with those horrible cuts far to the back of his mind. “I’m sure it made it worse that I knew the man. And I should stop talking about it, for your sake.”

  “No doubt. I’m glad I did not go with you.” Fred patted his arm and Charles smiled sideways at his little brother.

  He ruminated on the subject while they walked through the quiet streets toward their personal tree bank. He spread a length of toweling over the wet ground to spare their clothes and they knelt down, Fred with his trowel and Charles with his spoon.

  “How do you imagine the coins came to be here?” Fred asked, as they worked by the light of their lantern.

  To amuse them both, and to distract himself from sadder thoughts, Charles spun a story of the tempestuous Elizabethan age Countess of Derby, and her affairs with both the Earl of Essex and Walter Raleigh. She
’d had assignations with both of these men under this very tree, when it was a mere sapling, and coins had dropped from the men’s purses during their passion.

  He’d just come to a thrilling bit about Essex’s arrest for treason right under the tree when he heard female laughter. Fred scrambled to cover the lamp. Charles leaned against the tree and turned his face away. At least they had yet to find anything that night, so they had nothing to hand over to a watchman.

  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is rumored to have been performed for the first time at the Derby wedding,” she said.

  “Julie Saville,” Charles groaned. “Why are you following me again?”

  “This is where I find you,” she said simply, as she reached them. “You pirates.”

  Fred opened the lamp and struck a pose, as if he were standing at the wheel of a mighty ship.

  Without speaking, Julie pulled off her lacy knit shawl with dirt streaks around the edges and revealed her torn bodice. The marks of fingers bit into her upper arm just below her shoulder. Charles took the lamp from Fred and examined her face as his brother exclaimed. She had a cut at the corner of her mouth.

  She stuck her tongue in her cheek. “I think I have a tooth loose. Can you help me, Mr. Dickens? I need to find a new position before she kills me.”

  “With poison?” he asked bluntly.

  She wrinkled her nose. “She’s not clever enough.”

  “I doubt that. She’s held on to her theater all this time.”

  “Maybe all the gin is damaging her mind,” Julie snapped. “You know how hard they work me. You’re the only person I know who is out and about at this time of night.”

  “You can sleep in front of our fire,” Fred offered, before Charles could shush him.

  “Don’t worry,” she simpered, looking at Charles’s expression. “I won’t damage your reputation, and surely you can’t hurt mine.”

  “Only for the n-night,” Charles stammered. “But you have to be gone in the morning. I leave for Sudbury before noon.”

  “Please don’t leave town,” she said, taking his arm. “I can’t go back there. I’m afraid of Angela and Percy.”

  “You’re an actress.” He didn’t wrench his arm away for fear of hurting her.

  Tears dripped down her cheeks and nose. “I hurt.” She worked her mouth. “I swear to you, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t you have any family?” Fred asked, his forehead wrinkled with concern. He took off his muffler and tied it around Julie’s neck, hiding the worst of the rips.

  His brother had always had that for support, unlike Charles himself. He’d never have asked.

  Julie shook her head. “They took me directly out of a workhouse two years ago. My father died when I was young and my mother when I was twelve.”

  “What about becoming a maid of all work?” Fred carefully rewrapped Julie’s shawl around her. “You could afford that, couldn’t you, Charles?”

  “She’s too good an actress to waste her time as a maid.” Charles unwound his muffler and handed it to Fred. He tied it around Julie’s neck over the shawl.

  She wiped her eyes with the edges and sniffed. “Do you know anyone who can help me?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, still unsure of her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Hunting,” Fred said. “For pirate treasure.”

  “A simple amusement,” Charles added quickly.

  “You’d better not get caught. All these lawyers in the surrounding buildings will have your head on a pike,” she said tartly.

  “There’s the Julie I know.” Charles beamed, entirely restored to good humor. “Come, kneel on the towel and help us look for lumps. You should be warm enough now.”

  “She ought to be indoors,” Fred insisted. “I can make her a cup of tea.”

  “I’m fine. Lumps?” Julie knelt next to Charles, hiking her shawl up on her shoulder. Then she fussed with his muffler, covering her hair. She poked experimentally in the dirt.

  “You don’t want to get your mittens dirty,” Fred cautioned.

  “Dirt comes off,” she said, removing her mittens and burying her hands in the muck.

  They worked in silence for half an hour or so, ignoring Fred’s sighs of impatience, his urge to be a knight rescuing his lady ignored by Julie, finding nothing but pebbles. Charles began to yawn, the day catching up with him. Then his spoon stopped on something hard. He scratched around it. A rock? A coin? “Stop for a moment,” he told the others.

  Fred handed the trowel to him and he used it to scoop up his lump. “Do you think you’ve found something?”

  “Here goes nothing.” He took off his glove and began the slow process of crumbling the hard-packed dirt.

  After a minute, Fred grew impatient and held up the lantern so he could see what Charles was doing.

  “Is that gold?” Julie’s breath brushed against Charles’s cheek as she stared into his hands.

  He spit on the dirt to loosen where the first hint of the coin was emerging.

  “Be careful,” she urged. “You don’t want to bend it. Gold is soft.”

  Slowly, he worked at it, spitting until his mouth was dry, but by then, one side had emerged. “A shield back.”

  “That’s a proper gold coin,” Fred crowed. “That must be worth something.”

  Charles slipped it into his pocket. “We’ll clean it up and take another look tomorrow.”

  “I can take it,” Fred offered, holding out his hand.

  “I have it safe,” Charles insisted. He’d keep it close even in sleep, not wanting it to disappear. Hearing teeth chattering, and afraid that it was his jaw doing the rattling, he called an end to their evening. “Fill in the hole,” he instructed, handing the trowel back to Fred.

  “If this blasted rain would stop, we’d get further,” his brother muttered.

  “It keeps the top of the ground soft,” Charles countered.

  “Do you think all the trees have coins buried underneath?” Julie asked, standing up.

  “Probably not.”

  “Why did you start looking?”

  “It was an accident. I found that one when I was with you, not gold, and I thought I would look again.” In the dark, he couldn’t glare at Fred to make sure he kept his mouth shut, but thankfully his brother was too busy shifting dirt to say anything.

  “It’s worth trying again,” Julie said, “if you’re going to turn up gold coins.”

  “Sleep is good too,” Charles said. “This isn’t the sort of thing you can do in the daylight.”

  “Eventually someone will catch you,” she agreed. “But finding a gold coin was fun.”

  They walked back to Furnival’s Inn, more slowly than they had set out. Charles felt pleasantly tired, though anxious. Also, he was sneezing with increasing regularity. Julie slipped on a patch of ice and grabbed his arm to keep herself upright. They slid around together, trying to rebalance, as Fred danced around them, trying to figure out where to latch on to them. Julie moaned in pain as Fred caught the bruise on her arm when he grabbed her, but by the time they were safely upright, all were laughing, the echoes bouncing off buildings.

  Charles shushed them as they went up the stairs. Inside, the fire had gone out and the rooms were cold. Fred went to relight the fire and put the kettle on while Charles took Julie to their water can to wash her hands and see to her wounds. A ring must have caught just under her eye, for there was a spot where a scab had formed.

  “The first time she just hit your face. Now it’s your face and your arm,” he pointed out as he handed her a cake of soap and poured clean, cold water into their washbowl.

  “I can’t go back there, but I need a character. The theater world is a small place,” she said.

  “People must know that she’s a violent woman,” Charles said. His hands now clean, he opened a cupboard and pulled out a small box. “This is our sewing kit. You can fix your dress.”

  “Thank you.” She dunked he
r hands into the bowl of water until they were clean, then dried them and took the box.

  “I’ll find you a blanket and you can sleep in front of the fire.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dickens,” she said. “I’m happy to clean and cook in order to pay my way.”

  He didn’t want to formalize anything, to find himself with her in his employ. Any expectations could be dangerous. Also, he didn’t want any other women in his life. He wanted his private thoughts to be filled with Miss Hogarth, not Julie, not Lady Lugoson. How complicated it all was when so many people wanted something of him.

  He sneezed. “You’ll need to make other arrangements, but for now, you can fix your dress, get some rest, and tomorrow, I have a little acting job for you.”

  Julie handed him the towel. “What?”

  He wiped his nose. His words came out muffled. “We’ll talk about it then.”

  “So you aren’t going out of town?”

  “William didn’t seem to mind going for me. I’ll trade with him this time.” It seemed best.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You won’t regret it. I’ll take good care of both of you.”

  “Just for a day or two,” he cautioned, then sneezed again. He put his hand to his forehead. “I’m going to bed,” he called to Fred.

  “I’ll join you after the tea is made.”

  Charles stumbled from the room, half-blind with fatigue, but once inside, he carefully slipped the still dirty gold coin into a ripped seam on his pillowcase. It would be safe there, and he hadn’t wanted to remind Julie of its existence by cleaning it in front of her.

  * * *

  Charles felt like a carriage was driving back and forth over his forehead when he woke, digging its wheels into his sore skull, but Fred and Julie were both bright-eyed and eager when he left the bedroom the next morning.

  “What is your plan?” the actress asked.

  “Clean yourself as best you can. I need you to look very respectable.”

  Fred swallowed a piece of bread. “Where are we going?”

  “To St. Luke’s for services, and then hopefully to Marie Rueff’s house. I have an idea to get us more information,” Charles explained.