The Dark Enquiry (A Lady Julia Grey Novel)

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  I gave her a gracious smile. “Thank you, but no, Mrs. Lawson. If my brother requires refreshment, I suspect he will want something rather more bracing than tea.”

  She drew herself up and gave a sniff. “It is eleven o’clock in the morning, my lady.”

  “Thank you, that is all, Mrs. Lawson,” Brisbane said, delivering the dismissal with a smile of such charm that Mrs. Lawson simpered on her way out the door.

  “Honestly, Brisbane,” I told him. “It is simply revolting the way they fawn upon you.”

  “Whom?”

  “Mrs. Lawson, Morag. I daresay the new cook will be next.”

  He gave me no retort, for the door opened again and there was Bellmont. My brother looked surprised to see me, but no mere surprise could account for his extreme pallor and the dark shadows beneath his eyes. He had suffered a shock, and from the newspaper clutched under his arm, I could guess what it was.

  He covered his dismay at seeing me with a greeting that was barely polite.

  “Julia, my dear, an unexpected pleasure. I trust you are in good health?” he enquired, but his eyes darted from me to Brisbane, imploring.

  “I am well, Monty, but I think you are not. Let me pour you a glass of whisky.”

  He blinked rapidly, but did not demur. I had thought I would be angry with him, and in some measure, I was. I was outraged on Adelaide’s behalf, on behalf of the children. But to my surprise, I found I was rather sorrier for Bellmont. Our father had warned me once that Bellmont would find his middle years difficult ones. He was too ambitious, too rigid. He had not the March talent for living easily with his own faults. He was no friend to his own shortcomings. The rest of us were willows, bending easily with the wind. Bellmont was a stout oak, strong and straight, too unyielding to tempests. He would stand or he would break, there was no ground in between.

  I poured him out the glass of whisky and handed it to him without a word. He looked up at me, and the little bit of colour in his face faded right away.

  “My God, you know,” he whispered. He drained off the whisky and pointed a finger of accusation at Brisbane. “I trusted you, but now I see what your word as a gentleman is truly worth.”

  I put a hand to Bellmont’s sleeve. “He did not tell me, at least not until I followed him to the Spirit Club and joined him in searching Madame Séraphine’s rooms.”

  “You searched her rooms?” He swung round to Brisbane. “I do not know whether to take a horsewhip to you on my own behalf or my sister’s! What do you mean permitting her to accompany you?”

  Brisbane had not moved. He merely gave Bellmont a slow, steady stare. But I knew Brisbane too well not to see the coiled tension in him, and if Bellmont had made a move towards him, Brisbane would have dropped him as easily as he had the ruffian in the street the night before.

  I hurried to settle my brother. “Bellmont, collect yourself. You will not threaten my husband under his own roof when he was out doing your bidding last night.”

  Brisbane stirred himself then. “I do not require your protection, Julia,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

  “I am well aware of it,” I told him through clenched teeth. “I am trying to protect Bellmont.”

  Bellmont whirled at me. “I do not require protection from the likes of him!”

  I smothered the urge to stamp my foot. Brisbane was showing remarkable restraint under the circumstances, but I fancied I saw cracks in the veneer of his control. I could not know which of my brother’s barbs might strike a blow that Brisbane found impossible to resist, and I for one, did not want to see the result.

  I turned on my brother. “Bellmont, do not be a fool. I have seen Brisbane with sword, horsewhip, his fists and a pistol, and I can assure you that if you push him so much as an inch further you will have cause to see it, too, and I have no wish to clean up the blood. Mrs. Lawson hates me quite enough already without the carpets being ruined. Now sit down.” I adopted a schoolmistressy tone and pushed at his shoulders. “Sit down.” To his credit, he obeyed and I hastened to put another whisky in his hands. For some of my brothers, that would have been kindling to the fire, but not Bellmont. Good liquor always made him quieter, and Brisbane stocked only the best.

  “Now let us discuss the matter peacefully,” I proposed. “Yes, Bellmont, I do know why Brisbane was sent to Madame’s last night, and I admit I intruded upon his work for reasons that need not concern you. He apprehended me inside the Spirit Club before he had an opportunity to search the rooms alone. He had no choice but to bring me along lest I be discovered by someone else.”

  I paused, letting Bellmont digest this bit of information. He said nothing, merely sipped at his drink, and I continued on. “Brisbane and I were able to search Madame’s boudoir, but discovered nothing pertaining to you. Unfortunately, she returned earlier than expected from her supper and we were forced to hide ourselves in a secret passage.”

  “A secret passage?” His tongue slipped ever so slightly upon the words, and I knew the whisky was beginning to have an effect.

  “From Madame’s boudoir to the materialising cabinet in the séance room,” I informed him. “No doubt she employed it during her more dramatic séances, but we found it quite useful for our purposes last night. In fact,” I paused again, darting a glance to Brisbane’s impassive face, “we were there when Madame succumbed to some malady and died in her boudoir.”

  Bellmont groaned and dropped the whisky glass, spilling the last drops upon the carpet. I sighed. Mrs. Lawson would doubtless blame me for that. After a moment, Bellmont lifted his head.

  “I read the notice in the papers and thought they must have got it wrong. How could she be dead?”

  I thought I detected a slight lament for his inamorata, and the notion that Bellmont might mourn her caused the slender threads of my sympathy to snap.

  “Well, she is, and in a rather nasty fashion, too. Brisbane thinks she was murdered.”

  Bellmont gripped the arms of the chair as if to anchor himself to the earth. “Do not say it,” he implored Brisbane.

  But Brisbane gave him a cold nod. “Indeed. It seems impossible to me she was not.”

  “But who? Why?” Bellmont asked, his voice rising.

  Brisbane shrugged. “Another discarded lover?” He did not bother to hide his disdain. “She had any number of such gentlemen. Any one of you might have done away with her.”

  “Any one of us?” Bellmont’s voice rose higher still. “You accuse me?”

  Brisbane gave him a wintry smile. “I merely point out the possibility.”

  Bellmont rose and made his way to the door on unsteady legs. “I will see you in hell,” he ground out, pointing at Brisbane. He left, banging the door so hard behind him that the framed map of Damascus on the wall fell, shattering the glass.

  I turned to Brisbane. “I do hope you are proud of yourself,” I said, my tone repressive.

  He gave me a brilliant smile. “Oh, quite.”

  I took up the chair Bellmont had recently vacated and studied my husband. “What now?”

  He steepled his hands, thinking. “We wait.”

  I bristled with impatience. “Surely not. There must be something we can do.”

  “Such as?”

  “We could gain entry once more to the Spirit Club, search Madame’s apartments with real thoroughness. We could find Bellmont’s letters,” I pressed.

  “There may be nothing left to find. She may have had a change of heart and destroyed the letters. She may have given them to a friend or consigned them to her bank or her solicitor for safekeeping,” he pointed out. “And even if she did conceal them somewhere in the Spirit Club, how precisely do you expect me to retrieve them in the midst of an official investigation into her death?”

  “I have seen you accomplish far more demanding tasks,” I returned with some irritation. I suspected Bellmont’s recent nastiness had prompted Brisbane to be difficult.

  “Julia, be reasonable. It is not worth the chance of apprehension just
on the possibility that the letters are at the club. If I knew they were there, that might—might—be different. But the risks I take in my business are calculated ones, and this is too great.”

  I cocked my head at him. “You are a professional enquiry agent. Surely the authorities would merely send you off with a flea in your ear if they discovered you.”

  He leaned forward, piercing me with those fathomless black eyes. “If I am discovered, I will be taken up for theft and sentenced to hard labour.”

  My lips went quite dry and I found it difficult to breathe. “Hard labour? You cannot be serious.”

  “Deadly, I am afraid,” he returned with the ghost of a smile.

  “All this time, I thought you had some sort of arrangement with the authorities,” I murmured. “You have handed over murderers and jewel thieves and blackmailers to them. You must be in league together.”

  He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Would you be in league with someone who regularly showed you up? I will grant you, one or two of the inspectors are well-enough disposed towards me, but the vast majority would be very pleased to bring me up on any charges at all. If I let them take me in the act of stealing a dead woman’s property, I might as well choose my own cell in Newgate.”

  “Don’t,” I begged. “I had no notion. I thought all of you worked together to see that justice was accomplished.”

  “They are bound by the law,” he reminded me. “I have rather less respect for that institution, and I have made no secret of it.”

  I struggled to make sense of what he said. “So last night, when we were concealed at Madame’s, if we had been discovered—”

  “I would have found a way out of that,” he assured me.

  “But when we were scrambling over rooftops and you were brawling in the streets, surely that was not legal.”

  “I may have broken one or two minor laws,” he admitted.

  I shook my head. “Little wonder you were so angry.”

  He said nothing for a long moment whilst I studied my hands. “I owe you an apology. I have pushed too hard to be included in your world, and you are entirely right. I have no notion of the difficulties, the dangers. It never once occurred to me that you might be gaoled for no more than pursuing your occupation.”

  He rose and came around the desk, pulling me to my feet. “I am careful,” he promised. “Very careful.”

  I hid my face in the shoulder of his coat. “You cannot be careful enough. I think I would like it very much if you gave up this line of work altogether.”

  I felt him stiffen in my arms, then relax as he pressed a kiss to my head. “You know that isn’t possible.”

  “Yes, but I can wish.”

  “You knew what I was when you married me.”

  “No, I did not. I had a very different idea altogether,” I told him. “I knew you pursued villains of all descriptions, but I never realised how entirely alone you are. I always thought the police would rescue you if you needed it.”

  There was a rumble of laughter from his chest, and I rubbed my cheek against him. “You think I need rescuing?”

  “It is possible,” I persisted.

  “Well, perhaps now you will reconsider your efforts to join me in my work,” he said, his lips in my hair.

  I pushed away from him. “Reconsider? When I have just this minute discovered how much you really need me?”

  His eyes narrowed sharply. “Need you?”

  “Brisbane, I am even more determined to assist you. You require a partner, and I am she.”

  “God help me,” he groaned.

  “Julia, stop distracting Brisbane. We have work,” came an irritable voice from the door. I rose on tiptoe to look over Brisbane’s shoulder. Plum arrived just as I was declaring my intentions to Brisbane, and he fixed me with a resentful stare.

  “Hello, Plum,” I said, settling a bright smile upon my lips. “You are come back early. Did you enjoy your stay at Mortlake’s estate?”

  He banged the door shut behind him, dropping his bags upon the floor. “In point of fact, I did not. And it is entirely your fault.”

  Brisbane resumed his seat behind the desk, and I detected from his expression that he was rather glad of the interruption. I made up my mind to raise the subject again later, and turned my attention to my brother.

  “Did you not recover the emeralds?”

  “Oh, I found them, all right. And turned them over to Lord Mortlake, who was not best pleased.”

  I was genuinely curious now. “Did he not appreciate your efforts?”

  “You could hardly expect him to, since he was the one who engineered the theft in the first place!” Plum went to the whisky decanter and poured out a hefty measure. I sighed. At this rate, we should have to order more spirits and quickly.

  “Lord Mortlake himself stole them?”

  “The jewels were heavily insured,” Brisbane explained.

  “You knew he stole them?” Plum’s handsome face flushed with anger. “Why the devil didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I had no proof. It might have been anyone in the house. Lord Mortlake was merely the likeliest candidate in my estimation.” Brisbane kept his voice even in the face of Plum’s irritation. “I discovered that the policy was only written two months ago—the first time the Mortlake emeralds have ever been insured. It seemed entirely logical that Lord Mortlake himself was the culprit and had only engaged me as a ruse to pacify the insurance company.”

  “But why suggest the thief was his own daughter?” I questioned. “That was a stroke of cruelty.”

  Brisbane shrugged. “If I had to guess, I would say because she was an excellent scapegoat should Plum get lucky and find the emeralds. No one would expect him to turn his own daughter in to the authorities. It would be settled as a private family matter. Where did you find them?”

  “There is a monstrous old humidor in Lord Mortlake’s study. The emeralds were inside, stuffed in an old stocking.”

  “Perhaps one of Lady Mortlake’s?” Brisbane suggested.

  Plum gave a nod. “I suppose Lady Mortlake herself might have done the deed. She came to the marriage with nothing, and if he is ruined, their sons’ inheritance will be lost. I suspect his losses must have been greater than he let on.” I quirked a brow at him and he explained. “Gaming tables. Mortlake favours large bets on losing hands. He’s an exceptionally poor player, but he does love to gamble.”

  I sniffed some satisfaction in his demeanour. “You played with him, and won, I would wager.”

  He gave me a slow, lazy smile that I would have sworn he learnt from Brisbane. “Rather a lot, as it happens. I suppose it was the insurance company’s money.”

  “Which they will want back as soon as they discover the emeralds are returned, unless Lord Mortlake means to keep it secret,” I surmised.

  “Not a chance,” Plum related proudly. “I handed them back to him in the middle of the ballroom. Lady Mortlake even presented me with a token of her gratitude in the form of a kiss upon the cheek.”

  I seized the opportunity to needle him a little. “And Lady Felicity? Was she suitably impressed?”

  He curled a lip. “She missed it entirely. I saw her for five minutes when I first arrived and then she took to her bed with a sick headache. She never made it down to the ball at all, although she did thank me quite handsomely this morning.”

  “You kissed her!” I crowed.

  The blush deepened to almost apoplectic levels. “I am a gentleman,” he reminded me with some heat. “I would never impugn a lady’s reputation by speaking of such things.”

  I waved a hand. “Nevertheless, you kissed her. And enjoyed it, unless I am mistaken.”

  “Julia Desdemona, shut your mouth,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Brisbane knew better than to interfere in our family quarrels. He occupied himself with his penknife whilst we squabbled.

  “If you had such a lovely time with the lady, why are you so put out with me?” I enquired. “I was no
t even present.”

  “Precisely. And your absence was extremely difficult to explain—difficult to the point of awkwardness. The Mortlakes think we are quite uncivil.”

  “But surely you must have struck a point in our favour with the return of the emeralds.”

  Plum’s hands were fisted at his sides. “Not enough to undo the damage of your appalling rudeness in not showing up for the house party.”

  “Except with Lady Felicity. She must not have minded,” I said sweetly. Plum started forward until Brisbane rose smoothly to his feet. He said nothing, but the mere fact that he had seen fit to rise stopped Plum in his tracks.

  “How you can endure her is beyond me.” Plum pointed a finger at me. He could turn nasty more quickly than any of my brothers, but I was genuinely happy for him. He had suffered too long at the hands of an unrequited passion. He deserved a little happiness, although it seemed to me he would have his hands full, convincing the Mortlakes to accept him as a suitor to Lady Felicity.

  “She has her redeeming qualities,” Brisbane assured him.

  I bristled. “Redeeming qualities indeed! Back to the matter at hand. What will become of the Mortlakes now?”

  “Ruination,” Brisbane guessed, resuming his chair. “Mortlake will have to return the funds to the insurance company or be charged with fraud.”

  “But he does not have the money, not if he used it to settle his gaming debts,” I argued. “And he cannot sell the estate. It is entailed with the title.”

  “He has properties in town. He will see nothing like their true worth if he means to sell quickly, but he has enough to cover his losses,” Brisbane explained.

  “They will be ruined socially,” Plum said, sinking into the chair next to mine. He clutched at his hair. “I did not think. When I gave those jewels back to him, I did not imagine I would be the instrument of ruin for his entire family. They will be driven from society.”

  “There, there,” I soothed, patting his arm. “We will think of something.”

  Brisbane slanted me a curious look. “What precisely will we think of?”