To Mourn a Murder

by Joan Smith

  "I don't believe I've seen you here before, M'sieur." The "M'sieur" was the only attempt at feigning Frenchness. Mam'selle was as English as Yorkshire pudding, but much more delectable. A puff of blond curls, airy as a cloud, surrounded a pretty little heart-shaped face, which was indeed painted, but discreetly. "I'm familiar with most of the gentlemen who come here with their–friends," she said, with a lift of one eyebrow that told him the friends were mistresses. That would explain the red bonnet in the window. She catered to the muslin company.

  Mam'selle had green cat eyes that reminded Prance of Petruchio. She also had a trim little figure that did marvelous things to a modest black gown cut right up to her collarbone. That one touch of the prude added piquancy to her general air of availability.

  "Just visiting in town," he said and dropped a name that he felt would add to his luster. "I'm putting up at a friend’s house. Lord Luten."

  The green eyes sparkled. "I've never had the pleasure of his business. But you're not driving his carriage." Mam'selle's green eyes were sharp. She had observed the lack of a crest on the door panel.

  "I always prefer to drive my own. As it happened, Luten is not with me today."

  "And you want a bonnet for your–wife?" she asked. In lieu of lifting an eyebrow she gave him a rather naughty half smile that suggested they both knew this was a game.

  To tease her, he slipped into French, which seemed so appropriate for flirtation. "En effet, Mam'selle je ne veux pas un chapeau. Je suis venu pour une autre raison. "

  Her tongue came out and touched her lips nervously. "Oh you can speak English, M'sieur. Truth to tell, my French is becoming rusty."

  "I haven't actually come for a bonnet at all," he said.

  The smile was back and her eyelids fluttered in a sultry invitation. "May I ask who recommended me?" she said. The woman was for hire, as he suspected! There was no other explanation for that question, and the manner of its utterance. She took customers on a referral basis. This, while an exciting notion, promised to be a great time waster. She would have to have been twice as pretty and naughty to keep him from tomorrow evening's party with Byron. Circe herself would have had uphill work of it.

  With the party uppermost in his mind, he replied, "My friend, Byron, mentioned you," and watched while Mam'selle's green eyes grew in astonishment. "He had heard of you from some friends."

  Her hands clapped together in astonishment. "You're a friend of Lord Byron! How I adore his poems." She opened her lovely lips again, but could find no words to express her feelings. When she recovered, she said, "Do sit down and let me serve you a glass of wine." She pointed to a chaise longue in the corner, with a palm tree behind it and the tiger skin rug, somewhat the worse for wear, on the floor in front.

  Mrs. Partridge hadn't mentioned wine. "What a civilized idea. It will allow you and I to become acquainted."

  "Let me take your— " She looked in perplexity at his scarf.

  "My écharpe? " he said, as the French name sounded more stylish. It occurred to him on the instant that henceforth his traveling scarf would be known as an écharpe. "My valet, Villier, contrived it," he said, unwinding it and handing it and his coat to her for disposal.

  "French! I knew it," she said, laughing and showing her white teeth. Again he was struck with her resemblance to Petruchio. Her teeth, the eye teeth especially, were noticeably sharp. "Perhaps you'd care for brandy instead of wine? A friend has just brought me some excellent cognac from France."

  "You'll make me tipsy, Mam'selle," he said, leering at her, and allowing his eyes to tour her body from blond curls to dainty kid slippers.

  She leaned forward, took his chin in her white fingers and squeezed it playfully. "Good," she whispered. "It will make you less—shy. I'll be back in a tick."

  Prance watched appreciatively as she walked away, swaying in a manner that Coffen would call "swinging her rump." Mam'selle was charming, but Prance was hard put to see how he was to lead the conversation around to Goodman's, and what had become of the papers he had, presumably, left behind.

  * * *

  Chapter 20

  Several minutes passed before Mam'selle returned with the brandy and two glasses on a silver tray. She set the tray down and said, "No customers will be coming for bonnets this late. I'll draw the blind and put a closed sign on the door. It will be cosier."

  Prance smiled his approval, knowing that "cosier" meant more private. Under normal circumstances, Prance had the eyes of Argus for all the trivial details of a lady's toilette. On this occasion his mind was so busy with other things that he didn't notice Mam'selle had changed her gown until she was coming back from locking the door and drawing the blind. The fact that the shop was dimly lit and she had replaced one black garment with another made it less obvious. But when she joined him on the sofa, there was no doubt at all, for the outfit she was now wearing had no buttons, but only a tie around the waist. In fact it was not a gown at all but a superior sort of peignoir.

  As she reached to hand him his cognac she let it fall open, freeing the creamy lobes of her breasts. She leaned so close he almost felt it was her breasts she was offering. Mighty fine breasts they were too. The musky aroma of French perfume wafting from them in such heady strength suggested it had been freshly applied for the occasion. He accepted the glass with an unsteady hand.

  She sat close beside him and just looked at him silently for a long moment. Prance had some hope of a clever speech, something he might use on another occasion himself, or if it was too outré, he could at least amuse Byron with it tomorrow night. At the party. In his honour. But when she spoke, her banal utterance was, "What's your name, then?"

  "Prance. Sir Reginald Prance. And yours, Mam'selle?"

  "As you already know, my name's Grolier," she said, the name rolling off her tongue with a Frenchified accent—Groleeay. "I must assume you're asking my first name." She leaned towards him until he could feel her breath on his cheek and said in a husky voice, "We've hardly known each other long enough to be on a first name basis, Sir Reginald." Then she reached out her dainty hand and patted his cheek, laughing, and added, "But you can call me Betsy."

  She moved her hand, with a rather fine sapphire on her middle finger, to the back of his head and began to play with his hair. As a rule, Prance disliked being mauled by strangers but made an exception for a pretty woman in such a charming state of semi-dress. "How does one become a Sir Reginald?" she asked playfully.

  This, he assumed, was a discreet way of asking whether he was a baronet or a knight. He was happy to inform her, "One is clever enough to have a baronet for a papa, and no older brother."

  "And where do the clever Prance baronets live?"

  "In a clever castle in East Sussex. Granmaison, it is called. A French name, en effet. The family records show that my Norman ancestors originally called it Grande Maison." Mam'selle displayed not a jot of interest in his French ancestry. "It means big house," he explained.

  "Coo," she coo'd. "Nice to be some people. Are you staying in Brighton long, Reggie?

  He gazed into her eyes and murmured, "I hadn't intended to, but now that I've met you ..."

  "You must have a hundred girls in Lunnon, a swell gent like you."

  "Ah but none of such rare beauty as your sweet self."

  She twitched her shoulders in appreciation, setting her creamy breasts a-jiggle and her vulgarity sank a buttonhole lower. "Do you want to come up to my bedchamber or do it here? We're safe as houses. You can't see a thing from the street."

  Prance felt his interest shrink as her speech degenerated to utter commonness. Unlike Coffen, he preferred some semblance at least of gentility in his women. As he had to keep her in curl until he learned what he wanted to know, however, he had to continue playing his role. He would just have to call on his ingenuity to rescue him before he disgraced himself in the boudoir. Really he didn't feel he could perform satisfactorily for a female who said, "Lunnon" and "swell gent" and spoke of "doing it here," as if they were a p
air of alley cats.

  He knew this was a poor prejudice in himself. It wasn't Betsy's fault that she had been born common. But then was it his fault that he instinctively recoiled from her? Everyone had his fault. He acknowledged and accepted his own without thinking less of himself. He drew her hand away from his head and massaged her fingers, to get them out of his hair. "Let me get to know you first, Betsy. How long have you had your shop?"

  "Coming up seven years now." Seven years! Interesting!

  "You must have been a mere child at the time," he said to flatter her.

  "A little older than that," she allowed. "A gent I was with at the time set me up."

  "Now you're making me jealous," he chided. "He bought you the shop?"

  "He bought out a jewelry shop that was closing. Bought the building, I mean, and gave me a ten year lease free as a gift."

  He tried to ignore the tautology. "Generous! Who was he?"

  She gave a coy smirk. "That'd be telling."

  "Aha! A married gentleman." He shook his finger under her nose. "You don't fool me, Mam'selle. You were poaching."

  "It wasn't what you'd call a real marriage. One of them marriages of convenience. I only saw him for that one summer, but he's never dunned me for the rent ever since. Handsome, I call it."

  "Who was he? You can tell me. I shan't breathe a word."

  The green eyes narrowed. "What do you want to know that for?"

  He shrugged. "Just curious. Like a cat. You're rather like a kitten yourself, you know," he said hastily to divert her mind from her question. He lifted his hand and rubbed the back of his knuckles against her cheek.

  "Those big green eyes, the graceful, sinuous way you move." She stretched lazily, impressed by this tired old simile. "Come on, tell me," he urged.

  "I'm sure I don't know what you want to know for, but if you insist, it was Lord Jergen."

  "Lord Jergen!" The name was howled out before Prance could get a rein on his astonishment.

  "You know him then?"

  "Oh rather. Jergen! Certainly. Everyone knows Jergen," he said, as if Jergen was the man of the hour, the name on every tongue.

  "Mind you don't say nothing." She smiled and squirmed, cat-like, pleased that she had impressed him with her conquest. "I was an actress at the time, but the leading lady was jealous as a green cow and my career wasn't going nowhere. Jergen was jealous of all the gents hanging around after me at the Green Room. He figured I'd only see women in a millinery shop. The more fool he!"

  "As if the gents wouldn't find you wherever he hid you," Prance said, allowing his eyes to linger on hers while he mentally reviewed what he knew of the case. She seemed to be telling the truth, except that Lady Jergen had mentioned her husband was seeing an actress called Rose Sommers seven years ago.

  "I'm surprised he didn't make you change your name to fool them," he said.

  She sat up, laughing. "He did! I was called Rose Sommers when I was in the theatre. Betsy Grolier's my real name." The French pronunciation shifted, not Groleeay now, but Grolyur. It seemed she was telling the truth.

  "It must have been a deal of work, cleaning up all the rubbish of another shop."

  "Jergen had all that done for me. He hired some fellows."

  "He should have kept an eye on them. I seem to recall you mentioned there used to be a jewelry store here. There might have been diamonds hidden among the papers."

  "Jergen was awake on all suits, don't you worry. He had his sec'etary keep an eye on them to see it was all done right."

  "Young Mercer, that would be?" Prance said, choosing a name at random and hoping Mam'selle would correct him.

  "I don't recall the name. I never saw the fellow, but Jergen told me all about it at the time. Said his sec'etary was sharp as a tack, and needed the work."

  Luten could look into that. The possibilities were endless. This nameless secretary could be anyone from a stranger to Brunei to Ed Harrelson, though presumably not Mrs. Webber's doctor-lover. Was it possible Jergen himself was the Bee? Was he in dun territory, sunk to crime to pay the grocer? Surely one would have heard if he were bankrupt. It seemed, in any case, that Jergen could have had access to Miss Winchley's letter. But was he unprincipled enough to rob his own wife? Lady Jergen had been one of the Bee's first victims. Perhaps he had done it in revenge for her infidelity. Or was Lady Jergen the more likely suspect? It was one of the few outstanding clues that all the victimized ladies had some connection to the Jergen household.

  "Cat got your tongue?" Betsy said, drawing Prance from his untimely reverie with a poke of her elbow into his ribs.

  "I've just remembered," he said, striking his forehead with the heel of his hand and assuming an air of deep chagrin. "I have a dinner appointment this evening. You're so delightful you put it clean out of my mind." Her face stiffened to annoyance. "At the Prince's pavilion," he added to suggest the dinner was practically a royal command.

  "Coo," she said, impressed.

  "May I see you tomorrow?"

  "Or later tonight?" she suggested.

  "One can't leave until the Prince has left," he said with a sigh, "and that might be three or four in the morning if they get playing cards."

  "Tomorrow then," she said, rolling her eyes to indicate the utter ennui of her days. "Business is slow as molasses this time of year."

  He rose, drawing some gold coins from his pocket and placing them quietly on the table. He had very little intention of returning, and wanted to repay Betsy for her time and information. His fastidious nature recoiled from making love to her, but he was human enough to feel pity for her.

  "You have a charming shop. I'll recommend it to my friends who come to Brighton," he said.

  Her eyes lit with interest. "Does Lord Byron ever come here?"

  "No doubt he will, when I boast to him of the treasure I've discovered." He lifted her white hand to his lips and whispered a kiss on it, then retrieved his outer garments. With a twirl of the écharpe around his neck he went out into the cold, clammy night.

  Darkness had fallen while he was within. He was elated at his discovery. Dispatching this news to Luten would excuse him from making any further investigations that night. He would make a quick tour of the inns in the morning and leave for London by noon. He knew from the past that Luten had a small but interesting library in his house on Marine Parade and an excellent cellar. He had earned a night before a blazing grate with a book and a bottle of claret to keep him company.

  He felt warm tears pool in his eyes as he was driven home. Something in Mam'selle had called to mind what Prance considered the one true love of his life, the Comtesse Chamaude, a real French lady. She, too, had been aggressive in her sexual advances, but never with that touch of the gutter. He had never known such fulfillment as in her arms. Their affair had been brief but of an unparalleled excitement never before imagined, much less achieved. There was a sort of poetic beauty to the fact that death had snatched her away from him at the height of the affair. Murdered in cold blood. Their love could not have got better, and might have got less enchanting over time.

  Then his mind turned to the party tomorrow evening, and he forgot his unforgettable countess.

  * * *

  Chapter 21

  "Why can't Pelkey take it?" Villier asked his master when Prance handed him the important letter he had written to Luten, and informed Villier he was to hire a mount at the stable and ride post haste to London. "Because I shall need him to drive me back to London tomorrow."

  "Who will take charge of your toilette while I'm gone?"

  "It is a problem, of course," Prance allowed, fingering his chin. His toilette was no trifling matter. "Since I shan't be seeing anyone important, I shall just have to make do with Pelkey's assistance."

  "Pelkey! Pelkey's assistance! I would sooner leave your top-boots in the hands of a butcher."

  "Your fears cannot be greater than my own on that score," Prance assured him. "Had I foreseen the necessity I would have brought a footman with me
and spared you this trial, Villier. But you must stand by me. This is an emergency. Lives are at stake."

  "Fiddlesticks. The Bee is only after money. He hasn't killed anyone," Villier sniffed. Villier was Prance's confidant in all matters. Like his master, he enjoyed these emotional exchanges and played them to the hilt.

  "We may prevent that tragedy if you get to London in time," Prance replied in a gently chiding manner. He knew, and Villier knew, that the latter deserved a good scolding. But Villier was in the boughs and a sulky valet, especially with Byron's party in the offing, required coddling.

  Prance had not yet told Villier of the party. He now revealed the great surprise. "You really ought to be in London tomorrow morning in any case to prepare my toilette for the party Byron is throwing in my honour," he said, taking care to place no emphasis on the magical name, but uttering it as calmly as if he were saying "Luten's party" or "Lady deCoventry's party." The name provided its own emphasis.

  This excuse was much more acceptable to Villier than the possible loss of lives. No inconvenience was too great when it came to his master's sartorial reputation. With Byron as host there was no saying what crowned or tiara'd heads would see his work. It was not only his master's aim for Sir Reginald to be the best turned out gentleman in London. Villier's reputation also rode on Sir Reginald's slender shoulders (discreetly eked out with padding.)

  "Lord Byron throwing a party for you!" he cried. "Why did you not tell me sooner, milord? We must discuss your toilette."

  Prance replied in a hushed tone to indicate the gravity of the situation. "Such is the importance of this letter, Villier, that the party totally slipped my mind," he lied. "I must leave the entire matter of tomorrow evening's toilette in your capable hands. Jacket, cravat, cravat pin, waistcoat, slippers–you must decide, bearing in mind the importance of the occasion."