Secrets of a Lady

by Tracy Grant

  “Perhaps she sold it already,” Edgar said.

  “Then one would think she’d have admitted it when Charles held the pistol on her.”

  “So what now?” Edgar asked.

  Charles stopped walking and turned back to scan the street. “We burgle the house.”

  His brother stared at him, digesting this statement.

  Addison detached himself from the shadows by the square railing. His gaze flickered from Charles’s face to Mélanie’s to Edgar’s. “You didn’t get it?”

  “No,” Charles said.

  Addison gave a curt nod. “The kitchen door is locked but not bolted. The ground-floor windows round the back are sash windows with a simple latch. They open onto the breakfast parlor and Mr. Constable’s study, respectively. I knocked on the area door—I said I was a groom who’d got lost delivering a message—and had a brief word with the kitchenmaid. Mr. and Mrs. Constable’s bedchamber is at the front of the house on the second floor. The cook and kitchenmaid sleep off the kitchen. The rest of the servants sleep in the attics and the nursery is there as well. The manservant locks up at midnight. Mr. Constable is expected to stay in his chambers in the Temple tonight rather than return home.”

  “Thank you, Addison. Well done.”

  Edgar was still staring at Charles. “You were planning to break in even before we spoke to Mrs. Constable?”

  “No, but I knew it might come to that. Which it has. We should return to Berkeley Square to make our plans. Addison, stay here. If Mrs. Constable or anyone else in the household goes out, follow him or her and send word as soon as you can. We’ll be back just after midnight.”

  “Right, sir.” Addison said nothing more, but the gaze he exchanged with Charles had the warmth of a hand clapped on the shoulder.

  In silence they cut through a mews, rounded two street corners, flagged down a hackney, and directed it to Berkeley Square.

  “How would you do it, Mel?” Charles said when they were settled in the carriage.

  “The back windows. There’s more chance of being spotted at the kitchen door and more chance of waking someone at the front of the house.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “You sound as though you’ve done this before,” Edgar said.

  “I have,” Charles replied.

  “But—Oh, I see. In Spain.”

  “And Portugal. And once or twice in Vienna. Ask Castlereagh to tell you the story sometime. He was grateful for my somewhat unorthodox talents on that occasion.”

  “Charles picked the lock on a wine cave the night I met him,” Mélanie said. “Of course, it wasn’t until later that I learned what an expert he was.”

  “You mean you were there when he—Do you mean he dragged you along on these adventures?” Edgar asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Mélanie said. It was quite true. She neglected to add that she had also done more than her share of breaking and entering on her own.

  “Good God.” Edgar shook his head and looked at his brother. “Your ‘fetching and carrying’ went even further than I realized.”

  “A great deal further,” Charles said. He flicked a glance at Mélanie. “Might as well call a spade a spade, brother. I was a spy.”

  Mélanie opened the door of her and Charles’s bedchamber, carrying a bowl of warm water and a roll of lint. She found her husband alone in the room, unfastening the cuffs of his shirt. “Edgar’s changing in the guest suite,” he said. “He ducks out of sight whenever he realizes I have to change your bandages.”

  “Poor Edgar. He has a delicacy of mind neither of us can appreciate.” She set the water and lint on her dressing table. “I sent Blanca to make coffee. She’s itching to be doing something. I had a hard time convincing her it would only complicate matters if she came with us. Are you going to be able to climb through a window with your leg in that state?”

  Charles pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his dressing gown. “I’m going to have to.”

  In truth, both his bullet wound and her knife cut had begun to heal, as was revealed when they changed the dressings. They didn’t speak of what lay ahead until the fresh bandages were in place and they had begun to don clothing appropriate for a burglary.

  “If she has the ring hidden in the house, it’s probably in her bedchamber,” Charles said, buttoning a black waistcoat over a fresh shirt. “Have you ever broken into a room while someone was sleeping in it?”

  “Once or twice.” Mélanie dropped a gown of jet-colored merino over her head. Most of the time she had managed to already be in a gentleman’s bedchamber before he fell asleep. She saw this realization dawn in Charles’s eyes as she thrust her arms into the long, tight sleeves. “Difficult and dangerous, but not impossible,” she continued, pulling the fabric over her shoulders with more force than was necessary. A stitch snapped in one of the shoulder seams. “But there’s a good chance she keeps the ring in a dressing room rather than the bedchamber itself. A lady’s boudoir is the one room she can keep inviolate.”

  “She may have moved it after our visit.” Charles crossed to her side and began to do up her buttons. “She must guess we won’t give up.”

  “Addison’s there if she tries to leave the house or send anyone away with the ring. Charles.” She forced herself to voice a suspicion that had been tugging painfully at the corners of her mind. “Suppose Victor Velasquez got to her before we did? If she sold him the ring, she might have promised not to reveal the truth to us.”

  Charles did up the last button. “Not at the risk of her own life. She knew how close I came to pulling the trigger. I could see it in her eyes. Which means she was afraid of something—or someone—if she gave us the ring or told us what she’d done with it.”

  “If she doesn’t have it—”

  He squeezed her shoulders. “We’ll deal with that possibility after we’ve established it’s not in her house.” He went to his chest of drawers and rummaged beneath a stack of cravats. “When did you last see my picklocks?”

  “A couple of months ago when Jessica locked Colin in the garden shed.” The memory tugged at her throat. She opened the doors of her wardrobe and forced herself to debate between a black velvet cloak and a slate-colored wool. “Try your handkerchief drawer, darling.”

  She decided on the black velvet—camouflage was more important than warmth—and turned from the wardrobe. Charles, normally far more tidy than she was herself, had tossed half the cravats on the floor and was doing the same with his handkerchiefs. She went to her dressing table and opened the central drawer. She lifted out a box with rose-wood cranes inlaid in the lid, pressed one of the cranes to release the false bottom, and took out the set of picklocks Raoul had given her so many years ago. She crossed back to her husband, who was now riffling through a box of sleeve-links, and held out her hand.

  Charles stared at the shiny instruments held together with green satin ribbon rather than a metal ring like his own set. “Of course. Any self-respecting agent would need her own.” He pushed the drawer shut. The sleeve-links rattled like ammunition. “Handy for all sorts of things. Including opening your husband’s dispatch box, I imagine.”

  She received his gaze as a duelist might receive a bullet. “Among other things.”

  The brief, hard flare in his eyes made her bleed inwardly. “I always wondered why you took to picking locks with such natural ability. But then there are any number of things you pretended to learn from me that you were already expert at.”

  They stared at each other. Every paper she had stolen, every secret she had gleaned from him and passed on to Raoul hung between them, as impenetrable as the wall of any fortress.

  Mélanie drew a breath. “If you’re wondering exactly when—”

  “No.” Charles folded his arms across his chest. “As it happens, I’m trying to remember how many dispatch boxes I’ve broken into myself through the years.”

  He watched her a moment longer, his gaze steady and unreadable on her own. Then he shrugged into a bl
ack coat, wound a black silk scarf over the white gleam of his shirt, and walked to the door. Mélanie put the picklocks in the pocket of her gown and picked up the black cloak.

  After seven years, her husband could still surprise her.

  The back of the Constable house was as Addison had described, two ground-floor windows with simple latches. The curtains were drawn, but the fringed chintz at one and the velvet drapes at the other easily differentiated the breakfast parlor and study.

  Mélanie glanced at Charles. They had left Addison and Edgar to keep watch at the front of the house, with orders for one of them to follow anyone who left.

  Charles jerked his head at the study window. Mélanie took out her picklocks and opened the window of this London house as easily as she had any in Lisbon or Vienna. Charles boosted her up and she pulled herself over the sill, ignoring a twinge in her side. She stretched down a hand to Charles and he pulled himself up, using the strength in his arms to make up for the weakness in his leg. He sucked in his breath as he dragged his wounded leg over the sill.

  A faint smell of ink washed over them in the darkness. Don’t rush at things headlong, whatever your instincts. Raoul’s advice echoed in her memory. Wait a moment to let your eyes adjust to the dark. Look for clues to orient yourself. She held back the curtains so that enough light from the three-quarter moon spilled through the window to show the outline of the door. Charles seized her hand in his own and they picked their way across the floor, which proved to be covered with a thick, soft carpet. Thank goodness Helen Trevennen was able to afford luxuries.

  Charles eased open the door. The hall to which they had been admitted a few hours before stretched before them. A smell of scented beeswax lingered in the air. A half-moon of gray light indicated the fanlight over the front door. After a few moments, she could make out the mass of the stairs and the outline of the hall table.

  They tiptoed over a few feet of polished floor to the muffling pile of the Turkey rug. Space seemed to expand in the dark. It felt as though the relatively compact hall took as long to traverse as a palatial gallery. The trick was not to panic and move too quickly, not to rely on one’s faulty memory rather than the evidence of one’s senses. At last Charles stopped, and she heard the faint stir of his hand closing round the newel post.

  Mercifully, thanks perhaps to the house’s newness, none of the treads squeaked. Her foot nearly collided with the balustrade as they rounded the first-floor landing, but Charles steadied her. On the second floor, they paused at the head of the stairs. A window at the end of the corridor let in a faint glow of moonlight. The white-painted doors stood out as pale blurs against the dark wallpaper. No light shone beneath the doors.

  The door directly across from the stairhead was wider than the others, with a carved doorcase. Charles jerked his head at her and moved to the door to the left of it. It opened on the smell of camphor and lavender. Standing behind Charles, Mélanie could make out the bulk of a four-poster. A spare bedchamber. They moved to the door to the right of the carved doorcase. A faint smell of perfume and face powder seeped round the door as Charles reached for the handle. He pushed the door open.

  The curtains had been thrown back from the windows. A scene of chaos shimmered in the moonlight. The wardrobe doors gaped open. Gowns and shawls and hats were strewn about. The dressing table drawers hung from their slots. Powder and jewels and scent spilled across the top of the dressing table. A small oil painting had been pulled from the wall, the canvas slashed.

  Charles made a quick circuit of the room. Mélanie moved to the door to the adjoining bedchamber and put her ear to the panels. No sound, not even the stir of bedclothes. She turned to Charles and shook her head. He moved to her side and exchanged a look with her. She nodded and turned the door handle, a fraction of an inch at a time, so it made only the softest of clicks. She put her shoulder to the door and eased it open.

  The curtains were thrown back in this room as well. The moonlight fell over the rumpled, empty bed. The room was marked with the same signs of chaos as the boudoir, but her gaze skimmed past them. For on the hearth rug, before the cold, banked fire, was the sprawled figure of Helen Trevennen, the woman who now called herself Elinor Constable.

  A pistol gleamed silver on the carpet beside her, and a red stain spread over the front of her nightdress. But Mélanie still hurried forward, dropped to her knees, and put her fingers to the woman’s cold neck. She was dead.

  Chapter 29

  M élanie looked up at Charles, who had knelt beside her. Rage flared in his eyes, a fire quickly banked.

  He looked from the pistol to the wound in Helen Trevennen’s chest. Scorch marks showed on the embroidered linen of her nightdress. “The bullet went in at an upward angle,” he said, “at close range.”

  Mélanie glanced at the bed with its thrown-back covers, then looked at Helen. Her sheer nightdress was lavish with lace, but she wore no dressing gown and her feet were bare. The pistol was small and elegant, a lady’s weapon. “He was searching the room, she woke and jumped out of bed and grabbed her pistol—she must sleep with it beside her bed, which fits with Giles saying she kept a pistol in her reticule. They struggled and the gun went off.”

  “Yes, that’s how it looks. The question is, did he find the ring?” Charles put out his hand as though to close Helen’s eyes, then drew it back. “Best not to disturb things more than we have to. But I think we can risk lighting a lamp.” He pushed himself to his feet and held out his hand to her.

  Mélanie stood and glanced once more at the still face of the woman they had spent the past thirty-six hours searching for. Violet Goddard’s friend, Hugo Trevennen’s niece, Susan Trevennen’s sister, Jemmy Moore’s lover. A different woman to all of them, but in all their eyes she had been a creature of life and vitality. With a single bullet, all that life and vitality had been extinguished. Put out the light indeed.

  Further speech was a dangerous luxury. They found a tinderbox on the mantel and lit a single lamp, then moved about the disordered room in silence, unscrewing finials, rummaging through already opened drawers, turning back the pastel carpets, glancing in vases and jewel boxes, under the mattress, inside the coal scuttle. It seemed obvious that the murderer had begun in the boudoir and only risked the bedroom when his search of the first room proved fruitless, but Charles checked the boudoir again while Mélanie inspected the porcelain on the bedroom mantel.

  He came back into the bedchamber, shook his head, then went still. Mélanie heard it a fraction of a second later. A faint thud outside the door that was different from the normal stirrings and creakings of the house. She barely had time to call herself a fool before the door from the corridor was pushed open.

  “Darling?” A man’s voice, questioning, not suspicious. More candlelight spilled into the room. “Are you awake? I decided to—”

  He broke off and looked across the room at Mélanie. He looked to be in his mid-forties, a slight man with pleasant, unremarkable features, rumpled brown hair, and a rumpled black evening coat. His face twisted with bewilderment. He glanced down at the carpet, stiffened, and stared transfixed at his wife’s body. He opened his mouth, but before he could let out a scream, Charles’s fist connected with his jaw.

  Charles lowered Mr. Constable’s crumpled form to the carpet. He moved to the door, cracked it open, and nodded at Mélanie. She extinguished the lamp and followed him into the corridor. His hand closed round her own. His fingers were cold and she could feel the pounding of his pulse, but he led the way back downstairs with a silent, measured tread. Down the corridor, into the study, out the window. Cold night air and the blessed relief of moonlight.

  Edgar was waiting for them at the back of the house. “Are you all right?” he demanded in a low voice. “We saw someone go in the front door. We weren’t sure what to do.”

  “Later.” Charles clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder and pushed him toward the garden gate. They returned to where Addison was waiting, but Charles merely said, “We can
’t stop here,” and led them two streets over. Then he stopped and slammed his hand against a lamppost, so hard Mélanie thought she could hear the bones rattle.

  “Darling.” She gripped his arm. “Not now.”

  He jerked away from her and pressed his white-knuckled hand to his face. “Sweet bloody Christ, how could I have been such a fool?”

  “Because your options were limited. We were both fools, though I don’t honestly see what we could have done differently and in any case it doesn’t matter. It’s done.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “We have to decide what to do next.”

  “What happened?” Edgar asked.

  She released her husband and turned to her brother-in-law. “Someone broke into the house before we did, and searched for the ring and killed Helen Trevennen.”

  “Dear God.” Edgar blanched in the lamplight. His eyes seemed to jump from his face. “But who—”

  “Who’s been dogging our heels since yesterday?” Charles’s voice was as sharp as a knife turned inward. “Victor Velasquez.”

  Edgar looked as though he was going to be sick. “But how—”

  “I don’t know.” Charles’s hand curled into a fist. “Damn it, I don’t know.”

  “Does he have the ring?” Addison asked.

  “We can’t be sure. Helen Trevennen seems to have awakened and interrupted him in the midst of his search.” Charles glanced at Mélanie. “He entered and left through the boudoir window. When I went back in I found that the latch was ajar, and there were traces of rope caught on the windowsill.”

  He turned back to Addison and Edgar and gave the rest of the details of their discovery of Helen Trevennen’s body, their search of the rooms, and their encounter with her husband. “Addison, go see Roth. Try Bow Street first, then his house. Tell him what’s happened and what we suspect. Someone should get to the Constable house at once. I trust they will convey my apologies to Constable, though in the circumstances it’s likely to be the least of the poor devil’s concerns.”