A Purely Private Matter

by Darcie Wilde

  “Well, well, well,” murmured George. “She is sticking to her story after all. What do you suppose that means?”

  “I have no idea,” said Alice. “But I think Mrs. Seymore should be worried.” She laid a hand on Rosalind’s. “How are you doing?”

  “I don’t know.” Rosalind watched the Seymores sit stiffly and uncertainly beside each other. “And I don’t think Mrs. Seymore does either.” Because how could a woman be doing when on the one hand she told a tale of suicide when with the other she was writing to Rosalind to find a murderer?

  Next, Edmund Kean was called, to cheers and adoring sighs from the assembly. He mounted the stand to declaim with grand feeling and dignity of his friend (the great man!), and he had to swear that he did share a dressing room with Fletcher Cavendish, but at the hour of his death he had not been there. Upon hearing this, he dissolved into tears and was barely able to choke out that this was so before he had to be led away.

  “Bravo,” breathed George as he wrote.

  Mrs. West, for her part, mounted the stairs to the dock like she was taking center stage. She drew back her veil to great applause. Unlike Mr. Kean, the actress shed no tears, but gave her statement calmly and clearly. The court hung on her words, rapt and silent, until she spoke of overhearing the argument coming from Mr. Cavendish’s dressing room, and the word “money.”

  There was something happening at the front of the court. Mr. Townsend had stepped in from somewhere Rosalind did not see. Now he was leaning close to Sir David, and handing him a piece of paper. The two men read it together, and conferred in close whispers.

  “This cannot mean any good,” said George.

  “Thank you, dear brother, that’s most helpful,” Alice muttered.

  “Is your pencil still sharp, dear sister?” he answered. “I think somebody’s in for it.”

  Sir David was nodding. Mr. Townsend patted his shoulder and stepped away, but did not leave. He stationed himself behind the coroner’s chair, and folded his hands behind his back. Rosalind looked around for Mr. Harkness, but did not find him. Mrs. Seymore’s face was turning, from Mrs. West in the stand, to Sir David, and back again.

  Rosalind’s fingers knotted in her skirt.

  “Mrs. West,” said Sir David. “You heard this argument through a closed door, did you not?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “So you did not see with whom Mr. Cavendish spoke?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “Can you say on your oath whether it was a man’s or a woman’s voice you heard speaking with him at that particular time?”

  Mrs. West paused. She frowned, and Rosalind bit her lip.

  “I thought it was a woman, but I could not swear to it.”

  The excited jumble of voices rose again. This was new and entirely unexpected. Rosalind found her gaze riveted on the fresh piece of paper Sir David held in his hands, as if she thought she could discern its contents if she simply stared hard enough.

  “So it might have been either a man or a woman?”

  For the first time, Mrs. West’s poise wavered. Rosalind looked at Mr. Townsend, who stood at the coroner’s shoulder and watched, and smiled, just a little.

  “I . . . yes, it might,” said Mrs. West.

  “Oh, good lord,” breathed Alice. “Oh, no. This cannot be happening.”

  “What?” whispered Rosalind.

  “They’re getting set to hang the captain,” said George. “Townsend is standing there to make sure the right questions are asked.”

  “No. It cannot be.” The room was sweltering, but despite this, Rosalind felt herself go suddenly and completely cold. She looked frantically around for Mr. Harkness, but he had not reappeared. Neither had Lord Adolphus.

  What does it mean?

  Sir David gestured to the clerk and said something, which Rosalind could not hear. That man bowed his assent, and raised his voice once more.

  “The court does call one Lord Adolphus Greaves. Lord Adolphus Greaves! Draw near and give your attention to this court!”

  “Lord Adolphus!” Rosalind exclaimed. “What could Lord Adolphus have to say!”

  “I don’t know,” replied Alice. “But I think Margaretta is wondering the same thing.”

  Although Mrs. Seymore had drawn her veil back over her face, she had not regained her former composure. As Lord Adolphus climbed into the stand to be sworn in, Margaretta clutched at her husband’s arm, but Rosalind could not tell whether it was to reassure herself, or to hold him in place. Mrs. Seymore leaned close to the captain. Was she whispering to him? What was she saying?

  “Now, your lordship,” said Sir David to this new and unanticipated witness. “I have here a statement that you were also at the Theatre Royal the night Fletcher Cavendish died.”

  Rosalind clapped her hand over her mouth. Lord Adolphus was at the theater? All the conversation they’d held, all the times he’d protested he wanted to help, and he’d said nothing of it.

  “I was there, sir,” Lord Adolphus was saying. “I arrived about the hour of one, after the performance, when I felt there was less chance of being seen or recognized.”

  “What was your purpose in going there?”

  “I had something of a personal nature to communicate to Mr. Cavendish.”

  “And that was?”

  Lord Adolphus hesitated. His shoulders under his well-tailored brown coat hunched in, and he folded his hands together on the rail in front of him, an attitude that made him look younger than he was.

  “Captain Seymore is my cousin, sir,” said his lordship at last. “I knew he was in want of money, but because he is proud, he would not accept a gift from me. I suspected that want was the true cause behind the criminal conversation suit he threatened against Mr. Cavendish. It had occurred to me I might be able to strike a bargain with Mr. Cavendish. I told him I would pay over the sum the captain had named as damages in his suit. All Cavendish would have to do was represent the money as his, and say that he was paying it to end the suit before it came to court.” Lord Adolphus paused and lifted his clutched hands and lowered them again. “This would not save the Seymores from all unpleasantness, but it would at least keep Mrs. Seymore from being dragged before the public.”

  “So this bargain you proposed to Mr. Cavendish was for Mrs. Seymore’s sake?” asked Sir David.

  Somebody sniggered and somebody muttered. Sir David glared across the court. “For the whole of the family’s sake,” said Lord Adolphus. “My mother, Lady Weyland, is a reclusive woman, sir, and my brother, the marquis, is in poor health. The threat of scandal even at a remove is painful to them.”

  “And what was Mr. Cavendish’s response to your proposal?”

  “He refused me,” said Lord Adolphus. He coughed and he cleared his throat. “He . . . laughed at me. I remonstrated with him, and he told me . . .” Lord Adolphus stopped. “He ordered me out of his rooms.”

  Sir David drummed his fingers against the table. “What, specifically, did he tell you?”

  Alice leaned forward, so did George, pencils poised, eyes shining with suspense and anxiety. Rosalind looked at Mrs. Seymore. She was holding the captain’s shoulder.

  “I reminded him of my rank and station. He told me he would laugh in the face of any man who made himself ridiculous. He would laugh at me and he would laugh at Captain Seymore when he came, because he was such an absurd little man.”

  “Then,” said Sir David slowly. “Lord Adolphus, it is your testimony that at the time you spoke with him, Mr. Cavendish was expecting Captain Seymore?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lord Adolphus. “It is.”

  The captain shot at once to his feet. “You lie!” he bellowed. “You lie!”

  Mrs. Seymore was on her feet, too, but whatever she said was lost in the commotion raised by the crowd. She clutched at the captain’s coat, but he shoo
k her off. “Liar!”

  Rosalind pressed her hands against her mouth. It was not possible. It could not be happening. She was pushed and jostled and deafened and she sat as she was, her eyes wide and staring, as if at a new murder.

  It was beautiful. It was in its way perfect. Nothing Lord Adolphus said directly contradicted what Margaretta said, so Margaretta could not be accused of lying, just in the way that nothing Margaretta said contradicted anything Rosalind had seen.

  Around her the tumult continued. Alice lost her pencil. George had to take a swing at a man who tried to grope his sister’s bottom as she bent over to try to retrieve it.

  Somewhere in the midst of it, Sir David dismissed Lord Adolphus from the stand. He bellowed to the jury that they had heard the testimony and they were to consider the verdict. Mrs. Seymore stared at Sir David, or maybe it was at Mr. Townsend, because Mr. Townsend was still smiling slightly in satisfaction.

  Mr. Harkness, where are you?

  But Mr. Harkness did not reappear. The jury, clustered on their benches, murmured and gesticulated, and at last turned to face Sir David. One man stood up from among the twelve.

  “Mr. Foreman,” said Sir David. “How do you find Fletcher Cavendish came to his death and by what means?”

  “No!” cried Mrs. Seymore. “This is not the way! This is not what happened! I told you . . .”

  Mr. Townsend moved. He hurried from his place beside the coroner, to take her shoulders. He murmured something to her, but she tore herself away and clutched at her husband’s coat.

  The foreman looked on with something like pity in his eyes.

  “We find Fletcher Cavendish murdered, by William Seymore, late of His Majesty’s Navy.”

  The room erupted; screams of horror and outrage filled the air. Captain Seymore dropped back into his chair as if his strings had been cut. Mrs. Seymore sat down slowly beside her husband, her hand pressed over her mouth. Mr. Townsend touched her, and she jerked away.

  Seymore stared down at his wife, and then threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “Oh, well done, Margaretta!” he boomed. “Very well done indeed!”

  CHAPTER 32

  While the World’s in Mourning

  Nothing is so satisfactory and gratifying to the public as a genuine protracted mystery.

  —Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald,

  Chronicles of the Bow Street Police-Office

  The day of Fletcher Cavendish’s funeral, London ground to a halt. Crowds of mourners blocked the streets before the watery sun rose over the rooftops. Landlords lucky enough to have rooms along the route of the procession reaped astounding profits from those who wished to have a view above the common crowd.

  The church could not contain one tenth of the people who tried to gain a seat.

  In the end, it was the Theatre Royal itself that took charge of the lavish arrangements required to take Fletcher Cavendish’s mortal remains from the church to the graveyard. Dr. Arnold, conscious that this might be the most important spectacle he ever staged, did not stint on the cost, or neglect a single detail. The finest funeral furnishers in London were engaged. The coffin was teakwood and silver. The shining black hearse was decorated with bundles of white plumes and lilies. There was a feather man to lead the procession, and no fewer than eight mutes in black livery and powdered wigs. Flowers were showered from every direction, and it was only the skill of the driver that kept the plumed horses (all of them coal black) from shying away. Mounted constables rode alongside the hearse to deter women and girls, and not a few boys, from throwing themselves in its path. This was mostly effective.

  Sampson Goutier later declared he would be deaf for a week from the crowd’s wailing. Ned Barstow swore he’d seen an entire boarding school class worth of girls collapse in a dead faint.

  Rosalind did not attend. There was no time. Mr. Harkness had made that very clear as they stood together in the Bow Street court room while the crowd around them drained away.

  “Seymore will go before the magistrate either today or tomorrow,” Adam had told Rosalind when she asked what would happen next. “He will be charged. Causing the violent death of another is a breach of the king’s peace and so it doesn’t require someone to make a specific complaint. If the Seymores do not already have an attorney, they should engage one. Judges may still say that no lawyer is needed and an innocent man should be able to explain himself simply and clearly, but . . .”

  “But we all know that innocence is rarely so simply stated,” Rosalind finished for him, and Adam nodded.

  “The magistrate will then decide whether the captain is to be held for trial and if bail is to be allowed. Which I doubt it will under the circumstances.”

  “So he will be left in jail,” said Rosalind. “For how long?”

  “Three days, maybe four. Possibly as long as a week, but I wouldn’t count on it. There is no set schedule of trials. When his case comes up will depend on the existing docket and on the attorneys. And I will warn you, since there is already a guilty verdict from the coroner, the trial, when it comes, will not take more than an hour or two at most.”

  “Will you . . . remain involved?” Rosalind asked.

  “Not unless I’m called for. The deed is done, the suspect is in custody. It’s for the courts to take things in hand now.” He looked at her with his patient, penetrating eyes. “And you?”

  “My charge has not changed,” she told him. “Although I think the reasons for it may have.”

  For all her doubts about Margaretta and the reasons behind her conduct, Rosalind was certain of one thing. Captain Seymore had not killed Fletcher Cavendish. She did not like the captain. He was a drunk and a boor. She did not pretend even to begin to understand the nature of his marriage. But these were not crimes for which he should be hanged.

  It was possible there was nothing Rosalind could do. Time was fast running out and powerful persons were determined to see the captain hang. But she had to try, if not for Margaretta’s sake, then for her own, so that in days to come when she had cause to examine her conscience, this stain was not too dark.

  “Mr. Harkness, why did you leave the court?” she asked softly.

  Adam’s face grew cold. “I was sent on an errand,” he said, but as Rosalind looked in his eyes, she knew he meant something quite different. He meant: I was gotten out of the way. Because Adam Harkness might have objected to the questions, or to their abrupt ending. He might have had something to say that prevented the inquest from being tied up in a bow and saving Mr. Townsend from embarrassment.

  “For what it is worth, Miss Thorne,” said Adam quietly. “I do not think this attempt to obscure the truth around Cavendish’s death began with Mr. Townsend, and I do not think it should end there.”

  Rosalind found herself very much in agreement with this.

  Now Rosalind sat at her writing desk with a list of necessary letters, including the one she realized she must send to Lady Bertram. She dashed them off with haste, crossing the names on her list off as each missive was sanded and sealed. She had three days, according to Mr. Harkness, perhaps four. A week at the longest. It was not enough time. There was too much she didn’t know.

  She did know that, except for the captain, every person associated with the Seymores had lied to Bow Street and the coroners. Even Lord Adolphus had lied. Those lies had together buried one pathetic truth. The night Fletcher Cavendish died, Captain Seymore had been too drunk and too confused to have killed a strong and sober man.

  She must find out who wrote those insinuating letters, and why. Surely, once she did that, she would have a thread she could follow to—to what exactly? Somewhere. Anywhere. As long as it led an innocent man away from the gallows.

  Therefore, while the rest of the city donned its best mourning, Rosalind was out before dawn with Mrs. Kendricks following determinedly behind. They walked as far past the fu
neral route detailed by A. E. Littlefield as they could before finding a cab stand with an optimistic and miraculously sober driver to drive the rest of the way to the Seymores.

  Even though Rosalind had left before full light, she still had to shoulder her way through the crowd that had gathered in front of the Seymores’ house, and then give a letter to one of the four constables on guard there to take to Mrs. Seymore to see if she would be allowed inside.

  This assumed that Mrs. Seymore was even home, or awake. The sun had barely touched the rooftops. The service at the church would be starting. Was Mrs. Seymore in attendance there?

  No. The door opened and the little maid, Margie, leaned out and beckoned to her. Rosalind hurried inside and Margie slammed the door and locked it.

  “The mistress is in her study. I’m sure you know the way?” Margie curtsied, and bolted. Clearly the day was proving far too much for her. Rosalind found she could easily sympathize. She turned to Mrs. Kendricks.

  “I’ll go see if I can be of use,” the housekeeper said, and disappeared through the green baize door to the kitchen.

  In Mrs. Seymore’s study, the drapes were still drawn, and although the lamps were lit, the room still felt close and gloomy. Mrs. Seymore sat at her desk, as disheveled as Rosalind had ever seen her. She still wore her silk wrapper over a saque gown of undyed muslin. A single teacup was perched carelessly on a pile of books.

  “You must forgive me, Miss Thorne,” Margaretta said, waving Rosalind to a chair. “None of our servants has arrived yet. I suspect they are staying away deliberately. We’ve only Margie and Mrs. Nott, and Margie has been near hysterical all morning.”

  “It is going to be a difficult day,” said Rosalind.

  “It is. And I was not expecting visitors, at least, not any I’d be prepared to admit.” Mrs. Seymore glanced toward the closed windows. “Mrs. Nott informs me there’s already been some stones thrown. We are lucky the mob has a bad aim.”

  “I am very sorry, Mrs. Seymore.”