“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sir William said sulkily.
“Have you a wish to dance the Paddington frisk? Before your corpse is summarily dissected, it will serve any number of purposes. Splinters from your gallows will be taken to cure toothaches, wood chips will be worn in bags around the neck to cure the ague.” Her gaze was uncomfortably direct. “However, if you choose so ignominious an end, it is none of my concern, even though Luisa will hardly approve. I might add that if you do not answer my questions, I shall take your so-called memoirs to her immediately.”
Sir William turned to the window. “What alternative do you offer me? It seems I must answer your questions or be damned.”
“You are a murderer,” Dulcie observed. “Persons of your sort are damned as a matter of course.”
Sir William thought furiously, seeking some means of escape from this dreadful predicament. “How did you know?”
“We will discuss alternatives later,” the Baroness ignored his question. “You need not consider escape; I am an excellent shot and would feel no compunction whatsoever about disposing of you. Nor do I suggest you consider trying to overpower me, for the same reasoning applies. You would be dead before you ever laid a hand on me.”
“I wouldn’t think of such a thing!” Sir William tried to appear sincere. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done; to say the truth, I’m glad to see it end.”
Lady Bligh remained unmoved. “Should you not cooperate, we will proceed immediately to Bow Street. Were I you, I would prefer to preserve as much of my honor as I could.”
Sir William sat down heavily, the picture of a defeated man.
Lady Bligh held her pistol steady. “You returned secretly to Arbuthnot House on the night Arabella died. Tell me what occurred between you then.’’
“We quarreled. I had perceived the extraordinary attention paid to my wife by Dorset and had remonstrated with her, but it did no good. She laughed at me.” Sir William held out his pudgy hands, palms up. “I am by nature a very passionate man. I left my wife in a temper, too angry myself to listen to more, but returned later to try to reason with her.” His face was ashen as he relived the ghastly scene.
“And in the meantime she discovered that you’d been selling off her jewels,” Dulcie prompted. “How did she find out? Did she seek to dispose of something only to learn that it was paste?”
“How did you know that? Arabella was forever demanding money, until I had no more to give. I guess it was then that she thought of her jewels.” Sir William clasped his hands so tightly that the knuckles showed white. “She took them to the very man to whom I’d sold the originals, worse luck! And so the fat was in the fire.”
“She would not listen to reason?” In the excitement of the conversation, Dulcie’s atrocious wig had slipped to one side.
“No.” Sir William clearly found the subject painful. “She threatened me with exposure, even though I’d given all the money from the sale of the gems to her. I lost my temper, I’m afraid. That’s when all came to an end.”
“With poison?” The Baroness caught him up sharply. “That is hardly a spur of the moment thing!”
Sir William looked haunted. “I could not have laid a harmful hand on my wife! It was the only way. She was going to leave me. Her damned cousin had promised to take her away with him.”
“How did you administer the poison?” Lady Bligh’s relentless interrogation would have put the Chief Magistrate to shame.
Sir William’s forehead was beaded with perspiration. “We shared a bottle of wine. It was easy enough to do.”
“I see.” Dulcie’s tone was dry. “You drank, perhaps, to the future? I shan’t quibble about that. Having disposed of Arabella by this very odd means, you proceeded to implicate my nephew.”
Sir William eyed the pistol nervously. “It seemed only fair, since he cut up my peace! His knife was there—Arabella had it from him as a love token, or so she said. I suspected the button was his.”
“You set the scene and then sat back and watched the fun.” He flinched at her tone. “So we come to Gwyneth. That, too, was by your hand?”
“She knew.” Sir William stared at the floor. “Don’t ask me how, but she did. There was no choice; she had to die.”
“It is not up to us, but to the Almighty, to determine these things. Then, when Gwyneth called at Arbuthnot House, she spoke with you?”
“Yes.” Sir William shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “She wanted me to buy her silence, but I could not. There was nothing else to do. I agreed to take the money to her later, at her hotel.”
“Where you strangled her instead. Yet no one saw you.”
“You are not the only one who can go disguised.”
“Control yourself. And bear in mind that I wouldn’t have the least qualm about shooting you. Let us return to the matter of the jewels. Why make it look like robbery when you sought to blame the thing on Dickon? Or did you intend Arabella’s so-called cousin as the second string to your bow? It was to him, of course, that you gave the imitation jewels, bribing him to place them in my nephew’s home.”
“Damned if I know how you figured this!” Sir William was briefly his old self, indignant and blustering. “I thought I’d covered my tracks most carefully.”
“Carelessly, in fact, but I don’t doubt you did the best you could.” Dulcie pushed irritably at her wig. “You were hardly in a position to think clearly. Arabella had introduced you to her cousin? How could you be certain he would do as you asked?”
Sir William’s laugh was short and ugly. “I know his kind. He cared no more for Arabella than she for him. I suspect the fellow sought to take advantage of her social position.”
“You are wrong. He was blackmailing her, and probably thought it a miraculous windfall when you calmly handed the jewels over to him besides.”
Despite his dire predicament, Sir William was impressed by his captor’s quick wit. “He was on the doorstep and I decided to make use of him. I told him that Arabella had changed her mind, and wouldn’t see him again. He didn’t find out until later that she was dead.”
“A lucky meeting,” mused the Baroness, “at least for you. I daresay Worthington had demanded more money, and thus inspired Arabella’s fateful meeting with your jeweler. It’s certain, at least, that she and Worthington met that night. Or perhaps he truly did mean to take her away with him. Her supposed fortune in jewels would have been an inducement sufficiently powerful to reawaken old desire. When did you have copies made of those gems?”
“Is there nothing you don’t know? Soon after our marriage.”
“You realize,” continued Lady Bligh, firing her questions like cannonballs, “that this so-called cousin was nothing of the sort?” Sir William was obviously startled. “I thought not! He was, in fact, her legal husband. You were cleverer than you knew when you implicated Worthington. He was told to place the jewels in Dickon’s lodgings?”
Sir William nodded, speechless.
“But you failed to inform him that they were paste.” Dulcie’s mind worked with awesome precision. “Then you tidied up here and returned to the Cyprians Ball, hoping that your absence had gone unnoticed.” He glowered sullenly.
“Worthington panicked when he heard she was dead,” the Baroness mused. Sir William, thinking her distracted, made a slight movement. “Instead of disposing of the jewels immediately, he held on to them; then, desperate, took them to a pawnbroker. I imagine he was dumbfounded when he learned that they were paste.” Dulcie did not seem to notice that Sir William had tensed to spring. “How did you get ‘him to cooperate?”
“Money,” said Sir William. “The fellow had no scruples.”
“When Gwyneth died, he must have been truly terrified, recognizing your handiwork. One who so long lived off his wits must surely have realized he was dangerously involved.” Lady Bligh frowned in deep concentration. “What then? I assume he tried to blackmail you.”
“He wanted money to le
ave the country.” Grimly, Sir William smiled. “And leave the rascal did, though not in the way he’d intended.”
The Baroness was deep in thought; her gun lowered fractionally. “Just how much of this does your mother know?”
“Madame is a feeble, crippled woman! The blame is entirely mine.”
Lady Bligh did not question this. “Were you responsible for the investigator who delved with such determination into Arabella’s past?”
“What investigator?” Sir William was desperately planning his last-ditch effort to save his skin. Despite her bravado, Dulcie was neither young nor muscular. She would be easily overpowered. “I know nothing of that.”
“I see,” murmured the Baroness. Encouraged by her abstraction, Sir William lunged. He could not have anticipated that Dulcie’s long acquaintance with the gypsy Jael had exposed her to various of the Eastern methods of self-defense.
“Foolish boy,” the Baroness chided. Sir William flinched away from the cold steel pressed so ruthlessly against his temple. Dulcie’s left arm was hooked around his neck, pressing against his windpipe in a manner that threatened to resolve on the spot the question of his fate. “You can hardly commit murder here and hope to escape.” She released him and he dropped his head into his hands. The manuscript lay forgotten on the floor. Dulcie picked it up and pressed it on him. “I suggest you dispose of that prurient and puerile essay.”
Sir William stared blindly as she moved toward the door. “What do you mean to do?”
The Baroness considered him thoughtfully. “I shall go to Bow Street, traveling by a roundabout route that will allow me to call upon your mother. You have played your game neither wisely nor well. I shall apprise Luisa of what has happened here today.”
“Madame,” said Sir William weakly.
Dulcie raised the mask. “Better from me than Bow Street, don’t you agree? Your mother sets such store by the Arbuthnot name.”
Sir William sighed heavily. “Then this truly is the end. I am surprised that you let me go.”
“I have no wish to act as your executioner.” Lady Bligh’s voice was as metallic as the gun that she still held. “You had what you thought was good reason for the things you did.”
“I’ve failed,” muttered Sir William, at the end of both endurance and hope. “All my life I’ve tried so hard, yet failed at everything.”
“You have an hour,” the Baroness was emotionless, “in which to make one more attempt.”
Chapter 19
“The law is,” said Sir John, “that thou shalt return from hence to the place whence thou earnest, and from thence shall remove only to the place of execution, where thou shalt hang by the neck until dead.” He might, for all the emotion he displayed, have recited an oft-told nursery rhyme. “May the Lord have mercy upon thy soul.”
The shackled prisoner snarled and spewed abuse upon his prosecutor. Sir John blinked not an eyelid as the miscreant was dragged from the room, to be taken to the condemned cell at Newgate. In death he would become another testimony to the majesty of the law and, one hoped, a dreadful example to others. In practice, however, although the impression made by the execution of a person of position and property was deep and long lasting, the conviction of so common a felon as this would serve mainly as excuse for a holiday.
The Chief Magistrate reluctantly made his way back to his dingy office, where visitors awaited him. He would have preferred to have the Arbuthnot murderer in the dock, or at least to have sufficient evidence to issue a warrant for an arrest. Sir John had various resources under his control: the Horse Patrol, which guarded the roads approaching the metropolis from highwaymen; the Foot Patrol, whose territory was the center of town; the Dismounted Horse Patrol, which policed the area between the other two. Yet, even with the additional efforts of his Runners and the Day Patrol, the assassin remained at large. Perhaps it was true, as one wit snidely claimed, that Bow Street was fit only for such menial tasks as attending the Bank of England when dividends were being paid, guarding foreign envoys and valuables in transit, and protecting aristocratic revelers from pickpockets.
Sir John accepted a folded note from a pasty-faced underling. It was a sad comment on the state of English justice when his best Runners spent the majority of their time playing nursemaid to the frivolous Regent or attending routs and balls. Sir John unfolded the note. As he read the few scrawled lines, his eyebrows rose. Then he gave word that Dorset and Mrs. Lytton should be admitted.
Livvy herself was in a state of severe disorder, prompted partially by Dulcie’s sudden disappearance and partially by a gift that she had received from Lord Dorset, a dainty memento from a previous century that bore an extremely moving, and improper, sentiment expressed in French. Some ladies might have been shocked by the tiny scent bottle, on which was depicted a minuscule cupid drumming enthusiastically upon a pair of luscious breasts, but Livvy was not among their number. She was distracted from her musings by Sir John’s unwelcoming scowl.
“To what do I owe this unexpected visit? I warn you, I am in no mood for further of your games.” The Chief Magistrate dropped heavily into his chair. Surely, at a time when all Society waited with bated breath to see how Lady Caro Lamb would react to the announcement of Lord Byron’s engagement to Miss Milbanke, anticipating that Caro might even transcend her antics of the year before when she slashed her wrists with broken glass at a fashionable ball, Lady Bligh’s annoying family could find more promising diversions than meddling in Bow Street affairs.
“To my aunt’s disappearance,” replied Dickon. Sir John looked upon this sensual and short-tempered gentleman and wondered how much Mrs. Lytton knew of Lord Dorset’s sybaritic way of life, and if Livvy was so besotted that the Earl’s divorce didn’t signify.
“This is the second time you have come to me on that pretext.” Sir John massaged his brow. “Dulcie makes a habit of giving you the slip. What reason have you for assuming that she has fallen into a scrape? It seems more likely that she merely wished to be about her business without an interfering chaperone.”
“Dulcie,” retorted the Earl, “has an infinite capacity for stirring up mischief, and no more prudence than the merest babe.” Sir John was startled to see that Lord Dorset was sincerely concerned.
“We have reached certain conclusions,” Livvy interrupted hastily, lest Dickon antagonize the Chief Magistrate, “that I am sure Dulcie must share. We are afraid that she may have taken matters into her own hands, and may be in grave danger even now. I beg you, help us find her before it is too late.”
Sir John knew what was coming. For once in the course of this damnably convoluted affair, he had the upper hand. “You’d take me off on another wild-goose chase, would you? Not this time! First tell me about these conclusions, and then we’ll see what we may do.”
“I hope that you may be moved to action before my aunt has been dealt her death blow.” The Earl moved to the window and stared bleakly down into the street.
“You must help us!” Livvy cried. “Dulcie may be in great peril!”
Only severe worry could bring Mrs. Lytton out into the public eye in such a disheveled state. Sir John considered the possibility that these amateurs might possess information he might not. “Tell me these conclusions that so distress you.”
“Truly there is no time!” Livvy’s beautiful eyes were suspiciously bright. “You must find Sir William before he does Dulcie harm.”
The Chief Magistrate relaxed, his apprehension gone. “If you are so anxious to see Sir William, why did you call here instead of at Arbuthnot House?”
“You don’t understand,” Livvy wailed. There was no question of the sincerity of her distress. “Sir William is the murderer!”
“Calm yourself, my love.” The Earl moved to stand behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder as if to impart strength. “I suspect Sir John is not unfamiliar with these views. We did call at Arbuthnot House, but William was not in. We also called upon my cousin Hubert, but he had not seen my aunt.” Dickon did
not add that they had surprised Hubert in the practice of his art, and Jael en déshabille. “You begin to understand our anxiety?”
“They could be anywhere!” Livvy had grown calmer, and the glance she gave the impatient Earl spoke volumes to Sir John. He had thought this betrothal a diversionary tactic instigated by the devious Lady Bligh, but even the most accomplished actress would be hard pressed to sham a look so sizzling as the one that had just passed between Mrs. Lytton and the Earl. “Perhaps, but they are not. Sir William, at least, has been accounted for.”
“Thank God,” whispered Livvy. “Are you sure that he can offer Dulcie no harm?”
“Reasonably.” Sir John’s tone was dry. “Since he hanged himself not an hour past, an occurrence that has scandalized the entire select membership of White’s.” He surveyed their faces, Livvy’s startled and ashen, Dickon’s merely thoughtful.
“So William was our murderer,” said the Earl, as Crump silently entered the room, “and in a fit of remorse took the matter of his justice into his own hands. How neat!”
“I suspect,” Sir John commented wryly, “that you may now guess at your aunt’s activities this day. She has driven men to distraction, and inspired them with fine madnesses, but never before, I think, has she prompted one to suicide.”
“No.” Livvy was unable to accept this. “Surely the agony of remorse that Sir William suffered as a result of his crimes led to a temporary derangement of the mind, during which he put an end to his own life. It is unthinkable that Dulcie may have had a hand in his suicide.” Lost in her own confused speculations, she did not see the meaningful glance that passed between Lord Dorset and Sir John. Crump fidgeted.
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