Let's Talk of Murder

by Joan Smith

  Byron’s lips moved in silent amusement. “Tell him you’re already spoken for,” he suggested.

  Coffen shook his head. “It’ll break his heart.”

  “He can hardly be that enamored of you yet,” Prance said.

  “It came on fast, in his lonesome state. He was at loose ends, just looking for a raft to cling to.”

  “Love at first sight, in fact,” Prance said with a sneering smile. “Let’s visit him together. I shall pose as your cher ami, but to provide a more seaworthy raft for him to cling to in his stormy sea of grief, we shall take him to a club I happen to know of where he’d feel right at home. I’ll speak to a friend and see that he’s made welcome.”

  “That’s decent of you, Prance. I appreciate it. But don’t go snuggling up to me in public or I’ll wallop you.”

  “I shall endeavor to restrain my ardor. It won’t be difficult.”

  The doctor came down and said that Beth was recovering and should be able to talk by evening.

  Luten rose and said, “I’m going to Bow Street to see if Townsend is there yet.” He was careful not to look at Byron, but he was stiff with tension, listening to hear if Byron was also going to leave. He had said he only waited to learn Beth was alright.

  “I’ll be running along now as well,” Byron said at once.

  Prance turned to Coffen. “Shall we visit Morrison now?”

  “The sooner we get it over, the better.”

  “Will you come back for dinner?” Corinne said. She turned to include Luten and Byron. “All of you,” she said.

  Byron and Luten exchanged a long, questioning stare, then Byron turned to Corinne and said, “Thank you for the invitation, Corinne, but I’m promised to Lady Melbourne this evening.” He had never called her by her first name before. She had never asked him to. He did it now to show Luten that, while he allowed his rival the inner track on this occasion, he wasn’t out of the race entirely.

  Corinne looked surprised at hearing this new familiarity, but didn’t want to make an issue of it in front of Luten. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Prance adored Byron’s nerve in calling her Corinne. He felt like clapping. She turned to Luten. “Will you come back for dinner?”

  “But of course, my dear,” he drawled with a smile that would freeze the hobs of hell.

  Coffen, more interested in his stomach than this battle of hearts, asked, “What are we having?”

  “Food,” Prance said.

  “Ah, good.”

  “He’ll be here, and so shall I,” Prance said, and placing one hand on Luten’s elbow, the other on Coffen’s, he led them out, with a smile behind their backs at Byron, who followed them from the room.

  Corinne went abovestairs and sat with Beth, thinking, planning, remembering. How contrary of Byron to call her Corinne, as if they were much closer than they were. And Luten! You shouldn’t call a lady “my dear” in that arctic tone of voice. It was practically an insult.

  How pale Beth looked, and her little hands cold as ice. She chafed them a moment, then put them under the coverlet. She sat until the lengthening shadows of twilight told her it was time to dress for the evening.

  * * *

  Chapter 28

  Prance and Coffen were the first to arrive. They hadn’t changed into evening clothes. “All is well,” Prance crowed. “It was nip and tuck for a moment whether young Morrison wasn’t going to transfer his fickle affections to me, but I clung to my beloved,” he said, squeezing Coffen’s arm and batting his eyelashes. Coffen gave him a shove that sent him reeling against a table. “There’s gratitude for you!” Prance snipped. “Morrison was suitably grateful when Nigel Barnes invited him to join him for dinner. I think they will deal admirably, those two rafts adrift on the sea of lost love. Nigel has just been jilted by Eric Wolfe. He’ll see that Morrison gets a decent haircut and jacket.”

  “How’s Beth?” Coffen asked.

  “Still sleeping,” Corinne said.

  Luten arrived soon, still in his blue jacket and buckskins, and with Townsend in tow.

  “What’s new?” Coffen asked.

  Townsend looked around the group with a triumphant smile. “Was I right or was I right?” he crowed. “I caught Mrs. Bruton on her way out the back door with her bag in her hand, headed to Clare, I have no doubt. I sent a young fellow who was loitering about off for a hackney to take her in for questioning.”

  “That lad, he’d be Willie Sykes,” Coffen said.

  “Aye, he did say his name was Willie. A sharp little gumboil. I was surprised to learn Lord Byron has a finger in all this. He’ll get a poem out of it, no doubt,” Townsend continued. “He don’t have to go scrambling off to Persia to find horrors to write about. Mrs. Bruton hasn’t told all she knows. She’ll talk fast enough when I threaten her with being an accessory. She clammed up like an oyster when I mentioned Rosalie Higgins but her face tells me she knows all about it.

  “The hackney cab that took us to Bow Street was Tom Noonan’s. He didn’t have his passenger’s name, but the description matches Clare, barring the false beard he was wearing. It’s suspicious that the vicar, so-called, arrived across the bridge in one hired rig and changed to another. Trying to cover his tracks, you see. After I pick Clare up, we can get a firm identification. The driver took the vicar and Fanny to an inn in the country but was told not to wait as friends would be picking them up. The lady seemed willing. I wager Clare convinced the foolish chit he was setting her up as his mistress, or even his wife. It seems there was hand holding and so on when they reached the inn. Ah, the poor lass had no idea how bad a card she was dealing with.

  “I took a quick dash out to the inn, the Green Man it was. The proprietor told me Fanny was not feeling well when they left. She had to be supported out to the rig. A dose of morphine, I fancy. The gent had driven his curricle there earlier and left it in the stable to be waiting for him. He took a hackney home. He used his sporting carriage so he wouldn’t have to have a coachman as witness, you see, for the weather was pretty chilly for the open rig. It was all planned in advance. Premeditated. He must have drugged her, and somewhere along the road, he shot her. After dark, he dumped her body into the river. No hope of a witness, I fear. In that fog, nobody could see him, not if they were three feet away.” After a murmured chorus of muted outrage from his listeners, he asked, “How is the lass abovestairs?”

  “She’s recovering,” Corinne said.

  “I’ll just nip up and see if she’s able to talk yet while you folks have your mutton. I see I am keeping you from it.”

  “Won’t you join us?” Corinne asked.

  “Nay, I’d rather get on with business, if you don’t mind.”

  “Perhaps a tray in Beth’s room while you wait?”

  “That would be dandy, milady. Thank you.”

  Dinner was a strange mixture of joking and sobriety bordering on mourning. Prance was inclined to make merry at Coffen’s amorous success with Morrison, which left Mrs. Ballard in total confusion. Corinne felt she was a monster of selfishness. She had begrudged poor Fanny her second hand gowns, and now the girl was dead. She kept thinking of Beth, too, wondering what her story would be. She could see that Luten was also preoccupied. His glance was often on her, questioning, weighing, with a grim set to his lips.

  When these friends dined with Corinne, they made short shrift of the gentlemen’s privilege of port and a cigar after dinner. They joined the ladies within ten minutes, at which time Mrs. Ballard silently disappeared from the room.

  Corinne was just pouring tea when Townsend came down. “Well, she is awake now, and it’s a sorry tale she told,” he said, shaking his head. He accepted a cup of tea and continued. “Clare usually got his girls for the bawdy house off the street–petty thieves, prostitutes. Occasionally one of them would not go along with his plans for her. He would feed her opium, to keep her in line.”

  “That ain’t what Sally told me,” Coffen said. “She said there was no drugs, and she was free to go.” />
  Townsend nodded. “Yes, he had some actresses and prostitutes working downstairs that he treated well enough. That was to ensure a ready supply of girls in a good humor for the ordinary patrons, and to give the place an aura of decency when the law came calling. We’re not in a hurry to close down a well-run brothel. It keeps it off the streets. I am speaking of the girls he used in his tableaux abovestairs, young, frightened girls with no one to turn to. Like Beth, she has no family now. She came from the country looking for work a month ago when her mama died. Clare picked her up as she was leaving a cheap hotel. Her pockets were empty.

  “Fanny, now, is a completely different case. She was a willing victim. She was being trained up as one of what Clare called his actresses. I daresay he convinced the peahen it would be good experience for the legitimate stage. Perdita was the role he had in mind for her. He meant to go ahead with it, in spite of my warnings. Fanny warned Beth that Clare had her in his eye to replace Emma Hamilton. Beth looks remarkably like her. Pretty little thing. The girls’ looks don’t hold up long, once they start taking opium. The Emma Hamilton and Nelson skit is very popular, it seems. Beth would have been the third Emma.”

  “What about Beth’s bruises?” Corinne asked.

  “She tried to run away once and was hauled back pretty roughly. Kept on bread and water for a week. With Bruton guarding the front door and the back door locked, the girls were pretty well kept prisoner. And where could they go if they did get out, poor souls? They’d never dream of coming to the police. I wonder if Rosalie Higgins was foolish enough to threaten it, and that’s why she was tipped off the roof. But you were asking about Beth’s bruises, milady. Some of them were from Bruton pinching at her and hitting her with a broom or mop handle when she stopped working to catch her breath. Bruton’s job, I believe, was to make the girls Clare chose so miserable they were happy to get to the annex. And from the annex they were easily spirited upstairs for what he called the tableaux. More like a one act play really.”

  “Did he have a particular reason why he needed money?” Prance asked. “Is that why he sunk to running this despicable business?”

  “On the contrary, the fellow leads a modest life, for a lord. He is generous to a fault. He gives money to various charities. No, he does it for the thrill of it. He is debauched in that one area, it seems. And the oddest thing of all is that he never touches the girls himself—in that way, I mean. He arranges every detail of the tableaux and costumes and so on and watches them regularly. It’s a sickness, really. Heaven knows where it comes from.”

  “Have you ever noticed, short men are ultra aggressive?” Prance said. “Napoleon, par example.” Seeing no comprehension in his listeners, he added. “It’s as if they are trying to make up for some lack. What I am suggesting is that Clare might be impotent, and gets his sexual thrills vicariously in this rather absurd manner.” He looked around. No one seemed much impressed at his insight. “Why else does he balk at marrying Lady Cecilia?”

  “That match is off,” Townsend said. “It was the rumors of the whore house that made the papa put his foot down.”

  “Giving the money to charity doesn’t make Clare innocent. How do we prove he murdered Fogg and Fanny?” Luten asked in a cold voice.

  “And Rosalie!” Prance said.

  “Eh? Who’s this Rosalie you keep mentioning?” Coffen asked.

  “Oh, she’s the reason we were so worried about Beth,” Corinne said. “Byron told us about her.” She related the story without, Luten noticed, saying how Byron came to tell them all this. Did he call for that reason only, or did he happen to mention it while he was calling on her?

  “I wasn’t on the case myself, or I would have put it all together sooner,” Townsend said with a sad shake of his head. “We had no reason to suspect murder. Many a lass pitches herself into the Thames when she’s in the family way, as she thought she was. A false pregnancy, the doctors call it. Or perhaps Clare only made up the story to account for her being in the home.

  “But as I was saying, we have enough circumstantial evidence tying Clare to Fanny’s last hours to take him in for questioning. The hackney driver, the inn keeper. Threaten him with evidence from Bruton and the girls at that infernal house and I wager he’ll do the gentlemanly thing and save the nation the cost of a silk rope. The peers are given the honor of being hung with a silk rope. Thus far, no silk rope has ever had to be purchased.”

  Coffen said, scowling into his cravat. “What we need is clues. I wonder what he did with the beard and cleric’s garb.”

  “Got rid of them, you may be sure,” Townsend said.

  “Where was Fanny’s body found?”

  “Right in town, near the Blackfriars’ Bridge,” Townsend replied. “A good distance from the Green Man, to blur the connection.”

  “Was Clare still wearing the vicar outfit when he went to the inn, and when he left it?”

  “He was, throughout the entire charade, but a black jacket and a beard can only cover so much. And the stable hands will very likely know every inch of the curricle.”

  The discussion continued another half hour. When Townsend left, Luten accompanied him. Before long, Prance became bored and also left. Coffen sat on in a corner with his chin in his hands, thinking.

  He didn’t think Clare would take off his disguise until he had got Fanny into the Thames. Fog or no fog, he’d keep the outfit as a precaution. It didn’t seem likely he’d take off his outer coat when he was riding an open carriage in damp and chilly weather either. Nossir, he’d wear it back to the stable where he kept his rattlers and prads and hide them there. Or put them into his regular carriage, take them home and burn them. That was the danger, of course. Still, there was a good chance they were stuck away in some corner of the stable. P’raps in the curricle itself.

  He wouldn’t have driven his curricle since then, for the damp and chilly weather had kept up. Clare, living on the northwest corner of the square, would likely keep his team and carriages at the mews on Upper Brook Street, just a step away. It was worth a look.

  He suddenly lurched up from his seat and said, “I’m off.”

  “Oh, don’t leave me alone, Coffen,” Corinne said with a pout. “Where are you going?” He told her. “You shouldn’t go alone. It’s too dangerous.” Within a heartbeat she saw the way she could earn back Luten’s respect. “I’ll go with you,” she offered. That would show Luten she was truly concerned.

  She could always talk Coffen into anything. He argued, of course, but eventually agreed. “I daresay there’s no danger if you wait in the carriage while I have a look about. I was planning to hire a hackney, in case Clare chanced along. He might recognize my team–and he’d certainly recognize your rig, with the crest on the panel.”

  “I’ll get my pelisse.”

  Black, the inveterate eavesdropper, had her pelisse waiting. He handed Coffen a pistol. “Be careful, sir. It’s charged,” he said.

  “Thankee, Black.” He said to Corinne as they left. “Now there is a butler who knows his business. Worth his weight in gold.” Black smiled complacently, then he went to the front door and blew his whistle to summon a hackney.

  They didn’t wait, but hurried along until they found a passing cab, hopped in and gave their destination. Coffen’s fiddling with the charged pistol made her nervous. “Do put that thing down before you shoot yourself,” she scolded. He placed it on the seat.

  “You crouch down when we get to the stable,” he said. “I’ve a feeling Luten won’t be too happy that you came along.”

  “What I choose to do has nothing to do with Lord Luten.”

  “He’s a better man than Byron, my girl. And for a jealous sort like you, Byron wouldn’t do at all.”

  “I’m not jealous!”

  He mentioned a few instances from the past, and clinched it by saying, “You’re even jealous of his work.”

  Defeated, she sniffed and said, “Are we nearly there?”

  “We’re there–here, now. You’d best cr
ouch down.”

  * * *

  Chapter 29

  Coffen looked out on a set of wooden stables ranged around a cobblestoned yard. A torch lit the yard, silvering the cobblestones, but the stables were in darkness. A light gleamed in the window of an office at the end of the stables. A youngster was coming from the pump, his shoulders bent under the weight of a bucket of water.

  Coffen approached him and asked, “Which one is Lord Clare’s?”

  “The one on the end,” the boy said, nodding to the right. He examined Coffen’s clothes and decided he was a gentleman. “But his lordship ain’t there,” he added. “He took his rig out an hour ago. “

  “Is his groom there?”

  “Nay, there’s nobody there now. We look after the nags. His lordship only keeps a single team in town. He hires a mount when he wants one.”

  “Thankee, lad,” Coffen said, and tipped him a coin. The stable boy pocketed it and went on his way.

  In the carriage, Corinne waited. She decided it was dark enough that she could take a peek out the window without being seen.

  Coffen went to Clare’s stable and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. He opened it just enough to slide in. As he crept into the dark stable his nostrils were assailed by the pungent odor of horseflesh. He wished he had brought a lantern with him but as he hadn’t, he had to feel around for the curricle.

  The manager of the mews called the water boy as he passed. “What did that gent want?” he asked.

  “He was looking for Lord Clare. I told him he ain’t here.”

  Lord Clare was mighty fussy about his stable. There might be a quid in it if he let him know this fellow was poking around. As the caller looked harmless and the manager had no idea where his lordship might be found, however, he decided he would just mention it to him when he returned.