Grave Expectations

by Heather Redmond

  William glared at him and tossed the rest of his pint of ale down his throat. “I’ll follow Breese and meet you in front of the building in a couple of minutes.”

  After a couple of minutes, Charles walked out of Breese’s rooms. He didn’t lock the door, since he didn’t know if Breese had a key. When he went outside, he found his fellow investigators testing green sticks they had torn from an ornamental tree in the front.

  “I hope Mr. Ferazzi isn’t lurking around to catch you damaging his property,” he joked.

  Breese tossed him a stick. “It isn’t exactly a cudgel, but I wouldn’t want one of these coming at my eye.”

  Charles caught the stick and pulled off a few leaves. “I could pretend a sword battle with it when I was ten, but beyond that, I’m not sure of its use.”

  “At least we look armed,” Breese said cheerfully. “All for one and one for all!”

  Chapter 21

  William shook his head at Breese’s Musketeerish battle cry. He gestured down the lane with his stick. “I’d like to point out that the smithy is not that far from here, less than a city block, and we may consider silence as our best policy from here on out.”

  “Maybe we could tie knives on the end of our sticks,” Charles suggested, ignoring him.

  “Why don’t any of us have theater swords?” Breese mused. “We all spend a good deal of time at the theater.”

  “None of us are in the habit of putting on amateur theatricals,” Charles said. “I do look forward to moving into that time of my life.”

  “When does that come?” Breese asked.

  “When you have more than three rooms,” Charles explained, swishing his stick around and enjoying the whooshing sound it made. “One needs room to rehearse and have a stage.”

  “Room for guests,” William suggested. “Honestly, Charles, other than the fact that Selwood Terrace brought you closer to your Kate, and me closer to Lady Lugoson’s money, moving here has been a terrible decision.”

  “Financially ruinous,” Charles agreed.

  “You met me,” Breese protested. “Aren’t you the lucky ones?” He struck a pose, reminiscent of certain actors that Charles had met at parties.

  “Have you ever considered marrying?” Charles asked the songwriter. “You need a wife to be friends with our ladies.”

  Breese put his hand to his head, scratched his cheek with his stick, then dropped it. “Good heavens, I’ve forgotten my hat. You didn’t lock me out, did you? I must still be rum dum.” He tottered back into the building, holding his cheek, after Charles assured him that he had not been locked out.

  “It’s better not to push the issue,” William said softly. “It’s his private life, and you know the severe problems his predilections can cause.”

  Charles bit his inner cheek. “He should hide it better, for his own sake. Someone made a comment to me, and he could risk arrest.”

  “Not your business,” William cautioned. “Don’t mix yourself into it.”

  “I just want to help him,” Charles snapped.

  William dropped his stick and held up his hands. “You can’t, Charles, except by merely being his friend. Here is poor Gadfly, a Hebrew, among other things. He must hide his true self in order to have any hope of success.”

  Charles snorted. “He has no trouble writing one love song after another.”

  William picked up his stick. “But who are they written to? Are they all about a love that can never be returned, never shown openly?”

  Charles opened his mouth, then closed it.

  William looked down his nose at Charles, his expression uncharacteristically severe. “Exactly.”

  Breese reappeared after a couple of minutes, holding a walking stick. He brandished it at Charles. “Sword cane. Thought it might come in handy.”

  William bent over it. “Looks like an antique.”

  Breese pounded the grass with it. “Belonged to my great-grandfather. Family lived in Germany then.”

  Charles picked up the stoutest of the remaining sticks from the tree. “Let’s get going.”

  “What about a lantern?” William asked. “Let me run in and get one, just in case.”

  He vanished back inside the building.

  “I start to wonder if we will ever make it down the lane,” Charles remarked.

  “Just because you are both men of adventure doesn’t mean any of us are exactly men of action,” Breese pointed out. “You like to travel around reporting, but you aren’t involved in what goes on.”

  “No,” Charles admitted. “But the three of us should be able to take on one fifty-eight-year-old man.”

  “A blacksmith? Powerful bodies,” Breese mused.

  Charles felt a frisson of discomfort at Breese’s tone. Too dangerous.

  William reappeared. “I have it.”

  “Sticks, a sword, a lantern,” Charles said. “Now can we go? The mere thought that his friends might have been hiding Larsen so close to us all this time makes my blood boil.”

  They walked down the lane. The sun hung low in the sky. Smoke from cooking fires obscured some of the pinkening horizon, but the moon had already appeared. In only a few minutes, the smithy appeared. Behind it were the two small houses.

  “Do we separate?” Breese whispered.

  “Let’s stay together,” Charles said. “Our quarry will be desperate.”

  “What first?” William asked.

  “The smithy.” Charles’s fingers felt slick along his stick. “We don’t want him escaping into it if he hears us.”

  Charles crept alongside the woodshed and peered into the dark. He recalled that the logs were stacked across the rear wall, so no one should be able to hide in there. After he motioned the other two men to the opposite side of the door to the smithy, he pulled up the latch and opened it.

  Holding his stick in front of his face, he stepped into the doorway. He breathed lightly through his nose as he listened intently for other sounds of breathing or movement. When he moved inside, William opened the lantern shutters and lifted the lantern high.

  Charles saw the shadowy shape of the anvil, and the forge, less intimidating with its fire gone out. The room was laid out in a long rectangle. “No real hiding places in here,” he said in a low voice.

  “They cleaned it out well,” Breese said.

  “That explains why the door was unlocked,” Charles agreed. “I did wonder.”

  They spent a couple minutes poking around, but the dirt floor didn’t appear to be hiding a storage space in a dug-out basement.

  “If someone has been hiding on the property, they’d probably want a bed,” Breese said after they all met at the door again.

  “Makes sense,” William agreed.

  “Very well.” Charles pointed his stick at Daniel Jones’s house. “Let’s search there next.”

  They formed a triangle as they moved through the yard, watching for any sign of light or movement. Charles heard rustling in the woodpile as they walked by, but suspected rats. A flock of birds flew overhead. He accidentally kicked an anthill that had already started forming a few feet in front of the abandoned house. The ants streamed out, and the men danced around them, trying to get away from the nest before ants crawled up their legs.

  William reached the front window and shined the lantern inside. No curtains blocked the space now. They must have belonged to the Jones family. “Just an empty room,” he reported. “How large is the house?”

  “I’m not sure,” Charles admitted. “Maybe four rooms.”

  Breese tried the front door. “Locked, Charles.”

  “I recall the houses share a kitchen in the back, so there must be another door.” He led the way. That door was locked, too, but the window showed another room was vacant.

  “That’s at least half the place empty,” William said. “And I bet there are only three rooms.”

  They walked together to the small kitchen building. The unlocked door allowed them instant access. William shined his lantern aro
und. The light illuminated a long, bare wooden table and a squat stove. On the other side were cupboards, but none large enough to hide a man. The ghosts of old meals clung to the air, potatoes and fish stew.

  “No one here,” William noted.

  “Let’s try the other house,” Charles said. “But I admit I’m discouraged.”

  “This is a perfect hiding place,” William argued. “Since we can’t risk breaking into the houses, Larsen could be hiding inside.”

  “Let’s check the last house and then go to the police,” Charles suggested.

  “Bravo,” Breese said, breathing harder than was warranted by their exertions. “Brilliant plan.”

  They left the kitchen building and went to the window in the back of the Edmund Jones house. Through the glass, Charles saw a dilapidated armchair next to the fireplace. Hannah Jones must have decided not to move it. The floor didn’t have the scrubbed-clean look of the one in the other house. She must not have been as house proud as Mrs. Jones.

  Breese tried the back door. “Well, well. It turned.”

  William blew out a breath and lifted the lantern high as Breese stepped aside. Charles stayed close behind his friend as light swept over the fireplace and the armchair. When the light reached the opposite wall, Charles saw a clean square where an embroidered hanging with a religious verse had hung.

  William walked on. “Just three rooms,” he reported. They swept through a dining room in the back and a bedroom with an old bedstead that looked like it had been built into the house.

  “No bedding or curtains,” Breese said. “She took those.”

  “I think this was Mr. Jones’s room,” Charles said. “I can smell the tobacco.”

  They returned to the dining room. Charles pointed to a bright rectangle on the floor to the right of the fireplace. “Looks like a second bed was under the window.”

  “This means there’s a bedroom with no windows in the other house,” William said. “Assuming the floor plan is the same. We can tell the police that and call it good.”

  Charles circled the rooms once more, but this wasn’t a house that held secrets. Nothing remained.

  They returned to the yard. Trees rustled at the far end.

  “A person?” Breese asked, stepping closer to William and the lantern.

  Charles heard an owl hoot. “I think it is the owl’s prey escaping.”

  “Let’s go,” William said. “My candle is down to a stub, and I don’t want to be attacked from behind.”

  Charles led the way to their building. “Let’s go to the main road. If we don’t see a constable, we’ll walk to the station, though I think that sergeant is tired of me.”

  William blew out his candle and shuttered the lantern as a curricle went by, the young man working hard to keep his horses in step. The lady next to him held on to her bonnet with one hand and the seat with the other.

  “That’s an accident waiting to happen,” Breese said. “He didn’t seem skilled enough to manage his cattle.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t see them in the road,” William said.

  They walked past a coffee cart, which was not doing brisk business at this time of night.

  “Good evening,” called a soft voice from the shadows between a pub and a row of terraced houses.

  They kept walking. Even a soft voice could be a harbinger of danger where no light existed.

  “Constable across the street,” Breese said when they were only a couple of streets from the station.

  They crossed, and Charles waved to the constable. “Blight!” he called, recognizing the man.

  “Now what is it, Dickens?” the man said laconically. He spit tobacco into the street.

  “We think the Joneses’ smithy should be searched for Osvald Larsen,” Charles explained. “We just had a look around ourselves, but one of the houses is locked, and there’s a bedroom without any windows.”

  “Why do you think he’s there?”

  “We think he murdered the woman who lived above me. She might have been a childhood friend of Edmund Jones and Ferazzi, the property owner,” Charles said. “It’s a good hiding spot. He’s gone to ground somewhere. I still believe Daniel Jones is innocent, but I’m not convinced his father was.”

  The constable nodded and lifted his rattle to signal other men close by. “We’ll have a look around, gentlemen.”

  “Thank you. Would you like us to help the search?” Charles asked him.

  “No, my sergeant would not approve. We’ll be in touch if we need any more information.”

  Charles turned away, suddenly realizing how stiff he felt across his shoulders. “A rum and water sounds like a capital notion right now, my friends.”

  William clapped him on the shoulder. “More than one, I hope, and I’m buying.”

  “Why?” Charles asked.

  William grinned at him. “Nothing like a candlelit search, holding nothing but a stick, to feel like a man!”

  Breese laughed. “I prefer a sword cane.”

  “We can’t all be dandies,” Charles said. “But I think I might like to have one of those myself. Oh, to be done with Selwood Terrace and to be back in London again, with money in my pocket.”

  * * *

  The trio was worse for wear by the time they returned home, singing one of Breese’s comic songs that had been in a theatrical show the year before. Charles stumbled as he entered his parlor after saying good night to his friends. Unaccountably, he still had his stick. He, William, and Breese had used it as a prop while entertaining the other pub denizens with their antics.

  He set it next to the fireplace and unbuttoned his frock coat, dancing a jig as he did so and singing softly. Fred snored in the bedroom, syncopating his song.

  “That’s it!” he exclaimed, sure he had the idea for another collaboration with Breese. He lit a candle and took it over to his desk, then dipped a fresh quill into his inkpot. Black tendrils of ink splattered on paper as he rushed to write down his brilliant rhymes before he forgot them.

  After six or eight couplets, his mind lost focus. He yawned. The candlelight seemed to grow before his eyes. Catching himself, he jerked back before his nose hit the hot brightness. He blinked, then heard a scratch at the door.

  As he stumbled toward it, he yawned hugely. Was Breese pursuing a similar burst of inspiration? Or was Julie or William escaping a spat?

  Instead, when he opened the door, he found a little figure covered in a dark cape. A pair of rosebud lips poked out from the encompassing hood.

  “Kate?” he asked.

  “See, I came,” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If this is the only hour to reach you, I’ll sneak out and walk over here.” She pushed back the hood so he could see the outline of her oval face and pointed chin.

  “I didn’t suggest you wander about in the dead of night,” he said around another yawn. “Between escaped convicts and other villains, your father would have my head.”

  More roughly than he meant to, given that he wasn’t so steady on his feet, he pulled at the cape to bring her inside. The tie tightened around her neck, making her cough.

  “Sorry, sorry.” He reached for the ribbons and untied them, then let the heavy fabric drop to the floor. He could see trails of perspiration on her neck, for the cloak had been too heavy for the warm July night. “Why are you here? You are more sensible than this, Kate.”

  “You certainly aren’t acting happy to see me.” She pouted.

  “You can’t be irritated with me, because I’m working so hard to secure our future.”

  “I never see you,” Kate said. “Surely tonight you haven’t been working. You’re drunk, Charles, I can tell.”

  He giggled. “We celebrated after our convict hunt.”

  “Did you find Larsen?”

  “No, but the police are looking into it.” Charles shook his head, overbalanced, and caught the back of his sofa for support.

  “Oh, Charles. I’ll make you some tea.
”

  She moved toward the fireplace, but he caught her arm. “Don’t. I don’t want any more smoke in the room. I’m dizzy enough.”

  She looked around his arm and saw the quill on the scrap of paper. “You’ve been working?”

  “On a song. More ready money.”

  “If you say so,” she said doubtfully. “Shouldn’t you be working on your prose pieces?”

  “Whatever makes money. Here, give me a glass of water. That will sober me up.” He went into the bedroom while she put water jug to cup.

  When he came back out, she handed the cup of water to him. He ignored the brackish taste and drank it down. “Thank you, my dear.”

  “Of course, Charles. Will you walk me home now?”

  “You don’t want to stay?”

  They stared at each other. Charles wished Fred had gone to Bloomsbury for the night, but how could he have known his Kate would be so daring? Besides, he couldn’t afford to marry her yet. No, a chaperone was best, even a sleeping one.

  “Kate, I’ll walk with you, but I’ll have to let you go at the burial ground. I can’t risk your parents seeing me with you at this hour.”

  “You do look rather drawn,” she said, putting her hand on his cheek. “But I hate that I see you so little. You are solving our murder with your friends rather than with me.”

  “Looking for a poisoner as we did in the winter, among the drawing rooms of the Brompton elite, is far different from looking for a desperate blacksmith who may have brutally murdered an old woman,” Charles explained. “This is not a genteel situation. The police won’t even consider Miss Jaggers, as best as I can tell, so all we can do is find Larsen.”

  “Murder is never genteel,” Kate said. “Oh, Charles, do just walk me home. I’ll deal with the consequences.”

  “Very well. I’ll, err—” He realized he’d taken his shoes off at some point. Glancing around the dark room, he couldn’t see them anywhere.

  “What?”

  “Shoes,” Charles said. “Do you see them?”

  “No. I’ll help you search.”

  She went toward the door, while Charles stood in the center of the room, trying to retrace his steps. After a couple of minutes, he sat back down at his desk. His toes immediately touched something hard.