by C. S. Harris
“You’ve seen the papers?” said Sir Henry Lovejoy when the two men met in a crowded coffeehouse beneath one of the ancient arcades overlooking Covent Garden Market. The air was thick with the smell of roasting coffee, hot chocolate, and wet wool.
“The Morning Gazette was the only one to make it through to Mayfair,” said Sebastian, sliding into the old-fashioned high-backed bench opposite the magistrate. “But I assume they’re all the same.”
Lovejoy nodded. “The palace has announced that Jane Ambrose slipped in the icy streets and hit her head.”
“Less sensational than the footpads option, I suppose.”
“Decidedly.” Lovejoy sipped his hot chocolate in brooding silence, then said, “I received a visit late last night from a certain Major Burnside.”
Sebastian was familiar with the major, who played a key role in that legion of former military men, spies, informants, and assassins used by the Regent’s powerful cousin, Lord Jarvis, to maintain his position. “And?”
The magistrate set down his cup with pronounced care and cleared his throat. “I will attempt to assist you in this where I can. But officially my hands are tied.”
Sebastian met the other man’s troubled gaze. “I understand.”
From the piazza outside came a loud clatter, followed by a shout. Normally at this hour of the morning, Covent Garden Market was a cacophony of buyers and sellers, its stalls overflowing with fruit and vegetables brought in from the countryside to be sold to shopkeepers and the costermongers who fanned out across London. But so little produce was trickling into the city that many of the stalls hadn’t even bothered to open.
Sebastian said, “You spoke to Jane Ambrose’s husband?”
“Last night, yes. He appeared both shocked and devastated by the news of his wife’s death. But was either emotion genuine?” Lovejoy sighed. “I honestly couldn’t say. Something about his reaction seemed slightly off to me, although I can’t put my finger on why.”
“Did he say where his wife was yesterday?”
“No. He found it difficult even to speak of her, and finally apologized for being so distraught as to be of little assistance. I told him you were taking an interest in the case. Perhaps you’ll have more success with him today.”
“If he hasn’t dosed himself into insensibility with laudanum.”
Lovejoy nodded. “Gibson is quite certain the woman was murdered?”
“It’s either murder or manslaughter,” said Sebastian. “But someone definitely moved her body.” He saw no reason to divulge the fact that Jane Ambrose’s hurried autopsy was actually performed by an unlicensed Frenchwoman.
Lovejoy rested his shoulders against the high back of his bench and frowned. “Why leave the body in Shepherds’ Lane? I wonder.”
“To implicate someone else in her death, perhaps? Someone who lives in the area.”
Lovejoy considered this. “Yes, that’s certainly a possibility.”
“How much do you know about Edward Ambrose?”
“Not much, actually. But I’ve set one of the lads to looking into him. The palace shouldn’t object to that.”
“Especially if they don’t hear of it,” said Sebastian.
Lovejoy rarely smiled. But Sebastian thought he caught a gleam of amusement in the dour little magistrate’s eyes before he looked away. “My lads can be very discreet.”
* * *
The snow was starting up again by the time Sebastian cut across the drift-filled, half-deserted market toward Edward and Jane Ambrose’s house in Soho Square.
Dating to the time of Charles II, the square had once been popular with dukes and earls and even George II in his days as Prince of Wales. With the construction of new areas such as Grosvenor and Cavendish Squares, most of Soho’s fashionable residents had drifted westward. But it was still home to a number of notables besides Ambrose, including Sir Joseph Banks and Franz Schmidt.
The Ambroses’ narrow, well-tended house stood on the side of the square once occupied by the elegant residence of that ill-fated royal bastard the Duke of Monmouth. Sebastian’s knock was answered by a young housemaid with a pale face and big brown eyes swollen with tears. When Sebastian handed over his card, she sniffed, said, “Oh, my lord, Mr. Ambrose said we was to show you right up,” and led the way to a gracious drawing room, where Edward Ambrose stood before a cold hearth.
He looked drawn and haggard, as if he hadn’t slept much the night before. He was a tall man, perhaps five or six years older than his dead wife, and of a surprisingly muscular build. His features were even and attractive, his golden hair just beginning to recede from his high forehead. The son of an impoverished Middlesex vicar, he had enjoyed only modest success as a playwright until around the turn of the century, when his opera Lancelot and Guinevere took the town by storm. He still wrote the occasional play, but none was as popular as his operas, which were always enthusiastically received.
He stood now staring up at a large canvas that hung above the mantel. Following his gaze, Sebastian realized it was a portrait of Jane Ambrose and what looked like the two children from her locket.
“Thank you for seeing me,” said Sebastian as Ambrose turned, his features ravaged by grief. “My sincere condolences for your loss.”
Ambrose nodded and swallowed hard, as if momentarily too overcome by sorrow to answer. “Please, sit down,” he said, indicating a nearby seat. “I’m told it was Lady Devlin and a friend who discovered Jane’s body. How perfectly ghastly for them. I hope the ladies are all right.”
“They are. Thank you,” said Sebastian, taking one of the delicate Adams-style chairs. “I’d like to ask you some questions, if I may?”
Ambrose stayed where he was. “Yes, of course. I’ll help in any way I can.”
“Can you tell me when was the last time you saw your wife?”
“Yesterday morning.” Ambrose brought up one hand to rub his forehead in a distracted gesture. “At breakfast.”
“Do you know how she planned to spend the day? Did she say?”
He nodded briskly. “Her Monday and Thursday mornings were always devoted to the Princess.”
“Did she actually attend Princess Charlotte yesterday?”
Ambrose looked vaguely confused, as if the question surprised him. “I suppose. I mean, I don’t know for certain, but . . . why wouldn’t she? The snow didn’t become worrisome until midafternoon.”
“Where would she have gone after her lesson with the Princess?”
“I expected her to come home.”
“She didn’t?”
“I don’t believe so, no. None of the servants saw her.”
“You weren’t here?”
“I was, yes. But I’m working on the libretto for a new opera. It’s giving me fits at the moment—as they usually do at this stage.” His lips twitched as if he almost smiled. Then the smile tightened with what looked like pain. “Jane knows—knew—to leave me alone when I’m like that. I shut myself up in the library.”
“You weren’t concerned when she wasn’t home by evening?”
“Not overly much, no. Jane had her own life. I don’t—didn’t—keep a tight rein on her activities. It wasn’t until I realized just how late it was getting that I even gave it a thought. And then I assumed she must have decided to stay someplace until the storm passed. God help me, I was even mildly annoyed with her for not bothering to send a message telling me she’d been delayed.”
“Do you have any idea what your wife might have been doing in Clerkenwell yesterday?”
“No. I understand that’s where she was found, but I can’t imagine why she would go there.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
A spasm passed over the playwright’s features and he gave a half shake of his head in denial. “The magistrate who was here last night—Sir Henry—suggested she’d been murdered. But
this morning the papers are all saying she simply fell and hit her head.”
“Given her connection to Princess Charlotte,” said Sebastian, “you do understand why, don’t you?”
Ambrose’s gaze met his. Then he looked away and nodded silently.
Sebastian said, “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted your wife dead?”
“Jane? Good heavens, no.”
“No one?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me more about her?”
“What is there to tell? She was a brilliant, beautiful, talented woman. Why would anyone want to kill someone like that?”
Sebastian glanced again at the portrait of Jane Ambrose above the fireplace. She held the younger boy—in this painting a laughing babe of perhaps eighteen months—on her lap, while the more pensive older child leaned against his mother’s knee. Rather than looking outward at the viewer, Jane had her head turned, her attention all for her children. A gentle, loving smile softened her features. Sebastian found it profoundly disturbing to be given this glimpse of her as she’d once been—so warm and glowing with life and love—and then remember the way he’d last seen her, a cold, bloody cadaver on a stone slab in a surgeon’s dissection room. And he knew a powerful surge of fury directed at whoever had robbed her of her future and left her as only a memory.
“Your children?” asked Sebastian, keeping his voice steady with difficulty.
Ambrose followed his gaze. “Yes.” He sucked in a quick breath that shuddered his chest. “That was painted seven years ago. They’re both dead now. We lost Benjamin last summer, and Lawrence in November.”
Oh, Jesus, thought Sebastian, his heart aching for this man’s tragic series of losses. “I’m sorry.”
Ambrose swiped one hand across his face and nodded.
Sebastian said quietly, “Did your wife have any family?”
“Not really. Jane lost her mother when she was still quite young, while her father passed away ten years ago or so—not long after Jane’s twin, James. And then her sister, Jilly, died two years ago. Consumption, same as James. A dangerous weakness to the disease seems to run in the family.”
“How long has Jane served as Princess Charlotte’s piano instructor?”
Ambrose looked thoughtful. “It must be nine or ten years, at least. Why?”
“So she knew the Princess well?”
“She did, yes. But surely you don’t think her death could have anything to do with Charlotte?”
“At this point, I don’t know. Did she talk much about the Princess?”
“Not really. You don’t stay with the Princess long if you talk about her—or even get too friendly with her. If Prinny could have his way, that poor girl would be attended only by deaf-mutes who hate her.”
The rough anger in the man’s voice didn’t surprise Sebastian. There were few in contact with the Prince Regent who didn’t come away with sentiments ranging from contempt to disgust. “Who else did your wife teach?”
Ambrose frowned. “She’s had various pupils over the years. But the only one I can name off the top of my head is Anna Rothschild.”
Sebastian knew a flicker of interest. “The daughter of Nathan Rothschild, the German financier?”
“Yes. Jane’s been teaching Anna for three or four years now. Or, at least, she did until several weeks ago, when Rothschild suddenly dismissed her.”
“He dismissed her? Do you know why?”
“No. All I know is that Jane was extraordinarily upset by it. Rothschild’s daughter, Anna, was a talented pianist, and Jane was disappointed to lose her as a student. Although . . .” Ambrose’s voice trailed off.
“Although?” prompted Sebastian.
Ambrose drew in a quick breath that flared his nostrils. “She refused to talk about it—she actually became angry with me when I tried to press her on it. But to be honest, I’d say she was more than upset or disappointed. She was frightened. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. But that’s the only word I can use to describe it.
“I don’t know why, but Jane was definitely frightened.”
Chapter 6
“I didn’t sleep well again last night,” announced the Prince in a petulant, accusatory voice that informed everyone present that he considered them personally responsible for his sufferings.
His Royal Highness George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales and Regent of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, lay sprawled in naked, bloated splendor in the six-foot-long copper tub that was the focal point of the Moorish-tiled bathing room he’d had installed at enormous expense in his palace of Carlton House. Once he’d been a handsome prince, beloved of his people and cheered everywhere he went. Now in his fifties, he was monstrously overweight, endlessly self-indulgent, notoriously dishonest, and reviled by the same populace that had loved him so long ago.
A half circle of prominent, proud men stood around him, summoned so that he might berate them for their failings: two of his personal physicians, Drs. Heberden and Baillie; the Prime Minister, the Earl of Liverpool; the High Chancellor, Lord Eldon; and the Prince’s distant but extraordinarily powerful cousin, Charles, Lord Jarvis. Only Jarvis remained silent and watchful as the other men rushed to murmur platitudes of sympathy and sycophancy, for Jarvis knew his prince, knew the calculated, manipulative games he played on everyone around him, knew that this whining complaint was mere prologue to something else that had nothing to do with his night’s rest or his health.
When one of the doctors ventured to suggest that a simple solution might be for the Prince to moderate his food and alcohol intake to avoid aggravating his gout, the Prince roared, “It wasn’t because of the port and buttered crab, you fool! I lay awake all night fretting about that Brunswick bitch. She is plotting against me again. I know it.”
This announcement was met with embarrassed discomfort, for “that Brunswick bitch” was the Regent’s wife, Caroline, Princess of Wales.
“I tell you, she is determined to destroy the monarchy of this country,” fretted the Prince. “It has been her intention for nineteen years now, and she will not rest until she has achieved her goal.”
His listeners exchanged knowing glances. It was beyond ridiculous to suggest that Caroline—niece of the current King of England, great-granddaughter to his predecessor, and mother of the young woman who would one day be queen—might nourish any such ambitions. But the Prince of Wales had been convinced of his wife’s perfidy and malignant intentions for years, and no one had ever been able to persuade him otherwise.
When his audience remained awkwardly silent, the Prince shifted in the tub, sloshing sudsy water over the high sides to splash against the tiles. “I blame the Privy Council. Twice the cowards have been given the opportunity to rid me of her, and twice they failed. Twice! We now see the result. She’s scheming to destroy everything I have planned, and she has everyone from Henry Brougham and Earl Grey to that rat Lord Wallace intriguing with her—God rot their souls. In a better-regulated society, they’d all be hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason.”
The assembled men exchanged glances again. There was no denying that Brougham, Grey, and Wallace—all prominent Whigs—had taken the Princess’s side in her long, painful struggles against her husband. But in no sense could they be accused of anything treasonous.
“I don’t think—,” the Prime Minister, Liverpool, made the mistake of trying to say.
“That’s because you don’t know! You don’t know the blackness, the evil that lives inside that vile hell’s spawn of a woman. She actually makes effigies of me from wax and sticks pins in them, like some African voodoo queen! I tell you, she will stop at nothing to destroy me unless I destroy her first.”
This last statement was accompanied by a fierce stare directed at Jarvis, who, unlike the other men present, knew precisely which plans most concerned His Highness.
Jarvis gave a low bow. “We have the matter quite in hand, Your Highness. You may rest easy.”
“Well. At least someone understands the gravity of the situation,” grumbled the Prince. “Perhaps you should bleed me, Heberden,” he added in a plaintive voice to the nearest physician. “I feel my pulse beginning to race.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
As the other men bowed and backed from the royal presence, Liverpool shot Jarvis a quick questioning glance and said quietly, “What the devil was that about?”
“The Princess,” said Jarvis.
“The Big P or the Little P?” asked the Prime Minister—the “Big P” or “Big Princess” being the Regent’s wife, Princess Caroline, while the “Little Princess” was their daughter, Princess Charlotte.
“Both,” said Jarvis with a smile. “And neither.”
Chapter 7
Rothschild.
Sebastian found himself turning the financier’s name over and over in his head as he slipped and slid his way across the freezing, paralyzed, miserable city toward the financial district in the east.
The son of a minor Frankfurt coin dealer turned banker, Nathan Rothschild had appeared in England just fifteen years before. At first he’d focused on skimming money off the Manchester cotton industry before transferring his unsavory but undeniably brilliant talents to the London Exchange. In just a few short years, he’d managed to become one of the richest men in the Kingdom.
But Rothschild was more than a financier. Like many of his peers, he was also heavily involved in smuggling, and at that level smuggling was a deadly serious, highly lucrative, and dangerous business. If, in the process of teaching Anna Rothschild, Jane Ambrose had accidently overheard or stumbled upon something she wasn’t supposed to know, Sebastian could see Nathan Rothschild or his associates ordering her killed.
Quietly and efficiently.