Dinner Most Deadly

by Sheri Cobb South

  The man called Collins shook his head in the negative, but the other man, Wilkinson, nodded. “Aye, he came past my sentry box.”

  “Do you recall what time it was?”

  Wilkinson scratched his head. “Let me see, the clock on the Guards building had just struck nine-thirty . . . Captain must have returned at about twenty-five to ten, no later than a quarter till. Well, it stands to reason he wouldn’t have been out too late, would he, with the review this morning.”

  “Thank you,” said Pickett, making a note of it. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  Thirty-five minutes, forty-five at the most, to walk from Audley Street to the Horse Guards. It seemed a reasonable time for a man in good physical condition with a clear conscience and therefore no need to hurry, thought Pickett, although he might wish to confirm it by walking the route himself. Not now, of course, when the streets of Mayfair and Whitehall bustled with fashionables and government officials, respectively, but later, between the hours of nine and ten. Barring any contradictory evidence, it appeared that Captain Sir Charles, however great the provocation, was innocent of any part in Sir Reginald’s death.

  CHAPTER 8

  In Which John Pickett Traces the Provenance of a Pistol

  Experience had taught Pickett that the beau monde rarely rose from their beds before noon, so he saw no point in trying to interview any of Lady Dunnington’s dinner guests before that hour. In the meantime, he decided to call on Joseph Manton, premier gunsmith to the ton, at his popular shooting gallery in Davies Street. As he had expected, there were few of the fashionables about at this early hour. Only three or four gentlemen were present, taking turns shooting at wafers and laying bets as to their success (or lack thereof) at this endeavor. None of them had any attention to spare for a young man in an unfashionable brown serge coat, his curly brown hair tied back in an outmoded queue.

  The proprietor, however, had had professional dealings with Bow Street before. Granted, these experiences were before Pickett’s time, but that young man’s reputation had preceded him, and so Mr. Joseph Manton abandoned his aristocratic clients and came forward at once.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said, “and what may I do for you?”

  “John Pickett of Bow Street. I should like to know what you can tell me about this weapon.” He withdrew the pistol from the waistband of his breeches and presented it to the gunsmith.

  “Hmm, not one of mine, I can tell you that already.”

  “Is it the sort of firearm a captain of the Hussars might carry?”

  “Yes and no,” said Mr. Manton, turning the pistol over in his hands with the ease of long practice. “Unlike the enlisted men who are issued muskets, officers supply their own pistols, and they may purchase whatever type they prefer. I suspect more than a few of my own have seen service on the Peninsula.”

  “And this one?”

  Pickett’s knowledge of firearms was strictly utilitarian, and Mr. Manton very quickly took him out of his depth with his talk of swamped barrels, frizzen springs, back-sights, and half-stocks, concluding at last with, “This particular piece was made by Rigby of Dublin.”

  “Dublin, did you say?” demanded Pickett, seizing upon the one tidbit in this lengthy discourse that made sense to him. “Dublin, as in Ireland?”

  The gunsmith’s eyebrows rose. “If there’s another Dublin where Rigby operates a gunworks, I’m not aware of it.”

  Pickett shook his head as if to clear it. “No, of course not. Thank you, sir, you’ve been most helpful.”

  He left Manton’s shooting gallery with the fixed intention of paying a call on Mr. Martin Kenney, lately of Ireland, until it dawned on him that he had no idea where to find the man. Nor, for that matter, was he familiar with the residences of any of the other gentlemen present at Lady Dunnington’s dinner, with the notable exception of Lord Rupert Latham, whom he’d had the dubious privilege of interviewing once before; he had been so distracted by the presence of Lady Fieldhurst, and so daunted by the prospect of the coming interview with her, that he had failed to obtain the information. Clearly, there was nothing for it but to return to Lady Dunnington’s house and request to be enlightened—an exercise that would hardly raise the countess’s opinion of his competence. Seeing no alternative, he set out for Audley Street, where the door was soon opened to him by a red-eyed and sniffling Dulcie.

  “Miss Monroe?” he said, taking off his hat. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Pickett, sir.” Giving the lie to this statement, she dabbed at her eyes with one corner of her apron.

  “Has something happened?” he asked, growing increasingly alarmed. “Lady Dunnington—?”

  “Her ladyship is fine, sir. It’s—it’s nothing that need concern you.”

  “At the moment, I’m afraid anything that happens in this house concerns me. Come, Miss Monroe, won’t you tell me what is the matter?”

  “Call me Dulcie, sir. If you must know, it’s—it’s the shepherdess.”

  “The shepherdess?” echoed Pickett, conjuring up bizarre images of flocks of sheep wandering aimlessly through London following the violent death of their keeper. “What shepherdess?”

  “The Dresden shepherdess that used to stand on the drawing room mantel. Porcelain,” explained Dulcie, seeing him still at a loss.

  “Oh! Porcelain,” said Pickett, relieved to have one mystery solved, at least. “What about it?”

  “That’s just what I don’t know, Mr. Pickett,” confided Dulcie, seeking recourse once again to the hem of her apron. “Her ladyship noticed this morning that it was missing, and she thinks—she thinks I stole it.”

  “Is it possible that someone—another servant, perhaps, knocked it off the mantel by accident while dusting or some such thing, and disposed of the pieces in the hope that Lady Dunnington wouldn’t notice?”

  Dulcie took instant exception to this theory. “I do the dusting in the drawing room, sir, and if I’d done such a thing, I would have told her ladyship at once, and never mind the punishment!”

  “Of course you would have,” he assured her hastily. “I’m sure her ladyship didn’t mean anything by it—she’s probably still upset about what happened here last night.” He wasn’t at all certain he believed it himself, but it seemed to make Dulcie feel better.

  “Thank you, sir. I hope you’re right.”

  “I should like to see Lady Dunnington, if I may.”

  “Of course.” Recalled to her duties, she relieved him of his hat and gloves and set them on the side table near the door. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll inform her ladyship.”

  She bobbed a quick curtsy, then suited the word to the deed. Pickett had not long to wait until she returned, gesturing for him to follow. “If you will come with me, sir.”

  “Thank you. And Dulcie”—he hesitated, wondering if he were overstepping his authority—“if you would like for me to speak to her ladyship on your behalf, I would be glad to do so.”

  He was rewarded with a grateful smile from the chambermaid. “That would be most kind of you, Mr. Pickett.”

  She led him, not to the drawing room as he had expected, but to the breakfast room, where Lady Dunnington sat at the table sipping her morning chocolate. She still wore her dressing gown, and the shadows under her eyes testified to a night of very little sleep.

  “I beg your pardon for interrupting your breakfast,” Pickett said, taken aback by her haggard appearance. “I can come back later if you would prefer—”

  “No, Mr. Pickett, if it is all the same to you, I would rather have done with it,” said her ladyship. “Would you care for coffee? Dulcie, fetch a cup for Mr. Pickett, if you please. I daresay he has thought of a hundred questions to ask me.”

  “Not at all, your ladyship,” Pickett demurred hastily. “And no coffee, if you please. I shan’t impose on you that long. I only realized this morning that, while I asked you for a list of the men who dined here last night, I failed to ascertain their directions.”

  “Yo
u disappoint me! Here I thought a Bow Street Runner would have no difficulty in running his quarry to ground.” Her tone was playful, a circumstance jarringly out of place given her obvious distress.

  “Perhaps not, but it usually helps to have some idea of where to look for him,” Pickett said.

  “Very well, Mr. Pickett, if you insist. Dulcie,” she turned to address the maid, “fetch the invitation list from my writing table—you will know where to look.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Dulcie left the room, and Lady Dunnington regarded Pickett across the breakfast table.

  “Well, Mr. Pickett, have you found our killer yet?”

  He blinked at her in surprise. “I have hardly begun investigating, your ladyship.”

  “I am sadly disillusioned. I thought surely you must be on the verge of making an arrest. Who will it be, I wonder? Lord Rupert Latham, perhaps? I daresay you would enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”

  Pickett flushed, well aware that such a thought had occurred to him more than once during his investigation into Lord Fieldhurst’s death. “I only want to discover the truth, your ladyship. Whether I find any enjoyment in it or not is entirely beside the point.”

  “More’s the pity, hmm?” she put in, cocking one delicately arched eyebrow suggestively.

  Pickett was thankful for the interruption of Dulcie, returning at that moment with a single sheet of vellum in hand.

  “Here is the invitation list, your ladyship.”

  “Give it to Mr. Pickett, if you please,” said Lady Dunning-ton, gesturing toward him. “Mr. Pickett, you may keep it if you wish.”

  He took the list from the maid, then nodded to her in acknowledgment as she bobbed a curtsy and betook herself from the room.

  He glanced down the list. The men Lady Fieldhurst had mentioned were all accounted for, along with the direction of each man’s London residence. He noted with some disappointment that while most of the men lived in Mayfair, Mr. Kenney (the man he was most interested in questioning, given the provenance of the pistol) had his residence some distance away in the none-too-savory section of Town known as St. Giles. Pickett decided to interview as many of the men as he could before his two o’clock appointment with Lady Fieldhurst, then call on Mr. Kenney on his way back to Bow Street.

  He thanked Lady Dunnington, then rose to take his leave. As she reached for the bell pull to summon Dulcie to show him out, he recalled he had an obligation to discharge where the girl was concerned.

  “Your ladyship, Dulcie tells me you’ve noticed a piece of porcelain missing.”

  “Yes, it is the most tiresome thing, coming on top of everything else that has happened here.”

  “She seemed to be under the impression that you thought she had stolen it.”

  She shrugged, then regarded him with a surprisingly charming smile. “I daresay I might have said something to that effect. It has been a most distressing night, Mr. Pickett, and my tongue sometimes has a tendency to run on wheels. Those who are well acquainted with me know to disregard half of what I say.”

  From his own experience as a footman, Pickett knew a servant did not have the luxury of disregarding anything his mistress might say, but he suspected that pointing this out to Lady Dunnington would be a waste of breath. “Then you don’t intend to discharge her?”

  “Heavens, no! Good help is too hard to come by to dismiss a servant so lightly. I daresay the girl knocked it off and broke it, and is afraid to tell me.”

  The same thought had occurred to Pickett, but he believed Dulcie when she had denied it. Still, at least he could assure her that her position was not in danger. That, he supposed, would have to do. He thanked Lady Dunnington again, then when Dulcie came in answer to her mistress’s summons, he followed her to the front door.

  “Thank you, Dulcie,” he said when she handed him his hat. “I am pleased to report that it was just as I expected, and Lady Dunnington spoke out of her own distress, given the events of last night. At any rate, I can assure you that you are not on the verge of being given the sack.”

  “You’re very kind, Mr. Pickett,” she said shyly, tucking her chin and looking up at him through her lashes. “I thank you for taking the trouble.”

  “It was no trouble at all,” he assured her. “Good day to you, Dulcie.”

  “And to you, Mr. Pickett,” she said, and stood at the door gazing after him until he disappeared down the street.

  Pickett stopped first at Lord Edwin Braunton’s town house in Portman Square, where he gave his card to the butler.

  “I shall inquire if Lord Edwin is at home,” intoned this individual, leaving Pickett to cool his heels in the foyer. He returned a few minutes later with the information that Lord Edwin would receive him in his study. The butler led the way upstairs, then paused at the study door to announce, “Mr. John Pickett of Bow Street, my lord.”

  Pickett, who lived in fear of discovering that at least one of the gentlemen vying for his lady’s favors represented every woman’s beau ideal, was relieved to find himself facing a tweedy gentleman fully two decades older than his own four-and-twenty years. Lord Edwin looked up from his desk, where he was engaged in cleaning what appeared to be, judging from the pieces littering its surface, a fowling piece. Several other specimens of the gunsmith’s art were mounted on the wall behind the desk; apparently Lord Edwin was a collector. Pickett filed this information away for future consideration.

  “Come in, sir, come in,” Lord Edwin urged, waving him forward. “What brings you here, if I may ask?”

  He waited until the butler had withdrawn and closed the door behind him to answer. “I am here at Lady Dunnington’s behest, Lord Edwin. One of you gentlemen in attendance at her dinner last night appears to have left something there. I wonder if you have noticed any of your personal belongings missing.”

  “No, I’ve not lost anything that I’m aware of.” Lord Edwin frowned and laid aside his cleaning cloth. “Look here, I’ve had no dealings with Bow Street before, but it’s my understanding that you fellows wouldn’t be called out to search for a missing glove or a watch. Unless you’ve recently opened a children’s division?”

  Pickett’s jaw clenched, but he allowed the inevitable reference to his age to pass unchallenged. “No, sir, no missing glove or watch.” He withdrew the pistol from the waistband of his breeches and laid it on the desk. “I see you have an interest in firearms. Does this one look familiar?”

  “Hmm, Rigby, eh?” Lord Edwin picked up the pistol and studied it. “Not mine, I’m afraid. I prefer Manton, myself. You say someone left it at Lady Dunnington’s house last night?”

  “Yes, right after shooting Sir Reginald Montague in the chest with it.”

  “Good God!”

  “Do you know of any reason why someone might want Sir Reginald dead?”

  Lord Edwin laid the pistol on the desk and pushed it away. “You might do better to ask for some reason anyone might want him alive. The fellow was a bounder. I didn’t kill him, but I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”

  “Why not?”

  Lord Edwin made an expansive gesture. “Any number of reasons. Ask anyone! That Captain Sir Charles, for instance. He had no reason to love Sir Reginald.”

  “Why? What happened between Sir Reginald and the captain?” asked Pickett, groping in his inside coat pocket for his occurrence book and pencil. He was, of course, fully aware of the captain’s tale, having heard it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, but it would not hurt to have it confirmed by another source.

  “Oh, I couldn’t say, exactly—something on the Continent, if rumor is to be believed. It was all hushed up, but it is very likely Sir Reginald would have faced a court-martial, had his father not chosen that moment to die. The Army scotched the scandal by allowing him to sell out, when there were plenty of folks wanting to see him swinging at the end of a rope.” He sighed. “Either way, it wouldn’t bring those poor lads under his command back to life.”

  “And Captain Sir Ch
arles knew about this incident—whatever it was?” asked Pickett, checking Lord Edwin’s account against the one provided only a few hours ago by the captain himself.

  “Knew about it? My good fellow, he was there! A mere second lieutenant at the time, however; who would take his word over that of his commanding officer?”

  “Am I to understand that Sir Reginald Montague was his commanding officer?”

  “Didn’t I just say so? No, if you’re wanting someone who’d have reason to kill Sir Reginald, you need look no further than Captain Sir Charles. Unless, of course, it’s Lord Dernham.”

  “Why? What did Lord Dernham have against him?”

  Lord Edwin leaned back in his chair and fixed his gaze on the ceiling while he performed a series of mental calculations. “Let’s see, two years ago it was, no, make that three. Mind you, I’m a sporting man myself, but I don’t hold with using one of the busiest thoroughfares in the country as one’s own private racecourse!”

  “I gather that is what Sir Reginald did?”

  “Aye, he had a mind to best the Prince of Wales’s London-to-Brighton time. Curricle racing,” he explained, seeing Pickett’s blank expression.

  “So what happened?”

  “The way I heard it was that Sir Reginald came up on a big berline and took it into his head to pass it where the road wasn’t wide enough.”

  “And?” prompted Pickett, suspecting he already knew the answer.

  “Sir Reginald was thrown clear—they say the devil protects his own—but several of the berline’s passengers did not survive the crash. Among them was Lord Dernham’s wife.”

  Pickett looked up from writing in his occurrence book. Here was motive, indeed. But why would Lord Dernham—or Captain Sir Charles, for that matter—wait until years after the event to exact his own brand of justice?

  “What about the other guests?” Pickett asked. Lord Edwin Braunton was as gossipy as an old woman. Was he hoping to divert suspicion from himself, or was he merely envious of the other men competing for Lady Fieldhurst’s favors, and hoped to narrow the field? If the latter were the case, Pickett could sympathize wholeheartedly; either way, he intended to take full advantage of Lord Edwin’s loquaciousness. “Had any of the others a reason to wish Sir Reginald dead?”