by Louise Allen
There was no press of expensive coaches now, only hackney carriages, delivery carts and a bustle of working people and tradesmen. A nearby clock, probably the one on St James’s Palace tower, struck the half hour. Ten thirty.
There was a man in a sacking apron polishing the brass handles of the double doors when we arrived outside Almack’s. He straightened up when he saw Lucian, stuffed the cloths into his apron pocket and gawked at bit. ‘My lord? Er, ma’am.’
Apparently Lucian was known by sight by even the man who polished the brass. Unless he greeted all gentlemen as my lord on principle.
‘Good morning. My cousin lost an earring here last night. Has one been found?’ Something that chinked changed hands.
‘They won’t have finished cleaning the public rooms, my lord. I’ll tell the steward – ’
‘We will look ourselves.’ Lucian was already through the doors, sweeping me along. ‘My cousin believes she knows where it might have been lost.’
‘My lord – ’
‘I know the way.’ Lucian carried on, leaving the faint protest behind. Obviously no-one ejected an earl.
I frankly stared as we went up the stairs, along some corridors, through what must be the ballroom. Every Regency romance, just about, features Almack’s and yet it was not as impressive as I’d imagined. Perhaps it needed the glamour of candlelight and gorgeous gowns and music. The great candelabra were lightless, there were dust cloths thrown over what looked like stacks of chairs and the musicians’ gallery was empty. It smelt too, nothing I could put my finger on, but it made my sanitised twenty first century nose twitch.
‘Here, this is where that mirror is.’
He led me into a room that had long bare tables along both sides. The mirror was on the end wall, almost full-length, its frame a swirl of gold curlicues that I thought might be Baroque. Or Rococo, perhaps. I can never remember the difference. It looked like a perfectly normal, if very splendid, antique mirror, with the grey tinge of lead glass and a slightly wavy surface.
I stood behind and to one side of Lucian and we stared at our reflections.
‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘Look, you are a correct mirror image now.’ He reached out and touched the glass, leaving fingerprints on the surface.
‘I saw you too,’ I admitted. I tugged off one glove and looked down at the long claw mark right across the back of my hand, then moved so that I was between him and the mirror. ‘It must have been this room, there was movement and colour behind you, blurred. And a lot of candles. And I know that you saw me too.’
‘So it definitely was real.’ Lucian turned, rubbed his hand across his eyes in the first gesture I had seen him make that was less than assured. ‘You were very clear for a moment, better than at Angelo’s, the fencing master’s school, which is when I first saw you. I was working off a solid night’s drinking and card playing.’ He broke off. ‘I apologise, I should not be speaking of such matters to a lady.’
I waved it aside. He hadn’t seen me out with the girls on a Friday night, obviously… ‘Tell me.’
‘I thought I was still drunk. You were very blurred and I was committed to a thrust. One moment you were there in the long mirror on the wall, then you were not.’
I held up my hand, my back towards him. ‘This was done by my cat. He can see you too and he is scared of your portrait.’
Lucian took my scratched hand and raised it to his lips. Just the merest brush of his mouth, or perhaps it was only his breath. I snatched it back. It was that or walk into his arms and I didn’t think either of us was ready for that.
‘Well, this mirror is not working at the moment and I don’t imagine you can get me into Angelo’s.’
He studied me for a moment, head to one side. ‘You know a lot about this time, more than most people now would understand about the year 1607 if they were to go back two hundred years, I would wager.’
‘It is a very popular period in my time. People enjoy fiction set in it, admire the art and architecture.’ I tried to express what attracted me. ‘Things are going to change, very soon, within your lifetime. Steam power, industrialisation – ’ I stopped before I could mention anything he would not have heard of. ‘This is a world on the very brink of transformation. That makes it fascinating to look back on. And people find it glamorous.’
We stood looking into the mirror, side by side, thoughtful. ‘There is something,’ I said, tentatively. ‘Just a vague feeling as I stand here, as though the air is moving oddly, as though the ground is not quite steady. This might be a gateway, a portal or whatever the word is.’ I touched the glass with my bare fingers, pressed. Was it my imagination that it gave, very slightly? I pressed harder but the resistance now was firm. ‘For some reason it doesn’t want to let me back through now.’
‘We will try again,’ he said. ‘Did you have any warning that something was about to happen?’
‘Not a great deal. I felt dizzy… The miniature of you is what triggered this and that is still in my kitchen which is where I was.’ I tried to work it through logically. ‘If there is a link between this mirror and the portrait then it will be unbroken.’ Unless someone has discovered I am missing and breaks into the flat and moves the miniature… The sick feeling of panic swept up again and I fought it back. No-one would do that, not yet, not for days, surely?
Lucian was silent as he escorted me back to the front doors. ‘I will take you to Albany, then I must visit Cottingham, see if there is any news.’
‘Take me with you,’ I said on impulse. ‘If I could speak to the maid I might find out more than a brother would.’
‘How am I going to explain you? He has only to look in the Peerage to see that you are not my cousin.’
‘I am an American relative, from Boston,’ I said with a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘A second cousin or something. And my ancestors went to America under something of a cloud, which no-one talks about. And me being American will cover for just about everything that is strange about me – my accent, my lack of knowledge of London society and manners, my informality.’ I looked up at him hopefully, delighted with my idea, and got a rueful smile in response.
‘I suppose, unless we run into the American Ambassador, that it will answer.’ He turned, not uphill towards Piccadilly, but towards St James’s Street. ‘How you expect to get permission to speak with the maid, I do not know though.’
‘Wait and see. If he has nothing to hide and he really cares for his sister he will snatch at any hope and if he does have something on his conscience, then he will not want to expose it by being difficult.’
Chapter Six
The house Lucian took me to was in one of the short side roads running from St James’s Street to Green Park. It was narrow and tall and exuded class. I tried to work out what it would cost to buy in my time and ran out of zeros.
Lord Cottingham was At Home and managed to cope with the intrusion of Lord Radcliffe’s American cousin with aplomb, considering that this was the morning – and therefore not the time for morning calls, which, with magnificent English logic were made in the afternoon – and he had a missing sister to worry about.
I gushed, I will admit. I sympathised at length and that was not too difficult to do because the man looked desperate. He wouldn’t be the most handsome man, even after a good night’s sleep and with nothing to worry about, but he had a pleasant oval face and the dark-shadowed hazel eyes with their long lashes were attractive. So was his voice, normally, I guessed, but it had a rasp now, as though he had been talking endlessly.
‘There is no news?’ Lucian asked when he could get a word in edgeways with me sympathising and exclaiming and Cottingham telling me at repetitious length how good and pure and innocent his sister was.
‘Nothing. No-one has seen anything, heard anything,’ he said bitterly.
‘Tell Lord Cottingham about last night, Cousin Lucian,’ I urged.
‘I was attacked,’ Lucian admitted. ‘It could have simply been footpads, but
I doubt it, and the only thing I have been doing recently that might have made someone want to do away with me is to be asking about Miss Trenton.’
‘Then Selbourne is our man.’ Cottingham sprang to his feet and began to pace. ‘He knows you are interesting yourself in the matter.’
‘No, he is not our man,’ Lucian snapped. ‘I believe him to be innocent and he knows that I do. He has no reason to try and put me out of action.’
‘Has the maid been thoroughly questioned?’ I asked before they started snarling at each other. ‘By a woman, I mean?’
‘Toms? I questioned her myself,’ Cottingham said. ‘May I enquire why you ask?’
‘Because a woman might notice something in her story that a man perhaps would not. I would be happy to do it, and to have a look at Miss Trenton’s room at the same time. The slightest clue may be of value in discovering what happened to her and a woman’s eye might detect it.’
He obviously thought me deluded but was too polite to say so, instead tugging the bell pull. When the butler came he told the man to take me to interview Toms and I was escorted out.
As I mounted the stairs I caught sight of a portrait hanging at the far end of the hall. ‘What a charming painting. And so unusual.’ It was a double portrait of a man and woman, well into middle age, yet gazing lovingly at each other. They clasped hands, left to left, and their golden wedding bands seemed to glitter. She was holding a large bouquet of flowers, exquisitely rendered by the artist. ‘So romantic.’
‘The late Lord Cottingham and his second wife, Miss Lawrence.’
‘Charming,’ I repeated and followed the butler upstairs and into a bedchamber where he left me, saying he would fetch ‘the girl.’
I didn’t have much chance to look round before the ‘girl’ appeared. I’d expected some forlorn waif, but the butler was obviously just a patronising misogynist. Martha Toms was about twenty, pert, pretty, bright as a button and distinctly wary underneath the façade of willing attentiveness. Was that suspicious, or was she understandably worried that she would be blamed in some way for her mistress’s disappearance?
‘I am Miss Lawrence from America and I am assisting in the search for Miss Trenton,’ I told her. ‘How long have you worked for her?’ I wandered about the room as I spoke, just looking.
‘A year, almost, Miss. I was a housemaid, but when Miss Trenton was going to come out I asked if I could be her personal maid. I’m good with hair and I know how to look after nice clothes and I want to better myself.’
Was she looking for another position already? ‘This is a very nice room.’ It was prettily decorated if you like Wedgwood blue and ruffles and toile de jouy print fabrics. The bed was large and draped in lace, the chairs looked comfortable and there were expensive-looking ornaments elegantly displayed. I picked up the topmost book of the little stack of reading by the bedside. It was a novel by someone I had never heard of entitled The Impenetrable Secret, or Find It Out! Very appropriate.
‘Yes, Miss. His lordship always says, nothing but the best for Miss Trenton.’
I wandered over to the window, the book still in my hand. The view was over the small garden at the back and I leaned out and looked down two storeys of the main house and another ten feet into the service basement yard below. It would need a very long ladder indeed to reach this window. Still, it would be worth investigating to see if there were any marks on the ground. Getting a struggling or unconscious woman down this way would be impossible, so if a ladder was used, then she must have co-operated. It didn’t mean that she hadn’t been in fear and reluctantly though.
‘Where do you sleep, Martha?’
‘In the dressing room, Miss. His lordship doesn’t like Miss Trenton to sleep alone.’ She turned and opened a door in the panelling and I followed her in.
‘Why not? Has she been unwell?’
‘Oh no, Miss, she is very healthy, but he said one could never be too careful with the wellbeing of a young lady.’ That sounded like a direct quote. ‘His lordship is very protective.’
The room was small, made cramped by a narrow truckle bed jammed in against the tall clothes presses and chest of drawers. The dressing table, I’d noted, was in the main bedroom. There was no window, but I supposed the maid slept with the door ajar in order to be able to listen out for whatever emergency Lord Cottingham’s vivid imagination conjured up. Then I recalled why I was there and mentally apologised. The emergency had happened.
‘And you drank warm milk before you went to bed and don’t remember anything else?’
‘No, Miss. Miss Trenton was quite as usual that evening. She’d had dinner at home, with his lordship. There were no guests. I undressed my lady and brushed her hair when she had put on her nightgown. She said she was going to read for a bit, so I trimmed her lamp and left her to it. I’d been up since five, so it was a treat to get to bed and not to have to wait up for her.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything in the night?’
‘No, Miss. I woke up and there was this terrible thumping and shouting and I felt ever so queer. I dragged myself out of bed just as the door was broken down – his lordship had put his shoulder to it. He came tumbling in, almost flattened me, he did.’
‘So it was definitely locked?’
She nodded, her black curls bobbing under her starched cap. ‘I saw his lordship pick the key up from the floor over there.’ She pointed to a spot on the carpet.
Or the door was locked from the outside and he brought the key in, concealed in his hand, and pretended to pick it up. I had seen that in TV murder mysteries several times. ‘And what was missing – besides Miss Trenton?’
‘Nothing at all, Miss, just a day dress and shoes and so on – what she’d been wearing that afternoon.’
‘How was the door was locked on the inside if she had gone?’ Did that prove she went out of the window?
The maid stared at me, apparently confused. ‘I don’t know, Miss. Put like that, it’s a proper mystery.’
‘You checked the room yourself, even though you were feeling unwell from the drugged milk? And no-one else searched in here?’
‘Well, yes, Miss, it was me what checked. And no, no-one else has looked.’
It took me half an hour. No-one came to find where I had got to, but I guessed Lucian would have pretty much exhausted his social chit-chat by now. Either that or he was having his ear talked off by the anxious brother. It was frustrating because I wanted to have a look at the yard and garden and I needed to talk to the other servants, Cook in particular. She would be the most powerful woman in the household.
‘Thank you, Martha,’ I said, taking a last look round the pretty, frustrating, room. What had I expected? That I would pick up a book and a note would fall out saying, Meet me at midnight in the Square, signed with someone’s name in full?
Where was Miss Trenton? In a lover’s arms… or cold in a shallow grave?
Lucian was standing in the hall talking to the butler who was handing him his hat and cane.
‘Ah, there you are, Cousin. Cottingham has had to leave for an appointment at Bow Street. He is hiring Runners.’
‘Very sensible, I’m sure. We need to look at the garden and service yard now,’ I told the butler as though I expected there to be no difficulty about it whatsoever.
He blinked, but he gestured to a door at the back of the hall without making a protest. ‘This way, Madam. My lord.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ I said as we walked down a few steps onto the tiny circle of grass and out of his hearing. ‘He must assume the permission for me to interview the maid extends more widely.’
‘What did you find? Anything?’ Lucian took my arm and guided me to a winding path that vanished behind some shrubs. ‘I want to look at the back gate.’
‘Nothing positive. Let’s sit for a moment.’ There was a cast iron bench decorated in a fern pattern in a rose arbour that screened it from the house. I sat down and Lucian joined me, sitting just close enough for me to feel
his warmth. He shifted, lifted his arm as though to rest it along the seat behind me, then seemed to change his mind.
‘The maid’s story hasn’t changed,’ I reported. I leaned back and took a deep breath: growing green things, the ever-present coal smoke and the faint unpleasant rumour that warned that an outside privy was close by. ‘The door was locked from the inside, she is certain. Unless Cottingham actually brought the key with him and pretended to pick it up from the carpet.’
‘Why should he do that?’
‘As I said, the close family always top the list of suspects.’ Lucian looked incredulous and I shrugged. ‘I admit, he doesn’t look as though he is trying to hide something. I have never seen anyone with such an open-looking face, and he seems frantic. I could not see any way to get out of her room except by the door or the window.’ I pointed up. ‘But that is over the sunken service area.’ It looked even higher from outside. ‘It doesn’t seem very likely to me that she could have got down a ladder in long skirts, certainly not unwillingly, but we ought to check for marks on the ground.
‘The room is delightful and the maid says that her brother looks after her indulgently. I searched, but without lifting the rugs and testing the floorboards, or dismantling the bed, I can see no caches. Other than a taste for somewhat lurid novels she appears to be the sheltered, innocent young lady everyone says that she is.’
‘Da – That is to say – ’
‘That is to say, damn. Quite.’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘When I come from, women swear.’
His lordship looked a trifle shocked, but he did not comment on my language. ‘It would be much easier if she had been carrying on a correspondence with some man and run off with him,’ he said with a shrug. ‘At least we would know she had gone willingly. Although that would shatter Clem. Let us see what the gate can tell us.’
Not a lot as it turned out when we studied it. With no steps down to a service door at the front of the house, all the deliveries came in from the rear and the path was well-trodden. The gate was open but Lucian pointed out the heavy bar that would have been dropped across at night to secure it.