by Louise Allen
‘You aren’t serious?’ I halted a forkful of cabbage halfway to my mouth. ‘I decide to commit murder but think, Oh, bother, I can’t go and pulverise the doctor with a blunt instrument because my maid won’t like it?’
‘What I mean,’ James said, with some dignity, ‘is that a lady by herself would attract attention, both leaving her own house and on the street.’
He was right and I was forgetting the constraints on ‘respectable’ women in this time, but I could still think of ways to get around it – wearing simple clothing and a cloak and looking like a maid out on an errand, for one. ‘Then it would need more planning and forethought, I admit. Or considerable luck. Or conspiracy. Leaving aside a female murderer, how would you have done it?’
‘Pistol or knife,’ Luc said. ‘Always assuming this isn’t someone avenging a matter of honour, in which case they should have called him out.’
‘Yes,’ James agreed. ‘Although if Talbot didn’t consider the murderer to be a gentleman he wouldn’t have accepted a challenge from him.’
I swallowed several comments on the idiocy of duelling along with the very excellent piecrust. ‘If the motive involved a lady, for whatever reason, wouldn’t the murderer have avoided a duel in order to keep her name out of it?’
‘No. He would have picked a quarrel over something else entirely,’ Luc said.
I wondered if he’d ever duelled and decided not to ask on the grounds that it would only encourage him. ‘So, we can’t rule out a woman, although she’d have had to plan carefully or be very lucky. But we can rule out murder to avenge someone’s honour?’
‘Yes,’ they agreed in unison.
‘Right. Then what do we do next?’
‘Could you make a list of patients from the uncoded ledgers for the past two years?’ Luc asked. ‘Garrick is going to discover if any of the servants in the houses in that road, or the grooms in the mews behind, saw anything.’
‘On what authority?’
‘I will imply I’m with Bow Street,’ Garrick said. He certainly looked as though he might be a thief-taker.
‘James and I will see what we can discover about Sir Thomas’s section of the Home Office.’
‘See if anyone has heard of Mr Dettmer,’ I said. I still wasn’t prepared to give up on my spy theories. I drained my tankard, the contents of which would have reduced any member of the Campaign for Real Ale to incoherent delight, and sighed at the thought of an afternoon of clerical slog. ‘I’ll need paper. A lot of paper. And a pencil. I’m not using a dip pen, let alone a quill.’ I was sulking, I admit it. I wanted to dress up as a youth and join Garrick or put on a new bonnet and flutter my eyelashes at some Home Office spies.
‘I’ll take you to the surgery, see you settled,’ Garrick said. ‘There’s a stationers’ just up this street and then we’re virtually at the house.’ I suspect he was picking up vibes from me that the brothers were not aware of. Women and servants, however well-regarded, did what they were ordered and ladies, at least, submitted to being put somewhere safe and told to get on with a nice genteel occupation involving, if not needle and thread, then pen and ink.
On the other hand, this probably was the best use of my time. I just wished it involved something more exciting.
Let me give you some advice – do be careful what you wish for.
Bromley let us in at the house door and meekly led the way down to the surgery. Garrick produced a key and unlocked it and glanced around. ‘Has anyone been down here?’
‘Not since the Constable and his men left, no, sir.’
I turned and looked properly at Bromley. He was even whiter than he had been that morning and I wondered if he was eating or sleeping. I don’t think I would have cared to spend all my time alone, day and night, in a house where an unsolved murder had been committed a short time before.
‘Miss Lawrence will be working here for a while,’ Garrick said, putting the package of paper on the desk. ‘Bring her tea when she rings.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The manservant sounded cowed. He and Garrick were both gentlemen’s gentlemen, although I assumed that they took the relative status of their employers. But even so, I’d have expected him to say Mr Garrick, not Sir.
‘I will be back in an hour, perhaps two, Miss Lawrence. Will you be all right?’
‘Yes, certainly.’ I broke open the packet, took out paper and a pencil and settled myself behind the desk, then made myself look at the space in front of the hearth. The rug that had been so hideously stained had been replaced with a brightly-coloured Oriental. I wondered what the polished boards beneath looked like and repressed a shudder. Bloodstains couldn’t hurt me. ‘Thank you, Bromley.’
He left on almost silent feet, the door closing with a soft click behind him. I waited a minute, then removed the desk drawer, found the key and went to fetch the first ledger.
After an hour I was making good progress. I gave each initial letter its own sheet of paper to make sorting easier afterwards and jotted down name, medical condition and date. Once I was halfway through the first ledger I was finding repeats, so could just add the dates under the name.
I turned the last page in the second ledger and heard a sound, just a whisper that, for a moment, I could not identify. Then I realised there was someone in the room. That sound had been the brush of the lower edge of the door against an uneven floor board that I must have noticed subconsciously when I’d entered before. The door was behind me.
There was no weapon on the desk, not even a paperknife or a steel-nibbed pen. I had taken off my bonnet so had no hat pin and my reticule was on the fireside chair, which left only a pencil and the ledger. The final page crackled under my palm as I smoothed it down. One name. I added that to my notes and closed the volume, setting it upright on the desk and keeping hold of it ready to throw. Then I turned, as though getting up.
‘Bromley.’
I didn’t make the mistake of thinking he had brought tea and crumpets. His eyes were intent and full of some desperate emotion I couldn’t read and his jaw was working as though he was about to burst into speech at any moment. Then I looked down at his hands. He was holding an open cut-throat razor.
Chapter Ten
Breathe. Get up and put the desk between you. I stood slowly, not making any abrupt moves, pushed back the chair and edged to the far side of the desk, still holding the ledger. ‘What is the matter, Bromley? You shouldn’t hold an open blade like that, you might cut yourself.’
He didn’t seem to hear me. The wild gaze followed me as I moved, then, when I stopped, began to flicker around the room.
‘Bromley? Put the razor down.’ I tried for calm and authoritative but I might as well have been out on the street whistling for all the notice he took of me. The solid bulk of the ledger was some comfort, but I didn’t underestimate the destructive power of a razor. If I tripped or he feinted and I misjudged… I’d seen images of razor slashes, I knew what they could do to a face, to an artery. Don’t think about that.
‘Brom– ’
‘I told him. I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I told him.’
‘Doctor Talbot? You told him something?’
At the name he turned his head slowly and stared at me. ‘I told him. Told him I loved him.’
Oh hell. ‘Yes? You told him that here?’
His jaw worked as though the words had to be chewed into submission before he could utter them. ‘No. In his dressing room.’
He took a step forward and I moved back. My heel caught and for a moment I stumbled, righted myself, found I was standing just where we had found Talbot. I had almost tripped on the rug. Bromley kept coming and I kept moving back, past the screen shielding the street door that I knew was locked. When the valet stopped in front of the fireplace I took two rapid sideways steps and reached the far side of the couch. At least I could tip that over if he came at me.
‘What did he say?’ Try and establish a dialogue, they’d said in training on dealing with the drunk or violent.
<
br /> Bromley had been staring down at the rug, now he looked up, moving his head with that eerie slowness that had me wishing I had never seen a zombie film. ‘He laughed.’
Double hell. ‘Perhaps you took him by surprise,’ I suggested.
‘Don’t be pathetic.’ Bromley’s voice was suddenly so strong, so harsh, that I jumped.
‘I didn’t mean – ’
‘That’s what he said.’ His voice was back to that dreary murmur again. ‘He thought I was pathetic. I’d taken so long to find the courage to tell him how I felt. I kissed his hand. I was kneeling at his feet, holding his shoes. He pushed me away. I fell over.’
Bastard, I thought. Cruel bastard.
‘When was this, Bromley? In the morning?’
‘The night before.’ He held up the razor, turning it in front of his face as though to see himself in the polished steel. ‘He went out.’
The poor devil had spent all night brooding over his heartbreak, his humiliation and, of course, the loss of his position. He’d probably expected to be turned off without a character in the morning. But the mortification and the rejection, would be the worst things. He needed help, proper psychiatric help, and he wouldn’t get it in this century. If he was lucky, he’d be hanged, in public, in front of a jeering mob. If he was unlucky, he’d be sent to Bedlam to be an object of entertainment for that same mob, an early taste of hell. Had I any right to try and stop him cutting his own throat?
I came out from behind the couch, although I kept hold of the ledger. ‘Bromley – ’
‘No! Get away!’ He whirled, the razor slashing out.
I jumped back, crashed against the couch and somehow scrabbled upright. The ledger went flying. ‘Don’t do this,’ I said. ‘Don’t kill yourself. Lord Radcliffe has powerful friends, he’ll find a safe place for you.’ Surely there must be humane private asylums if you paid enough? ‘I understand why you did it.’
He stared at me, suddenly arrested in the middle of a lunge. ‘Did what?’
‘Killed Talbot.’
‘No. I didn’t kill him. I would never hurt him. I loved him.’
He was delusional, clearly. He’d brooded all night in mental agony, then cracked in the morning when his idol showed no sign of relenting. ‘Did Doctor Talbot tell you to come down here in the morning and then dismiss you from his employment?’ I asked, hoping to jog him into recalling it as it really was. ‘And then you hit out in sudden anger? I can understand…’
Bromley gave an incoherent cry of rage and rushed at me waving the razor. ‘Liar!’
I jumped clear fast enough, the training at the police station dojo had taught me that. But we hadn’t practised in trailing skirts, encumbered by stays and petticoats and wearing slippery little shoes. I landed on the edge of the ledger, turned my ankle and fell, sprawling on my back. Bromley dived at me, the light flashing off the blade, and I lifted my foot, got him in the gut and heaved.
It should have sent him over my head and it would have done if my legs had been free and I hadn’t been lying at an odd angle. He crashed down beside me, gasping, and I staggered to my feet as the door burst open and Garrick came barrelling through.
‘Look out – there’s an open razor under him somewhere,’ I shouted as he dived for Bromley.
There was the sound of a blow, a shriek and the razor shot across to the rug. I grabbed it, closed it and retreated behind the desk. ‘Don’t kill him!’
‘Why not?’ Garrick stood, bringing Bromley with him, one arm twisted up behind his back. ‘If I don’t Luc will.’
‘What the hell?’ Luc and James burst in and stopped dead. Then Luc strode across to the desk, took me by the shoulders, jerked me against him and kissed me until my head swam. ‘What happened?’ he demanded when he eventually let me go.
‘Look at this.’ James held up the ledger, a deep slashing cut right across the cover.
I pointed to the razor. ‘Bromley was going to cut his own throat. When I misunderstood and accused him of killing Talbot he, er, became irrational.’
‘Irrational?’ Garrick said. ‘I was walking past the window towards the front door and heard him becoming irrational very clearly. It sounded like nothing I’ve ever heard. When I got in here he had Cassandra on the floor – ’
He’d never called me by my first name before. I swallowed. ‘Correction. I had him on the floor. I’d just kicked him in the gut.’
‘Are you hurt?’ Luc demanded. I shook my head. ‘Thank God. We saw Garrick break into a run, got here to find the front door wide open…’
‘Look, let’s go upstairs, sit down, have some tea, discuss this,’ I suggested. ‘Bromley is deeply distressed.’
‘He is distressed?’ Luc snarled, but he shrugged, took my arm and led the way to the door.
We ended up in the kitchen and I was quite glad of the heat of the range. Garrick tied Bromley’s ankles to the legs of a heavy chair and gave him sweet tea too when I insisted. The man was silent, shaking, and seemed dazed. He certainly gave no sign of hearing me when I recounted what had happened.
‘Is it likely that Talbot would react like that?’ Luc asked James.
‘Oh yes, if he was taken by surprise. I imagine he had absolutely no idea what to do and was clumsy as a result.’
‘I’d say cruel.’
James gave me a rueful smile. ‘He was very much absorbed with Coates. I think the discovery that someone felt like that was a complete shock, especially when he did not regard them as in any way his equal, when they were someone in his own household.’
‘Anyway, he was thoughtless enough to go out and leave Bromley alone to brood all through the night and into the morning. I assumed that he had summoned him downstairs, said something to make things worse, or dismissed him, and Bromley struck out with the poker.’
‘An odd weapon for a valet,’ James said. ‘I’d have expected him to use that razor.’ We all looked at the deadly thing lying on the table in front of Luc.
‘Only if he had gone down there intending murder,’ Luc pointed out. ‘It wasn’t as though the crime was committed in his dressing room where it was easily to hand.’
‘I did not kill Doctor Talbot,’ Bromley said suddenly, making us all jump. ‘I was going to kill myself. Then you came to the door and found him, so then I wanted to find out who had murdered him so I could kill them and then cut my throat.’ He sounded exhausted, but calm and rational. ‘But at the inquest there was no clue who might have done it. I saw it was hopeless, so I thought I’d do it today, go down and tell Miss Lawrence so someone knew.’
‘I believe him,’ I said. ‘He was utterly shocked when I assumed he had killed Talbot. It was frightening because his behaviour was so strange – and he had the razor, of course – but I swear he wasn’t hostile to me until he realised I thought him the killer.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Lawrence,’ Bromley said.
The handle of Luc’s cup snapped off in his hand but he met my gaze and kept silent.
‘What are we going to do with him?’ James asked. ‘If we hand him over with this story they’ll hang him.’
‘He needs care – and I don’t mean tossing into one of your awful madhouses. Somewhere secure but where he will be properly looked after,’ I said.
‘I might know of a place,’ Luc said. ‘One of the members at White’s had a brother who became… unwell. He was telling me he found a doctor who took in a few patients, securely. Apparently the family have been visiting regularly and have been very impressed at how well he’s been looked after. He might have a vacancy, although I gather it comes at a high price.’
‘You can afford it.’
His brows drew together at my tone. ‘Of course I can. But for a man who tried to kill you?’
‘Yes. He’s a victim in this.’
‘Very well.’ He shrugged. ‘I recall the address because it happened to be next door to a house I took for… That is, I rented on behalf of someone a while ago in Kensington.’
From James’s e
xpression I guessed this would have been a mistress. He saw me looking and said hastily, ‘Give me the address. Garrick and I will take Bromley now and see if the doctor can take him right away. He must be used to emergencies. If he can’t then we’ll have to come back here, lock him in and think of something tomorrow.’
‘I’ll pack him a bag,’ Garrick said and went upstairs while I tried to explain to Bromley what was happening, although he seemed too sunk in apathy to care.
I probably looked about as responsive as the manservant by the time we got back to Luc’s apartment. I was stiff, sore, shocked and upset and all I wanted was a hot bath and a cuddle, preferably both at once. One look at Luc’s stony face told me I wasn’t going to get either in a hurry, so I took myself off to the kitchen and stoked up the copper in the scullery.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked from the doorway.
‘Heating water. I want a bath.’ I focused on the coal scuttle with a fierce determination not to cry.
‘Cassie.’ Luc came right into the little whitewashed space and took me by the shoulders.
I yelped. ‘Careful. I’m a mass of bruises.’
‘You said you weren’t hurt.’ He sounded furious.
‘I fell over twice, once on top of that confounded ledger. I’ve fought off a man with a razor who weighs as much as I do and I… I’m upset and a hot bath will make me feel a lot better. So please, go away.’
The sound Luc made came from deep in his chest, choked off almost as soon as it escaped.
‘Lucian?’ He was already turning away, but I caught him by the arm and forced him to look at me. It wasn’t anger I’d been seeing, sensing. He looked as though someone had died. ‘Luc, talk to me. What’s wrong?’
‘What is wrong? I sent you there, by yourself, even though I knew Bromley was in the building. When you are in danger of your life it is Garrick who saves you, not me. You are hurt and distressed and I did not realise how much because I was too busy kicking myself for not foreseeing this, for not protecting you. Now you want nothing to do with me and I understand. I’ll fill that bath for you.’