Stoker put out his hand for the newspaper. He read in silence, and when he had finished, his jaw was set. “Would you be interested in interviewing a woman who knew her? Someone who could tell you what it is like to live on the streets? To sleep rough and to earn your bread on your back?”
She leant forwards eagerly. “Would I indeed!”
Mornaday looked affronted. “It is far too dangerous,” he began.
J. J. rounded on him. “What I do is not your concern,” she told him, her tone biting. I had little doubt this was a conversation they had had on more than one occasion. “Besides,” she went on, “you had no objections when I wanted to work for Madame Aurore to write an exposé on the doings at her club.”
“I had the most strenuous objections,” he reminded her coldly.
“And look where that got you,” she jeered. “I did it anyway. You would never have got your own post there without me.”
“Is that how you came to be on hand?” I asked him. “We were grateful for the assistance, but you might have told us.”
He had the grace to look a little abashed. “I could not be sure. I heard snippets of the inspector’s plots, and I kept my ear to the ground. I trailed him a time or two and discovered he was meeting with de Clare. That put me immediately in mind of the last time that particular fellow came to our attention. Archibond was spending a good deal of his time at Madame Aurore’s—too much for a man merely bent upon a bit of rumpy-pumpy,” he added with a leer that would have done credit to a satyr. “I deduced the Club de l’Étoile was more than a spot for debauchery. It was a meeting place, a focus for some dastardly plan. So I prevailed upon J. J. to help me gain employment since she already had a post there,” he acknowledged grudgingly.
I turned to J. J. “How does it happen that you were already in Madame Aurore’s employ?”
“Mornaday,” she said smoothly. “He was kind enough to volunteer the information that the club was a rich source of material for a story with all the comings and goings of the great and good.”
“Volunteer!” Mornaday snorted. “You got that out of me with your feminine wiles.”
J. J. blinked at him, wide-eyed and feigning innocence. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”
Mornaday grumbled under his breath. “She had been sniffing around the club for some weeks, making notes for a story she intended to write. When I asked her to secure a position there for me, it was the least she could do.”
“I think what Mornaday means to say,” she put in coldly, “is that he extorted a reference from me on the grounds that he would tell Madame Aurore exactly what my purpose was in taking employment in the club and ruin my story if I did not help him.”
Mornaday’s smile was smug. “Sauce for the goose, my dear.” He turned back to me.
“I went in disguise so that Archibond should not know me.”
“And kept your disguise even when speaking with friends,” I put in.
“I could not know you were not a part of the plot,” he returned. “I had to be certain. I even came round and gave you tickets to the theatre to test you, which you bloody well failed. Innocent people would have used them.”
“I do not care for Gilbert and Sullivan,” Stoker reminded him.
Mornaday scoffed. “What sort of Englishman doesn’t care for Gilbert and Sullivan? They are national treasures, they are. In any event, your turning up at the club that night roused my suspicions. I had given you the perfect outing if you were innocent, but instead you appeared, just in the thick of the most damnable conspiracy I have seen since the last time de Clare darkened these shores. It was very difficult to entertain any possibility of your innocence after that.”
“What persuaded you?” Stoker demanded.
Mornaday shifted in his seat. “I discovered Madame Aurore’s body, just after the deed was done. I had seen de Clare and one of his men go into the dressing room, and I heard voices, raised. When they came out, de Clare’s lad was putting a gore-stained handkerchief back into his pocket. I slipped into her room and found her there. I heard someone coming and hared into her bathroom, hiding behind the door.”
“So you heard everything when we entered with the prince?” I guessed.
“Most of it,” he affirmed. “Enough to realize none of you had a bloody thing to do with the conspiracy. So I decided to help.”
“Help?” Stoker’s expression was frankly skeptical.
Mornaday colored deeply. “Yes, as it happens. I did you a very great service. I scuttled down to the generator house and cut the electricity so you could get away in darkness. I meant to find you and lead you out of the place myself, but . . .” He trailed off, clearly uncomfortable.
“But?” I pressed.
“But he fell down,” J. J. said, scarcely suppressing her mirth. “He tripped over a leg in the darkness and fell headlong into the punch bowl. He came out festooned with liquored fruits.”
He scowled at her, no doubt deploring the less than romantic picture she had painted. He wanted to believe himself a swashbuckling hero, and yet to J. J. he would only ever be Mornaday, the bungling charmer of Scotland Yard.
I reached over and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Well done, Mornaday. You always come through in the end. In spite of yourself.”
He brightened considerably at that and Stoker folded the newspaper with maddening precision. “Yes, indeed. I suppose I ought to thank you for arriving when you did. A few minutes later and I might have been dangerously injured,” he said, giving a significant look to the bandages still swathing his torso.
Mornaday’s smile faded. “Yes, well. I did my best, didn’t I? I spent half the night clearing up after you, carting corpses around to keep the prince from being implicated.”
Stoker opened his mouth to argue, but I held up a hand. “If the pair of you mean to brawl, kindly wait until both of you are fit and do it properly, with pistols at dawn. Miss Butterworth and I will serve as your seconds.”
“Speak for yourself, Miss Speedwell,” J. J. said. “I rather think we should let them get on with killing one another. It would save us all a great deal of time and bother.”
“I have had quite enough of pistols,” Stoker said dryly. He gave Mornaday a long, level gaze. “I suppose we really do owe you a debt of thanks. Not just for a timely arrival, but for protecting the prince.”
“I am still not persuaded he is worth it,” Mornaday said with a ghost of a smile. “But you are welcome.” A moment of understanding, perfect and amicable, hung between them. I might have known it would not last long.
“Still, you did leave our rescue rather late,” Stoker said.
Mornaday thrust his hands into his hair. “Do you know how hard it was to find you? You vanished from the club in the middle of the night and I had no notion of where Archibond might have taken you nor where you might have disappeared after.”
“We were at Bishop’s Folly,” I told him unhelpfully.
“You. Went. Home,” he managed, biting off each syllable.
“Well, we got the prince to safety and then assumed Archibond was far too intelligent and de Clare too unnerved to stay in England. It seemed a safe enough proposition,” I said by way of defending us.
Mornaday shook his head. “If only I had gone to you then,” he said, his tone frankly mournful.
“But then you might not have had the opportunity to apprehend the conspirators,” J. J. pointed out with infallible logic. She turned to me and to Stoker. “Poor Mornaday was at a loss once you disappeared from the club. There were records connecting Archibond with the warehouse in Whitechapel, but it took more than a day to put the pieces together, and by that time you had escaped him and he had fled. Mornaday and I could not unravel the next bit of the plot until we compared what we knew and were able to anticipate Archibond’s last desperate gambit—luring you here.” She smiled in obvious satisf
action. “Whilst Mornaday was haring around town in pursuit of Archibond, I was following you. I suspected you were the key to the whole scheme, as much as Mornaday tried to keep your name out of it. And when I recognized you at the club, I knew I had only to go to Bishop’s Folly anytime I wanted to pick up your trail.”
I gave her an even stare. “And you know the purpose of the plot.”
She nodded. “I do. They meant to use a series of scandals to throw this lot off the throne and install you in their place.”
“You are no respecter of institutions,” I commented mildly. “And yet you are willing to protect them. You have not written about this in your newspaper. An ambitious reporter, sitting quietly on the story of the century. It beggars belief.”
She curled her hands into fists. “I am ambitious, and I mean to make a name for myself,” she vowed. “But I will not do it that way, not with that sort of destruction. The cost would be too high. The world is not ready for such anarchy.”
“You are a royalist after all,” I said softly.
“I am a pragmatist,” she corrected. “I want to write stories that will do real good, accomplish some purposeful change. Like speaking with the women who live in Whitechapel,” she said with a nod towards Stoker.
“I will arrange it,” he promised.
“And you will keep my secret?” I asked.
She gave me an assessing look. “Let me be a part of your adventures whenever possible, and I will keep it to the grave, Miss Speedwell,” she said, extending her hand to shake mine.
“That is a bargain, Miss Butterworth.”
* * *
• • •
Stoker remained in Pennybaker’s care for more than a fortnight before he was permitted to leave. I stayed with him, sleeping in my narrow elephant-bedecked bed next to his in the night nursery. I left him only once—to retrieve clothing from Bishop’s Folly and make our excuses to the earl. I sketched a vague story about an accident, and his lordship, distracted by the new arrival of a set of cameos of polished Vesuvian lava, made suitable noises of sympathy and told us to take as long as we needed before returning. I was delighted to find Lady Wellie on the mend, and took tea with her before I left.
“Well,” she said, eyeing my sling disapprovingly, “I see you have been up to mischief whilst I have been incommoded.”
“A bit,” I conceded. Over tea from her Wedgwood crocodile service, I told her the whole story, including our harrowing adventure with Eddy and his secret return to Scotland.
“I know,” she said calmly.
I blinked, pausing in the act of dolloping a bit of strawberry jam on a muffin.
“You do?”
She smiled, her old bird-of-prey smile that never changed. “My dear child, I have had regular visits from most members of the family.”
She did not need to specify which family. My heart beat faster, thudding dully against my ribs as I put the spoon aside with careful hands.
“Was—”
“Your father? No. But the Princess of Wales came. And Eddy.” She gave me a close look. “You liked him, didn’t you?”
“I did. In spite of myself. There is an unexpected sweetness to him.”
She paused, nodding gravely. Her gaze drifted and her expression was inscrutable.
She poured out a fresh cup of tea, stirring with deliberate calm. “By the way, you might return my diary when you have a moment. That is how you and Stoker discovered my state of mind, is it not?”
I did not bother to deny it. “We were concerned, and Archibond played upon those worries expertly.”
“As he did my own,” she said. “The anonymous note and the cuttings were his, planting that monstrous suggestion.”
“It was unkind of him,” I began.
“Unkind! It was diabolical,” she said with real venom. “But once the idea had been raised, I saw how easily our enemies might make political capital of it, true or not.”
“He is not responsible, you know,” I told her firmly. “Eddy could never have committed the murders in Whitechapel.”
A flicker of emotion crossed her face. In another, I might have called it guilt. But I was entirely certain Lady Wellie was unacquainted with such a feeling.
“I did not believe it,” she told me. “Not really. But all possibilities, no matter how distasteful, must be investigated, if only to rule them out. I did not believe it.”
I might have believed her if she had not repeated herself. For whatever reason—ill health, fatigue, distraction—she had permitted her imagination to get the better of her, doubting a man she had known since birth, whose every flaw and virtue were as familiar to her as her own face. She would not forgive herself easily, and she would never forget.
I did not have the heart to prod her further. I returned my attention to my muffin and she said suddenly, her eyes bright, “I am glad you had a chance to spend time with him.”
“So am I.
“You might have told us of your suspicions before the princess appealed to us to retrieve the jewel. It would have saved a great deal of trouble.”
She put her cup into the saucer, rattling it only a little. “Do not think I am unaware of how badly I mishandled matters this time. That Archibond should—” She broke off, composing herself after a moment. “I have decided to take a sabbatical. The weather is not good for my neuralgia, and I need the sun. I am leaving next week for Egypt.”
“You will be missed,” I told her.
“Yes, well, it will give me a chance to complete my recovery and contemplate my sins,” she said crisply.
“It does not matter now,” I said. “It is finished.”
Her smile was pitying. “My dear child, it is never finished. Our enemies are cunning and careful. And they are legion.”
“And this time they have lost,” I assured her. “Mornaday and Sir Hugo will never reveal my patrimony.”
“And that reporter?” she asked, her lips thinning with displeasure.
“Miss Butterworth and I have come to an understanding,” I said coolly.
“Indeed?”
“Yes, we have shaken hands upon the matter and I trust her.”
Her mouth curled. “A gentlemen’s agreement?”
“No,” I told her. “Better than that. It is a ladies’ agreement.”
CHAPTER
25
The other order of business at Bishop’s Folly was not nearly so pleasant. It transpired that, during his interview with Sir Hugo, Mornaday had omitted one significant detail—the murder of Madame Aurore.
“Why on earth would you fail to tell him about that?” J. J. demanded.
Mornaday looked frankly mulish. “I couldn’t very well tell my superior that I had been haring about London with a corpse in tow, now, could I? There are laws about such things.”
“Why not?” she asked disdainfully. “You were covering up a crime, something Sir Hugo seems entirely comfortable with.”
“I was never supposed to be working in the Club de L’Étoile in the first place,” he reminded her stiffly. “Archibond was my superior. If Sir Hugo discovered I had spied upon him and trailed him on the strength of nothing more than a suspicion, he would drum me out of the Yard, and my new promotion would go hang on a washing line. Besides, Sir Hugo did what he did out of necessity for the good of the nation—nay, for the good of the Empire.”
She snorted. “You mean for the good of his own arse. If anyone knew an anarchist had carried out an abduction of a senior royal under the very nose of the people tasked with their protection, he would be out of a post before you could snap your fingers,” she said, clicking her fingers for emphasis.
Mornaday flushed hotly. “Sir Hugo Montgomerie would never put himself first in such a situation, and if you think he would, you are the most cynical—”
I held up a hand. “Pax, ch
ildren. Now, regardless of why we have a corpse on our hands, the point is that we do. And she must be dealt with.”
In a late-night whispered council of war in the night nursery—now Stoker’s recovery ward—we decided amongst ourselves that she ought to be laid to rest quietly. She had no family to mourn her, no close friends, we discovered. Mornaday went to make discreet inquiries at the club, but it was shuttered, the staff dispersed, and her solicitor could offer no further information. Madame Aurore had built a career on secrets and she took them to her grave.
Following Stoker’s careful instructions, Mornaday and J. J. and I disposed of Madame Aurore. We returned to Bishop’s Folly late one night to finish the sordid task. We tied strips of cloth soaked in camphor over our mouths and noses to counter the stench, but J. J. was sick again when Mornaday removed the lid of the sarcophagus. I retrieved the Templeton-Vane tiara, cleaning it carefully before wrapping it in a piece of velvet and putting it with the armillae into a rusted biscuit box for safekeeping. Only Stoker would look there, I reflected, and so long as there were no biscuits to be found, the tiara would remain undisturbed.
“Best dispose of this while we’re about it,” Mornaday said, tugging an armful of pink taffeta from a bundle near the corpse’s feet.
“That is the gown the prince was wearing,” I said at once. I retrieved the bundle, only a little soiled from its proximity to decomposition. “How did you come to find this?” I demanded.
He pulled himself up, puffing a little with pride. “I was following you that night. Not near enough to stop them snatching you off the curb,” he said, clearly irritated with his own failures. “But I managed to recover that. I still had it when I went to collect madame’s body,” he added with a jerk of the chin towards his former employer. “I stuffed it into the box with her so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Between that and that bloody awful tiara, I did nothing but clear up after the pair of you all evening,” he added with a grin.
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