Murder in Grosvenor Square

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Good heavens,” she said, studying the man from red-rimmed eyes. “He seems in a right state. You’d better go with him, Lacey, hadn’t you?”

  *

  I gathered up my greatcoat, fetching my walking stick from the bedchamber, and followed Mr. Mackay into the dark dampness of the March night. He led me through Russel Street to Covent Garden, the vendors in the market now closing down for the night, which meant the criminal element would be emerging to play.

  The street girls knew me and grinned as I passed, but they stared at Mackay, who was as out of place as a tropical bird in brickyard. He walked carefully, as though he rarely took a step in his too-shiny boots, which made me wonder—where was his coach, hired or otherwise? Why was he tramping, alone, in the environs of Covent Garden?

  I had no chance to ask. He began a brisk pace after we turned to James Street and so on to Long Acre. Beyond that, we headed toward Seven Dials, not the most salubrious part of town. I kept my walking stick ready and looked about me, but Mr. Mackay seemed oblivious to danger. I’d never seen a man so nearly beg for ruffians to set upon and rob him.

  As Mackay turned down a narrow and noisome passage, I wondered whether I wasn’t the man asking to be set upon. I’d followed him here, knowing nothing about him, and I now willingly walked after him down the lane. I was a lame man armed only with a sword, which I’d have to extricate from my walking stick. I’d never manage against a crowd of Seven Dials toughs.

  Mackay stopped in the middle of the passage and let out a noise of despair. I caught up to him and found him peering at a swath of mud on the hard-packed cobbles.

  “He was here.” Mackay put his hands on top of his head and made another moaning sound. “He was here. What has become of him?”

  I liked this less and less. I loosened my sword and studied the stones, finding not only mud but something dark and glittering in the faint light from a window above us. I crouched down, wincing at the pain in my knee, stripped off my glove, and touched my fingers to the wet patch.

  The dying light showed a dark red substance clinging to my fingers, kept damp by the mud. Blood. And much of it.

  “Who?” I asked, rising with difficulty. “Who was it?”

  “Where did he go? Who took him?” Mackay’s words came fast with the beginnings of hysterics.

  “Mr. Mackay.” My voice cut sharply through his cries. “You must tell me. What did you find here?”

  He couldn’t answer. He’d be no more help to me, I could see. I wished for a lantern, but I’d brought none, having no idea Mackay had meant to lead me into these warrens.

  I left him there and went back to the main street. People were hurrying home, ready to put walls between themselves and the night. I followed a man who ducked into a nearby house, and caught the door before he could shut it.

  “I need a light,” I said into his frightened face. “A lantern, man. I need one.”

  He hesitated, so I pushed inside his house, unhooked a lantern I found hanging beside the door, lit the candle from one his equally terrified wife had already lighted, and made my way out.

  “I’ll return it when I’m done,” I promised as I went.

  The wife recovered her shock and screamed at me “’Ere! You!” before her husband slammed the door, muffling the sound.

  Back in the alley, Mackay was leaning against a wall, his breath coming in hoarse gasps. At least he’d stopped wailing.

  I returned to the blood and lifted the lantern over it, quickly finding smears that led farther into the passage. The smear died to droplets after a time, but the candle picked them out.

  I’d hoped Mackay would follow me, but he remained behind, in the dark. I stooped as I went along, supporting myself with my walking stick, flashing the lantern across the ground.

  I came upon a boot print in the middle of the blood trail, then another, but the boots were of different sizes. Two men, one perhaps supporting the other. If they were seeking help, they were going the wrong way—deeper into the darkness.

  I found them not many steps later. Clouds had gathered thickly above the city, rendering this closely confined passage utterly dark. The lantern, however, told me all I needed to know.

  Two men lay stretched out upon the ground. They wore the boots whose tracks I’d seen, but the rest of their clothes were in disarray. One was missing his coat and waistcoat, the front of his long trousers open. The other’s breeches and drawers were down around his boots, though he’d retained his waistcoat and cravat.

  The one with breeches fallen down was dead, his eyes open and staring into the night. The other, his pale hair smeared with black blood, was still breathing, his heart beating under my palm as I pressed it to his chest.

  The dead man, his brown eyes open to the sky, was Gareth Travers. Next to him, his head bloody, lying beside the body of his lover, was Leland Derwent.

  Chapter Seven

  My strength left me. My legs folded up, and I found myself sitting against the dirty wall next to the two young men.

  “Leland,” I whispered. “What happened to you?”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes were closed but not tightly, a gleam of white orb showing in the lantern’s light.

  I prayed. I hadn’t in a long while, but I begged God with harsh words to please make this scene not what it was. Make Leland Derwent not be here, beaten in an alley next to Gareth, who was dead.

  God didn’t answer. He didn’t change anything in that dark alley. Nothing stirred at all, not even the rats that were wary of my light.

  Strength returned to me with my rage—at Leland and Gareth for being here at all, at whoever had beaten these lads so thoroughly that one had died and one still might.

  Had they been caught together in the passage? Performing an act that was so vile to whoever had found them that they’d been beaten down? And why the holy hell had Leland and Travers chosen a passage near Seven Dials for their tryst? Why not somewhere soft, private, and safe?

  “Leland,” I shook him, then pried open one of his gray eyes and shone my lantern into it. Leland didn’t move, didn’t moan.

  “Mackay!” I called back down the passage.

  He did not respond, and I started cursing the man. What the devil had he been doing here? Why hadn’t he helped?

  I shouted again for Mackay then went back down the passage to where I’d left him, hoping he hadn’t run away.

  I expected so much that he had, that I was surprised to find him leaning against a wall, a folded handkerchief at his mouth. Mackay rocked a little, breathing in uneven gasps.

  I shone the lantern in his face, making him blink. “Go back to my rooms,” I told him. “Fetch Marianne if she’s still there, and tell her to send for Grenville.”

  Mackay’s eyes rounded in distress. “Mr. Grenville? You can’t … he can’t …”

  “For God’s sake, man—Leland will die if he’s not looked after. I need Grenville’s coach to get him home. Now go.”

  “But …”

  I suppressed the urge to punch him. “Then are you willing to sit by them and wait until I return?”

  Mackay’s eyes went even wider, and he shied from my light. “I can’t stay here.”

  “Then go fetch Marianne. She’s the woman in my rooms. If she’s not there, check the rooms above. If you can’t find her at all, tell Mrs. Beltan in the bakeshop to send someone to Grenville—if you’re such a milksop that you can’t go yourself.”

  Mackay managed a nod. “The woman in your rooms. Yes. I’ll … go.”

  Handkerchief once more at his mouth, Mackay stumbled down the passage to the street. I wondered if he’d make it to Grimpen Lane.

  Leland needed to be home, needed a surgeon. Grenville’s carriage could carry him there in some comfort. I knew Grenville would respond quickly to a message from Marianne, never mind her conviction he’d forgotten all about her. I knew better.

  I supposed I could have sent for Donata’s carriage, but I knew she was using it tonight to take her from fri
ends’ abodes to the theatre, and truth to tell, I couldn’t remember exactly where she’d gone. I only knew that Grenville, once found, would put things together in a rapid and efficient manner.

  I made my way back to the two men and sank down beside Leland. His blood was black on his face, and I lifted his head to my lap. I patted his cheek, but didn’t have much hope of waking him. His breath grated, but at least he still breathed.

  Travers lay a foot beyond us, his eyes staring at nothing. The lad I’d admonished so harshly in the tavern earlier today, who’d grinned at me in the end and sprang up with such exuberance, was dead.

  I knew I ought to have sent Mackay running to Bow Street, or shouted for the Watch myself—though I doubted any night watchman would be brave enough to venture down here.

  But the two lads found like this would raise too many questions. I did not want Pomeroy, or even worse, Spendlove, to see them like this, to reveal to the world that the two had been lovers. I might not be able to save the lad’s lives, but I could spare them that.

  A strong voice came out of the darkness behind me, making me jump. “Captain.”

  The word was followed by a man who strode toward me with the confidence that nothing in this place was more frightening than he was. I’d have been alarmed by his size and the fact that he carried a cudgel, if I hadn’t recognized him as Denis’s man Brewster.

  “Do you have a conveyance?” I snapped at him without greeting.

  Brewster took in the two young men, their clothes open and missing, and me sitting next to them, my legs sprawled. He gave me his usual stoic look from his great height and said, “I’ll take care of it, Captain,” then turned away and walked firmly back down the passage.

  I had no need to wonder how Brewster had happened to turn up here. He’d been following me. Denis always kept watch on me, and Brewster had no doubt been haunting my steps since I’d made for Covent Garden this evening.

  Once Brewster was gone, I came to myself, shaking off my stupor. Leland was too cold. I slid off my greatcoat and wrapped it around him.

  I groped about in the dark and flashed the lantern around, but I could not find what had become of Leland’s coat and waistcoat. He wore a lawn shirt, so light it was almost silken to the touch, but the shirt gaped open, Leland’s collar and cravat gone.

  The killer might have taken the clothes, or perhaps a person who’d come upon them had decided to steal a good coat rather than help the two young men. Leland’s coat and waistcoat could fetch a good price with a secondhand clothier who didn’t ask questions.

  I gently buttoned Leland’s trousers, hiding the pale patch of skin and his flaccid member. I didn’t like to move him too much, but I laid him on his back then rose and made my way to Travers, restoring his clothing the best I could.

  I sat down again, returning Leland’s head to my lap, the lantern a dim beacon next to us. I brushed Leland’s hair back from his face, examining his wounds, but I had not much doubt how he’d come by them. Someone had beaten the back and side of his head, but it was too dark to tell more than that.

  Travers had been beaten even more severely.

  I passed one of the longest hours I’d ever passed, alone in the dark passage with the two young men. I felt helpless and limp, aching.

  After a time, I heard rattling at the end of the alley and the sound of a horse’s hooves on cobbles—a large draft horse, not the light stepping of a dandy’s carriage horses.

  A flat-bedded dray wagon came to a halt at the passage’s mouth. The driver didn’t dismount, but Brewster dropped off the back. “You stay there,” he said in his rough voice.

  The driver glanced about nervously, but he kept the reins slack in his hands and made no move to pull away.

  Brewster came to me with his lumbering gait. “Where do you want ’em shifted to, Captain?”

  “What do you make of the wounds?” I asked him instead of answering. While I had much experience with injuries made by pistols, carbines, bayonets, knives, and various forms of artillery, I’d never learned about the art of bludgeoning.

  Brewster bent over the bodies with an air of a professional. “Hard to see in this light. But I’d say a piece of wood. One with nails in it.” He touched the side of Travers’s head where the blood was blackest. “He was smacked with the club, and the nails sticking out of the end went right in.”

  I swallowed a sourness in my throat. “What the devil kind of man would do such a thing?”

  Brewster shrugged. “I can see any number of coves around ’ere doing for ’em. They’d want to keep mollies, especially rich ones, away from their boys.”

  “I very much doubt Mr. Travers and Mr. Derwent had any interest in the lads around here,” I said. “Which returns me to the question—what were they doing here?”

  “Can’t say as to that,” Brewster answered, though I’d spoken mostly to myself. “Need to get ’em away, though, before the Watch stumbles on ’em.”

  He had a point. I could not wait any longer for Grenville’s carriage—I’d have to apologize for the summons later.

  I tried to lift Leland, but my leg was sore from being folded up on the pavement in the cold. I couldn’t hold him.

  Brewster took Leland’s slack body from me with surprisingly gentle hands. “Let me, Captain. You get ’em tucked in all comfortable on the dray and leave the carrying to me.”

  His suggestion was sensible. I stayed with Travers, while Brewster carried Leland away, hoping without much hope that Gareth would blink his eyes, laugh, and tell me he and Leland had played a fine joke on me.

  He didn’t. Travers lay still, dead, and would never joke again.

  *

  I wasn’t certain where to take them. If I rolled up in a dray in Grosvenor Square and carried two bodies inside Sir Gideon Derwent’s house, it would be in every newspaper the next morning. If I took them to Grenville’s, not far from the Derwents, the same thing would occur.

  I contemplated taking them to my rooms in Grimpen Lane, but I had gossipy neighbors, none more than my landlady. Mrs. Beltan often stayed late in her shop, preparing for the next day, and the ladies across the street would visit her, knowing Mrs. Beltan sold her leftover bread at half price and sometimes even gave it away.

  “I know a place, sir,” Brewster said, when I’d voiced my dilemma. “If you need to hide ’em for a bit.”

  “Leland needs a surgeon,” I said.

  “No matter. We’ll get ’em stashed away, and a surgeon can be fetched.”

  Not ideal, but I wanted them out of the rain. “Lead on,” I said wearily.

  Brewster gave me a nod and climbed up onto the seat with the driver. I settled in the back next to the tarp-covered bundle that was Leland and Travers, commending us all to the hands of a man who made a living committing murder for James Denis.

  Chapter Eight

  Brewster took us to a house in a tiny lane off High Holborn. Not the most affluent address, but the house was private. The narrow abode, the width of one room and a staircase hall on each floor, rose four stories to a ceiling lost in shadows.

  The house was dark, no lights but a candle in a lantern Brewster held. I’d insisted on returning my lantern to the man I’d taken it from, much to Brewster’s amused disdain.

  Brewster led me up two flights of stairs to a front bedroom. I could tell it was a bedchamber only when Brewster’s lantern cut through the vault of blackness to illuminate pale hangings around a large bed. I laid Leland on the bed’s coverlet, ignoring the blood and mud both of us smeared on it. “It’s bloody freezing in here,” I said over my shoulder. “Get a fire going.”

  Brewster grunted, not liking to take orders from me, but he saw the sense in doing so. Soon he was banging around the fireplace and had a blaze going. He lit fresh candles in silver candlesticks, lighting up the small room.

  The bedchamber was sparse, with only a bed, a washstand, and a night table. No curtains hung in the many-paned window, though they were draped heavily around the bed, whic
h told me it was used. The washstand was from the past century, polished mahogany, the top with the washbowl made to swing open to reveal the slop bowl beneath. Grenville had one like it in the guest room in which I’d often stayed.

  Leland was breathing, but that breath was labored. His lids were half-open, his eyes unmoving. “We need to find a surgeon,” I reminded Brewster. “A good one, not a quack.”

  Brewster didn’t answer and started to trudge away.

  “Wait,” I called. “What about Travers?”

  Brewster paused in the doorway. “Still in the cart. He’s dead, inn’t he?”

  “Bring him inside. Give him some dignity.”

  The man did not hasten to obey. “He needs burying. He’s going to start stinking.”

  “Then we will have to live with the stink. Put him in a ground-floor room and keep the mice away from him.”

  Brewster scowled. “I can’t do everything, Captain. And Mr. Denis won’t like a corpse in his front room.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “This is his house, is it?”

  “Aye. He keeps it for business. Sometimes a ladybird.”

  The idea that the ice-cold Mr. Denis ever did anything as sentimental as tuck a mistress into a discreet house was absurd. I nearly laughed, but the laugh would have been tinged with madness. I supposed every man needed to satisfy his bodily needs—God knew I enjoyed it—but Denis seemed to subsist on cold air alone.

  “Perhaps he will know a surgeon who can be discreet,” I said. “You can send word to him?”

  “Oh, aye, he’ll know you’re here.” Brewster’s voice was hard, his annoyance apparent. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Yes, hunt up Grenville. He will be racing to my summons at Seven Dials.”

  Brewster didn’t bother to answer; he strode noisily out of the room and left me.

  I heard him slam the front door of the house, but I also heard movement in the lower floors, presumably the driver carrying Travers inside.

  I hunted up cloths from a cupboard in the hall, but I’d need to climb down the stairs for water or shout for the dray’s driver to bring it up. That assumed there was any water below, and the man wouldn’t have to run to the nearest pump.