Cut to the Quick (34 page)

She was stocky and healthy-looking, though weary just now, her eyes bloodshot and smudged with shadows. Locks of hair, so pale it was almost white, strayed out from under her cap. She had a snub nose and round, clear, light blue eyes.

“We're closed—” she began. Then, seeing Julian, she broke off in surprise. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?" Her tone suggested she could not imagine what that might be.

“I’m looking for a young lady named Louisa."

“I'm Louisa. Louisa Howland."

“How do you do, Miss Howland. My name is Julian Kestrel. I have something very important to speak to you about. May I come in?"

“Well—I suppose it’s all right. My mother's sick, but she’s sleeping just now. If she wakes, I'll have to go up to her."

She led him into the shop. “What is it?"

“I believe you once knew a young lady called Amy Fields."

Her eyes lit up. “Do you know something about Amy? Where is she?"

He hesitated, wanting to break the news gently.

“Oh, I see how it is!’* she burst out. “You should be ashamed of yourself—ashamed! I wonder you can face a Christian woman, after what you've done!"

“Miss Howland—”

“Why couldn’t you have left her alone? She was a good girl, and trying hard to live respectable, in spite of being taught all wrong and having a mother no better than a cat’s, and how you could take advantage of anybody as weak as she was—! And now you come wanting me to put right whatever you’ve done to her. Well, I'll go to her, and I’ll take her away from you and your kind, and she can live with Mother and me again—I don’t care how bad she’s been. Where is she? What’ve you done with her?”

“Miss Howland, I never knew Miss Fields. I never even laid eyes on her—until after she was dead.”

“Amy’s dead?” she said in a small voice.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“How did she die?”

“She was murdered.”

“What? Somebody killed her? Who’d do that? And why?”

“That is precisely what I should like to find out.”

He explained his connexion with the murder—how he had found the body in his room at Bellegarde, and his valet had been accused of the crime. He said as little as possible about the Fontclairs, and nothing about Geoffrey’s letters. He felt an obligation to the Fontclairs not to spread that story any further than he could help.

She fished out a handkerchief and clumsily blew her nose. “I heard there’d been a murder at a country squire’s house. People’ve been talking their heads off about it the past few days. But I’ve been so taken up with nursing Mother, I haven’t had time to go out much, or look at a newspaper. I never thought it could have anything to do with Amy. You hear about terrible crimes, but you never think the person it’s done to could be somebody you know. You don’t think she was—I mean—the killer, he didn’t—”

“No. No. She wasn’t molested in any way.”

“I’m glad. Amy couldn’t have borne that. She was shy with men. They scared her.”

“But you thought at first she was having a love affair with me.” “That’s because I couldn’t think why else a gentleman like you would be asking after her. And when a girl as pretty as Amy runs away all of a sudden, you can’t help but wonder if there’s a man in

it somewhere. But it didn’t sound like Amy—that’s what’s puzzled me all along. She was never one to run after the men. She was shy with everybody, but men most of all. You know, she had a mother who was nothing but a doxy—taking up with men for what they could give her. Amy didn’t want to be like that.”

“Was her mother’s name Gabrielle?”

“Yes, that’s right. I never knew her. She died before Amy came to England—and just as well for Amy, though I know that’s not a Christian thing to say. Amy never said in so many words how bad her mother had treated her, but I could tell. That’s why she couldn't take care of herself. She was so used to being kept down by her mother that she couldn’t stand up to people. She was like an animal that ought to have a shell but doesn’t, so she was all soft and shrinking and easy to hurt.”

He got up and walked a little away. He knew he needed to hear all this—but, good God, it was painful. Much easier to think of the murdered girl as a cipher, the central piece in a puzzle—something less than human.

“How did you and Miss Fields come to know each other?”

“Her name wasn’t really Fields. We called her that because her French name was hard to say. She said it meant ‘fields’ in English. But her Christian name really was Amy, though she said it more like ‘Aymay.’ ”

“Aimee. It means ‘loved.' ”

“Well, she wasn’t that, except by Mother and me. Hardly anybody cared a rap about her till she came to us. She never knew her father, and her mother—well, I told you what she was. I think that’s why Amy was so stuck on her colonel. He was the only one of her mother's fancy men who treated her decent.”

He started. “What colonel?”

“She never told me his name. She was afraid of getting him into trouble. Her mother’d lured him into some wicked business in the war in Spain—spying or smuggling, or something like that. Amy was only a child, so she didn’t really understand it. She talked to me about him all the time—how he used to bring her sweets, call her by pet names, tell her stories about England. Little things like that meant the world to Amy. She was starved for love. After she

and her mother left Spain, she didn't see him for years, but she never forgot him. She came to England after her mother died, just to be near him. She had daydreams he'd adopt her, make her really his daughter. She was always wanting to find out where he lived and try to see him, but she didn't dare. She was afraid he might hold it against her how her mother'd used him."

She broke off. Mr. Kestrel's greenish eyes had a dangerous glint, and his face was set and hard. "I wonder," he said softly, "would the colonel recognize her after all these years?"

"She had it all worked out how she'd make herself known to him. She had a keepsake he'd given her—a silver trinket shaped like a scallop shell. She wore it around her neck all the time. If he didn't recognize her right off, she’d show that to him, and he'd know who she was."

So Geoffrey had known all along who the murdered girl was. Even if Aimee had changed too much in a dozen years for him to recognize her, he must have realized who she was when he saw the silver scallop shell he himself had given her. For surely he must be Aimee’s colonel. There were not likely to be two English colonels, both lovers of Gabrielle, both enticed into giving information to Bonaparte’s army in Spain. If any more proof were needed, Geoffrey had deliberately lied, saying Gabrielle had no relations. Why would he have concealed that she had a daughter, except to hide the fact that her daughter was the murdered girl?

The most obvious solution to the murder now was that Aimee, overcome by her longing to see Geoffrey again, had come seeking him at Bellegarde, and Geoffrey, already overwrought by Craddock’s threats, had killed her in a fit of panic or rage. But why in my room? Julian asked himself for the thousandth time. And how did she meet him in the house without any of his family seeing her? Or are they all lying—closing ranks to protect one of their own?

He reined in his speculations. There was no point in trying to put the puzzle together till he had all the pieces. He said to Louisa, “Tell me how you came to know Miss Fields."

“It was in February of last year—round about St, Valentine’s Day. Mother and I were working late in the shop one night, when Amy

came asking for work. We felt for her—she had no warm clothes, and not enough flesh on her bones to keep a mouse warm. We asked her in and gave her something to eat. She didn't speak much English, but we got out of her that she'd just come to London from Italy, where her mother had died. We wanted to help her. It was clear that if she walked the streets much longer, she'd go to the bad. She'd have to, to keep from starving. That happens to lots of girls.” “I understand.”

“We gave her some sewing to do, and it turned out she was handy with her needle, so we took her on to help in the shop. We were doing much better in those days, before Mother got so sick.” She looked wistfully at the closed worktables, and the bonnets lying about untrimmed. “She wasn't much good with customers—her English was bad, she was shy with people, and she never could count change. She mostly sewed in the back room. She was good at trimming hats—very quick and deft.”

Julian nodded, remembering how Mrs. Warren had praised the girl's skill at needlework. “What do you know about the black and gold jewelry box she pawned?”

“It was her mother's. It was one of the few things Amy had left of hers. Most were sold to pay her mother's debts after she died. Amy needed warm clothes, and we hadn't the money to give her an advance on her wages. The jewelry box looked like it might be worth something, and Amy didn't set any store by it, so I said why not pawn it. I went to the pawnshop with her so she wouldn't get put upon by some gripefist pawnbroker.”

“Did she ever regret pawning it or want it back?”

“I don't think she cared if she never saw it again. Though after she ran away, I went back to the pawnshop, just on the chance she’d come in and tried to get it back. She hadn't. And the pawnbroker said he didn’t have it anymore.”

“When did she run away?”

“It was about six weeks ago, around the end of April. But I think whatever made her run away started earlier, in March. Because that was when she started acting strange.”

“In what way?”

“She got skittish, absentminded. She’d fall into fits of brooding and then jump, guiltylike, when she was roused. She wouldn’t let on there was anything wrong, but I’d known her for more than a year, and I knew better.

“Then one day at the end of April, she went out to deliver a bonnet—at least that's where she said she was going. She’d been making deliveries for us lately, now she knew more English and wasn't quite so shy. She tripped off with a bandbox in her hand, and that was the last we saw of her. When she didn't come back for hours, I went up to our room—she slept upstairs with me— and found a note she’d left. The hat she was supposed to deliver was lying on the bed, and some of her things were missing. She must have taken them away in the bandbox instead of the hat."

“What did the note say?"

“I’ll bring it to show you."

Left alone, Julian glanced into the small back room where Aimee had worked. It was dark, and smelled musty and unused. He wondered what Louisa and her mother lived on while their shop was closed. To judge by Louisa's worn frock and tattered apron, they were in a bad way.

She came back with Aimee's note in one hand and an old, yellowing newspaper in the other. She gave the note to Julian. It was written in a careful, childish hand:

Dere Louisa and Mrs. Howland,

You have ben so kind to me I am sory to leve you like this without won word of goodbie. Please do not think too badly of me. I do not want to go but I must. It is of the most importance to me that I do this. Please foregive your Amy and do not wory there is no nede.

I pray to the good God to see you againe soon. I embrace you both.

Aimte

1 leve behind some clothes I can not carry. Please kepe them I give them to you.

“What did she leave behind?’* he asked.

“Her best dress and hat, and an apron and shawl. She didn’t take anything but the clothes on her back and a couple of handkerchiefs and caps, and a few toilet things. Oh, and her rosary. She was a Papist, though Mother and I were always trying to break her of that.*’

“When she was found dead, she was wearing an expensive shawl, silk slippers, and gold earrings.*’

Tears welled up in Louisa’s eyes. “God forgive her. And curse the man, whoever he was! I never thought she’d go wrong that way. She wasn’t one of your light-skirts. She was modest, Mr. Kestrel. She cared about being good."

“It may not have been a lover who gave her those things," he pointed out gently. “Whoever killed her may have tried to buy her off first, or given her presents to win her trust."

“Why would anybody have to buy her off? She couldn’t do anybody any harm."

Oh, but she could, thought Julian. She could harm one man— one family—very much. Of course, if she was as devoted to Colonel Fontclair as Louisa said, she would not be likely to betray his secret, but he might not believe that. He might fear she would be as unscrupulous as her mother.

“I wanted you to see this, too." She held out the newspaper. It was the Morning Post. “I found it under Amy’s pillow after she ran away. I was searching all over for anything that might give me an idea where she went. I don’t know why she saved it. I read it all the way through, but I couldn’t find anything in it that had aught to do with her."

Julian took off his gloves and unfolded the newspaper, glancing at the date: April 23, 1824.

“That’s five days before she ran away. I don’t know where she got the paper. We don’t buy them, but a customer might have left it behind in the shop. Amy liked to look at newspapers, though she wasn’t much of a reader. She only liked books with pictures—fashion plates and such."

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to read this through."

She nodded. “That’ll give me a chance to look in on Mother. Oh—can I get you anything, some tea?”

“No, thank you.” He thought the Howlands must have little enough to spare.

She went upstairs, and he sat down with the newspaper. It was only four pages long, but its narrow columns were packed with print. Parliamentary debates. Foreign news. Sporting and social gossip. Advertisements for concerts, mantua-makers, medical treatments. What was there here to attract Aimee’s notice—to impress or excite her so much that she slept with the newspaper under her pillow?

The answer leaped out at him when he reached the third page. Here, among the tidbits of Society news, was Mark Craddock’s announcement of his daughter Maud’s engagement to Hugh Fontclair.

What the devil did this mean? Had Aimee been leafing idly through the paper and caught sight of the announcement? She would surely have guessed the bridegroom was related to her beloved colonel. Did seeing the name Fontclair awaken in her such a longing to see Geoffrey again that she ran away to find him?