Riot Most Uncouth (7 page)

“What possible good could it do you?” he asked. “There's nothing in there for you to learn. You are not an expert criminal investigator. If Knifing missed some clue to the killer's identity, you won't find it either.”

“Do you think I could have committed this crime?” I asked. I loomed even closer, putting my face near enough to the constable's that he could feel my breath on his cheeks. My strategy was to unman him with my overbearing youth and masculinity.

He did not back away. “I can't be certain. You seem mentally unbalanced, and very angry, especially for a gentleman of such privilege. But, no. I don't think you did it.”

“Then let me try to exculpate myself while I still have a chance. The undertaker will surely arrive soon to take away the body, and my opportunity will be irrevocably lost.”

His features pinched and his mouth curled sourly downward. He spat some thick gray phlegm into the grass. “You really want to see what's in there, Lord Byron?”

“I asked, did I not?”

Angus turned on his boot heel in a crisp, assured motion; his muscles perhaps recalling some long-past, slimmer time when he was a soldier. I followed the constable into the house, past the house matron's parlor, and up a narrow stairwell. I could hear the sound of muffled weeping coming from some of the other girls' quarters.

Angus led me down a dim hallway and stopped in front of the third entryway on the left. He removed a key from a metal ring he had looped through his belt, worked it in the lock, and cracked open the door. The windows were covered with heavy curtains, so Angus took an oil lamp down from a fixture on the wall and held it so the light cut in through the doorway.

The corpse of Felicity Whippleby was bound about the feet with knotted bedsheets and hung upside down from a chandelier-hook on the ceiling. Her open eyes had dried and begun to shrivel in the sockets, exposing pink connective tissue around the milky, discolored orbs. Her lips hung slack and loose; her cheeks were purple-white.

“She might have been beautiful,” I said.

Angus shrugged. “She's not anymore, though.”

Her neck was slashed open, and blood pooled on the rug beneath the dangling form. The half-dried puddle was thick and brown around the edges, on the way to turning black. I noticed that there was much less of it than one might expect to find in a human body, and there was a mashed-down spot the rug beneath the corpse, which might have been left by a heavy washbasin or some similar vessel. The killer had collected her blood and taken it with him. He'd also slit her torso open from the throat to the navel, and gray coils of swollen viscera, shiny in the low light, protruded from the ragged wound.

I tried to hide my shock at the sight of the body. It was necessary for me to demonstrate my brilliance here; to find something Knifing had missed. “If the killer took the blood with him, how did he get it out of here?” I asked.

Angus was unimpressed by my observation. “He hung up the body with rope. He probably used rope to lower his bucket out the window. It would have weighed maybe fifteen pounds; plus the weight of the container. No great feat for a healthy man; easier than lifting the corpse. Knifing found a bit of spillage below, on the street. We canvassed all the houses with views of the window, but nobody saw anything.”

All I could think to say was: “Spillage?”

“Have you anything else to contribute, Lord Byron? Does your keen poet's eye spot some subtle clue that escaped Mr. Knifing?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I've got nothing else right now.”

“I thought not. Have you a joke or a quip? Have you a clever bit of wordplay?”

“None springs to mind.” My voice cracked a little.

“Personally, I will sleep worse tonight for having looked upon this sorry tableau,” said Angus. “I've got a daughter, and I fear for her. Frightens me deep down to know this kind of thing is out there in the world.”

I nodded, staring transfixed at the corpse, which swung in little circles, moved by the slight breeze from the doorway.

“You didn't need to see this,” he told me. “I don't know what you think you're doing here, but I've got no patience for it. This isn't a game. This isn't some lark. This isn't for your drunken amusement.”

He drew away the lamp, put it back on the wall. Felicity Whippleby fell back into shadow as he closed the door.

 

Chapter 10

Say, what dire penance can atone

For such an outrage, done to thee?

Arraign'd before thy beauty's throne,

What punishment wilt thou decree?

—
Lord Byron,
“Lines Addressed to a Young Lady”

Angus pivoted on his heel and descended the staircase. I was about to follow him, when I heard the sound of someone moving around in the quarters opposite Felicity's. I felt I would be remiss in my investigative duties if I failed to question a potential witness, so I knocked on the door.

A young woman about my age, wearing an informal housedress, opened the door.

“Oh my goodness,” she said. “You are not supposed to be here.”

Her appearance was really quite striking; her skin was pale and clear, and her lips sensuous. And though her figure was quite trim, her bosoms were sufficiently ample. It was immediately evident that she was a subject of great interest, and not only to my investigation.

I smiled at her, and stepped through the door and into her small, clean room. “I find the best things happen when one ventures where one is not supposed to be.”

She retreated from the doorway, so that her bed was between us. “But men are not permitted entrance to this residence, and certainly not without a chaperone. Your presence here could cause quite a scandal.”

“I came in with Angus, the constable. We were inspecting the scene of last night's tragedy.”

“And what has that got to do with you?” she asked.

“You know who I am?”

“Yes. Everybody knows who you are.”

I was already aware of that, but was pleased to hear her say it, nonetheless. “Then you know I am one of the finest and most famous young poets in all of England.”

“What has that got to do with anything? Why would someone like you need to examine a murder scene?”

“The poet's skills can be constructively applied to a wide range of problems and circumstances. I believe my expertise may be vital to capturing Felicity's killer.”

“The logic of that escapes me,” she said.

I nodded. “That does not surprise me. The workings of a mind as subtle and intricate as my own baffle the mind of normal folk. And though it is no fault of your own, you are doubly disadvantaged in matters of comprehension, due to your sex.”

She frowned at me. “You overstate my disadvantages, I think. Informal though my education has been, I have spent a significant amount of time and a considerable sum of money under the tutelage of faculty members here. In fact, I have probably devoted more hours to study than you, Lord Byron. You are notorious for your poor record of class attendance.”

“I'm notorious for a lot of things,” I said.

“Yes, I'm quite aware.” It was clear my notoriety was less delightful to her than it was to me. “I cannot understand why someone admitted to Trinity would squander such an opportunity.”

“A chance to listen to a bunch of blathering professional mediocrities is hardly an opportunity,” I said.

“It is when you're denied it,” she told me. “There are thirty colleges in Cambridge, and none of them has ever admitted a woman. Despite calls for reform, the only chance I've got to obtain some semblance of an education in mathematics and the Arts is to take a squalid room in a Cambridge boardinghouse and hire those mediocrities for private tutoring at obscene rates.”

I thought about this. “You know who I am,” I said, “but who are you?”

Her eyes narrowed, their delicate lashes fluttering with her irritation. “It took you a long time to ask. I'd wondered if you cared.”

“All facts are relevant, and all facts will be uncovered,” I said. “The processes of the skilled investigator are deliberate and methodical.”

She seemed to consider making some further comment about my investigative skills, but decided against it. “I am Olivia Wright,” she told me.

Wright. It was a common name; a laborer's name. But private tutoring from Cambridge faculty was no small expense, so she was new money, like Leif Sedgewyck. I thought of what I'd told Angus that morning; that wheelwrights can also be murderers, and I performed a series of calculations. Knifing had assumed the killer accessed Felicity's room through the window, but her neighbor in the rooming house could also have gotten in. But I had no reason to suspect this woman, and anyway, the killer must have been a man, for a woman could not have inflicted those wounds or hung the corpse from the chandelier.

I continued my line of inquiry: “And Felicity was, like you, a thwarted scholar?”

She paused. “Not as much,” she said. “I think her tutoring sessions were a bit of a pretense.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “She came to Cambridge in a spirit of reform, and in defiance of social norms. If she could not be admitted to college, she'd hire the professors to educate her. And she'd live in a rooming house without a chaperone, despite whatever gossips may say about her. Of course, it would merely be a joyous and unexpected accident if she happened, by chance, to encounter a wealthy and wellborn young undergraduate one fateful morning while she meandered across the warm and dewy expanse of the Great Lawn. And it would be completely unanticipated if a marriage were to result from such a meeting.”

“She met someone,” said Olivia. “And something resulted.”

Silence between us.

“But unlike her, you're here to get an education, not to find a man?” I asked. “Have you already got a man?”

“Why should I need one?”

“All the usual reasons, I expect.” I gave her a lascivious smile, but she did not return it.

“I knew her, a little, before we were neighbors in this place,” she admitted. “We both attended the seasonal events in London for two years. Neither of us found a reasonable suitor. Her father's wealth was insufficiently vast, and my father's name was insufficiently respectable. After two failed seasons, there's little point in attempting a third. The attention of the gentlemen will be focused on fresher goods.”

“The ordinary course of action would be to host a series of balls or formal events on one's estate to introduce one's daughters to eligible men.”

She nodded. “And we attempted this. But my father had little standing among the social set he hoped to marry me into. His invitations were politely declined, or impolitely ignored. And Felicity's father had his money problems.”

“Yes,” I said. “Lord Whippleby could hardly be expected to throw a ball to find a husband for his second daughter. He was probably far too busy shuttering wings of his country house and letting go of servants he could no longer afford to keep.”

She allowed herself a bitter laugh at this. I was making progress.

“What do you know of Leif Sedgewyck?” I asked.

“He's quite nice,” Olivia said. “Good manners. Soft hands. His family's money would have rescued Felicity's father from his difficulties.”

“Did he love her?”

“I don't think love was a prerequisite for their arrangement.” A flicker of genuine contempt flickered across her face, and she started to say something further. But then she caught herself. “I really think I've told you too much about this. It feels wrong to speak ill of the dead, and it's wrong for you to be here at all. I really think you ought to go.”

I tried to ask another question, but she shut her door in my face, and did not respond to my subsequent knocks. I was shocked by her abruptness; she did not even kiss me good-bye.

 

Chapter 11

The dew of the morning

Sunk chill on my brow—

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame:

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

—
Lord Byron,
“When We Two Parted”

When a man finds himself in low spirits and at the mercy of his enemies, it is natural that he will seek the most readily available source of comfort. So, stung by my failure to learn anything of use at the murder scene, or in my subsequent interrogation of Olivia Wright, I called upon Mrs. Jerome Tower.

Violet was a matronly twenty-eight years of age, but she was slight in the places a woman ought to be slight and ample in all the places a woman ought to be ample. Her husband was a Fellow at Trinity, and an instructor in literature. He'd given me poor marks in a class my first year, complaining that my writing was self-centered and lacking in worldly knowledge. I took his criticism to heart; seeking to expand my experience and better myself, I obtained knowledge of the gentleman's wife by the end of that week. It was indeed a rewarding pursuit, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I subsequently continued to follow Professor Tower's advice and advanced my education at every opportunity.

Seducing maidens is a fraught and challenging enterprise; they're overly concerned with their marriage prospects. I was largely able to avoid becoming a target of anyone's matrimonial designs, due to rumors about my financial circumstances and my well-earned reputation for promiscuity, but my endeavors were substantially harmed by the belief among girls that involvement with me diminished their chance to ensnare other desirable men. I had, thusly, begun to direct my seductive efforts toward married women; they had already realized whatever value their virtue might have had, and were free to engage in philandering, a favorite sport of England's idle classes, second only to foxhunting.