Secrets of a Lady (6 page)

“There’s no need to apologize, Mrs. Fraser. Bloody awful sums it up very well.” He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. “You have a good eye, Mr. Fraser. It looks as if it happened just as you guessed. They came through the garden gate and probably tossed a rope up over the ledge of the window to your son’s room. I found a few strands of rope stuck to the wall.”

Mélanie Fraser tugged a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it over the spilled coffee. “You’re sure they
meant
to take Colin? They couldn’t have been after the silver and simply stumbled across him?”

“I’m not sure of anything, Mrs. Fraser. But they entered the house through your son’s bedchamber window, a silly thing to do if they were bent on robbery. And as far as we can tell, nothing else is missing from the house. So yes, I’d say it’s likely your son was their target.”

She twisted the coffee-soaked handkerchief in her hands, as though she could knead answers out of the damp linen.

Fraser was looking at his wife. Lines were etched deep into the sharp Celtic planes of his face, but otherwise his control hadn’t faltered. “They didn’t go to all this trouble to take Colin in order to do him a mischief, Mel.”

It was not the sort of comfort most husbands would offer their wives, but Mélanie Fraser nodded. “No. There is that.” She picked up the coffeepot again and poured out three cups with painstaking care. “Cream, Mr. Roth?”

“Black.” He leaned forward to accept the silver-rimmed cup she was holding out, close enough to catch the spicy floral scent of her skin and to see the smeared traces of blacking round her eyes.

Charles Fraser stared into his own cup. “London is full of boys it would be all too easy to snatch off the street. So whoever took Colin must want him to extract money from us or to use as leverage against one or both of us.”

Roth took a welcome sip of the strong, hot coffee. “That seems the likeliest explanation.” He balanced the fragile cup in his hand. “To own the truth, I’ve never come across a case like this nor heard tell of one. Young heiresses are sometimes abducted in the hope of forcing a marriage, but this is obviously something very different. As I said, the men were professionals, probably hired for the job. I don’t believe in false reassurance. But if they’ve taken your son for ransom or to use as a bargaining chip, they’ll keep him safe and healthy.”

Fraser gave a quick, contained nod. Mélanie Fraser’s fingers whitened round the ecru porcelain of her cup.

Roth set down his coffee cup, reached into the frayed pocket of his brown wool coat, and drew out a notebook and a pencil. “I know it’s difficult to think clearly at a time like this—”

Fraser set his own cup down with a clatter. “My wife isn’t given to hysterics, Roth. I’ll do my best not to succumb to them myself. For God’s sake, don’t waste time sparing our sensibilities.”

Roth met the other man’s gaze. Fraser’s gray eyes had the hard glint of tempered steel. Roth recalled that before he had been a politician, Charles Fraser had been posted at the British embassy in Lisbon, where he had earned fame for exploits beyond the usual diplomatic line. A man of action with a cold intellect. A volatile combination.

“It was carefully planned,” Fraser continued, in a tone that made Roth wonder just who was conducting the interview. “They’d have learned the routine of the house, the arrangement of the rooms.” He looked at his wife. “My wife and I were discussing who we’ve seen about in the last few days. Tradesmen making deliveries. Hackney drivers. Coachmen and grooms. It would be easy enough for a stranger to blend in.”

Roth nodded. “Judging by the breakin, they’re too accomplished to have drawn attention to themselves, but the patrol I brought with me is having a word with the servants in case anyone noticed anything. Which brings us back to the question of the motive.”

Fraser picked up his coffee cup, then set it down again without touching it. “Money would seem likeliest. Isn’t it at the root of most crime?”

“It is indeed, Mr. Fraser. And it’s surprising how often the culprit proves to be a family member.” Roth looked from husband to wife. “Any relatives who’ve applied to you for a loan or whom you know to be in debt?”

Roth expected shocked denial at this accusation against one of their own. In his experience, the higher one moved up the social ladder, the more people wanted to believe that crime was something that only existed in the dark reaches of the underworld.

But Fraser merely said, “My brother’s a captain in the Horse Guards. Fraternal feelings aside, he married an heiress. Their income is probably larger than ours. My sister and her husband live in Scotland and they’re too proud to ask for money, let alone extort it. I have an aunt and uncle who are in Paris at the moment and a widowed aunt in Brighton. She has a taste for amorous intrigue, but she’s far too well off to indulge in anything this sordid. None of my cousins is in straitened circumstances. Oh, and there’s my grandfather. But he hasn’t left Scotland in years and he’s quite comfortably situated.”

This last was a wild understatement. Charles Fraser’s maternal grandfather was the Duke of Rannoch. Roth inclined his head. “I appreciate your frankness.” He made some notes. “Mrs. Fraser?”

Mélanie Fraser plucked at the skirt of her gown, her nails scraping against the sheer fabric. “I’m an only child. Both my parents were killed during the war in Spain. Between the war and the revolution, I don’t have any family left that I know of.”

Roth, ardent supporter of the French Revolution, more than passingly sympathetic to Napoleon, looked into the eyes of this blue-blooded woman and found himself smiling in an awkward attempt to ease her fears. “Friends, then.” He jotted down a note. “Hangers-on. Former servants, though it would have to be someone with the resources to carry out such a plot.”

The Frasers exchanged glances again. “No one I can think of,” Mrs. Fraser said. “The only servant who’s left recently is our little girl’s nurse who got married last summer. My husband and I were at the wedding.”

“My friends aren’t all saints,” Fraser said. “But if they wanted money they’d simply ask for it.”

“Of course it’s possible he was taken for ransom by someone unknown to you,” Roth said. “But while money’s the likeliest motive, it’s not the only one. You’re a prominent politician, Mr. Fraser. Perhaps the culprit wishes to force your hand in the House of Commons.”

“You can’t have followed my career too closely. It’s highly improbable that any of my proposals will be enacted in the immediate future. It’s more likely
I’d
take someone hostage as leverage.”

“You ruffled a lot of feathers with your speeches against suspension of habeas corpus. Suppose someone took the boy to force you to be silent. Or to get you to change your vote.”

“Unfortunately, they’re hardly in need of my vote to suspend habeas corpus.”

“No, but it would make a powerful statement to silence critics if you changed your position.”

Fraser leaned back on the sofa, his eyes narrowing.

“I do read the papers,” Roth said. His voice was mild, but there was an edge to it.

“I don’t doubt it.” Fraser watched him a moment longer. “You’re an unusual man, Mr. Roth. You work for the chief magistrate of Bow Street, who works for the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary is a government minister. Yet you’ve just suggested that someone allied with the government’s interests may have been behind the disappearance of our son.”

“It’s my job to explore all possibilities, Mr. Fraser.” Roth shifted his gaze to Mélanie Fraser. “Mrs. Fraser? Is there any reason you can think of why your son might have been taken to target you?”

She shook her head, strands of hair stirring about her face. “No. I’m sometimes accused of being too outspoken, but I can’t see anyone going to this much trouble to quieten me.”

Her fingers clenched tight in her lap. Her gaze shifted toward the painting on the overmantel. Roth followed the direction of her gaze. The painting had only registered before as a blur of colors. Now the candlelight seemed to cluster about the luminous whites and pastels the painter had used. It was a portrait of Mélanie Fraser and the children. They were sitting on a wrought-iron bench in the same garden where Roth had looked for clues to Colin Fraser’s disappearance. In the painting it was not a November night but a spring afternoon. The linden trees in the background were thick with leaves, not stark and barren. Mélanie Fraser’s face was bright with laughter, not shadowed with fear. A little girl of perhaps eighteen months sat in her lap, reaching for the rose-colored ribbons on her dress. A small boy stood beside her, leaning against her arm.

Colin Fraser must have been about five when the portrait was painted, Roth guessed, judging by his own sons. The boy wore a shirt and breeches, not ruffles and velvet. His hair was dark, almost as dark as his mother’s. His face was fine-boned and serious, but curiosity sparkled in his eyes and a hint of mischief danced in the slant of his brows.

Roth’s throat closed unexpectedly. “He looks like a bright lad.”

“He is.” Mélanie Fraser’s voice broke, like crystal hurled against a rock. She drew a sharp breath. “He’ll keep his head. I keep telling myself that.”

Charles Fraser took her hand and gripped it between his own. “He has his mother’s nerves of steel as well as her looks.”

In truth, the boy did look very like his mother. Roth studied the picture a moment longer, searching for some echo of Charles Fraser in his son. You could see it in the little girl—the strong, determined bones of the face were visible even beneath the baby fat. But the boy was pure French-Spanish, with no hint of the Celt. Not that it was surprising for a child to take strongly after one parent. And yet—

Roth turned a page in his notebook and jotted down a random note, to give himself a moment to think. The Frasers seemed a happy enough couple, but Charles Fraser was a damned cold bastard and fidelity was rare in their set. Some women of fashion made it a matter of pride to have each of their children by a different father. It was rare for an eldest son and heir to be illegitimate, but accidents could happen to even the cleverest woman. If another man had fathered Colin Fraser, if that man knew or guessed and wanted to lay claim to his child…Roth scribbled over the page. It would explain Mélanie Fraser’s startling combination of self-possession and fear if she suspected who had taken her child and why.

It was nothing he could pursue with the Frasers, but he could make discreet inquiries later. No doubt it would be damnably difficult. What the polite world did and what they were willing to talk about were two very different things. “Anything else either of you can think of?” he said. “Anything anyone might pressure you to do, not to do, anything anyone might want from you—”

“We’ve had our share of adventures in the past,” Charles Fraser said, “but nothing—Oh, Christ.” Fraser stared across the room, as though he had been slapped hard across the face.

“Darling?” Mélanie Fraser squeezed her husband’s hand.

Charles Fraser pushed his fingers into his brown hair. “It’s absurd. But—”

“What?” His wife’s voice was tense with strain.

Fraser looked at her. “The Carevalo Ring.”

Mélanie Fraser’s eyes widened. “Why—”

“What ring?” Roth asked.

Fraser drew a breath. “You’ve heard of the Marqués de Carevalo?”

“Spanish nobleman. War hero.”

“Yes. He was one of the
guerrillero
leaders whose forces were allied—somewhat uneasily at times—with Wellington’s troops in driving the French from Spain. Carevalo was reckless to the point of insanity, but he was a brilliant enough commander that his crazy risks paid off more often than not. The Carevalos are an old Spanish family. Carevalo saw his service to Spain as part of his family’s tradition. He was inclined to view the royal family as incompetent upstarts, with little understanding of what was due to the Spain he believed in. Like many Spaniards who opposed the French, Carevalo isn’t best pleased with the course his country has taken under the restored monarchy. He’s now working with the Spanish liberals, who are in increasingly vehement opposition to the king.”

Roth nodded. In his view, the British government had woefully betrayed their Spanish allies. Many of the Spaniards had seen the struggle against Napoleon’s occupation as a time to enact long-needed reforms in their own country. At the end of the war, the Spanish king had been restored under an extremely progressive constitution. But the restored King Ferdinand had promptly repealed the reforms made in his absence, restored the Inquisition, stifled all freedom of speech and discussion, and refused to honor the constitution. All the while, the British government continued unwavering in their support of him.

“Carevalo’s in England now, isn’t he?” Roth said. “Trying to turn British opinion against the Spanish monarchy.”

“Yes, he—No, I’ll have to start at the beginning. It’s a hell of a long story.” Fraser looked as though the last thing he felt like doing was telling it while more time ticked by with his son missing.

“If there’s any chance it has a bearing on your son’s disappearance—”

“Quite.” Fraser pushed himself to his feet and took a turn about the room. “To understand what the ring means today, you have to understand its history. What came to be known as the Carevalo Ring is a gold signet ring, a lion with rubies for eyes. It was forged in Andalusia in the eleventh century, when Spain was divided between Moorish and Christian princes who fought each other and often fought on the same side, in a complex web of shifting alliances. Ramón de Carevalo was a friend and comrade in arms of El Cid. Like El Cid, he fought in the service of both Christians and Moors.”

Fraser continued to pace, speaking with the crisp precision Roth imagined he would use to outline a strategy for steering a bill through the House of Commons. “There are different stories about how Ramón de Carevalo came to possess the ring. The ring was commissioned by Princess Aysha, wife of Tariq ibn Tashfin. She and her husband presided over a court that was known for its tolerance and artistic achievements. The ring represented what was best in the court. A Jewish sculptor designed it, a Christian gem-cutter cut the rubies, a Moorish goldsmith forged it. According to some versions of the story, Aysha commissioned the ring as a gift for her husband. After Prince Tariq was killed in battle, Carevalo stole the ring and abducted Aysha. According to other versions, Aysha commissioned the ring not for her husband but for Carevalo, who was secretly her lover. After her husband’s death the two of them ran off together.”