Sheri Cobb South (14 page)

“—to Mary Smith, nurse, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling...to Jim Owen, groom, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling...to Harold Gilmore, valet, the sum of twenty pounds sterling...to William Rogers, butler, the sum of twenty pounds sterling—”

A sudden movement caught her eye, and she realized that at the mention of the butler’s name, Pickett had begun scribbling something in his ubiquitous notebook. Her hackles rose as a new, and most unwelcome, possibility presented itself. If the Bow Street Runner considered a bequest of twenty pounds sufficient motive for murder, what would he make of four hundred pounds per annum plus a house in Kensington?

At last the solicitor exhausted his supply of information, gathered up his papers, and took his leave. The family party broke up immediately thereafter and, after the Bertrams had gone, Lady Fieldhurst walked with her guests as far as the front door.

“But where are your bags, Papa?” she asked, fully expecting to see them awaiting him in the foyer. “I shall have Thomas bring them upstairs at once.”

Sir Thaddeus quickly demurred. “No, no! Wouldn’t dream of imposing on you at such a time. I’m taking my mutton at Limmer’s.”

“Are you quite certain? It will not take long at all to have a room prepared for you—”

The squire again declined and, as she had no real desire for houseguests, Lady Fieldhurst accepted his decision with little more than a token protest.

“When do you plan to return to Somersetshire? You will give my love to Mama, will you not?”

For the first time since his dramatic entrance, Sir Jonathan looked slightly ill at ease. “Oh, er, as to that, I haven’t quite decided yet. I don’t like to go off and leave my little girl in the suds, you know.”

“Never mind that, Papa. There is nothing you can do here, and if...anything...happens, I am sure you will hear of it. Truth to tell, I am surprised the news of Frederick’s death reached Somersetshire so quickly.”

As Pickett, hovering in the background, had wondered about this very thing, he listened closely for her father’s response.

The squire cleared his throat rather loudly. “Harrumph! Yes, well, I’ve taken the London papers for years, you know. A man doesn’t like to be behindhand with all that’s going on in the world.”

This remark segued into a brief monologue on his opinions of the war in general and Bonaparte in particular. Having delivered himself of this speech (which most of his acquaintance in Somersetshire had already heard at least once), he bussed his daughter soundly on the cheek, bade her goodbye, and departed for his hotel.

After he had gone, Lady Fieldhurst turned to regard Pickett. “Yes, Mr. Pickett?” she inquired frostily. “Was there something you wanted?”

Thus addressed, Pickett advanced a few paces. “I—forgive me, my lady, but I seem to have offended you. I should like to know what I have done, and—and to beg your pardon.”

“As to what you have done, Mr. Pickett, I wonder you should have to ask! Surely you cannot have thought I would be pleased to find that you had been asking the better part of my acquaintance for an accounting of my movements? Thanks to you, most of Mayfair awaits with bated breath the news of my arrest for murder.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing Pickett rather taken aback by this revelation.

“If—if that is so, my lady, I am sorry for it,” he said at last. “I can’t deny that I did question a great many of Lady Herrington’s guests, but only so that I might establish that you had not been absent from the ball long enough to have committed the murder.”

“And did you do so?”

“Unfortunately, no. There seems to be a quarter-hour during which no one can account for your whereabouts.”

“But I told you! The maid—”

“The maid was sacked for, er, flirting with a footman.”

“Now that you mention it, I saw them together. But even if she is gone, surely the footman must remember so unwelcome an interruption as I must have been?”

“He was sacked, along with the girl.”

“Oh.” This unexpected—and unwanted—turn of events left her momentarily weak at the knees. She groped for the side chair positioned against the wall and sank onto it, her black bombazine skirts pooling at her feet. “I see I have misjudged you, Mr. Pickett. I can only wonder that you do not make it easy on yourself and arrest me without further ado, for I cannot but feel it must eventually come to that.”

“It is my duty to see that the King’s justice is done, my lady,” he said. “I fail to see how arresting an innocent woman would accomplish that end.”

“Are you so certain, then, of my innocence?”

He dropped to one knee before her chair and looked her squarely in the eye. “As certain as I have ever been of anything, my lady. As God is my witness, I will not let you hang for a crime you did not commit.”

The intensity of his brown gaze made her blink back sudden tears. “God bless you, Mr. Pickett,” she whispered.

* * * *

Pickett did not return to Bow Street upon leaving Berkeley Square, but instead sought out the offices of several of the better newspapers, where he made certain inquiries regarding their distribution. Receiving answers that confirmed his own suspicions, he next set out for Limmer’s Hotel in Conduit Street. The shabbiest of London’s fashionable hotels, Limmer’s catered to a clientele more interested in horseflesh than handsome surroundings. In addition to its famous gin punch, it featured plain English food and excellent port, all served in a gloomy coffee room where one might meet any number of like-minded souls. Pickett could see its appeal for Lady Fieldhurst’s father, as it was immensely popular among the sporting set, including especially the rich squirearchy.

He inquired at the desk as to Sir Thaddeus Runyon’s room number, as well as the date of his arrival, and, armed with answers to these queries, went upstairs and knocked upon the squire’s door.

“Yes, what is it?” Sir Thaddeus greeted his caller. “Oh, it’s you—Pickens, is it?”

“Pickett, sir.”

“Well, what do you want?”

Pickett thought of the boisterous conversations in progress in the coffee room below, and a glint of mischief lit his eyes. “I should like to have a look at your horses.”

“My horses? What the devil—?”

“According to the Times, the Morning Post, and the Herald, the issue bearing the news of Lord Fieldhurst’s murder would not have reached Somersetshire until this morning. I am curious to see the team that could make a journey of more than one hundred miles in less than six hours. Confess, sir, you were already in London at the time of Lord Fieldhurst’s murder—as the hotel register attests.”

Sir Thaddeus hesitated for only a moment, then stepped back to allow Pickett entrance. “Well, let’s not stand here jawing for the whole world to hear,” he said. “Come in and shut the door.”

Pickett obeyed, and the squire closed the door behind him and shot the bolt home.

“All right, I arrived in London two days before Fieldhurst’s death. Surely you don’t think I came all this way just to kill my daughter’s husband?”

Pickett answered his belligerence with a not unsympathetic smile. “Perhaps not, but I do think you wouldn’t stop at much where your daughter’s happiness is concerned.”

“Aye, well, you’ve the right of it there,” conceded the squire. “In fact, it was that very thing that brought me to London. My good lady was convinced our Ju-ju was unhappy, and nothing would serve but that I should go to London and fetch our girl home. Poppycock, I said, but you know what women are once they get a bee in their bonnet.”

Pickett, who possessed no such knowledge, merely made a noncommittal noise and encouraged the squire to continue.

“Well, halfway to London, I thought maybe my wife wasn’t so far off, after all. Seemed to me this lack of a babe was at the root of the problem, and if we could get past that— well, I decided to ask Fieldhurst if our little Julie could come back to us for a little while. Might make him a bit more attentive—absence making the heart grow fonder, and all that, don’t you know. Depend upon it, a few months apart, and in nine months’ time she’d be dropping ‘em easy as a heifer!” The squire chuckled at his own wit.

Pickett regarded Sir Thaddeus with something akin to horrified fascination. Was it possible for a man to love his own flesh and blood so dearly, yet know her so little? More to the point, would a man so astoundingly obtuse possess the subtlety to free his daughter from an unhappy marriage by making her a widow?

“But they’d been married for six years already,” he was moved to protest. “Surely a few months would hardly achieve what six years could not.”

“Six years?” echoed Sir Thaddeus incredulously. “Has it really been that long? Stap me if it don’t seem like just yesterday I was putting my girl on her first pony—not that she stayed in the saddle for long, for she wasn’t much of a horsewoman even then, more’s the pity—”

“What did Fieldhurst have to say to this plan, when you put it to him?” asked Pickett, cutting short what showed every sign of being a protracted reminiscence.

The squire wagged his head. “Now, that I don’t know, for I never got the chance.”

“You never saw Fieldhurst? But you were in London for two days before he died,” Pickett reminded him.

“Aye, well, I don’t get up to London very often. I had—other business to attend to.”

“Sir Thaddeus, I fear I must ask you where you were between the hours of midnight and two o’clock on the night of his lordship’s death.”

The squire’s expression grew so hang-dog that for one moment Pickett thought he was about to hear a confession of guilt. As Sir Thaddeus spoke, however, Pickett realized he was making a confession of quite another sort.

“Here now, young man, my good lady is as dear a soul as ever drew breath,” the squire began. “But her health is not what you’d call robust, and—well, a man has his needs. I’ll wager you know London pretty thoroughly. Have you ever heard of a woman by the name of Maxine Watkins? She keeps a...er, a discreet little house in Sackville Street, just off Piccadilly.”

Pickett nodded. “I’ve heard of it. Can you give me the name of the girl you, er, met with?”

“Something with a D—Daphne, was it? No, that was t’other one. Diantha, maybe? Look here, you won’t tell Ju-ju, will you?” the squire entreated, clutching at Pickett’s sleeve. “My girl thinks the world of me, and if she ever found out, well, it just don’t bear thinking of!”

Privately, Pickett thought the state of Lady Fieldhurst’s own marriage would have rendered her incapable of being shocked by marital infidelity. Still, he saw no reason to shatter whatever childhood illusions might remain. He promised Sir Thaddeus that he would not reveal the older man’s indiscretions unless the course of his investigations required it, and put forth a tactful recommendation that the squire occupy the remainder of his time in London in seeking out a handsome gift to bring back to his lady wife. Pickett then left Limmer’s for Maxine Watkins’s house in Sackville Street.

Sir Thaddeus Runyon had not exaggerated when he described Mrs. Watkins’s establishment as discreet; no one seeing its stately facade for the first time would suppose it to be anything but a modest but respectable residence. Inside, however, rumor held that neither modesty nor respectability was held in particularly high regard. Pickett, professionally if not personally acquainted with the seamier underpinnings of the Metropolis, was not deceived by the misleading exterior, but raised the polished brass knocker and let it fall.

The door swung open a moment later, and a breathtakingly lovely girl of no more than sixteen peered out and regarded Pickett with wide blue eyes.

“Yes, sir?” she inquired in well-modulated accents. “May I help you?”

Her golden curls were simply dressed, with a single blue ribbon threaded through, and her sprigged muslin gown was modestly cut, with a tiny ruff of fine white linen at the neck.

For one bewildering moment, Pickett wondered if he had mistaken the address after all.

“I—I should like to see Mrs. Watkins, if you please,” he stammered.

“And whom shall I say is calling?” she asked, stepping back to allow Pickett to enter.

The girl’s manner was demureness itself, but a certain calculating gleam in her blue eyes caused Pickett to revise his estimation of her age upward by several years.

“John Pickett,” he said. “Bow Street.”

The girl gave a sharp gasp, then thrust both her slender arms out at him, clasped together at the wrists, her hands dangling limply. “Take me!” she cried. “Chain me up, lock me away! I am completely at your mercy!”

While Pickett was struggling to assimilate this performance, a second woman, still handsome well into her fifties, entered the room from the back of the house. “Here now, Daphne, what’s all this?”

“She’s good,” Pickett told this woman, jerking his thumb in the fair Daphne’s direction. “Your latest virgin in residence?”

“Aye, she came to me from Drury Lane, after the play she’d been appearing in folded. She’s an actress,” Mrs. Watkins added unnecessarily.

“They should have featured her in a death scene,” Pickett observed. “She’d have been packing them in, and not a dry eye in the house.”

“Why, thank you kindly, sir,” Daphne said, bobbing a coy curtsy.

“She’s already packing them in, thank you very much, although I can’t vouch for the tears.”

“But—do men really believe that?” asked Pickett incredulously.

“Of course they do! Confess, she had you going there for a moment or two. Not only do they believe it, they’re willing to pay extra for the privilege of initiating her.” The proprietress regarded Pickett speculatively. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested—?”

“N-no, thank you,” Pickett hastily demurred.

Mrs. Watkins sighed. “A body would think you’d got ice water in your veins! You’re all alike, you men—always wanting to think you’re the first.”

Pickett thought of a certain widowed lady of his acquaintance. “I should think being the first would be less important than being the last.”

“Oh well, to each his own, I suppose. But if you didn’t come to see me about Daphne, then which one of my girls is it? No trouble, I hope, for I run a respectable house, and always have.”