Sheri Cobb South (24 page)

“And then?” Pickett prompted, when Mr. Bertram lapsed into reminiscent silence.

“Then Lord Fieldhurst died—my uncle, you know—and my cousin inherited the title. Since he still showed no inclination to marry, it became imperative to the family that I should do so, and thus ensure the continuance of the line. A match was arranged with Caroline Deering, eldest daughter of a Lancashire baron. It was by no means a brilliant match, but it was a respectable one by Fieldhurst standards, and her portion was said to be sizeable.”

“And so you made a bigamous marriage.”

“I’ve done nothing that the Prince of Wales himself hasn’t done,” insisted Mr. Bertram. “He abandoned his Mrs. Fitzherbert readily enough for Princess Caroline, after Parliament made it a condition for increasing his funds.”

Pickett wondered how many times over the past two decades George Bertram had justified his actions by making the royal comparison. “Perhaps,” he said, conceding the point. “But—begging your pardon—you, sir, are no prince.”

George Bertram’s face grew dark with impotent fury. “I might have known you would not understand! You cannot possibly imagine the sort of pressure placed on the heir presumptive to an ancient title. At last I saw they would not be persuaded by any argument I could put forth, and so I put aside my dear Henrietta, and married Caroline.”

“If the lady I loved agreed to marry me,” Pickett said slowly, “I don’t think I would give her up, no matter what sort of pressure was brought to bear.”

“Fine words, Mr. Pickett, but they put no bread on the table! Have you any idea what an ensign is expected to support himself on?”

Pickett did not, but as he suspected it compared rather favorably to the salary of a neophyte Runner, he found it difficult to drum up much sympathy for Mr. Bertram’s plight.

George Bertram, seeing that his audience was not convinced, hastened to put himself in the best possible light. “In any case, I did not abandon Henrietta utterly. I continued to see her whenever I could, and when her parents cast her off after it was discovered that she was with child, I hired a small cottage where she might live with a respectable woman.”

“All at your second wife’s expense,” observed Pickett dryly.

“Yes—not that Caroline’s dowry was nearly as large as my family had been led to believe. At any rate, once the boys were old enough to be sent to school—we have two sons, Henrietta and I, so I have done my duty to the family by begetting legitimate heirs of the body—I moved her to London to be near me. Now that my cousin is dead, I am head of the family, and I intend to restore my lawfully wedded wife to the position that should have been hers all along.”

“And the other Mrs. Bertram? Does she know?”

“She does not. I will allow, however, that the situation is no fault of hers, and I intend to do right by her, as well as I am able. When I learned that my cousin had left a house in Kensington, I had hoped to install her in it, but unfortunately, that property was left to his widow.”

“On the night of the murder,” said Pickett as a new idea occurred to him, “you were with your first wife.”

George Bertram bowed his head. “I was. I stayed at White’s long enough to establish my presence there, in case Caroline should become suspicious, then left by the back door—a long-standing arrangement worked out with the doorman, for reasons which should be obvious.”

“You realize that I must question—” What to call her? Pickett wondered. “—Mrs. Henrietta Bertram.”

“Of course,” Mr. Bertram said with a sigh. “In a way, it will be a relief, giving up the double life I have led for twenty years.”

Pickett privately suspected Caroline Bertram would soon enough disabuse her bigamous husband of this notion, but he wisely held his tongue. Within a few minutes, Henrietta Bertram was seated in the chair vacated by her husband.

“Yes, George was with me that evening, from about eleven o’clock on,” she said. “It was not his usual night—he usually came to me on Tuesday and Thursday—but he had quarreled with Caroline and was very much perturbed.”

“And you were not?” asked Pickett, amazed by her calm acceptance of her husband’s betrayal. “Did you never resent his treatment of you?”

She laughed then, a musical sound that recalled the carefree young girl she had once been. “I assure you, Mr. Pickett, I am no saint! I sometimes resented it very much. You will say George was weak and cowardly, and so he was—and so he still is, for that matter—but I could not expect him to be other than what he is. Oh, I admit, in the early days of our marriage, I sometimes longed for George to make a grand gesture, renouncing his family and his claim to the title, and acknowledging me before the world as his wife. But even if he had done so, it would not have answered. We should have been penniless, for his family would not have hesitated to cut him off without a shilling. He would have ended by hating me.”

Privately, Pickett thought George Bertram did not deserve such loyalty. “Now that you are free to claim your rightful place, why did you put up at the Hart and Hare, instead of staying here with your husband?”

Her brow puckered in a thoughtful frown. “George tried to persuade me to do so, but it did not seem right to me to push myself forward at such a time. There will be ample opportunity for all that later, and most of it will be extremely unpleasant. I do feel rather sorry for Caroline; it seems to me that she is the one who will suffer the most from George’s lack of courage. But for now, I will not think of that. For now, I will enjoy strolling about the grounds with George and planning our future here together. Have you seen the rose garden? You must allow me to show it to you before you go. The present viscountess laid it out herself, I believe.”

Pickett recalled a snatch of conversation he had overheard one morning in the breakfast room in Berkeley Square. “Then—you don’t intend to dig it up?” he asked, liking Mrs. Henrietta Bertram better by the moment.

“Good heavens, no! Who could do such a wicked thing? It must grieve Lady Fieldhurst very much to lose it. I wonder if she would like to have cuttings of some of the more unusual species.”

Pickett smiled. “I think she would like that very much, your ladyship.”

Mrs. Bertram’s answering smile was pathetically bewildered. “How very odd that sounds! I have lived so long as a fallen woman, I wonder if I shall ever grow accustomed to anything else.”

* * * *

On the following day, having exhausted all other options, Pickett packed his meager belongings and retraced his route to Maidstone, conveyed this time by Young Ben, whose father was on this occasion occupied in the fields. Like his father, Young Ben was by nature loquacious, but this time Pickett found it difficult to enter fully into the farmer’s amiable chatter. His three days were over, and he had found nothing of use to Lady Fieldhurst. In fact, he had done nothing at all beyond proving the bigamous George Bertram blameless in the murder of his cousin.

Some three miles from Maidstone, Young Ben spied a red-haired damsel in calico, walking toward the village with a basket on her arm. He drew the cart to a halt as it came abreast of her, calling as he did so, “Becky! Come ride with me, sweeting!”

Pickett, recalling Old Ben’s boasts of his son’s popularity with the local female population, was not surprised to hear Becky accept this offer with every indication of eagerness. Upon being admonished to “make room, do!” he squeezed up sufficiently to make room for the new passenger, and offered a hand to help her up. Once Becky was settled between the two men with her basket on her lap, Young Ben set the cart in motion, and the three continued on their way.

Finding herself surrounded by handsome young men, Becky lost no time in making Pickett’s acquaintance, and spent the remainder of the journey making herself agreeable to each of her companions in turn. Alas, she was soon obliged to concentrate her efforts on Young Ben, for her coy blushes and inviting smiles were quite wasted on Pickett. Although he responded mechanically to her coquetries, he could think only of how abysmally he had failed. As God is my witness, I will not let you hang . . . What right had he to make such a promise, when he could not keep it?

It was a relief to at least two of the three travelers when Pickett was finally set down in Maidstone. Young Ben was convinced that his father must have been having him on, for the lively tales of London life which he had been assured would spill forth from Mr. Pickett’s lips had never materialized. Becky, for her part, was unaccustomed to being all but ignored by the local blades, and saw no reason why she should tolerate such cavalier treatment from a Londoner, be he never so handsome.

As for Pickett himself, he was beyond feeling much of anything at all. He thanked Young Ben for his hospitality, bade the petulant Becky farewell, retrieved his battered valise from the back of the wagon, and soon boarded the stagecoach that would take him back to London. He obtained a seat beside the window and spent the journey staring out at the passing scenery, unmindful of the occasional efforts of his fellow passengers to engage him in conversation.

He reached his Drury Lane lodgings in the afternoon. Mrs. Catchpole, hearing an unusually slow and heavy tread on the steps, waddled out of her workroom at the back of the shop, and called up the stairs, “Johnny? Is that you?”

No response issued from overhead except for the thud of Pickett’s valise striking the uncarpeted floor. A moment later, the door at the top of the stairs opened, and Pickett once again descended to the shop below.

“There you are, Johnny! I thought it was you.” Mrs. Catchpole lifted a steaming teakettle from the hearth by means of her apron wrapped around its handle. “And just in time, too! Sit down and have a cup of tea, and tell me all about your journey.”

Pickett did not answer. Mrs. Catchpole, glancing around at him to repeat the invitation, saw in her boarder’s face a look of such bleak despair that, as she confided later to her niece Alice, it gave her such a queer turn as she’d never had in all her life. In fact, Pickett did not even seem to notice she was there, but left the shop without a word and turned his steps in the direction of Bow Street.

At any other time, the girls with their baskets of apples and the men pushing their carts of cabbages might have made him smile to think of Old Ben and his farm wagon. Today, however, he neither saw the street vendors nor heard their cries. He spoke to no one and looked neither right nor left until he entered the Bow Street office and approached the magistrate’s desk.

Mr. Colquhoun looked up and smiled as Pickett stopped before the wooden railing. “Well, John, how was your sojourn in the country?”

Pickett, unsmiling, gripped the railing so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Sir, I would like to request a warrant for the arrest of Lady Fieldhurst for the murder of her husband.”

Chapter 18

Lady Fieldhurst Makes a Discovery

An unnatural hush seemed to fall over the usually bustling office. Two members of the foot patrol, discussing the latest issue of the Hue and Cry, seemed very far away; their voices no more than a distant hum. For Pickett, there was no sound except the scratching of the magistrate’s quill on the parchment that would send Lady Fieldhurst to Newgate, and thence, in all likelihood, to the gallows. At last Colquhoun laid the quill aside, shook sand over paper to absorb the wet ink, and handed the document over the railing to Pickett, who scarcely glanced at it before rolling it up and storing it inside the hollow wooden tipstaff he carried expressly for this purpose.

“Do you want me to send someone else, John?” the magistrate asked quietly.

For a moment, Pickett was tempted. He dreaded the task that lay before him, and if there were any way he could honorably avoid it, he would not hesitate to do so. Yet the thought of placing the viscountess’s fate in the hands of a stranger was intolerable. She deserved, at the very least, the comfort of a familiar face. As God is my witness . . . He shook his head. “No, sir. If it must be done, I—I’d rather do it myself.”

“There is still a chance,” Colquhoun pointed out. “She might be fortunate in her jury. Men have been known before now to be moved by the plight of a beautiful woman. Or new evidence might turn up before the trial. Stranger things have happened.”

Pickett nodded, well aware that neither of them truly believed it. Like one in a trance, he turned and left the Bow Street office.

The brilliant May sunlight outside seemed to make a mockery of his despair. The distance to Berkeley Square was long and the day uncomfortably warm, but he elected to walk nevertheless. He wanted only to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

“One of these days, John Pickett, you’re going to step right in front of a carriage and be put to bed with a shovel,” scolded Lucy, looping her arm through his. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”

He managed to summon up a bleak smile. “In Kent.”

“Kent? What have you been doing in Kent?”

The smile vanished. “Nothing,” he said bitterly. “Not a bloody thing.”

“Don’t swear in front of a lady,” Lucy said primly, even though she herself possessed a vocabulary that would embarrass most sailors.

“I beg your pardon. I’m afraid I’m not very good company today.”

Lucy squeezed his arm. “Maybe I could put you in a better mood.”

“I doubt it.”

“All right, be that way!” she retorted, withdrawing her arm abruptly. “Some men know how to appreciate a woman!”

“Your Frog, for instance?”

“Wee-wee,” Lucy agreed cheerfully, lapsing into atrocious French. “Why, just last night—

“I don’t want to know,” interrupted Pickett, holding up a restraining hand.

“—He said, ‘Lucy, mon cur, shut the door!’

“If he called you a cur, I hope you told him to shut it himself.”

“You don’t know nothing about the French, do you?” retorted Lucy with a snort of derision. “ ‘Mon cur’ means ‘my heart,’ and ‘shut the door’ means ‘I love you.’
:

Pickett regarded her skeptically. “Are you sure about that? Seems to me ‘shut the door’ wouldn’t be a very— “ He broke off abruptly as a light, dim at first, but growing steadily brighter, began to dawn. “What did you say?”