Sheri Cobb South (26 page)

Chapter 19

In Which All Is Revealed

There was, as Pickett had observed to Lucy on an earlier occasion, never a hackney around when one needed it. But as he was suddenly possessed of a burning impatience to reach Berkeley Square, and thus disinclined to stand on the corner waiting for such a vehicle to miraculously appear, he set out on foot. It was perhaps just as well, for he needed time to consider the possibilities raised by Lucy’s abominable French, to fit them together like pieces of a puzzle until a coherent pattern appeared. By the time he had reached the fashionable environs of Mayfair, such a pattern had indeed emerged, with only a few pieces missing. As he neared Berkeley Square, his steps quickened. He could not shake the growing conviction that, if his theory was correct, the viscountess might face a far more immediate danger than the warrant he carried in his tipstaff. By the time he reached the Fieldhurst town house, he was more than ever convinced of the need for haste. He bounded up the shallow steps onto the front stoop and pounded on the door knocker as if the Furies were at his heels.

There was no answer. Pickett could only assume that Rogers was polishing silver in his pantry, or else the butler was pickled again. As he reached once more for the knocker, a loud thump sounded from somewhere above and to his immediate left—if his sense of direction did not mislead him, the very room in which Lord Fieldhurst had died. Flinging propriety to the winds, Pickett released the knocker and seized the knob instead. In the space of a moment, he had flung open the door (not troubling, in his haste, to close it behind him) and crossed the hall, then took the curving stairs two at a time. Upon reaching the top, he burst through the nearest door and stood transfixed at the sight that met his horrified gaze.

Camille de la Rochefort, her lips twisted in grim determination, crouched on hands and knees on the bed as she pressed a plump white pillow over the face of a writhing female figure, a creature who struggled so mightily against her aggressor that her black bombazine skirts were by now rucked up about her knees.

Pickett, who had seen those shapely, silk-clad calves all too frequently in his dreams, could not fail to recognize them now. Casting his tipstaff aside, he seized Camille by the shoulders and dragged her off the viscountess. The abigail immediately focused her efforts on this new adversary, kicking and clawing like a woman possessed. Indeed, it was only by pinning the woman’s skirts to the mattress with his knee that Pickett was able to avoid quite a painful kick in a most vulnerable location. Deprived of what was arguably the most powerful weapon in her arsenal, she tossed frantically to and fro in an effort to escape his grasp, and once succeeded in raking her fingernails down his cheek. She paid dearly for this temporary victory, however, for he seized both her wrists in a vise-like grip, then wrenched both arms behind her back and hauled the woman to her feet.

The immediate crisis averted, he became aware of the sound of running footsteps, and turned to discover Rogers, wearing an apron over his black suit and twisting a polishing cloth in his hands. Behind him, Thomas the footman stared goggle-eyed at the scene, while a hysterical housemaid sobbed gustily onto his shoulder. Beyond Thomas, two new arrivals pushed their way past the motley crew into the room. Pickett blinked at the sight of the two men clad in the distinctive red waistcoats of the Bow Street foot patrol.

“Mr. Colquhoun told us to follow you,” one offered by way of explanation. “He thought you might need help.”

“And so I do, but not for the reason he expected,” acknowledged Pickett, panting slightly.

Camille took advantage of the distraction to administer a swift kick to his shin.

Pickett flinched, but did not falter. “Take her to Mr. Colquhoun, and tell him I want her held on charges of murder and attempted murder.” True, the arrest warrant was in Lady Fieldhurst’s name, but Pickett had every confidence in the magistrate’s ability to make it right. “And be careful with her—she’s a regular Tartar.”

But even as he voiced this caveat, Camille’s bearing changed. She ceased struggling in his grasp and stood as straight and proud as if she were making her curtsy at Versailles. “You may unhand me, s’il vous plait. I will come quietly, out, even willingly. Alors—” Her gaze shifted to the bed, where the viscountess still lay, limp and gasping for breath. The smile she bestowed on her former mistress was almost pitying. “—I will soon be reunited with my lover.”

She swept from the room with her handsome head erect and, although Pickett did not think she would so demean herself as to attempt an escape, he was glad to note that the foot patrol still held her by the elbows. Rogers, displaying a degree of tact which did much to explain Lady Fieldhurst’s loyalty to him, shooed the other servants back to their duties while Pickett turned his attention to the viscountess. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took one of her cold hands in his, then wrapped a supporting arm about her shoulders and gently raised her to a sitting position.

“Are you all right, my lady?” he asked.

“Oh, yes—or I very soon will be.” Her voice was raspy, and her throat already showed the beginnings of bruises, but she appeared otherwise unhurt. She looked up at him, and touched gentle fingers to his face. “But you are bleeding!”

A discreet cough from the doorway reminded Pickett of the butler’s presence. “Perhaps my lady would be the better for a glass of sherry?” suggested Rogers.

Lady Fieldhurst, suddenly conscious of her exposed limbs, busied herself with shaking down her skirts. “Sherry would be lovely, Rogers. I daresay Mr. Pickett would not object to a glass, either, along with a cold compress for his injured cheek.”

Mr. Pickett, suddenly realizing that he was sitting on her bed with his arm still encircling her waist, leaped to his feet as if scalded by her touch. “Ob-object?” he stammered. “N-no, not at all. It—it would be much appreciated.”

Rogers bowed and withdrew, leaving the Runner and the viscountess the task of filling an awkward silence.

“A most timely arrival, Mr. Pickett,” said her ladyship, somehow contriving to look elegant in spite of her ash-streaked gown and ravaged coiffure. “I congratulate you.”

Pickett, noting her ladyship’s heightened color and the determination with which she avoided his gaze, wondered if she too was aware of Mr. Rowlandson’s handiwork in the windows of Oxford Street.

“Timely?” he echoed, the word finding no favor. “If I’d not been gadding about all over Kent, you should never have been placed in such a position.” His choice of words was unfortunate, as it recalled to his mind the precise position her ladyship had occupied, sprawled on the bed with her lower limbs gloriously displayed.

“What were you doing in Kent?” she asked. Finding him oddly distracted, she was obliged to repeat the question before receiving an answer.

“Chasing after mare’s nests,” he said bitterly. “On the night of the murder, the footman Thomas was passing by your bedchamber when he heard the words, ‘The tomb of Deacon Toomer may shut the door on the poor sod’ shouted by an unknown speaker. I’ve scoured half the crypts in London, not to mention the Kentish countryside, trying to locate the tomb. It wasn’t until I returned to London that, er, someone made me realize that ‘shut the door’ and the French words for ‘I love you’ sound very much alike.”

Lady Fieldhurst observed the rich color that stained his cheeks as he spoke these words and drew her own conclusions. She wondered who had been whispering French endearments into Mr. Pickett’s ear and, perhaps more importantly, why it should annoy her that she might owe her life to a pretentious City lass not above putting on airs to impress her beau. Whoever she was, she was not the only woman in London with a little French at her command, as Mr. Pickett would soon discover.

“Je t’adore,” she said in an accent Lucy would scarcely have recognized. “Yes, I can see how it might be mistaken for ‘shut the door’ by someone who did not speak the language, especially when heard through a closed door.”

“What about Deacon Toomer, then?”

“I daresay we shall never know for certain, unless Camille chooses to tell us her exact words. But based on what she told me before you arrived, I should hazard a guess on something along the lines of, ‘Tu m’as dit que tu m’aimais’—in English, ‘You told me that you loved me.’
:

The words hung in the air between them like a tangible thing, and for a moment it was almost as if they were no longer discussing the lady’s maid and her doomed passion. It was perhaps fortunate that Rogers appeared at this juncture to inform her ladyship that the requested sherry awaited them in the drawing room.

“I should have guessed, by the way Fieldhurst’s coat was pushed off his shoulders,” Pickett remarked, once they had exchanged the charged atmosphere of the bedchamber for the more decorous setting of the drawing room. “He was apparently taking it off prior to—er—”

Seeing that this line of reasoning was rapidly leading into deep waters, he decided a change of subject was in order. “You never realized she was his mistress?”

“No, although I was aware that Frederick was unfaithful. I did not even recognize her portrait when I saw it in Queens Gardens,” she added ruefully, taking a sip of sherry.

“It was painted years ago, and she’d had a hard life since then.”

“She was spying for him too, did you know?”

He nodded. “That explains the letter Sir Archibald Stanton took from your husband’s desk. Apparently the Foreign Office hoped to retain Camille’s services after the viscount’s death. What I took for evidence of guilt on Stanton’s part was no doubt his attempt to preserve her cover.”

“His efforts would have been fruitless, in any case,” said the viscountess. “Oh, he might have preserved her anonymity, but she would never have continued spying. She was more jealous of Frederick’s country than ever she was of me, his wife. What I fail to understand is, why now? She had been his mistress, as well as his partner in espionage, for years. Why did she turn on him so abruptly?”

“I think I may have the answer to that,” said Pickett. “I was in your—upstairs—on the morning after the murder, when Sir Archibald called to pay his condolences. I could hear the two of you speaking quite plainly through the chimney flue. If Camille was indeed working in your bedchamber when Stanton called upon your husband, as she said when I interviewed her, she could have heard enough of their conversation to realize she had been deceived in Lord Fieldhurst’s affections.”

He was obliged to abandon this promising theory, however, as a new prospect occurred to him. “No, that can’t be right. There was a fire in the grate that night, so the sound would not have carried.”

“Oh, but there was not!” cried Lady Fieldhurst. “That is, there was certainly a fire by the time you arrived on the scene, but it was not lit until after Frederick was dead.”

She gave the bell pull a tug, and when Thomas answered the summons (Rogers having returned to his pantry and the unpolished silver), she instructed him to go to her bedchamber and fetch the small, round buttons on her dressing table.

“I found them in the grate, among the cinders,” she explained to Mr. Pickett, when these had been given over into his custody. “When I realized they were Camille’s, I wrote a note asking you to call as soon as possible, but Camille surprised me before I could instruct Thomas to deliver it. She realized at once what I was about and made no attempt to conceal her guilt. She even told me how she had burned the bloodstained dress and put on a castoff gown I had given her earlier in the evening.”

“She told you all this?”

“I tried to keep her talking while I edged toward the door. It wasn’t difficult; all I had to do was make sympathetic noises whenever she paused for breath. Unfortunately, when she realized I meant to escape—” She shuddered at the memory and took a restorative sip of sherry. “When I heard someone at the front door, I—I rather hoped it was you.”

A tremulous smile accompanied this confession, and Pickett was not quite certain whether the warmth that suddenly flooded through his veins was due to the unaccustomed beverage (superior, certainly, to anything served in the Covent Garden pubs) or to the lady sitting beside him on the sofa. Alas, in either case, he had obligations awaiting him in Bow Street, as well as a magistrate who would no doubt be expecting a full accounting of the unexpected turn of events. Reluctantly, he set down his wine glass and took his leave of the viscountess.

“I cannot allow you to leave without thanking you for all you have done,” she said, accompanying him as far as the door. “It is not often one meets cleverness combined with kindness.”

He snorted derisively, unimpressed by this flattering view of himself. “Clever! I’m a clunch for not figuring it out a week ago!”

“You are too hard on yourself, Mr. Pickett. Had you been less clever, or less kind, I should have found myself clapped in irons any time this past se’ennight. You have saved my life twice over—once from the scaffold, and once from Camille— and for that I must always be grateful,” she said, holding out her hand to him.

He knew a moment’s panic when his fingers closed over hers. Would it be presumptuous of him to kiss her hand? Did saving a lady’s life give one the right to take certain liberties? If not, then it should; Parliament should pass a law. But even as he wrestled with this dilemma, she withdrew her hand from his, and the moment was lost.

He stammered something—he could never afterwards recall precisely what—bowed once more to her ladyship, and betook himself back to Bow Street.

* * * *

The trial was something of a nine days’ wonder. Hastily printed and bound versions of Camille de la Rochefort’s purported life story now held pride of place in the shop windows of Oxford Street. As for John Pickett, he had undergone a miraculous metamorphosis in the public eye, transformed by Mr. Rowlandson’s pen from a lecherous buffoon to an avenging angel pictured rescuing a terrified Lady Fieldhurst (this time attired in virginal white) by cutting the hangman’s rope just as the trapdoor dropped.