Sheri Cobb South (3 page)

“You recognize it?” he asked, watching the candlelight play along the short blades of a pair of silver nail scissors.

“Yes,” she said. “They’re mine.”

Lord Rupert stepped forward, as if to shield her. “That doesn’t prove anything!”

“I’m not accusing her ladyship of anything,” Mr. Pickett replied blandly.

“Really, Rupert, there is no need for this posturing,” protested Lady Fieldhurst. “Mr. Pickett is merely performing his duty. Of course he must know whose scissors they are, and how they came to be—

She shuddered, running a hand across her eyes as if to eradicate the sight of her dead husband on the floor at her feet. She looked unutterably weary, and Pickett, though “merely performing his duty,” felt like a cad for doing so.

“I don’t have to know it all tonight,” he found himself saying. “You’ve had a nasty shock. I’ll need to ask you some questions, but I can do it tomorrow, after you’ve got some rest.”

Her smile, though feeble, made him tingle all the way down to his toes.

“You are most kind, Mr. Pickett,” she said, her voice warm with relief and gratitude.

“Kind,” he muttered to himself a short time later, as he plodded eastward. He could think of more fitting words: gullible, for one, or just plain stupid. What had possessed him to give the pair of them all night to concoct a pretty story? Hard on the heels of this damning question came another: how was he to explain this fit of gallantry to the magistrate?

* * * *

The sky was beginning to lighten by the time Pickett reached his hired rooms off Drury Lane, allowing him only a few hours of rest before presenting himself in Bow Street. Alas, he was to be denied even this brief respite. Mrs. Catchpole, the woman who was both his landlady and (for a modest sum in addition to his monthly rent) his charwoman, was already up and bustling about the shop. Upon hearing her boarder’s tread on the stairs, she fell into her habitual harangue.

“Is that you just getting in at this hour, Johnny?” she called, her tone slightly accusing.

“It is, Mrs. Catchpole. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

She waddled over to the staircase, a large rosy-cheeked woman whose starched mobcap covered once-beautiful tresses now more silver than gold. “Lord love you, you’re not disturbing me! I’ve been up this half-hour and more. But what’s kept you out and about all night?”

“Bit of a dust-up in the West End,” Pickett explained wearily, pausing halfway up the stairs with one hand resting on the banister. “I’ll tell you about it later, but now I’m for bed.”

“Aye, I don’t doubt it! What you need, Johnny, is a wife. Give you a woman waiting at home, and you’d be eager enough to seek your bed before sun-up, I’ll be bound!” She chuckled richly at the prospect, then returned to her scold. “Trouble is, the only females you meet in your line of work ain’t the right sort for marrying. Dolly-mops, most of ‘em, or pickpockets, or both.”

Pickett could not dispute this home truth. He knew almost every prostitute from Long Acre to the Strand by name, yet he’d never “known” a woman in the biblical sense. He’d seen too many men wracked by disease, too many women selling their bodies to feed their bastard children, to avail himself of those all-too-fleeting pleasures. But he was not about to make a present of this information to Mrs. Catchpole; if she ever got wind of it, she wouldn’t rest until she saw him wed.

“You’ll be happy to know, then, that tonight I met a woman who is none of those things.”

Mrs. Catchpole saw the little half-smile playing about his mouth, and hope flared within her ample bosom. “You don’t say! Is she married?”

“Widowed.”

“Recently?”

He nodded. “Quite—quite recently.”

“Hmmm.” She frowned, pondering the difficulties inherent in courting a newly bereaved woman. “She’ll need plenty of time to mourn her husband, you know. Best not press her for a hasty marriage.”

“I won’t be pressing her for a marriage at all—at least, not marriage to me. She’s a viscountess.”

If Pickett had hoped for assurances as to love’s ability to conquer all, he was much mistaken in his confidante. Mrs. Catchpole collapsed into cackling laughter that set her numerous chins quivering. “A viscountess? Lord love you, Johnny, how you had me going! Here I was, thinking you was ready to post the banns!”

Pickett hastily demurred, professing himself to be quite satisfied with his bachelor state.

“Aye, that’s what you young fellows always say,” said Mrs. Catchpole, still chuckling. “You’ll change your mind when you meet the right girl, mark my words! Would you care for a spot of tea, or a bit of bread and butter? You’ll sleep all the better for a full belly.”

Pickett wanted nothing more than to escape a conversation which he found uncomfortably personal, but at Mrs. Catchpole’s mention of breakfast, his stomach reminded him urgently just how long it had been since he had last eaten. He accepted, although he had no illusions that this indulgence would somehow come without a price.

Nor did it. “You should meet my niece, Alice,” Mrs. Catchpole said, as she dispensed steaming tea into two mismatched cups. “As pretty as a morning in May, she is, and she knows how to hold household, which I’ll wager is more than anyone can say of this viscountess of yours!”

By the time she had plied him with food and drink, and bethought herself of no less than three promising local girls, any one of whom would have been a more fitting object for his affections than any viscountess, it was time for him to report to his magistrate in Bow Street, and he had not yet shut his eyes.

He was not surprised to find Mr. Colquhoun there ahead of him, and scarcely had time to wonder if the energetic Scotsman had already heard the news from Berkeley Square when the question was answered for him.

“Hear you’d some nasty business in Mayfair last night,” observed the magistrate, regarding his most junior Runner from beneath bushy white brows.

“Yes, sir,” agreed Pickett. “Viscount Fieldhurst, stabbed in the neck in his wife’s bedchamber. Found some time later by her ladyship and—”  He paused for a moment to consult the small notebook in the breast pocket of his coat. “—Lord Rupert Latham.”

Mr. Colquhoun’s forehead creased, and his eyebrows wriggled together like twin caterpillars. “And why didn’t Foote investigate?”

Pickett recalled the senior Runner’s avid interest in Lucy’s exploits. “He was, er, otherwise occupied.”

Upon reflection, the magistrate conceded that Pickett’s handling of the case might be a good thing, on the whole. Aside from an unexpectedly keen intelligence, the young man possessed a gift for mimicry, picking up and echoing back the speech patterns of the people around him, apparently without conscious effort. In fact, there were times Mr. Colquhoun could detect traces of his own Scots brogue in his protégé’s conversation. Perhaps the Fieldhurst clan might find Pickett’s reasonably genteel accents less objectionable than William Foote’s cruder tones. Not being given to lavish praise, however, he merely grunted. “Hmph! Well, I suppose you’ll have to do, but I don’t mind telling you I would have preferred a more experienced man on the job. No offense, mind you, but the upper classes don’t like to have their dirty laundry aired in public, and what they don’t like, they can make downright unpleasant. Still, I suppose it can’t be helped. Any sign of the murder weapon?”

Pickett nodded. “A pair of nail scissors belonging to her ladyship.”

“Any signs of a struggle?”

“None, sir. Although his lordship’s coat was pushed down off his shoulders.”

Colquhoun gave a grunt of satisfaction. “Taking it off preparatory to giving the little lady a tumble, no doubt. But she’s got this Lord Robert on her mind—

“Lord Rupert, sir.”

“Yes, yes. So she sees her opportunity and, while his lordship’s arms are effectively pinned behind his back, she stabs him with the scissors. Classic love triangle, crime of passion—should be simple enough.”

“Perhaps,” Pickett said doubtfully, “but I don’t think so.”

“Come now, Pickett, don’t be naïve! What else would this Lord Rupert have been doing in Lady Fieldhurst’s bedchamber at such an hour?”

“Yes, sir, but among other things, the timing isn’t right. The blood was already beginning to congeal by the time I arrived. My guess is that he’d already been dead for an hour, perhaps two.”

“What makes you so certain you were summoned at once? The pair of them may well have plotted to kill Fieldhurst, then ‘discovered’ the body some time later to avert suspicion.”

“Maybe,” Pickett said grudgingly, considering this possibility with some reluctance. “I don’t mind telling you that Lord Rupert strikes me as the sort who wouldn’t stick at much. But her ladyship—well, sir, you should’ve seen her. All white and scared, she was, and trying hard to convince me— and herself too, I’ll be bound!—that his lordship’s death was an accident.”

“A clever pretense by a guilty woman.”

“But she was so pale and—and sort of dazed, as if she couldn’t believe what was happening. She wasn’t pretending, sir. I’m sure of it.”

“You have lodgings in Drury Lane, do you not?”

Pickett was somewhat taken aback by the sudden change of subject, but he nodded. “I’ve a couple of rooms above a chandler’s shop.”

“Then I daresay you’ve been to the theatre there?”

Pickett recalled many enjoyable evenings spent in the pit at Drury Lane and wondered if Lady Fieldhurst might have been in one of the boxes above. It was strange to think that he had been unaware of her existence a scant six hours ago.

The magistrate took his silence for agreement. “Then you know that there are women—yes, and men too, we won’t forget them—who make their living ‘pretending,’ as you say, emotions they don’t feel. Some of them do it very convincingly.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Tell me,” interrupted Mr. Colquhoun, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, “would you say Lady Fieldhurst is an attractive woman?”

Pickett did not hesitate. “I’d say she was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

The magistrate heaved a sigh at this unforeseen complication. “John, your instincts are among the best I’ve ever come across—God knows you wouldn’t be here if they weren’t—but you still have a lot to learn. You must never, ever, allow yourself to become personally involved in a case. Always maintain a professional distance.”

Pickett regarded him with limpid brown eyes. “Like you did, sir?”

Although his tone was innocent enough, Mr. Colquhoun was not deceived. He remembered all too well a lanky youth, already an accomplished pickpocket at age fourteen, whose parents he had just sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay. A circuitous route had brought that same youth back to Bow Street ten years later, this time on the other side of the law.

“Harrumph! One moment of weakness, and you see what it’s got me: an impertinent young cub who had one lucky guess, and now thinks he knows everything there is to know about police work! Well, you don’t, my lad, not by a long chalk, but you’ve got too much sense to let your head be turned by beauty in distress. Besides,” he added, lowering his voice as he leaned forward to prop his elbow on his desk, “Fieldhurst was highly placed in the Foreign Office, and what with the war on, it’s a bad time for them to lose an important man. There might be a lucrative reward for the man who brings his killer to justice.”

“I have every intention of doing so, sir. But it won’t be Lady Fieldhurst. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“You have, Mr. Pickett.” Mr. Colquhoun leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “You have.”

* * * *

With this dire warning ringing in his ears, Pickett left Bow Street and set out for Lord Rupert Latham’s rooms in the Albany. The door was opened to him by Lord Rupert’s man, who looked down his nose and stated that his master was breakfasting while managing to convey his unspoken opinion that anyone worthy of being admitted to the lordly presence would have known better than to call at the uncivilized hour of ten o’clock. Pickett held his ground, however, and in the end the manservant was forced to content himself with a disdainful sniff before going in search of his master. He returned a short time later and grudgingly requested that Mr. Pickett be so good as to follow him to the breakfast room.

Pickett obliged and was soon treated to the sight of Lord Rupert Latham, gorgeously arrayed in a dressing gown of Oriental design, addressing a plate of eggs, ham, cold chicken, and toast, all of which were washed down with coffee. Clearly, the events of the previous evening had no effect on his appetite.

“So, Mr. Pickett, we meet again,” said Lord Rupert. “I trust you’ve no objection to seeing me en deshabille. Do sit down!”

He waved his fork in the general direction of the chair opposite. Pickett sat.

“I’ll not trouble you long, your lordship. I only need to ask you a few—

“Yes, yes, of course you do. But first, do tell me: whom do you intend to hang for the murder—the fair Lady Fieldhurst, or my humble self?”

“I don’t intend to hang anyone—at least not right away. I’m only trying to fix the time of death.”

“You relieve my mind.”

“Then perhaps you won’t mind describing your movements last night.” Pickett withdrew his occurrence book from the breast pocket of his coat.

“Not at all.” Lord Rupert fortified himself with a long pull from his coffee cup. “I called for Lady Fieldhurst at half-past eight. We drove straight to Lord Herrington’s residence in Portman Square. We returned to Berkeley Square at promptly two o’clock, as evidenced by the tolling of bells from a distant church; I regret that I cannot say with certainty which one. I escorted Lady Fieldhurst upstairs to her bedchamber and, finding the door partially blocked, shouldered it open to discover her husband dead upon the floor. The rest you know.”

“Tell me, your lordship, what is the nature of your acquaintance with Lady Fieldhurst?”

Lord Rupert’s cup froze halfway to his mouth, and his eyebrows arched. “My good fellow, I should think it was obvious.”

“Humor me,” suggested Pickett, tight-lipped.

“Very well,” Lord Rupert said with a shrug. “I first met Lady Fieldhurst—Miss Runyon, as she was then—in ‘02, when she came out.”