Sheri Cobb South (5 page)

“So long as you understand that I am not making a confession, Mr. Pickett, is there anything you desire I should do for you?”

The possibilities raised by this simple query were so outrageous as to make him blush. He was both relieved and disappointed to see that she was not similarly affected, but he was not surprised; it was highly unlikely that such a lady would entertain the sort of thoughts about him that he’d had of her from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.

“If I may, I’d like to have another look at your—at the scene of the crime.” Seeing her smile fade, he added quickly, “You need not come with me, if it upsets you.”

She squared her shoulders and took a steadying breath. “No, I shall come with you,” she said resolutely. “You may have questions that I can answer.”

“We don’t have to go right away,” he assured her. “First, I’d like you to tell me about last night.”

“Very well,” said Lady Fieldhurst, more than willing to postpone the unpleasant task. “What do you wish to know?”

“Everything—and nothing in particular. Just sit down and tell me about it, like you were telling a friend.”

Her black skirts rustled as she settled herself on the bronze-green sofa so recently vacated by the dowager. “Where do I begin? I was promised to attend a ball given by Lord and Lady Herrington. Rupert—Lord Rupert Latham, that is—called for me at half-past eight, just as we had agreed.”

“Did you often attend such things without your husband?”

“I don’t know what you would call ‘often,’ but it was not unusual. As with most Society marriages, he had his interests, I had mine, and we rarely interfered with one another. On this occasion, he could not have escorted me in any case, for he had an appointment at nine o’clock.”

“Did he, now? With whom?”

“He didn’t say.” She watched with mingled exasperation and amusement as he withdrew a small notebook from his coat pocket and began to write. “If you truly wish for me to speak to you as a friend, Mr. Pickett, I must point out that my friends rarely take down my words.”

He gave her a rueful smile, but kept writing. “A necessary evil, I’m afraid.”

“In that case, I suppose I must resign myself.” In spite of these brave words, she turned slightly away from him, sparing herself the reminder of Pickett’s official capacity while at the same time unwittingly presenting him with a view of her elegant profile. “As I said, Lord Rupert called for me at half-past eight, and we were driven to the Herrington house in Grosvenor Square. We returned several hours later. I did not note the exact time.”

Pickett flipped back a page or two in his notebook and scanned the notes he had taken earlier that morning. Lord Rupert Latham had said quite decisively that they had returned at two o’clock. If they had concocted a story together, they had made a very poor job of it.

“And while you were at the ball? Were you together the entire time?”

She turned to regard him with an indulgent smile. “You do not understand how these things work, Mr. Pickett. Just because a lady accepts a gentleman’s escort to a ball does not mean she must sit in his pocket the entire evening. Indeed, it would be very bad ton to do so.”

“Even if the gentleman were her lover?”

“Especially if the gentleman were her lover.” The implication of her words wiped the smile from her face. “Mr. Pickett, I realize that it must look very bad for me, but I must tell you that Lord Rupert is not my lover.”

“I’m no guardian of the public morals, my lady,” protested Pickett, blushing like a schoolgirl. “You’ve no obligation to explain to me—”

“Nevertheless, I wish to do so. Whatever else my failures as a wife, I have always been faithful to my husband. But I’d had too much champagne, and Rupert was—indeed, I don’t know what I was thinking! I have asked myself a hundred times if I would have actually gone through with it. I still don’t know the answer.”

“You’d quarreled with Lord Fieldhurst, perhaps?”

“Quarrel is too strong a word for it. Certainly we were not in perfect charity with one another, but I believe such a state is not uncommon among married couples.” She glanced at the notebook on his knee, his hasty scrawl now filling its pages—with her own incriminating remarks, no doubt. “Goodness, how I have prattled on! You have a talent for making people say more than they ever intended to.”

“It comes in handy in my line of work,” he said with a smile.

“And it has no doubt sent more than one person to the gallows.”

“And saved more than a few others. Come, your ladyship, you’ve nothing to fear from me. I want only to find someone who can prove that you’d no opportunity to kill your husband.”

“But this is absurd!” protested her ladyship. “How could I have done so, when I was in plain view of almost three hundred people the entire—”

She faltered, and Pickett, seeing consternation writ large upon her face, prompted, “You’ve thought of something?”

“I—It seems I would not have been in plain sight the entire time, after all,” she said slowly. “During one of the sets, my gown was torn, and I was obliged to withdraw from the ballroom long enough to see to its repair.”

“How long would you say you were gone?” “Fifteen minutes, perhaps, no more than twenty.” Pickett, making a note of this in his occurrence book, looked up. “Does it really take that long to shove a couple of pins in?”

Her ladyship colored slightly. “Your knowledge of ladies’ clothing is obviously not extensive.”

“No, I can’t say that it is,” confessed Pickett with a rueful smile.

Her color deepened. “Suffice it to say that I was obliged to remove the gown entirely.”

“Did anyone see you?” asked Pickett, firmly banishing the mental image this confession inspired. “I mean—that is, did any other lady enter the room during this time, anyone who might vouch for your presence there?”

“No, no one but the maid on duty. I do not know the girl’s name, but I daresay Lady Herrington could furnish it—unless, of course, she was hired as extra staff for the occasion. If that is the case, the employment agency that placed her would be the most reliable source of information.”

Pickett wrote down this suggestion, but privately hoped for a less circuitous line of investigation. “What about Lord Rupert?” he suggested. “Was he perhaps awaiting you in the corridor? If he could swear that you were at that ball from eight-thirty to two—”

“Oh, but he couldn’t. He was gone for part of the evening himself.”

Pickett’s pencil fell to the floor with a clatter. “He what?”

“He spilled champagne on himself—or rather, someone jostled him and caused him to spill it—and so was obliged to return to his rooms in the Albany for a change of clothes. He did not return until after supper.”

As Lady Fieldhurst recounted the incident, Pickett once again sought confirmation from his notes. As he’d thought, there was no mention of Lord Rupert’s having left the premises. An innocent oversight on that gentleman’s part, he wondered, or a deliberate attempt to deceive? It might well be the former, but he would not put the latter past his lordship.

“At what time was supper served, my lady?”

“Midnight.”

At first glance, it would appear that Lord Rupert had just been promoted to chief suspect. Unfortunately, the timing of Lord Rupert’s movements did not square with those of the murder quite as well as Pickett could wish. Nor could it have been Lord Rupert whom the viscount had arranged to meet at nine o’clock; surely Lady Fieldhurst must have remarked upon it if Lord Rupert had called for her at half-past eight, only to abandon her early enough to visit her husband a scant half-hour later. That mystery, at least, should be cleared up easily.

“Lady Fieldhurst, I should like to have a word with the butler who admitted your husband’s visitor last night.”

Her lips twisted in a humorless smile. “So should I, Mr. Pickett, but it appears that Rogers has disappeared.”

Mr. Pickett’s eyebrows rose. “Done a bunk, has he?”

“You sound just like Thomas.”

“Thomas?”

“The footman who met you at the door,” she explained. “He was the one who informed me of Rogers’s disappearance. He will be acting as butler until Rogers returns, or until another butler can be engaged.”

“I’ll want a word with him before I go.”

“Of course. But surely you don’t think Rogers—

“I think,” said Pickett with great deliberation, “that whoever Rogers showed in at nine o’clock last night was very likely the last person to see Lord Fieldhurst alive.”

Chapter 4

In Which a Clue Disappears

“And you think the visitor—and therefore the murderer— was Rupert.”

Lady Fieldhurst’s tone was slightly accusing, and Pickett realized that the cautious camaraderie of a moment earlier had been no more than a brief illusion. However welcoming her smile, however amiable her manner, she was still a viscountess, and he was still a thief-taker.

“I don’t know what to think, at least not yet,” he said. “Might I have a look at the room where your husband received his guests? Perhaps he left some clue to his visitor’s identity.”

She nodded in understanding. “You mean a calling card, or some such thing. Yes, certainly you must see Fieldhurst’s study.”

She led the way across the tiled entrance hall and opened the door to the room directly opposite. The curtains were tightly drawn and no candles burned, but the room gave off a masculine aura discernable even through the gloom. Pickett rather thought it lay in the smells that hung in the air: old leather, fine liqueur, and snuff. Then Lady Fieldhurst drew back the heavy curtains, and the pale March sunshine flooded through the tall windows, illuminating the sources of the various scents. Bookcases lined two walls from floor to ceiling, their shelves groaning under the weight of calf-bound volumes, all neatly arranged alphabetically. Canisters of snuff marched with military precision along the mantle, each one labeled and dated. The late viscount, it seemed, was an organized man—far too organized, unfortunately, to Pickett’s mind. There was no sign of the brandy he’d undoubtedly offered his visitor, nor was there any calling card left lying about which might serve to identify the mystery guest. Even the gleaming mahogany desk had been swept clean of all but a quill pen, an ink stand, and a stack of franked letters awaiting the post. Pickett thumbed idly through these and then paused. He could neither read nor speak French, but he recognized the language when he saw it, and the letter beneath his hand was unmistakably directed to a Paris address.

Without looking up, he asked, “Did your husband have correspondents in France, my lady?”

“He may well have done,” she said, crossing the room to join him at the desk. “We are at war, Mr. Pickett, and my husband was highly placed in the Foreign Office. Under the circumstances, I always felt it best not to inquire too closely into his correspondence.”

He tucked the letter back into the middle of the stack and restored it to the desk. “No doubt you’re right. Now, if I might have another look upstairs?”

“Of course.”

Together they left the viscount’s study. Pickett followed Lady Fieldhurst up the gracefully curving staircase to the closed door at the top of the landing. She paused for a moment and took a deep breath, then turned the knob and opened the door.

The last time he had been in this room it had been in darkness, illuminated by nothing more than a single branch of candles and a dying fire. In sunlight it was a thing of beauty, all blue and pink and delicate rosewood furnishings. Only a large, brown stain on the carpet gave silent testimony to the violence perpetrated here a scant twelve hours earlier. Except for the removal of Lord Fieldhurst’s body, the room appeared untouched; not even the cold ashes had been swept from the grate. If he were a gambling man, Pickett thought, he would bet a week’s wages that the servants were afraid to set foot in here.

“You will find the room essentially unchanged,” Lady Fieldhurst told him, as if reading his thoughts. “I gave orders to the maids that it was not to be cleaned—not that they needed a great deal of persuading.”

He nodded but offered no reply, his attention being at present occupied with a survey of the room. In addition to the door they had just entered, the only other entrance to the room appeared to be a door set in the adjacent wall. He tried the knob. It turned in his hand, and the door swung open to reveal a second bedchamber, this one somewhat larger and furnished in royal blue and berry red.

“My husband’s bedchamber,” said Lady Fieldhurst by way of explanation.

“Was this door usually left unlocked?”

Color flooded her cheeks, but the glitter in her eyes gave him to understand that her uppermost emotion was not embarrassment, but affront. “I realize, Mr. Pickett, that you think me immoral and possibly murderous, but I was never so derelict in my duty to my husband that I should lock my door against him!”

Pickett opened his mouth to protest, then decided against it. If that was what she imagined he thought of her, it was perhaps better that she remain unenlightened. He shut the door connecting the two bedchambers, then turned his attention to the window, which, if his sense of direction could be relied upon, should look out the front of the house onto the street. He crossed the room and drew back the filmy curtains. As he had expected, the view was of the square below. The hedge-lined walking paths of the common area bisected the square into geometric patterns, while the wrought-iron railings about its perimeter protected the pleasant island of greenery from trespass by undesirables. Beyond it, a row of almost identical edifices faced the Fieldhurst abode and its neighbors, like duelists confronting one another on the field of honor.

Finding the window unlocked, he pushed the casement open and leaned his head out to inspect the pavement two stories below. A nimble man might manage to scramble down without serious injury, but he would be forced to do so in full view of his neighbors, any one of whom might glance out the window at any time. That fact alone would appear to put paid to the housebreaker theory. No, it was far more likely that the viscount’s killer was someone who had the run of the house, someone who could do the deed and then stroll down the stairs without arousing suspicion.