The Sudbury School Murders (31 page)

I took two steps into the room, checked
myself, and turned to go.

“Captain Lacey?"

I halted, bowed, and admitted to be he. I had
no memory of who she was.

The woman swiped at her wet cheeks with a
handkerchief so tiny she might as well not have bothered. "May I
make so bold as to speak to you? Mr. Grenville said you might
assist me."

Had he, indeed? Grenville was apt to
volunteer my services, as I'd been of some use in solving problems
that ran from innocuous misunderstandings all the way to violent
murders.

I ought to have walked away then and there
and not let myself be drawn into the whole sordid business. I was
tired and quite drunk and had no reason to believe I could help
this sorrowful lady.

But her red-rimmed eyes were so pleading, her
wretchedness so true, that I found myself giving her another bow
and telling her to proceed.

"It is my maid, you see."

I braced myself for an outpouring of domestic
troubles. My head started to pound, and I sank into the nearest
comfortable chair.

"She is going to be hanged," the lady
announced.

Her blunt statement swept the fog from my
brain. I sat up straight as several facts clicked into place.

"You are Lady Clifford," I said.

She nodded, dejected.

“I read of it in the newspaper this morning,”
I said. “Your maid has been accused of stealing a diamond necklace
worth several thousand pounds." The maid was even now awaiting
examination by the Bow Street magistrate.

Lady Clifford sat forward and clasped her
doughy hands. "She did not take it, Captain. That horrible Bow
Street Runner said so, but I know that Waters would never have done
such a thing. She's been with me for years. Why should she?"

I could think of a number of reasons why
Waters should. Perhaps she saw the necklace as her means of
escaping a life of servitude. Perhaps she had a lover who'd
convinced her to steal the necklace for him. Perhaps she bore a
secret hatred for her employer and had at last found way to exact
revenge.

I said none of these things to Lady
Clifford.

"You see, Captain, I know quite well who
stole my diamonds." Lady Clifford applied the tiny handkerchief
once more. "It was that viper I nursed at my bosom.
She
took
them.”

I knew from gossip which viper she meant.
Annabelle Dale, a gently born widow, had once been Lady Clifford's
companion and dearest friend. Now the woman was Earl Clifford's
mistress. Mrs. Dale still lived in the Clifford home and, from all
accounts, continued to refer to Lady Clifford as her "adored
Marguerite."

But all of London knew that Lord Clifford
spent nights in Mrs. Dale's bed. They formed a curious menage, with
Mrs. Dale professing fierce attachment to her old friend Lady
Clifford, and Lord Clifford paying duty to both mistress and
wife.

"Do you have evidence that Mrs. Dale took
it?" I asked.

"The Runner asked just the same.
He
could produce no evidence that Waters stole the necklace, yet he
arrested her."

The arresting Runner had been my former
sergeant, Milton Pomeroy, who had returned from Waterloo and
managed to work his way into the elite body of investigators who
answered to the Bow Street magistrate.

Pomeroy was far more interested in arresting
a culprit than in slow investigation. He was reasonably careful,
because he'd not reap a reward for the arrest if he obtained no
conviction. But getting someone to trial could be enough. Juries
tended to believe that the person in the dock was guilty, and a
maid stealing from an employer would make the gentlemen of the jury
righteously angry.

However, I conceded that Lady Clifford would
know a maid she'd lived with for years better than would Milton
Pomeroy. Interest stirred beneath my port-laden state.

"As I understand the story," I said, "your
maid was upstairs in your rooms the afternoon the necklace
disappeared. Before you and your husband and Mrs. Dale went out for
the day, the necklace was in place. Gone when you, Lady Clifford,
returned home."

Her lip curled. "Likely Mrs. Dale was nowhere
near Egyptian House as she claims. She could have come back and
stolen it."

My injured leg gave a throb. I rose and paced
toward the windows to loosen it, stopping in front of one of
Grenville's curio shelves. According to the newspaper, the other
Clifford servants had sworn that Mrs. Dale and Lord Clifford hadn’t
returned to the house all afternoon. "You want very much for Mrs.
Dale to have stolen your necklace."

"Perhaps I do. What of it?"

I touched a piece of jade carved into the
shape of a baboon. "You must know that however much you want Mrs.
Dale to have taken it, someone else entirely might be guilty."

"Well, Waters is not."

I studied the jade. Thousands of years old,
Grenville had told me. The carving was intricate and detailed, done
with remarkable workmanship. I rested the delicate thing on my
palm. "You might be wrong," I said. "Are you prepared to be?"

"Mr. Grenville promised you would help me,"
Lady Clifford said, tears in her voice. "Waters is a good girl. She
doesn't deserve to be in a gaol cell with common criminals. Oh, I
cannot bear to think what she is suffering."

She broke into another flood of weeping. Some
ladies could cry daintily, even prettily, but not Lady Clifford.
Her large body heaved, her sobs choked her, and she blew her nose
with a snorting sound.

I set the miniature beast back on its shelf.
Lady Clifford might be wrong that the solution was simple, but she
was in genuine distress. The fact that some of this distress was
pity for her poor maid made up my mind.

Lady Clifford sniffled again into the abused
handkerchief. "Mr. Grenville said I could rely on you
utterly
."

The little baboon smiled at me, knowing I was
caught. "Very well, my lady," I said. "I will see what I can
do."

*** *** ***

"I did not exactly say that," Grenville
protested.

I eyed him from the opposite seat in his
splendid carriage. I had awakened with the very devil of a
headache, but I felt slightly better this afternoon, thanks to the
concoction that my landlady, Mrs. Beltan, had stirred for me upon
seeing my state. Grenville had arrived at my rooms not long later,
and now we rolled across London in pursuit of the truth.

In his suit of finest cashmere and expensive
kid gloves, Grenville's slim form was a tailor's delight. I bought
my clothes secondhand, though I had a coat from Grenville's tailor
that he'd insisted on gifting to me when my best coat had been
ruined on one of our adventures.

I said, "Lady Clifford strikes me as a woman
who so much wishes a thing to be true, that it is true. To her. But
this does not mean she is mistaken. If the maid did not steal the
necklace, I have no wish to see her hang."

"Nor do I," Grenville said. "Her predicament
played on my sympathy. Lady Clifford might have exploited that, but
I sensed she genuinely cares for poor Waters." He gazed out at the
tall houses of Piccadilly then back at me, a sparkle in his eyes
I'd not seen since before he'd been injured. "So, my friend, we are
off on another adventure. Where do we begin?"

* * * * *

About the Author

Award-winning Ashley Gardner is a pseudonym
for
New York Times
bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. Under
both names--and a third, Allyson James--Ashley has written more
than 30 published novels and novellas in mystery and romance. Her
books have won several RTBook Reviews Reviewers Choice awards
(including Best Historical Mystery for
The Sudbury School
Murders
), and the Romance Writers of America’s RITA (given for
the best romance novels and novellas of the year). Ashley’s books
have been translated into a dozen different languages and have
earned favorable reviews in
Publisher's Weekly
and
Booklist.

More about the Captain Lacey series can be
found at

http://www.gardnermysteries.com
.

Or email Ashley Gardner at

[email protected]
.

Books in the series

The Hanover Square Affair

A Regimental Murder

The Glass House

The Sudbury School Murders

The Necklace Affair (
a novella)

A Body in Berkeley Square

A Covent Garden Mystery

A Death in Norfolk

And more to come!