Wicked Little Secrets (10 page)

“J-just the usual will be fine,” Dashiell stammered.

The barmaid’s mouth thinned in disappointment. She directed her attention at Teakesbury. “And you, sir?”

The solicitor ordered a cherry brandy and watched the barmaid sashay off.

Dashiell cleared his throat. “I’ve just come here a few times,” he assured the solicitor. “Just for crank. Not for… for… you know.”

Teakesbury didn’t respond but arched a brow, content to let Dashiell stew in his discomfort.

“How’s your family?” Dashiell finally managed, struggling for respectable conversation.

“Robert Jr. is in his third term at Eton,” he said. “Mrs. Teakesbury is embroidering a fire screen for my office. It’s a dear thing, a bird on a branch.” The solicitor leaned back in his chair and put his elbows on the armrest, steepling his fingers over his lap. “Now, why do you want to know about Bertis? Has this to do with one of your women?”

“Dammit, Teakesbury, I’m on the board of St. Joseph’s Charity School for Boys and some other charity… which I can’t remember at the moment… but I’ve traveled the world. I have a huge collection of antiquities from all periods. And, let us not forget, I’m a contributing member of the Imperial Society for History, Cartography, Exploration, and Related Matters. Despite what you may like to think, not every aspect of my life is about women.” This particular aspect was very much about a woman, but the solicitor didn’t need to know that.

“Relax, my good man, I’m ribbing you.” Teakesbury patted Dashiell’s shoulder. “Bertis was a little before my time. He was a puisne judge of the Queen’s Bench. But he must have taken everyone’s turn at Old Bailey. In his eyes, if a man had been brought to court, he was probably guilty, and if he wasn’t, a few years in Newgate would teach him never to argue his grievances to court again.”

“What of his personal life? Any connection to a madam down in St. Giles named Adele Jenkinson?”

“A St. Giles abbess?” The human mongoose lit up. “Tell me more of this Adele Jenkinson.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a cigar without taking his eyes off Dashiell except to light it on the candle in the middle of the table.

“She might have been a beauty in his day, but now her skin is leathery and all her teeth are rotted. She lives in a regular stop hole with a lobcock named Sidney and her son, Willie, an annoying squirrel of a man. I think she may do business with Angelica Fontaine.”

The solicitor smoothed the fine corner of his mustache with his thumb and index finger as he thought. “That’s not unusual. Every flesh peddler in the city is trying to supply a rare gem to Fontaine. From what I understand, a new girl at Fontaine’s gets a debut party where the top bid wins her for the evening, or if she is lucky, a man takes her as his mistress. Either way, she can make more in one night there than in two years on the street. Fontaine cuts the profit, so it’s a good business all around.”

Dashiell paused for a moment and drew a line on the table with his finger. “You just said Lawrence James’s widow was your client. I think I remember hearing that Fontaine was once his mistress, or should I say James was Fontaine’s, as he seemed to be the kept one. What happened to that affair?”

“What you would expect. Once James finally achieved some success, he decided he wanted to marry some young, beautiful thing, and not the dried-up woman who had supported him during all those years he struggled.”

“That’s rather harsh,” Dashiell said. “I think I might be a little angry if I were Fontaine. In fact, I think I might feel entitled to some of his masterpieces.”

“You think she stole those paintings?”

“Perhaps.”

The solicitor blew out a plume of smoke and gazed at Dashiell through the haze. “I truly loathe to admit that you and I think alike. It frightens me. I went to Scotland Yard with my suspicions. Yet, she is innocent according to the police and every inquiry made into the theft. But come, my good man, what official is going to go after her? She’s got secrets on the whole city.” He studied the fiery tip of his cigar. “So you say this Jenkinson woman ran a stop hole abbey. Did you see any masterpieces of art lying about, by chance?”

“Just cheap jewelry, watches, fobs—a small operation. She didn’t strike me as too intelligent.”

“Nonetheless, I’ll have one of my clerks check on her.”

The barmaid returned and set two glasses on the table. She jerked her head toward the door. “Your grandfather is here.”

“What!” Dashiell’s head whipped around to the door.

Several piercing whoops rose above the chatter of the club. People began to crowd about the edges of the room, parting the seas for the Earl of Baswiche and “the boys.”

“Oh God,” Dashiell groaned.

“Teakesbury,” his grandfather said as he nodded to the solicitor, then fixed his wild gaze on the painting. “What are you doing with that portrait of Vivienne?”

“What?” Dashiell bolted from his seat and regathered the fallen wrapping around his painted seductress. “Good God, this is not Vivienne! It doesn’t look a thing like her. Vivienne has pale skin and dimples in her cheeks, and she doesn’t have brown eyes.”

His grandfather squinted at the painting. “Can’t really say I’ve noticed her eyes before.”

How could he not notice her eyes! “They’re pale green, like ivy covered in icy snow.”

His grandfather’s friends exchanged infuriatingly knowing glances.

“My boy’s in love.” The old man beamed, like some proud society mama announcing her daughter’s engagement.

“Bloody hell, I am not!”

“He’s got it bad, I can tell,” said the earl’s friend, Sir Milton. “Never seen a man so much in love as to have to carry around her portrait and all. Who’s the lady?”

It seemed like every head in the room turned toward Dashiell. The chatter of conversation and the clatter of utensils and glasses ceased.

“Vivienne Taylor,” his grandfather said, oblivious to his audience or the twitching of his grandson’s hands, itching to go around his scrawny neck and squeeze his vocal chords permanently shut. “She’s Gertrude Bertis’s niece, you know, ol’ Judge Bertis’s wife. A saucy beauty, Vivienne is.”

It probably wasn’t prudent to take a table knife and murder his grandfather
à la
Thomas Becket in front of a solicitor and a room full of witnesses, no matter how much satisfaction Dashiell would derive from the act.

“Vivienne is
not
in any way attached to me,” Dashiell explained with a controlled coolness. “She is an honorable and proper young lady who happens to be engaged to another man, and she is certainly not the model in this painting.”

“What’s the matter with your boy?” Sir Milton ribbed the earl. “He can seduce every lady in London except the one he’s in love with?”

“Remember we discussed his problems with commitments,” his grandfather reminded his friends. “How he gets scared.”

“Oh,” the sympathetic old men said in unison, as if Dashiell suffered from some heinous medical condition such that, upon hearing the word “commitment,” his penis would shrink to the size of an acorn.

He slid his hands down his face. “Good God.”

“Please excuse me.” Teakesbury rose, stubbed out his cigar, and then reached for Hatshepsut. “While I would love to sit here and be amused by your little amorous exploits, Dashiell, I’ve serious work to do.”

“I’m going too.” Dashiell shot his grandfather a lethal glare, but it didn’t make the slightest dent in the old man’s happy, addled expression.

“Hell, Dash, it’s just seven!” he cried. “There’s a special party at 67 Knightsbridge. Invitation only, and clothes are unnecessary.”

The old men giggled, as if giddy to expose their flabby, aging bodies to some poor ladies. Dashiell had to believe a thousand torturous deaths at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition would be a more pleasant way to pass the evening than hanging about with his naked grandfather and his exhibitionist friends. “No, thank you.” He tossed a tanner on the table and picked up Italian Vivienne. Hugging her protectively to his body, he hurried after Teakesbury, finding him in the alley.

“So this conversation was really about Judge Bertis’s niece?” Teakesbury said.

“Pay no attention to my grandfather. He—”

In a flash, the solicitor raised his cane, holding its butt like a blade point between Dashiell’s eyes. “Now listen to me. Judge Bertis was not my favorite judge; nonetheless, I consider him a colleague. You’re a faithless scoundrel, Lord Dashiell. All you do is cause hurt and pain. You stay the hell away from Bertis’s niece. Understand?” He thumped the cane against Dashiell’s cheekbone.

“Ouch! Dammit. Why did you have to do that?”

Teakesbury retracted his staff and began walking into the fog. Then he spun around, swirling the mist about the edge of his coat. “Oh, and one more thing. Don’t forget you are lecturing at the Imperial Society next week. I have you slated to speak after Newberry.”

***

During supper, Vivienne toyed with her mushy potato croquettes drowned in brown sauce as she made elaborate plans to sneak into her uncle’s study. Although she realized she couldn’t talk to Dashiell anymore, he was right that she should check her uncle’s personal effects for incriminating evidence. She wished John hadn’t seen her and Dashiell together or that Dashiell hadn’t behaved so much like an obnoxious drunk, for now she had to promise never to talk to him again. She had to forget him once and for all, say good-bye to those girlish fantasies about running away to exotic lands with him to dig up mummies and ancient villages. She had clung to those stupid dreams for too long. She poured another cup of black tea. Assuming her little visit to her uncle’s study would be a clandestine, midnight mission, she needed to stay awake.

Down the table, Aunt Gertrude was cutting her mutton into tiny pieces and dropping them on Garth’s china plate on the floor. “Who’s my little puppy? Who’s my own sweet sugar? It’s you!” she would say as the dog smashed his face into the plate, eating in his noisy spitting manner. Once all the mutton was gone, the merry game was over. Her aunt pushed away her uneaten mounds of croquettes.

“I’m quite fatigued and desire to sleep.” She rose from the table. “I trust you will read the Lord’s word in my absence.”

So after Miss Banks had put her mistress in bed and then gone to the basement to wash the dishes, Vivienne retired to her room. Following her aunt’s instructions, she opened her Bible and cursorily read two dull verses from Samuel:
Now
there
was
a
certain
man
of
Ramathaimzophim, of mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephrathite: And he had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah: and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

Vivienne closed the book. She picked up the rose glass oil lamp from the side table and padded down to Uncle Jeremiah’s study.

She cautiously approached his great, mahogany bureau as if his ghost might rise up and slap her wrists for trying to delve into his secrets. She knew what to do. Her father had inherited a matching bureau upon his wedding to Vivienne’s mother. Inside was a secret compartment where her father hid the sparse family jewelry—hideous antique stuff that she would dress up the cat in when her father was working.

She set the lamp on the floor and then dragged a ladder-back chair over. Standing on the chair’s seat, she patted about the top of the cabinet until she found the small skeleton key. Then she set to work. She opened the desktop with the key, removed the top drawer, and ran her fingertip along the back recess. She stopped on what felt like the tip of a tiny protruding nail and pushed. There was the slightest click and the bank of drawers shifted down, allowing her to ease them out. In the very back was a little U-shaped pigeonhole. She wedged the tip of her fingernail in it and eased the wood forward until a thin, rectangular wooden box fell out.

Then she saw something different from her father’s desk. Uncle Jeremiah’s secret compartment had a lock on it.

“Dammit!” she whispered, then pressed her hand to her mouth. She had been around Dashiell too much. He was a bad influence on her vocabulary.

Holding the slim box close to the light, she examined the tiny lock.
Hmmm… a rather primitive mechanism. My father made more complex locks in his factory.

She plucked a pin from her hair, causing a wavy strand to flop into her eyes. She tried to twine the wayward curls around another pin, but that only caused an avalanche of hair to fall. Frustrated, she pulled every pin from her head, until all of her tresses were loose and flowing about her shoulders.

She bent the edge of a hairpin, stuck the tip in the lock, and ran her fingernail along the crack in the seam, catching the latch.
Open
Sesame
. The box’s lid flew back.

Inside was a brown leather book about the size of her hand, so old and well-used its bindings had turned to shreds. Tucked beside its spine was something thin and dark. At first, she thought it was a sentimental lock of hair. But when she picked it up, she found it wasn’t a braid of hair, but a tiny sack like the ones used for sausage casing. A curious thing to hide, unless it was saved from a sentimental meal. However, saving the casing was quite unromantic, if not bordering on disgusting.

She set it aside and carefully opened the fragile book.

She read the words, blinked, and read them again, just to make sure she wasn’t delusional.

Dec. 2, 1825: It has been a month since Barbara let me peek at her succulent, dimpled cheeks. Oh, my fingers itched to spank each one.

Vivienne touched her own dimpled cheek. Who was Barbara and why did her uncle slap her in the face?

March 12, 1826: Deborah Nixson was a very wicked lady’s maid indeed for stealing her mistress’s perfume. How she led me on a merry chase around her parlor. What delicious delight I took in administering the back of a hairbrush to her impertinent plump buttocks.