Wouldn't It Be Deadly (10 page)

“How remarkable to meet your cousin in such circumstances,” Pickering said. Redstone nodded in agreement.

“Lizzie has had a long, exhausting day,” Jack said with a fond glance. “Best if she goes home, has a hot meal, and gets some rest.”

“You're coming right to Wimpole Street with us, Eliza,” Pickering said. “Mrs. Pearce will turn the larder inside out making you the best dinner you've ever had.”

She gave Pickering another quick hug. “I'd like that. And you must come, too, Jack. We've had no time to catch up. I've no idea how you became a detective inspector, although I'm plenty glad you did. And I want to hear all about Sybil.”

Pickering smiled. “Please join us, Inspector. Professor Higgins should be home very soon, if he's not already there. I know you have a few questions for him.”

“A few.” Jack looked at Eliza. “Yes, I believe I will join you.”

He pointed at something beneath the table. “Here now. How did your hat get there?”

Eliza glanced over at Grint, who kept his gaze riveted to the floor. “Detective Grint dislodged it.”

Jack bent down to retrieve her hat, sending a dangerous look Grint's way. After brushing a few specks of dust off her hat, he placed it back on her head. When he did so, his eyes widened. “There's a bruise on your neck and ear, Lizzie. How did this happen?”

Eliza looked over at Grint once more.

“This is unspeakable,” Pickering said.

“Indeed it is,” Redstone chimed in. “Whoever did that should be flogged!”

Jack whipped off his suit jacket and flung it over the table. “If everyone would please leave the room. Everyone, that is, except for Detective Grint.”

Hollaway raced out of the room, followed by Eliza, Pickering, and Redstone. The door slammed shut. In the next instant, she heard something heavy being knocked to the floor. They all stood stock-still, listening to cries, grunts, curses, and repeated knocks and bangs from within the interrogation room.

At last, the door swung open and Jack emerged. He didn't have a scratch on him, but his knuckles were raw and bleeding. From behind him, soft groans could be heard.

“Sorry for the delay,” he said, and shrugged into his jacket.

Eliza went over to her cousin and straightened his lapels. “Just like Saturday night at the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel.”

“Aye.” He kissed her forehead. “Now let's get you back to Wimpole Street.”

Pickering clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, Inspector. Henry will be as pleased as I am that you taught the brute a lesson.”

“It's possible the Professor may not be as pleased to see me as you imagine,” Jack said under his breath.

In that moment, Eliza knew she had never been the prime suspect in Nepommuck's murder. Henry Higgins was.

 

SIX

Although Mrs. Pearce had been given little time to cook supper for four, Eliza and her dining companions were duly impressed. The table was set with the best bone china, courtesy of a long-ago gift by Mrs. Higgins, and everything from the nut and celery salad to the boiled capons with cauliflower sauce was prepared to perfection.

So delicious was the meal that for most of it, there had been little conversation, everyone ravenous at the end of such a long, exhausting day. But as the maids brought out the blancmange and Madeira, Eliza thought it was time to put in a good word for the still absent Henry Higgins.

“It's a shame the Professor isn't here.” Eliza reached for her dessert spoon. “Blancmange is his favorite. He's as lighthearted as a boy whenever Mrs. Pearce serves it.”

“Don't worry.” Mrs. Pearce stood near the dining room entrance, where she had overseen the serving of the various courses. “I've put aside an entire bowl for him.”

Her cousin Jack cocked his head in the housekeeper's direction. “Does Professor Higgins often miss dinner without notifying his staff?”

“I should say not,” Mrs. Pearce said in an affronted tone. “Mr. Higgins insists on punctuality for both his meals and his lessons.”

With that, Mrs. Pearce gestured for the two serving maids to leave the dining room. She gave a last look of approval at the table before following suit.

Jack took a spoonful of pudding before speaking. “It seems as if the Professor's behavior tonight is uncharacteristic.”

“Not at all, Inspector,” Pickering said. “Henry takes to wandering the streets for hours on end for research purposes. He always has an ear out—quite literally—for an interesting dialect or a new turn of phrase. And where Henry is concerned, the study of phonetics trumps everything.” He lifted up his own spoon. “Even blancmange.”

“The Colonel is right, Jack. The Professor loves to eavesdrop on people. Despite what Mrs. Pearce said, we've known him to miss three meals in one day because he was so caught up listening to a south Putney bus driver.” Eliza smiled. “Or a Cockney flower seller.”

“Is that how you made his acquaintance, Lizzie?” Jack asked. “Last I heard from my sister, you were selling violets to the toffs.”

“Better than selling fruit like I did when I was ten. Flowers smell nicer.”

“How did you end up living with these three fine gentlemen at Wimpole Street?”

Redstone looked up from his dessert. “I have only recently arrived in London, Inspector. I regret to say that I had not made the charming young woman's acquaintance until Sunday last, when the Colonel introduced us at Lady Gresham's garden party.”

Jack seemed puzzled. “I thought both you and the Colonel lived here with the Professor.”

“That is true.” Redstone sipped his Madeira. “But only this past fortnight. I've spent the last fifteen years in India.”

“The Major and I are colleagues, Detective,” Pickering said. “We've spent the better part of two years in Bombay working on Sanskrit translations and trying to revive the language, at least in the academic world. Our research was interrupted, however, when I came to London last year to meet Professor Higgins.”

“I expected he would be gone six months at most,” Redstone added, “but when he wrote that he was extending his stay indefinitely, I decided to journey to England myself. The Colonel and I have a paper to prepare for an upcoming conference. We'll need to work together closely until then.”

Pickering nodded. “And when Henry learned a fellow language scholar was arriving in London, he insisted the Major stay with us.”

Jack took out his notebook and scribbled something down. Eliza could sense the growing anxiety in the dining room.

“I don't know what you're writing,” she said. “Major Redstone has nothing to do with the murder. He hadn't even met Nepommuck until I introduced them at the garden party.”

“I see.” Jack wrote a moment more before looking up. “What did you think of the Hungarian gentleman, Major?”

“I thought he was no gentleman,” Redstone said.

“Why did you think that?”

“He insulted our Eliza at the party,” Pickering said. “It would not take you more than ten minutes in his company to know him for an opportunist and a liar.”

“Jack, no one in this room had any reason to kill the Maestro,” Eliza said. “But plenty of others did.”

Her cousin ignored her. “Major Redstone, while I'm not a language expert like you and the Colonel, it doesn't sound like you were London bred.”

“You are correct, sir. My family is from Northumberland. I was born near Corbridge, just east of Hexham.”

“From what I've learned so far, several of Nepommuck's students wish to remain anonymous,” Jack said. “Perhaps you once had need of Nepommuck's services as a teacher and are reluctant to admit it. You do seem roughly the same age as him. Maybe at some point in the past, you wanted to get rid of your northern speech as much as I wanted to erase my Cockney vowels.”

The Major smiled. “If my speech retains the echo of my Northumberland upbringing, I can only say I never found it to be an impediment. Certainly it proved no obstacle to my studies at Sandhurst or Oxford.”

Eliza was growing irritated. “Really, Jack, you're acting as if a Northumberland brogue is as dreadful as our East Ender accent. And I consider myself lucky it was the Professor and Colonel Pickering who taught me, not Nepommuck.”

“We are back to my original question. How did you end up living in Wimpole Street?”

“Blame us, Detective,” Pickering said before she could reply. She sensed that the Colonel was not only trying to protect Higgins, but her as well. “Both Henry and I became intrigued that we could pass her off as a lady within six months' time.” He smiled at her from across the table. “Of course to me she has always been a most gracious young lady.”

“Hear, hear.” Redstone raised his glass to her.

“They're being kind,” Eliza said. “When I first laid eyes on the Professor last summer, I was a ragamuffin with dirty hair, bad teeth, and manners to match. The farthest thing from a lady one can imagine. And seeing as how you were raised in the East End, too, you don't have to imagine much.”

Jack nodded.

Eliza sat back. “The night I met the Professor, it had been raining for hours, and I hadn't even made my usual half crown selling violets. I was keeping dry beneath St. Paul's, along with all the swells that had just left the opera at Covent Garden. I tried to convince the Colonel to buy a flower when someone mentioned that a man was writing down everything I said. That put the fear of God in me. I thought he was a copper's nark.”

“What's a ‘copper's nark'?” asked Redstone.

“A police informer,” Jack replied.

“As the Colonel can tell you, I didn't take this well. I created a bit of a scene, actually. But the fellow taking these notes—Professor Higgins—got me to calm down by announcing I had been born in Lisson Grove. It seemed like magic that a person could listen to me for a minute or two and know right where I came from. Even to the very street.” She took a moment to finish her blancmange. “Still impresses me, it does.”

“He impressed me as well,” Pickering said. “That was the night that I first met Eliza
and
Henry.”

“So you all became fast friends during a summer rainstorm, did you?”

Eliza wasn't fooled by her cousin's casual tone. If phonetics ruled Higgins's actions, she'd bet her three best hats that respect for the law ruled Jack.

“The Colonel and the Professor did,” Eliza said. “They have much in common, seeing as how the Colonel is a Sanskrit scholar and the Professor studies language.”

“As I told you, I had come all the way from India just to meet him.” Pickering reached over to pour himself another glass of Madeira from the crystal decanter. “And Henry swore he had plans to travel to the subcontinent to talk with me. I found our encounter that night most remarkable.”

Jack didn't look convinced. “You still haven't answered how you ended up living here, Lizzie. The police report says you were in residence at 27A Wimpole Street from last summer until this past February. Then you apparently moved in with the Professor's mother on the Chelsea Embankment.”

“This is sounding far too much like a police interrogation,” Redstone said. “And you have assured Miss Doolittle that she is innocent of any crime.” While he wore an impassive expression, Eliza heard a note of warning in his voice.

“It's simple, Jack,” she said. “The night after I met the Colonel and the Professor, I came here to ask for lessons. Professor Higgins said he could teach me how to speak like a lady. I'd been selling violets in the rain and the fog for seven years, and all it had gotten me was a shabby room I could barely afford in Angel Court next to Meiklejohn's oil shop. Couldn't see myself doing that for the next thirty years. I thought if I could speak properly, I might be able to find work in a real flower shop.”

“The Professor taught you for free?” Jack asked.

“Eliza offered to pay for her lessons, but I wouldn't hear of it,” the Colonel said. “I paid for them instead, which was only right considering that we didn't have the most charitable reasons for taking her on. For that, I duly apologize.”

“Oh, hang the apologies,” Eliza said. “This all started as an honest wager between the Professor and the Colonel. They placed a bet that I could speak like a lady at a proper garden party, and later that I could be passed off as a duchess at the Embassy Ball. By the way, Nepommuck helped win that wager. He had no idea of my background at the time and after meeting me, pronounced that I was indisputably of Hungarian royal blood, just as he was.”

“Who knew that Nepommuck was putting on an even greater charade than we were?” Pickering muttered.

“Anyway, there was nothing dishonorable about my relationship with the Colonel or the Professor, Jack. I learned how to behave and speak properly, and Professor Higgins won his bet. Mrs. Pearce acted as a chaperone the entire time. When the Professor and the Colonel went off to Spain to do research, I began working for Nepommuck as his teaching assistant. I am far better off than I was a year ago. I even have a young gentleman who has taken a fancy to me.”

“Hardly a fancy,” Pickering said. “Mr. Eynsford Hill is besotted with Eliza.”

Jack pushed his half-eaten dessert away. “You've both painted a most harmonious picture. Except that Professor Higgins provided the newspapers with damning accusations against Nepommuck. And the day these were published, the Hungarian winds up with a knife in his back.” He frowned. “Even more suspicious, Professor Higgins is nowhere to be found.”

“But the Professor did not kill the Maestro.”

“Just so, Eliza,” Pickering said. “Henry is incapable of such a thing.”

“I know he's exasperating, sarcastic, and a bit of a bully,” she said, “but he's all bluster and noise, like our drunkard of an uncle, Otis Pepper. He could no more stick a knife in a person than I could sound like one of those opera singers at the Garden.”