When maidens mourn ssm-7 Read online

  But now, as she listened to his footsteps climb the stairs to the second floor and heard the distant click of his bedroom door closing quietly behind him, she knew a deep disquiet.

  And an unexpected welling of an emotion so fierce that it caught her breath and left her wondrous and shaken and oddly, uncharacteristically frightened.

  Tuesday, 4 August

  `My lord?'

  Sebastian opened one eye, saw his valet's cheerful, fine-boned face, then squeezed the eye shut again when the room lurched unpleasantly. `Go away.'

  Jules Calhoun's voice sounded irritatingly hearty.

  `Sir Henry Lovejoy is here to see you, my lord.'

  `Tell him I'm not here. Tell him I'm dead. I don't care what the hell you tell him. Just go away.'

  There was a moment's pause. Then Calhoun said, `Unfortunately, Lady Devlin went out early this morning, so she is unable to receive the magistrate in your stead.'

  `Early, you say? Where has she gone?' He opened both eyes and sat up quickly - not a wise thing to do under the circumstances. `Bloody hell,' he yelped, bowing his head and pressing one splayed hand to his pounding forehead.

  `She did not say. Here, my lord; drink this.'

  Sebastian felt a hot mug thrust into his free hand. `Not more of your damned milk thistle.'

  `There is nothing better to cleanse the liver, my lord.'

  `My liver is just fine,' growled Sebastian, and heard the valet laugh.

  Calhoun went to jerk back the drapes at the windows. `Shall I have Morey tell Sir Henry you'll join him in fifteen minutes?'

  Sebastian swung his legs over the side of the bed and groaned again. `Make it twenty.'

  Sebastian found the magistrate munching on a tray of cucumber and brown bread and butter sandwiches washed down with tea.

  `Sir Henry,' said Sebastian, entering the room with a quick step. `My apologies for keeping you waiting.'

  The magistrate surged to his feet and dabbed at his lips with a napkin. `Your majordomo has most kindly provided me with some much-needed sustenance. I've been up at Camlet Moat since dawn.'

  `Please, sit down,' said Sebastian, going to sprawl in the chair opposite him. `Any sign yet of the missing children?'

  `None, I'm afraid. And that's despite the hundreds of men now beating through the wood and surrounding countryside in search of them. Unfortunately, Miss Tennyson's brother has offered a reward for the children; he's even set up an office in the Fleet, staffed by a solicitor, to handle any information that may be received.'

  `Why do you say unfortunately?'

  `Because the result is likely to be chaos. I've seen it happen before. A child is lost; with the best of intentions, the grieving family offers a reward, and suddenly you have scores of wretched children, sometimes even hundreds being offered to the authorities as the lost child.'

  `Good God,' said Sebastian. `Still, I can understand why he is doing it.'

  `I suppose so, yes.' Lovejoy blew out a harsh breath. `Although I fear it is only a matter of time until their bodies are discovered. If the children had merely been frightened by what they saw and run off to hide, they would have been found by now.'

  `I suppose you must be right.' Sebastian considered pouring himself a cup of tea, then decided against it. What he needed was a tankard of good strong ale. `Still, it's strange that if they are dead, their bodies weren't found beside Miss Tennyson's.'

  `I fear there is much about this case that is strange. I've spoken to the rector at St. Martin's, who confirms that Miss Tennyson and the two children did indeed attend services this past Sunday, as usual. He even conversed with them for a few moments afterward although not, unfortunately, about their plans for the afternoon.'

  `At least it helps to narrow the time of her death.'

  `Slightly, yes. We've also checked with the stages running between London and Enfield, and with the liveries in Enfield, but so far we've been unable to locate anyone who recalls seeing Miss Tennyson on Sunday.'

  `In other words, Miss Tennyson and the children must have driven out to Camlet Moat with her killer.'

  `So it appears. There is one disturbing piece of information that has come to light,' said Lovejoy, helping himself to another sandwich triangle. `We've discovered that Miss Tennyson was actually seen up at the moat a week ago on Sunday in the company of the children and an unidentified gentleman.'

  `A gentleman? Not a driver?'

  `Oh, most definitely a gentleman. I'm told he walked with a limp and had an accent that may have been French.'

  For a gentlewoman to drive in the country in the company of a gentleman hinted at a degree of friendship, of intimacy even, that was quite telling. For their drive to have taken Gabrielle Tennyson and her French friend to Camlet Moat seemed even more ominous. Sebastian said, `I've heard she had befriended a French prisoner of war on his parole.'

  `Have you? Good heavens; who is he?'

  `I don't know. I've yet to find anyone who can give me a name.'

  Lovejoy swallowed the last of his sandwich and pushed to his feet.

  `If you should discover his identity, I would be most interested to know it. I've no need to tell you how this latest development is likely to be received. Sales of blunderbusses and pistols have already skyrocketed across the city, with women afraid to walk to market alone or allow their children to play outside. The Prime Minister's office is putting pressure on Bow Street to solve this, quickly. But if people learn a Frenchman was involved! Well, we ll likely have mass hysteria.'

  Sebastian rose with his friend, aware of a profound sense of unease. He knew from personal experience that whenever Downing Street or the Palace troubled itself with the course of a murder investigation, they tended to be more interested in quieting public hysteria than in seeing justice done. The result, all too often, was the sacrifice of a convenient scapegoat.

  Eighteen months before, Sebastian had come perilously close to being such a scapegoat himself. And the man who had pushed for his quick and convenient death was his new father-in-law.

  Charles, Lord Jarvis.

  Chapter 17

  After the magistrate's departure, Sebastian poured himself a tankard of ale and went to stand before the empty hearth, one boot resting on the cold fender.

  He stood for a long time, running through all he knew about Gabrielle Tennyson's last days, and all he still needed to learn. Then he sent for his valet.

  `My lord?' asked Calhoun, bowing gracefully.

  To all appearances, Jules Calhoun was the perfect gentleman's gentleman, elegant and urbane and polished. But the truth was that the valet had begun life in one of the most notorious flash houses in London, a background that gave him some interesting skills and a plethora of useful contacts.

  `Ever hear of a man named Jamie Knox?' Sebastian asked, drawing on his gloves. `He owns a tavern in Bishopsgate called the Black Devil.'

  `I have heard of him, my lord. But only by repute. It is my understanding he arrived in London some two or three years ago.'

  `See what else you can find out about him.'

  `Yes, my lord.'

  Sebastian settled his hat at a rakish angle and turned toward the door. Then he paused with one hand on the jamb to glance back and add,

  `This might be delicate, Calhoun.'

  The valet bowed again, his dark eyes bright with intelligence, his features flawlessly composed. `I shall be the soul of discretion, my lord.'

  Hero had begun the morning with a visit to the Adelphi Terrace.

  She found Mr. Hildeyard Tennyson already out organizing the search for his missing cousins. But he had left clear instructions with his servants, and with the aid of a footman she spent several hours bundling up Gabrielle's research materials and notes. Having dispatched the boxes to Brook Street, she started to leave. Then she paused to turn and run up the stairs to her friend's bedroom.

  She stood for a long moment in the center of the room, her hands clenched before her. She had called Gabrielle friend for six years. But a
lthough they had been close in many ways, Hero realized now just how compartmentalized their friendship had been. They had talked of history and art, of philosophy and poetry. Hero knew the pain Gabrielle had suffered at the early loss of her mother and her lingering grief over the brothers who died so young; she knew her friend's fondness for children. But she did not know Gabrielle's reason for turning away from marriage and any possibility of bearing children of her own.

  It occurred to Hero that she had simply assumed her friend's reasons mirrored her own. But she knew that assumption was without basis. Gabrielle had challenged the typical role of women in their society by her own enthusiasm for scholarship and her determination to openly pursue her interests. Yet she had never been one to crusade for the kind of changes Hero championed. When Hero spoke of a future when women would be allowed to attend Oxford or to sit in Parliament, Gabrielle would only smile and faintly shake her head, as if convinced these things would never be and perhaps never should be.

  She had certainly never spoken of her friendship with some mysterious French lieutenant. But then, Hero had never mentioned to Gabrielle her own strange, conflicted attraction to a certain dark-haired, amber-eyed viscount. And Hero found herself wondering now what Gabrielle had thought of her friend's sudden, seemingly inexplicable wedding. They'd never had the opportunity to discuss it.

  There were so many things the two friends had needed to discuss, had intended to discuss that morning Hero was to drive up to Camlet Moat. Now Hero was left with only questions and an inescapable measure of guilt.

  `What happened to you?' she said softly as she let her gaze drift around her friend's room to linger on the high tester bed and primrose coverlet, the mirrored dressing table and scattering of silver boxes and crystal vials. The chamber was, essentially, as Gabrielle had left it when she went off on Sunday, not knowing she would never return. Yet Hero could feel no lingering presence here, no whispered essence of the woman whose laughter and dreams and fears this place had once witnessed. There was only a profound, yawning stillness that brought a pricking to Hero's eyelids and swelled her throat.

  Leaving the house, she directed her coachman to the Park Lane home of a certain member of Parliament from the Wolds of Lincolnshire. Only then, as her carriage rocked through the streets of London, did Hero lean back against the soft velvet squabs, and for the first time since she'd learned of Gabrielle's death, she allowed the tears to fall.

  A few carefully worded inquiries at the War Office, the Alien Office, and the Admiralty provided Sebastian with the information that there were literally thousands of paroled French and allied officers in Britain. Most captured enemy officers were scattered across the land in one of fifty so-called parole towns. But some were billeted in London itself.

  Prisoners of war from the ranks were typically thrown into what were known as the hulls. Rotting, demasted ships deemed too unseaworthy to set sail, the hulls were essentially floating prisons. By day, the men were organized into chained gangs and marched off to labor on the docks and in the surrounding area's workshops. At night they were locked fast in the airless, vermin-ridden, pestilence-infested darkness belowdecks. Their death rate was atrocious.

  But the officers were traditionally treated differently. Being gentlemen, they were credited with possessing that most gentlemanly of characteristics: honor. Thus, a French officer could be allowed his freedom with only a few restrictions as long as he gave his word of honor as a gentleman, his parole that he would not escape.

  `That's the theory, at least,' grumbled the plump, graying functionary with whom Sebastian spoke at the Admiralty.

  `Problem is, too many of these damned Frog officers are not gentlemen. They raise them up from the ranks, you see, which is why we've had over two hundred of the bastards run off just this year alone.' He leaned forward as if to underscore his point. `No honor.'

  `Two hundred?'

  `Two hundred and thirty-seven, to be precise. Nearly seven hundred in the past three years. These Frenchies may be officers, but too many of them are still scum. Vermin, swept up out of the gutters of Paris and lifted far above their proper station. That's what happens, you see, when civilization is turned upside down and those who were born to serve start thinking themselves as good as their betters.' The very thought of this topsy-turvy world aroused such ire in the functionary's ample breast that he was practically spitting.

  `Yet some of the best French officers have come up through the ranks,' said Sebastian. 'Joachim Murat, for example. And Michel Ney...'

  `Pshaw.' The functionary waved away these examples of ungentlemanly success with the dismissive flap of one pudgy hand.

  `It is obvious you know nothing of the Army, sir. Nothing!'

  Sebastian laughed and started to turn away.

  `You could try checking with Mr. Abel McPherson, he's the agent appointed by the Transport Board of the Admiralty to administer the paroled prisoners in the area.'

  `And where would I find him?' asked Sebastian, pausing to look back at the clerk.

  `I believe he's in Norfolk at the moment. I've no doubt he left someone as his deputy, but I can't rightly tell you who.'

  `And who might have that information?'

  `Sorry. Can't help you. But McPherson should be back in a fortnight.'

  Hero was received at the Mayflower house of the honorable Charles d'Eyncourt by the MP's married sister, a dour woman in her mid-thirties named Mary Bourne.

  Mrs. Bourne had never met Hero and was all aflutter with the honor of a visit from Lord Jarvis's daughter. She received Hero in a stately drawing room hung with blond satin and crammed with an assortment of gilded crocodile-legged tables and colorful Chinese vases that would have delighted the Prince Regent himself. After begging dear Lady Devlin to please, pray be seated, she sent her servants flying for tea and cakes served on a silver tray so heavy the poor butler staggered beneath its weight. She then proceeded, seemingly without stopping for breath, to prattle endlessly about everything from her Bible study at the Savoy Chapel to her dear Mr. Bourne's concerns for her remaining in the metropolis with such a ruthless murderer on the loose, and followed that up with an endless description of a recent family wedding at which fandangos and the new waltz had been danced, and the carriages decked out in good white satin. `At a shilling a yard, no less!' she whispered, leaning forward confidingly. `No expense was spared, believe me, my dear Lady Devlin.'

  Smiling benignly, Hero sipped her tea and encouraged her hostess to prattle on. Mary Bourne bragged (in the most humble way possible, of course) about the morning and evening prayers that all servants in her own household at Dalby near Somersby were required to attend daily. She hinted (broadly) that she was the pseudonymous author of a popular denunciation of the modern interest in Druidism, and from there allowed herself to be led ever so subtly, ever so unsuspectingly, to the subject Hero had come to learn more about: the precise nature of the relationship between Charles d'Eyncourt and his brother, George Tennyson, the father of the two missing little boys.

  Charles, Lord Jarvis lounged at his ease in a comfortable chair beside the empty hearth in his chambers in Carlton House. Moving deliberately, he withdrew an enameled gold snuffbox from his pocket and flicked it open with practiced grace. He lifted a delicate pinch between one thumb and forefinger and inhaled, his hard gaze never leaving the sweating pink and white face of the stout man who stood opposite him. `Well?' demanded Jarvis.

  `This c-complicates things,' stammered Bevin Childe. `You must see that. It's not going to be easy to...'

  `How you accomplish your task is not my problem. You already know the consequences if you fail.'

  The antiquary's soft mouth sagged open, his eyes widening. Then he swallowed hard and gave a jerky, panicky bow. `Yes, my lord,' he said, and then jumped when Jarvis's clerk tapped discreetly on the door behind him.

  `What is it?' demanded Jarvis.

  `Colonel Urquhart to see you, my lord.'

  `Show him in,' said Jarvis. He closed his snuff
box with a snap, his gaze returning to the now-pale antiquary. `Why are you still here? Get out of my sight.'

  Hat in hand, the antiquary backed out of the room as if exiting from a royal presence. He was still backing when Colonel Jasper Urquhart swept through the door and sketched an elegant bow.

  `You wished to see me, my lord?'

  The Colonel was a tall man, as were all the former military men in Jarvis's employ, tall and broad-shouldered, with fair hair and pale gray eyes and a ruddy complexion. A former rifleman, he had served Jarvis for two years now. Until today, he hadn't disappointed.

  `Yesterday,' said Jarvis, pushing to his feet, `I asked you to assign one of your best men to a certain task.'

  `Yes, my lord. I can explain.'

  Jarvis sniffed and tucked his snuffbox back into his pocket.

  `Please don't. I trust the individual in question is no longer in my employ?'

  `Correct, my lord.'

  `You relieve me. See that his replacement does not similarly disappoint.'

  The Colonel's thin nostrils quivered. `Yes, my lord.

  `Good. That will be all.'

  Sebastian spent three frustrating hours prowling the rooming houses, taverns, and coffeehouses known to be frequented by officers on their parole. But the questions he asked were of necessity vague and the answers he received less than helpful. Without knowing the French lieutenant's name, how the devil was he to find one paroled French officer amongst so many?

  He was standing beside the Serpentine and watching a drilling of the troops from the Hyde Park barracks when he noticed a young, painfully thin man limping toward him. A scruffy brown and black mutt with a white nose and chest padded contentedly at his heels, one ear up, the other folded half over as if in a state of perpetual astonishment. The man's coat was threadbare and his breeches mended, but his linen was white and clean, his worn-out boots polished to a careful luster, the set of his shoulders and upright carriage marking him unmistakably as a military man. His pallid complexion contrasted starkly with his brown hair and spoke of months of illness and convalescence.