A Study in Silks (6 page)

He must have read her expression. “I can promise you on everything I hold sacred that I had nothing to do with this. I might be a rascal, but I’m not evil.” His tone was gentle, almost apologetic, but she saw a flash of anger flit under the surface of his gaze.

It took every ounce of strength to keep her own voice level. “I know.”

“Thank you.”

How many women, she wondered, had been tempted to reform Tobias Roth? “You startled me in the upstairs hall,” she said.

“When?” His white, drawn face didn’t change.

“Never mind.”

If it hadn’t been Nick, or Tobias, then whom? Her stomach lurched.
Dear Lord
.

“Do you know what to look for?” he asked, jerking his chin at the body.

“Are you asking me to name the murderer by looking at the body?”

“Why not?” His eyes were bright with emotion. “If anyone could do it, you could. You’re smart enough.”

There was his redeeming grace. He didn’t treat her like a fool.

Evelina shook her head. “I’m not a consulting detective like my uncle. And be careful. You’re nearly standing in the blood.”

Tobias drew back with a sharp oath, then noticed the footprint. “Is that yours?”

“No. And I can’t be certain it’s Grace’s. Maybe it belongs to the girl who found her. I need to look more closely.”

“Well, I would suggest that you be quick about it. The police are on their way. They couldn’t find their backsides with an ordinance survey, but you can be sure they’ll toss everyone else out of the room.”

“Someone called the constables already?”

Tobias spoke low, through gritted teeth. “Bigelow did, before my father could stop him.”

“Stop him?”

“Someone crept into our house and committed murder. The scandal will be ferocious if it reaches the papers, so you can be sure the event will be buried faster than a plague victim.”

His words stalled Evelina’s brain. “How can you say that?” And then she realized that she was being naive.

Tobias made an impatient sound. “You know my father. Best to get on with your work.”

What work? What am I looking for? And why?

There was no good answer, outside the fact that it was impossible
not
to look. Partially it was curiosity. Partially it was respect. This woman had died. She deserved attention.

Carefully, she ran a hand down Grace Child’s arm, feeling for broken bones but not finding any. The limbs were still loose and slightly warm, the blood tacky enough to stick to Evelina’s fingers. She shuddered, wondering if it would be bad form to wipe herself clean on the victim’s skirts.

A small cross hung at Grace’s neck, the gold paint chipped. A purse with tattered fringes still held a few pence. Not robbery then—though any thief in this house would be after a bigger prize. Mended stockings. A hem and boots with fresh mud.

Grace had been out before this had happened. Errand? Assignation? Just a night off work to visit with friends? Evelina sniffed near Grace’s mouth. No telltale stench of gin. No scent of cheap perfume. Just a burned smell, as if
clothing or hair had caught fire, but she saw no scorch marks on Grace’s clothes.

She lifted the hem of the skirt slightly, trying to gauge the depth of mud the girl had tromped through. Not too bad. Probably paved streets, then. Moving the skirts revealed a long, careful mend in Grace’s right stocking. And, oddly, a brand-new petticoat trimmed in Brussels lace. Where had she come by that?

Evelina had a sudden, sinking feeling. A girl clinging to the edge of society, one with no protection, one tempted to seek affection in the wrong places. But for the grace of God, it could have been Evelina.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, fighting back tears, imagining the terror Grace had felt and no doubt falling short of the real thing. Then she drew out her handkerchief and covered the girl’s face, giving her some dignity. She tried to remember some detail about the girl, but knew woefully little about the servant who slept under the same roof.

She arranged Grace’s skirts, smoothing them over the edge of her petticoats.
I’ll do what I can for you
. It would be little enough. As she’d said to Tobias, she was no detective.

There was the stomp and shuffle of men’s boots, and Tobias left Evelina to greet the newcomers at the door. A glimpse of tall, distinguished Lord Bancroft told her that time was running out. Even in a dressing gown, he had the look of a man ready to slap an unruly colony back into obedient servitude.

But he was a man with secrets. She knew that now.
Dark magic, Your Lordship? Now there’s a tale you’ll keep close at all costs
.

Evelina slipped her fingers under Grace’s jacket, questing for anything the servant might have hidden. Too many assumed a woman always used her bodice as a hiding place, but there were other options. Sure enough, there was an envelope tucked in the waistband at the small of Grace’s back, still moist with sweat. Evelina retrieved it and checked for the address. It was blank. Something hard was inside.

An unpleasant sensation swept up her arm.
Magic
. It had a strange, double-layered flavor, as if the envelope’s
contents had come into recent contact with not one, but two spells. Some substances, occasionally stone but more often metal, could absorb magical residue.
Where were you, Grace?
These were dark spells, unlike anything her Gran Cooper would have spun. Evelina squeezed the envelope, trying to guess what it held.

She was suddenly all too aware of the constables standing with Lord Bancroft. Her pulse began to speed.
There is evidence of murder and dark magic on your cloakroom floor, my lord
. With a little careful management, the death of a servant might not arouse undue interest, but a scandal involving magic would be ruinous. There would be jail, or worse, and the courts were swift to find a culprit whenever and wherever magic was found. Every year, the penalties grew harsher, and a lordship was no guarantee of safety.

And if Lord Bancroft were destroyed, his family would be, too.

The thought made Evelina stiffen. Faces flashed through her mind: Tobias, Poppy, gentle Lady Bancroft, and even Lord B himself. They had been good to her. And Imogen was her only real friend. She slipped the envelope into her pocket and out of sight. Guilt flushed her cheeks, but she wasn’t handing it over until she understood what was going on—or, more precisely, until she was sure Imogen and her family would be proven innocent.

“What is Miss Cooper doing here? And not properly dressed?” Lord Bancroft asked in a brusque tone. A slight sibilance betrayed the fact he had been enjoying a late-night tête-à-tête with the whisky decanter. “Do I need to point out the obvious and say this is not a suitable scene for a young woman?”

“I invited her,” Tobias lied coolly. “You know she has an excellent head for details.”

“I fancied I heard something earlier,” Evelina interjected, thinking about the voices she had heard while in the tree. The clock had struck eleven, drowning them out. And then there had been the figure in the hallway. “I thought I might prove helpful.”

“Is that so, Miss Cooper?” Lord Bancroft lowered his
brow. “It has nothing to do with your taste for sensational novels? Perhaps you should return to your bedchamber.”

She was about to protest, to say he had to listen, or at least the police did. But, with a lift of his chin, he effectively dismissed her.

Anger fired along her nerves, bright and sharp as lightning. She barely stopped herself from making a gesture unbecoming a lady—or shouting that he should be quiet and let her help him, because she might be the only one who saw the full danger his family was in. Instead, she turned back to the body, continuing with her inspection despite her seething.

Uncle Sherlock very rarely gave in to emotion. Now she saw why—she needed a clear head. It was impossible to concentrate when she wanted to snarl like a tinker’s cur.

There wasn’t a whiff of magic on the body itself, which meant some
one
, not some
thing
invoked by sorcery, had wielded the blade. That meant Grace Child had been killed by a purely human agency. Or did it? In Evelina’s limited experience, it took time for magical residue to stick, especially to flesh, so was it safe to make an assumption?

That raised an interesting question. Was there a connection between this murder and those trunks in the attic? Two unusual events in one night could be coincidence, but it seemed unlikely.

Lord Bancroft gestured to the man on his left. “This is Inspector Lestrade.” The former ambassador’s voice was dry as he addressed his son.

Evelina started.
Lestrade
. She knew the name from her uncle’s cases, but she’d never met him in person. She studied him carefully, thinking that Dr. Watson had described him well.

“I’m sure you and Miss Cooper will leave him and his men to do their work,” Bancroft added.

All eyes were on Tobias, who had his mouth set in a defiant frown. Evelina was invisible, just a girl who had accidentally strayed into the affairs of men—even though she was the one getting her hands bloody. Piqued, Evelina rose to her feet.

The motion of her standing drew the eyes of the inspector. “Miss?”

He was a wiry man of middling height with dark hair, a sallow complexion, and the sharp, pointed features of a rat. He had dressed with the look of one eager to impress, but something in his air made Evelina uneasy. This was no fool. She wondered, with a sick feeling, if Nick had finally found the wits to leave the house.

She looked at him squarely. “This is Grace Child, one of the kitchen staff.”

Lord Bancroft barely stirred at the news. There were doubtless more drudges where Grace had come from.

Lestrade narrowed his eyes—an expression that did not match his polite nod. “Thank you, miss, but I’d appreciate it if you stepped away. There’s a chance you might disturb the evidence.”

“Of course.”

As she moved toward the door, the evidence in her pocket, she counted the uniforms Lestrade had brought with him. There were three, all crowding into the cloakroom with chests puffed out and brass buttons shining.

One had a chemical whistle strapped to his belt, set to give off a shrill alarm if its plunger was depressed. Her uncle, something of a chemist, had designed the prototype and given it to Scotland Yard. If only the coppers’ brains were as sharp as their gear.

With a pang of frustration, she wondered if anyone had thought to search the grounds. Or was that too much a breach of His Lordship’s privacy? Lucky for Nick, they weren’t combing the upstairs rooms, but …

She thought again about that moment in the upstairs corridor. Had Grace surprised someone? The idea gnawed at her.

But Lestrade’s eyes were on her. The only thing Evelina could do right then was retreat, so she returned to the hall where Dora sat. Maisie and the housekeeper were gone, but someone had brought tea, the universal restorative. A little steam-powered trolley sat huffing to one side, smelling of Assam and brandy.

Evelina sat next to Dora. “How are you?”

Dora sniffed wearily. “I’ll be all right, miss.” But she shook her head, as if nothing would ever be right again. “Poor Maisie’d done the last of the pots and was going to bed. Taking the short way rather than the servant’s stairs like she was supposed to. Saw the light and went to shut it off and then there was Gracie.”

Evelina thought a moment, trying to picture the scene in her head. “There was a woman’s footprint by Grace, and I noticed she was wearing walking boots that would have left a much larger outline. It couldn’t have been hers. Do you know if Maisie went right up to the body?”

“No, miss. She barely set foot in the room once she saw the blood. I didn’t, either. I get all hot and shuddery at the sight of a scraped knee, to say nothing of … of this.”

Then whose shoe made that mark? She would have to find out where all the servants were tonight. She moved on to the next question. “Do you have any idea why Grace was in the cloakroom?”

A flush crept from the neat white collar of Dora’s uniform, turning her ears crimson. “I wouldn’t know that, miss.”

Obviously she did. Evelina softened her voice. “Was she going to meet someone there? After all, it is a quiet room, and no one was using it. A private place.”

“I don’t know, miss. She wasn’t a careful girl.”

“Careful how?”

“To hear her talk, you’d think her latest beau was the crown prince.”

“What do you mean?” Evelina asked, more sharply this time.

Dora suddenly looked very frightened. “I don’t mean anything by it, miss.”

“Was she someone’s …” Evelina trailed off, thinking about the fancy petticoat.

Dora tucked in her chin, resembling a turtle on the defensive. “If it were anything much, she wouldn’t have been peeling spuds all day, if you know what I mean.”

“But she was seeing someone who had money?”

A sidelong glance shot from under the maid’s lashes. “That
would have been a bit of all right, but her bad stomach in the morning said there was trouble on the way.”

Evelina caught her breath. Grace had been about to be ruined. She would have lost her place. There weren’t many options open to an unwed mother, especially a poor one. Usually those stories ended with death or emigration. “Did she ever say who the father was?”

Dora shook her head. “She never said any names.” There was clearly more she wanted to tell, but she pressed her fist against her lips, as if to hold back the words.

“What, Dora?”

The maid shook her head again, tears glistening in her eyes. “Oh, miss, I saw Grace barely a half hour before Maisie found her.”

“Alive?”

Dora nodded in quick, jerky movements. “I saw her out the window. She was in the garden, as if catching a breath of air before coming in to bed.”

Evelina automatically calculated the hours. That narrowed down the time of death considerably. “Right after you left Imogen’s room?”

Dora nodded. “When I went to fetch the sleeping draft.”

That would have put the time at around twelve thirty. Evelina again remembered the voices she’d heard when she’d been outside. That had been much earlier, almost an hour and a half before.