Let's Talk of Murder (4 page)

Luten listened disconsolately. “Was there something you wanted us to do, Townsend?” he asked, with waning interest.

“As you were looking into the matter, I just wondered if you had come up with anything.”

“No, nothing yet, I fear. Our only interest was to help the prince. As it’s clear the attack was not on him, I believe our involvement is at an end.”

“I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at it,” Coffen said. He loved food and horses and actresses, but there was little dearer to his heart than a good murder. “I know a fellow who works at Somerset House, Ernie Parker. Bought a nag off him, an excellent cob. Ernie might have some useful gossip.”

Townsend slapped his knee. “Good lad! Have a go at him. You could do a better job of it than myself. Amazing the way folks, even innocent folks, clam up like oysters when they hear the words Bow Street. Let me know straightaway if you learn anything.”

“I will,” Coffen said. “Sounds like a case of
cherchez la femme
to me. The missing lock of hair, the ring.”

“I doubt a lady would call on her beau at the Albany,” Corinne said. “But perhaps she wasn’t a bona fide lady.”

“The young greenheads do get themselves mixed up with actresses—and worse,” Townsend said, nodding.

“She might have had a brother or someone do it for her. If Fogg had wronged her, I mean,” Coffen suggested.

Prance, still harping on Byron, added, “Or she might have dressed up as a page, as Lady Caroline Lamb did when hounding after Byron.”

The conversation continued a while. Luten paid little heed. There was one advantage to losing the Prime Ministership. He and Corinne could get on with their wedding. His leg was improving daily. He looked up and saw her gazing at him, with a dreamy half-smile on her lovely face, and knew she was thinking the same thing.

Townsend soon left, and Coffen said, “Any chance of a fresh cup of tea before I run down to Somerset House, Luten? Or do you want us to leave so you and Corinne can cuddle a bit?”

Luten reached out and took her hand. “No hurry now,” he said. He called Evans and ordered fresh tea. “With this business out of our way, we can get on with our wedding plans,” he said, when the butler had left. “I wager you have something in mind for us, Prance?”

“Now that you mention it, I have been running a few themes through my mind, since you disliked the notion of a Japanese style wedding in my nino at Granmaison. That was foolish of me. Corinne mentioned her mama wishes to hold the wedding at Ardmore Hall, and use the gown from her own wedding, I think you said?”

“Yes, if it fits,” she replied. This ruse had been invented to avoid the Japanese kimonos Prance favored during his brief passion for things Japanese. In fact, Corinne was by no means sure her mama still had her wedding gown.

“A traditional wedding then, I think. The season is hardly conducive to orange blossoms, but even in late autumn, I daresay I can contrive something suitably romantic. An autumn wedding is appropriate. After all, you are neither of you exactly in the spring of youth,” he added with a hint of malice. “Will you have to cruise down the aisle in a Bath chair, Luten, or will you wait until you can walk?”

“I can walk now, with my crutches. Give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll not only walk without them, but dance at my wedding.”

“Excellent!” Prance cried. “That will give me time to arrange things. I believe I shall pop over to Ireland and see what I have to work with at Ardmore. The church, the landscape, the Irish legends—Brian Boru, and so on.”

“Good gracious, Prance, we don’t want some great lavish affair,” Corrine said, laughing.

“Don’t be selfish, my pet,” he pouted, and to repay her added, “It may be your second trip down the aisle, but remember it is Luten’s first.” Her nostrils thinned in annoyance.

Coffen glared and said, “That’s all a bridge under the water now. “

“You mean, I expect, water under the bridge,” Prance corrected.

“Exactly.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?” Coffen regularly made fritters of the King’s English, yet somehow one always understood him. Well, that was, presumably, the purpose of language, to communicate. He sighed in defeat.

“I did.”

Before the conversation degenerated into a brawl, the tea arrived. Luten excused himself a moment to write a note to the prince explaining that, after speaking to Townsend, it was clear his services were no longer necessary. Every word was an agony. Brougham had been so excited when he heard of the prince’s promise.

He had assured Luten that, as this coup was his, the reward of the Prime Ministership must certainly fall on his shoulders. A bright future of reforming England had glowed in front of them. And now it was all coming to naught. He was almost tempted to hire a thug to take a shot at the prince, being careful to miss him, of course.

When he returned to the saloon, Coffen had left but Prance was talking to Corinne, teasing her about Byron, very likely. “He was most eager to meet you,” he was saying. The flush on Corinne’s cheeks showed her pleasure.

“I daresay it’s Byron you’re speaking of, Prance,” he said.

“Just so, Luten. It is well the wedding is being rushed forward, or you might lose this lovely girl,” he said in a rallying way, to show he joked.

“I hardly think my fiancée is interested in a fellow who has made himself a byword for lechery,” Luten replied with an air of nonchalance. “Corinne is not so abandoned as Lady Caroline Lamb.”

“It’s all nonsense, Luten,” she said, pleased with his jealousy. “Pay Prance no heed. He is just teasing you. Is that the letter to Prinney?”

“Yes, I’ll ask Evans to have it sent off. I daresay I should let Brougham know as well. Pity I bothered mentioning the matter to him, as it has turned to ashes,” he said bitterly.

He called Evans and dispatched the message. Prance went home to order hock and soda water, and to begin planning the wedding. He could hardly connive at fostering any romance between Byron and Corinne when he was in charge of the wedding. He was a rogue, but he was not a scoundrel.

Corinne and Luten enjoyed a brief spell of quiet. She sympathized with him over his lost chance of bringing the Whigs into power, and consoled him that he was young, there would be other opportunities.

“I have put it entirely from my mind,” he said, and tried to believe it. “How can I be sad, when you will soon be my wife?”

“We have one thorny problem to settle,” she said. “We have to choose whether Coffen or Prance is to be best man. I hate to hurt either of them, but we cannot have two best men, can we?”

“Coffen is your cousin. That gives him the edge,” he said, knowing she preferred Coffen.

“Yes, but Prance would look better. I want to impress my friends at home in Ireland, you know. I wonder if he will be satisfied with being Master of Ceremonies, or director, or whatever one calls the person in charge of a show, for he certainly plans to make a show of it.”

He rallied enough to ask in a joking way, “Am I not catch enough to impress your folks?”

“You’re one step up from my last husband,” she said with a saucy smile. “He was only an earl. You are a marquess.”

“Next time you’ll try for a duke, I expect?”

“How did you know I have my eye on Doncaster?” she said, naming an octogenarian neighbor in Ireland.

“First you’ll have to be rid of me,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “Demme! Who can that be?” he exclaimed, as the door knocker rattled. “If it’s Prance, I’ll —”

Evans bowed himself into the room and handed Luten a note bearing a magnificent gilt, or possibly gold, crest.

“It’s from Prinney, no doubt acknowledging my note,” he said, opening it. “He didn’t waste much time.”

“What does it say?” Corinne tried to look over his shoulder.

When he turned to look at her, she saw the glint of joy in his gray eyes. His thin lips opened in a boyish smile of real pleasure. He leaned forward and placed a kiss on the corner of her lips.

“We’re back in business,” he said, throwing his head back and laughing. She could not but notice this pleased him more than any talk of their wedding had done. “Prinney wants us to discover who murdered Fogg—as a favor to Lady Hertford. He also wants to confirm that the shot was not meant for himself. He dislikes to give up his role of martyr. I daresay he thinks it might win him some public sympathy, though he does mention discretion in our investigations.”

Although Corinne was happy for him, she could not suppress a surge of frustration at the delay of the wedding. “But does the same reward still apply?” she asked.

“Oh yes. I have it in writing now. Let him try to wiggle out of it. Listen to what he says. ‘The reward we discussed still applies. It is what we have both long wanted.’ He used to be a Whig, you recall.”

“Lady Hertford won’t like it.”

“Very true. He must be planning to dump her.”

“Speaking of ladies being dumped, I shall tell Prance there’s no hurry with the wedding plans, then,” she said, but in a teasing way.

He took her hand and squeezed it. “Let him go ahead. This won’t take us long, my dear. We already have clues to follow. Let your patience in this matter be your wedding gift to me,” he said, in a husky, loving voice that won her over completely.

“And here I’ve already made a down payment on a ball and chain,” she said.

“No need for that, my pet. I’m already a cripple. I shall just send off a reply to his note, while you change for dinner. You promised to dine with me, you recall.”

With this bribe she went home satisfied, if not happy. She knew these apparently simple cases had a way of growing into tangled complexity. But at least this time Luten would be supervising the operation from the safety of his own house. In her innocence, she imagined no trouble could find him there.

It was Coffen Pattle who made the next step forward in the case. He came to call just as Luten and Corinne were finishing dinner. His eyes swerved to the sideboard, where the remains of a fowl, a dish of ragout and other side dishes were being kept warm over basins of hot water.

“You haven’t eaten, Coffen,” Corinne said, when she saw the hungry look in his eyes. Coffen had a full complement of servants, including a cook, but they were none of them capable at their jobs. His coachman couldn’t read a map, his valet hardly recognized an iron to see it, and his cook, Prance said, must have learned his trade at the poor house.

“Have your port here, Luten, and I’ll remain with you to hear what Coffen has to say,” Corinne said. “As I’m the only lady present, you cannot whisk me off to the drawing room alone.”

Luten nodded and gestured Coffen to the sideboard.

“Thankee, I’ll just help myself,” Coffen said, darting thither. A footman handed him a plate and sliced off a leg of the chicken. “And a little white meat, as I see one breast is untouched. Just pour a little gravy on her,” he said, tilting the gravy boat higher when the footman wasn’t generous enough to please him. Potatoes, carrots, broccoli and green peas were heaped on. “I’ll come back for the ragout later,” he said to the footman. “Don’t take it away.”

Corinne and Luten had another glass of wine while Coffen squared his elbows and dug into his dinner. He made quick work of it and was soon scanning the board for dessert. “A syllabub, dandy!” he exclaimed when it was placed in front of him. It, too, disappeared with alarming speed, and he only spilt three drops on his cravat.

When he had dined to repletion, the group moved to the drawing room for coffee. Coffen was about to open his budget when Prance arrived, wearing a wounded expression and an exquisite jacket of pearl gray. His waistcoat of gray, gold and mauve stripes had nacre buttons, a new fashion of his own devising. After considerable discussion with his valet, Villier, they had decided on an amethyst cravat pin to compliment the stripes in the waistcoat. A quizzing glass hung about his neck on a purple silk cord.

“I trust I’m not intruding on private business?” he asked, in a voice that revealed his state of pique at being left out.

“Sit down, Prance,” Coffen said. “I see you’re in half mourning for Fogg. I daresay I ought to get some black crepe for the funeral.”

Prance’s nostrils narrowed in sheer vexation. Prance had not expected his new ensemble to go unnoticed, but this was not the comment he expected. As he glanced at himself in the ormolu mirror, he saw it was well earned. “And I see you are fresh from the trough,” he riposted. “The stains on your cravat are still wet. “

Coffen passed a careless hand over the spots, smearing them over a larger area. “So they are,” he said. “Have a seat. I’m just about to tell them about my visit to Somerset House.”

Corinne offered Prance coffee. He waved away the preferred cup, daintily lifted his coattails to prevent wrinkling them and eased himself into a chair.

Coffen ladled five or six spoons of sugar and a healthy dollop of cream into his coffee, blew noisily on it, and took a sip before beginning. “Well sir, if Fogg was carrying on with a lady, he certainly kept it dark amongst his fellow workers. Not a whiff of her. In fact, he didn’t chum around with any of them except a fellow called Harry Morrison, who was about the last one you’d expect him to take to. Not quite as high in society as the others, but they seemed to get along all right. Fogg thought he was too good for most of them since being taken up by Prinney, from what I could pick up. Only showed up for work two or three times a week, and then he only stayed for as long as it pleased him.

“The fellow he worked for, if you can call it work, says he was only paid two hundred per annum, but he lived pretty high on the hog. Dressed up like a duke and had a new curricle and team. Joined a few expensive clubs, gambled. How did he afford that? It takes money to lose money. You mind Townsend said he wasn’t getting along with his folks. I wonder if his papa gave him enough allowance to cover all that high living.”

Prance listened, then said, “Probably living on tick. Is it possible his debtors got him?”

“That wouldn’t account for the missing ring and lock of hair Townsend told us about,” Coffen pointed out. “My thinking is, if he was gambling and living the high life, he was likely involved with women as well.”