Sheri Cobb South (10 page)

The allure of a sympathetic ear, particularly one attached to the head of a handsome young man, proved too powerful to resist. The last vestiges of Nancy’s fear vanished. “Aye, that I did! All told, it was going on for two o’clock by the time I put my mistress’s pelisse away and sought my own bed.”

“Her pelisse?” echoed Pickett, thinking of the well-dressed ladies occupying the boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, as glimpsed occasionally from his place in the pit. “Her opera cloak, surely?”

“No, for I’d put it up right after she came in. But soon after her confab with the master, she changed into a walking dress, put on her pelisse, and went out again. The master had already gone out by then, too. I heard—that is, I understand he was going to his club.”

Pickett cocked a knowing eyebrow. “Descended to a shouting match by that time, had it? But surely it was a bit late for Mrs. Bertram to be going out alone. Is your mistress always so capricious?”

“Oh, no—leastways, she’d never done anything like that before, but mayhap she’d never had reason to. I shouldn’t like to say anything against her, for she’s always been good to me, giving me her castoff ribbons and such. Although,” she added, “what she thinks I can do with a couple of bent and broken hair pins, I’m sure I don’t know!”

“Bent and broken hair pins? Did she truly give you such things?”

“Oh, yes! Just last night, after I’d put up her coat. I didn’t like to seem ungrateful, so I just thanked her kindly and put them in my pocket.”

“Do you still have them?”

Nancy plunged a hand into her capacious pocket and withdrew two hair pins. The end was broken off one, while the other was bent at so sharp an angle as to render it useless.

“May I?” Pickett took the bent one and examined it through his quizzing-glass, thinking again of the scratch marks on the face of the strong-box. “Will you show me upstairs, Nancy? I think I need to have another word with your mistress.”

Caroline Bertram, silently congratulating herself on a narrow escape, was not at all pleased to discover Pickett still on the premises.

“Yes, what is it now? I thought you had gone.”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Bertram. I have one more request to make, if I may. I should like to have another look at your husband’s strong-box.”

“Oh, if that is all—! Mr. Bertram is still in his study, if you would care to knock.”

“I’m afraid you misunderstand. I should like you to show me the box, if you would be so kind.”

Mrs. Bertram opened her mouth as if to protest; then, thinking better of it, turned and, with one last, furtive look in Pickett’s direction, disappeared down the corridor in the direction of George Bertram’s study. She returned a few moments later, bearing the small metal box in both hands.

“Thank you.” Without waiting for an invitation, Pickett sat down on a nearby chair and set the box on his knee. As he produced the bent hair pin, he heard Mrs. Bertram’s gasp, quickly suppressed. He inserted the pin in the lock and, with one flick of the wrist, the lock sprang open.

“But—but—oh, that wicked Nancy!” exclaimed Mrs. Bertram, clearly grasping at straws. “Who would have thought it of her?”

“Come now, Mrs. Bertram, Nancy never opened that box,” Pickett chided. “The pins were already in that condition when you gave them to her.”

“What—what are you saying?”

“I am saying,” replied Pickett, “that you broke into your husband’s strong-box yourself, after he had departed for his club, and that you removed from it notes in the amount of sixty-five pounds.”

“Nonsense! Even if I wished to do such a thing, I should not know how to go about it.”

Pickett traced the longest scratch with one finger. “No, not at first. But never fear,” some demon of mischief prompted him to add, “it grows easier with practice.”

A dull red suffused her cheeks. “Insolent man! I daresay you will expound this absurd theory to George!”

“No, for I expect he has already guessed. Besides, I am more interested in your movements afterwards. What did you do with the money?”

“You may search the house, if you wish,” declared Mrs. Bertram, gesturing expansively. “You will not find the missing notes anywhere on the premises.”

“No, for you went out again, did you not? And what, pray, was your errand? Did you call in Berkeley Square, by any chance?”

“No!”

“Or perhaps you hired a henchman to speed your husband to the succession by killing his cousin? Sixty-five pounds seems a rather low price for a viscountcy, but perhaps your cohort was as much a newcomer to murder as you were to burglary.”

“I tell you, no! I confess it was I who broke into George’s strong-box, but not for any nefarious purpose. In fact, I did it for poor Harold!”

“Harold?” echoed Pickett, all at sea.

“My eldest son. He is presently at Oxford, and—well, you should know what young men are, Mr. Pickett, being so young yourself. They need the wherewithal to amuse themselves without being beholden to their parents for every last farthing.”

Privately, Pickett felt that sixty-five pounds might amuse any number of young men for a year or more. Aloud, however, he merely said, “Surely you cannot expect me to believe that you traveled to Oxford and back in the space of less than two hours!”

“No, no, of course not! But I had to get the money out of the house before George returned, and it was far too late to catch the Mail. So I took it to my dear friend Clara Beauvoir, whose husband is just as clutch-fisted as George, and who would naturally sympathize with a mother’s need to provide for her child, no matter how great the risk to herself.”

“And where does Mrs. Beauvoir live?”

“Why, here on Half Moon Street, only two doors down.”

Alas, when, immediately upon leaving the Bertram domicile, Pickett attempted to confirm Mrs. Bertram’s extraordinary tale, he met with a blank wall: Mrs. Beauvoir, as her butler informed him in no uncertain terms, was Not Receiving. This constituted no small setback, as Pickett’s efforts on Lady Fieldhurst’s behalf would have been aided considerably by Mrs. Beauvoir’s vehement denial of a story which, it must be said, seemed too far-fetched to be believed.

Unfortunately, Pickett could not shake the lowering conviction that it was probably true.

Chapter 8

John Pickett Pays a Call

“It won’t do, John,” the magistrate said some time later, when Pickett’s findings were presented to him. “You know it won’t. Good, solid evidence is what you need, and you haven’t a shred of it.”

Pickett leaned against the railing that separated the magistrate’s bench from the rest of the room. “Not yet,” he confessed reluctantly. “But the porter at White’s can’t recall seeing Mr. Bertram leave the premises, and Mrs. Bertram turns out to possess a ruthless streak that wouldn’t stick at much. And both of them had sufficient reason to want Fieldhurst dead. As for Sir Archibald Stanton, I don’t know yet what his motive might be, but I’ll be bound he never stole that letter out of pure gallantry. Her ladyship is not the only possible suspect.”

“But it was she who discovered the body.”

“Exactly!” Pickett came up off the railing like a rifle shot. “Why should she bring a lover to the very bedchamber where she knew her husband was lying dead?”

“I should rather ask, why should she succumb to Lord Rupert’s advances on this particular night, when she had steadfastly resisted up to this point? Perhaps because she knew she would not be obliged to go through with an illicit union? Perhaps because she wanted a witness present to attest to her shock and horror upon discovery of her husband’s dead body?”

Seeing that his most junior Runner had lapsed into silence, the magistrate pressed his advantage. “It was still she who had easiest access to the bedchamber, and it was she who knew the nail scissors were readily to hand. She wanted only the opportunity. If you truly want to establish her innocence, you must first eliminate that.”

“And so I will, sir, as soon as I—”

Here he caused no small damage to his argument by yawning hugely. Mr. Colquhoun waited patiently until his Runner’s mouth was closed, then asked, “How long since you’ve slept, John?”

Pickett glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Just over twenty-four hours, sir.”

The magistrate nodded. “I thought as much. Go home and go to bed. I promise you, no one will arrest the viscountess while you sleep.”

* * * *

She wanted only the opportunity . . . To establish her innocence, you must first eliminate that. The magistrate’s words accompanied him all the way to Drury Lane, where he discovered to his relief that Mrs. Catchpole was occupied in the rear of the store. Feeling incapable of facing another inquisition—for Mrs. Catchpole’s questioning could be twice as ruthless as Mr. Colquhoun’s, once that redoubtable female had got the bit between her teeth—he tiptoed up the stairs so as not to attract her attention. Once upstairs, he paused only long enough to remove his coat and boots before collapsing onto the narrow iron-framed bed.

Alas, his slumber was not the peaceful oblivion he had hoped for. He was troubled—if that was the word for it—by vaguely erotic dreams in which Lady Fieldhurst, clad in the white ball gown in which he had first seen her, twined her slender arms about the neck of a man who was somehow both himself and the viscount. As he lowered his head to kiss her, firelight flashed off the silver blades of a pair of nail scissors concealed in her hand, and he awoke shaken and damp with perspiration. When he slept again, the setting had changed to the gallows, where a hooded executioner approached Lady Fieldhurst with a length of rope stretched taut between his hands. But even as he reached to lower the noose over her head, Pickett seized the lady, tossed her across his saddlebow, and carried her in safety to his rooms above the chandler’s shop, where she rewarded his heroism in a manner which, when examined in the harsh light of wakefulness, was as embarrassing as it was improbable.

But whatever else they may have done, these dreams served to strengthen Pickett’s belief in Lady Fieldhurst’s innocence. A moment’s reflection was sufficient to inform Pickett that, if he truly wished to rescue Lady Fieldhurst from the gallows, his best course of action lay not in tossing the lady across his saddle-bow (an awkward proposition in any case, as he possessed neither saddle nor horse), but in eliminating any possibility that she might have had either the inclination or the opportunity to do the deed. Unfortunately, there was little he could do about inclination. He had already heard from the lady’s own lips that all had not been well between herself and her husband, and this unhappy state of affairs had been confirmed by Camille de la Rochefort as well as Mr. and Mrs. Bertram.

His efforts, then, must focus on opportunity. Pickett’s experience of balls was slight to the point of nonexistence, but common sense informed him that, if Lady Fieldhurst had indeed spent the evening thus engaged, her presence must surely have been noted. There must be gentlemen somewhere in London who would remember dancing with her, ladies who would recall admiring her gown. It remained only for him to locate these anonymous beings and piece together a complete accounting of the viscountess’s movements on the night of her husband’s murder. With this end in view, he rose, washed, and dressed, then set out for Lady Herrington’s house in Portman Square.

Herein he made a tactical error, for it was by now almost half-past three—that time of day at which the ton made what it erroneously referred to as morning calls. Lady Herrington, when interrupted by her butler, was in the act of dispensing tea to a roomful of these callers. She took no particular pleasure in this act of hospitality, as her guests had been quick to inform her that her recent entertainment, which she had believed to be quite the succès fou, had been eclipsed in the public eye by the violent death of Viscount Fieldhurst.

“Beg pardon, my lady,” murmured her ladyship’s butler, “but there is a man from Bow Street below, requesting a word with your ladyship.”

“Dear me!” she exclaimed, setting her teacup down with a clatter. “And he wants to see me? Show him into the small saloon, and tell him I shall be with him directly. I wonder, does one offer tea to such a person? Best not, I suppose.”

Lady Herrington rose with a rustle of silk skirts and excused herself to her guests. A moment later she entered the small saloon at the back of the house, her expression carefully, if imperfectly, schooled into an expression devoid of curiosity.

“John Pickett of Bow Street, my lady,” intoned the butler, then withdrew, leaving her ladyship alone with a young man whose slightly shabby dress and outmoded queue appeared glaringly out of place, even in this least formal of receiving rooms.

“Your ladyship,” said this worthy, rising awkwardly from his rigid perch on the edge of a straight chair covered in cherry-striped satin. “I hate to take you away from your guests, but I understand you held a ball here last night.”

The lady inclined her head, somewhat mollified by the information that word of her humble amusement (only four hundred invitations sent, and, by some quirk of scheduling, in direct conflict with a rout given by a rival hostess) had spread so far eastward.

“And you numbered among your guests the viscountess Lady Fieldhurst?”

Again that inclination of the head.

“I should be grateful if you could give me, as well as you are able, an accounting of her ladyship’s movements last night.”

At this simple request, Lady Herrington abandoned all pretense of indifference. “Good heavens! Never tell me you believe Julia—!”

Mr. Pickett had no intention of telling her any such thing, even had he been able to find his tongue after being unexpectedly presented with the gift of Lady Fieldhurst’s Christian name. Julia. It suited her, somehow. But this fact, though undoubtedly interesting, was a matter of irrelevance where her ladyship’s guilt or innocence was concerned, so he mentally filed it away for future study, and returned his attention to the matter at hand.

“Merely a routine interrogation, my lady,” he assured Lady Herrington hastily. “I believe Lord Rupert Latham was also present?”