Sheri Cobb South (21 page)

Chapter 15

In Which John Pickett Propounds a Theory

“Well, well, if it isn’t young Lochinvar,” observed Mr. Colquhoun when Pickett reported to him the following morning.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Lochinvar,” repeated the wily Scotsman with a twinkle in his eye. “Hero of Walter Scott’s new poem. Romantic young fellow who gate-crashes a wedding and makes off with the bride.”

“I fail to see the connection, sir,” Pickett said stiffly.

“Do you? And here I thought you one of the more intelligent men of my acquaintance. No, no, don’t go all muffin-faced on me! I’m only roasting you. Now, what did you discover yesterday?”

“A dead end where the maid is concerned, although we were at last able to locate the butler, Rogers—”

Pickett’s use of the plural pronoun was not lost on Mr. Colquhoun, even though that worthy appeared to be deeply engrossed in the notes he scribbled onto a blotter. “We?” he echoed without looking up.

“Lady Fieldhurst and I,” explained Pickett.

The scratching of Mr. Colquhoun’s quill ceased, and he regarded the erring Runner from beneath ominously lowered brows. “I was not aware that the viscountess was acting as your partner in the investigation.”

“Her ladyship is not acting as my partner in anything, sir, but she had an idea for smoking out the butler; since I’d had little enough luck in that quarter myself, I thought it couldn’t hurt to let her have a go at it.”

“On the contrary, Pickett, it could hurt you a great deal. Your reluctance to arrest the lady—who is still generally held to be the most promising suspect, regardless of your unwillingness to see her as such—has not gone unnoticed in certain quarters. You have a promising future in Bow Street, my boy, but not if you persist in compromising your integrity for the sake of a pretty face.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I am not compromising anything. If she was in fact guilty, why should she offer to help me locate the butler? For Rogers turned up on her very doorstep, just as she predicted, and through him we—or rather, I—discovered that the late-night visitor was none other than Sir Archibald Stanton, the same one who’d pinched the letter from Lord Fieldhurst’s desk.”

Mr. Colquhoun gave a grunt. “And so the butler appears, complete with a motive for murder and evidence incriminating Sir Archibald. Convenient for her ladyship, at any rate.”

Pickett wisely chose to let this comment pass. “I paid a call on Sir Archibald, hoping to question him further, but meeting with no success there, I stepped ‘round to the Foreign Office.”

“The Foreign Office?” echoed Mr. Colquhoun, startled. “And what, pray tell, did you do there?”

Pickett’s gaze slid away from the magistrate’s. “I, er, seem to have accused Sir Archibald of spying.”

“You what?”

“Or maybe it was Lord Fieldhurst who was spying, and Sir Archibald was onto him. They’re protecting someone, sir. I’m sure of it.”

“And what, pray, was the Foreign Office’s response to this extraordinary accusation?” asked Mr. Colquhoun, his eyebrows lowering ominously.

“They, er, they threw me out on my ear,” confessed Pickett, belatedly adding, “sir.”

“As well they might! Have you run mad, man?”

Pickett looked up, his earlier embarrassment forgotten. “That letter means something,” he insisted. “I would swear to it. What was Fieldhurst doing with it in the first place, and why would Sir Archibald take it from his desk and then try to fob me off with a cock-and-bull story about her ladyship—”

“What cock-and-bull story was this?”

Too late Pickett recognized his error. He had not told Mr. Colquhoun about his first interview with Sir Archibald, painfully aware that he had not shown to advantage in the encounter. Now, however, an explanation was clearly called for. “He tried to convince me that the letter was from a French mistress of Fieldhurst’s, and he’d taken it to spare Lady Fieldhurst’s sensibilities.”

“It seems reasonable enough. God knows there are plenty of French émigrés trying to earn their bread any way they can.”

“Yes, sir, but his tender concern for the viscountess struck me as false. For one thing, her ladyship has no illusions about her husband’s character, and so does not need Sir Archibald’s protection. For another, I find his fit of gallantry a bit self-serving, seeing as it attempts to clear him of suspicion, while at the same time crediting her ladyship with an additional motive for murder.”

“You, on the other hand, would insist upon her innocence even if you had discovered her standing over the body with the bloodied weapon in her hand,” the magistrate remarked dryly.

“You wrong me, sir, but that is beside the point. I have a theory which I should like to put to you, if I may.”

Mr. Colquhoun threw up his hands in resignation. “I daresay I shall be forced to hear it whether I would or no, so by all means, Pickett, let us hear your theory.”

“Espionage,” declared Pickett. “Either Fieldhurst or Sir Archibald is spying for the French, and the other found out and pinched the letter as proof. Sir Archibald has my vote. Fieldhurst could have set up the meeting to confront Sir Archibald with his crimes, and Stanton, seeing the game was up, murdered him to keep him quiet.”

“An interesting theory,” conceded the magistrate, “but for the fact that Fieldhurst was very much alive when the butler showed Sir Archibald out.”

“He could have come back later, after Fieldhurst had retired upstairs for the night.”

“Then why pursue the viscount upstairs? Why should not Sir Archibald just go into the study, take the letter, and go?”

“He probably didn’t know it was there until the next morning, when he called on Lady Fieldhurst and saw it lying on the desk. Perhaps he assumed Fieldhurst had the letter on his person, and followed him upstairs in the hope of persuading the viscount to give it to him. Or perhaps Fieldhurst was blackmailing him, and Sir Archibald saw his chance to do away with the blackmailer and retrieve the letter. So he stabs Fieldhurst, then rifles the pockets of his coat, but the letter isn’t there.”

The magistrate’s silence was deafening.

“All right, forget the blackmail theory,” Pickett said with a sigh. “Let’s say Fieldhurst was the spy. Sir Archibald confronts him with his crimes, finds the viscount unrepentant, and returns later to eliminate the breach to national security.”

“Thus cheating the hangman? Why, if Fieldhurst’s death is to be the end result either way?”

“To spare the Foreign Office a black eye when it becomes known that one of their own is spying for Boney. Can you imagine the scandal? The Foreign Office might well have deputized him to rid them of the embarrassment before it came to light.”

“That is quite an accusation, young man!”

“Not an accusation, sir, just a theory based on my own lack of welcome at the Foreign Office.”

Mr. Colquhoun scowled into space, pondering the extraordinary scenarios presented for his consideration. “Even if Sir Archibald did return to murder the viscount, for whatever reason,” he said at last, “how did he leave the house without being seen? No one on the opposite side of the square reports seeing anyone exit the house through the front door, and had he attempted to leave through the servants’ entrance, he must have passed through the downstairs dining hall at the very hour when the staff was gathered for the evening meal.”

“He may have simply been lucky,” Pickett pointed out. “No one across the square recalled seeing Sir Archibald leave at twenty past twelve, although it seems fairly obvious that he must have done so. Or he might have gone up the servants’ stair to the attics, and thence to the roof. The houses are so close together that an agile man might leap from one to the next without much fear of falling.”

“Unfortunately, the most promising theory is worthless without solid evidence to back it up,” observed the magistrate, albeit not without sympathy. “Having made yourself persona non grata at the Foreign Office, where will your investigations take you next?”

“St. George’s, Hanover Square.”

“What the devil for?” thundered Colquhoun. At the mention of one of Mayfair’s most fashionable churches and the site of more than one Society wedding, his expression assumed so forbidding an aspect that Pickett could not but wonder if the magistrate suspected him of absconding with the viscountess to the nearest altar a la young Lochinvar.

“ ‘The tomb of Deacon Toomer,’ ” quoted Pickett, reading from his notes. “I have no idea who the fellow was or where he is buried, but since St. George’s is the viscount’s parish church, the crypt there seems to be the best place to start searching.”

“I don’t know,” muttered the magistrate, as the purple faded from his countenance. “It seems little enough to go on.”

“I agree, sir, but since the footman Thomas heard the words spoken in anger from her ladyship’s bedchamber shortly before the time of death, it apparently means something to someone—a meeting place, perhaps; or perhaps Toomer’s death is somehow tied to Fieldhurst’s.”

“Another spy, in other words,” grunted Colquhoun. “Have a care, Pickett, or you are likely to see one lurking behind every tombstone!”

* * * *

“I shall naturally do all I can to help poor Lady Fieldhurst,” declared Mr. Robert Hodgson, rector of St. George’s, Hanover Square. His voice bounced eerily off the walls as he and Pickett descended the stone stairs into the crypt.

The Runner, carefully picking his way down steps only dimly seen in the drunkenly bobbing light of the rector’s lantern, was obliged to wait until his feet touched level ground before asking, “Were you well acquainted with the viscountess?”

“I should not say I was well acquainted with her ladyship, although naturally we exchanged greetings every Sunday after services. She seemed to me to be a gentle lady, incapable of such a violent act.”

“She attended services regularly?”

“Until her husband’s death, yes.”

“Some would take her absence since then as evidence of a guilty conscience,” observed Pickett.

“The mean-spirited might, I daresay. For my part, I attribute her absence to her recent bereavement—along with, perhaps, a perfectly natural reluctance to offer herself as fodder for the gossips.”

Pickett looked up sharply. “Gossips, you say?”

Mr. Hodgson gave an unecclesiastical snort. “Oh, they say nothing to her face—they haven’t the courage for that!—but the scandal sheets print the most revolting insinuations, while as for the sketches in the printing shop windows—really, one finds it an embarrassment to walk down Oxford Street! But as I recall, you yourself have not escaped their censure. Allow me to assure you that I, for one, respect you for your restraint in the matter.”

“I, er, thank you,” said Pickett, somewhat baffled by the rector’s reassurances.

His eyes had by this time grown accustomed to the darkness of the crypt and could now distinguish individual tombs. Some were no more than large stone slabs, while others bore elaborately carved memorials to the deceased.

“As I told you when you first questioned me, I cannot recall a Deacon Toomer interred here, although I believe there is a William Toogood along the right-hand wall about halfway back. Whether he was a deacon or not, I cannot say. Feel free to look as long as you wish. I shall be upstairs in the vestry, if you should have need of me.”

He left the lantern with Pickett, assuring the Runner that he had climbed the staircase often enough to have no need of its assistance. Left to his own devices, Pickett lost no time in locating William Toogood’s modest stone slab. The hope, never very strong, that the rector had misread the name proved a futile one, as the crudely carved letters were clearly legible. To this disappointment was added the discovery that the subject had shuffled off this mortal coil in the year of our Lord 1746, forcing Pickett to absolve both Lord Fieldhurst and Sir Archibald of having any hand in good Billy’s demise.

Deprived of this promising lead, he set about examining each of the remaining tombs in turn. It was a monotonous task, relieved only by one harrowing moment when a draft from an unseen crack in the crypt wall snuffed out the feeble lantern and plunged him into stygian darkness. Only by cupping his hands around the wick and blowing gently was he able to coax the flame back to life. By the time this operation was completed, however, he found he had lost all taste for his present company. He made short work of the remaining tombs and, finding no sign of an occupant named Toomer or any evidence that any part of the crypt had been used for meetings of a clandestine nature, abandoned the dark of the vault for the sunshine above.

He should have gone next to investigate the crypt of Sir Archibald’s parish church, St. Martin in the Fields; he’d had every intention of doing so, had not certain of Mr. Hodgson’s words taken root in his brain and refused to be dislodged. The sketches in the print shop windows . . . you yourself have not escaped their censure. Finding himself only a short walk from Oxford Street, he decided to see for himself those sketches which had so embarrassed the rector.

He soon wished he had not. To be sure, most of the window space was taken up by the usual unflattering representations of the Prince of Wales and his amorous activities, along with a number of caricatures criticizing Wellington’s progress (or lack thereof) against Bonaparte. But it was a drawing of quite another sort which held all of Pickett’s attention, one which featured a fair-haired woman whose ample bosom spilled over the abbreviated bodice of her low-necked, high-waisted gown. With her left arm, she embraced a rakish gentleman dressed in the wasp-waisted coat and high shirt-points of the fashionable set—Lord Rupert Latham, presumably—while with her right, she plunged a scissors into another man’s neck. This gentleman, however, appeared oblivious to the threat to his life, so engrossed was he in fondling the doxy sitting upon his knee. The caption at the bottom of Mr. Gillray’s masterpiece read: “The Modern Marriage.”

“A lot he knows,” muttered Pickett to no one in particular. “She’s not that top-heavy.”

A print by Thomas Rowlandson was displayed nearby, this one even more offensive than Gillray’s offering. For here was Lady Fieldhurst dressed in the black mourning gown of the recent widow—although Pickett sincerely doubted any widow had ever displayed so much bared bosom. A noose hung loosely about her neck, but far from dreading her fate, she smiled coyly at the leering fellow who held the other end of the rope—a man in a shallow-crowned hat and the red waistcoat of the Bow Street foot patrol. The lady held a bloody scissors imperfectly concealed behind her back, but the Runner, ogling her cleavage with bulging eyes, took no notice of them. The caption read: “Bow Street Investigates.”