The Dark Enquiry (14 page)

In the years I had known Brisbane, I had never seen him so entirely dumbfounded as he was in that moment.

“You recognised it?”

“Of course. It bears the badge of the Sigmaringen-Hohenzollerns, the cadet branch of the German Imperial family. It was devised by the kaiser himself when Germany was still called Prussia.”

He shook his head. “I know I will regret asking, but how can you possibly know that?”

“As children, when we were naughty, one of our governesses used to set us to copying out pages of the
Almanach de Gotha,
” I added. “My favourite bits were always the parts about the heraldic badges.”

“How is it that you remember an entry you have not seen for two dozen years?”

I primmed my mouth. “I was naughty rather often. I must have copied that particular entry ten times. So, it is, in fact, an excellent clue. I cannot think why you are so grim.”

“I have no love for Germans,” he said flatly.

I was surprised. I had never heard Brisbane speak so dismissively of any particular group, and his antipathy roused my curiosity. “Brisbane.”

His handsome mouth thinned. “Under Prussian law, any Gypsy over the age of eighteen can be hanged.”

I blinked at him. “For what crimes?”

“Breathing,” he said coldly.

I felt a chill as I considered the implications. “That is horrifying.”

“That is Germany. At least it was. One hopes the kaiser will be more tolerant in his policies, but it isn’t likely, not with his mother in disgrace.”

Kaiser Wilhelm’s mother, our own Princess Victoria, was a liberal and forward-thinking sort of royal. Unfortunately, the family she married into was not. She and her husband had been effectively excluded from the rearing of their son, and his sympathies were firmly entrenched with the most reactionary bastions of German patriotism. So deeply embedded was his suspicion of his English mother that, upon his father’s death, the kaiser had ordered his mother’s house searched for papers that might incriminate her as a traitor to Germany. There seemed little hope that any of her influence might be reflected in his reign. Only those who served Germany’s greater interests would be tolerated, and Gypsies certainly did not fit the bill.

I hastened to change the subject to something less thorny. “Well, then tell me what you have discovered at the clubs.”

Brisbane steepled his fingers under his chin, his ill temper past. “You will be happy to know there isn’t even a tittle about Mortlake. He seems to have dodged ruination quite nicely.”

“I am glad to know it.”

“As for Mr. Sullivan, I met with a bit of resistance there. Mr. Froggitt, the editor of the
Illustrated Daily News,
was not terribly forthcoming. He could only tell me that Sullivan is a fellow who works freelance, not an employee of the newspaper. He sends in his stories and the editor runs them. He keeps no office at the newspaper, and the editor has no means of contacting him.”

I gave a start. “That is curious. How does the fellow receive assignments?”

“The editor sends a runner to a particular coffeehouse each afternoon at four o’clock. If the fellow is there, he receives his assignment. If not, the editor merely passes it along. An unconventional arrangement, but the editor is pleased enough with the work, he is content to leave it so.”

“Did you learn anything else?”

“Only that the fellow is American and has ginger hair.”

“Ginger hair?” My mind hurtled back to Madame’s last séance. There had been a slight young man with ginger hair and whiskers in attendance, I remembered. I had nearly stepped on his heels as we made our way into the séance room and, once there, I had taken the chair next to him.

I mentioned the coincidence to Brisbane. “I recall him,” my husband assured me. “And tomorrow I mean to pay a call at four o’clock to a certain coffeehouse to see if we have our man.”

“
We
mean to pay a call,” I corrected him.

Brisbane’s only reply was a groan.

In the end, I did not accompany him. Brisbane, with a great deal more patience than he usually exhibited, explained that in this particular neighbourhood a lady of any variety, much less one of some means and dressed fashionably, would attract far too much attention and doubtless scare our man away. Naturally, I offered to don my masculine garb, which won me a rather fluent bout of profanity from Brisbane, but good sense prevailed and I grudgingly agreed to remain at home. Brisbane promised to reveal all to me as soon as possible, and so I spent the better part of the afternoon sitting in the airless cupboard under the stairs waiting for the shrill summons of the telephone.

At last, sometime after five o’clock, it came and I pounced upon it. After the usual preliminaries with the operator, Brisbane came on the line, speaking to me from his rooms in Chapel Street.

“Brisbane! Tell me everything!” I ordered.

There was an exclamation of pain and then, after a long moment, my husband’s voice. “Do not shout, Julia. It is not necessary.”

“Are you sure? Can you hear me properly?” I stared at the device suspiciously. It seemed counterintuitive that one could speak normally and still be heard down the wire.

“For God’s sake,
I hear you!
” he roared.

I winced. “Goodness, Brisbane, there is no call to howl at me. I can hear you perfectly.”

“Good,” he said, his voice oddly tight as if he were grinding out the word through clenched teeth.

“Now, what of our American?”

“He appeared after some delay, but spied me through the window. As soon as he caught sight of me, he ran, and I followed him for some distance before I lost him.”

I thought rapidly. “But if he ran at the sight of you, that means he must know you! How?”

Brisbane’s jaw was set. “He has written one or two stories about previous cases of mine. I recognised the byline.”

“Did you recognise him?”

“He was indeed the ginger-haired fellow who sat next to you at the séance.”

“Oh, well done!” I cried.

“Julia,” Brisbane growled again.

“I am sorry,” I whispered. “But this is really excellent. It means we have a firm lead on this American fellow, particularly since he ran from you. He wouldn’t have done so if he had nothing to fear.”

“Yes, but we have lost him with precious little means of tracking him down. He won’t show his face at that coffeehouse again.” I paused so long he thought the connection broken. “Julia? Are you still there?”

“I am here,” I said finally. “Brisbane, you just said ‘we.’ You said we lost him with little means of tracking him down.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did!” I persisted. “You have begun to think of me as a partner, whether you like it or not.”

“I cannot hear you, Julia. I think the connection is faulty.”

“The connection is fine, you impossible man!”

But it was too late. He had disengaged.

That night after dinner we sat comfortably in our drawing room and considered our next move as Brisbane prepared his hookah pipe. He fiddled with coals and the tarry black bits of hashish as I went into the details of my visit with Mademoiselle Agathe. I took the first deep draught of the heady smoke as he told me again of the chase the fleet-footed American had led him on, and how the fellow had craftily dodged into the train station just as a train was arriving, using the arrival to cloak his disappearance from Brisbane.

I pondered a moment, then sat up quickly—too quickly, in fact. The smoke made my head swim. “It makes no sense.”

“What doesn’t, my love?”

“The ginger-haired fellow is a reporter of the most vulgar sort. He writes for a lurid newspaper and revels in the lowest manner of details. He spied you through the window and
then he fled
. It makes no sense whatsoever. You are one of the foremost private enquiry agents in London, son-in-law to an earl and brother-in-law to one of the Opposition’s leaders. You might have given him a treasure trove of information for a story! Instead, he took to his heels and fled as if the very hounds of hell were after him.”

“Thank you for that charming image of me,” Brisbane said drily. He took a long draught from the pipe, blowing out the smoke into a series of delicate rings.

“Brisbane, think of it. He did not behave as a proper reporter ought to behave. Why?”

Brisbane said nothing, and I continued on, warming to my theme. “How could I have been so blind? How could
you
have been so blind? The police never questioned the guests of the séance, Madame’s last public session. They never interviewed them or it would have been in the newspapers. They never made an effort to find me. If they had wanted to speak with the Comte de Roselende, they would have circulated a description and placed advertisements in the newspapers, and yet there was no mention at all. And no mention of the guests was ever put forward at the inquest. They focused solely on the kitchens, blaming an elderly cook’s poor eyesight.”

Brisbane stirred himself lazily. “Your point, my dear?”

“My point is that any one of us might have murdered Madame. The murder hinged upon one thing, the substitution of an aconite root for a horseradish. It has been done before. The two are not unalike. But one doesn’t make up horseradish at the last minute. It might be done at any time. Any one of us might have disguised ourselves as a greengrocer’s lad and slipped down to the kitchen with the fatal root and done the deed without the cook ever noticing at all.”

“Including the general? In full evening dress and bald as a new egg? You think he might have been mistaken for a kitchen boy?”

I pursed my lips. “Perhaps not, but he might have adopted a disguise, any of the guests might have. Or,” I added, my excitement rising, “the murderer might have brought a servant from home—a kitchen boy or a hall boy. It would have been easy enough to give him the deadly specimen and instruct him where to leave it. Servants of guests are always entertained in the kitchen. What could be more natural?”

“And you think a murderer clever enough to use this method would have put himself into the power of a kitchen boy? He would have just opened himself up to blackmail.” Brisbane blew out another puff of smoke, this one sinuous as a serpent curling above his head.

“If the boy ever realised what he had done,” I argued. “Kitchen boys are the lowest of the low. They are not educated. They do not read newspapers. They do not question their betters. Imagine it, an illiterate urchin instructed by his master to do this one thing, perhaps his master presents it as a joke or a merry prank. The boy is given a coin to spend on whatever he likes and the only caveat is that he must not tell anyone because it’s his master’s secret jest. He would do it in an instant, I tell you, and spend his coin on a pint of beer and that would be the end of it. He would never realise what he had done, and his master is entirely in the clear.”

I sat back, feeling entirely happy with my hypothesis. Until Brisbane pricked my balloon.

“And if his master is taken up for murder? What if the boy had been detected or his master had been found out? How does the master explain it away when there is a witness to his crime?”

I nibbled at my lip, then brightened. “Easily! He simply has the boy killed, although this time, I think the master would do the deed himself. Far better to tie up this loose end with his own hands rather than letting himself in for more of the same trouble later. If it were me, I think I should drug him, tie him in a sack weighted with stones and fling him into the Thames. No blood in the parlour.”

Brisbane stared at me, open-mouthed, then shut his jaws with a decided snap upon the mouthpiece of the pipe to take a sharp puff. “That is the most cold-blooded thing I have ever heard you say.”

“Murderers are cold-blooded. If he would not scruple to kill Madame, why would he stop at the murder of a kitchen boy? Once the impossible has been done, it becomes possible always,” I pointed out.

Brisbane shook his head. “It is a credible theory, I grant you, but there is still no evidence of murder. The inquest verdict was accidental, and although the blackmail note to Bellmont suggests more nefarious things afoot, we cannot say definitively that the lady was murdered,” Brisbane reminded me. “The blackmailer might simply be a creature of opportunity, seizing the chance to make some easy money.”

I considered this, then dismissed it. “No, I think Madame was murdered, and by someone at that séance.”

Brisbane canted his head and gave me a predatory smile. “Would you care to wager upon the point?”

“That is highly unprofessional,” I said primly. “Fifty pounds?”

“One hundred,” he countered. “One hundred pounds to you if Madame was murdered by someone at that séance.”

I rose and went to him, offering my hand. “Shall we seal the wager?”

He put aside his pipe. He took my hand and pulled me down hard onto his lap. “Yes, but that is not precisely how I had in mind.”

The next morning, I ran Brisbane to ground with a new thought. He was in his study, scrutinising the button. “There must be a list somewhere, a registry of sorts of the gentlemen who have been given the right by the kaiser to wear that particular emblem,” I remarked, taking the button to study it more closely.

“And their retainers?” he asked swiftly. “The Queen of England’s guards and servants wear her badge. What of the kaiser’s? If he gives that wretched eagle only to men of his family, the list is manageable. But if he extends the courtesy to his closest aides, to men who have served at the court in Berlin, it is an entirely different matter. We might be looking for a very elusive needle in a Teutonic haystack.”

His expression was grim, and I set a bright smile on my lips. “Never mind that now. What are your plans for the day?”

“Plum and I are off to Richmond. Lady Riverton has been robbed of some rather valuable silver. She suspects the butler, but hers is the fourth such complaint I’ve had in the last three months. I suspect a ring of thieves is abroad in Richmond. I shall endeavour to apprehend them myself or try to persuade her to turn the matter over to the police.”

“You must be careful,” I admonished. “You and Plum both.” He reached for the latest copy of the
Journal of Psychology
then, and I slipped the button into my pocket and said nothing more.

With Brisbane safely out of the way in Richmond, I was free to pursue my own investigations, and if they were not conducted with his knowledge, at least I consoled myself that they ought to have been. Really, what woman of character and spirit would lie down in the face of a wager of that size and not do her utmost to win?

I retrieved my list of the guests at the séance and locked myself in the study for an hour to prepare my plan of attack. There had been three names inscribed legibly in the guest-book besides mine. The veiled lady, alas, had come too late to sign, but Agathe had vouched for her as a legitimate client and therefore she was of no use to us. General Fortescue signed in a bold hand, while Sir Henry Eddington had a crabbed signature with a pinched look to it very like his mouth. Sir Morgan Fielding, I recalled, had an elegant hand, penning his name with economical good taste.

I used the newspapers and Debrett’s to supply much of the details I required, and a bit of discreet gossip with Morag took care of the rest. I coached her carefully on my expectations, taking her into my confidence only so far as was absolutely necessary for her cooperation. Of course, it cost me another five-pound note to secure her participation, but once she had the note in hand, she was more than agreeable. I dressed carefully in a flattering costume of emeraldgreen, the gown and reticule trimmed in peacock feathers. I forced Morag to harness herself into her best black, a stiff bombazine affair that very nearly stood on its own accord. Swan was waiting in the hall as we took our leave, and he sprang to attend us. With his extremely tall and thin frame, his striped livery made him resemble nothing so much as an insect, albeit an elegant and exotic one. But he ushered us into the town coach and leapt nimbly to his seat just as the driver pulled away.

It was a short journey to the Bloomsbury house of General Fortescue, our first call of the day. Swan took my card and rang the bell, and a very few minutes later I was ensconced in the general’s stuffy morning room. In spite of its name, it offered no comforts. The morning sun did not illluminate this gloomy room, nor had a fire been lit. The tables had not been recently dusted, either, I observed, and the blinds still shuttered the windows. There was an unpleasant odour in the room, a warm mustiness that told me neither the gentleman nor his possessions was particularly well cared for.

In all, it was the home of a man sunk in gloom, and when the general appeared, nothing about him altered my opinion. This man who had once been accustomed to commanding thousands of men, had been reduced to something rather pitiable. He had made an attempt at shaving, but rough patches of white whiskers still dotted his chin, and his uniform—once pristine and festooned with bright medals—now hung shapelessly, the medals dark with tarnish.

He greeted me civilly enough, and I applied myself to acting my part, but all the while I thought of Morag, and wondered if she was up to the task I had set her.

“General, how very kind of you to receive me,” I said sweetly. He peered at me from beetling white brows.

“Do I know you?” he demanded, but his gruff demeanour was nothing like the bellicose man he was once reputed to have been.

“I think we have not been formally introduced. I am the daughter of the Earl March.”

His expression darkened. “That Radical?”

“And the sister to Lord Bellmont,” I hastened to add.

Those were the magic words, for his expression lightened at once. “Ah, yes, Lord Bellmont, capital fellow. I very nearly had his vote for bringing corporal punishment back into the ranks. In the end, he voted against it, but he considered it very carefully.”

I coughed slightly. “Yes, well, I am sure it grieved him very much not to have been able to vote for such a fine piece of legislation. After all, one cannot have too much discipline in the ranks, I always say.”

“Do you, by God? That is good to hear. Not many ladies understand that,” he added, giving me a look of thoughtful appreciation. “Would you like a drink, my dear?”

“Oh, yes. Tea would be lovely—” I began, but when I saw where he was bound, I amended the remark instantly. “But a bit of something stronger would be much appreciated.”

He poured a hefty measure of gin into two smeary glasses and presented me with one of them. “A stiffener,” he said, giving me a broad wink.

I sipped at the vile fluid, trying manfully not to choke. “Very refreshing,” I said finally. It was cheap stuff and tasted rather like my Uncle Leonato’s shaving lotion smelled.

But the general did not seem to notice. He had quaffed half the glass before we settled to a cosy chat.

“I have come because I have taken up the study of photography and I am particularly interested in the subject of spirit photography. Your name was mentioned to me as a person of some great knowledge upon the subject.”

He preened a little, the liquor clearly blunting his defences. “Well, I do have some experience. It’s very easy for a woman to get taken in by some of the charlatans, you understand. Yours is the gullible gender. No fault of your own,” he hastened to assure me. “It is how God made you, and glad we are of it. But you haven’t the brains to think rationally.”

“Haven’t we?” I asked weakly.

“Not a bit of it. You must rely upon us to discover the frauds and the mountebanks.”

“And those who are not frauds,” I prompted. “Could you discover those, as well?”

His eyes grew rheumy and thoughtful then, glazed with memories. “Only once have I ever known a true medium. You might have photographed her, but she is dead and gone, my girl.”

“What a pity! She was the genuine article then? A person who could commune with the dead?”

“That she could. She spoke with their voices, voices I have not heard in decades. She found them, though, God rest her soul!” He broke off then and took a healthy swallow of the nasty stuff.

“She sounds a remarkable woman. I am sorry not to have known her,” I urged. “Did she bring you messages from the beyond?”

He gave a great sniff, and to my horror, I saw a fat tear rolling down his reddened nose. “She did. She spoke in their voices, the voices of those brave lads who fell. She found them, and they used her as their instrument to speak to me, their commander, one last time. Good boys, they were, and they loved me like a father.”

He seemed more intent upon convincing himself than me, and I thought with some pity of how heavily the burden of those dead men must weigh upon his aging shoulders.

“Did you call upon her often?”

His eyelids were drooping beneath the extraordinary brows, and he recalled himself with a jerk. “What? Erm, yes, rather. I saw her from time to time. It helped to keep the dreams at bay.”

His head bobbed a little, and I knew I had only a short time left. “What dreams, General?”

“Dreams of the boys, they come to me, dripping gore and pointing fingers. But that’s not real. Madame said they understood. They forgive…”

His head fell heavily onto his chest and the empty glass rolled from his hand. He gave a deep, snoring exhalation, and I rose to see myself out. Swan collected Morag from the kitchens, and in a very few minutes we were on our way. I took several deep breaths of bracing London air to clear my head.

“So?” I prodded Morag. “What did you learn?”

She shook her head. “No kitchen boy in service there, nor has there been. Only an old army cook and a sad little scullery maid. Bored to sobs, they are. The old fellow drinks his dinner most days now.”

“Keep a respectful tongue, Morag. The old fellow is a highly decorated general,” I reminded her tartly. My disappointment made me waspish. I was so certain of success, and I had rather liked the general for a villain in spite of my defence of him to Morag. He was precisely the sort of military man I abhorred—arrogant, unyielding and entirely too sure of himself.

Or was he? The dreams he mentioned seemed to indicate his conscience did not rest easily. He was tormented by the ghosts of dead men, good young men he had ordered to their graves. His desperate visits to Madame had won him some measure of peace from their accusations, and in that light, it seemed entirely unlikely that he would have had anything to do with her death. He had had an actual need of her dark consolations, I reflected, and would no more have done her harm than he would have worn her petticoats. He had apparently gone steadily downhill since her death, and I wondered if he had thought to avail himself of Agathe’s services as a substitute.

I took the little notebook from my reticule and pencilled a line through his name.

“Next is Sir Henry Eddington,” I noted with some distaste. I had not cared for Sir Henry’s attitude towards his dead daughter, and I suspected I should not like him any better on closer acquaintance. He owned a sizeable mansion in Kensington, very near the park, and shortly after I presented myself I was shown into his study by a maid who looked faintly terrorised. I had the notion that Sir Henry acted the martinet with his family and staff, and prepared myself accordingly.

Unlike General Fortescue, Sir Henry clearly had a mania for order. Every angle in his study was a square one, with books and papers rigidly positioned, and even the chairs placed at precise distances from one another. Not a speck of dust or smear of furniture polish marred the icy perfection of the room. Even the curtains at his windows hung at attention.

When the maid ushered me in, Sir Henry rose from behind his desk, clearly annoyed at the interruption but enough of a man of business to hold his irritation in abeyance until he knew the nature of my errand. Debrett’s and the society columns had revealed that he was the second son of a minor baronet from Derbyshire who had made his own fortune after an indifferent education. Reading between the lines, it was easy to surmise that he had been embittered by his experiences, frustrated that his family fortunes had been too reduced to permit him to live as he believed he ought. He had quarrelled with every member of his family, save his rather downtrodden wife and daughters. They had long since given up any pretence at defiance.

Except perhaps for the curious Honoria, I marked. I set a gracious smile upon my lips and advanced. Doubtless he anticipated I was collecting for some improving organisation and about to make a call upon his purse. I could already see the refusal rising to his lips and hurried to disarm him.

“Sir Henry, it is so good of you to see me,” I said, giving him my hand. He looked as if he did not quite know what to do with it. He dropped my hand and gestured for me to sit, more out of propriety than any real desire for my company, I fancied. I perched on the edge of my chair, not entirely surprised to find it excessively uncomfortable. I had a notion that Sir Henry was not inclined to desire his callers to linger.

He glanced at the card the maid had carried in upon my arrival. “Lady Julia Brisbane. Your brother is Lord Bellmont, is he not? He put me in the way of a rather good investment last spring. Foundries,” he commented. I suppressed a sour smile. Bellmont must have been very certain of the Naval Defence Act passing if he was recommending investments on the strength of it.

“How nice. It is always best if these things stay between people who really understand them,” I said, pitching my voice low, as if I did not wish to be overheard. “Sir Henry, I come to throw myself upon your mercy. I should like some advice.”

He blinked, and a pale pink stain stole over his complexion. I realised he was flushed with satisfaction, and it occurred to me that this particular enquiry might be far easier than expected.

“You see, I find myself in need of guidance, from the other side, as it were.”

The colour ebbed instantly, and his face was white as old paper. “The other side?”

“Yes, we do not like to speak of it outside the family, but as you are a gentleman of such discretion and good judgement, I felt it was worth the trouble of consulting you.” I took on the air of one confiding a great secret. “My first husband, Sir Edward Grey, died rather suddenly a few years ago. He did not have sufficient time before his passing to divulge the secret of where he had cached the Grey Pearls, a rather extraordinary set of jewels passed down in his family for several generations.” It was a lie, of course; the pearls had been resting comfortably in a bank vault when Edward died. “I find myself in rather extreme need at present,” I confessed. I paused a moment and lifted a handkerchief to my eye. Sir Henry was unmoved by the gesture, and I dropped the handkerchief at once to proceed with my narrative. “I have tried everything, but I am growing desperate. I thought perhaps a medium might be able to make contact with Edward and persuade him to give up his hiding place.”

Sir Henry’s gaze narrowed tightly. “And why do you come to me?”