The Lady Julia Grey Bundle (67 page)

“Father?” I gave him a stern look and he nodded, a trifle sheepishly.

“I did. I owed Brisbane a rather significant favour,” he said shortly. His jaw was set, and I knew he regretted bringing the sordidness of an investigation into his home. I cocked my head, wondering if either of them would admit to Brisbane’s daring deed in Trafalgar Square.

“What sort of favour?”

Father’s eyes slid from mine. He was suddenly terribly interested in the state of his blotter.

“It does not signify,” Brisbane cut in smoothly. “The fact remains, his lordship offered the use of this house party as a suitable setting to apprehend her.”

Charlotte gave a harsh laugh. The colour had risen in her cheeks, whether from her predicament or the whiskey, I could not say.

“Apprehend me! And what have you got, my lord? A handful of tatty old rags and a girl out of bed when she oughtn’t be,” she said to Brisbane, her voice shrill, very near to hysteria, I thought.

“Is that true?” I asked him. “You have no proof of her crimes?”

Brisbane’s jaw tightened. “I do not. She has been clever enough to secure the item in question somewhere other than her room or her trunk. I had a strong suspicion she was going to move it tonight. I hid myself in the gallery of the ladies’ wing and followed her when she entered the hidden
passage. Once I realised she was assuming her disguise, I retraced my steps and resumed my hiding place in the corridor. From there, I knew once she was garbed in her ghostly costume, she would lead me directly to her cache.”

I felt a cold chill creep over my limbs that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. Brisbane was regarding me with an icy stare, and I understood with a thrill of horror what I had just done.

“You mean I ruined—” I could not bear to finish the thought.

“You did,” he put in brutally. I had thought him angry with Charlotte. I should have known better. Brisbane was a professional. He did not permit his emotions to become entangled with the criminals he pursued. My interference, however, could be viewed in a very different light.

“Oh,
no,
” I groaned, burying my face in my hands.

Charlotte laughed again, mirthlessly. “I suppose I ought to thank you, my lady. Brisbane has nothing to charge me with except the wearing of old clothes I found in the lumber room, and there is no crime in that.” Old clothes she had likely discovered when Aunt Hermia had led a party of chattering ladies to the lumber rooms to choose Lucy’s wedding finery. How simple it must have been for Charlotte to mark those few articles, then return later to fashion them into her ghostly garb. Under different circumstances, I might have admired her ingenuity.

I raised my head. “But clearly you were abroad for some nefarious purpose,” I argued, desperate to salvage this calamity I had wrought.

Charlotte smiled at me and took a sip of her whiskey. “Or was I creeping around in this disguise to preserve my reputation? Perhaps I was seeking an assignation?”

There was no malice in her eyes, only the calm certainty of a woman who has taken every precaution in a dangerous game. This was why she had courted Plum’s attentions, then. She had earned herself a stalwart defender should she have need of one, and an alibi as well.

She rose and placed her glass on the table, patting her hair to smoothness. “I do hope you will excuse me. I am very tired, and it is quite late. I will of course return these things to the lumber rooms, my lord,” she said with an arch smile at Father. “I should not like to have it said I took anything that did not belong to me.”

She dropped a deep curtsey and left us then. I sank further into my chair, wishing I could escape as easily as that.

“I am sorry,” I murmured. “I had no idea.”

“Yes, you did,” Brisbane said bitterly. “You knew I would never seriously consider marrying a woman like that. You taunted me with it that day by the river. But you could not reason further to realise I was engaged upon an investigation?”

I spread my hands helplessly, wishing Father would say something, anything at all. “I did realise it, but I never took her for a villainess. You even implied someone else might use her as a scapegoat, if you will remember. You said someone else might cache jewels in her room to throw suspicion upon her. And even if I were inclined to believe the worst of her, two minutes in her company would have
cured my doubts. She looks like a Dresden shepherdess and she talks like a milkmaid!”

Brisbane’s mouth twisted. “Well, your little Dresden shepherdess managed to steal one of the single most valuable jewels in the entire kingdom, and if I do not recover it…”

His voice dropped off as if he could not bear to give voice to the magnitude of his ruin if he failed. “What did she steal?” I dared to ask in a very tiny voice.

“The Tear of Jaipur,” Father said softly. “I have only seen it once, but it was the most magnificent thing I have ever laid eyes upon.”

“A diamond?”

“Not a diamond,” Brisbane corrected, his voice thick with sarcasm. “
The
diamond. The largest one in the queen’s personal collection. It was a gift from an Indian potentate when she became their Empress.”

I nearly laughed aloud. The very idea was preposterous, another one of Brisbane’s nursery stories to keep me in the dark. “The queen? Charlotte stole the queen’s diamond? How? Did she scale the walls of Buckingham Palace? Or did she overpower the guards like Colonel Blood?”

Father winced and Brisbane looked grimly at the glass in his hands. He rolled it between his palms, the flames on the hearth flickering in the reflected depths of the whiskey. Too late I realised he had told the truth.

“The queen had given the jewel to her daughter-in-law. No, I will not say which,” he said sternly as I opened my mouth to ask. “But she gave it as a mark of extreme favour. And the stupid woman gave it away.”

I blinked at him. “To whom?”

“A lover,” Father said, pulling a face. It might have been a deliciously scandalous story if matters had not turned out so disastrously for Brisbane, I thought.

“How could she possibly expect the absence of such a thing would not be noted?” I demanded.

Brisbane shrugged. He did not grimace, and I wondered if the aftereffects of the hashish were still allaying the pain of his injury. “He spun her a tale. He told her he wanted to keep it, just for one night, a pledge of her faith and devotion.”

“And she believed him?” I scoffed, but Father gave me a world-weary shake of the head.

“Never underestimate the stupidity of a woman in love,” he said. “Or a man,” he hastened to add.

“The lady did believe him,” Brisbane continued. “She gave him the jewel for one night and never saw him again. His name was Edwin Campbell. He is Charlotte’s husband, or rather, the man she acknowledges as her husband. I have found no evidence they were ever wed. She took the diamond from him and he has not seen her since.”

I shook my head. The tale hung together, but loosely, like cobweb lace. “Why would she move openly in society if she were hiding from her husband?”

“He was taken to gaol shortly after the theft for other crimes. He refuses to speak against her. Poor devil still believes she will come back to him, with the diamond.”

“But she is leaving the country? You are certain?”

“As certain as one may be of information one has bought. But it seems the only possible course for her. She
has the diamond. She cannot hope to sell it here, but on the Continent, in the Americas even, she could make a tidy fortune and live quite comfortably.”

I shook my head. I could not quite take it all in. “I cannot believe she is a thief. I thought her so refined, so feminine.”

“Make no mistake, she is the daughter of a gentleman, and she has been educated as a lady. Presenting herself as a genteel society widow was no great difficulty for her. And Campbell was a rather talented forger. He wrote letters of introduction for her, and with those she wormed her way into the highest circles. She was invited to parties at the wealthiest houses. She was quick and careful, and if the hostess noticed some time later a valuable trinket was missing, she would never connect the theft with the charming and garrulous Mrs. King.”

“Clever,” I said, admiring her just a little in spite of myself. She was thoroughly amoral, and her lifestyle was utterly reprehensible, but there was still something, some elusive quality about her that drew one in. Perhaps it was charm, or a vulnerability she thought she had masked with her deceit.

“Clever and vicious. She was nearly apprehended once by a lady’s maid. She bashed the woman over the head with a candlestick and nearly killed her.”

I caught my breath. The implication was horrifying. “Brisbane, you do not think, I mean, it is not possible. Not Mr. Snow.”

“No,” he said slowly. “She could not have killed him. Her hands are smaller than yours. If Edwin Campbell were
a free man, I would have suspected him instantly, particularly as Snow had jewels in his pocket. But he is a guest of Her Majesty’s, enjoying the hospitality of Wandsworth Prison at present. And the jewels Lucian Snow had in his pocket were not of the variety to tempt the lady. The Grey Pearls would have been much more in her line.”

“You think she stole my pearls?”

“I know she did, I can feel it in my bones. But without a witness, without the pearls, without a confession, I have nothing. Less than nothing,” he said, his mouth thin with bitterness. “I do not even have the Tear of Jaipur.”

I said nothing for a long moment. Father remained silent, and the only sounds were the ticking of the mantel clock and the rustling of the fire.

“The princess herself retained you to recover it?” I ventured finally, afraid of his answer.

“Through the prime minister,” he said calmly. It was even worse than I had feared.

“And now you will have to go to them and admit you have failed,” I said wretchedly.

“The letters patent,” Father began. The letters patent, drawn up to bestow Brisbane’s viscountcy, a viscountcy that would not be his until the letters had been published.

“Useless,” Brisbane cut in, his voice clipped.

I looked from one to the other. “The letters patent? For your title? What do you mean they are useless?”

Brisbane looked into his whiskey glass, studying the amber depths. “The letters were drafted by Lord Salisbury. He approached me about recovering the jewel for
Her Royal Highness after some success I had on behalf of the Prince of Wales in the autumn. The letters were to be held until the diamond was recovered. If I fail, he will burn them.”

Puzzled, I turned to Father. “But you have already been addressing him by the title of viscount.”

Father shrugged. “A ruse to sweeten the honeypot for Charlotte King. Jewel thieves are terrible snobs.”

I shook my head, feeling suddenly sick. “Because I interfered, you will lose a title? And an estate?”

Brisbane drank off his whiskey and put the glass carefully onto Father’s desk. “It does not matter, my lady. I was not born to it. The loss of it does not grieve me.”

The words should have been comforting, but somewhere underneath them was a current of some indefinable emotion in his voice that made me ache. Was it longing? Did he care so much for what he had never had? I thought of the life he might have led, lord of the country manor, perhaps a husband and father, caring for his stock and his tenants, managing them all with fairness and generosity. I could have wept for him. But something in his face, his implacable, unyielding face, warned me not to.

I rose, a trifle unsteady after the shocks I had endured and the whiskey I had drunk. “There is no possible method by which I may apologise as profoundly as you deserve. I can only tell you I will regret my thoughtlessness, my impetuosity, every day of my life.”

I left them then. I heard the low rumble of voices as I closed the door. I did not stay to eavesdrop on what they
might have said. They had their own differences to sort between them. I had interfered enough for one night.

Or so I thought. There was one last bit of meddling yet to come. It was a silly thing, really, that finally revealed to me the murderer of Lucian Snow. It happened when I tripped on my slipper on the stair. I was tired and stumbled a little, catching the sole. I looked back to find the slipper sitting on the stair, the toe facing backward, and when I went to pick it up, I understood what we ought to have seen before.

When I reached for the slipper, I instinctively turned my hand, thumb facing back, so that when I straightened and brought the slipper up, the toe would face forward. A simple, stupid detail one would never think on in the course of an ordinary day. But this had been no ordinary day. A man lay murdered under my father’s roof, strangled by a right-handed man.

Unless the murderer was upside down.
No, that was ridiculous. It was
Snow
who had to be upside down, and once I knew that, the rest of it fell tidily into place. I sank down onto the stair, closing my eyes to better imagine it.

I saw the two men in the chapel, perhaps by arrangement, perhaps by accident. Snow turns his back. Was he caused to do so? He could have been. The little bundle of jewels would have been a pretty lure. He could pocket them and then, his back still turned, he is struck down by a single vicious blow from the candelabrum.

Stunned, perhaps dying already, he slumps unconscious to the floor. His murderer turns him onto his back, and
standing at Snow’s head, reaches over his face to strangle him. The bruises would speak eloquently of a right-handed man, the perfect alibi for a left-handed murderer.

I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself still on the stair. I had seen it so clearly in my mind’s eye. All but the face of the killer, and it did not require much imagination to supply that.

I rose and put on my slipper, determined not to waste a moment. I sped to the gentlemen’s wing and knocked softly at one of the doors. It took an agonisingly long time before he replied, but at length he did. I had expected I would rouse him from sleep, but his hair was neatly combed, and his eyes, though shadowed with anguish, were clear and alert.