The Sudbury School Murders (11 page)

I gave him a faint smile. "I have. Knee-deep
mud. A foul murder. A man who is a boor running a school for
appallingly rich bankers' sons."

Grenville snorted. "Yes, Rutledge can be an
ass. You would not think he comes from one of the finest families
in England. Why he decided to take up a post as headmaster I never
understood. But he seems to enjoy it."

Grenville crossed his ankles on the ottoman,
giving me a view of his extraordinarily clean boots. Rumor had it
that he had his right boots and left boots made by two different
boot makers so that they'd fit his feet perfectly. I doubted
that--Grenville was not frivolous--but the leather did conform to
the shape of each foot and was shined with care. Even after a
journey of sixty miles, the boots were nearly free of mud.

"Are you certain you want to lodge here?" I
began. "While the accommodations in Sudbury are not elegant, they
are at least quiet."

"Ah, but here, I am in the thick of
things."

I wondered whether Marianne knew he'd
arrived. Had she seen his coach as she'd hurried across the fields
toward Hungerford?

As though reading my thoughts, Grenville
glanced at me, slightly defiant, and said, "I hired the
Runner."

We regarded each other in silence. We were so
different, the pair of us, he a smallish man with clean dark hair
brushed in the latest style, his dark eyes quick and lively. I, on
the other hand, was a tall man, muscular from my days in the army,
brown from the same, although my tan had somewhat faded. My hair
was only a shade lighter than his, but wiry and thick and never
stayed down, no matter how much I might slick it with water. My
eyes, too, were a shade lighter brown than his, too light, I
thought for that lively look he had.

I did not think either of us had a face to
attract a lady's attention, but Grenville had a constant string of
admirers. His status as the most eligible bachelor in England
caused every mother in the
haut ton
to eagerly plot.
Grenville neatly avoided their snares by rarely appearing at
Almack's, the rooms in King Street where each Season's crop of
debutantes were paraded. Admission to this bastion was more
difficult to obtain than presentation at court. The hostesses
expected applicants to conform to a strange and stringent code of
behavior and ancestry that few could meet.

Needless to say, I had not been granted a
voucher to purchase a ticket to Almack's. I refused Grenville's
offers to intercede for me. I was too old to care for attending,
and in any case, I did not have the clothes for it. Ironically, my
lack of interest in Almack's had made me a focus of social
curiosity. As a consequence, I had more invitations to events in
the
ton
than did other hopeful nobodies.

Grenville was everything to the polite world.
And yet, he faced me now, caring that he had my disapproval.

"I am concerned for her well-being, Lacey,"
he began.

"She is a resourceful woman and survived long
before you knew she existed," I said.

His eyes darkened. "If you can call it
survival."

Marianne and I had lived in identical rooms
in Covent Garden, hers above mine. "I do," I said stiffly.

"Damnation, Lacey. If I defend myself, I
insult you. You are making this bloody difficult."

"If you had read my letter, you'd know I
advised you to let her go."

"I did read it," he growled.

We regarded one another again.

After a time, I said, "I should not interfere
in your business."

"You are making it your business," he
snapped. "The devil if I know why."

"Perhaps because you like to stride over
people, and I understand how that feels. Your intentions are always
benevolent, of course."

"Of course? What would you have me do, Lacey,
cease bestowing money on the London poor? Because they might take
offense? Or fear that I am interfering in their business?"

I shook my head. "The situation is not the
same. When you give money to the poor, you hand it to the parishes
to use as they see fit. You do not enter into each person's life
and tell him or her how to live it."

"And you claim I am doing so with
Marianne?"

I tried another tack. "Marianne has survived
on her own for a long time. She has had other protectors, some of
whom did not treat her well. You cannot blame her if she has
learned to distrust."

Grenville thumped the arms of his chair. "The
pair of you will drive me mad. I am not an evil villain of the
stage. I have given her a house to live in and clothes to wear and
money to spend. A woman with those amenities should be content to
stay at home."

I smiled dryly. "It is apparent that you have
never been married."

"I have kept mistresses in the past, Lacey.
Even the most greedy and extravagant of them lived quietly in my
houses."

"Because those ladies stood in awe of you.
Marianne never will. She's been knocked about most of her life,
many times by wealthy gentlemen. Why should she trust you?"

He looked offended. "I have shown her nothing
but kindness."

"Perhaps, but also great irritation when she
does not do exactly as you like."

He threw up his hands. "I have never
attempted as benevolent an act that tried me as much as this one.
So you would like me to cease looking for her? Cease wondering
whether she is with a brute who is even now beating her because she
will not give him the money that I handed her? Cease wondering
whether in her haste to run away she did not fall among thieves who
abandoned her somewhere along the Great North Road?"

I felt suddenly cruel. I knew good and well
that Marianne was safe. But I could not tell him this; I had given
her my word.

I wished she had told me her secret so that I
might know whether holding my tongue helped or hurt. I wished still
more that she'd simply confide in Grenville herself. I would be
saved much trouble, and so would they.

"If you will trust me," I said, "I will make
certain she is restored to you."

He stared. "How?"

"You must dismiss the Runner," I answered,
"or you will make a muck of things."

"But how can you-- " He broke off, and his
eyes went black with anger. "You know where she is."

I said nothing. I turned my brandy glass in
my hands, not looking at him. I sensed his rage grow.

"Damn you, Lacey."

"I will see that she returns home," I
interrupted. "You must not ask me to choose which view I will take
in the matter. I choose no views. Trust me to restore her to the
Clarges Street house, and then the two of you may come to your own
arrangement."

I had rarely seen Grenville angry, and never
this angry. He remained still, his fingers white upon the arms of
the chair. His dark eyes were sharp, tense, regarding me with
fury.

The mantel clock chimed nine, notes of small
sweetness. In the silence that followed, I grew to respect Lucius
Grenville. At that moment, he might have chosen to quit me, to
leave behind our friendship forever. By speaking a few words at
White's, he could ruin my character. He could make certain I was
received nowhere, simply with the lift of an eyebrow, the shrug of
a shoulder.

He also could have shouted at me, accused me
of all kinds of things, just as Colonel Brandon did whenever I
angered him, which was often.

Grenville did neither. What he did instead
was sit still and let his anger course through him. Then, quietly
and slowly, he mastered his emotions. I watched his gaze cool as he
drew upon his sangfroid and good breeding, becoming more and more
remote as his grip on the arms of the chair relaxed.

"I will send word to Bow Street," he said
quietly, "and tell them I no longer need the services of a
Runner."

I gave him a quiet nod. "I will make certain
she returns home. Although I cannot guarantee the state of her
temper."

He rose from his seat and casually poured out
another glass of brandy. I admired him greatly at that moment.

"I am certain she will be quite annoyed,"
Grenville said, returning to his chair. "But let us speak no more
of it." He gave me a wry smile. "Let us return to the somewhat
safer topic of murder."

In some relief, we immersed ourselves again
in the problem at hand. We talked over everything I knew and the
steps I had begun to take. We did not mention Marianne again.

Later, a servant came to tell Grenville that
rooms had been made ready for him. Grenville left with the servant
to seek rest, and I made my way to Rutledge's study and the day's
correspondence.

Rutledge was disinclined to talk of the
morning's events. Instead he growled as he read his morning's post
and dictated responses in a rush. He was already receiving letters
from worried families about the murder. He told me to answer all
with a statement that a Romany had been arrested and all was well.
He eyed me balefully and read over each letter I wrote for him, as
though fearing I'd put forth my idea that Sebastian did not commit
the crime. The wealthy men whose sons attended this school would
not care who did the murder, Rutledge implied, as long as
somebody
had been arrested.

Rutledge had made arrangements for Grenville
to take luncheon with him in his private rooms. He grudgingly
invited me along, but I declined, knowing he did not truly want me.
I made my way instead to the common dining hall, where I seated
myself next to a morose Fletcher.

"I suppose it does not matter," Fletcher
sighed as he scraped the last of his stew from his bowl. "I should
never have become a tutor, but I much needed the post. I was a
translator, you know, in London. I translated books from fine Latin
and Greek into raw English so that the great unwashed could
understand them. Sacrilege, but one must eat."

He ate the remainder of his soup now,
hungrily.

"Do you lock your rooms?" I asked him.

"No, why should I? Servants have to tidy and
lay the fire, do they not? Anyone is free to enter, including those
bent on destroying perfectly innocent books." His mouth quivered.
"A good book is like a good friend, do you know, Lacey? One you can
turn to when the night is cold and you are lonely. And there is old
Herodotus, standing ready to regale me with tales of his
travels."

"Yes," I said sympathetically. "Grenville has
offered to help you replace some of the books."

He brightened. "Good heavens, has he? How
noble of him. Well, I shall toast Mr. Grenville." He lifted his
port glass.

I drank with him to Grenville. "Why should
anyone burn your books?" I asked presently. "I mean
your
books in particular, rather than, say, Tunbridge's math texts?"

Fletcher shrugged. "Science and mathematics
are all the rage, you know. But who has time for good old Horace? I
managed to save one." He patted his robe. "In my pocket at the
time. One, when I had so many."

"I am sorry," I told him. "It was a rotten
thing to do."

He heaved a long sigh. "Ah, well, Captain,
God sends us trials, does he not? But one day, one day, I shall buy
an entire library of everything I want. And then I shall sit back
in a room filled with so many, many texts, and read to my heart's
content." He smiled a little, enjoying his dream.

I noted Sutcliff watching us from his place
at the head of his table. When he caught my eye, he nodded, lifting
his glass. Then he turned away to snarl at a younger boy down the
table, who had not finished his stew. A Rutledge in the making, I
reflected.

When the meal finished and we all left the
hall, I caught up to Sutcliff and touched his shoulder. "Mr.
Sutcliff," I said. "Could you spare some time to speak to me and
Mr. Grenville?"

* * * * *

Chapter Eight

Sutcliff agreed to meet with Grenville and
myself for a glass of claret that afternoon. His tone when he
delivered his answer told me that he never would have accepted had
Grenville not been involved. Gabriel Lacey might be a gentleman,
his look said, but Gabriel Lacey could barely afford the clothes on
his back.

My own father would have thrashed him soundly
just for that look. Lucky for Sutcliff that my father was dead.

At three o'clock, Sutcliff reported to
Grenville's rooms, and Grenville, now rested and bathed and dressed
again in a fine suit, received him.

While Didius Ramsay was a usual sort of boy
trying to fit in with his fellows, Sutcliff was a few years older
than the rest, and definitely Rutledge's man. He regarded everyone
about him with a sneer and considered himself higher than all
except Rutledge. Sutcliff's father, I had learned from gossip, one
of the wealthiest men in London, had risen from assistant clerk at
a warehouse to become the owner of a fleet of merchant ships and
several warehouses. Goods from all over the world--and the money
those goods made--had passed through his hands. Sutcliff stood to
inherit all that money, and he made certain with every gesture and
turn of phrase, that we all knew it.

I wondered, however, how much money he truly
had at present. His father likely gave him an allowance, but even
wealthy fathers could be stingy as a way to teach their sons to
respect money. Sutcliff's clothes were not shabby, but nor were
they the equal of Grenville's, or even small Ramsay's. Perhaps his
papa held the purse strings tighter than Sutcliff liked.

Sutcliff seated himself on a Turkish sofa in
Grenville's rather grand rooms and accepted the glass of claret
that Matthias, Bartholomew's brother, whom Grenville had brought
with him, served us.

When Matthias had emptied the bottle,
Grenville told him he was finished with his duties and suggested he
find Bartholomew and take him to visit the pub in Sudbury. Matthias
thanked him, said a cheerful good afternoon to me, and
departed.