The Thames River Murders (20 page)

“You are very aggravating, my husband. I think you do not believe I am worried for her. Aline knows to take every precaution, as do I. We have managed to throw dozens of balls over the years without violence at any of them.”

“Even so,” I said. “Those are my conditions.”

Donata made a noise of exasperation. “Very well. I will tell Aline to expect ruffians to invade her house but not to be alarmed. Any anger she has about it, I shall direct to you.”

“I will be honored,” I said, with a small bow.

“Then please go away, Gabriel. I must change my clothes again, and sulk.”

As long as she stayed in the house, she could do as she pleased. I caught her hand, drew her to me, and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”

“Yes, all right.” Donata frowned at me, but I saw the softening in her eyes.

I left her and went to my study to write letters—one to Denis and another to Grenville.

***

Donata, true to her word, forwent her calls to stay in and write her own letters. She could be as persuasive on paper, she claimed, as she could in person. Having received letters from her myself, I believed her.

She was adamant about going out later that evening, however, as she had invitations she could not possibly turn down without awkwardness, she claimed. After another heated discussion, I told her I’d accompany her. While supper balls did not move me to paroxysms of joy, I would tolerate one to keep my eye on her.

At seven, however, I had an appointment to keep with Grenville.

To preserve peace in my marriage, I asked Donata to accompany me. I rather think she’d have come anyway, had I not.

Donata dressed herself in a subdued gown of fawn sprigged with red flowers, covering her shoulders with a light shawl. Hagen drove us in the carriage the short distance to Grosvenor Street.

I gazed at number 12, three doors down from Grenville. This was the house of Viscount Compton, who owned the Irish hunter Bartholomew had found.

Though I was certain the horse stolen from Hyde Park had been the one the culprit rode, I couldn’t help looking the house over. Viscount Compton’s abode was no different on the outside than Grenville’s, even more plain, I’d say. And why the man or anyone in his household would have a grudge against me, I could not tell.

We arrived at Grenville’s punctually at seven. Mr. Bennett must have been very eager to meet the famous Lucius Grenville, because he was already there.

Matthias shot me a long look as he led us up the stairs to Grenville’s front sitting room—the one Grenville used for the unwashed masses, not his very private sanctum higher up in the house.

Matthias drew himself up to his full height as he opened the door to the sitting room. He became the haughtiest of haughty footmen as he announced:

“Captain and Mrs. Gabriel Lacey.”

Grenville, dressed in his most severe black frock coat and trousers, and his most achingly white waistcoat and cravat, came forward to greet us.

“Lady Donata, how lovely you are.” He took her hands and kissed her cheek. “And Lacey. Well met.” He formally shook my hand.

A far cry from the Grenville in a dressing gown over shirtsleeves at the breakfast table. I concluded from his crisp suit and precise formality that he sincerely disliked Mr. Andrew Bennett.

That gentleman came forward, an eager smile on his face.

He was not what I expected. Devorah Hartman and Captain Woolwich had painted a picture of a groveling, crafty young rake who won the hearts of ladies and killed them for their money. I’d imagined handsomeness in a too-fulsome way, perhaps with the dark eyes and knowing look of a stage villain.

What I found was a young man heading for middle age, a little bit portly but still straight-backed and tall, with a soft, innocuous face and friendly brown eyes. He looked less the wily villain and more the hero’s best friend. He’d be Horatio, not Hamlet.

He bowed to Donata, suitably awed by her lofty status, then to me. “Well met, Captain,” he said, holding out his hand. “My father-in-law told me you had some news for me.”

Mr. Bennett’s handshake was firm, but not too much so, and not too soft either. I wondered if he practiced it.

Mr. Bennett withdrew, retaining the look of an interested puppy. “Mr. Grenville would not impart it,” he said. “He insisted you tell me yourself.”

“I thought it best,” Grenville said smoothly.

I understood. Though Grenville would be curious to know Mr. Bennett’s reaction, he did not want to be alone with him when the reaction occurred.

Grenville motioned for us to take a seat. With careful politeness, he led Donata to a chair and settled her, then sat in the one next to her. I preferred to remain standing, so Bennett did as well.

“What is it, Captain?” Bennett asked. “You are alarming me.”

“I am afraid,” I began, “that I have discovered what happened to your first wife, Judith Hartman.”

Bennett stopped. The soft-eyed look deserted him for a second, his face losing color. “What?” he asked. “Tell me the worst.”

I wondered a moment if
the worst
would mean her being found alive.

“She was discovered in the River Thames,” I said. “Had been killed and discarded there perhaps fifteen years gone now. What is left of her was fished out ten years ago and stored in a cellar. Mr. Grenville, once we discovered her identity, arranged to have her sent back to her father, for burial.”

As I spoke, Bennett had grown more and more pale. At last, his face resembled nothing less than the white of ghostly fog, his cheeks taking on a sheen of perspiration.

Bennett drew a quick, short breath as my speech ended, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he dropped to a heap on the floor.

Chapter Twenty

Grenville was on his feet. “Good Lord.”

I reached down to heave Bennett to the nearest sofa. He was heavy for his size, and my leg hurt me. Grenville, after a stunned second, leapt to help.

Together, we got him stretched across a scroll-backed, silk-upholstered divan. I patted his cold cheek.

“Bennett.”

“Did you kill him?” Donata leaned in. “No, I see his chest moving.” She swung away, her skirts brushing my leg, and snatched up her reticule. She removed a small silver box, opened it on its hinge, and thrust it under Bennett’s nose.

The acrid odor of vinegar came to me. Bennett’s face screwed up, his eyes popped open, and he coughed.

Donata, satisfied, snapped the case shut.
 

Grenville returned with brandy. His absolute best was kept upstairs in reserve for him and very special guests. Even so, what was in the cup he offered Bennett now I considered much too good for the wretch.

Bennett drank, then coughed up most of the liquid, which Grenville caught on a handkerchief.

Bennett grabbed the linen cloth and applied it to his lips. “What … happened?” he asked around it.

Grenville gave his shoulder a pat. “You took a tumble to my sitting room floor. Are you hurt?”

“No.” Bennett blinked as he thought about it. “I do not believe so.” His gaze went to me. “Sir, did you say …”

“That Judith Hartman is dead, yes.” I had stepped back from the tableau and folded my arms. “Shall I go through it again for you?”

“No … no.” Bennett held up his hand. “Oh, my poor Judith. This is terrible. I assumed she had met an unfortunate end, but I did not dream …”

I watched him carefully. The flick of his eyes told me he lied.

“You knew,” I said, already tired of him. “That is why you married again so quickly, how you convinced the magistrates you should be allowed to wed. You
knew
she was dead.”

“No.” The word was sharp, full of shock, bordering on anger. “No, Captain, you misunderstand. I perjured myself, it is true. I never believed she was dead at all.”

It was Donata who interrupted the amazed silence that followed. She fixed Bennett with cold hauteur. “If you believed her alive, then why were you in such a hurry to marry the next lady?”

Bennett flushed. “I must confess to you. I am a warmhearted man.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “When Judith walked away and did not return, I was hurt, unhappy, grieved. I put it about that she must have died so no one would know she deserted me. Her father, you see, was very unhappy about her marrying me, and she began to feel that she wronged him. She wished to reconcile. I believed, when she did not come home that day, that she had returned to her family.”

“You would have soon learned otherwise,” I said sternly.

“I did. I missed her so much.” Bennett dabbed his cheeks with the brandy-stained handkerchief. “I finally went to the heart of the Hebrew area, and demanded to speak to Judith. Her father told me he hadn’t seen her. I did not believe him, of course.”

“So you went to court to have her declared dead?” He was not winning my respect with this story.

“I asked her neighbors, those who would speak to me. Her father did not allow her mother and sister to come down and listen to me—they might have told me the truth. But the Hebrews, they band together, and I was an outsider, the Englishman who’d stolen one of their own. The entire street more or less shoved me out and slammed the door, so to speak.”

“Her father told you the truth. She hadn’t come home.”

“I concluded that after a time,” Bennett admitted. “Judith was a sweet thing. She would have found some way to talk to me if she could, would have written at least. What I believed, gentlemen, your ladyship, was that her father had spirited her off somewhere—back to the Continent, out to the countryside to some other enclave of Hebrews, and she would never come back.”
 

He sighed. “When I met my Seraphina, we came to love each other deeply, and it broke my heart that I could not marry her. Hartman had metaphorically buried Judith—it hurt me to imagine what life she had—and so I hired a solicitor to help me declare Judith dead so that I could marry Seraphina. I wish you could have met
her
, Captain. You’d understand. A finer woman did not walk the world.”

“You were living with her,” I pointed out. “For a few years, I understand. Why the sudden need to have the banns read?”

Bennett blushed like a schoolboy. “We believed she was increasing. I did not want a child of mine to be born on the wrong side of the blanket. And so, I obtained a declaration that Judith was dead, and I married Seraphina. The banns were posted. It was in the newspapers. Hartman could have come forward, told the truth, stopped the marriage. He did not. I concluded he wanted nothing more to do with me—with me married again, Judith would be safe.” His face fell. “Only now you tell me …”

Tears trickled from his eyes, and he sniffled into the handkerchief.

“Mr. Bennett.”

At my tone, Bennett looked up, eyes puffy and red. “Sir?”

“I do not understand you. You loved Judith, and yet you quickly married another. And since have married a third woman.”

Bennett nodded. “Yes. My Maggie. The best woman in the world. You met her, Captain.”

“So why this outpouring of grief for Judith?” I asked him severely. “You had finished with her years ago. Fifteen years, to be precise.”

The handkerchief came up again. “Because all this time, I thought she was still alive. I had a notion that perhaps someday, we would meet once more. Spend our dotage together. Foolish, perhaps, but she was still in my heart.”

“What of your current wife? Your dear Maggie?”

Bennett went redder still. “You can scarce understand, Captain. I loved Judith. I love Maggie. My heart does not shirk from both.” He shook his head, eyes screwing up. “That scarce matters now. You’ve revealed that my poor, my dearest, sweetest Judith is …”

Grenville and I exchanged a glance. He expressed in one flick of his brows that he had no idea what to make of the man.

Bennett’s tears seemed real enough. He did everything to put forth a picture of a hapless gentleman caught in his own deeper feelings. Loved too much, grieved too hard.
Pity me.

And yet, I understood why Woolwich did not like him. There was something wrong with the way Bennett spoke, begged us to understand him.
 

I felt as though I watched a play. The description of Bennett wandering into a Hebrew neighborhood and having every single one of them driving him, the Gentile, away, protecting their own, had the ring of the theatre to it. I knew that Londoners as a whole put the Hebrews into a box, and many men, as Brewster did, considered them “other” and disdained them collectively. Even so, I felt that Shakespeare or Sheridan could have written the scene.
 

I thought of Margaret Woolwich, good-natured but, as her father had claimed, not very intelligent. She’d have seen Bennett’s surface and been satisfied with it. I wondered if Judith had been satisfied, or come to her senses—too late.

Donata, Grenville, and I were too worldly, had known too many, to take Bennett’s character as absolute.

Donata, in particular, regarded him with blatant cynicism. “You see, Mr. Bennett,” she said, leaning down a little to pin him with her sharp stare. “We were of the mind that
you
had killed Judith. Struck her down with a poker or some such, so that you could marry your dear Seraphina.”

Bennett came off the sofa. I was in his way, but his bulk shoved me aside.

“I?” Again the drama, his hand pressed to his heart, his eyes wide with horror. “Dear lady, Judith was to me as the most precious jewel in all the world. I would never hurt her. Not one hair on her head.”

“Her hair was not in jeopardy,” Donata said in her acerbic way. “Her head was bashed in, rather, and she was pushed into the river.”

The slight widening of his eyes in shock was not feigned, I thought. “Please. How horrible. I cannot bear to think of it.”

Donata was remorseless. “It was a bit worse for Judith.”

“Please.”
The handkerchief went to Bennett’s mouth again, and he shuddered.

I broke in. “If not you—can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Judith?”

Bennett lowered his hand. He was white about the mouth. “No, indeed. Everyone loved her.”

“Apparently not everyone,” I said dryly. “If her death distresses you so, please help us find her killer.”