A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (22 page)

Transfixed by his voice, Lucy stood stock-still.

“Perhaps you, my dear, should like to pose for me? I have many things to offer a girl such as you,” Del Gado suggested.

“I do not want to pose for you,” she whispered.

As if she had not spoken, he continued. “No, I can see, no mere trifles for you, no combs or dressing boxes or gilded mirrors or perfumes. A girl like you wants something different; I can sense it.” He reached for a curly wisp that had escaped from her cap. “Perhaps you would like a small picture for your lover so he can delight in your loveliness. A token that you can bestow upon him.” Lucy flushed, and he laughed, dropping his hand. “No, I can tell you want something from me but do not wish to say. That intrigues me, my love, yes, that intrigues me. Just know that when I think of it, you’ll not refuse. I desire to know you, little one; I sense something in you, but no matter. I do not know yet where to place you, how to capture you.” Del Gado’s eyes drifted over her body knowingly. “You are still a girl, but the woman in there…” He sighed. He moved to open the door.

Knowing, even as she spoke, the pure folly she was venturing upon, Lucy seized her chance to find out what he knew. She pretended to reconsider. “I do not think my mother should like it if I posed”—she paused—“as you would have me.”

“Ah, mothers. She would never know, my sweet. I can already see you, my little Psyche, a nymph in a simple white robe, perhaps just slipping off one shoulder here, revealing—”

Lucy interrupted before he could touch her. “You say you would give me something in return? Perhaps you could just do my eye. As you did for Jane Hardewick.” Lucy held her breath.

A frown creased Del Gado’s brow. He stepped back. “You knew Jane?”

“We worked together before I came to the Hargraves,” she lied, figuring he would never know. “We were friends.”

“And she showed you the eye?” he asked. The excitement that he had just displayed was fast fading. Lucy nodded, hoping he would not press for details.

“Yes, lovely girl. Made Marie jealous, which isn’t too hard to do these days.” He licked his lips. “I had to use a special ocher to get the brown of her eye right.”

A dark shadow crossed his face. For a moment, he looked—what? Angry? Desperate? Disappointed? “Shame about the girl, though. Waste of lovely young flesh.” Del Gado looked at Lucy sharply. She merely nodded. Then he stepped back, the earlier vulnerability she had glimpsed now disappeared. “Tell your mistress I shan’t need her for any more sittings; the portrait the magistrate commissioned is finished. I’ll have it sent over shortly. And Lucy,” he added. “Remember. There’s much I can offer you—more than you can imagine.”

16

After supper had been cleared that night, Lucy brought a mug of mulled wine to Adam, taking care to leave the door wide open. A few thick law books lay about his room, various passages marked by any number of odd objects, including a feather, a rock, and a shard of wood. A sheaf of printed pamphlets was strewn across his writing desk. Placing the steaming mug on his desk, she waited nervously for him to look up.

After one last notation, his quill stopped scratching on the paper. “Thank you, Lucy.” When she did not move, he added, “Yes, Lucy? Is there something else?”

He knows what I’m going to ask,
she thought. She nodded at the papers on his desk. “Is that William’s case?”

Adam grimaced slightly. “Yes. I’m afraid I haven’t much new to tell you. I’m trying to work out the questions he must put to his accusers.”

“You cannot ask the questions for him? I’m afraid he will not remember what to ask.”

“No, I wish I could. You see, the law of this realm is set up so that a man may face his accuser and be able to question him. That is all well and good, but I have seen many a time when an accused man grows flustered, or is tongue-tied, or simply forgets to pose the right questions to his accusers. I’ve often thought that barristers should be the ones to pose the questions in court, so long as the accused agrees.” He rubbed his forehead. “All I can do is try to keep him focused, so he’ll ask the right questions,” Adam said. “It’s rather tricky, you see. He must plead a certain way, so we must think through what words he should say. We must, in essence, work out his defense. It shan’t be ‘learn the neck verse’ either. Worst piece of advice a fellow can get!”

“How so?” she asked.

He explained. “One of the prison clergy taught it to him. The neck verse is the Fifty-first Psalm. It’s a common enough strategy. If the accused can memorize it and speak it to the magistrate and jury during his trial, sometimes that means the prisoner can be passed off as clergy.”

“Clergy are not harmed?”

“Sometimes they are spared. A fool’s strategy, I can tell you that!” Adam slammed down his book. “The whole case is based on hearsay! There is no definitive evidence that Will did it.”

“Because he didn’t,” Lucy said.

Adam glanced at her. “Of course. Unfortunately, Will had a motive and means—two things the law is most concerned with. Bessie was with child, probably his, and the jurors are likely to believe he did not wish to be hindered with wife and child when he’s widely let it be known that he wishes to be his own master.”

“Still, he had no need to kill her,” Lucy said. “He could just have denied her, as men usually do in situations like these.”

If Adam heard the bitterness in her voice, he did not let on. “Well, she was murdered in a fit of rage. It might be argued that Will killed her because he could see no other option. The courts might well have made him marry her, if she claimed he was the father to her babe.”

Lucy looked up at the ceiling, despairing of his logic.

“Or,” he continued, “the jurors could be convinced that Bessie was blackmailing him. And there were, of course, the stolen items. The constable might also say that Will had convinced her to make the theft and then killed her to maintain her silence.” He raised his hand to stem her protest. “We know that was not the character of either Will or Bessie. The jurors, however, do not know that. So we must create doubt in the minds of the jury. That is our only hope here.” Adam began to pace around the room, his steps on the wood floor softened by the leather slippers he wore.

Lucy watched him quietly.
Does he regret his offer to help?
Her lip curled.
He must think the case is impossible. What hope is there for William?

Adam’s next words confirmed her fear. “We could say that he had been drinking, which is of course true,” he mused. “When he discovered her infidelity, and about the baby…”

“No!” she cried. “I won’t allow it! It’s not true!”

He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “’Tis unlikely to get him out of jail, but it should do well enough to keep him from swinging at Newgate, to be sure. That will have to do.”

Lucy wanted to slap him. This was her dear brother he was speaking of, not some common oaf out of the gutter. A life in jail was as bad as swinging. She marshaled her anger and tried to stay calm. Her tone was icy, reasonable. “What about the painter, Master Del Gado?”

“What about Del Gado, Lucy?” he asked, stacking the papers into a pile.

“He certainly knew Bessie. Indeed, he knew her intimately.”

Adam shrugged and picked up the wine. “He had no motive.”

“Yes, but he also knew Jane Hardewick!” she cried. “Quite well! What do you make of that?!”

Adam set the mug down heavily. “What do you mean? How could you possibly know that?”

“Sir, I was at Master Del Gado’s today, and I—”

The force of his glare stopped her midsentence.

“Why were you at Del Gado’s? For God’s sake, Lucy! Are you completely addled?”

Lucy flinched. “I’ll have you know that your mother, Mistress Hargrave, sent me and—”

“Of course she did.” Adam picked up his mug again and set it down without taking a sip. “No thought about sending a girl like you into a scoundrel’s den like that.”

Lucy shuddered as he unconsciously echoed Del Gado’s own words.

“By God, Lucy, it isn’t right. Anyone can see you’re a decent respectable innocent girl! Mother shouldn’t have sent you there; John should have gone to check on her precious portrait, which I
imagine
is the excuse she gave you! I’ve a good mind to say something to her!”

“Oh, no, sir!” Lucy cried. “Please don’t! Mistress Hargrave did not want me to tell anyone she had sent me. I mean, I wasn’t to tell the master. I mean…” She trailed off.

“All right, Lucy. I won’t say anything. But sometimes my mother—” He muttered, “I mean, look at you! A girl like you! A man like him! Your brother would never allow it!”

Thinking of her brother made her remember why she had come to his room in the first place. “Oh, yes, sir! Do you think that Master Del Gado may have had something, er, to do with Bessie’s death? I mean, he did paint her, and I know he gave her the box with the dressing brush and combs…”

“Combs?”

“Well, the combs like the ones your mother wears.” Her voice faltered; she was unsure how to put her thoughts into words. “When I was dressing your mother’s hair, I saw her combs. They were just like Bessie’s, painted, I’m sure, by the same hand. I asked her about them, and she said they were a gift from your father. Forgive me, sir, I think they may have been from Master Del Gado.” Lucy twisted her hands uncomfortably.

“Never mind about
that,
” Adam responded tersely. “I daresay everyone knows about mother’s, er,
sessions
with the painter. Everyone excepting Father, that is, but that is neither here nor there. I’m afraid I’m not following you.”

“It got me thinking. I knew Bessie and Mistress Hargrave had both posed for Master Del Gado, and I think he gave them the combs—”

“Yes, yes,” Adam interrupted. “I understand
that.
What does this have to do with Jane Hardewick?”

Suddenly, Lucy felt trapped, like a hen before the butcher’s knife.

He went on. “So somehow you assumed that Jane Hardewick had posed for Del Gado, too? You thought, what, that you would just ask him? Tell me, Lucy.” Adam’s voice grew hard. “Exactly how did this leap in logic come about? I’m quite eager to know.”

Lucy glanced at his writing desk. The tobacco pouch was nowhere to be seen. Following her quick look, his eyebrows raised. “I see. In your infinite devotion to this household, you thought to make sure that all nooks and crannies, including the pouch containing the miniatures of two eyes, each from a different nameless woman, were thoroughly cleaned. Clearly, I underestimated how much a chambermaid—ahem,
lady’s maid—
will snoop.”

Lucy’s hand tightened into a fist, but she willed herself not to cry. She felt something dear had slipped away. He no longer trusted her, she could see. A different thought arose, and she heard herself speak. “Why did you have a portrait of Jane Hardewick’s eye,
sir?
”

Adam crossed his arms, his own face taut. “I found it where the poor woman was murdered. I assume it depicts her eye. I have no doubt you saw that I also found Bessie’s comb. This object I also found where she was killed.”

“But why—?”

“Why did I go searching these morbid scenes? Simple enough. I believe that when a crime has occurred there is often evidence that is overlooked. Our constables and our bellmen, good men though they may be, are given these positions because they’ve proved themselves capable of banging together the heads of drunken men. They know how to keep men from tearing each other apart in pub brawls. They know how to stop a bread riot.” He shook his head. “For God’s sake, they know how to keep watch, tell time, and shout a report at the hour. But what do they know of evidence? What do they really know of the law? Read enough legal testimony and it’s obvious how many things are overlooked.”

Lucy was not to be deterred. “And the other eye portrait? I know it was not of Bessie. ’Twas not the shape of her face. Whose eye was it?”

“Alas, I do not know. I found that miniature, too.”

Awfully convenient, she thought, but did not dare say. Reading her doubt, he added, “I did find them. The first, I found on the street in front of our home, believe it or not. I still do not know to whom it belongs.”

“On the street? In front of our home?” she repeated. “That would mean”—she broke off, a sickening thought coming to her.

“That this monster may have passed you in the street? That you may have seen him?” He ran his hand through his hair. “That he may have seen you? Believe me. I’ve thought all these things.” He turned away then, not seeing her shiver. He went on. “So I too have been suspicious of Del Gado, knowing that this form of expression is peculiar to his hand. Even before that swaggard Richard showed us those sketches of Bessie, I knew enough of that dastardly painter to know that he usually ends up bedding his models. Forgive me the coarseness.” He sighed in frustration.

“Yet, I’m sorry, Lucy, but I don’t think the painter had any reason to kill Bessie. Unfortunately, he lacks motive.”

“But he—” She paused, grasping for the right word. “He seduced her! You said so yourself.”

A muscle twitched in Adam’s face. For a moment he seemed amused, which renewed her earlier anger. How could she ever have thought he was kind or compassionate? Her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink, but she continued breathlessly, her words tumbling out as she tried to make him understand.

“Don’t you see? Perhaps it was he who got her with child! She had nowhere to go, nowhere to turn to, maybe she threatened to expose him for the”—again she paused, trying to find the worst words she knew—“for the dung beetle cad that he is!”

She imagined the scene. It all fit perfectly, yet Adam was shaking his head.

“I know, Lucy, I know Bessie was a good girl and he took that from her, but the jury won’t see that. Perhaps if there were ever women on the jury! If you will forgive me for speaking so bluntly of your friend, the jurors will just see her as a fulsome wench, ripe for the plucking. Surely, they will see her transgression as her own folly. Indeed, we know him to be a philandering cad. The plight of a serving girl who has been taken in by the gentry is of little consequence.”