Laura Lee Guhrke (14 page)

Agatha frowned, her thin face forming lines of disapproval. She turned to Violet. “Didn’t you receive my letter?”

“I did, my dear sister,” Violet said, not at all intimidated. She leaned forward to give Agatha a peck on the cheek. “But it arrived only yesterday. We had no time to write back to you and explain.”

“Violet, what is there to explain? Jubilee is the perfect opportunity to bring Sophie out into society again. How can she ever find a husband if all she does is root about in her garden and her conservatory, never meeting any eligible young men? You have been most lax in your efforts, Violet, and I have decided to do something about it.”

“Of course,” Violet answered. “I couldn’t agree with you more, but it’s impossible to do that from the house in Mill Street. We simply have no room. The only empty bedroom we had left was let before we learned of your plans to stay with us. We cannot throw the poor man out. He is a very pleasant fellow.”

Sophie could sense her mother’s irritation growing with every word, and she stepped in, hoping to smooth things over with a compromise. “Mama, this won’t affect your plans in the least. It will be a bit more inconvenient, perhaps, but I will attend whatever functions you arrange.” If she needed an excuse to get out of any particularly awful occasion, she would invent it later. “I leave that to you, Lady Fortescue, and Charlotte.”

Her ploy worked. Agatha nodded, accepting the compromise, and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m glad to see you are finally coming to your senses and have
stopped mooning about Lord Kenleigh.” She paused, looking her over, and a look of such disappointment came over her face that Sophie wanted to take her conciliatory words back.

“But what is this thing you are wearing? Isn’t this the same dress you wore last summer? And the summer before?” Agatha eyed her worn yellow silk dress and its many untied green bows with a tragic air. “Must you always look so down at heel, my darling?”

She tied up a few of the bows of Sophie’s skirt, then gave that up and pushed Sophie’s bonnet to a more fashionable angle, smoothed her sleeves, and fussed over her as if she were still a child of six. Finally satisfied that she’d done all she could, she stood back and eyed her younger daughter with a sigh.

“Charlotte, we simply must take Sophie to a decent dressmaker. This gown is three years out of fashion at least. Besides, your sister doesn’t have your fashion sense, and she needs a bit of help to look presentable.”

Sophie wanted to ask if Charlotte’s help included the money to buy these fashionable new clothes, but as tempting as sarcasm might be, her mother would not understand. Her husband, the vicar, did not have a large income, but Mama still refused to accept the economic necessities of life, since Harold’s money was always available to her when her own creditors became so unreasonable as to expect payment. Sophie, however, would join one of those American Wild West circus shows as a fortune-teller before she would ask Harold for tuppence.

Agatha turned to her own sister. “Violet, dear, it’s wonderful to see you, but I hope you have at last abandoned that silly spiritualism business.”

Sophie almost groaned. They weren’t even out of the train station and she was starting on Auntie already. But Violet could hold her own against Agatha, and her next words proved it.

“On the contrary,” she answered. “It is more fascinating than ever. Miss Peabody and I are now in communication with a spirit named Abdul. He was a copper merchant in Cairo two hundred years ago. He drowned in the Nile, he told us.”

The tense silence was broken by Harold. “Awfully warm for spring, isn’t it?” Without waiting for a reply, he went on, “Perhaps we should get your trunks, Agatha.”

He took her claim ticket out of her hand and beckoned to the nearest porter. “My carriage is at the Wilton Road entrance,” he told the man, handing over the ticket. “We’ll await you there.”

“Aye, sir.” The porter tipped his hat to them and departed in search of Agatha’s luggage.

Due to the noise, talking was impossible as the five of them left the platform and walked through the train station, but once they were seated in Harold’s luxurious carriage, Agatha resumed discussion of her favorite topic.

“So, Violet, tell me of Sophie’s circumstances at present. Does she have any suitors? Has she been out to any card parties, cotillions, or balls? Has she met any young men at all?”

“She has, actually. We have a very handsome man
staying with us at the moment. He’s with Scotland Yard.”

Sophie did not appreciate her aunt’s impish streak just now. She nudged Violet with her foot.

“A policeman?” Agatha and Charlotte said in unison, staring at Sophie in horror from across the carriage as if she’d suddenly grown a second head.

“Not a mere policeman,” Violet explained, oblivious to Sophie’s elbow now jabbing her in the ribs. “A detective. He seems quite taken with our dear Sophie.”

Sophie hastily spoke up. “He is not taken with me, Mama, nor I with him.” She shot a warning glance at Violet and went on, “He is simply one of Auntie’s lodgers, and I have nothing whatsoever to do with him.”

“I should hope not,” Agatha answered with a disdainful sniff. “A policeman is not the sort of man with whom a young lady should associate.”

She looked at her sister. “Violet, while I am here, I will see that Sophie is introduced to unmarried men of Harold and Charlotte’s acquaintance. She simply must associate with men of her own class if she is ever to find a suitable husband.”

Sophie sent an anguished glance heavenward and wondered with wistful longing what it would have been like to have grown up an orphan like Mick Dunbar.

Looking through people’s things without their knowledge or permission might have bothered some people. It didn’t bother Mick at all.

Last night, he had planned to go through Sophie’s
desk and make a search of the rest of the ground floor, but the fact that Sophie had still been awake when he’d come downstairs had forced him to postpone that plan.

Now it was Sunday afternoon, and no one was in the house but him. Sophie and her aunt had gone to church services, then continued on to Victoria Station, where they were meeting the train bringing Sophie’s mother. They were planning to go on from there to a dinner party. The servants had gone to early service and were spending their afternoon out enjoying the festivities for Jubilee that were going on around the city. The other lodgers were out as well, no doubt also enjoying Jubilee.

Mick took full advantage of this opportunity to search the house. He started with Sophie’s secretaire in the library.

In looking through her desk, he discovered that she was as haphazard about her papers as she was about her clothes. Most of the documents he found in her desk were bills, some marked paid, some not. There was also a bankbook for the household account which showed the meager balance of twelve pounds, nine shillings and sixpence, and that amount included Mick’s first week’s rent. Mixed in with the bills and bankbook were receipts, demands for payment, social invitations, unused bank drafts, letters, sealing wax, and other stationery supplies, all of it thrown together in a jumbled fashion.

Some of Sophie’s letters were from female friends and acquaintances in Yorkshire and London, but most of her correspondence was from her mother, whose
sole concerns appeared to be her daughter’s lack of a husband and nonexistent efforts to find one. Mick scanned the letters, but he found nothing in any of them to show who might want to kill him. He did find a secret drawer, but it was empty.

Hampered by the furniture, bric-a-brac, and fancy, feminine whatnots that crowded the rooms, Mick had to make his search a cursory one. He decided to finish the ground-floor rooms another time, late at night when everyone was asleep. He went upstairs.

Miss Atwood was tidy, Miss Peabody was not. As Sophie had already told him, the colonel liked to read Kipling. He also smoked a pipe and enjoyed doing crosswords. In Dawes’s room, Mick found medical texts, surgical instruments, hashish, and some very graphic pornography.

Mrs. Summerstreet’s bedroom faced the back garden, had a balcony with a tiny wrought iron table and chair, and smelled of patchouli incense. There were a few imitation Egyptian artifacts on the mantel of her fireplace. Among her winter woolens, he found a few pieces of carnelian and lapis in the Egyptian style, but no gems of great value. Mick put the jewelry back where he had found it, smiling. Violet really did think she was Cleopatra.

He found Sophie’s room locked, which instantly aroused his suspicions, but the lock was a simple one, and Mick easily got the door open with a hairpin from Violet’s room.

Like her aunt, Sophie had a balcony overlooking the garden, but there the similarity ended. Mick was
not surprised to find that Sophie’s room was as flowery as her conservatory. There were flowers everywhere’—cut roses in vases, a counterpane in a floral print, cabbage roses on the chintz-skirted dressing table. There were curtains of eyelet and lace, cut crystal lamps, and satin-covered pillows of pink and white stripe. It was the kind of room that made Mick long for a leather chair and a cigar.

The decor of her room might be that of an upper-class woman, but her wardrobe was not. It contained several shirtwaists and skirts, two dresses of striped cotton, one evening gown of wine red silk, three hats, and two pairs of shoes. Mick remembered what Thacker had said about the family having very little money, and it seemed to be the truth. From the balance of their bank account, the clothes in their bedrooms, and what he had observed with his own eyes, Sophie and her aunt lived in genteel poverty. After paying their servants and the expenses of running the lodging house, they probably had very little on which to live.

Unlike her aunt, Sophie had a jewel case, but the only items in it were a string of pearls and a set of small garnets. None of the pieces were worth much.

In the drawer of the table beside her bed were a quill pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheaf of notepaper. On the top sheet were scribbled notes in her handwriting, which he recognized from his search through her desk. Every note had a date beside it.

Mick sat down on the edge of her bed and studied the scribblings with great care, but they seemed to be just plain nonsense. There were sentence fragments such as
“the Pekingese and the terrier,” and “Black knave/red queen.”

Was this some sort of code, and if so, what was it for?

Mick turned to the next page. The first words that caught his attention were “Scotland Yard,” and he stiffened. Here was something at last. “Violent death,” he read. “Dark blue suit, man, blood everywhere. Dark hair. Dead. Murdered. Knife?”

There was nothing written here she hadn’t told him the day he’d met her, but Mick folded her notes and put them in the breast pocket of his jacket, then continued his search.

Sophie might write notes about blood and violent death, but as Mick began searching through her underclothes, he noticed that she also had a fondness for pretty things.

For Mick, who had spent much of his boyhood living among prostitutes in the East End, what women wore under their dresses had never been a mystery. But among the various lace-trimmed corsets, petticoats, chemises, combinations, and garters in the drawers of Sophie’s dressing table, he found something that did surprise him. He lifted a piece of pink muslin out of the drawer, and the distinct shape of the garment made him grin. It was unmistakably a bust improver.

His fingers tightened around the fabric, and he closed his eyes. His grin faded as he held the garment in his hands, inhaled that special fragrance she wore, and remembered each and every luscious curve of her body. He’d explored those curves in his flat that night just long enough to fire his imagination, but he knew
enough to say for certain that Sophie Haversham’s shapely body didn’t need any improvements.

Reluctantly, he returned the bust improver to the drawer, closed it, and opened the one below. The sight of her stockings immediately brought an image of her legs to his mind.

Bloody hell
.

He shoved that delectable and dangerous vision out of his mind. He buried his hands in the untidy pile of filmy stockings that filled the drawer, and the delicate silk caught on the calluses of his hands as he searched.

When his fingers closed around something hard, he pulled it out of the drawer. It was a rather lumpy object rolled in a stocking. He unwrapped it, and what he saw caused him to give a low whistle.

“I’ll be damned.” He stared down at the diamonds and emeralds in his palm with surprise and appreciation, knowing full well he had in his hands the missing necklace of Sophie’s cousin, Lady Fortescue. This piece matched the description he’d read in the police report in every detail, including the tiny lion’s head clasp. What was it doing hidden among Sophie’s stockings?

She was a cousin of Lord Fortescue, but if she had merely borrowed the necklace, the viscountess would not have reported it stolen. Mick had met plenty of thieves in his life, and he wouldn’t have thought Sophie to be that type, although a woman who liked pretty underclothes might be tempted to steal pretty jewels, and a woman who was poor might steal them to sell. Either way, she was not so innocent as she pretended to be.

Mick stood up and slipped the emeralds into the pocket of his trousers. He intended to find out why the necklace was in Sophie’s room, and he was also going to find out whom she was protecting. If he went about it the right way, he might be able to accomplish both goals at the same time.

Seven