Let's Talk of Murder (20 page)

He could trip Corinne up. That skirt she was wearing was full. Easy enough to get his toe into it and send her to the ground. Still, it was a shabby trick to serve a lady. He could stumble himself– but he was wearing his new pantaloons and didn’t want to mar them. No, tripping was not the answer. He would institute some excuse to linger a moment at Corinne’s house, requiring Luten to linger with him.

Luten put one hand on Prance’s shoulder, the other on his cane to avoid having to touch Corinne at all. Really they were such a stubborn pair of children! Now what possible excuse could he invent for getting himself and Luten into her house? A book? Corinne was next door to illiterate. Her idea of a good book was one of those sensational marble-covered novels from the Minerva Press. A journal? They all subscribed to the same ones. Borrowing a cup of sugar? As if anyone would believe André would let any of his supplies run out!

As they approached her house, he lifted his hand to his head in frustration. “Headache, Prance?” Corinne asked with tender solicitude.

There was his excuse handed to him on a platter. “I’ve had a throbbing headache all evening. And of course I’m out of headache powders.”

“I’ll send Black over with some,” she said.

“No need to bother the estimable Black. I’ll step in and get it now.”

“But Luten–”

“I’ll just wait here, at the bottom of the stairs,” Luten said.

Prance gave up on the pair of them. “Oh never mind!” he said crossly. “I’ll pilot Luten home, then come back for it.”

“Very well. Good evening,” she said, tossing her words vaguely in their direction, but as Prance was returning, Luten decided it was meant for him and returned the courtesy.

“You are not easy to help, my friend,” Prance said, as he took Luten home. “Why didn’t you go in with me? I meant to take the headache powder and rush home at once, leaving the two of you alone.”

“I don’t want you interfering in my private affairs,” Luten said fiercely. Then he added in a different tone, softer, edged with hope. “Did she put you up to it?”

“Alas, no. But she didn’t balk at it as you did.”

“Hmph. Goodnight, Prance. Thank you for seeing me home. I feel liked a demmed lady, saying that.”

“Don’t worry, Luten. You neither look, sound, nor behave like one, unless it be a lady bear.”

He saw Luten in and darted back to Corinne’s. She had the headache powders ready for him. He just looked at them. “I don’t have a headache. I was trying to get you and Luten together.”

“Oh!” She looked sorry at his failure. “You notice how quickly he refused to come in. ‘I’ll just wait here at the bottom of the stairs,’ ” he said, in that cold, hateful way.” Then she emitted a little squeal. “I hope he doesn’t think I put you up to it.”

“No indeed. I disabused him of that notion.”

“Then he did think it! The conceited creature!”

“He seemed disappointed that you hadn’t,” Prance said, with a little smile.

“Good! I’m glad he’s disappointed. He’s impossible.”

“One dislikes to sink into clichés, but as William says, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’“ Prance was on a first name basis with all the literary greats.

“Did it ever run as crooked as mine and Luten’s?” she asked, with a wistful smile that was half a frown.

“You forget my own blighted affaire with la Comtesse,” he said gently.

“But you only knew her–”

Before she could point out the two weeks duration of their acquaintance, he said, “True, we were robbed of all the delightful crinks and cranks of a long courtship by her tragic death.” He sighed and left.

Corinne decided she needed the headache powder herself, and took the packet upstairs with her.

Corinne spent her morning making social calls in an effort to discover what she could of Lord Clare, and whether Fanny had found herself a patron. None of her friends recognized the name Fanny Rowan. She learned that Lord Arther Quillam had bought an Italian courtesan from his brother, who was about to marry, and Sir James Trevithick had exchanged one well known actress for another. That appeared to be all the week’s trafficking in mistresses.

The reactions to Lord Clare’s name were curiously at odds. Lady Castlereagh and Mrs. Spencer called him a saint, citing his work on behalf of the Morgate Home. That lively gossip, Countess deLieven, on the other hand, lifted an arched eyebrow and called him the wickedest rogue in town, but could not be cajoled or cozzened into revealing the nature of his wickedness. As she spoke with a twinkle in her eye, Corinne did not think she was speaking of anything truly heinous, such as murder.

When Corinne asked casually, “Do you think the match with Lady Cecilia will come off?”, the countess looked at her as if she were mad and said, “I hardly think so, my dear. Not if the lady’s papa has anything to say about It.”

Prance had no better luck.

Coffen Pattle made inquiries amongst his actress friends, none of whom had ever heard of Fanny Rowan. All they knew of Clare was that he occasionally dropped around the Green Room. They thought perhaps he had found patrons for a few girls who were out of work. After three glasses of wine, one of them, Mollie Perkins, fell into sobs and admitted that he had offered her the same sort of non-acting job that he had offered Sally.

“I wasn’t that hard up myself,” she said firmly through her tears. “Still and all, while it’s not as good as a carte blanche, it’s better than taking to the streets. You never know who you’ll pick up there. A girl could get kilt.”

After a word with the manager, Coffen left with a promise that Sally would have a speaking part in the next play, and the manager have a new desk to replace the battered piece of lumber currently in use.

Coffen didn’t forget the tangible clues, the ring and the lock of hair, in his busy day. He thought Luten was right in thinking the murderer would have dumped them shortly after leaving the Albany, providing they weren’t taken by a lover. He wouldn’t have to drive all the way down to the Thames to do it either. Just toss them out his carriage window as he drove along. Coffen had the notion of hiring a hackney cab to lead the way to the Albany at a pace slow enough for Fitz to follow without getting lost. Fogg’s quarters were on the end of the long block of flats close to Piccadilly. Coffen went to the doorway and began scanning Albany Court Yard for signs of either the lock of hair or the ring.

He knew the chances were one in a hundred, maybe one in a thousand of finding either of them. The hair would blow away, and anything gold had a good chance of being picked up by a postman or footman or one of the link-boys, who carried their torches of tow and pitch by night to light the path for pedestrians. By day, they haunted the streets in hope of earning a few pennies by guarding a gentleman’s mount or curricle.

But still he walked on, head bent, kicking fallen leaves, scouring the road from right to left, hoping for a glint of gold. He continued on out of the Court Yard, toward Burlington House and on toward Old Bond Street.

He tried an experiment. Say a fellow rolled the hair around the ring to heave it out his carriage window, the hair would fall off, but the ring, being heavier, would go farther. He took out a penny and tossed it. It rolled along the street for a few yards before coming to rest against the curb at the corner where the pavement turned. A passing carriage nearly capsized him as he darted forward to retrieve it. A glint of gold caught his eye, he brushed aside the detritus around it, and there, like a gift from God, sat a gold ring, not two feet from the penny. His fingers trembled as he picked it up.

A street urchin, intrigued by Coffen’s behaviour, followed him. The urchin snapped up the penny and took to his heels.

Coffen examined the ring, turning it this way and that. It was a plain thing, two ribbons of gold braided into a band. There was some engraving inside that he couldn’t read with his naked eye, possibly a set of initials that would tell him something. In any case, it settled in his mind that the lock of hair and the ring had been taken to make it look like a jilted lover, when it was nothing of the sort. Just a dashed red herring. He put the ring in his pocket and returned to his carriage.

* * * *

At Berkeley Square, Sir Reginald Prance went across the road to Corinne’s house to compare findings when he saw her carriage arrive. They each told what they had learned.

“What can Lady deLieven have meant?” he asked, intrigued. “How would she know about his bawdy house if Lady Castlereagh and Mrs. Spencer didn’t know?”

“Lady deLieven knows everything,” Corinne said comprehensively. “I mean to go out this evening and continue quizzing everyone. What are you doing tonight, Prance? Can I count on your escort?”

He gave her a sly smile. “I seem to recall another gentleman offering to escort you, should you feel the need,” he reminded her.

“You mean Byron? I couldn’t ask him. It would be too forward.”

“Rubbish. He asked you to ask him, and I assure you he does not extend that invitation unless he means it. Do drop him a note,” he urged.

She was sorely tempted to have her revenge on Luten for that cruel, “The extremely unlikely chance of bringing Byron up to scratch.” On the other hand, he was already angry with her, and to further infuriate him might finish any chance of a reconciliation. “I’ll ask Cousin Harry,” she said.

“No, Byron. Luten will run mad to see his rig picking you up. It’s the very thing to bring him out of his sulks.”

She vacillated. “Can Byron be trusted to behave himself? He has a wicked reputation– and I’m a widow. We’re not treated like debs.”

“He’s a tame man in a carriage, providing you don’t provoke him with some saucy behaviour.”

She sniffed. “I hope you know me better than that!”

“Sorry,
cara mia,
perhaps you didn’t realize you were fluttering those inch long eyelashes hard enough to cause a gale the last time you were with him. I shouldn’t mention that you and Luten are on the outs. Let Byron think he’s merely acting
in loco Lutenis,
as it were. Doing Luten a favor to accompany you.”

She considered it a moment, her chin firming in determination, then said, “Very well. Help me write the note. And if he refuses, Prance, you must never mention a word of this to anyone.”

Prance adored guilty secrets. “I can usually manage to forget my failures.” He entered into the spirit of it with great delight. It was lovely to be mischievous for a good cause. “Where will you ask him to take you? I shall go the same place and keep an eye on you. “

She took her invitation cards from the mantlepiece and flipped through them. “It seems cruel to ask him to take me to a ball when he can’t dance.”

“Not at all. He adores going to the balls. It serves to remind everyone of the tragedy of his club foot– which, by the by, would be merely a deformity in any other gentleman, but is somehow transmuted to a tragedy in him,” he said with an air of pique. “Don’t worry that you’ll have to sit every dance out with him. He’ll be swarmed the instant he arrives, and you will be free to quiz all your friends.”

“Very well. Let’s make it Lady Sefton’s do,” she said, selecting a card. “You have an invitation to it?”

“Bien entendu.
I make a point to keep on terms with all the patronesses of Almack’s. Possibly the most boring club in town, yet one would be devastated to be excluded. Rather like those people Doctor Johnson spoke of– one should like very well to drop them, but would not wish to be dropped by them. I’ll take the note for you, and explain that you asked me first but I have an earlier appointment, and can’t go until late. That will confirm that you’re not interested in romance — unless he considers me a rival to Luten.”

She wrote the note and Prance, always eager to call on the rich and famous, darted off with it. He found Byron at home, lounging on the strange backless sofa, with a notebook beside him. He was relieved to see no four-footed creatures with him.

“Another poem to thrill and delight society?” Prance asked waggishly.

“I’ve been sweating out verses by the bucket. I write too much,” he said, and tearing a clump of pages from the book, he squashed them up and tossed them toward the grate.

“Oh no!” Prance cried, moving to rescue them.

“It’s more pudding than poetry. It puts the blue devils to rest if I can get them down on paper. I don’t know who is the greater fool, myself for such incontinent scribbling, or society for encouraging me.”

“You’re too hard on both yourself and society. Such a genius ought not to go to waste. That having been said, I now propose to waste your evening for you.” He handed Byron the note.

Byron perused it and lifted his wicked eyes to his caller. “I hardly call this a wasted evening! Trouble with the winsome widow and her fiancé, or is this just a request for an escort?”

“As she invited me first, I must regretfully assume the latter.”

“Pity. No matter, I shall go. Hope springs eternal, and in any case, it will give the gossiping old hens something new to prattle about. They’ve exhausted the scandal of Caro Lamb and my poor self. I don’t have to write a reply, do I?”

“Oh do! You know every lady to whom you dash off a line presses the note between the pages of your poems for posterity. I daresay your Fletcher is squirreling away your laundry lists.”

Byron stared. “Damme, Prance, I’m not a lady! I don’t make laundry lists.” But he did dash off a few lines to Lady deCoventry.

Prance tried to get a glimpse of them, but failed. He slid the folded note into his pocket. “This is one messenger who’s in no danger of being shot,” he said, smiling at his success.

“Speaking of being shot, is there any word on Fogg’s murderer?”

“It’s strictly
entre nous,
but we believe we have a line on a certain gent.”

“I thought as much,” Byron said, with a knowing, satirical glance. “ ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.’ ”

“ ‘Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,’ ” Prance added, to let Byron know he recognized the quotation.

Byron frowned. “That part don’t apply, does it? You did say a certain gent? Fogg hadn’t much to do with ladies, had he? He preferred young men, according to gossip.”