The Glass House (10 page)

I explained, but he looked skeptical. "Such a
lady may know nothing or be paid to know nothing."

"Perhaps, but it is worth a try. Now, while
we have the chance, shall we see what else this room can tell
us?"

"Kensington would not have left us alone if
it could," Grenville pointed out, but he turned his hand to the
task.

We went over the room again, looking under
the bed covers, through the dressing table, behind curtains, under
the bed. I examined the tools at the fireplace, studied the heavy
brass grating. I finished my search, finding nothing. The room was
neat, well-dusted, impersonal.

Grenville found nothing either, but I knew
that Peaches could very likely have been killed in this room.

We found no evidence that she had been, of
course. Her killer would have had time to tidy up behind themselves
or he had paid Kensington to do it. Or perhaps Peaches had left
with her killer and met her death somewhere between here and the
Temple Gardens.

Kensington was waiting for us at the bottom
of the stairs when we came down. He told me that he'd chosen Room
Five for me and that he wanted three hundred guineas for the
pleasure.

* * * * *

Chapter Seven

I nearly told Mr. Kensington exactly what I
thought of his three hundred guineas. Grenville, on the other hand,
coolly handed it over. "I will wait for you," he said.

He returned to the front room, while
Kensington bade me follow him. I wondered what vice Kensington had
decided a man like me would want.

We did not return to the main room but
entered the front staircase hall. Kensington produced another key
from his pocket and took me to a small door a little way along the
gallery that encircled the stairwell. He opened the door, gestured
me inside, and closed and locked the door behind him.

We stood in a narrow corridor lined with
doors on our left. I realized that this hall ran behind the main
room and the small rooms that encircled it. I wondered briefly what
the builders brought in to alter the house had thought about the
bizarre floor plan.

Kensington led took me to a door in the
middle of this hall and produced another key. He had put the key in
the lock and turned it, when I heard a cry. A child's cry.

It did not come from the room Kensington was
opening for me but from the one next door. I turned to Kensington,
my countenance frozen. "Let me in there." I pointed to the blank
door to the right.

His pleased smile sealed his fate. "That room
is taken."

"Nonetheless."

"The bid for that room was considerably
higher than yours," he said, giving me a patient look. "It has
already been spoken for."

Every spark of rage that had been building
inside me since I'd seen pretty Peaches dead on the riverbank
surged and focused on the small man with the oily smile.

I had Kensington against the wall in a trice,
the handle of Grenville's walking stick pressed against his throat.
My leg ached and throbbed, berating me for the punishment I'd given
it that afternoon. It was likely that Peaches had either met her
death in this house or met her killer here, and Kensington knew
that too. He might be the murderer himself.

Kensington eyes held fear but also a deep
glint of confidence. "You do not know what you are doing,
Captain."

"On the contrary, I believe I do."

He had mistaken me for a weak man. I was not.
I pressed the handle of the walking stick harder into Kensington's
throat, cutting off his air. I could kill him. I saw him realize
that.

"If you insist," he said. His voice was still
icy, if hoarse.

I eased the walking stick away. Kensington
gave me a long look as he cleared his throat, reassessing me.
Straightening the cravat I'd put askew, he unlocked and opened the
door of the second room.

What I saw within made my previous anger at
Kensington seem as nothing.

A girl who could have been no more than
twelve stood against the wall on the other side of the room. Her
cheeks and lips were red with rouge, and her hair had been died a
dull yellow. She resembled the girls that prowled the environs of
Covent Garden, the younger ones in the shadows of their older
colleagues. I always grew angry when I saw them, and angry at the
gentlemen who exploited them, thereby teaching them that they could
earn money at so early an age. This girl was locked in, unable to
leave, lacking even the feeble protection the street girls gave one
another.

The infantryman I had seen in the outer room
was with her, now in shirtsleeves and trousers, his coat tossed
over a chair. He looked up in surprise when I banged in, and opened
his mouth to protest, but closed it and rapidly backed away when I
came at him.

The drapes to this room stood open. Two
gentlemen peered in through the window, enraging me further. I
lifted a chair and threw it at them. The glass in the window broke
with a satisfying shatter, and the casement splintered.

The infantryman swore. The girl watched
silently. Kensington merely looked on, as though resigned to my
tantrum. His lack of worry puzzled me, or would have puzzled me had
I not been so furious. This place was vile, and knowing that it had
played a part in Peaches' death made me angrier still.

I grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her
out of there. She came silently, her eyes round with fear, but she
did not fight me. Neither did Kensington. He simply watched me with
that knowing look and stood aside to let me pass.

I took the girl to the main staircase, down,
and out of the house. The doorman tried to stop me, but I slammed
the walking stick into his midriff, and he fell away with a grunt,
arm across his belly.

The night outside had turned bitterly cold
and was still wet. Matthias blinked when he saw me charging at him
with the wretched girl in tow, but he opened the carriage door and
quickly helped us in.

Grenville ran from the house and sprang into
the carriage, shouting at his coachman to go. We moved out into the
street, and Matthias slammed the door and jumped onto his perch
behind.

"Good lord, Lacey," Grenville said,
breathless, then he chortled. "You ought to have seen their faces
when that chair came flying through the window. It was most
gratifying." He switched his gaze to the girl.

She stared back at him, her kohl-rimmed eyes
wide.

I wondered what to do with her now that I'd
rescued her. I had taken a Covent Garden girl to Louisa Brandon
last spring, though Black Nancy had been a few years older than
this mite in grown-up clothes. I did not like to continue
inflicting Louisa with my rescued strays, though I certainly could
not take the girl home with me, nor could Grenville.

Then I remembered that I knew a family who
would be both sympathetic to the girl's plight and able and eager
to help her. Sir Gideon Derwent was a philanthropist and a
reformer, and though I hesitated to impose upon him, I could think
of no other solution. I asked Grenville to take us to Grosvenor
Square, and he gave his coachman the direction.

"I had a chance to speak to the doorman while
you went off on your adventure," Grenville said as the carriage
rolled into the rainy night. "He told me that Peaches did indeed
arrive near to four o'clock on Monday, but he never saw her
leave."

"He is certain?"

"He said he was at the door all that day. She
came in but did not go out."

I sat back, trying to ease my abused leg.
"Well, that tells us much, then."

"She went out the back," the girl said.

Both Grenville and I started, swiveling gazes
to her. She looked back at us with no less fear but now with some
curiosity."You saw her?" I asked, too startled to gentle my
voice.

She nodded, her artificially blond curls
bobbing. "Down the back stairs, through the scullery. Didn't stop
to say ta."

"Was she alone?"

The girl blinked, and I realized that my
abrupt tone frightened her. "It is important," I said, trying to
soften my voice. "Did she leave with someone?"

"Not that I saw." She glanced from me to
Grenville. "Are you going to arrest her?"

"No. I am afraid she died."

The girl's mouth became a round O. "She
died?" She went silent a moment. "She was nice to me."

"Did she come often to The Glass House?" I
asked.

The girl shrugged too-thin shoulders.
"Sometimes. She didn't speak to anyone much."

"But she was nice to you."

"Let me stay in her room sometimes. Would
tell me stories about when she was on the stage. Asked if I wanted
to go on the stage."

"And do you?" Grenville asked. I heard the
pity in his question though his expression remained neutral.

"Naw. Like as not, I'll marry a bloke."

Not if she were dead from disease or
brutality long before she reached marriageable age.

Kensington and his Glass House were doomed.
If Sir Montague Harris needed evidence of sordid goings-on in that
house, this girl could provide it. If we enlisted Gideon Derwent's
help, his influence and public outcry would defeat The Glass
House.

Even so, Kensington hadn't seemed worried by
my interference. He must believe that the guiding power behind the
house--possibly James Denis--would prevent me from doing it any
harm. I was determined to prove him wrong.

"Did Peaches ever come to The Glass House
with anyone?" I asked the girl.

"A lordship," she answered without
hesitation. "She thought he was handsome. She was in love with
him."

"Anyone else?"

"No." The girl seemed to relax, to grow more
childlike every moment. "Just the lordship. She would go on and on
about him, called him her Bear."

Peaches and Barbury. Filled with affection
for each other. "Did she speak to anyone else regularly? Besides
you?"

"Naw, she kept herself to herself. She'd
natter with Kensington, because she knew him from before. But no
one else I ever saw."

"After Peaches left Monday, do you remember
seeing Mr. Kensington still there?"

"I think so." Her small brow puckered. "I
don't remember."

I had hoped she'd tell me she saw Kensington
run after Peaches with a murderous look on his face, or better
still, brandishing a weapon, but I let it go. Kensington could
easily have killed her. Peaches knew him, he could have gotten
behind her, struck out . . .

"Are you taking me to a magistrate?" the girl
asked.

I banished the horrible picture of Peaches
falling to the stairs at the Temple Gardens, her head a bloody
mess.

"To a friend, who will look after you," I
said.

Her fearful look returned. "I don't want to
be looked after."

"Yes, you do," Grenville said.

Her apprehensive look grew. The girls in
Covent Garden had nothing kind to say about the reformers who
sometimes scooped up one of their number--cheating them out of a
decent day's wages, they'd say.

What men like Kensington had done to this
girl was monstrous, and her innocent acceptance was still more
monstrous. I knew that houses existed all over London where such
things went on, and that shutting down one would not eliminate them
all. I'd also seen plenty of girls like her while in the Army,
daughters of camp followers or orphaned girls who'd decided that
laying with soldiers was better than starving. I couldn't save them
all.

But I could at least help Sir Montague Harris
close The Glass House, and perhaps I could spell the end for one
very powerful underworld gentleman. The thought buoyed me through
my haze of anger and pain.

We reached Grosvenor Square, the most opulent
in Mayfair, and stopped before the Derwents' tall house.

The Derwents were surprised to see us but
behaved predictably. The entire family turned out to welcome
us--Lady Derwent, thin and frail but with a bright smile for me and
Grenville; the daughter, Melissa, her usual shyness melting into
sympathy for the girl, who at last relayed that her name was Jean;
Sir Gideon, robust and righteously angry at my tale. The only one
missing was Leland, the son of the household, who was visiting his
club with his cronies from university.

Likewise, I did not see Mrs. Danbury, which
relieved me a bit. I'd made a great fool of myself in front of her
at Inglethorpe's. I wanted to apologize to her for my behavior but
I was not yet ready to face her.

We left young Jean looking bewildered and
surrounded by well-meaning Derwents, and returned to Grosvenor
Street.

Grenville, as usual, invited me in for
brandy, but I declined. I was exhausted, still angry, in pain, and
not in the mood for pleasantries. Tomorrow was the inquest for
Peaches, and I needed rest.

I took a hackney home. Grenville would have
offered his coach, but he'd indicated that he would look in at his
club, and I did not want to rob him of his conveyance. He conceded,
saw me into the hackney, and said goodnight. Bartholomew would be
awaiting me in Grimpen Lane, with the fire high and my bed
aired.

I discovered halfway across London that I had
only enough shillings to take me to Haymarket. I descended there
and braced myself heavily on Grenville's walking stick as I tramped
toward home.

The air was chill, my breath steaming, the
rain tiny needles on my face. I severely disliked cold. Perhaps if
Grenville did decide to return to Egypt, I'd ask to go with him, as
an assistant or secretary or some such in order to earn my way. The
baking sun would no doubt be good for my leg as well as for the
rest of me. How grand it would be to again roll up my sleeves
against the heat, let my skin tan, live a bit like a barbarian
again.

My young wife had hated the sun, complained
of it ruining her complexion. She'd wilted in the humid heat, and
God help me, I'd been impatient with her. I'd wanted her to be more
like Louisa Brandon, who had been robust and enjoyed the warm
weather. But then, I'd always been a bloody fool where Carlotta was
concerned.