The Glass House (15 page)

Jean thought, but she shook her head. "When
Peaches came in that day I heard Mr. Kensington start to shout at
her, but she went on upstairs and slammed the door. Later, I saw
her go down through the kitchen. She was smiling."

"Mr. Kensington did not go with her?"

"I didn't see him."

So I was back to Peaches disappearing from
The Glass House and turning up later in the Thames.

"Did she speak to anyone else? Perhaps tell
them where she was going?"

Jean shook her head. "I didn't see."

Not her fault. I gave her a nod. "Thank you,"
I said. "You have been very helpful."

"Yes, sir," she said. She'd answered without
hesitation but without much enthusiasm either. No anger, sorrow,
fear. She was like a mongrel dog eating the food given it without
gratitude toward the feeder.

I wanted to reassure her. "You're safe here,
Jean. The Derwents will look after you."

"Yes, sir." She sounded doubtful.

I had nothing else to add. She would have to
learn trust; it could not be forced, well I knew.

Mrs. Danbury announced she'd take Jean up to
bed, effectively cutting short the interview and indicating she
wanted me to go. I issued my goodnights to her and the little girl
and again expressed my best wishes for Lady Derwent.

Mrs. Danbury condescended to give me a
half-smile as I departed. Perhaps my gentle treatment of and
concern for Jean had redeemed me in her eyes a small amount, at
least.

I returned home and spent a restless night.
This day I had enraged Louisa, upset Mrs. Danbury, discovered I'd
been duped by Kensington, and nearly been accused of murder by
Pomeroy. Not the best day of my life, by any means.

I woke with a headache and received a note
from Pomeroy that the inquest for Inglethorpe would be held that
morning, in Dover Street, at eleven o'clock.

Before I departed for it, I penned Louisa an
apology for my behavior at her house the night before. I knew I
should not have let Brandon provoke me. I seemed to forever cause
pain to the one woman I least wished to.

I sent the letter in care of Lady Aline
Carrington, Louisa's dearest friend. I disliked delivering it in
this roundabout fashion, but I did not want Brandon to put the note
on the fire the moment he recognized my handwriting. Louisa would
at least do me the courtesy of reading it, even if she too burnt it
afterward.

It was just eleven when I slid inside the dim
public house on Dover Street and took a seat near the back wall.
The murder had been committed in the parish of St. George's and so
the inquest was held there as well. The room was warm and stuffy,
the smell of steaming wool and damp hair pomade just covering the
odor of stale cabbage. My swordstick, still covered with dried
blood, lay naked on a table before the coroner.

The coroner called the proceedings to order.
Sir Montague Harris had chosen to attend, and the coroner had
called in a doctor, rather unnecessarily, I thought, because
Inglethorpe had obviously died of the stab wound, and the butler
could fix the time of death within half an hour.

The doctor, a thin, spidery man with pomaded
black hair, confirmed that because of the warmth of the body and
the stickiness of the blood when he'd been found, that Inglethorpe
had died not more than thirty minutes before that, in other words,
by half-past two yesterday afternoon.

The coroner interviewed the butler who had
discovered the body. The man was nervous, wetting his lips and
darting his gaze about, but no more uncomfortable than any man
being asked such questions might be. He'd seen his master at two
o'clock, he'd said, when Inglethorpe had risen from bed and taken a
light meal.

The butler had returned to the servants' hall
and attended to duties below stairs until he'd gone upstairs again
at half-past two. He'd found the front door standing open and
closed it, annoyed that the footman had not noticed. Then he'd
stepped into the reception room and found his master on the
floor.

The butler's lips were gray when he finished,
and he walked heavily to his seat.

Pomeroy rose and gave his evidence about
being summoned by the Queen's Square magistrate to the scene of the
crime, finding Inglethorpe dead, and recognizing the walking stick
as belonging to one Captain Lacey. When he finished, and the
coroner asked me to rise.

As I took my place before the coroner I spied
Bartholomew sitting to the right of the jury and Grenville next to
him, his curled-brimmed hat resting on his knee. Grenville caught
my eye but sent no acknowledgement.

I identified the swordstick and explained how
I had left it behind on Wednesday, when I'd attended a gathering at
Inglethorpe's house. The coroner asked what kind of gathering, and
I told him of the scientific gas that Inglethorpe had in the bags,
which produced an interesting, but temporary euphoria. The coroner
nodded, as though he'd heard of such things before.

I explained that I'd returned to
Inglethorpe's yesterday--to look for the walking stick, which I
could not afford to lose--and had found instead the Runner,
Pomeroy, who'd informed me of Inglethorpe's death.

The coroner seemed quite interested in me. He
tried to make me tell him that I had arrived at Inglethorpe's
unseen at quarter past two, crept in, and stabbed the man to death,
being obliging enough to leave my own sword behind, and then return
soon after to be confronted by a Runner. Fortunately, I could place
myself at the moneylender's in the City during the hour that
Inglethorpe met his end.

Disappointed, the coroner questioned me about
why I had not returned to Inglethorpe's as soon as I'd realized I'd
left the stick behind, and I explained that I'd borrowed another
from a friend, since I'd had other engagements. He at last seemed
to take my word for it and dismissed me.

Calling the butler back, the coroner asked
what had become of the walking stick between the time I'd left it
and the time I'd returned for it the next day. The butler, still
nervous, said that he'd found no walking stick left behind in the
sitting room where Mr. Inglethorpe's guests had gathered; he'd
never seen it. Neither had any of the other servants in the
house.

The coroner nodded, made a tick on his paper,
and moved on to his next note. He questioned the butler about who
had been in the house when Inglethorpe died, which had been the
servants and no other guests, according to the butler. The coroner
then asked about the gathering the day before--one of those
attending could have taken the walking stick then returned and
killed Inglethorpe, he said.

He asked the gentlemen who'd been present at
the gathering, including Mr. Yardley and Mr. Price-Davies, to rise
and tell their stories.

Each was similar. The gentlemen had been
invited by Inglethorpe to partake of his magical gas in the
upstairs drawing room, where'd they'd breathed the air and sat in
comfort. Three gentlemen had departed the house before I had. Mr.
Yardley said he thought he remembered seeing the walking stick left
behind, but he'd not mentioned it to his host. Whyever should he?
he demanded when the coroner asked him why not. Inglethorpe had
servants to clean up the rooms and restore any lost property.
That's what servants were for, wasn't it? Mr. Yardley hadn't
thought anything more about it.

Mr. Price-Davies hadn't remembered one way or
another about any walking stick. None of the gentlemen claimed to
have returned to visit Inglethorpe the next day, and all could put
themselves somewhere else, with witnesses, at the time of
Inglethorpe's death.

After this, the coroner summoned the two
ladies who'd been present from the private room in which they'd
been waiting. Lady Breckenridge sat tall and straight before the
coroner and told him in clear tones that she had gone to
Inglethorpe's on Wednesday, departed his house at about half-past
four, hadn't taken Captain Lacey's walking stick, and had not
returned to Inglethorpe's the next day. Between two and three on
Thursday, when Inglethorpe had died, she'd been at her toilette,
attended by three maids who could all attest to that fact.

In her dark blue pelisse and widow's bonnet,
Lady Breckenridge looked quiet and respectable and elegant, but her
eyes were as sharp as ever. She stared haughtily down her nose at
the coroner, and if she'd had a cigarillo to hand, she would have
blown smoke into his face.

Mrs. Danbury, however, looked quite unhappy.
Sir Gideon Derwent escorted her, I was pleased to see, and he stood
beside her while the coroner questioned her.

She told the same story as had Lady
Breckenridge; she'd gone to the gathering at Inglethorpe's
invitation, partaken of the strange gas, then gone home. No, she
did not remember noticing any other gentleman going away with the
walking stick. She had gone out yesterday afternoon to shop, though
she could not remember precisely where she had been between two and
three, but she certainly had not gone to stab Inglethorpe.

The coroner nodded and dismissed her, and Sir
Gideon led her away. Mrs. Danbury's face was white, and she leaned
heavily on Sir Gideon's arm.

It occurred to me, and I wondered if it had
occurred to the jury, that the butler himself had the best
opportunity to dispatch his master. He would know when everyone in
the house would be safely out of the way, he could divert
Inglethorpe to the reception room, and he could have hidden my
walking stick beforehand and professed to have no knowledge of it.
The butler must have thought so, as well, because his nervousness
increased as the inquest went on.

The coroner finished, and the jury went aside
to confer. When they returned, they gave their verdict, death by
person or persons unknown. The coroner instructed Pomeroy and his
patrols to continue investigating to find the culprit. He then
closed the inquest and dismissed us.

*** *** ***

Lady Breckenridge emerged from the public
house behind me as we all filed out. I tipped my hat, and she
bowed. "Good morning, Captain," she said, without stopping.
"Ghastly hour to be dragged from one's home."

She continued to her landau. Her footman
quickly set a padded step-stool on the ground in front of it, and
Lady Breckenridge stepped from it to the carriage without breaking
stride. A pair of splendid ankles flashed, and then she was inside,
the footman shutting the door.

Sir Gideon led Mrs. Danbury to the Derwent
coach, his arm about her shoulders. Mrs. Danbury did not look
around or see me watching her.

As Sir Gideon's coach pulled away, Sir
Montague spoke at my side. "A relieving verdict for the coroner,
was it not, Lacey? Must have been tricky when he learned that all
those Mayfair gentlemen were involved. Gentlemen with influence,
upon whom his position depends, perhaps. Presiding over the case of
a drowned prostitute or a dead vagrant is so much easier."

The coroner himself walked by us at this
point, his lips thin. Unembarrassed, Sir Montague bowed to him.

"I noted that the coroner did not mention
Inglethorpe's clothes," I said. "Or lack of them."

Sir Montague gave me a conspiratorial wink.
"Why complicate things, eh? Most curious, though, is it not? I am
interested in those clothes."

I thought about Inglethorpe lying on his
back, feet apart, surprised and alone. Fine pantaloons had encased
his legs, and his coat and shirt and waistcoat had been neatly
folded on a hair. His shoes . . . I stopped, frowning.

"What are you thinking, Captain?" Sir
Montague's eyes twinkled in the weak winter sunlight.

"He wore pumps," I said. "But their soles
were muddy."

"Is that significant?"

"It is if you are a gentleman of his
standing. Those shoes were not meant to be worn outside."

"No?"

"Grenville must have a dozen pairs of
slippers he wears only inside his house. Inglethorpe's shoes were
to be worn indoors with pantaloons. More to set off his feet than
for function. Yet, they had mud on them. As though he'd run out
into the street for a few minutes."

Sir Montague rocked on his heels. "To meet
someone, perhaps?"

"Or he saw something outside the window," I
said. "It surprised him, and he went out to investigate. Or he went
out to bring a person back inside with him."

"Hmm. And then took off half his clothes. A
lover, perhaps?"

"Perhaps." The explanation did not quite ring
true. If a man had a sudden assignation, did he carefully remove
his clothing and fold it neatly on a chair? Or were the clothes
hastily ripped from the body and dropped on the floor, or not
completely removed at all?

"There may be something in what you say," Sir
Montague said. "By the way, Mr. Thompson told me of your doings in
The Glass House the other night." He chuckled. "You must have put
the wind up them."

I was not so certain. Kensington did not seem
easily frightened; in fact, he'd been a bit overconfident, even
when I'd broken the window. "Kensington is key to the business of
The Glass House and Mrs. Chapman's death," I said. "I am
convinced."

"Being convinced is not proof," Sir Montague
said. "I want no holes in this case."

"I know. The girl I rescued could tell you an
earful. I believe Kensington might work for a man called James
Denis, although I have not confirmed that. But if you are looking
for a man powerful enough to block the magistrates and reformers,
it would be Denis."

Sir Montague nodded. "I have heard of him, of
course. Corruption is rife, unfortunately, and his name crops up
when corruption does. I'll question Kensington myself. Don't
frighten him too much, yet, Captain. I don't want him slipping away
or turning to Mr. Denis for protection."

"I have also put Sir Gideon Derwent on the
scent," I said. "The child is staying with him. He is a powerful
man, in his own way."