The Glass House (17 page)

I gave him a warning look. "And now you will
tell me. I believe that you also do not know your danger."

Kensington heaved a sigh. "Very well, I will
show you the bloody attic room. I planned to burn all her things
anyway. They are of no use to me."

I started to say more, but Kensington looked
past me, and color flooded his face.

Lord Barbury and Grenville had stopped behind
me, Lord Barbury not looking well. He seemed to have aged since
Peaches' death; his eyelids were waxen, his face pale, the bristles
on his jaw dark against his white skin. His eyes were rimmed with
red, lashes wet. One man, at least, grieved for Peaches.

"What the devil are you doing here?" he asked
Kensington in a hard voice.

Kensington contrived to look sad. "Saying
good-bye to my lass."

Barbury tuned to me. "Captain Lacey, do not
trust this man. He is a snake, and he made Peaches' life
miserable."

"Gullible fool," Kensington sneered. "You
should ask what she did to
my
life."

"You used her until she had nothing left,"
Barbury snapped. "When she made it clear she preferred me to you,
you tried to buy her back."

"And she came running. What does that say for
you, my fine lord?"

"Gentlemen," Grenville interrupted. "We are
standing in a churchyard."

"Not for much longer," Kensington said
angrily. "Are you coming, Captain?"

As Kensington turned and marched away, I told
Grenville that I was going with him to have another look at The
Glass House, to see what Peaches had left behind there.

"Would you like to come with me?" I asked
Barbury.

He hesitated a long moment, then his gloved
fingers closed and he looked away. "No," he said at last. "No, I do
not want to come."

I sympathized. When my wife had left me,
sorting through her things and those of my daughter had been purest
torture. I had been lucky that Louisa had been there to help.

But I sympathized only so far. If Barbury had
truly loved Peaches, he would have married her and cared for her,
damn her origins.

"Tell us about it tonight," Grenville said to
me. "I've invited Lord Barbury to dine at my house. We'll begin at
eight."

I nodded. Barbury looked at me again, his
agony evident. I touched my hat to the pair of them and hobbled
after the disappearing figure of Mr. Kensington. The damp was
playing hell with my knee.

* * * * *

Chapter Eleven

The Glass House by day was a depressing
place. Silent and lit by gray daylight, it was a place holding its
breath. The only inhabitant was the doorman, who gave me a hostile
stare when he let us in.

Kensington took me up two flights of stairs,
past the room he'd showed me before, and up into the attics.

Two doors stood on either side of the
low-ceilinged stairwell. Kensington still claimed he did not have a
key to Peaches' chamber, but the door he pointed out was a bit
flimsy. I applied my boot heel to the latch, and on the third kick,
it gave way, the wood splintering. Kensington looked startled, as
though he'd believed me feeble, despite having seen me throw a
chair through a window.

The room beyond was a bedchamber, but in
contrast to the stark stairwell, the room had been made quite a
cozy. A thick rug covered the floor, plenty of pillows had been
scattered on the bed, and the bed hangings were of a thick, blue
brocade. Peaches had collected an odd jumble of furniture, but each
piece had been chosen for comfort--a deep wing chair, a low writing
table with cushioned stool, a settee with a side table piled with
books. Feminine touches were everywhere, from the lace on the
cushions to the hair ribbons on the dressing table. A fireplace
held the ashes of a fire not many days cold, the brass fender shone
brightly, and the coal bucket was full.

"She did like her little luxuries,"
Kensington said.

"She did," I answered. "Now, go away."

Kensington laughed, his pudgy belly moving.
"I admire your cheek, Captain. Watching you fall will be most
pleasurable."

Still chuckling, he left the room and made
his way noisily down the stairs.

I was alone. And in that room, in the gray
silence of the house, I found Peaches.

I found her in the clumsily embroidered
pillows on the bed, in the silver pen tray engraved with her
initials--probably gift from Lord Barbury--in the dresses in the
wardrobe that were all silk, all daringly cut, all too ostentatious
for a respectable barrister's wife.

In the drawers of the writing desk were
torn-out pages of newspapers dated six years ago, each page
containing an article about a play. In on, the name "Miss Leary"
had been circled with charcoal pencil.

The articles gave the highest accolades to
the principle actors. When they mentioned Peaches at all, it was at
most one line. "Miss Leary gave a fine performance as Bianca," was
the lengthiest notice she received.

Another drawer held Lord Barbury's letters to
her. Peaches had kept them from the night they'd first met, after a
performance one evening in Drury Lane. Barbury had written many
letters during their first year as lovers, stopping only at her
marriage. He had written her every day, whether they'd met or
not.

I skimmed through them, feeling like a
voyeur. Lord Barbury's letters were loving and passionate, but when
Peaches had decided to marry, his tone turned resigned.

I wish only happiness for you, my darling,
and if this is the kind of happiness you wish, I will not stand in
its path. A woman wants to be mistress of her own household with
her own children . . . Nights will be long without you, but I am
grateful for what joy you've lent me over this twelvemonth, which
has been the happiest of my life.

They'd met again several years later, and I
found Barbury's letter about it:
Seeing you was like sunshine
breaking through the greatest of storms, my sweet Peaches. You ask
if we can meet again, and I say, my darling, that a hundred times I
have thought of contriving to meet, and only great strength of will
has kept me at home. Name the place, name the time, and I will fly
there with the greatest joy, if only to touch your hand, to look
upon you, to hear your voice once again.

His next letters had been euphoric. Later
missives spoke of Peaches' unhappiness with Chapman, of Chapman's
jealousy, of her sorrow when she realized that she would never have
children.

Most of all, Barbury's letters expressed his
great happiness that he and Peaches were together
again--monotonously so. Occasionally, he admonished her about her
craving for excitement, which would get her into trouble some day,
he warned. Sadly, he had been correct.

All Barbury's letters had been addressed
here, to number 12, St. Charles Row. She had used this place as a
home away from home, a place to which her lover could send letters,
in which she could dress herself as Peaches the lovely actress and
meet her Lord Barbury. Her husband would likely never find this
place, and Peaches probably had paid Kensington handsomely for the
privilege.

I refolded the last letter and sat lost in
thought. Suppose Chapman
had
discovered this place and his
wife's duplicity--would it have driven him to murder? He would
certainly have had reason to be incensed. Peaches and Barbury had
been conducting a most intense affair.

True, Chapman had produced a witness to swear
that he was dining during the hour his wife met her death, but I
could not cross Chapman off the list of suspects yet. Of anyone, he
had the greatest motive, and Peaches had been thrown into the river
very close to Middle Temple Hall.

Likewise, I still could not dismiss Lord
Barbury. Like Chapman, he'd had witnesses to his presence at
White's at the time in question, but he could have hired someone to
carry out the murder. When Peaches had turned from Lord Barbury the
first time, his letters had been sad but understanding. However,
other letters had shown a fiery, hot-blooded man--a man who very
much desired a woman and was almost ill with despair when he could
not see her.

If Peaches had told him she wanted to end
their relationship a second time, could Barbury have been provoked
to murder? Possibly. Many murders were committed out of jealousy
and anger; the newspapers were full of such stories.

I stacked the letters together, laid them on
the desk, and opened another drawer. I found there another letter,
unfolded and unfinished, lying atop a neat stack of blank
paper.

This letter was in a different hand and
addressed to "My dearest, funny, sweetest Bear." Peaches had called
Barbury "Bear," Jean had said. Not the salutation of a woman to a
man she planned to leave.

We will have two delicious weeks
together
, she wrote,
when we can pretend that we belong
totally and completely to one another. Oh, my darling, my heart
beats faster with thought of days and nights in your presence,
where you may touch my hand or my cheek any time as though I was
yours forever and ever. And nights--how I long to be with you in
the dark all night long, without fearing the clock and the
dawn.

She went on for a few paragraphs in this
vein, excitement and desire pouring from her pen. She never
mentioned Inglethorpe, or her husband, or her method for deceiving
Chapman. Why she'd never finished the letter nor sent it, I didn't
learn from her words.

The clean papers beneath the page were smooth
and free of indentation. I toyed with the idea that Kensington had
come in and removed a second page of the letter, one that
incriminated him of her murder, leaving only the top page for me to
find.

If he had, he'd removed any blank sheets that
might have been under it to catch the indentation. The letter
stopped a good two inches above the end of the page. Peaches likely
had only written that much, then tucked the paper into the drawer
to finish later.

I folded it over on itself, hiding the
excited, happy words, and laid it with the rest of the letters.

I found nothing else in the writing desk or
in my continued search of the room. Finishing, I seated myself on
the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed, my hand on my
borrowed walking stick, and looked about me.

Peaches had lived here and loved here. Had
she died here?

Again, I had seen nothing that obviously
pointed to her murder, but Kensington could easily have removed any
evidence. I still did not much believe he did not have a separate
key.

I found it strange that the house had this
one oasis of calm, where Peaches had found refuge. I had expected
the room to be a terrible place, a prison, but it felt more like a
sanctuary. Peaches had had this one place of her own, in which she
could lock out her husband, Kensington, and even her lover if she
chose.

I stayed there for a time, listening to the
faint sounds of traffic outside, then I rose and gathered up the
letters. There was a fairly large bundle, but I took them all. I
gave the room one last look, descended to the ground floor of the
house, and bade the doorman run and fetch a hackney coach for
me.

The doorman was ill disposed to help me at
all, but Kensington appeared and told the man to do what I
said.

Kensington eyed the bundle of letters while I
waited. "Finished prying, Captain?"

"For now." I gave him a cold look. "Tell me,
what exactly were you to Peaches, all those years ago, when she was
a girl just going on the stage?"

Kensington smiled. "A friend, I hope."

"What did you do for her? And what did you
make her do for you?"

"I resent your implication, Captain. I
managed to introduce Amelia to a company of players, to get her a
part on a stage, to expose her to people with influence. That is
all."

"She did not like you."

He waved that away. "She was young, with a
head full of romantic notions. The ladies, you know."

"If I discover you murdered her," I said, my
voice steady, "may God have mercy on you."

Kensington's eyes flickered the slightest bit
and his bravado faltered. He was not exactly afraid of me, but he
was uncertain. I liked that.

A hackney coach rolled to a stop in front of
the door just then, and I departed with my treasures.

*** *** ***

It was a long, slow, cold ride back to Covent
Garden. We wound through the City to Fleet Street, then through the
Temple Bar and onto the Strand and so to Grimpen Lane. It was dark
by the time I climbed the stairs to my rooms.

Bartholomew was there, tidying, brushing my
regimentals again for my evening meal with Grenville and Lord
Barbury. I bade him find me a box for the letters, and he returned
from the attics with a small one of rough wood, into which the
letters just fit. I would return them to Lord Barbury to do with
what he liked.

When Bartholomew deemed the regimentals ready
for me, he helped me into them. Before I'd finished fastening the
cords on my coat, someone knocked at the door. Bartholomew went to
answer, then returned to tell me that Mrs. Beltan, my landlady, was
asking for me.

"It's Mrs. Brandon, sir," Mrs. Beltan said
when I reached the front room. "She's downstairs and would like a
word."

I descended after Mrs. Beltan to the bakeshop
in some disquiet. Louisa usually thought nothing of walking
upstairs to my rooms, leaving her footman to gnaw bread in Mrs.
Beltan's shop. That she'd chosen to send Mrs. Beltan upstairs for
me worried me somewhat.

The shop was full of customers at this time
of day, including Louisa's footman, who, as usual, was chewing on a
pastry. Mrs. Beltan led me to the little parlor behind the shop,
let me in, and closed the door, leaving me and Louisa alone.