A Body in Berkeley Square

by Ashley Gardner

  Louisa fell upon them hungrily. "My maids believe that thin slices of bread and weak tea are all my constitution will abide," she said as she ate. "Aline simply keeps plying the brandy. I shall be in a sad state before long."

  "I will send instructions to fatten you up," I said. "Is that why you fled? In search of food?"

  Louisa dabbed her mouth with a handkerchief when she finished, and Bartholomew removed the empty plate and the tray. "The magistrate questioned me. Sir Nathaniel from Bow Street, I mean, along with your Sir Montague Harris."

  "In the Bow Street House? I hope not." I thought of the smell of unwashed bodies in the lower rooms, the dirty, callused palms thrust out for coins.

  "No, they came to me. They asked me all sorts of awful questions. Had I known that my husband was having an affair with Mrs. Harper? What had he told me about Mr. Turner? Did Aloysius behave in a peculiar fashion that night? How did he not remember bringing the knife with him? Did I know beforehand that he would kill Turner? And other nonsense."

  "I will speak to Sir Montague," I said, my temper rising. "They should not have harangued you."

  "No, no, do not grow angry with him. The pair of them obviously did not think me an accessory. They see me as the poor, betrayed wife, deceived by her husband." She gave me a bitter look. "Which is what I am."

  I took her hand. "Louisa, I will do everything in my power to restore him to you."

  Louisa's fingers briefly tightened on mine then flowed away. "I have been lying awake these last few nights thinking of you trying to save him. And sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, when I am most alone, I am not certain that I still want you to."

  I gazed pensively at her, unsure of what to say.

  She went on, "Oh, I do not mean I wish for him to be hanged. Of course not. But I believe that I do not want him to come home."

  "Louisa . . ."

  "I know now what you felt when Carlotta left you. I felt sorry for you at the time, but I see that then I did not truly understand. To live your whole life for someone, to stand by them and to care for them, no matter what happens, and then to have them betray you, throwing your devotion back in your face, is the hardest thing a person can bear. You feel foolish for having spent so much time on such an unworthy person. You feel as though you've given everything but been found wanting." She broke off, her eyes filling. "And I am so bloody tired of weeping. If you pat my hand, Gabriel, I shall never forgive you."

  I took a handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her in silence.

  I knew that Brandon had found Louisa wanting. He'd told her so once, and not tried very hard to hide his disappointment in her inability to have children. Louisa had been forced to stand by a few nights ago while Brandon was arrested, and look into the face of the woman Brandon admitted was his mistress. I thought she was holding up well, considering.

  "What you do with him after his trial will be your choice," I said. "Leave him, obtain a legal separation--that is for you to decide. I will help you as much as I can, use my few connections to bring about a happy ending for you."

  Louisa lifted her head. "Gabriel, take me to France."

  I started. "To France?"

  "Yes." She crumpled my handkerchief in her hand. "You told me that you wanted to go to France to find Carlotta. I offered to accompany you. Let us go, and leave London and all of this behind."

  Her eyes blazed fire in her pale face. Despite her anguish, she looked beautiful, resolute and glittering, like a diamond.

  "Louisa, if you hie off to France with me while your husband endures a murder trial, you will never live it down."

  "What does it matter? We are ruined. I am ruined. Even if Aloysius is found innocent, we shall always be known for it--the colonel who was tried for murder, arrested in front of his mistress and his wife. It will follow us all our lives."

  "I know," I said.

  She sprang to her feet and began pacing. "I want no part of it. Take me to France. I am certain that Paris will be slightly more exciting than a country village in Dorset."

  "Suggest a journey to Paris to Lady Aline. I will persuade her to accompany you."

  Louisa stopped and faced me, two dark red spots on her cheeks. "I do not wish to go with Aline. I wish to go with you."

  I studied her flushed face, her brittle eyes, her bosom as it rose with her agitated breath. If she had offered me this in 1814--after Napoleon had been temporarily defeated, when France was open again--I would have gone with her in a flash.

  I would have taken her to Paris and bought her frocks and drunk wine with her while the English delegation decided what to do with France and the restored Bourbon king. I would have abandoned honor and everything else to be with her, to take her hand and explore the world with her, to never to return to England again.

  I would have done it. I would have done it in 1815, after Waterloo, when my life was nothing and the Continent was free and open once again. I would have fled with her to begin anew.

  But not now. Now, I'd begun to build something from the wreck of my life. I'd laid a foundation with my friendship with Grenville, discovered an interest in investigating crime with Pomeroy and Sir Montague Harris. I had made friends with the Derwents and Lady Aline Carrington, Mr. Thompson of the Thames River patrol, and my landlady, Mrs. Beltan.

  And I had met Lady Breckenridge.

  I thought that in Lady Breckenridge I'd found a friend who understood me, one who could keep me from making too great an idiot of myself. I remembered her lips on mine the day before I'd journeyed to Epsom, and how much I'd liked that feeling.

  I had forged tenuous things that were new and needed to be explored. I now had something to lose.

  I cared for Louisa more than I'd ever cared for myself. But I no longer wanted to give up my entire life for her.

  She saw that in my eyes as I gazed at her. Her expression became one of defeat, and her shoulders drooped.

  "I am sorry," I said, as though it would make any difference.

  She shook her head. "I ought to have known that in the end, you would abandon me, too."

  I got to my feet. "No, never abandon you. Never that." I took her hands. "I will never leave you to face anything alone. You have my word. But if we did dash away together to France, or Italy, or any number of places, you would soon grow ashamed. You would dislike yourself, and you would grow angry at me for not stopping you. You would begin to dislike me, and that I could not bear."

  Tears stood in her eyes. "Gabriel."

  "In any case, I am horrible to live with. Ask Bartholomew."

  She did not smile. Louisa stood looking at me for a moment longer, then she lowered her gaze and walked away from me. She moved to the window and stood looking out at the gray drizzle that had begun.

  I did not know what else to say to her. I felt numb.

  "I should not have asked you," Louisa said. "Forgive me."

  Her back was slim, but straight and strong. She might not believe she could weather this problem, but I knew that she could. Louisa had a core of strength that the stoutest general would envy. Her strength had taken her through the hellish living on the Iberian peninsula, and through the grief that both Brandon and I had put her through.

  "Louisa," I said gently. "I swear to you that I will get his charges dismissed. I will bring Aloysius Brandon home. Because as much as I despise him for what he has done to you, I do not believe that he committed murder."

  "Why not? The rest of the world does."

  "What did Sir Montague and Sir Nathaniel tell you?"

  She turned around. "They said that Aloysius had reason to kill Mr. Turner. He had been seen growing angry with him, they had gone off alone together where Aloysius claims he called the man out. Aloysius named Mr. Turner a coward when he refused, and the knife was his."

  "The knife." I paused. "Was the knife truly Brandon's, without question?"

  "I do not know. I did not know all of his private possessions. And in any case, he admitted that the knife was his."<
br />
  "But he does not remember carrying it into the party. Or at least, so he says."

  Louisa made an exasperated noise. "The two magistrates asked me that as well. As though I go through my husband's pockets before we leave the house. I'm not the sort of wife who dresses her husband. He has a valet for that."

  "So if anyone would know about the knife, it would be the valet."

  "Yes, they asked Robbins. Interviewed him quite closely. Robbins agreed that the knife belonged to Brandon and said that he placed the knife in the pocket of Aloysius's frock coat. Aloysius did not ask for it, but he liked to have the knife with him. Aloysius insisted he did not notice whether the knife in his pocket."

  "Therefore," I said, "the knife is Brandon's in all likelihood. What we must discover is how it got from Brandon's pocket into the wound."

  "Most people think he put it there," Louisa said.

  "Well, I am one person who does not. But it would not be difficult to steal the knife from him. Someone could easily dip into his pocket. The most likely person to have taken the knife is, of course, Mrs. Harper."

  "You believe she is a murderess, not simply a Jezebel?"

  "I do not know yet what I believe. She lied to me, that is certain. Brandon is lying too. Once I clear out the lies of these two, I believe the solution will present itself."

  Louisa sagged. "I no longer know what to believe."

  I went to her and put my hands on her shoulders. "Please trust me. I will do whatever I can to make your world better for you. I love you that much."

  The tears that had been threatening to fall now spilled down her cheeks. "I love you too, Gabriel. I always have."

  I kissed her forehead. Her curls were like silk beneath my lips.

  It was difficult not to embrace her, not to whisper that the world could go to hell, that we could leave England together.

  But I resisted. I stepped back from her and let her go.

  In silence, Louisa gathered her shawl and her bonnet. She would not look at me as she tied the green silk ribbon under her chin. "For some reason," she said, trying to keep her voice light, "I feel as though I should be wearing black."

  "Have you seen your husband since he has gone to Newgate?"

  "No. How could I?"

  "Go and see him," I said. "Have Sir Montague take you."

  Louisa looked at me in anger but she said nothing. She finished tying the ribbon then she gathered her shawl and walked to the door. "Goodbye, Gabriel," she said.

  And she was gone.

  *** *** ***

  Much divided in mind, I set off for Covent Garden Theatre.

  The arched piazza leading to the theatre stretched along the northwest side of Bow Street, its soaring columns sheltering theatregoers, game girls, pickpockets, and servants from the April rain and wind. I walked among ladies and gentlemen dressed in the finest style as well as girls in tawdry gowns picked from secondhand stores or parish charities.

  A lord descending from a carriage marked with a coat of arms was instantly surrounded by beggars with hands outstretched. The lord scattered a few pennies among them before he lifted his head and swept past them. His footman swatted at the group, telling them to clear off, then hopped back onto the coach and rattled away to no doubt drink and dice with the coachman.

  I stopped to bow to a gentleman I recognized and then his wife, a large woman with feathers balancing atop a mass of gray curls. I had met the man through Grenville, and the three of us exchanged polite pleasantries. Just as the gentleman drew his wife on toward the doors of the theatre, someone hissed at me from the shadow of a pillar.

  "Lacey!"

  I waited until the gentleman and his lady had entered the theatre, then I peered into the darkness under the piazza.

  "Marianne," I said. "What are you doing?"

  She stepped from the shadow. She wore blue velvet trimmed with gold and silver tissue, and a bonnet with a long blue feather. She ruined this semblance of respectability by lurking behind the column like a street courtesan.

  "Is he here?" she asked.

  "I am to meet Grenville in his box, yes."

  Her tone grew bitter. "He has come to see Mrs. Bennington. He suggested a gathering afterward with her to his friends. I heard him as he arrived."

  "Did you hide here and spy on him?"

  "Well, if I did not spy on him, I would never know where he was, would I?" she said heatedly. "He has not come to see me for days. He does not even write me, and his servants are useless for information."

  "He and I spent the last two days in Epsom. At a funeral, if you must know. It was not a frivolous outing."

  "He might have been plowing a field, for all he told me. And now, he arrives, sweet as you please, to ogle Mrs. Bennington in yet another performance."

  I remembered Grenville's evasiveness about Mrs. Bennington. I did not want to lie to reassure Marianne, but she was becoming most obsessed about the subject.

  "Grenville invited me tonight so that I'd have a chance to speak to more of the guests from the Gillises' ball," I said.

  Marianne stepped closer to me. "If you'd like to know something interesting, he seemed quite keen to go to that ball. Kept saying there was something he had to do there."

  My interest perked. "Did he? He seems to have spoken to you a little about it, in any case."

  "Mrs. Bennington was also there. I can imagine what he had in mind."

  "Well, I cannot." I became aware of people glancing our way as they passed, of their raised brows and disdainful looks. "I must go in, Marianne. Go home and cease lurking under pillars. Someone might mistake your intentions."

  "I believe I will stay," she retorted. "I will be interested to see what direction he takes when he leaves--and with whom."

  "You'll catch cold. Go and wait in my rooms if you cannot bring yourself to go home. I know you have a key. Bartholomew has the fire hot. If he is there, you can interrogate him about Grenville's motives, if you wish, though I imagine he knows not much more than I do."

  Marianne scowled. "Gentlemen so enjoy giving orders."

  "I know better than to expect you to obey. Use my rooms if you want to keep warm; if not, wait out here in the rain, and follow him as you please."

  Her expression darkened. Marianne stepped back into the shadow of the column, but she leaned there and did not walk away.

  I left her and entered the theatre.

  Grenville's box was located almost directly above the stage, where the viewers could look down on the drama below as well as see who waited in the wings. Comfortable mahogany chairs stood in two rows with tables between them for lorgnettes or gloves or glasses of claret and brandy.

  The box was filled with gentlemen tonight, not a lady in sight, which made it, in my opinion, rather dreary. But I was interested enough in the gentlemen present to tolerate the absence of female company.

  An empty chair waited next to Grenville, I assumed for me. Grenville introduced me all around, beginning with Basil Stokes.

  Mr. Stokes was tall and white haired. As usual in a man of his age, he had a large belly from years of consuming at least a bottle a day of port, but he did not have the usual gout. He had a booming voice, and, when he greeted me, heads throughout the theatre turned in our direction.

  Stokes was from Hampshire, which, he assured me, afforded excellent hunting and fishing if I ever wanted to take the trouble. He laughed loudly and made a comment about the large bosom of an actress who had just entered the stage.

  The actress, indeed a buxom young lady, heard him. She simpered, and the audience guffawed.

  Mr. Bennington was a complete contrast to Stokes. He was about my age, an inch or two shorter than I was, and very lean, as though he ate sparingly and drank little. He had a long face and a longer expression, a man devoted to sardonic observation. His handshake was rather limp.

  "Pleased to meet you, my dear Captain Lacey. Have you come to watch my wife stun the masses of London again?" He said it with no pride, only a drawl o
f resignation.

  "I have seen her perform," I said. "She is a lady of great talent."

  "Oh, yes, indeed," Mr. Bennington said. "Her reputation is well deserved."

  I thought I heard a slight emphasis on the word reputation, but I could not be certain.

  The other gentlemen in the box were club fodder, gentlemen I'd met in passing while visiting Grenville or going with him to Tattersall's or Gentleman Jackson's boxing rooms. They greeted me with varying degrees of enthusiasm, some warm, some indifferent, each making a polite comment or two.

  We settled down to watch the performance, which was already well into the first act. As usual, the restless audience talked amongst themselves, shouted to the actors, drank and ate.

  In our box, the conversation turned to sport, namely pugilism and the best exhibition fighters. I leaned to Grenville and apologized under my breath for being late.

  "Not at all," he said. "I take it some new twist in the investigation?"

  "No. Marianne Simmons."

  Grenville started. "I beg your pardon?"

  "She accosted me under the piazza outside," I said.

  Grenville's mouth hardened. "Why the devil is she under the piazza outside?"

  "She must be gone by now. I told her to go to my rooms and get warm."

  Grenville's body stiffened and his gaze became fixed. He brought one closed fist to his mouth. "Damnation."

  Below us, the audience began to applaud, then to stamp, then to cheer, as the lovely Mrs. Bennington glided onto the stage. She waited, poised and gracious, while London adored her.

  Grenville rose from his chair and woodenly made for the door of the box. In alarm, I followed him, excusing myself to the other gentlemen. I heard murmurs below as people noticed Grenville's abrupt exit.

  Outside the box, the halls were deserted. Grenville swiftly walked away from me. By the time I reached the stairs, he'd already gone down, flinging himself out of the theatre without stopping for his hat and coat.

  I went in pursuit, leaving the relative warmth of the theatre for the cold wind and rain of the night.