A Gentlewoman's Guide to Murder

by Victoria Hamilton

  She was silent, watching him as he wound the ribbon and tied the length with string.

  “As I said, Aloisia and I share the apartment above,” he continued. “She takes in students to teach them French and sewing. That man gravely insulted her not two weeks ago as she was coming from the privy.” Then his eyes widened and he put one long-fingered, well-kept hand over his mouth. Hastily he added, “Our, er … conveniences are close enough to hail your neighbor across the alley, you see.” His face pinked, the tip of his cleft nose turning red.

  “What kind of gentleman would do such a thing, insult a lady?” Gillies leaned forward in the habitual stance of the born gossip and stared up into his eyes. “Did you see anything the night he were kilt right down in your own courtyard, almost? I haird he was set upon by a gang of robbers, slaughtered like a pig at the butcher!”

  Mr. Hargreaves, a look of revulsion on his face, said, “Oh, no, that is not so at all! He was killed there, yes, but I’m sure there was no bloody slaughter.” He bundled the thread and ribbon into a paper package and tied it with scrap of thin ribbon, making a bow with a flourish. “My sister’s room overlooks the alley, but she saw nothing that night,” he said firmly. “And as I told the magistrate’s constable, I never did see the shocking woman thief who stole away the serving girl, but I did see men there later that evening, and witnessed Sir Henry quarreling with them.”

  Gillies trembled with excitement; this was information her mistress could use! Hargreaves must be the informant the magistrate found. “Quarreling? What was going on?”

  He gave a moue of distaste and fluttered his hand. “There was one feller, but he went on his way right quick. There was two more, though. I couldn’t hear much, but Sir Henry was proper in a turmoil about something, jawing with one while the other hung back.” He paused as he handed the package to her. “He yelled an obscenity I won’t repeat in front of a lady.”

  She had likely heard much worse, being raised by a father who thought nothing of letting loose a volley of obscenities and then backhanding his children when they dared talk back to him. “Perhaps they came back later and killed him?”

  “P’raps,” he said as he wrote out a receipt in a neat hand.

  “Must’ve been so exciting to have all the broadsheet writers.”

  He looked up from his writing, ink dripping from the quill. “I wouldn’t speak to such as them.”

  Something in the man’s gaze suggested otherwise. “Maybe not you, then, but others must have. Didya not read the broadsheets?” With her eyes wide, Gillies added in a hushed tone, “Some of them writers said they spoke to Lady Claybourne, the poor lady. Did they no speak to you?”

  “I chased them away.”

  “But you told the magistrate’s men what you saw.”

  He nodded, his lips in a tight line.

  She examined his face. “I’d be terrified to live here, with such a beast roamin’ an’ killin’ folk.” She gave a theatrical, exaggerated shiver. “Are you not frightened?”

  “I’d wager whoever killed Sir Henry came only for him. He was a dreadful man and deserved what he got.” There was a finality to the haberdasher’s words.

  He would not be drawn, after that, simply shaking his head. Gillies was, however, not convinced that his sister, whose room, he said, overlooked the back courtyard, had seen and heard nothing. She carefully counted out and then handed the haberdasher the money. “Your sister gives lessons in sewing, you said. Could I see her work? I may know someone who could lairn a thing or two about fancy stitching.”

  He brightened and reached under the counter. “Of course! She does up the clocks on gentlemen’s stockings for certain customers as likes a bit of fancy handwork. See how neat her sewing is!”

  Gillies gazed at the embroidery on the man’s gray silk knitted stocking, a flourish of neat, flat satin stitches in a stylized fleur-de-lis at the top of a cream gusset. “What might be her direction, Mr. Hargreaves?”

  “A note will find her here. She takes girls every day but Sunday. You will see a blue door to the left of my shop; her name and mine indicate our rooms upstairs.”

  “I’ll see if the mother I know will have Miss Hargreaves teach her girls. Now, about Sir Henry,” she said, trying to elicit more information. “Maybe someone in the household killed him if he is as nasty as you say?”

  The haberdasher hid a quick smile, plastering a pious look on his face instead, hand over his heart. “God rest his soul. I may have thought him foul, but I have heard his wife is devastated by his death.”

  “Oh?”

  “After all, who will run the brewery now?”

  He had nothing more to say. Gillies left the shop and headed around the corner onto Chandler Lane. As she strolled past the alley, glancing down it, she saw the haberdasher come out his back door and stare at the townhome courtyard behind his shop. She stepped back, concealing herself along the brick entrance to the alley, not wanting to be seen, then took a chance and peeped again. Hargreaves stared a moment longer, with what appeared to be an uncertain expression, looked up at his own building, then returned to his shop through the back door.

  Gillies, perturbed by the curiousness of Hargreaves staring at the back of what she assumed must be the Claybourne residence in so distracted a manner, walked on and turned down Blithestone, basket over her arm, just another servant on a street busy with them. In front of the Claybourne residence she paused and dug in her basket while covertly examining the townhouse.

  It was one of a row of newer modest townhomes, narrow and constructed of yellow brick above whitewashed stone, leased by the up-and-coming tradespeople of London. Opposite it was a small green park bounded by a black wrought iron fence and a locked gate, likely for the use of the Blithestone residents. Sir Henry’s house would not have suited him for much longer if his brewery was doing as well as might be expected. Gillies didn’t understand what the man had done to be knighted, but it ofttimes didn’t take much beyond saying something kindly about the king. Poor dotty ducky; with the state of the old king’s head—and whatever one could say about him, he was better, even mad, than his spendthrift son—it may not have taken much beyond a speech of support for the royal family.

  On the pavement opposite the townhome was a fellow lingering near a lamppost. He was sulky-looking, his dark gaze now settling on Gillies. His eyes, even at a distance, glittered with inquisitiveness. He was about to start across the street but stopped suddenly.

  A woman came out the front door of number seventy-three and glared at Gillies as she set a girl to work scrubbing the front doorstep. Housekeeper by the looks of her, Gillies thought, with a leap in her bosom. She was hard-featured, bitter-mouthed, her face deeply lined and her hair iron gray under her starched white cap.

  “Pardon me, madam, but do you know th’time?” Gillies asked, holding her basket close to her body.

  The woman consulted a pocket watch on her silver chatelaine, then snapped it shut. “A quarter of two.”

  “Thank you,” Gillies said, curtseying. “I couldn’t bother you for a sip of something to drink, could I?”

  “No. Now get on wiv you.” She kicked the child lightly and said to her, shaking her finger, “Mind, you get all them stains if you’re to stay on ’ere.” She glared at Gillies, then across the street at the skulking man—who suddenly started off, whistling a tune that carried all the way to them—then down at the child again. “And no talkin’ while you’re to be workin’, or you’ll get a beatin’.”

  Gillies walked back the way she had come, knowing there would be no prying information from the child. As far as what the housekeeper had said about a beating, she’d heard worse. Even in the St. Germaine home, Cook ofttimes threatened the potboy with having his ears boxed, though she had never yet carried out the threat. It was a fact of life for working children. At least they had food and a warm place to sleep, and in the Claybourne house the
new scullery maid would not now be raped by the master.

  She turned and headed back along Chandler, pausing to look down the alley once more; her mistress had slunk down it just a few nights ago. Through the brick arch she could see that there were privy houses lining the bottom of the back gardens of the townhouses on one side. The merchant establishments along Samuel did not have enclosed brick courtyards, but they did have brick privies—small, cramped, and dark no doubt—attached to each shop with two doors along the back of each unit, one from the shop and one from the upstairs rooms. That was where Sir Henry had insulted Benjamin Hargreaves’s sister, near the privy. But was that even possible? It seemed an unlikely tale to her.

  And in any case, it was surely not a grave enough offence to inspire Mr. Hargreaves with murderous rage. Depended on what the insult was, she supposed, and the temperament of the man. With a sigh, Gillies turned into the stiffening breeze and headed back to Samuel Street, where she could hope to find a post carriage or cart to carry her toward Chelsea. All she had done was find one more suspect in Sir Henry’s murder, and she had not spied Tommy Jones even once.

  Seven

  The ladies were gathered in Lady Adelaide’s parlor and this time there were no strangers to strangle their talk. They were uncommonly silent, these five good ladies, and looked to Emmeline with an array of expressions. Their hostess was tense, her favorite cat, the one-eyed black tom, on her lap. She petted him ceaselessly, her pale gray dress becoming littered with dark hairs until he growled, lashed out at her, and leaped down. She looked startled but otherwise didn’t remark, holding her handkerchief to her scraped hand as blood oozed, staining the purity of the linen. “Emmeline, why don’t you tell us why you have summoned us here today?”

  Emmeline gathered her thoughts as she glanced at each woman, their expressions as individual as they were. Martha Adair looked frightened, her friend Dorcas Harvey wary. Juliette Espanson was wide-eyed, Lady Clara bemused. Emmeline took a deep breath and said, “We were all together when first we learned of Sir Henry Claybourne’s murder. As we all had agreed, I visited him to rescue his scullery maid, poor little Molly. But I also delivered to him a pointed warning that if he ever behaved thusly again, he would not be dealt with so kindly.”

  “Demmed right, too,” Dorcas said, her cheeks red. Dorcas was in that most difficult of positions, a poor relation tethered as companion to a sickly and irritable aunt whom she seemed to never please. Both women tormented each other with badly fitting personalities. Dorcas had once been a schoolteacher, but for some reason she would not discuss had been let go. “Should have had his ballywoggles cut off!”

  Martha Adair shot her friend an alarmed look. “Dorcas, please. Such vulgarity!”

  An outcry against vulgarity in a meeting to discuss a man’s murder seemed ridiculous to Emmeline, but Martha was sensitive to crudeness. The absurdity of Dorcas’s made-up word almost made her want to giggle. If she were not speaking of murder, she would have. Instead, Emmeline maintained her stern look, and even Dorcas calmed.

  “As much as I condemn murder,” Emmeline continued, folding her hands together and clutching tightly, “I cannot say I’m sorry Sir Henry is dead.”

  “How can we be sure you had no hand in it?” Lady Clara asked, one elegant brow arched. She was gowned in gray-green silk the color of sage leaves, snow white silk gloves to the elbow and gleaming pearls woven through her elegant dark hair. “I would have at least considered exterminating the rodent, given your opportunity. You did have a knife … and used it, you tell us.”

  “Of course I did not slaughter Sir Henry!” Emmeline exclaimed.

  There was a collective whoosh of expelled breath, several relieved sighs all at once. Was it possible that these, her Crone compatriots as she had come to consider them, thought her capable of such a vile crime, even in the defense of a helpless child?

  “It was just a thought,” Lady Clara said, her tone and mien coolly amused. “I commend you on keeping your temper.”

  “Who was it who brought the girl’s predicament to the group?” Emmeline asked.

  Miss Juliette Espanson raised her hand. Red-haired, freckled, and uncommonly pretty, with sparkling blue eyes, the young lady appeared subdued. Her high spirits—not too high for fashion, of course, as giddiness was frowned upon—usually buoyed them all, but this day she was downcast. “I couldn’t bear the thought of that poor child being abused by such a loathsome man. And trapped! With no recourse, no escape. It haunted me.”

  Juliette was engaged to wed a wealthy but much older man. She was desperately unhappy about it and the law was on her side; if she wished, she could say no. But to say no to the match would be to incur her father’s wrath. As her guardian, he could send her to her grandparents in the extreme north of Ireland, where she claimed she would have no more companionship of any kind but for the villagers and sheep until she was middle-aged or acquiesced. She believed in providence and would be saved, she said, from her fate at the eleventh hour.

  “We all agreed that Molly needed to be rescued,” she concluded.

  “How did you know about her?” Emmeline asked. “And how did you know about Sir Henry’s despicable habits with his servants?”

  Juliette turned, frowning, to her closest friend among them. “Clara, you told me, I think?”

  Lady Clara nodded. “I was appalled when I heard about the poor child,” she said, her cool, calm voice warmed slightly by anger and husky with subdued feeling. “And about Sir Henry’s execrable behavior in the past. An open secret, apparently, among a certain circle of servants.”

  “And who told you?”

  “Dorcas said something,” Lady Clara said, turning to the companion. “Isn’t that so?”

  Emmeline turned to gaze at Dorcas, who appeared confused. “Where did you hear of Molly’s plight?”

  Dorcas, her full face still suffused with red, frowned. “Martha, you mentioned something, did you not? And I said to Lady Clara that we ought to do something?”

  “Did I?” Martha asked.

  “Think, Martha,” Emmeline urged, watching her become flustered. “Where did you hear about Molly?”

  Martha’s eyes welled. “It wasn’t Molly I heard of first, it was Sally, of course, poor little Sally!”

  “Who is Sally?” Emmeline asked patiently. Martha was one of those women who would become forgetful if pressed too hard. She needed to be led slowly to revelation.

  “Sally was the last scullery maid.”

  “In Sir Henry’s household? Sally was the previous scullery maid in the Claybourne home,” Emmeline said, trying to be clear.

  Martha nodded. “I heard through my housekeeper’s sister’s daughter’s employer—or was it my housekeeper’s daughter’s sister’s employer? I can’t recall which—that being a scullery maid in Sir Henry Claybourne’s household was a terrible fate for any child. She said … she said the last girl—the one before Sally—ended up in one of those horrible bawdy houses. One run by … oh, what was her name?” Martha furrowed her brow. “Maud something-or-other. I remember because Maud rhymed with bawd.” She pinkened and nodded.

  “Your housekeeper’s sister’s daughter’s employer.”

  Martha nodded. “Or my housekeeper’s daughter’s sister’s employer.”

  Emmeline shook her head; that was too twisted a trail to follow right at that moment. “So what happened to Sally?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say?” Martha blinked. “I helped her.”

  “You helped her?”

  Martha nodded. “I hired her away from there. Picked her up myself in our carriage.”

  Emmeline bit her lip to keep from crying out, took a deep breath, and then slowly said, “You mean that you have employed Sally all this time? That I could have asked her for information on Sir Henry?”

  The woman appeared baffled, and then understanding filled her eyes. “I never thought … th
at is …” Martha’s voice faded and tears welled.

  Lady Sherringdon moved to a chair next to her and took her hand, patting it. “There, there, Martha, you did nothing wrong.” Adelaide gave Emmeline a look.

  Emmeline nodded and straightened. “Martha, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. However, perhaps now Sally could tell me more about the household.”

  Lady Clara eyed her, still calm and cool though her restless hands moved, tugging at the fingers of her elegant silk gloves. “Why?”

  Emmeline paused, trying to find the right words. Should she tell them it was, in some measure, because she was afraid? She had been there; it was possible the cook or housekeeper could identify her as the masked marauder, and thus a suspect in Sir Henry’s murder. “Both the newspapers and the magistrate are looking to blame the Avengeress, as they have named me. It is a dangerous position to be in.”

  Emmeline eyed Lady Clara, who waited for her to say more, though the others whispered together. She in particular—so icy, so unhappy, so desperately alone in her life—was, by her own admission, capable of such an act. It rather staggered Emmeline to try to imagine a perfect lady like Clara slitting the knight throat to belly with a knife. However … it was possible.

  “I want to know the truth,” she finally said. Information was the only antidote she could think of to this poisonous suspicion, this distrust of women she cared about and who were important to her. She met each one’s glance as she surveyed her group. They were crones; each one, in her own way, a woman who had achieved wisdom through pain and tribulation and now trying to use that wisdom to aid others. But had one betrayed the group? Emmeline’s gaze returned to Lady Clara and fell to her gloved hands in her lap. One of the pristine white gloves was marred now by a spot of red near the wrist, bleeding through from some wound on the lady’s hand.

  Emmeline’s breathing quickened. But no, surely her worst suspicions could not be true. Lady Clara, so cool, so elegant, so refined? There must be many who wanted so loathsome a human as Sir Henry dead, and perhaps it was her task to find out who did before that killer became judge and jury and murdered again.