Mystery Loves Company

by Sheri Cobb South

  “Back so soon, my dear?” Lady Washbourn began, turning at the sound of the door opening. “Oh, Mr. Pickett! And Mrs. Pickett, I’m so pleased to see you.” She rose from her chair and dipped a curtsy.

  Greetings were exchanged, and then the countess gestured toward the chair vacated by her husband. “Washbourn is not here at the moment, but he should be back directly. In the meantime, will you not sit down?”

  They seated themselves, and Pickett broached the subject he had been unable to raise with the countess that morning. “Your ladyship, my wife and I have been discussing the portrait hanging over your drawing room mantel,” he said, which was certainly a novel way of describing the conversation that had taken place a few hours earlier. “Mrs. Pickett says it was done by a Mr. Tomkins.”

  “You have a good eye, Mrs. Pickett,” she told Julia, then turned to Pickett. “Yes, Mr. Henry Tomkins of the Royal Academy.”

  “Was it painted shortly after your marriage, or more recently?”

  Lady Washbourn regarded him keenly, realizing there was more behind his innocent questioning than an interest in art. “It was done six months ago, when we were in Town for the autumn session of Parliament. Mr. Tomkins is much in demand, you know, and his services are practically impossible to procure during the Season.”

  “Did your husband watch Mr. Tomkins at work?” Realizing they might be overheard by curious ears in the adjacent boxes, Pickett added in an offhand manner, “I suspect his lordship paid a pretty penny, so I shouldn’t be surprised at his wanting to make sure he was getting his money’s worth.”

  “No, for Mr. Tomkins will not allow anyone to watch him paint. I confess I was more than a bit nervous about the finished product, for I don’t need an artist to tell me I am no beauty. Still, I can’t but be pleased with the results. It is an excessively flattering likeness, is it not?”

  “On the contrary, I thought the artist captured you very well,” Pickett said. Lowering his voice, he asked, “When Mr. Tomkins completed the commission and presented his bill, did he mention any of his paints being lost, or misplaced?”

  “Why, no, Mr. Pickett,” she responded in kind, but her expression was puzzled. “Should he have done?”

  “That is what I would like to know, your ladyship. If you should happen to recall any such incident, will you send word to me, at either Bow or Curzon Street?”

  “Of course.” Correctly assuming the subject to be closed, at least for the nonce, she addressed Julia in a very different tone. “Tell me, Mrs. Pickett, what do you think of The Bridegroom Deceived?”

  Julia shook her head. “It’s a very amusing play, but I fear I cannot think much of the intelligence of any man who fails to recognize his wife through a disguise.” She smiled up at Pickett. “I suspect my own husband would very quickly penetrate any such ruse.”

  “Yes, but then, you are wed to an unusually clever man,” her ladyship pointed out. “Then, too, Mr. Goodman had no reason to suspect that his bride was a princess, and so he would have no reason to expect to see her in such a rôle.”

  “It will be interesting to see how he reacts when he finds out,” Pickett remarked with perhaps undue solemnity, given that the play under discussion was a farce.

  “You will not have long to wait, for the second act should begin soon. I do hope Washbourn will not be late—ah, there you are,” she said a bit too brightly, looking at some point beyond Pickett’s shoulder.

  “Forgive me, my dear—Mrs. Pickett, Mr. Pickett,” he added, nodding to each of the visitors in turn. “Some nonsense about a missing fan. Lady Barbara is convinced she must have lost it on the night of our masquerade.”

  “She summoned you to her box for the purpose of discussing a lost fan?” Lady Washbourn asked, apparently unable to prevent a trace of skepticism from creeping into her tone.

  His lordship nodded. “This particular fan had been a gift from—a former suitor.” His slight stumble left Pickett in no doubt as to the identity of the suitor in question. “I told her you had not mentioned finding such a thing—although poor Annie’s death might well have driven it from your mind—and that she would do better to address her inquiries to you.”

  “Yes, of course,” the countess agreed with an eagerness Pickett found both touching and pathetic. “I don’t recall any such item turning up, but I shall ask the staff.”

  The conversation became more labored with the earl’s arrival, and it seemed to Pickett that they were all trying a bit too hard to avoid the subject of Annie’s death. All in all, it was a relief when the gong sounded to signal the theatre patrons to return to their seats for the second act.

  Alas, Pickett only traded one set of problems for another. He escaped from the real-life drama of the Washbourn marriage only to be immersed in the fictional one being enacted onstage, in which the obtuse Mr. Goodman’s dilemma reflected rather too closely Pickett’s own situation.

  Apparently Julia was equally conscious of the parallel, for they had scarcely settled themselves in their seats when she looked at him keenly and remarked, “I expect Mr. Goodman will be very pleased by his unexpected rise in the world.”

  “They could be quite happy living on his income,” he pointed out. “It isn’t as if they would be begging in the street.”

  “Yes, but why should they? Why should she have to give up her kingdom merely for the sake of his pride?”

  “ ‘Mere’ pride, Julia? There is also the little matter of deception, you know. They don’t call it The Bridegroom Deceived for nothing. She should have told him.”

  “Perhaps she felt she could not,” Julia retorted. “Perhaps she knew that if she had told him from the beginning, he would have been too—too confoundedly noble to marry her at all!”

  “Blast it, Julia, he found out on his honeymoon! From his father-in-law, of all people!”

  “What?” Utterly bewildered, she looked down at the printed program in her hand, whose description of the plot bore absolutely no resemblance to the scenario he had just described.

  At that moment, perhaps thankfully, the curtain opened on the second act.

  “Never mind,” muttered Pickett as he fixed his eyes on the stage, uncomfortably aware of having said too much.

  The play wound to its inevitable conclusion: the lovely Gwendolyn was revealed as the true princess of Sylvania, the handsome but dim Mr. Goodman took his place at her side with nary a qualm, and everyone lived happily ever after. Still, something of the evening’s early promise had been lost. When they returned to Curzon Street and prepared for bed, Pickett gave Julia a perfunctory peck on the cheek, then snuffed the candle and rolled over. But it was a long time before he fell asleep.

  14

  In Which John Pickett’s Investigation

  Takes an Unexpected Turn

  Before reporting to Bow Street the next morning, Pickett called at the Bond Street studio of Mr. Henry Tomkins, R. A. As he opened the door, a bell mounted over the doorframe announced his entrance, and a masculine voice from the floor above called down to inquire as to the nature of his business.

  “John Pickett, of Bow Street,” he said, feeling more than a bit foolish at having to shout up the stairs in the direction of the unseen speaker. “I should like to ask a few questions, if I may.”

  “Bow Street, you say? Oh, very well,” the disembodied voice conceded grudgingly. “I suppose you’d better come up.”

  Pickett mounted the stairs to the floor above where, he assumed, the artist would be working in the room at the front of the house in order to take advantage of the light from the large windows overlooking the street. This theory proved to be quite correct; alas, Pickett discovered to his chagrin that the artist had company. In fact, Mr. Tomkins was hard at work on a new portrait whose model was draped sinuously over a chaise longue, clad in nothing but a strategically placed scarf.

  “Er, um, I’m sorry,” Pickett stammered, blushing crimson and quickly turning his back on the overexposed and quite unembarrassed model. “I didn’t know�
�I thought you were alone.”

  Mr. Tomkins laid down his brush, then picked up a cloth and began to wipe the paint from his hands. “It’s quite all right, Mr. Pickett,” he said with a sigh that indicated otherwise.

  Too late, Pickett realized that he should have given his direction as Curzon Street, and offered some tale about wishing to engage the portraitist’s services. The artist’s next words, however, drove such petty considerations from his mind.

  “If you will excuse me, Persephone, you may rest for a bit before we resume.”

  “Persephone?” At the mention of the name, Pickett whirled about to confront the artist’s model, her lack of clothing forgotten.

  But not for long. The woman had let her scarf fall to the seat of the chaise longue and picked up a satin dressing gown, which she appeared to be in no great hurry to put on. Upon hearing her name called in a voice of incredulous dismay, she looked up at Pickett and winked.

  Mr. Tomkins looked from one to the other. “You two know each other?”

  “We’ve, er, we’ve never been introduced, exactly,” Pickett temporized.

  “Of course we have,” the artist’s model put in, shrugging her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown. “Dr. Humphrey introduced us. Don’t you remember?”

  In fact, Pickett tried his best not to think of that experience at all, but it was unlikely he would ever forget his encounter with Persephone or Electra, another member of the same sorority, who had been tasked with proving his virility (or, more specifically, any lack thereof) for the purpose of obtaining an annulment, while Dr. Edmund Humphrey observed the proceedings and took notes. Pickett had hoped never to clap eyes on any part of that unholy trinity again, and here he had crossed paths with two of the three in less than a fortnight.

  “I, um, er—”

  “Never mind, poppet, I won’t tell,” she assured him, her gaze drifting down his person in fond remembrance. “I trust that little business was settled satisfactorily?”

  “Most—most satisfactorily,” Pickett said with a hint of defiance. “In fact, the lady and I decided to stay married.”

  “Oh, well done,” she purred approvingly. “I must say, I thought at the time that it was a right shame.”

  “If you’ll wait for me in the other room,” the artist interrupted impatiently, “I’d like to take care of this business with Mr. Pickett, so I can get back to work before I lose the morning sunlight.”

  “Of course, Hank,” she cooed, then chasséd from the room.

  “Now, Mr. Pickett, what can I do for you?”

  “I believe you recently painted a portrait of the Countess of Washbourn.”

  Mr. Tomkins nodded. “Yes, about six months ago. What of it?”

  Pickett regarded Persephone’s abandoned chaise longue with some consternation as a new and unwelcome thought occurred to him. “Did Lady Washbourn come here to your studio for her sittings?”

  “No, no, certainly not. The studio is all very well for persons of Persephone’s stamp, but for a commission such as Lord Washbourn’s, I am of course at his service—or her ladyship’s, as the case may be.”

  “And having commissioned you to take his wife’s likeness, did his lordship take any particular interest in the proceedings themselves—wanting to watch as you painted, for instance?”

  “No, he didn’t, and for that I’m grateful,” confessed the artist. “As a general rule, I don’t allow others to watch me at work, but when one is paying as much as Lord Washbourn—well, it would have been an awkward prohibition to have to enforce.”

  Pickett glanced at the open paint box on a table positioned next to the artist’s easel. “It must be a challenge, working somewhere other than your studio. You must have to be careful not to leave anything behind.”

  “Not so very much,” Mr. Tomkins said, to Pickett’s disappointment. “Long before I could afford to set up a studio, I made a practice of soliciting commissions from door to door, so I already had an established routine for working at various locations. The greater risk is that of leaving something at the studio, and then wishing I’d thought to put it in my paint box. Of course, that’s not to say I never forget anything. In fact, a day or two after I’d completed the Washbourn commission, I realized I had left something at their house in Grosvenor Square.”

  “Did you indeed?” asked Pickett, his ears pricking up at this revelation. “A tube of paint, perhaps?”

  The artist’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Why yes, as a matter of fact, it was. How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess,” Pickett said cryptically. “I trust you were able to get it back?”

  Mr. Tomkins shook his head. “There was no need to trouble her ladyship over such a thing. The tube was almost empty, and ocher is cheap in any case, so”—he broke off with a shrug.

  “Then the missing paint was not Prussian blue?” Pickett asked, conscious of a pang of disappointment.

  “No, it was ocher, a yellowish-brown that I used—in combination with several other pigments, of course—to render her ladyship’s hair, as well as certain parts of the background and the carpet at her feet.”

  “I see,” Pickett said, abandoning with some regret what had appeared to be a very promising theory. “Well then, I’ll take no more of your valuable time.”

  The artist nodded in dismissal, clearly impatient to get back to work, and Pickett quitted the premises. When he returned to Bow Street, he found Dr. Gilroy lying in wait for him with a thick book under one arm, its leather binding cracked and its pages dog-eared from much use.

  “The good doctor here wants a word with you, Mr. Pickett,” Mr. Colquhoun informed him without preamble. You can use my chambers for privacy, if you wish.”

  Pickett nodded. “Thank you, sir.” He showed the doctor into the magistrate’s private office, and then closed the door behind them. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Dr. Gilroy. You have information for me?”

  “I believe I may, although you will be the best judge of whether it is any use or not.” The physician set the heavy book on the desk and began flipping pages. “I took the liberty of looking up prussic acid in my medical texts to make sure I hadn’t missed anything that might have been of use to you.”

  “And?”

  “And it appears the pigment Prussian blue is not the only source of the poison. It also occurs naturally in certain plants, including the seeds of common fruits.”

  “What fruits?” asked Pickett, as a new and entirely unexpected possibility began to take form in his brain.

  The doctor ran a finger down the page. “Apples, for one, as well as stone fruits such as apricots, cherries, peaches, plums—” Dr. Gilroy interrupted his reading to inquire, “Are you all right, Mr. Pickett?”

  “Yes, I’m—I’m quite all right,” Pickett stammered, squeezing his eyes shut against the blinding light of revelation.

  He could not recall afterwards exactly what he’d said to the doctor. He hoped he had thanked the man for the information before sending him on his way, but he could not have sworn to it. He did, however, remember waiting with his head spinning until Mr. Colquhoun concluded his business at the bench.

  “I’ve been looking at it backwards,” he told the magistrate, as soon as he could have a word alone with his mentor.

  “Have you, now?” asked Mr. Colquhoun, his bushy white brows lowering thoughtfully. “In what way?”

  “Lord Washbourn is not trying to kill his wife. Lady Washbourn is trying to kill her husband.”

  “Bless my soul! Are you sure?”

  “No, not entirely, but it certainly looks that way.” He ticked the sequence of events off on his fingers. “Lady Washbourn—whose father was a brewer, let’s not forget that—makes her own ratafia flavored with peaches and almonds; shortly before the masquerade, her ladyship goes downstairs and instructs the staff to serve this in addition to the champagne and negus she’d ordered for the party; Lord Washbourn brings her a glass of that same beverage, which she sets down untouched; an
d, finally, an unsuspecting maid picks up a glass of ratafia, drinks it down, and dies within minutes.”

  “We don’t know that it was the same glass,” the magistrate pointed out.

  “That’s true, sir, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t lay you very long odds.”

  “Even if that were the case, wouldn’t it be Lady Washbourn giving the glass to her husband, rather than the other way ’round?”

  “I haven’t worked out all the details yet,” Pickett confessed. “I hadn’t even considered the possibility until just now.”

  “I see,” Mr. Colquhoun said, nodding. “In the meantime, perhaps you can tell me why her ladyship would wish to do so, and why she would set a Bow Street Runner on the trail.”

  Pickett thought of Lady Washbourn, sitting in miserable solitude while her husband indulged in a tête-à-tête with the lady he had once hoped to marry. “The oldest story in the world,” he told the magistrate. “She’s in love with her husband, but he loves another woman, one whom he had thought at one time to marry, and who may even now be his mistress. Lady Washbourn decides that if she can’t have him—all of him—then no one will.”

  “And her reasons for bringing you into the matter?”

  “To establish her own innocence. She sets herself up as the intended victim, and then, if a tragic ‘accident’ were to befall his lordship, what would I think but that he’d been hoist with his own petard, so to speak? The maid’s death even helps her in that regard. After all, there’s already been one unintended victim; why not another?”

  The magistrate shook his head. “It makes a certain sort of sense, but she would be taking a terrible risk. She couldn’t know for sure that you wouldn’t tumble to the truth.”

  Pickett’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Yes, well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been underestimated.”

  “So, assuming this theory of yours is correct, how do you intend to prove it?”

  “There’s the rub, sir,” Pickett said with a sigh. “To start with, I should like to have a look about Lady Washbourn’s still-room, where she makes the stuff. So I suppose it’s back to Grosvenor Square.”