A Tale of Two Murders

by Heather Redmond

  “Not your son?”

  “No, I cannot look upon my dear boy and think that. My fancy was merely the effect of the wine that night. It gave me strange ideas.”

  “Then your mind is changed in no way despite the fate of Miss Rueff?”

  “It was in the papers. My sister had to come to her idea from somewhere. She is obsessed with youth.”

  Charles regarded Lady Lugoson’s lovely hair. Her maid had spent a great deal of time curling the front into tight clutches of blond ringlets. Not a hint of disinterested dishabille was evident on the lady’s person. He did not see her going gently into her middle age.

  “You believe your sister is not well?” he asked.

  “We shall see her in Bedlam before the end,” she said, then twisted her lips together tightly. “I would like to resolve the situation very quickly.”

  So she could return to France. Charles had the feeling that Lady Lugoson was willing to sweep the entire Marie Rueff story under the rug in order to have her sister put away. Why? Did she need whatever possessions her sister had? If her money was sunk into the Garrick, surely there was not much. Or was this the result of some deeper rivalry, something to do with the late Lord Lugoson, perhaps?

  Was the lady protecting her late husband? What was the complete and true story there?

  He was cast onto the waves of his thoughts. Who might be able to tell him more? The Carleys were too closely involved, in his opinion, to be of use, and he could not think to access Lady Holland on his own. Mrs. Decker came to mind. Would she allow a return call?

  He heard a key in the door. Relieved that his young brother had turned up, he went to the door and welcomed him heartily. “Fred! Where have you been? I thought we had plans for tonight.”

  “Here I am,” his brother said, droplets falling from his coat, his hair damp where it hadn’t been protected by his hat. “William asked me to help him rearrange his rooms. But the weather is too foul for anything other than a game of draughts by the fire.”

  A chair creaked and when Charles turned around, Lady Lugoson had already repinned her hat. Quickly, he fetched her cloak and dropped it over her shoulders, careful not to touch her.

  As she fastened it, she inclined her head, but said nothing, and swept out the still-open door.

  Fred didn’t speak until the footsteps had ceased to ring on the stairs. “What was that about?”

  “I’m not sure,” Charles said soberly. “But I want to find out. Set out the draughts board and heat up some cider while I dash off a quick note.”

  * * *

  Charles had decided not to request Miss Hogarth’s companionship this time, as much as he’d like to see her since she admitted he was right in his ranking of murder suspects. While she had been an asset on his first call to Mrs. Decker, he recalled that she had said some things weren’t fit for certain ears. Perhaps she would say more if he came alone.

  Late Friday afternoon, he made his way to Mrs. Decker’s home, following the note he’d sent that morning. There had been no time for her to respond. Thankfully, she agreed to receive him, and as the sky rapidly darkened outside, he found himself on her settee, drinking tea poured from that same silver teapot as before.

  Mrs. Decker, however, was transformed. She wore a new hairstyle with curls along the side of her face, rather than the formerly severe one. Her dress looked fresh and pretty, a striped fabric that was kind to her expansive figure.

  “You must forgive me,” she fluttered, touching her curls. “Mr. Decker requested a new miniature for me and I had the painter in today.”

  “It’s a wonderful thing to have a strong marriage,” Charles said gaily.

  “Are you thinking of marriage yourself, Mr. Dickens?”

  “My position in life has improved,” he said. “It is not out of the question.”

  “That is well done for such a young man. I’ve heard it said you show promise.” She said this in such a tone of cheerful enthusiasm that he felt none of the discomfort he’d had from Lady Lugoson’s call.

  “Thank you for the compliment.” He noted there was a new chair in the room, too, upholstered in a rich red velvet fabric. Perhaps she was going to pose on it. “I came today to follow up on our previous conversation. I had the sense you were unwilling to discuss certain indelicate matters in front of Miss Hogarth, who is of course a few years younger than I am.”

  “You feel you need to know these things?”

  “I had begun to believe that Beatrice Carley might have poisoned her friend, and Miss Rueff as well, over possible slights of a romantic nature,” he admitted. “But Lady Lugoson is intent on her sister being the murderess, though the evidence seems slighter. You had some enthusiasm for the poisoner being even closer to home. I am afraid I am in the thrall of a poisoner, madam. I wish not to act on anyone’s behalf if the possibility exists that they have been a party to this tragic death.”

  “What is your deepest thought on the matter?” she asked.

  “That Lady Lugoson might have some secret agenda to punish her sister for the facts surrounding Christiana Lugoson’s birth in the first place. Is there any chance Lord Lugoson was murdered?”

  “I don’t believe so.” Mrs. Decker stared at the floral-patterned carpet. Her skirts rustled against the wool. “I have never heard there was the slightest question. He had been short of breath for years and ultimately died of a lung infection.”

  “That doesn’t sound like poison,” Charles agreed. “Would Angela Acton truly kill her own daughter simply to hide the mere possibility that having the girl around would show her true age?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “She can be violent,” Charles admitted. “I’ve seen the result of a blow on the face of her assistant. But a poisoner?”

  “That is a more subtle art, so they say,” Mrs. Decker said with a toss of her black curls. Then she touched the silver at her temples self-consciously, as if realizing she was not of the age to make such a coquettish gesture.

  “I implore you to share the complete truth with me,” Charles begged. “I appeal to your good sense. If I am wrong about Beatrice Carley, I need to stop impugning her character.”

  “I don’t think it is a very good one,” Mrs. Decker said frankly. “But she’s a child, as Christiana was, rest her soul.”

  “And the Lugosons?”

  “It is a terrible story. Lord Lugoson was Lucifer’s own devil, I’m afraid. We still shudder to think of him.” She picked up her teacup and drank heartily.

  Charles glanced down and realized his own tea had cooled entirely. He polished off the entire teacup at one go, waiting for her speech to begin.

  “I’ve been told he shot himself,” Mrs. Decker said, not offering him more tea. “That is the truth.”

  “He was a suicide?” Charles said, startled. “What about his lungs?”

  “That is the public story, and he did have trouble with them, so it was believed.” The lady leaned forward, her curls dangling like a spaniel’s ears. The release of a secret seemed to energize her. “A long life of misdeeds culminated in a rape even he could not live with, or so I’m told.”

  Charles could scarcely believe his ears. First one story, then another. These Lugosons were a tragic puzzle. “Was that someone his own daughter?”

  “Might that be why they fled to France after?” Mrs. Decker said with a gasp.

  His eyes widened as he remembered the slim, angelic girl. “You think Miss Lugoson bore a child?”

  Her eyes rounded. “If she did, I did not hear of it, but even in the parish, you don’t hear everything.”

  “Her figure had recovered, if that is true, but it would have been over a year by the time I saw her,” Charles ruminated.

  “He was a very bad man, and the Actons were so intimidated by his rank that they gave him everything he wanted.”

  “Is the son the same as the father?”

  She put her hand in front of her mouth. “He is very young, but this business of not sendin
g him away to school makes me wonder.”

  “Lady Lugoson wants to keep him close. Of course.” Charles’s mind whirred. “What if it was Christiana Lugoson herself who was the bad seed? Might she have been poisoned to save her brother, unpleasant as I find him?”

  “That points to Lady Lugoson then, not Angela Acton.”

  “The lady is deflecting,” Charles said gloomily. “How I wish one could see evil on a face.”

  “One may not see evil, but one can see unhappiness, and no one in that family is at peace.” Mrs. Decker straightened. “Unlike your Mr. and Miss Hogarth, who seem two very contented people.”

  “They are everything that is good,” Charles said. “I thought to throw myself on their mercy for dinner this evening, since I am so close.”

  “Did I help you at all, Mr. Dickens? I cannot be sure.”

  “Does rape twist a woman’s mind?” he asked. “Lord Lugoson defiled Miss Acton, while elevating her older sister.”

  “And none of them ended up happy.”

  “Is there any way Miss Acton benefits from her daughter’s death, from her sister or nephew being blamed for it?”

  “Revenge?” Mrs. Decker suggested.

  “For what? Lady Lugoson was a victim of this man, too.”

  “If the father raped his daughter, Miss Acton might want revenge on the woman who didn’t protect her,” Mrs. Decker said with a sigh.

  Charles closed his eyes. Yes, of course. That did make sense. “What a murky world. I can imagine these women as innocent children, until destroyed by the beast who desired them.”

  “A great deal for you to consider. If all of this happened within the family, it is best you leave it alone.”

  Uneasily, Charles took his leave. He would agree with Mrs. Decker, if not for the conundrum of Marie Rueff.

  He had trouble opening the Hogarths’ front gate, as if the horrors clouding his mind were preventing him from entering such a clean, wholesome place. Forcing himself to stand up straight, to paste a smile on his downturned mouth, he lifted the gate until the latch loosened, and marched up to the Hogarths’ door.

  Miss Hogarth herself opened it. She looked surprised for a moment, then broke into a smile. “Mr. Dickens! What a pleasant surprise.”

  He had expected some apology from her, some realization that he’d been right in his theories, but discerned nothing of the sort in her manner. “I’ve been to see Mrs. Decker.”

  “Without me?” She gestured him inside.

  He shook the rain off his shoes and squelched in. “If you recall, she indicated there were things she wasn’t willing to say in front of you.”

  She frowned. “Such as?”

  He gave her a superior smile, rather catlike. “Certain theories and rumors regarding the Lugosons.”

  She didn’t seem to recognize the slight. “Oh, dear. Well, take off your coat and come sit down. Father isn’t home yet but the little ones are going to have their tea now.”

  Charles sat with the family for half an hour, eating bread and butter and drinking tea, speaking mostly to Miss Mary Hogarth on the subject of her parents’ furnishings, until Mr. Hogarth arrived by bus. The family bustled around him, fetching slippers and dishes and any number of comforting things. Charles imagined coming home to this, instead of a cold flat and a brother who didn’t have any more knowledge of housekeeping than he did.

  He sat next to the fire, a little separate from them, and imagined what it would be like to be master of such a household.

  “Are you coming to the table?” asked Mrs. Hogarth, appearing in the doorway. “I have a meat pie for us.”

  Charles rose and pulled his chair back to the table as Mr. Hogarth entered, bringing in the cold scent of the outdoors. “Thank you.”

  “What is the state of your investigation?” Mr. Hogarth asked, when they were all settled around the dinner.

  With a thought to tender ears, he explained that he suspected one person, but that everyone else seemed to still be focused on the lady herself, while she pointed her finger in different directions as it suited her.

  Mr. Hogarth took out his pipe at the end of the soliloquy. Mary rushed up with a tin of tobacco, and Miss Hogarth lit a taper from the fire for him. He puffed away, considering what Charles had said.

  Finally, he spoke. “You need to rule out Miss Carley and Miss Acton. If you can do that, then justice may be served.”

  “In what fashion can justice be served?” Charles asked, stung that Mr. Hogarth did not agree with his theory. “There is no proof of poison, no matter what anyone might think.”

  “The family will be shunned if they are responsible. No one will receive them, or do business with them. They will leave London and not return,” Mr. Hogarth said.

  “Lady Lugoson did not kill Marie Rueff,” Charles said. “No one seems to have seen her for close to two years, until four months ago.”

  “We must know if there is a poisoner in the neighborhood, Mr. Dickens,” Miss Hogarth said.

  “Or more than one. I agree. Either way, I am very glad Lord Lugoson is not in the neighborhood. What a dreadful man.”

  Miss Hogarth bent her head over her hands.

  “I am sorry you have had to hear all these things,” Charles said. “But not all men are bad. Many, like myself, treat women with the gentleness they deserve.”

  “For the first time, I found myself very glad I am not an heiress,” she said, still looking troubled. “And neither is Beatrice Carley, for which I am sure she should be grateful.”

  “There are more important qualities than the size of one’s purse,” Charles said. “A good, honest heart is the most important. Of that, I am sure you have.”

  She smiled at him for so long that her father cleared his throat. Charles stayed calm as he said his good-byes and redressed in his damp outerwear and left the house, but if he did a little jig in the road as he went to search in the dark for a bus to take him back into London, nobody was there to see him dance.

  Chapter 20

  Since it was Saturday and Charles didn’t have any political meetings to attend, he spent the morning editing the second part of his Watkins Tottle sketch in front of the parlor fire.

  Fred had stayed in the bedroom, studying one of Charles’s legal books, but he came out just as Charles was becoming sick of his own words. He resolved to sort out the mystery of Angela Acton for once and for all. He had no hope of understanding Lady Lugoson otherwise. Her fate was too intertwined with her sister’s.

  “Would you like to walk to the Garrick with me?” he asked Fred.

  “To see a play?” Fred straightened his waistcoat, grinning widely.

  “To see an actress.” Charles noticed that his brother’s clothes were too tight. He had grown again, and would need new clothing soon. “The one that Julie works for.”

  “Is she a real poisoner?” Fred asked eagerly.

  Charles put down his quill. “Her sister seems to think so.”

  Fred lost his smile. “Makes you wonder what kind of childhood they had.”

  “I have no idea, but anything good must have died away when Lord Lugoson came into their lives.” He had spared his young brother much information, but he had heard certain details.

  They bundled up and went out together, staying close for warmth, a bit of good luck when Fred skittered on black ice, invisible on the road, and nearly fell. Charles managed to hold him up, and the lad pretended to skate after that, swinging out his arms as if to balance, as he took long, gliding strides. While too grown up to join in, Charles enjoyed the sight of his mischievous brother’s antics, until he accidentally knocked a package out of an elderly passerby’s hand.

  Before braving the Garrick, they had cups of hot cider in a public house to fortify themselves. Charles made mental notes for his sketch on the topic. Eventually, they arrived at the stage door of the theater.

  The unlocked door and empty back hallway made Charles think someone must be present, but no one greeted them as they went through
the warren of rear corridors and out a door that led them into the pit. Onstage was just one figure, dressed in a brown robe that had a tree design appliqued on it. Percy Chalke’s voice rang out.

  Full fathom five thy father lies;

  Of his bones are coral made;

  Those are pearls that were his eyes:

  Nothing of him that doth fade

  But doth suffer a sea-change

  Into something rich and strange.

  “Ariel, from The Tempest,” Charles whispered.

  “He’s terrifying,” Fred whispered back, staring at the creeping figure on the stage making broad gestures at the floor, as if peering into a storm-tossed sea.

  “The character is telling a lie,” Charles explained, as someone read the next lines from the wings.

  When it came to the part of Miranda, Julie, as might be expected, did not appear, but Angela Acton, gliding from stage right, dressed in a black mourning dress. Unlike her sister’s fashionable new gown, Miss Acton’s dress might have been the lady’s castoffs from Lord Lugoson’s demise, the elbows shiny, and an obvious mend at the hem. Her first lines were nothing special, but when she said,

  I might call him

  A thing divine, for nothing natural

  I ever saw so noble . . .

  Charles could see the adoration in her face, an image of youthful fascination for an ancient being. Could this be how Miss Acton had seen Lord Lugoson, once upon a time?

  He and his brother watched, enchanted, as the two actors worked through the scene, Chalke playing two parts—throwing off his robe to be Ferdinand, Miranda’s lover. But the two transcended what they wore. So seamlessly did they perform, that Charles began to believe that the two must act together in all things. Even murder?

  Abruptly, Chalke stopped speaking. Miss Acton screeched, “Julie!”

  Fred’s mouth hung open as the girl dashed onto the stage, her body in a blue dress so slim and pliant, her every gesture so graceful, that she made Miss Acton look like an aging crone. The spell the actors had created vanished as the actress berated her protégée about something.