The Dark Enquiry (A Lady Julia Grey Novel)

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  At this, she went off in gales of laughter, and it was a long moment before she sobered. I endeavoured to retrieve the thread of the conversation.

  “Mademoiselle, if you are in fear of your life, I can help you.”

  She regarded me with pitying eyes, and it was the pity of a cat for a mouse locked between its paws. “My poor Lady Julia, you only mean to help, and I talk in riddles. But I can tell you nothing more. Only keep the button. One day it may have secrets to tell.”

  I longed to ask her about the last séance, but I dared not. If she pondered the guests that night too closely, she might note the resemblance between myself and the Comte de Roselende, a risk I dared not take. I rose then. “I think I had best be going now. Thank you for the cordial and for the conversation, mademoiselle.”

  She nodded, a cruel smile playing about her lips. “It was my pleasure, my lady. But you have not communicated with the spirits yet. Was that not why you have come?”

  “Perhaps another time.”

  “Very well,” she said, guiding me to the door. “But I should tell you that when you come next, there is a woman who wishes to speak to you. She is wearing yellow and there is a smell of vervain, verbena you call it. She says her name is Charlotte. Do you know such a person?”

  My hand stilled upon the doorknob. My mind whipped back a quarter of a century to the last time I saw my mother, dressed head to toe in yellow, her favourite colour. She was laughing and she crushed me to her, for Mama never did things by halves and her hugs were meant to be felt. The scent of her verbena perfume still clung to my hair when they came to tell me she had died, and some months later, when the stone had been carved at her grave, I traced the letters with my finger, my first lesson in literacy. C-H-A-R-L-O-T-T-E.

  I turned back to Agathe. “I am afraid not, mademoiselle.”

  “I am sorry,” she said, bowing her head. “My mistake.”

  I left her then, and I did not look back.

  The encounter with Mademoiselle Agathe had left me deeply shaken. I was jubilant to have found a real clue as to Madame’s possible killer—and even more pleased to have found a suspect besides Bellmont to offer up to my husband. But I was plagued by questions, most notably regarding Agathe’s parting remarks about my mother. Her voice and demeanour had altered considerably, her aspect quite flat and unaware. I had no doubt that if I had spoken to her, she would not have heard me. I had read of such mediums and the tests to which they were put by sceptics. I knew that once in a trance, many had been subjected to flames and needles being passed under their skin, to pinching and bruising, all in the name of rational enquiry. And many of them had been exposed as frauds.

  But occasionally, just occasionally, one had demonstrated complete unawareness and in such a state had delivered messages of things that could not possibly have been known. Was Mademoiselle Agathe such? Did she have true Spiritualist gifts?

  I turned the questions over in my mind until I reached Brisbane’s rooms. He was out, leaving me to prowl his rooms restlessly until at last, just as I was prepared to leave a note for him, he appeared.

  “Hello, my dearest,” I greeted him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Any luck?”

  He gave me a swift glance. “None, but I see you have been far more diligent. Tell me.”

  I dropped the button into his hand. “This belonged to a conspirator who was plotting with Madame Séraphine. I think Agathe believes the owner of this button may have had a hand in her sister’s death.”

  I made to take the button back, but Brisbane’s hand closed swiftly around it.

  “I will pursue this line of enquiry, my dear. Thank you.”

  I felt a thrust of annoyance at having my clue usurped. I put out my hand. “I think I will have my button back.”

  He merely stared at me, his fist closed over the button.

  I paused, allowing the anticipation to heighten between us as I formed my next reply. “I should be permitted to pursue the enquiry. I found the button, and furthermore, I am aware of its significance. That button is a link between Madame and a member of the German Imperial family.”

  In the years I had known Brisbane, I had never seen him so entirely dumbfounded as he was in that moment.

  “You recognised it?”

  “Of course. It bears the badge of the Sigmaringen-Hohenzollerns, the cadet branch of the German Imperial family. It was devised by the kaiser himself when Germany was still called Prussia.”

  He shook his head. “I know I will regret asking, but how can you possibly know that?”

  “As children, when we were naughty, one of our governesses used to set us to copying out pages of the Almanach de Gotha,” I added. “My favourite bits were always the parts about the heraldic badges.”

  “How is it that you remember an entry you have not seen for two dozen years?”

  I primmed my mouth. “I was naughty rather often. I must have copied that particular entry ten times. So, it is, in fact, an excellent clue. I cannot think why you are so grim.”

  “I have no love for Germans,” he said flatly.

  I was surprised. I had never heard Brisbane speak so dismissively of any particular group, and his antipathy roused my curiosity. “Brisbane.”

  His handsome mouth thinned. “Under Prussian law, any Gypsy over the age of eighteen can be hanged.”

  I blinked at him. “For what crimes?”

  “Breathing,” he said coldly.

  I felt a chill as I considered the implications. “That is horrifying.”

  “That is Germany. At least it was. One hopes the kaiser will be more tolerant in his policies, but it isn’t likely, not with his mother in disgrace.”

  Kaiser Wilhelm’s mother, our own Princess Victoria, was a liberal and forward-thinking sort of royal. Unfortunately, the family she married into was not. She and her husband had been effectively excluded from the rearing of their son, and his sympathies were firmly entrenched with the most reactionary bastions of German patriotism. So deeply embedded was his suspicion of his English mother that, upon his father’s death, the kaiser had ordered his mother’s house searched for papers that might incriminate her as a traitor to Germany. There seemed little hope that any of her influence might be reflected in his reign. Only those who served Germany’s greater interests would be tolerated, and Gypsies certainly did not fit the bill.

  I hastened to change the subject to something less thorny. “Well, then tell me what you have discovered at the clubs.”

  Brisbane steepled his fingers under his chin, his ill temper past. “You will be happy to know there isn’t even a tittle about Mortlake. He seems to have dodged ruination quite nicely.”

  “I am glad to know it.”

  “As for Mr. Sullivan, I met with a bit of resistance there. Mr. Froggitt, the editor of the Illustrated Daily News, was not terribly forthcoming. He could only tell me that Sullivan is a fellow who works freelance, not an employee of the newspaper. He sends in his stories and the editor runs them. He keeps no office at the newspaper, and the editor has no means of contacting him.”

  I gave a start. “That is curious. How does the fellow receive assignments?”

  “The editor sends a runner to a particular coffeehouse each afternoon at four o’clock. If the fellow is there, he receives his assignment. If not, the editor merely passes it along. An unconventional arrangement, but the editor is pleased enough with the work, he is content to leave it so.”

  “Did you learn anything else?”

  “Only that the fellow is American and has ginger hair.”

  “Ginger hair?” My mind hurtled back to Madame’s last séance. There had been a slight young man with ginger hair and whiskers in attendance, I remembered. I had nearly stepped on his heels as we made our way into the séance room and, once there, I had taken the chair next to him.

  I mentioned the coincidence to Brisbane. “I recall him,” my husband assured me. “And tomorrow I mean to pay a call at four o’clock to a certain coffeehouse to see if we
have our man.”

  “We mean to pay a call,” I corrected him.

  Brisbane’s only reply was a groan.

  In the end, I did not accompany him. Brisbane, with a great deal more patience than he usually exhibited, explained that in this particular neighbourhood a lady of any variety, much less one of some means and dressed fashionably, would attract far too much attention and doubtless scare our man away. Naturally, I offered to don my masculine garb, which won me a rather fluent bout of profanity from Brisbane, but good sense prevailed and I grudgingly agreed to remain at home. Brisbane promised to reveal all to me as soon as possible, and so I spent the better part of the afternoon sitting in the airless cupboard under the stairs waiting for the shrill summons of the telephone.

  At last, sometime after five o’clock, it came and I pounced upon it. After the usual preliminaries with the operator, Brisbane came on the line, speaking to me from his rooms in Chapel Street.

  “Brisbane! Tell me everything!” I ordered.

  There was an exclamation of pain and then, after a long moment, my husband’s voice. “Do not shout, Julia. It is not necessary.”

  “Are you sure? Can you hear me properly?” I stared at the device suspiciously. It seemed counterintuitive that one could speak normally and still be heard down the wire.

  “For God’s sake, I hear you!” he roared.

  I winced. “Goodness, Brisbane, there is no call to howl at me. I can hear you perfectly.”

  “Good,” he said, his voice oddly tight as if he were grinding out the word through clenched teeth.

  “Now, what of our American?”

  “He appeared after some delay, but spied me through the window. As soon as he caught sight of me, he ran, and I followed him for some distance before I lost him.”

  I thought rapidly. “But if he ran at the sight of you, that means he must know you! How?”

  Brisbane’s jaw was set. “He has written one or two stories about previous cases of mine. I recognised the byline.”

  “Did you recognise him?”

  “He was indeed the ginger-haired fellow who sat next to you at the séance.”

  “Oh, well done!” I cried.

  “Julia,” Brisbane growled again.

  “I am sorry,” I whispered. “But this is really excellent. It means we have a firm lead on this American fellow, particularly since he ran from you. He wouldn’t have done so if he had nothing to fear.”

  “Yes, but we have lost him with precious little means of tracking him down. He won’t show his face at that coffeehouse again.” I paused so long he thought the connection broken. “Julia? Are you still there?”

  “I am here,” I said finally. “Brisbane, you just said ‘we.’ You said we lost him with little means of tracking him down.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did!” I persisted. “You have begun to think of me as a partner, whether you like it or not.”

  “I cannot hear you, Julia. I think the connection is faulty.”

  “The connection is fine, you impossible man!”

  But it was too late. He had disengaged.

  That night after dinner we sat comfortably in our drawing room and considered our next move as Brisbane prepared his hookah pipe. He fiddled with coals and the tarry black bits of hashish as I went into the details of my visit with Mademoiselle Agathe. I took the first deep draught of the heady smoke as he told me again of the chase the fleet-footed American had led him on, and how the fellow had craftily dodged into the train station just as a train was arriving, using the arrival to cloak his disappearance from Brisbane.

  I pondered a moment, then sat up quickly—too quickly, in fact. The smoke made my head swim. “It makes no sense.”

  “What doesn’t, my love?”

  “The ginger-haired fellow is a reporter of the most vulgar sort. He writes for a lurid newspaper and revels in the lowest manner of details. He spied you through the window and then he fled. It makes no sense whatsoever. You are one of the foremost private enquiry agents in London, son-in-law to an earl and brother-in-law to one of the Opposition’s leaders. You might have given him a treasure trove of information for a story! Instead, he took to his heels and fled as if the very hounds of hell were after him.”

  “Thank you for that charming image of me,” Brisbane said drily. He took a long draught from the pipe, blowing out the smoke into a series of delicate rings.

  “Brisbane, think of it. He did not behave as a proper reporter ought to behave. Why?”

  Brisbane said nothing, and I continued on, warming to my theme. “How could I have been so blind? How could you have been so blind? The police never questioned the guests of the séance, Madame’s last public session. They never interviewed them or it would have been in the newspapers. They never made an effort to find me. If they had wanted to speak with the Comte de Roselende, they would have circulated a description and placed advertisements in the newspapers, and yet there was no mention at all. And no mention of the guests was ever put forward at the inquest. They focused solely on the kitchens, blaming an elderly cook’s poor eyesight.”

  Brisbane stirred himself lazily. “Your point, my dear?”

  “My point is that any one of us might have murdered Madame. The murder hinged upon one thing, the substitution of an aconite root for a horseradish. It has been done before. The two are not unalike. But one doesn’t make up horseradish at the last minute. It might be done at any time. Any one of us might have disguised ourselves as a greengrocer’s lad and slipped down to the kitchen with the fatal root and done the deed without the cook ever noticing at all.”

  “Including the general? In full evening dress and bald as a new egg? You think he might have been mistaken for a kitchen boy?”

  I pursed my lips. “Perhaps not, but he might have adopted a disguise, any of the guests might have. Or,” I added, my excitement rising, “the murderer might have brought a servant from home—a kitchen boy or a hall boy. It would have been easy enough to give him the deadly specimen and instruct him where to leave it. Servants of guests are always entertained in the kitchen. What could be more natural?”

  “And you think a murderer clever enough to use this method would have put himself into the power of a kitchen boy? He would have just opened himself up to blackmail.” Brisbane blew out another puff of smoke, this one sinuous as a serpent curling above his head.

  “If the boy ever realised what he had done,” I argued. “Kitchen boys are the lowest of the low. They are not educated. They do not read newspapers. They do not question their betters. Imagine it, an illiterate urchin instructed by his master to do this one thing, perhaps his master presents it as a joke or a merry prank. The boy is given a coin to spend on whatever he likes and the only caveat is that he must not tell anyone because it’s his master’s secret jest. He would do it in an instant, I tell you, and spend his coin on a pint of beer and that would be the end of it. He would never realise what he had done, and his master is entirely in the clear.”

  I sat back, feeling entirely happy with my hypothesis. Until Brisbane pricked my balloon.

  “And if his master is taken up for murder? What if the boy had been detected or his master had been found out? How does the master explain it away when there is a witness to his crime?”

  I nibbled at my lip, then brightened. “Easily! He simply has the boy killed, although this time, I think the master would do the deed himself. Far better to tie up this loose end with his own hands rather than letting himself in for more of the same trouble later. If it were me, I think I should drug him, tie him in a sack weighted with stones and fling him into the Thames. No blood in the parlour.”

  Brisbane stared at me, open-mouthed, then shut his jaws with a decided snap upon the mouthpiece of the pipe to take a sharp puff. “That is the most cold-blooded thing I have ever heard you say.”

  “Murderers are cold-blooded. If he would not scruple to kill Madame, why would he stop at the murder of a kitchen boy? Once the im
possible has been done, it becomes possible always,” I pointed out.

  Brisbane shook his head. “It is a credible theory, I grant you, but there is still no evidence of murder. The inquest verdict was accidental, and although the blackmail note to Bellmont suggests more nefarious things afoot, we cannot say definitively that the lady was murdered,” Brisbane reminded me. “The blackmailer might simply be a creature of opportunity, seizing the chance to make some easy money.”

  I considered this, then dismissed it. “No, I think Madame was murdered, and by someone at that séance.”

  Brisbane canted his head and gave me a predatory smile. “Would you care to wager upon the point?”

  “That is highly unprofessional,” I said primly. “Fifty pounds?”

  “One hundred,” he countered. “One hundred pounds to you if Madame was murdered by someone at that séance.”

  I rose and went to him, offering my hand. “Shall we seal the wager?”

  He put aside his pipe. He took my hand and pulled me down hard onto his lap. “Yes, but that is not precisely how I had in mind.”

  The ELEVENTH CHAPTER

  Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

  —Romeo and Juliet

  The next morning, I ran Brisbane to ground with a new thought. He was in his study, scrutinising the button. “There must be a list somewhere, a registry of sorts of the gentlemen who have been given the right by the kaiser to wear that particular emblem,” I remarked, taking the button to study it more closely.

  “And their retainers?” he asked swiftly. “The Queen of England’s guards and servants wear her badge. What of the kaiser’s? If he gives that wretched eagle only to men of his family, the list is manageable. But if he extends the courtesy to his closest aides, to men who have served at the court in Berlin, it is an entirely different matter. We might be looking for a very elusive needle in a Teutonic haystack.”