The Hanover Square Affair (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries Book 1)

by Ashley Gardner

  I decided to punish him. I sat. “Thank you. I will.”

  Brandon moved away from me a fraction, then barked an order for port and water. We sat without speaking until the waiter brought a decanter, a small bowl, and a caster filled with sugar. I took my wine straight, with only a little water, but Brandon sifted a large amount of sugar into his glass and poured the dark liquid over it.

  He took a sip of the concoction and regarded me with disapproval. “So you have mixed yourself up with the murder in Hanover Square. Sergeant Pomeroy told me. He said you had asked him any number of questions about this Horne fellow, then turned up to discover his murder.”

  I ran my finger around the rim of my glass. “I am taking an interest, yes.”

  “Why? Did you know the fellow?”

  “No.”

  Brandon gave me a cold stare. “Then I don’t understand why you’ve involved yourself.”

  “I happened to be there. Of course I am interested.”

  “Louisa told me about the girl he abducted. Did you murder him yourself?”

  A passing gentleman heard the question and stared in astonishment. Brandon glowered at him until he hastily walked on.

  “Believe me, sir,” I said quietly, “I had thought of it.”

  “Disgusted me, what Louisa told me. I cannot really blame you for your anger this time. But wasn’t someone arrested for the murder?”

  “The butler. But I don’t believe he killed him.”

  “Why the devil not?”

  I shrugged, pretending that sitting next to him didn’t make me tense as a violin string. “A feeling, an instinct, I am uncertain what. It also irritates me that everyone is happy to let him swing for it, mystery solved.”

  “Simple explanations are best, Lacey. You always want things to be complex.”

  I sipped my port. “The simple explanation is not always the right one.”

  “But it usually is, isn’t it?”

  I knew Brandon had stopped talking about Bremer the butler. He’d always believed I’d lied to him about Louisa, which had made me realize that for all his bleating about honor, he did not really understand it.

  I did not bother to answer. What happened was over and done with, flogged to death long ago.

  Brandon held my gaze for a long time then finally turned away and studied his sweetened wine. “I admit, your taste for trouble has proved beneficial before. You did find that would-be assassin while the rest of us were looking in the wrong place.”

  It was true that I had stopped an assassination plot against Wellington, based on a chance remark overheard around a barrel of brandy purloined from a French officer. Some had admired me for it; others accused me of currying favor. The deed did not garner me a promotion, and the accusations eventually stopped.

  But although Brandon’s nearness irritated me until my teeth ached, I could not let pass the opportunity to use him as a source of information. “Do you know Lieutenant Gale’s commanding officer?” I asked him.

  “Yes. Colonel Franklin. What about him?”

  I studied the ruby red port in my glass. “I wondered why five cavalrymen were sent to put down the riot in Hanover Square the other day. Usually the military isn’t called unless things are far out of hand. This was only a handful of people throwing stones at one house.”

  “Perhaps they were taking precaution.”

  I raised my brows skeptically.

  “Ask him yourself,” Brandon grunted.

  “I am not well enough acquainted with him to engage him in idle conversation.”

  Something glinted in Brandon’s eyes. “He knows you lambasted Gale for it. He likely won’t speak to me either.”

  I slanted him an annoyed look. “If he happens to mention it . . .”

  “I’ll write you.”

  We regarded one another in silence. I noticed that Brandon had carefully not asked me why I had been seen at the opera with Louisa several nights before. But his eyes held winter chill, and his neck was red.

  Once, when I’d first come to London, Brandon had tried to apologize. I had not let him. He’d never tried again. He wanted my forgiveness, but he didn’t want to extend the same forgiveness to me, and I knew it.

  So it went. We finished our port. Brandon feigned interest in billiards, and I declined, as he’d known I would. I felt his eyes on my back as I departed. I never would have dreamed, as a lad of twenty, how viciously, and how completely, love could turn to hatred.

  *** *** ***

  I took a hackney home. I descended at Grimpen Lane and stumped to Rose Lane, wondering where to begin looking for Grace, Horne’s former maid. John hadn’t been precise about where she was living.

  I began inquiring at houses. The third door I knocked on produced a mobcapped maid who seemed to know all the goings-on on the street. She directed me to Grace’s sister’s house, informing me that Grace had recently been employed at a house in which the master had gotten himself murdered, just imagine.

  I thanked the profuse woman, walked three houses down, and knocked at the door.

  Grace herself answered it, and her eyes widened in astonishment. “It’s you, is it? You’d better come in, sir.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  She opened the door and allowed me into a narrow hall that smelled of boiled vegetables. “You were Mr. Horne’s friend; I know you were. It’s a terrible thing.”

  Her large eyes filled, and she drew a handkerchief from her pocket.

  I followed her to a tiny, dark parlor in the front of the house, and we sat down facing each other. “I am trying to discover who murdered him,” I said.

  She sniffled into the cloth. “Mr. Bremer did, sir. They arrested him.”

  “But I do not believe he killed him.”

  The handkerchief came down. “To be truthful, sir, nor do I. The master was stabbed something hard, and Bremer couldn’t have done that with such force. He had to have John carry trays up the stairs for him.”

  “Then who do you believe could have?”

  Her eyes were large in her tearstained face. “I don’t know. John would be strong enough. Or Cook.”

  “Did you find him?”

  She started. “What?”

  “Mr. Horne. When I came upstairs that day, you were in the doorway to your master’s study. You were crying. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, sir. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There he was, the poor master.”

  “Did you find him? Did you open the door and find him there?”

  She shook her head vehemently. “I would never have gone in without his permission. I would have knocked first. No, Bremer opened the door, and I looked inside.”

  “Why were you upstairs at all?”

  The hand holding the handkerchief whitened. Her eyes moved past me, then back to my face, and she wet her lips.

  The obvious explanation would have been that she was going about her duties. But she brushed her lips again with her pale tongue and replied woodenly, “I was fetching something. For Bremer. When he came to open the door, I looked into the room.”

  I pretended to believe her. “Were you fond of your master?”

  She relaxed. “Oh, yes, indeed, sir. A kind gentleman he was, always giving presents and the like, and letting us have more days out than most. I’d have done anything for him.”

  “Including locking a girl in an attic and giving her opium to keep her quiet?”

  Her handkerchief came down. “Aimee would whine and fuss so, just because the master liked to play a little. Lily were much more of a lady. She always did what she was told.”

  A hard edge entered my voice. “Do you know what happened to Lily?”

  “The master sent her away, didn’t he? Not surprising, really. He had set her up nice and proper, but she didn’t like it one bit. Ungrateful cow.”

  “You said she always did what she was told.”

  “Oh, indeed. But with such airs, she did. Like she was being put upon, instead of the master favoring her. I’d have
given anything to have the master’s favor.”

  I tasted bile. At least Bremer had been ashamed. “The day Mr. Horne died, how long were you upstairs?”

  “Why do you want to know that, sir?” she asked around the handkerchief.

  “Were you there when Mr. Denis left?”

  Her eyes went round. “Mr. Denis was there?”

  “Yes. He visited for a time.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that. I was out shopping for cook until . . . Why did he want to come there? Bothering the master for money, I’ll warrant. He was always writing the master letters, and the master would get fair put out when he got them. But it was so much safer for him not to come. You know that.”

  “I don’t work for Mr. Denis, Grace.”

  She regarded me in astonishment. “You don’t? But I thought . . .”

  “You thought I was a go-between. Why did you think that?”

  “Who do you work for, then? The magistrates?”

  “No. I am working for Aimee, and Lily, who was really a young lady called Jane Thornton.”

  She gave me a puzzled look that wondered why I’d want to do anything for them. “I thought you were with Mr. Denis. He always sent someone different. Safer, wasn’t it? Mean of you to let me think you came from him.”

  “What time did you return from your shopping that day?”

  “I don’t know, do I? Maybe about three.”

  Denis would have been gone by then, if John had told me the truth that he’d let the man out at half past two. “And you went upstairs?”

  “I gave Cook her things and listened to her snarl about them. I slipped upstairs to get away from her.”

  “What were you to fetch for Bremer?”

  Grace jumped. “What?”

  She’d already forgotten her lie. I leaned forward. “What did Bremer tell you to fetch for him?”

  Her face reddened. “Oh. I don’t remember.”

  “You went upstairs on your own. Bremer had nothing to do with it. Why?”

  She gave me a confused look. “Why do you say so?”

  “Because you had plenty of time to dash upstairs, go to your master’s study, stab him through the heart, and then pretend to be about your duties when Bremer came and found him.”

  Grace looked outraged. “I would never. I would never have hurt Mr. Horne. Never, ever.”

  “Then why were you upstairs?”

  “That isn’t your business, is it, sir?”

  “You tell me the truth or I’ll drag you off to the magistrate and you can answer his questions. I’ll take you by the ear if necessary.”

  “But I didn’t kill him.”

  “I don’t care whether you did or not. I can make a magistrate believe it, and then you’ll go to Newgate and Bremer will go home. So will you tell me? Or shall we go to the magistrate?”

  Whatever Grace read in my eyes made her whiten. She glanced about as if looking for help but found none.

  “All right, I’ll tell you. I was listening at the door.”

  “Why?”

  She twisted the handkerchief. “Always did, didn’t I? When he was with her. In case he needed my help.”

  “Help with what?”

  A shrug. “Anything. Sometimes she’d fight him, and I’d help him quiet her. Stupid girl. I wouldn’t have fought him. Ever.”

  “So you were listening at your post that day, hoping Horne would call for you. What did you hear?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  Grace shook her head, looking disappointed. “Nothing. But sometimes I can’t hear nothing, no matter how hard I listen. The door is a bit thick.”

  “How long did you stay there?”

  “Until I heard Bremer coming upstairs. Then I hid until he opened the door.”

  I fell silent. Would she have heard the murder take place through the heavy wooden door? Could the murderer have escaped between the time she fled and the time Bremer reached the door? Or had Denis left him dead, annoyed with the man for not paying him for Aimee and Jane? Or perhaps it had nothing to do with money. Perhaps Horne simply could not be discreet.

  Anger boiled inside me. None of Horne’s people gave a damn about the two abducted young women, except perhaps John, who’d become infatuated with Aimee. They cared only about a good place, high wages, or Horne’s foul attentions, willing to look the other way at whatever the monster did.

  I leaned to Grace again. “Where is Jane Thornton?”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Who?”

  “I just told you. The girl called Lily. Where is she? What did Horne do with her?”

  “How do I know? She was there one day, gone the next. Good riddance, I say.”

  “Did he take her somewhere?”

  “I don’t know,” Grace repeated in a hard voice. “I never asked. Most like she ran off.”

  “She disappeared, and it did not occur to you to inquire?”

  “Why the devil should I? I didn’t like her. Why the master liked her, I’ll never understand. Such a milk-and-water miss. No wonder she was chucked out in the end.”

  I held my temper barely in check. “She was a respectable girl from a respectable family.”

  “Why didn’t she go home, then? I wager it was she who done the master. She crept into the house and killed him. You should be trying to arrest her. “

  I rose. “I have not ruled out the possibility that you murdered him, Grace. You had plenty of time and plenty of opportunity. And you were jealous.”

  She sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing. “How dare you say that to me. As if I’d ever have hurt him. They arrested Mr. Bremer, didn’t they? Not me.”

  “But you were alone upstairs, listening at the door, and you disliked him giving his attentions to Aimee and Jane.”

  Grace’s eyes widened, her voice rising with hysteria. “You can’t prove that. A magistrate would never believe you.”

  But a magistrate most likely could and would. From the fear in her eyes, she knew that.

  “I never killed him,” she repeated breathlessly. “I never would.”

  I left her standing in the middle of the dingy sitting room, her mouth open in fear and outrage. I opened the door to the dark rain and let myself out.

  *** *** ***

  My rooms in Grimpen Lane gave me a cold and cheerless greeting. The fire had died and flakes of plaster floated down as I slammed the door. I limped to the fireplace, shivering, knelt, and began the tedious process of striking a spark to ignite the coal.

  As the tiny flame licked over the dead black coals, I remained kneeling, staring into the fireplace. London was so damn cold and dank and dreary after the bright heat of India and Portugal and Spain. In Wellington’s army, I had fought for my life and watched men die, endured disease and heat and the near madness of grief.

  But I had lived. Every day, I had lived, as Grenville said I had. He envied me for it. Here, I existed. I did not fit in to London, and it did not know what to do with me. A career required money, connections, and influence, and I had none of those. Marriage required the same. Many a man without wealth or the right family might ship himself to the colonies of Jamaica or Antigua, but plantations there were built on the backs of slaves, and I could not be a part of that vileness.

  I rested my face in my hands and thought of Spain, of the long days and weeks as we slowly, slowly pushed Bonaparte back to France. Summer nights had been warm there, balmy. I had known a Spanish woman, a farmer’s young wife. She had not been beautiful, but her cup of water, delivered to me with gentle hands, had brought me back from death.

  She and her two small children had nursed me in a tiny farmhouse miles from anywhere. Her husband had been killed by French soldiers, and she lived off the remains of the farm, hidden far from the lines of battle.

  Upon reflection, I ought to have remained there. The army and Brandon and Wellington had thought me dead. Easy to have let them believe it and finished my life on that Spanish farm with Olietta and her two littl
e boys. But I had been fevered to get back to my regiment, to reassure everyone that I was still alive.

  I wondered whether Olietta would welcome me back if I journeyed to Spain to find her again. More than likely she’d found a Spanish man returning from the wars, happy to share the farm and her life with her.

  I sent a silent greeting to her while the flame danced higher.

  Someone knocked on the door. A fleck of bright yellow plaster, the color of the Spanish sun, landed on my finger.

  “Come,” I said.

  The door opened and shut behind me, but I remained staring at the fire. Melancholia took me that way sometimes, suddenly, rendering me unable to move.

  A swish of silk and the scent of Janet’s perfume, and she knelt beside me and smoothed my brow.

  “Hello, my lad. Are you blue-deviled again?”

  I turned my head and pressed a kiss to her palm. “As ever.”

  “Remember how I used to drive the blue-devils away?”

  I remembered. She kissed me. I slid my hands around her waist. A wisp of heat floated to me from the igniting coals, resuming the battle against the chill.

  I laid Janet down on the hearthrug and we loved each other on the hard and soot-stained floor. Not elegant, but we’d shared less comfortable bed spaces in the past. The coal flamed yellow, then settled into a steady red glow, prickling our skin with heat.

  We took each other fiercely, hunger in our mouths and in our hands. As I loved her, I remembered everything, the laughter, the foolishness, the unbearable summer heat, the brief, intense time when she had meant everything to me.

  When we’d finished, I drew her close. “I had just been thinking of Spain.”

  “I was thinking of Portugal.” Her eyes glinted. “How I told you that first night that I may as well sleep in your tent, as I had nowhere else to go.”

  “And in my bed, as there was only the one.”

  “Exactly.” She snuggled into my shoulder, her auburn hair snaking across my chest. “I never thought I would miss following the drum.”

  “We did not know what the world was like.”

  “And what one had to do to survive.”

  “No,” I answered, heartfelt.