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

by Ashley Gardner

  “Please sit down, Captain.” Denis returned to his desk and rested his hands on the bare surface before him, as if fully expecting to be obeyed.

  A pair of damask chairs waited in the middle of the carpet. I moved to one of them and sat.

  Denis studied me a moment with his emotionless eyes. “Please clarify something for me. Are you an acquaintance of Mr. Grenville or of Mr. Horne? It is most unlikely for a gentleman to be both.”

  “Grenville is the acquaintance,” I answered. “I met Horne by chance.”

  “And you prevailed upon Horne to write to me for an appointment. Why?”

  “He told me that you obtained things for gentlemen.”

  Denis inclined his head a fraction. “I have, in the past, provided certain assistance to people I know. I do not know you. What is it that you hoped me to find for you?”

  I made an uncomfortable movement, but I was determined to brazen it out. “A young lady.”

  “I see. For what purpose?”

  “What do you mean, for what purpose? For what purpose do you suppose?”

  “You might have a benevolent streak and wish to adopt an orphaned young woman to raise as your own. Or you might want a companion to share the rest of your hopefully long life. Or you simply might want someone upon whom you can relieve your base lusts.”

  A trickle of perspiration slid down my back. “It is the latter, I am afraid.”

  Denis regarded me for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was even more colorless, as though he regarded me with distaste. “You could obtain such a thing for yourself. London has an unfortunately large commodity of women for just that purpose.”

  “I do not want a girl from the streets. I want—a young lady.” I had difficulty making my mouth form the words.

  “And you believe I can find one for you.”

  “As you did for Mr. Horne.”

  In the silence, a green log popped and a smattering of sparks hissed back into the fire. “He told you this?”

  “Not in so many words. I drew the conclusion.”

  Denis studied me for a long time, his expression still neutral. Finally he spoke, as though ending an internal debate. “What I obtained for Mr. Horne cost him a large sum of money. A very large sum. Such a thing was difficult, dangerous, and I must admit, distasteful. You, Captain, cannot afford it.”

  “No,” I said. “But Mr. Grenville can.”

  His lids lowered briefly. “Mr. Grenville would hardly lend you money so that you could satisfy yourself on a respectable virgin. He is careful of his acquaintance and unlikely to cultivate a friendship with a man of such disgusting tastes.”

  I made a conspiratorial gesture. “He does not need to know.”

  “He knows everything about you,” Denis said. His blue eyes bored into mine. “As do I. I suggest, Captain, that you drop the pose.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I said calmly, “I have always been bad at lying.”

  Denis sat back and rested his hands, palms down, on the desk. “Yes, your skills are remarkably ill developed. What is it you truly came here to discuss?”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “Miss Jane Thornton. And her maid.”

  Nothing, not even a flicker of recognition. “Who are they and what have they to do with me?”

  My pulse beat faster. “You procured them for Mr. Horne. The late Mr. Horne.”

  “I did read in the newspaper of Mr. Horne’s unfortunate death. London is a dark and violent city, Captain.”

  “You destroyed an entire family, damn you. For his paltry fee.”

  Denis’s smooth fingers tightened the barest bit. “If I had done what you accuse me of, the fee would not have been paltry, I assure you.”

  I no longer tried to rein in my temper. I’d had enough of people caring nothing for the missing Jane, and for Aimee, frightened and destroyed. I rose. “You procured her, and you sold her, just as you sold the painting to Grenville and his friend.”

  I sensed a movement beyond my right shoulder. The man at the window, no longer looking half-asleep, had come alert.

  Denis gave him a small, subduing gesture. “Gentlemen sometimes ask me to obtain for them things that others cannot. It is expensive. One needs planning, the right contacts. I can do what they can’t. That is all.”

  “You cloak it in vague words, but you sold her the same as you would a prostitute to a nunnery.”

  Faint color touched his cheeks. “If you have come here to crusade, I suggest you rethink your position. I know you’ve questioned my coachman, and you questioned Horne and Grenville. But I warn you, Captain. Do not interfere in my business. You do not have the power or wealth to do so with impunity. And do not think to hide behind your friend Grenville. His greatest quality is his discretion. He will not help you.”

  “Do you expect me to turn my back as you ruin young women and their families?”

  “You must do as you please, of course.”

  I rested my fists on his desk. “Horne didn’t pay you for it either, did he? That’s why you went to see him the day he died.”

  Denis steepled his fingers and regarded me quietly over them. “My financial arrangements are my own affair.”

  “I know Horne owed you money. That fact has not been hidden. Did you murder him, then? Because he would not pay?”

  “How foolish for me to kill a man who owed me money. I prefer to have money in my coffers than blood on my hands.”

  “And you wouldn’t be able to pursue his heir for it, because you would have to explain the business transaction,” I said. “I doubt you keep any records. I suppose I will have to satisfy myself with the fact that you will never see tuppence for Jane Thornton’s ruin.”

  Denis regarded me through another long silence before he unclasped his hands. “I admire your bravery, Captain. Very few men would think to enter my house and make such accusations to my face. Or perhaps you do not understand your danger.”

  “I was warned.” Grenville had told me not to come here alone. Pomeroy had told me I was insane. I was beginning to think they were both right.

  “And you came anyway?” Denis asked. “I must say, you have astonished me.” He rose. “I bid you good day, Captain.”

  My breath came fast, and I did not take his outstretched hand. “I can’t say I wish you good health.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched the slightest bit. “You are refreshingly blunt, Captain. But have a care. Do nothing more to inquire into my business. It is not worth it.”

  His eyes, again, held no menace, but I sensed a cold ruthlessness behind them. That coldness no doubt inspired fear in those who became acquainted with him.

  I had lost my fear long ago.

  I did not say good-bye. I turned without word and left him.

  *** *** ***

  I returned to my rooms, enraged and no further forward. Yesterday, I had believed that Denis murdered Horne, but after meeting him, I changed my conclusion. I believed Denis when he said he would have gotten more out of Horne if the man had remained alive. Denis must have been in a fair temper with Horne in order to pay him a personal visit.

  I toyed with the idea that Denis had told the brute of a man who’d stood guard in Denis’s study to physically frighten Horne, and said brute had accidentally killed him, but I discarded that idea as well. Denis was too careful. The brute would not have made a mistake. And Denis certainly would not have murdered a man when he’d been publicly seen paying a call on him.

  But no one else had called on Horne that day. I was back to nothing. Perhaps the wretched Bremer had murdered his master after all. Or the cook had, because Horne hadn’t sufficiently appreciated her sweetmeats. Or Hetty had in a fit of zealous righteousness. Or the frail Aimee had, then tied herself up and locked herself in the cupboard from the outside, all the while managing not to get a drop of blood on herself.

  I seized my notes from the writing table and flung them into the fire. All my efforts had produced nothing. Grenville was still pur
suing the question of Charlotte Morrison in Somerset, while I blundered about London to no avail. My leg ached, I’d spent a fortune on hackney coaches, and I’d done nothing useful.

  No, Janet had found me useful. She’d amused herself with me while waiting to run off to Surrey with her new protector.

  I realized suddenly that Marianne, of all people, had been right. Janet had always latched herself on to those who could help her most. She’d fixed her hold on me when she’d been reduced to promising her favors to the winner of a card game. She’d fixed on her sister’s neighbor, Mr. Clarke, after her sister had died. She had fixed on Foster now that he was in a position to make her comfortable once more.

  My anger spun around and settled deep inside me. For the first time in my life, I contemplated killing a man in cold blood. James Denis would never be touched by conventional justice. He was too careful, and even the Bow Street Runners were afraid of him. Pomeroy had compared my bearding Denis in his den to charging a hill full of artillery. Perhaps he’d been right.

  I’d charged that hill because if I hadn’t, the battle would have been lost and many would have died. The French had gambled all on that battery of guns. My sergeants had almost refused to give the order, but I had bullied them down. And I’d been right. The guns were trained to blast the squares of infantrymen and rifles below; they’d not anticipated a cavalry charge on their flank. Straight up that hill we’d gone, and captured the guns before they’d been able to turn them around.

  Would not killing James Denis be the same thing? I could make another appointment with him, take a primed pistol in my coat, and shoot him across that empty desk of his. Or I could wait until he was returning home from an outing, open the carriage door, and shoot him then and there. Jane Thornton would be avenged, and London rid of a cold-blooded menace.

  I would no doubt lose my own life in the process. I had noted the alertness of Denis’s bodyguards and knew they were well paid to stop hotheads like me. But what did I have to lose? The society I lived in viewed any physical blemish with horror, and here I was, a lame man half out of my mind with melancholia, trying to be accepted as a gentleman on that society’s terms. I never would or could. I saw for myself days and nights spent in melancholia, or in trying to forget I had no life to speak of. Who would regret my leaving it?

  Louisa might.

  Louisa. I repeated her name silently, clinging to it to bring me back from black despair. Louisa cared. Her caring had been the only thing that had kept me alive after her husband had done his best to kill me. I needed to see her.

  I’d received another letter from her today about her damned supper party with the admonition that I attend. I would have to disappoint her. I was in no mood to make inane small talk at a gathering that would include her husband. I contemplated rushing out and shooting Denis at once, so as to have an excuse to avoid Louisa’s dinner.

  The joke relieved neither black humor nor my need to speak to her. I left my rooms and walked to Covent Garden theatre on the chance Louisa had attended tonight, but I did not see the Brandon carriage among those milling nearby. I did not see Nance either. I cringed at the thought of journeying to the Brandon house in Mayfair and refused to dash about town looking for her.

  In the end, I paid a visit to the Thorntons, and I found Louisa there.

  “I thought you’d be deep in whist at Lady Aline’s,” I said, sitting down in the Thorntons’ bare front parlor. Alice returned to a footstool before Mrs. Thornton, pale and worn, who was nodding off over a skein of wool.

  “I wasn’t in the mood for cards tonight,” Louisa answered.

  The red and blue and gold wool she was winding made bright splashes on her brown cotton gown. Her gray eyes and the thin bandeau winding through her hair were her only adornments tonight.

  “How is Mr. Thornton?” I asked.

  Alice glanced at me. “The same, sir.”

  I knew then I should not have come. Looking at them only made my heart harder. I caught Louisa’s cool hand.

  “Talk to me.”

  She looked up, frowning, but what she saw in my face made her still. She’d known me for a long time, and she knew what I was capable of.

  She gently pushed my hand away, and then she began to talk of things small and unimportant. I closed my eyes and let her voice trickle through my anger, dissolving my despair, loosening the knot in my heart. I remained there while she and Alice spoke of the small things that made up everyday life, until I was able to trust myself to return alone to my rooms and so to bed.

  *** *** ***

  I felt slightly better the next morning. The post brought me a letter from Grenville saying he was starting home at once and that Somerset had proved interesting. He did not elaborate.

  I tossed his letter aside and opened my reply from Master Philip Preston of number 23, Hanover Square. I’d written him the previous day before I’d set out for Denis’s, asking formally for an appointment. He’d answered:

  Dear Captain Lacey: I received your letter and thought it frightfully decent of you to write. I’ve been laid up since the end of Michaelmas term, and they let me see no one, but if you’d call at one o’clock today, I will ensure that you are admitted. I know you have been investigating the murder next door, because I’ve watched you out the window. You also faced the cavalrymen who quelled the rioters, by yourself, which I thought very brave. I’d much like to meet you and talk about the murder. Your respectful servant, Philip Preston.

  The slanted juvenile handwriting and the scattered ink blots made me smile a little. I tucked the letter into my pocket.

  At one, I emerged from a hackney in Hanover Square. The weather had turned, and a hint of May and warmer spring lay on the breeze that broke the clouds. May would also bring the wedding of the Prince Regent’s daughter, Charlotte, to her Prince Leopold. The festivities were already the talk of London. After that, June would arrive with its long days of light. I looked forward to summer, though I knew it would be gone all too soon. The dreariness of most of the year did my melancholia little good.

  I knocked at number 23, managing to avoid looking at number 22. A butler, who might have been cast from the same mold as that of number 21, answered the door. He began to tell me that Mr. Preston was out, but I handed him my card and told him my appointment was with the young master.

  An indulgent look touched his face that made him almost human. “Of course, sir. Please follow me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The butler led me through an echoing, elegantly furnished house with many pseudo-Greek pilasters and Doric columns and to the upper floors. At the end of one hall, he stopped, knocked, and opened the door when a young voice bade us enter.

  The room behind the double doors was stifling. A fire roared high on the hearth and the windows were shut tight. Books littered the room, as did papers, broken pens, the remains of a microscope, and various other scientific-looking instruments.

  Philip Preston himself hopped up from a divan. He was a tall, spindly lad of about fourteen, and his voice had already dropped from childish shrill to pre-manly baritone. I couldn’t tell if his thinness came from his illness, or if he simply hadn’t grown into the fullness of his body. He moved jerkily, as though someone controlled him with strings, and he executed an awkward bow.

  “You aren’t wearing your regimentals,” he said in a disappointed tone after the butler had gone. “John next door, said you were in the cavalry. The Thirty-Fifth Light.”

  “I was. I only wear my regimentals on formal occasions.”

  He seemed to find this reasonable. “You are investigating the murder, aren’t you? Like a Runner.”

  I moved newspapers aside and deposited myself on a chair. “Not precisely like a Runner.” Runners got the reward money when a criminal was captured and convicted. I would get nothing for my efforts but the satisfaction of preventing a man from being wrongly hanged.

  “I saw you talking to one. Big blond chap.”

  I inclined my head. “Pomer
oy. Yes, he is a Runner. He was one of my sergeants on the Peninsula.”

  “Really? Bloody marvelous. Who do you think did the murder?”

  “I came here to get your opinion on that. I believe you watch out the window a good deal.”

  Philip plopped himself on the divan. “I must. I’m not well, you see. I came home last Michaelmas with a fever and had it for a month. I’m still too weak to go back to school, Mama’s doctor says.”

  I looked him up and down. Thin, yes, but his eyes moved restlessly, and the mess in the room did not speak of weakness.

  “You spend much time alone,” I said.

  “I do. Mama is not well, either. She stays most days shut up in her rooms and doesn’t come down. She will go out with Papa sometimes, but most days she will not. Papa stays out much of the time. He has business. He’s in the Cabinet, you know.”

  Ah. That Preston. Right hand to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A man like that would not have time to indulge a valetudinarian wife and a bored and lonely son.

  “Do you ride at all?” I asked.

  Philip’s eyes lit up, then dimmed. “I have my own pony. But I don’t ride. Mama’s doctor said it would tire me.”

  I suspected Mama’s doctor had discovered how to keep his fees rolling in from his wealthy patients. “We’ll take you and your pony to Hyde Park and I’ll teach to you ride like a cavalryman. That means how to ride long distances without tiring yourself.”

  His face blossomed a wide grin. “Would you, sir? I’d be free Monday. That is—oh, I see, sir. You are being polite to me. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. Good riding is a skill much admired in all gentlemen. I will show you how even an ill lad can do it.”

  He nearly danced in his seat, then shot a doubtful look at my walking stick. “Do you still ride?”

  “I can,” I answered. “I will meet you on Monday for a riding lesson, if you will tell me what happened out of the window the day Mr. Horne next door died.”