by Issy Brooke
“My lady, without a man to chaperone you, you cannot eat anywhere in London, in public. And even accompanied, there are few places you can go.”
“And yet you can be seen almost anywhere,” Cordelia said sulkily. Then she shook herself. Pouting would not brew the tea, would it, she told herself firmly. “So it is. Standards, and all that. Mrs Unsworth, while you were on the streets, did you hear anything at all about the murder case?”
“Nothing,” said the cook shortly. She stood by the door to the small kitchen, clearly waiting to be released back into her domain. Cordelia waved her away at last. It was very strange to have the kitchen so close to the general rooms for living. Cordelia was rather enjoying the informality of the lodgings. She wondered if it was similar to being on safari.
“There is nothing in the papers of any use,” she said. “Save that many had taken against Bonneville, and cannot resist little digs even in his obituaries.”
“There, then, are many suspects,” Ruby said.
Cordelia looked at the list. “There’s a dozen names here and not one of them convinces me that they would have enough cause to do the deed. And surely anyone who spoke out so boldly would not then kill him, would they? That would be a singularly stupid act.”
“Murderers and criminals are stupid, my lady.”
“Not so, and I think we would be wise not to underestimate this situation, Ruby. We are in London now, and things are very different here.”
She realised she had said that, or thought that, many times lately. But people were the same, wherever they were; London contained the whole world in microcosm but was it so very different? People loved and fought and died, the same as anywhere else.
***
Shortly after the half-eaten eels were cleared away, Neville Fry entered the rooms. He had been assigned a small curtained-off area of the room where the men were sleeping, and in more usual circumstances, he would have been shocked and appalled that a butler was expected to share in such proximity to a coachman and his boy. Their place was the stables; although there were no stables handy. His place was far above the common servant.
Under the current cloud of murder and shame, however, he had barely seemed to register his unfavourable sleeping arrangements. He entered the main sitting room slowly, trying to keep himself professional and upright, but his thin face was drawn and looked many years older. Suddenly, nothing else mattered to him beyond family.
“I have been to visit Maisie,” he announced.
Cordelia urged him to sit but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He remained by the door. “I thought your daughter was called Florence?”
“She is, my lady. Maisie is my, was my, well she is Florence’s mother.”
Ah, his wife, she thought. Still his wife yet, for he was hardly likely to have obtained an expensive divorce. “And how is she?” Cordelia asked.
“Utterly distraught. But I have learned some things which may assist you when you go to speak to the policemen. She is being held in a police station house on Bow Street, as Florence put in her letter. Maisie has been to see her, and she could barely bring herself to speak of the conditions there!”
“And what of Florence herself?” Cordelia probed. “I appreciate that I may be speaking of indelicate things but do you know what brought your daughter and this politician together? Please do not be coy. Her very life may depend on your candour.”
Fry nodded. “I understand. And I can assure you that she is a respectable girl … though she may have undertaken a silly folly that shall certainly ruin her now! She was in the service of one man called Lord Brookfield, I understand.”
“What, at the time of the murder? What manner of Lord? I am not sure that I have heard of him, I think. What is his full name, and his family?”
“I cannot say. All this is new to me. I asked my wife who it was that Florence presently worked for, and she went thin-lipped and then turned to crying. So perhaps Florence had been dismissed. But Maisie said that our daughter was a pure girl, a maiden, who had merely fallen into the clutches of this politician and she was no part of his murder, not at all.”
She was not pure, not from the moment she fell into this man’s clutches, Cordelia thought sadly. Ruby drew in a slow breath, loudly enough for Cordelia to hear, and she knew that her maid was signalling her, and she already knew what Ruby meant.
How pure, really? For though there were many men that drew women into their clutches, there were also women who would lay themselves out to be clutched upon.
She did not speak of that to the devastated father before her. “Can you tell me anything else?” she asked, as kindly as she could.
Fry shook his head. “Nothing that I think would be of use, my lady. Maisie was almost insensible at times. She says that the police in that division are corrupt, and cannot be trusted in anything.”
Ruby snorted. “They all are, in every division.”
Fry looked like he was soon to fall down if he did not sit down. Cordelia dismissed him. As soon as he had gone, she said to Ruby, “I must enter polite society at once. Or, at least, that portion that will still accept me.”
“I am sure there will be many who shall not snub you. Here in the city, there are few untouched by scandal, once one cares to dig.”
“Of that I am sure. And speaking of such, what of this Lord Brookfield?”
“Do you know him, my lady?”
“I fear not. I suspect, however, that he is aristocracy, not merely gentility as I am.” Cordelia’s title was a courtesy one from her late husband. “But perhaps I have seen the name before. Something now tugs at my recollection.” She grabbed the newspapers and unfolded the large, unwieldy sheets. “Ah, yes. There is simply a passing mention of his work in politics …”
“Ah! So there is a connection, surely?” Ruby said.
“We are in the capital city, Ruby. Who here is not connected with one political party or another? He appears to be a Tory, like Peel himself, and Bonneville. So perhaps he is not a suspect … indeed, as he is a Lord, I find that unlikely…”
Ruby laughed, then subsided as Cordelia gave her a stern look.
“At any rate,” Cordelia continued, “he may know of Bonneville’s enemies, and as he was Florence’s master at some point, I ought to talk to this man. And if I were to attend some events, maybe some literary soirees, and the like, then I shall be able to talk to all manner of useful people. If not this particular Lord, then others.”
“Mr Fry has asked you to talk to the police. And the police only.”
Cordelia began to write a list. “And I shall, of course. Though I suspect we already both know what kind of reaction we’re going to receive. They have their suspect, do they not? I know that I will be complicating matters for them.”
“My lady, I foresee other problems here. If you enter society, and begin to ask questions, do you not think that this will alert the murderer, if indeed there is one, and it isn’t poor Florence? And if the murderer is alerted, what then? He will run to cover. Furthermore, my lady, your exploits in Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire are becoming known. If you ask questions, it will be obvious to all that you are trying to set up as some kind of Lady Detective.”
Cordelia smiled, liking that description. Ruby sighed. “You may hamper the investigation, my lady.”
“What investigation? The police are done with it already. No, if the murderer be cunning, then I shall be more cunning still. We women are bred to it, are we not?”
“And yet,” Ruby said, “this murderer is already ahead of you.”
“How so?”
“He knows what you do not.”
Chapter Six
Cordelia intended to get into society, and she managed it. In a country town, she would have been invited to At Homes and Luncheons, but the city was such a roiling mass of coming and going that one had to stand up and shout to be noticed. Stanley was fairly exhausted with the flurry of messages he was tasked with conveying about London. Within a day or two, she had
managed to get herself invited — courtesy of her agent, Gibbs and his long-reaching influence — to a literary soiree. Being a matter of the Arts, it had a rather more liberal air to it than some other places. And it was a situation that brought together those with similar interests rather than just similar accidents of birth. Not that it was quite as liberal as to admit tradesmen and the like, but it had a daringly European feel to the mix of guests.
She had not heard that the intriguing Lord Brookfield would be there, but she felt that any connections she began to make would be useful. After her marriage, some of her old contacts had fallen away. A widow was tainted, in some way. It was time to make new friends.
Gibbs accompanied her as she could hardly attend the gathering alone. She was supremely grateful to him for taking the time out of his busy schedule, but he was a true gentleman and assured her that the pleasure was all his.
“Besides,” he said, “this is also my job; to see and be seen in such places. Indeed, you are merely making my tedious role slightly more bearable. It is I who am grateful to you. Here, now; let me introduce you to Mrs Hunter-Jenkinson and the Colonel himself.”
Cordelia smiled warmly as Gibbs led her around the small gathering in the hired assembly rooms, which had been decked out in classic gold and cream. Her smile, however, soon faded from warm to coldly forced. She was not received with as much glory as she was expecting. Her conversation with Delilah Fotheringhay was typical of her interactions.
“Somebody suggested that you … wrote,” the woman said. She was in her late twenties, with a beautiful heart-shaped face, large dark eyes, and a tiny rosebud mouth that was currently pinched up into an expression of disgust, as if Cordelia still smelled of eels and oysters.
“I am currently the weekly cookery correspondent in a household magazine!” Cordelia said. She’d been trying out a number of different ways to describe herself. “Correspondent” had a glamorous and slightly daring ring to it, she thought.
“Cookery? You write about being a cook?” Delilah said, dropping her voice and taking a step back. Clearly she didn’t want anyone to know what sort of woman she was associating with.
“I am not a cook. I am Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook,” she reminded her. Gibbs had made the introduction, of course, before fading away to speak with someone else. “I take an academic interest in the culinary arts and their varied and complex histories,” Cordelia said, somehow managing to retain her smile.
The rosebud mouth of Delilah seemed to purse up even more. Her pale face was almost the same colour as the satiny wallpaper behind her and she seemed to blanch even further at Cordelia’s words. “Goodness me,” she said, in the same tone that her coachman Geoffrey would utter something much more earthy. “An academic interest, you say. How frightfully … different.”
Different. Dilettante. Potentially dangerous. “Of course,” Cordelia said, finally letting her smile fade. “I am not the only one to do so. Many ladies are taking it upon themselves to instruct their fellows and the lesser ranks. It is quite the new thing. And a good thing, too. For without difference and change, we would have no progress.”
“As if progress is a good thing,” Delilah said sniffily. “Any student of history could tell you that the relentless march of progress is destroying our once-proud nation.”
Cordelia reminded herself that she did not know Delilah, and that Delilah did not know her. An argument here would be both inelegant and potentially damaging to her reputation. Were she a man, she could have engaged in a hearty debate and that would have done nothing but proved her prowess; as a woman she had to bite back her retorts. She certainly wasn’t going to summon up a smile again, though. She was about to trot out a polite excuse and take her leave, when a couple approached, and greeted Delilah so that she was forced then to introduce Cordelia to them.
Mr Anthony Delaney turned out to be a stipendiary magistrate of some gravity, with close-cropped metal-grey hair and a narrow, yellow face. In contrast to his severity, his wife was younger, warmer and loquacious. She was only slightly shorter than her husband, and stood with a hunch, making Cordelia wonder if she deliberately tried to seem smaller than her man. She appeared utterly devoted to him, and the only time that Mr Delaney smiled was when he was addressing “my darling Ivy.” And to Ivy, he was “my Anthony.”
“I think progress is utterly wonderful!” Ivy was gushing as the unpleasant Delilah sidled away. After a few polite remarks, Mr Delaney allowed himself to be drawn into a nearby conversation about the Americas, leaving Cordelia quite alone with Ivy and her hyperbole.
“Indeed, I agree,” Cordelia murmured. She noticed that there was a large circle of emptiness around them, in contrast to the heaving throng in other parts of the room.
Ivy warbled on. “Of course, London is growing so fast now; I’ve always lived here and I barely recognise the streets of my childhood and yes, of course, that could be disconcerting but really, don’t you think, it’s just one small price to pay for the marvellous future we are building?”
“Yes, no, yes, rather.”
Ivy, to her credit, slowed down, and asked Cordelia about her own childhood. She listened intently, nodding, and appeared to be actually taking everything in. She made all the right comments about the right things at the right time, and Cordelia was convinced that Ivy was genuinely lovely.
It was somewhat unsettling. Her thoughts wandered. Most people have an ulterior motive, don’t they? Even Cordelia did.
“…and the telegraph!” Ivy saying and it jerked Cordelia back to the conversation. “Do you not remember that ghastly murder? Poor Sarah Hart! Poisoned!”
“It was a Quaker that did it, was it not?” Cordelia said. The dreadful events had dominated the news the previous year, even overshadowing Cordelia’s own exploits. The shocking murder at Slough just proved, to Cordelia, that no matter one’s background or apparent appearance to the world at large, even if one was a strictly religious man, you never really knew what someone was capable of.
“He was, yes, a Quaker, of course; though they have denied that he is one of their own, certainly since the murder, and who can blame them, of course. Of course. And caught by the electric telegraph! Now, does that not just seal everything we have seen saying about the wonderful march of progress? Justice, wrought real by progress, indeed!”
“Indeed,” Cordelia agreed weakly. She was scanning the room now, looking for escape. Ivy caught her look, and misinterpreted it. She hooked her arm into Cordelia’s, an overly familiar gesture that should have earned her a reprimand, and began to steer them both in the direction of more drinks.
Cordelia dearly wanted to speak to other people, but Ivy was an unstoppable force, and her conversation was interesting, if a little dominating. Over the course of the next few glasses of alcohol, Cordelia told Ivy all about her writing, and Ivy told her far more than Cordelia wanted to know about the life of a sitting magistrate at Bow Street, the toll roads, how the new haberdasher near to her townhouse was bringing in new silks, what type of cake she preferred to eat, and why she thought that lupins were a most delightful flower.
By the time that Cordelia was rescued by Gibbs, she was very drunk indeed, and Ivy didn’t seem at all affected by the alcohol. Her husband towed her away, and she went willingly, waving enthusiastically at Cordelia the whole time. “I shall call!” she trilled as she was engulfed by the crowd.
Cordelia felt delight and dread in equal measure, and felt like a bad person for it.
Chapter Seven
Cordelia had expected to have a hangover the next morning, but she did not expect to find that Ruby had one, also. Mistress and servant blinked at one another in the artificial gloom of the kitchen, while Mrs Unsworth fretted by the stove and muttered about the blinds being lowered during the day, marking them as classless people. She had spread a white cloth on the table because of Cordelia’s appearance. “I have no girl to help me,” she said in her continuing list of complaints. “The table needs scrubbing, and there is no Calais
sand, and who is to bake the breakfast rolls?”
“Send Stanley out to buy some,” Cordelia said. “That is what they do here. As Ruby told me, no one cooks in London.”
Mrs Unsworth huffed her way out of the room. “As good as telling me I’m useless…” was her muttered parting shot.
Cordelia looked at Ruby, who slid onto the bench by the table and groaned as she did so.
“I did not give you permission to go out last night,” Cordelia said, in between mouthfuls of watery and suspiciously grey milk. But then, she had seen no cows in London. How did it get to the city? How did it stay fresh? Though this was not “fresh.”
“No, my lady, for I quite forgot to ask for permission until it was too late, and you had already left for your engagement.” Ruby tried to look contrite but she mostly looked ill. “Anyway, there was no harm done.”
“Except to your head, it seems. Have we any of Mr Peeble’s Salts?”
Ruby grunted, stood up, and went slowly about her task.
***
Later, once Cordelia was better able to tolerate bright lights and noise, she took Stanley as her chaperone to the police station house where Florence was being held in custody. She felt better with a man at her side, though Stanley was but an overgrown streak of a boy. Women were walking freely about the city streets, but the better-dressed sort would stay in pairs or groups. The only lone women were poor ones. If a solitary woman appeared finely dressed, one could easily guess — or, perhaps, assume — as to her occupation.
The station house was small and shabby, and she was surprised. All the fanfare about the new police had led her to think that they would be housed in fine barracks of some kind. Instead, she found herself in a dirty street, crowded all about by every section of low society, and she drew herself closer to Stanley as they stood opposite the steps and looked towards the entrance.
“What do you suppose that policeman is doing?” she said. “Is he arresting that poor unfortunate woman?”
