by Issy Brooke
Neville emerged hastily from the kitchen. His sleeves were covered by long protectors and his hands were blackened from polishing the silverware that they had brought with them in a wicker basket. He had a large apron over his usual sombre suit. “My lady?”
“We’ve been to see your daughter,” she said, flopping into a chair as Ruby scurried forward to take her hat and gloves. “Stanley, ask Mrs Unsworth to brew me up a refreshing pot of tea. Make it strong; I can still taste the air of the cells. Ruby, if you would serve when it is ready. Now, Mr Fry, do sit. Please,” she said again as he reluctantly hovered by the door. “This may take some time. Sit.”
He perched, ram-rod straight, deeply uncomfortable in his working clothes. But he was keen — indeed, desperate — to hear news of his daughter. His paternal love overrode any societal mores.
Cordelia wanted to kick off her outdoor shoes but she couldn’t do that in front of Neville. She sat alongside a table and twisted; her skirts were too large, with their layers of starched petticoats, to be able to tuck underneath the low table comfortably. Various notebooks and papers were already scattered around, just like in her study at home. She pulled one notebook towards her and took up a pencil.
“Have you heard of Albert Socks?” she said.
“No. How is she, my Florence? You said you saw her; did you actually speak to her? Oh, my lady, I am sorry to bombard you but my heart aches. Did she ask after me?”
She did not, Cordelia noted. She actually called herself fatherless. “I spoke with her at length,” she said, “and she is in good health, as far as I can tell. Albert Socks is, or perhaps was, her employer.” She wondered how to broach the reality of the situation, as far as she could tell. “She was employed as … as his … companion, in a sense.”
“No. Never! She was a good maidservant.” His face showed that he understood what Cordelia implied, and that he was horrified by it. “There must be a misunderstanding. She would have been a maid.”
“A maid of some status. And previously she had performed the same role for the Lord Brookfield.”
“And do you mean to say that she … with this Bonneville also…”
“No, not at all,” she said. “I hope that you might find some comfort in this but she declared nothing but love for Bonneville. She spoke of him as a lover. Her only lover.”
“Comfort? Forgive me, my lady, I see no comfort in this. She was unwed! She had no business taking a lover.”
“But you must see, surely, that it is good that she was not with Bonneville under coercion or any such thing. Just from a pure motive of her heart.”
“My lady, she was unmarried and everything you speak of is impure. Wrong!” He shook his head dejectedly and fixed his gaze across the room. She could see the emotions warring within him; love for his daughter and hate for the situation that had ruined her. For that, his daughter had to take some blame. It is always the way, Cordelia thought. We must be angels but if we fall, we are at fault, not the ones who put us up so high that we could not fail to fall.
She moved the subject away from Florence. “Albert Socks is also a political man,” she said. “What do you know of this world?”
“I? But I am a butler, my lady. Do you not know more than I ever could?”
“I have no connections, either. This is a section of society unknown to me. I have heard of wild parties, and secret pacts, and blackmail and business and money, which makes anyone quite irrational.”
“There would be no wild parties for my Florence,” Neville said. “She does not touch a drop of any alcohol.”
Cordelia’s condescending scepticism was impossible to hide from her face. She knew Neville could see it when he said, before she could reply, “My lady, it is true. It is one thing that both I and her mother can be proud of her for. Although perhaps that ‘proud’ is not quite correct. Actually, it is her lack of stomach for the stuff that prevents her from drinking, rather than any morality and strength on her part.”
“She does not handle her drink, or has a delicate head the next day?”
“Oh, it is far more than that, my lady. Indeed, her body rejects it all most violently and almost instantly!”
“Interesting. Oh, Ruby, the tea; just place the tray here. Please, do stay. I will wish to talk this over with you anyway.”
Ruby did not need cajoling to sit down. At the barest hint from Cordelia, she had pulled up a comfortable chair and was less hampered than her mistress by voluminous skirts. She did stop short of helping herself to a cup of tea, of course. Neville was already incandescent at the impropriety of Ruby sitting right there, in the same room as her mistress. Ruby waited as Cordelia took a sip of tea and declared it delicious.
“Now then,” Cordelia continued. “So I wonder, what is this connection between Louis Bonneville and Albert Socks? Both are politicians. I must write this down.” She spoke aloud as she wrote, trying to remember everything that Florence had told her in the cell. “So, Lord Brookfield gave her to Albert Socks. So they can be assumed to be friends. And she said they would know Bonneville, and that would be fair enough as all move in the same circles, it would seem. And yet…”
“But you are saying that all politicians are linked to all others, my lady,” Ruby said. “I am a maid yet I am not intimately acquainted with all other maids here.”
No, just all the footmen with their well-turned calves, Cordelia thought. She suppressed her smile. “Something is nagging at my mind,” she said. She leaned against the table with her elbow, and a newspaper caught her eye. “Yes, here,” she said, and began to unfold the unwieldly thing. “Why do they have to make these things so blasted large?” she muttered. “Ah, I have it.”
“What, my lady?” both Ruby and Neville said.
“Here it is, in the gossip section. Socks and Brookfield had snubbed one another at a shoot. Red stags, just last month, at the end of the season for such things.”
“Really?”
Cordelia passed the newspaper to Ruby, who squinted at the close-packed print. “I do not see it.”
Cordelia took it back and read the snippet aloud. “We hear that the Lord B—, that politician so close to our PM, and lately come in from a watery pasture, has decidedly turned his nose up at one particular Article of Footwear.”
Neville and Ruby looked at one another.
“No, I am not run quite mad,” Cordelia said, “and you need not collude between yourselves to send for the head-doctor. It is in code, just like a riddle. It’s very mode, you know. Lord B is clearly Lord Brookfield — watery pasture, obviously. And the article of footwear must be Socks.”
“Or a man named Boot?”
“I don’t know any men named Boot.”
“You didn’t know Socks, either, my lady,” Ruby said.
“I will concede that it is a stretch. Nevertheless…” Cordelia carefully snipped the fragment from the paper with a small pair of decoupage scissors. “It could also be a clue. They are suspects, to my mind, for they are connected, and they will be connected to the murder, I am sure of it. And if they are not, then they are starting pieces. These first people mark the ends of the thread and I must tug at them to see what unravels.”
“All these allusions and codes and riddles make my head hurt,” Ruby said.
“That will be the drink from last night,” Cordelia said. “I do fear for your constitution, my dear girl. Anyway. Here we have a starting list of suspects.” She scribbled furiously.
“My lady, look to the premises,” Ruby said. Neville was a quiet spectator as the two women batted ideas at one another. “This lodging house that you spoke of. What of it? Where is it? Do you not find it odd that Socks had given Florence a key?”
“I do,” Cordelia said, and made another note.
“Furthermore,” Ruby went on, “look less to Bonneville’s connections and friends. What of his enemies? They are more likely to kill him.”
Cordelia unearthed another list she had made. “I already have. I have compiled this list
of names from the newspapers and periodicals. Here are all the people who have railed against Bonneville’s politics and ideas. The problem is, alas, that in politics and government matters, two men can be sworn enemies one day and the best of friends the next, depending on what policy needs decrying or supporting. It is an awfully long list.”
“More than that,” Ruby said. “For half the time, these friends are but sham friends, and these enemies are enemies only for show, I think.”
“Still, it is all we have at the moment. We must get out there and meet these people, face to face, and discover which of them are true enemies. Ruby, I have a task for you.” Cordelia pushed the list of Bonneville’s enemies across to her maid. “Get you to Socks’ house; talk to the staff and see if anyone mentions any of these people. Follow any trail at all that leads to Bonneville.”
“And where is Socks’ house?”
“I do not know, but nothing is truly secret in this city. He is a politician, and will be known. You must ask on the streets and I shall ask in my circles.”
“You have no circles here,” Ruby said.
Cordelia pursed her lips.
Ruby said, hastily, “My lady, I mean—”
“I know, I know. It is what it is. I shall go to Gibbs, for he shall be my way to the Lord Brookfield. He got me admitted to that soiree. He will get me to other places. We must also ask ourselves, always, who has benefited from the death of this man?”
“Not my daughter, that is for sure,” Neville Fry said at last.
Cordelia wondered at that. Privately, there could be a thousand reasons why Florence would want the man dead but if so, she was faking her grief rather well, in spite of her flashes of anger.
“But you cannot go alone,” Cordelia said as Ruby stood up. “Take Stanley with you for protection. And no, do not say it. I know what you might think of him. But the lad is resourceful and has proved himself to me on more than one occasion, as you well know.”
“In many ways he has, my lady,” Ruby conceded. “And yet on the rough streets…?”
“Well, before you go, speak to Geoffrey and ask him.”
“For…?”
“For anything that he feels you might find useful for your defence.”
Ruby nearly rolled her eyes. She nodded, and departed.
Neville, who had not witnessed the shocking lack of propriety between mistress and servant to this degree before, was slack-jawed with amazement. He stumbled to his feet and was wordless in his retreat.
Chapter Ten
Cordelia asked Geoffrey to accompany her to Septimus Gibbs’ offices. He smartened himself up as much as he was able, and terrified the Hansom cab driver so much that they were woefully undercharged for the journey. It was a short one, anyway, just to the south of where they were.
Gibbs had his offices a few streets behind Fleet Street. She left Geoffrey mooching around in the street, glowering at people. She was greeted in the lobby by an over-attentive and odious-smelling man in a garish gilt-edged dark navy blue jacket that reached the middle of his calves. He oozed up the stairs, holding her arm, and rapped on Gibbs’ office door. She paid him to go away.
“Come!” Gibbs barked from within, and when she opened the door, his beetle-black eyebrows shot up. “Cordelia! What on earth brings you here?”
“My dear Septimus. I believe you had some advice to impart to me on the matter of my cookery column, and we never did get to discuss it.”
“My main advice would be to not miss a deadline,” he said, coming around the desk to press her hands in his. “I dined last night with the editor, and he tells me that your copy has not been delivered. They cannot hold the press, you know. The next edition will not have your work in it. I assured him you were a professional…”
“Oh, I am so sorry. I have half-written it. I need to obtain more information about Billingsgate.”
“And that brings me to my second advice … don’t go to Billingsgate.”
“But it is a wondrous fish market!”
“It is a fish market but as to ‘wondrous’, I would disagree. ‘Malodorous’ and ‘highly inappropriate for a lady’ though.” He sighed. “Please, do sit. I will not hedge my words. Cordelia, you must change the thrust of your articles. They lack refinement. They are not what people expect from a lady.”
They argued lightly for a few minutes. She was quite put out about the whole affair. “I am writing what I, myself, would like to read!”
“Sadly, you are a singular woman,” he insisted. “You think and act differently to the masses.”
“I think and act as I please, and most do not.”
“True. I hesitate to cast judgement as to whether that’s a good thing. Please, think on my words. I fear your column will not last long if the editor keeps receiving complaints.”
She flared her nostrils and waved her hand dismissively although she knew such arrogance would not make any impression on Gibbs. “Well, it is not the main reason I am here to see you, anyway.”
“I thought not.”
“I need to meet the Lord Brookfield.”
“Ah, that politician?”
“The same. Who is he?”
“Charles Alfred Stone, the fourth Baron Brookfield. I do not mix in his circles, my dear.”
“You have more chance of it than I do, though. Please, Septimus. It really is a matter of life and death. It is beyond frustrating that I cannot move about London as I wish to, and nor can I send my servants into the sorts of clubs that this lord will go. Only you can help me.”
“Only I? I am flattered. This is all about that murder, then?”
“It is.” She told him about her experience at the police station house and he shook his head, just a slight hint of amusement on his face.
“You must be careful, Cordelia. That particular division is a corrupt one; more corrupt than the others. Remember that such corruption festers down from above as much as from below. Men do not last long there, unless they can embrace bribery and blackmail, or so it is said. Certainly that division has too many cases of men being sacked for misconduct.”
“I suspected as much. I saw a lot to disturb me there.”
“Tread lightly. Concentrate on your column. And if you can rein in your more earthy tendencies, then I shall forge out and seek this Lord Brookfield for you.”
He stood up and she rose as well. He shook her hand and held it, warmly.
“Thank you, Septimus. You have ever been good to me.”
“I worry about you. I always have. I will send word as soon as I may.”
***
Geoffrey had been feasting on a pie obtained from a flying pieman who hawked his wares from a broad tray hung from his neck and buttressed against his waist.
“I won it, my lady,” he said proudly.
“Gambling?”
“In a way. You toss a coin and if you win, you get the pie for free. I suppose it must work out for them at least half the time. I used my own coin.”
“What a silly way to do business.”
“Business is all gambling, to my mind.”
“And what is in your pie?”
“Meat … mostly.”
Flour was expensive, and so the piemakers had to cut corners somehow. The filling of “meat” would make up for the badly-made pastry. She refused Geoffrey’s offer to pursue the pieman down the street so that she might also sample his wares.
“I am going to move my interest in street food to a more academic and theoretical approach,” she told him. “Let us walk for a while. I don’t imagine we are too far from the lodgings and it will do me good to have some exercise.”
He walked close to her and his looming presence was the best deterrent possible to any potential molesters, botherers, pickpockets, thieves, scruffs, garrotters and general lowlifes. The noise of the horses’ hooves and the clatter of the carriage and coach wheels was deafening, although the tone would change as the road surface swapped from stone to flags to clinker to the crushed rocks of maca
dam. As they passed a hospital, there was a muffling of the noise, due to the road being covered with wood. It was a small concession to the patients suffering within.
“Geoffrey, what do you think of the new police?”
“I think very little of any police, new or old, my lady.”
“What are your grounds for your opinion? You know that I cannot be satisfied with an offhand statement.”
They walked on in silence for a little while. She knew he needed time to think. Eventually he said, “I know that they take bribes. I do not like that. In their position, I should take bribes also, which is why I am not a policeman. I know what I am. But they ought to be better than me, and better than the common man. But they are just rough men dressed up all fancy. They’re a lie. And this is not the English way.”
“Yes, it is obvious to me when they have been paid to look away, or they act only to serve their own ends. I read it daily in the press.”
“Just so, my lady. They are involved even now in all manner of crime, exactly as they were back when they were the Runners and would work for whoever paid them the most. And their empire expands and expands, without check.”
She didn’t reply. She lapsed into thought as they went on. As they passed an opened hatch of a pastry-cook’s shop, she stopped and bought some interesting-looking puddings. Geoffrey helped himself to yesterday’s stale pastry at half-price. Further on, she was able to buy some bread that had unfamiliar seeds dotted on its crust.
The food was bundled up and Geoffrey carried it back to the lodgings. She was pleased to find Mrs Unsworth was absent, and so she set about the kitchen, trying to bend the small enclosed range to her will. Ruby had been quite correct; few people cooked at home, certainly in the centre of the city. At Clarfields, they still had a large open range, but this new building housed the newer, smaller, ‘Kitchener’ types and its flues and workings were a mystery to Cordelia. The range had been lit that morning, and was slowly giving off a very low heat, and she applied herself to a new task: the best way to bake biscuits. She felt frustrated that she could not go out and act on her own. She was dependent on everyone else who was abroad, working on her behalf. She felt a little like a spider at the centre of a web.
