In The House Of Secrets And Lies (Lady C. Investigates Book 3)

by Issy Brooke

  So to distract herself from her feelings of helplessness, she concentrated on cooking and bakery, and littered half the small kitchen table with her dough-marked notes while she waited for her staff to come back to her with information.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mrs Unsworth reappeared when Cordelia was about to tackle her mountain of clearing and washing and cleaning. She did not want to leave the cook to tidy up on her own, especially with Ruby and Stanley engaged elsewhere, but Mrs Unsworth sullenly shooed her mistress from the room. She appeared resentful and angry at the sheer amount of work she now had to deal with, but she was even more resentful and angry at the thought of Cordelia undertaking such lowly tasks herself. She was also convinced that Cordelia would not understand the proper methods of washing up, and when to use the teak sink and when to use the stone one, and so on.

  Really, servants were such a funny bunch, Cordelia thought. But it’s not in their nature, really. I suppose they are just people first and servants second. We have made them so.

  Cordelia changed into a day dress, struggling with some of her articles of clothing alone. She chose a lilac one which showed a fashionable expanse of shoulder; it didn’t favour her wide stature but she had brought the most up-to-date clothing she could, to show her at her best in society. Just as she was about to settle down with a book, a note arrived, carried by a boy who waited around in case there was a reply and the potential for more money.

  He was right to wait; the note was from Ivy, the wife of the magistrate that Cordelia had met at Gibbs’ soiree. She was inviting Cordelia out to afternoon tea. Cordelia dashed off a reply and had to head back to her bedroom to change her clothing once again, to something more suitable to be seen in public.

  A little over an hour later, she was sitting at a private table in a lovely, floral-themed tea room in a rather exclusive area of Knightsbridge. Ivy was as warm and welcoming as she had been when Cordelia had last met her.

  They talked of polite matters at first. Ivy asked about her column and what she was doing in London. In return, Cordelia asked about Ivy and also her husband. “I believe he is a magistrate,” she said, wondering if there might be some value in knowing him.

  “He is,” Ivy said proudly, “and he studied law!”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “It is less unusual these days,” Ivy confessed. “Of course, the whole landscape of justice is changing as our world changes; did we not speak of progress before? He was a barrister and now he is a serjeant-at-law, which they are trying to do away with, and perhaps this is a less positive aspect of progress, you know, when they throw away good things just because they are old things.”

  “I’m sorry, he’s a what? Serjeant-at-law? What exactly are his duties?”

  “Oh, there are not many of his status left now, you know. He is very busy as a sitting magistrate at the Bow Street police courts because they can oversee any crime, not just those committed in their own division, like the other police courts and divisions, who are rather more constrained.”

  “So the divisions are generally rather self-contained?”

  “They are.” Ivy was relishing her role as an imparter of information. “Here, have you a pencil? I shall ask the man there for some paper.”

  “No need, do not trouble the waiter. I always carry a notebook. But why?”

  “See here.” And Ivy began to sketch out a rough map of London, the Thames cutting it in half from east to west. “The boundaries have changed in the past decade as the police have expanded throughout the metropolitan area — everywhere, indeed, but that magical square in the centre, the City, who cleave to their own police quite outside the system that Peel has introduced everywhere else. I can’t imagine that can be allowed to continue, of course.”

  “So what division is Bow Street in?”

  “Presently it is F. And within it there are subdivisions, and then sections, with their section houses or station houses, and then the beats which each policeman must walk. The sergeants run the sections, the inspectors run the subdivisions, and there is a superintendent over all the division.”

  “So Inspector Hood is but a small cog in his world,” Cordelia mused. “That is good to know.”

  “Hood? Of Bow Street?” Ivy shuddered.

  “You know him?”

  “I know them all, more or less, by reputation or by sight. My Anthony talks often of his work.”

  “And what is your husband’s opinion of this man?”

  “I fear he finds them all a little lacking, to be honest, although of course, my Anthony is far above them and so their paths will naturally have an edge of some conflict,” Ivy rambled. “If you know what I mean. Anyway, the magistrate’s men are not part of the common herd. Nor are the detectives.”

  Cordelia understood, once she’d unravelled Ivy’s sentence a few times. “Have you heard of Clancey’s lodging house?” she asked.

  Ivy smiled. “A lodging house? A lower sort? No, I am afraid that such places are unknown to me. But why on earth do you ask all this, of Hood and lodgings and the police?”

  Cordelia hesitated. She felt that the fewer people who knew of her investigations, the better; someone out there was a murderer, and word would soon spread. She did not want them to be forewarned.

  And yet Ivy was so simple and natural that she found herself confessing all. She kept her voice low and looked around frequently in case someone was lingering behind an aspidistra, eavesdropping on their secrets.

  “Do you know roughly where this lodging house is?” Ivy asked, her eyes wide as Cordelia finished her tale.

  “Just south of Holborn Road.”

  Ivy tapped at her hand-drawn map. “I would guess, then, that it is here in F Division. You said she was in the Bow Street cells? That would make sense. Yes, my Anthony is at constant loggerheads with Hood and his ilk.”

  “I am doomed to come up against unhelpful policemen.”

  “No,” Ivy said. “He is no policeman, remember. And you are in luck for the superintendent there is an honest man, Townsend or Townley or Townhouse or something.”

  “Indeed? Until this point I’d been led to believe there is not an upstanding man among them.”

  “No, that is not true, though it suits the public to talk so, of course. No, you may be assured that there are as many honest policemen as there are crooks in the ranks.”

  “I must thank you most profoundly, Ivy,” Cordelia said. Now, after all they had shared, it was inevitable they were on first name terms. “You have been a most erudite and informative companion.”

  “You are most welcome. The pleasure is all mine.”

  “Time runs on; I need to be home to see if my servants have discovered anything useful. But before I take my leave, may I ask, do you know anything of politics?”

  “You mean to ask, do I know of this Bonneville’s friends or enemies? I have to confess that I do not,” Ivy said. “My head is filled with my Anthony’s work but that is all I have space for in my poor brain, and some would say that it is too much and I am in danger of overheating but, of course, if I stuck only to needlework I fear I’d overheat even more! But please, you must continue with your investigations and also do keep me informed for now I feel most wedded to the outcome. Why, that poor man and his wife, the girl’s parents, they must be quite frantic!”

  “And so is the girl herself. Yes, Ivy, I shall keep you informed.”

  Cordelia wrote everything down as soon as she got back to the lodgings, and pinned up Ivy’s map to the wall.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time that Ruby appeared, late that evening, one wall of the lodging’s sitting room was completely covered by cuttings, maps, prints and scribbled notes. Stanley accompanied Ruby, and scurried ahead to the kitchen. Cordelia had lost track of time, and only realised that she was hungry when she caught a whiff of something baked, lingering about Ruby’s person.

  “Remove your shawl,” she said to her maid.

  “It is cold, my lady.”
Ruby tugged at the tasselled woollen garment, tucking her arms and hands out of sight.

  “It is not cold. You’re hiding a potato, aren’t you?”

  Ruby glowered but she let go of one corner of her shawl to reveal that she was, indeed, smuggling a potato. Two potatoes, in fact.

  “Who is the other for?”

  “Stanley.”

  Goodness, thought Cordelia. An act of kindness from the maid to the boy. Well, well. “What on earth has happened today that you feel compelled to thank him?”

  “I’m not thanking him,” Ruby said airily. “I’m just keeping him from starvation, as I would a dog.”

  Ruby tossed her head back and went into the kitchen. Cordelia dearly wanted to call her back and insist that she sample some of the potato but that would be a step too far, she felt. If someone stooped to taking food from their servants, something was very wrong.

  So she huffed to herself and resolved to wait ten minutes before asking Ruby if she were finished.

  But after only five minutes, Ruby popped her head back through the door. “Excuse me my lady. Mrs Unsworth here is half-drunk, the shameful sot, but says you have not yet eaten. So would you like…”

  Cordelia was in the kitchen as fast as a runaway horse. Ruby smiled as she carved up the two potatoes between three plates, adding some pie, and cheese, and an apple. She laid out a white cloth for Cordelia; it was customary when the mistress entered the kitchen, and even on holiday here in London, certain protocols had to be followed.

  Not the one about her cook being sober, however. “Mrs Unsworth has retired to nurse her gin bottle. She should have prepared food for you.”

  “I did not ask,” Cordelia said.

  “That is no excuse.” Ruby stacked Cordelia’s food onto a tray, added various knives and forks and small jars of pickle and chutney, a folded linen napkin in a silver holder, two glasses — one for water and one for sherry — and carried it back into the sitting room, which was having to do double-duty as the dining room. Within a few minutes she had prepared the table almost to the standard that Neville Fry would approve of, and left Cordelia alone to dine while she and Stanley ate from the kitchen table.

  Cordelia felt torn between wanting company, wanting to maintain standards, and being pleased that she had time to continue thinking. Still, she called Ruby back through to the main room once she had finished her makeshift meal. “Is Mr Fry anywhere to be found?”

  “I will send Stanley out to find him.”

  The lodgings were cramped and the servants seemed to find it more awkward to share with Cordelia than she did to share with them. Geoffrey and Mr Fry had found various local hostelries appropriate to their stations, and Stanley was able to find the butler quickly. Mr Fry came back and began to clear up, muttering to himself, while Stanley helped, and Ruby came through to the sitting room to tell Cordelia what she had discovered.

  “Now, my lady, it was easy enough to find this Albert Socks’ house. And he has far too many servants, all of whom are on the make.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They skim off from the food and the drink; they abuse his trust and use their positions. And not one of them would I call honest, and all of them are too free with their tongues.” Ruby sniffed and looked most supercilious. “They are servants of very low breeding, my lady. But then, I suppose he is only a politician.”

  “Indeed. And what of Florence?”

  “There was a maid who was bringing drink from a nearby alehouse and we talked,” Ruby said. “She knew Florence very well. She was definitely being kept by the Lord Brookfield. He had taken her on as a maid in his house but soon her charms persuaded him of other duties that she could perform. Then she was passed to Socks, like a horse being lent out to another.”

  “And she stayed in Socks’ house also? Usually these women are installed in some lodgings of their own.”

  “The finer ladies are … I think that would have been the eventual result, perhaps, if she learned to act the courtesan, but for the moment Socks had said to the world that she was another servant, and he expected her to behave as one. In truth, my lady, I do not think this Florence is of high enough character to be a well-liked mistress of a man. You met her. What do you think?”

  “I would agree,” Cordelia said. The mistresses of important men who were given rooms of their own were well-spoken, fashionable and often clever women. Florence appeared to be none of those things, although Cordelia had admittedly not met the girl in the best of circumstances. Some lower-bred women were consummate actresses, and learned to show the world an artificial face, but most did not. It took more than changing one’s accent; one had to exist as another person entirely. It was difficult.

  Ruby got up and paced the room. It was tastefully decorated in deep shades of burgundy, with the woodwork — dado rail, picture rail, frames and windows — picked out in a rich yellow. She wandered to the wall where Cordelia had assembled her information and inspiration.

  “But I found out some other interesting things, and there is one other thing which … you will not be happy about,” Ruby said, looking at the wall rather than her mistress.

  “What?”

  “Let me tell you in order. Firstly, that Albert Socks, and that dead man Bonneville, hated one another.”

  “They were on the same side.”

  “Quite so, but it is not unusual in politics, is it? Furthermore, Bonneville and the Lord Brookfield were friends, or at least, they were not enemies.”

  Cordelia rose to stand next to Ruby. “There is something fishy here, and it is not eels. Have you some ribbon?” She looked at a scrap of paper which said “Socks”, and an article which had a print of Lord Brookfield, and the obituary of Bonneville.

  With Ruby’s help, Cordelia tacked the strips of red ribbon on the wall, making a triangle between Socks, Bonneville and Brookfield.

  In the centre she pinned Florence’s name.

  “I wonder,” Cordelia said, “if this girl is more significant than we had been assuming.”

  “What, some lowly woman like her?” Ruby said, mockingly. “No, surely it is simply a case of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Yes, but look,” Cordelia said, tapping the points of the triangle. “She was Socks’ woman but she was in love with his enemy, Bonneville. Was it just a plot by Bonneville to undermine Socks? And if Socks found out…”

  “Then he would be even more angry to discover she was using the room that he had given her, to meet with his enemy. Then Socks is a suspect, my lady.”

  “He is indeed.”

  “Now I have a question for you, my lady,” Ruby said. “How was it possible for those two, Florence and Bonneville, to actually meet? He was not likely to be a guest at Socks’ house, so how would a lowly fallen woman meet a politician?”

  “That is a good point. Perhaps they met at the Lord Brookfield’s house, while she was there, as those two men are friends.”

  “But they are of such different statuses,” Ruby argued. “I struggle to see how their paths would meet. Maybe the Lord Brookfield passed her to him?”

  “Or even Socks did.”

  “No,” Ruby argued. “That would make no sense. Why would he pass his woman to his enemy?”

  “Perhaps she was not a nice gift,” Cordelia said. “I have often wanted to parcel up some fish and send it by slow mail to my distant cousin Hettie.”

  “I see no problem with that, as long as you do not attach a return address.” Ruby took a deep breath. “And now, my lady, I have but one more thing to tell you. You will not like this. Please, sit down.”

  “Oh, come now, Ruby. What could be so awful?” Cordelia laughed as she obeyed her servant and sat on a wooden chair, fluffing her skirts up as she did so.

  Ruby looked reluctant to speak. She blurted it out in a rush. “Hugo Hawke is in town, my lady.”

  Cordelia was glad now that she had sat down. She pursed her lips. “And you saw him with your own eyes?”

 
“From afar, my lady, across the street as we returned back here.”

  “And did Stanley see him also?”

  “No, my lady.”

  “And the street was crowded, I assume?”

  “Well, yes…”

  “Then let us be plain, Ruby. You could have seen anyone. Why, one would barely recognise one’s own mother if she were on the other side of the street.”

  “I’d barely recognise her if she were stood here in front of me,” Ruby muttered under her breath.

  Hugo Hawke was not someone that Cordelia was prepared to worry about. She dismissed him from her mind. “Ruby, I shall retire for the evening.”

  “Yes, of course, my lady.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cordelia had had enough of waiting for other people to do the investigating on her behalf. Ruby and Stanley had had a late night, so she let them sleep in, and she didn’t want to explore the local alehouses and dining rooms to find Geoffrey or Neville Fry. She threw a thin, light plain cloak around her shoulders, pilfered from Ruby’s chest. Ruby was shorter than Cordelia and it did not reach her ankles. With an unremarkable hat tied under her chin with a dark ribbon, and a basket on her arm, Cordelia decided that in the great big city of London, she could pass as a mere middling sort of merchant’s wife, and so move around unmolested. She hoped.

  And off she went, striding with a determined air back to the Bow Street station house. She stamped up the steps and into the lobby. There was an unfamiliar policeman in the outer area but she stream-rolled herself over him, using the information and names she had gathered from talking with Ivy Delaney.

  “I am here to talk to one of the detectives,” she informed the man in uniform.

  “And you are…?”

  “I just told you, man. I am here to speak to one of the detectives. Do I wait here, or shall you show me to a room? Thank you.”

  “Are any of them expecting you? Is there one in particular that you want to see?”