by Issy Brooke
“I am visiting,” she said. “I have taken lodgings quite centrally, and I intend to soak up as much culture and high-minded pursuits as I can.”
“Ah, the museums, the galleries. Quite so,” he said. “Our grand heritage makes us a great nation and our empire is slowly amassing the fortunes and the treasure of the whole world and bringing them back here for all to delight in.”
He said it as if the theft of another country’s treasure was a good thing, and from the look on his face, he truly believed it. There was a jingoistic jutting of his chin. Before he could launch into a stirring rendition of the national anthem, she said, “As well as art, I am also interested in architecture.” It was a blatant lie. She hoped that he would not turn out to be a world-acknowledged expert and engage her in difficult conversation.
“Are you?” he said. “Well, London offers you the very best in such things.”
“Yes,” she said, ploughing on in spite of his lack of encouragement; clearly he wasn’t interested, or he’d still be asking questions. “One place I intend to visit would be the Houses of Parliament.”
“Do you not mean the Palace of Westminster?” he said.
“Ah … yes, I probably do. I should say that though I am interested in architecture, I’m not an expert…”
“It is still, alas, something of a building site, a rather rough work in progress,” he said sadly. “The dreadful fire in thirty-four took much of the more ancient fabric of the building. Still, now that Barry and Pugin have their teeth into it, I am sure we might see a new and even more majestic edifice arise.”
“And does work — political work, I mean — still go on while it is rebuilt?”
“It does, of course. I am a member of the House of Lords, and we are determined to ensure that the country will be run as it ought to be, regardless of what surrounds us.”
“Indeed, and I commend you.” She drew in a breath as she prepared to break social convention. Her whole conversation had been designed to lead subtly to this point, to make it look as casual and innocent as possible. If she’d brought up politics right at the start, without preamble, she would have seemed rude. “I would fancy that all politicians, of whatever shade they might be, have but one aim deep in their hearts: that of the advancement of the welfare and rights of our people.”
“Welfare, certainly, but I would disagree about rights. For it is a plain fact, my lady, that the common man does not really know what is best for him. Such knowledge is given to us, to the few in power, so that we might guide and lead while absolving the lesser mortal of the responsibility to make decisions about which he is not capable, due to lack of education, or breeding, or simply common sense. Not all have the aptitude to think great things, do they?”
“Indeed they do not,” she said, agreeing while still feeling uncomfortable about his argument. She wasn’t sure why it unsettled her, but it did. Still, Lord Brookfield was only saying something that was common knowledge to everyone. “And do all politicians naturally have this aptitude, or are some there by accident of birth?”
He allowed a brief look of shock to tweak his eyebrows. He cleared his throat before he said, carefully, “Goodness, that was unexpectedly bold, my lady.”
“It is probably my lack of husband that makes me so free with my tongue.”
“Ah, the widow’s prerogative.”
“It is that. Indulge me. I have rather taken an interest in politics since coming here.”
“It would be a most unseemly interest.”
“Well,” she hurriedly countered, thinking on the fly as fast as she could, “of course, not the tedious subject of politics itself. No, no. I do confine myself to the more fitting considerations regarding, um, the nature of man and what values, what, er, exalted values a man would have who entered politics, and … and, well, just what I said.” She stumbled out of rhetoric and into gibbering. “I shall ignore the minute substance and detail of a man’s beliefs; but do all politicians in general hold heartfelt beliefs, or do they wax and wane according to what befits their ambition?”
He was growing tired, and not a little uncomfortable with the conversation. He smiled thinly, and said, “As to that, I do not claim to hold any insight into a man’s private motivations.”
She noticed he was no longer asking her questions, as he did not wish to prolong the conversation.
“Indeed not, and you must forgive my impertinence,” she said.
“The widow’s prerogative again?”
“Some might say I was impertinent all my life,” she said, and he smiled a little more naturally.
But she still hadn’t managed to steer the conversation onto the main topic she needed. She could see the moment passing. In desperation, as he relaxed once more, she blurted out, “For example, I am curious about one Albert Socks. A politician in your own party, is he not?”
Lord Brookfield went absolutely still and she realised her mistake instantly. Oh, to turn back time! She should have mentioned one or two other men, first, and Socks would then be an incidental name in a list of names. By speaking his name first, she had made him the main event, and aroused suspicion.
I am not as clever as I think I am, she berated herself. It is too late to turn this around. I shall watch him closely, however, as I still might learn something.
Lord Brookfield smiled again, and it was a distant and patronising one. “My dear lady Cornbrook, Mr Socks is but one member of a very large party of diligent and hard-working men, all with but one aim in mind: the betterment of the nation. We might all disagree on the methods by which we’ll achieve this, but no matter. As to the individual himself, why, our paths do not cross. Ah! Mr Gibbs. I fear your good lady friend is growing tired of this unfamiliar social whirl.”
“Cordelia!” Gibbs was concerned immediately as Lord Brookfield passed her over into his care, and bowed his way backwards, sidling out of sight as quickly as he could. “What ails you?”
“Absolutely nothing,” she said, “save that I have taken my already tarnished reputation and added ‘foolish prattle’ to it.”
“Have you asked indelicate questions?”
“I have,” she said defiantly.
“Oh dear. Do not let your actions besmirch me, if you please.”
“I shall try not to. Perhaps you should not be seen with me,” she said, beginning to grin.
“What are you proposing?”
“That you go and fetch me a fresh glass of champagne,” she retorted. “And thereby reduce the damage to your reputation by being in my company.”
He raised his eyes to the heavens and mouthed a silent prayer, but he was smiling as he took her empty glass and went in search of more drink.
It was unfortunate, then, as she found herself alone at the edge of a small anteroom at the ball, that this was the moment that Hugo Hawke descended upon her, and pulled her into a curtained alcove beside a bust of Cicero on a pillar and a portrait of the late King Edward VII who frowned down upon them as she slapped at Hugo’s chest ineffectually.
“What do you mean by this? Let go of me!”
“Hush,” he said, and moved his hand as if to press it to her mouth. He stopped short as she grabbed the cravat around his neck and began to twist, strangling him by inches. “Stop,” he gasped, and she released the pressure slightly.
“What do you mean by this?” she asked again, and kept her hand firmly ready to choke him again if she did not like his answer.
Chapter Sixteen
“Listen,” he said in a rough, low voice. “We are fighting for the same thing.”
“I … what do you know of what I am fighting for?”
“You’re investigating that politician’s murder, aren’t you?” he said.
“What murder?”
“For goodness’ sake, Cordelia. Don’t play games with me. We’ve been through too much together.”
She didn’t like any association of “together” with Hugo Hawke, but she let her hand drop from his neck. He was right. And she w
as, she had to admit, intrigued. “There might be a private matter to which I am attending, yes. A private matter.”
He straightened his necktie. “As soon as I heard it involved that old butler of yours, and his daughter, I knew you’d be all over it like fleas on a hedgehog. Not that I knew he had a daughter! The old goat.” He chuckled. “Anyway, you are quite the lady-detective now, you know. And when I saw you at the station house, then I knew for sure. And I know something else, too.”
“What?” She hated to ask for information, but she wanted to know what mischief he was up to, and then make her escape back to the ball. Conversations and chatter drifted past them, against an aural backdrop of dancing music.
“The police are thwarting you. Aren’t they?” he said.
“They are,” she had to agree. “What do you know of it, though?”
“I know enough. I know that they will stand in your way, and that the poor girl has just been thrown to the wolves for it.”
“And what do you care?”
“I care nothing for her,” he said, lightly. “But the police are thwarting me, too, and that — well, I do care about that.”
She was taken aback. Now she was leaning in to him, rather than trying to get away. “You must start from the beginning,” she said. “You don’t even live in London!”
He glanced around, and peeped around the pillar, before pulling the curtain even more tightly closed to shield them from view. “Consider this a kind of truce between us,” he said, “And afford me the honour and courtesy of keeping my words private.”
“Of course.” Unless a crime is committed, she added in her head. He could see her hands so she imagined crossing her fingers. That would have to do. And she was so surprised that he was confiding in her at all, that she even wondered if he had changed in some way; had a conversion, perhaps, or a life-changing illness. She listened.
“Well,” he said, “I own property, as you know. I must have the rental income, especially since you … enough of that.”
He was referring to Clarfields. She flared her nostrils, and he continued, hastily.
“And one of the properties that I own is a public house, not far from here. I installed a publican who is responsible for the day to day running of the place. He is the one under licence from the local magistrates to sell all alcohols and spirits. Everything is done by the book.”
“Indeed.”
He glared at her. “Indeed it is. But the local police in that division, Holborn, are trying to blackmail this man, my publican. He runs boxing matches, just small affairs for the common man, nothing out of the ordinary.”
Alarm bells began to sound in Cordelia’s head. She watched Hugo closely.
He went on. “But the policemen, you see, are insisting that my publican gives them money to be able to continue running these entertainments, or that they will have him up on charges of disorderly conduct and goodness knows what else. They could fabricate anything. Who are they accountable to? Nobody, as far as I can see.”
“That all seems suspiciously plausible,” she said. “What are you not telling me, Hugo? And if you are having problems with Holborn, why were you at Bow Street?”
His gaze flickered away. He checked the curtain again, running his hands down the thick folds, tugging it into place. “I’m telling you everything,” he said. His tone turned wheedling. “Isn’t this like old times, Cordelia? Do you remember, you and I, at the start of your visit to my house? What fun that was? Just like old times…”
“Not quite,” she said. “I cannot see a handy set of stairs to kick you down.”
He winced as he remembered the blow she had fetched him, in front of all of his guests and friends. “Let us not speak of that,” he said.
She wondered if the bitterness of that time would still be burning him, deep inside. That was another reason for her to be suspicious of him. “Why are you telling me these things?” she said. “You must be plotting against me, somehow … you must be! Let me assure you that I shall not be taken in by you again! Not ever, sir.”
“I am telling you, Cordelia, you stupid, stubborn thing, because I need your help.”
She gaped at him for a moment.
“You look like a trout.”
She closed her mouth, and said, “And you claim to need my help? With flattery like that?”
“True flattery never did work on you, so I might as well be honest,” he said. “I thought you might respect that. Respect what I am saying, even if you don’t respect me. Listen, it is true. We can work together. You will be investigating this murder, and I need to find evidence, hard evidence, that I can bring against the police. I had gone to Bow Street because I thought they could help me against Holborn. They won’t; I need evidence of the wrongdoing!”
“To take them before the magistrates?”
“Yes, exactly that. But how can one expose the injustice perpetrated by the justice system itself? What’s the saying, who guards the guards? It’s something in Latin, I don’t know. Look, as a man, I can go places that you cannot, so I can look out for information for you. But you … I need you because you have a strange sort of brain, a womanly one, I should say. You talk to unusual people. Like all of your sex, you look at things from a curious angle. I cannot fathom how you do it, but you do. It is your strength as well as your weakness.”
“Then ask any woman,” she said. “If, indeed, we all have corkscrew minds.”
“Yours is the twistiest I have ever encountered. I mean that in a nice way. You will look at the problem sideways and you will come up with connections that I could not see. All I ask is that as you look into things, look into the police, and pass to me anything that you can discover. I am not even asking you to go to extra effort for me. Just be alert.”
“I do not know what to say,” she said. She was inclined to take his odd words as a kind of compliment.
“Think on it. I’ll be in touch.” He reached out as if to shake her hand or press it to his lips, but she turned on a high-grade withering stare and he let his fingers drop.
He slid out of the alcove and she remained behind for a few minutes, thinking. He had not behaved too inappropriately with her. He had kept his distance. Could she believe him? Eventually she peered out from the curtain and when she was certain that no one would remark on her movements, she slipped out and re-entered the throng.
She was immediately drawn into a conversation with a small group of people. One man was being somewhat disparaging about her column, teasing her for her “literary pretensions” and she could not argue back because everyone was laughing as if it were merely a very good joke. She did not want to look cold and churlish. But Ivy appeared, and caught her discomfort, and cleverly turned things to other matters.
When a newcomer then mentioned the matter of Bonneville’s murder, Cordelia’s ears pricked up once more. “Who were the man’s enemies?” she asked, but she received general smiles for her answer.
“That woman who is to hang for it, obviously! Some gin-drinker of the streets.”
The consensus was that Florence was likely to be guilty of something, and if it were not murder of this man at this time, then she would probably have killed him in the future anyway.
Cordelia felt herself get quite angry. “It is too neat, too pat that she was there in the room when he was killed; no one has come up with any convincing reason why she might have done it! She has no motive.”
“I once dropped my cigar in my brandy,” a man said. “I half-knew I was doing it, but I cannot really explain why I did it. A part of me was curious as to the effects. I was, perhaps, distracted and idle.”
“And drunk,” someone added.
“That is a completely different thing,” Cordelia said in shock. “No one kills on a whim, just to see what happens.”
A matronly woman stepped in. “All of this talk is unseemly and inappropriate,” she said. “We are not in some common coffee house, and this reflects badly on every one of you. Of us. And our host would
not approve.”
The talk was forcibly turned once more. Cordelia sank into thought.
“And drink,” that person had said. It chimed in her head.
Was Florence guilty? Cordelia had to consider the possibility. Could it be a crime of passion?
No, she thought. A crime of passion would be something violent and physical, in the heat of the moment, using whatever came to hand. Bonneville had been poisoned by wine.
That had to be have been planned, Cordelia thought.
And then another thing came to her which turned her thoughts around.
Neville Fry assured her that his daughter did not — indeed, could not — drink alcohol.
If that was common knowledge, and her lover knew and accepted it, then she could easily refuse to drink the poisoned wine without arousing suspicion. If she had poisoned the wine herself, she had a good excuse why she was not drinking it.
Suddenly, it was not looking good in Florence’s favour, Cordelia realised. She had to look harder for a motive.
Chapter Seventeen
Gibbs accompanied her right back to the door of her lodgings at Furnival’s Inn that night. He took her in his own enclosed carriage rather than chancing the chillier cabs that thronged the streets. Still, she insisted on having the carriage window open, and he assumed that she needed the air due to the over-consumption of champagne. But in reality, she was fascinated by the city at night.
“The streets never sleep,” she said, as they got stuck behind a succession of cabs and coaches. “I reckon it to be a long way past midnight and yet the place is teeming like a midweek afternoon.”
“Teeming with a different character of people, though,” Gibbs said, as he nestled back and ignored her entreaties to look outside.
“You imagine they might all be lowlifes and drunkards and women of questionable morals,” Cordelia said, “and though there is a share of that sort, in fact I see workers coming home and workers setting out, and all manner of trades about their business. How long until dawn? I suppose there are people who must walk a great distance to be at the markets, to buy their produce, to be able to sell them to others who will be going to walk in a few hours’ time.” She was reminded once more of her desire to visit Billingsgate, and other places.
