Murder While I Smile

by Joan Smith

  “I’m worried about Prance’s fondness for that hussy,” Coffen said to Corinne. He had called on her for a consultation before they went to Boisvert’s. “I’d give the skin off my back to help him, but there’s no getting any sense out of him. As well try to get an oink from a hen. You ought to see the bracelet he bought her this morning. Paved with diamonds, with a big black one in the middle, to match her eyes. You’d think a dirty diamond would be cheap, but it ain’t. It cost more than a real one.”

  “It is real, Coffen. Colored diamonds are rare; that’s why they cost more.”

  “I thought it was pretty ugly myself. It might be enough to turn her off, but there’s no counting on it. What we could do is tell him about her stunt with the Rondeaux, giving the book he gave her to Marchant.”

  “It was an honest mistake. Marchant picked it up in error. Reg would have noticed if she didn’t have her copy in her saloon.”

  “He’d never notice if she had an elephant in her saloon. Too busy fighting the tiger off. Not that he does fight her. He says she jumped on him like a dog on a bone. The minute he sat down, she was all over him. Says she makes love like a tiger.” He shook his head in disgust. “French.”

  Corinne had a moment’s anxiety about Luten’s former acquaintance with Chamaude. How long had he been friends with her? If it had been more than a week, then they had certainly made love. She doubted that her own expertise in that area could match the tigerish efforts of Chamaude. When he said Yvonne had not been his mistress, that didn’t necessarily mean he had never made love with her. Corinne knew he had had mistresses in the past. One could hardly expect a bachelor of thirty years to be chaste. She didn’t mind the others; she knew they were history. It was only the beautiful Lady Chamaude who got under her skin in this unsettling way.

  The trouble was, she didn’t really feel she deserved Luten. Until coming to London, she had never met anyone remotely like him. So debonair, intelligent, handsome—and a rich marquess besides. It had been understandable that deCoventry should want her. He had been three times her age, but that such an eligible bachelor as Luten should offer for her still seemed like a fairy tale. Half the ladies in London were throwing their bonnets at him. Her dowry was insignificant compared to his fortune, and she was a widow of twenty-four years besides. Gentlemen usually preferred well-dowered debs.

  “Let us hope Luten can prove she’s a criminal,” she said. “I believe Prance is too fastidious to consort with a known felon.”

  “And anyhow, she’ll be locked up. He’d never go to Bridewell for his courting.” He looked into the grate and noticed no fire was laid. “No fire, eh?” he said.

  “On such a warm day as this? No, are you chilly?”

  “Can’t say I am. Just wondering about that smoke coming out of your chimbley this morning. Luten’s as well.”

  “That was in my bedchamber. It was chilly.”

  “Have you got damp in your attics?”

  She hesitated just an instant before replying. “Yes. I should have the roof looked at, I expect.”

  “I mind deCoventry saying it was a new roof when he bought you this place a few years ago.”

  “Newish. Shall we go?”

  “I’ll be driving my own rig, in case you two want to do something else after. Don’t mean to make a pest of myself at this time, when you two want to be alone. Together, I mean.”

  She saw Coffen’s plain black carriage standing in the road. Luten’s carriage had not been brought around yet, but she hustled Coffen out the door to distract him as he kept frowning at her grate. He was like a bulldog when something was bothering him. They waited at Luten’s house until his hunting carriage arrived. Coffen employed the time by looking across the street to examine her roof with his forehead corrugated in confusion.

  “That what you’re driving?” Coffen asked.

  “In case anyone is watching,” Luten explained. “One plain black carriage is much like another. We’ll get out at the corner of Curzon and walk the last bit. You’ll follow us, Pattle?”

  Coffen’s coachman, like the rest of his servants, was incompetent. He had been known to get lost going around the block.

  “I’ll not let Fitz lose you. Follow that carriage, Fitz,” he ordered.

  Luten’s groom set a leisurely pace. Fitz managed to keep sight of the rig as they drove through the polite West End. The passengers dismounted at Curzon Street, walked around the corner and on to Shepherd’s Market. As Boisvert’s studio was on the corner, they just slipped into the alley leading to the back door without attracting any attention. Boisvert had not even bothered to lock the back door. It opened with a simple turn of the knob.

  “Pretty lax for a fellow with paintings worth thousands in his studio,” Coffen muttered. “I wager he’s left someone to guard the shop.” He listened a moment at the open door. No sound came from within.

  “You two hide around the corner, and I’ll give a shout inside,” Coffen said. “If anyone comes, I’ll let on I’m looking for someone else. We’ll have to come back later.”

  Luten said, “If there’s anyone there, then the front door will likely be open, too. If you get an answer, keep the fellow occupied. We’ll go in the front door and search the studio.”

  Luten and Corinne darted around the corner to listen. Coffen opened the door and shouted, “Hallooo. Anyone home?” When he got no answer after three shouts, he beckoned the others forward and they all went inside. The door opened into a sliver of kitchen, where the remains of a simple lunch of bread and cheese were still on the table. In fact, the teakettle was still spouting a faint column of steam. As they continued down a narrow, dark passageway with two doors leading off it, they were assailed by the familiar reek of oils, turpentine, and food. At the end of the hall was a doorway into the studio.

  The room was as they remembered. The only difference was that one of the easels was empty. Luten wondered if Boisvert had removed the Watteau he was working on before leaving. He went to the spot where he had discovered the original Watteau resting against the wall the day before and began lifting the canvas that had concealed it. The Watteau was gone.

  Coffen began a systematic examination of the canvases stacked two and three deep against the wall. He saw landscapes of points of historical interest in London. Saint Paul’s, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament. Dull stuff, but well enough done if you had a taste for buildings. He preferred dogs and horses and people himself.

  Corinne decided to take a look in the bedroom, thinking there might be a desk there with some incriminating note from Chamaude. There were two doors in that narrow corridor. She went back and opened the first one. It was indeed Boisvert’s bedroom, but she never got around to searching it. As soon as she entered the dark, cramped little room, she felt a frisson run up her spine. It wasn’t just the fetid air, or the mess left behind by a bachelor without a servant to tidy up after him. It wasn’t the bare wood floor underfoot or the tumbled pallet he obviously used for a bed.

  Even before she saw the dark hump on the bed, she sensed the presence of something awful. She quelled the scream that rose in her throat and took a step closer. It looked like a heap of old clothes. His smock, was it? She thought Boisvert must have changed into his good clothes to go to the elegant Clarendon. Then she saw the arm dangling over the edge of the cot and the lifeless hand, with the fingers frozen in a curved position, and the scream could no longer be restrained.

  The banshee wail caused Luten and Coffen to leap, stare a moment at each other in alarm, then run down the hall to the open doorway. Luten just touched Corinne’s shoulder in passing, as if to ascertain she was all right, before he hurried on to the bed. She watched as he lifted the lifeless arm and stared at the corpse’s face. His own face looked very much the same—all rigid and gray—as he stared at the remains of Boisvert. Then she turned away, feeling faint.

  Luten took a long, hard look at the lifeless form. Were it not for the crinkly, tawny gold hair and the smock, he might not have
recognized the artist, for his face was discolored and distorted in horror. The head rested at an odd angle, the neck obviously broken. There was no sign of a weapon or blood. This ruthless murder had been performed with the bare hands, which told him that the comtesse had not done the job herself.

  “Is that Boisvert?” Coffen asked in a hushed voice, as he peered over Luten’s shoulder. Luten nodded. Coffen leaned over and lifted the lifeless arm. “I notice the arm moves easily. He ain’t rigor mortified yet. Can’t have been dead long. Strangled, from the color of his face, poor blighter. We’d best call Bow Street, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s have a look for clues before we go.”

  Luten looked around the room. “Where’s Corinne?”

  “Straggled down the hall. Studio, I believe. Or maybe outside, retching. Not a pretty sight,” he added, his gaze flickering to the truckle bed and the sad relic of humanity on it.

  “Would you mind taking her home, Pattle? I’ll go to Bow Street.”

  They went to the studio, where Corinne stood beside the empty easel. Luten drew her into his arms. “Are you all right?” he asked gently. She nuzzled her head into his shoulder a moment, then lifted it.

  “She did this,” she said, in a small, angry voice. She drew back and stared at him. Her eyes glowed like coals in her pale face. “She killed him. She came here and discovered we had been here.”

  “He didn’t know who we were.”

  Corinne detached herself from his arms and said angrily, “He had our description. She would recognize it. She knows you are on to her, and she killed him to prevent him from testifying. You must go to Bow Street and tell Townsend everything, Luten.”

  “Let’s see if she left any clues first,” Coffen said, and began looking around.

  “Yvonne didn’t kill him. It would have taken a strong man,” Luten pointed out. “He was strangled.”

  “She wouldn’t have done it herself.” Corinne’s face was stiff with grief and anger and determination. “She probably hired that Frenchman who broke into Coffen’s house. He always does her bidding. You ought to make an effort to find him. And search Boisvert’s desk, too. She might have sent him a note that she was coming.”

  “There ain’t no desk in his room,” Coffen said.

  “If there’s anything here, Bow Street will find it,” Luten said. “I’m calling there immediately. Coffen will take you home, my dear. You’re upset.”

  “Of course I’m upset!” she cried, in a voice edged with hysteria. “It’s our coming here that caused that poor man’s murder!”

  “We don’t know that,” Luten said, trying to assuage her remorse and his own. “We don’t know what else he might have been mixed up in.”

  “We know the Watteau has disappeared. She took it back so there would be nothing to connect her to Boisvert. I wager the copy was on that easel that’s now empty.”

  A small table stood beside the empty easel. It held a palette, some pigments, brushes, and rags. It also held a watercolor sketch, about sixteen inches by twenty, of a country estate. The sketch was marked off in squares for enlargement, obviously in oils as oils were Boisvert’s medium. The mini palace, standing in the middle of a parkland of grass and stately oaks and elms, had its name in Gothic script at the bottom of the watercolor. Gresham Hall.

  Coffen took up the sketch. “I don’t think he was painting the Watteau,” he said. “I believe this is what he was going to paint. The oils on the palette are gray. He’s got greens for the grass and trees, blue for the sky as well. It’s this big house he was going to paint.”

  He handed it to Luten, his index finger pointing at the words “Gresham Hall.” Corinne looked at the sketch.

  “Gresham! We know how he happened to hire Boisvert,” she said. “He’s Chamaude’s friend. She sent him here.”

  “It looks that way,” Luten agreed. A grim smile pulled at his lips. “Brougham will be interested in this. It would help if I could find some evidence she was having the Watteau copied. Let’s have a search before we call Bow Street.”

  A hasty search revealed no trace of the Watteau, nor further copies of Coffen’s Poussin either. As they hastened back toward the carriages, they discussed the matter.

  “Not really much to tie Chamaude to it,” Coffen said. “Who’s to prove she sent Gresham to him? Even if she did, it ain’t against the law to have a picture painted of your house. You have half a dozen of the abbey, Luten.”

  “Boisvert is not well known,” Luten pointed out. “How would Gresham, a man from Manchester, have discovered him? Yvonne certainly sent him there. She’s Yarrow’s mistress—”

  “Was,” Coffen amended.

  “Was, and may still be for all we know. In any case, she was Yarrow’s mistress when the rocket contract was given to her friend Gresham. There has to be a way to prove it. You take Corinne home, Coffen. I’ll see Brougham after Bow Street finishes up here. He’s looking into the awarding of that rocket contract.”

  He assisted Corinne into Coffen’s carriage. “I’ll call on you as soon as I’ve finished. Try not to let this prey on your mind, sweetheart.”

  “You have to prove she did it, Luten,” she said, clutching at his fingers. “The woman is a devil.”

  “A silver lining anyhow,” Coffen said. “Always is, so the saying goes. Prance. This’ll kill his passion for her. Pity he’ll have given her the bracelet before we can tell him.’“

  “It’s a small price to pay for opening his eyes,” Corinne said grimly.

  They drove home, and Luten drove posthaste to Whitehall.

  Chapter Seventeen

  No sooner had Coffen delivered Corinne to her doorstep than Prance darted across the street to join them. He wore his best afternoon jacket and a cravat of such intricacy that it had obviously taken aeons to arrange. A wanton lock curled artfully forward over his lean, greyhound face, but it was his petulant expression that his companions noticed first.

  Coffen directed a questioning look at him. “The tiger made quick work of you this time,” he said. “It’s only half after three.”

  “I didn’t go,” he said. “She put me off. A note arrived just as I was leaving my door. Her ladyship has the megrims. She might at least have come up with a convincing excuse! A megrim named Yarrow, I warrant.”

  “No, a megrim named Boisvert,” Corinne said, and led him into the room, where he lifted his coattails and perched on the edge of a wing chair to hear the explanation.

  Black, aware that his beloved was in the boughs, hastened in to inquire if she would care for tea.

  “Brandy is more like it,” Prance snorted.

  Black ignored him. “Wine, your ladyship?”

  “If you please, Black, and tell Mrs. Ballard I am home.”

  “Mrs. Ballard is having a lie-down. Shall I call her?” His look at Prance suggested he required no chaperonage. Black poured the wine and handed it around.

  “No, let her rest,” Corinne said, grateful for the privacy.

  “Pray, what has Boisvert to do with anything?” Prance demanded, when Black had retired to his listening post beyond the doorway.

  Corinne briefly related what had happened, with plentiful interruptions from Coffen.

  Strangely, Prance was mollified by the tale. After expressing his shock and concern over Boisvert’s murder, he said, “At least it was something serious that put off our rendezvous. I feared she was through with me—had found me inadequate as a lover. That would have been a catastrophic blow to my pride, for I put forth my best effort. I shall just dart around now and see if Yvonne is all right.”

  “Reggie! Have you not been listening?” Corinne asked. “She is a murderess.”

  He quelled down the frivolous urge to say, “No one is perfect,” and said instead, “This so-called evidence is highly circumstantial. Boisvert is dead—well, murdered. Who is to say he was not killed by a burglar, or some lifelong enemy, or as a spy for that matter? In any case, she has no reason to murder me.”
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  “She gave your Rondeaux to Marchant,” Coffen said. “The copy you signed for her. That copy Marchant asked you to sign for him—’twas the one you signed for her. I have it at home.”

  Prance was vexed that Yvonne had not noticed the exchange but decided to forgive her. “An innocent mistake. Marchant took his copy with him when he visited her and picked up the wrong book when he left.”

  “Does she still have a copy?” Coffen asked.

  Prance gave a smirking grin. “I was otherwise engrossed on my last visit. I shall tell you when I return from my call. Adieu, mes amis. A bientôt.” He finished his wine, set the glass down, made a graceful bow, and left.

  “He’ll not get a toe in the door,” Coffen said. “I’ve half a mind to follow him and see. My carriage is still outside.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Corinne said. The little house on Half Moon Street held a dreadful fascination for her. To explain her eagerness, she added, “I cannot like to sit home alone, thinking of poor Boisvert.”

  “Come along then. I wouldn’t mind the company. It’ll stop me from thinking about him as well. Terrible sight on an empty stomach.”

  Corinne ignored the hint for sustenance. They had to wait a quarter of an hour before Prance’s carriage was brought around. They let him get around the corner before leaving.

  “Half Moon Street, Fitz,” Coffen ordered. “And make sure you don’t overtake Prance’s rig. Go by Berkeley Street and make a right-hand turn at Piccadilly.”

  “Right hand?” Fitz asked, frowning.

  “The hand you shave yourself with.” He stared at his coachman’s whiskered face. “When you bother to shave,” he added.

  Fitz began a pantomime motion of lathering his face. “Right hand. I’ve got it now,” he said, and held up his left hand.

  “The other one.”

  It was not to be expected that Fitz could negotiate the shorter route via Charles, Queen, and Curzon Streets, which would require the prodigious feat of remembering three street names and three tricky turns.

  “I hope Prance doesn’t give her the bracelet,” Corinne said, as they clipped along.