Murder in Grosvenor Square (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries Book 9)

by Ashley Gardner

  I heard him slam the front door of the house, but I also heard movement in the lower floors, presumably the driver carrying Travers inside.

  I hunted up cloths from a cupboard in the hall, but I’d need to climb down the stairs for water or shout for the dray’s driver to bring it up. That assumed there was any water below, and the man wouldn’t have to run to the nearest pump.

  I could at least wipe the mud and grime from Leland’s face. Leland remained insensible, making no noise or movement as I touched his bloody wounds.

  All the while questions continued to whirl through my head: Why had Leland and Travers been in that dirty passage? Or had they been attacked elsewhere and carried there, arranged to be found as they’d been? The large quantity of blood suggested Travers had bled out on the cobbles where Mackay had first taken me. But who had moved them between the time Mackay had found them and I’d returned with him? Had Leland been conscious enough to try to get Travers to safety? Or had the killer returned and tried to hide them?

  As to who had attacked the two, Seven Dials had no shortage of toughs and men who lived on anger. A street gang who’d come upon two toffs on their own, no matter what they’d been doing, wouldn’t mind giving in to violence. Discovering that they were mollies would have lent fuel to the fire. But where did Mackay come into it?

  I would have no answers until Leland woke. I worried he’d never wake at all.

  I do not know how long I sat in the dim light, cleaning Leland’s face, but presently I heard Brewster return. His heavy tread sounded on the stairs, combined with a lighter, more nimble one.

  The man Brewster ushered inside was short of stature but had muscular arms, like a blacksmith’s. This gentleman said nothing to me but went straight to Leland’s side while Brewster lit more candles.

  The surgeon—I assumed that was who he was—demanded water and clean towels. Brewster moved to oblige, far more quickly than he’d ever obliged me.

  The surgeon had sallow skin and a fringe of brown hair around a balding head, but eyes that brooked no foolishness. Surgeons would never be given the status of doctors, since they worked with their hands—setting bones, cutting off limbs, taking out bits of a man’s insides—but the best ones saved more lives, in my opinion, than any doctor I’d met.

  The surgeon turned Leland’s head to study his wounds, peeled back Leland’s eyelids, felt him for fever, and loosened the shirt I’d laboriously done up. “How long?” he asked me, his words clipped.

  “I am not certain,” I said. “He was struck down at least an hour before I found him, I would say. And it’s been the better part of two hours since then.”

  “You a surgeon?” the man snapped. “How do you know it was an hour?”

  I was too tired to be offended. “I’m a soldier, or used to be. I’m guessing from the state of the wounds and the pallor on his friend, who did not survive, that they were struck down about an hour or so before I found them. Though I suppose Travers could have taken some time to die.”

  The surgeon shook his head. “The man in the kitchen? He was dead minutes after he was hit. This one wasn’t so lucky.” He gestured to Leland.

  Cold bit me. “You are saying he will die as well?”

  “Depends on his constitution. He’s young. I’ll do my best for him.”

  The man’s accent put him from outside London, somewhere in the west I’d say, though not as far as Cornwall. I’d had a Cornish man under my command in Portugal, and whenever he’d spoken in his native dialect, I hadn’t understood a bloody word he’d said. He’d understood me well enough, though, and survived many a battle to sail happily home to his wife and brood of Cornish children.

  Brewster quickly returned with the water, so perhaps the house did have a working pump, or one close by outside. The surgeon began to clean away the dried blood, revealing many gashes in Leland’s head, face, and neck.

  The man had brought his own needles and thread, and he sewed the larger wounds closed. I reflected that it was a mercy Leland was oblivious at the moment. The surgeon worked with admirable skill, but didn’t bother softening his stabs with the needle, his tugs on Leland’s raw flesh. I’d seen many a hardened soldier screaming as a surgeon held him down to stitch him back together.

  When the surgeon finished, he rubbed an ointment on the wounds, then looked at me without expression. The man’s face hadn’t changed expression at all, in fact, since he’d entered.

  “Have someone stay with him,” he said, packing up his things. “He’ll have a fever, and thrash, and he needs to be still, or he’ll open the stitches. Tie him to the bed if you have to. Send for me if he needs tending again.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I didn’t have much money with me, but I pulled a handful of coins from my pocket and held them out to him.

  The man studied the silver in my palm then met my gaze with those unemotional eyes. “Mr. Denis pays me. Good night.”

  “Will Leland survive?” I asked, dropping the coins back into my pocket. I felt I knew the answer already, but I couldn’t help asking.

  “Time will tell,” the surgeon said. “He’s young and strong, as I said. He either will, or he’ll catch a bad fever and won’t.”

  A man not willing to commit an opinion. I could not blame him—life and death was never certain. Without further word, the surgeon walked off down the stairs, out of the house, and into the night.

  *

  I needed to send word to Sir Gideon. He might lose his son tonight, and the family deserved the chance to tell him good-bye. I did not want to risk moving Leland again so soon, and so Sir Gideon would have to come here.

  I was on the verge of telling Brewster to deliver a message to Grosvenor Square, when Grenville arrived.

  “Dear God, Lacey, what the devil?” was his greeting as he strode into the room.

  Grenville stopped at the foot of the bed and gazed at Leland in shock. He was dressed for an evening on the town, in one of his most elegant suits, his cravat pin a glittering emerald. Diamonds winked white fire on his fingers, and his cravat was tied in a complicated but perfectly symmetrical knot. All this refinement contrasted sharply to the fear on his face.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you,” I began, my voice cracking.

  The fear flared to anger. “Bloody hell, Lacey, do not become prim with me. Matthias came running into White’s with a message that I must go to you in a dark passage in Seven Dials. If it had been any man but you, I’d have flat refused, but I knew you’d have good reason for me to rush there. Except, when I arrived, there was nothing but a foul stench and blood, and then one of Denis’s men found me and sent me here. Who the devil beat Leland over the head, while you do not have a scratch on you?”

  I waited until his words ran out, and then I quietly explained.

  Grenville put his hand to his already rumpled hair and dropped to the nearest chair. “Good Lord, Lacey. Does Sir Gideon know?”

  “Not yet. I was about to send for him.”

  Grenville shook his head. “I’ll go, of course, my dear fellow. My apologies for lighting into you like that. This is appalling.”

  “I do not know what to do with Travers,” I said, my words heavy. “I don’t know who his people are, where he’s from …”

  Grenville got to his feet, his commanding personality taking over. “Do not move.” He strode out the door. I heard him giving orders to Brewster and whoever else was below, though I was too tired to comprehend them.

  In a few minutes, Grenville was back, carrying the box he kept in his carriage that contained brandy and glasses. He poured a substantial amount of liquid into a glass and shoved it at me.

  “Get that inside you,” he said. “Then we’ll decide what to do.”

  *

  I was never more grateful to have a friend like Grenville than I was that night. His brandy burned a trail of healing fire down my gullet, but his help went far beyond that.

  Grenville knew I was in shock, and he was putting aside his own to handle th
e situation. He’d known Leland and the Derwents far longer than I had, and yet he turned away sorrow to do what had to be done. He told Brewster to find more blankets and pillows to make Leland as comfortable as possible, to stock water and tonics in case of fever, and to build up the fire to chase away the chill the rain and wind had brought. Brewster did it all without complaining, his expression as emotionless as the surgeon’s had been.

  Grenville had never met Travers’s family either, it turned out, but the Derwents would know who they were. He made sure I was all right, told Brewster that he should not leave me alone, and departed.

  Brewster had no intention of going anywhere. “Mr. Denis’s orders,” he said when I asked him if he didn’t want to return home, despite Grenville’s instructions.

  Mr. Denis had long had the habit of assigning men to watch me. Since our return from Norfolk, it had been Brewster most of the time. The fact that Grenville wanted the man to stay with me attested to his worry about both me and Leland. Grenville thoroughly distrusted and disliked Denis and everything connected with him, so his insistence on Brewster remaining spoke volumes.

  It was not long before Leland began the fever the surgeon had warned me of. He did thrash, and I held him down. I was strong, but so was he, and I had to recruit Brewster to help me. After the better part of an hour of this, Leland sank back to the pillows in exhaustion. I hoped he’d open his eyes and look around, but he drifted off again, finding whatever comfort in his darkness.

  More time crawled by—there were no clocks in the room, and I seemed incapable of pulling out the watch Donata had given me to check the time. At long last, Grenville returned with Sir Gideon, and I could put off my sorrowful tasks no longer.

  Chapter Nine

  “My boy.” Sir Gideon sank to the chair at the side of Leland’s bed. “My poor dear boy.” He clasped his son’s hand, tears running unashamedly down his face.

  I stood awkwardly nearby, letting Sir Gideon have a private moment. His round back shook and his white head bowed over Leland’s too-pale hand.

  “How did this happen?” he asked in a broken voice. “Who did this, Captain? Why should anyone want to hurt Leland? He is the kindest of us all.”

  I agreed with him. Leland had no harm in him at all, and as far as I knew, Travers had not had either.

  “You will find out, won’t you?” Sir Gideon mopped his damp face with a large handkerchief, but didn’t release his son’s hand. “You will find who did this and bring him to justice?”

  What could I do but agree? I only hoped Sir Gideon’s trust in me wasn’t badly misplaced.

  *

  Sir Gideon wanted to take Leland home. I did not like to move him, but Grenville had brought his traveling chaise, whose rear seat slid down into a makeshift bed. He’d had the seat fashioned to ease his inclination toward motion sickness, and I blessed Grenville’s thoughtfulness in bringing it tonight.

  Brewster carried Leland down the stairs and out to the carriage, Sir Gideon and I coming behind them. Brewster laid out Leland on the bed, careful of his injuries, and tucked blankets around him. Grenville thanked Brewster and helped a shaking Sir Gideon into the carriage.

  Grenville paused with one booted foot on the step, one hand on the side of the carriage. “I’ve made arrangements to transport Travers to the Derwents’ house as well,” he said in a low voice, wind moving the tails of his coat. “Sir Gideon wishes it. He also told me how to find Travers’s family. In Bermondsey.” He briefly gave me the directions to a vicarage there.

  “Thank you,” I said. Grenville was a good man to have at one’s side in a crisis. He gave me a nod and swung himself inside the carriage.

  Brewster shut the door for him. The carriage jerked and rolled away, leaving Brewster and me in foggy darkness, Travers dead in the house behind us.

  *

  Brewster again helped move Travers’s body when the smaller carriage Grenville sent for the purpose rolled up soon afterward. The coachman refused to come down off his box, not at all happy about having to transport a dead body, but we got Travers settled, and I pulled a sheet over the lad’s silent and graying face.

  The carriage moved away, wheels grating on the cobbles. I found my knees bending as I nearly collapsed in reaction. Brewster held me steady and got me inside to the dusty, empty drawing room on the ground floor. He thrust a glass filled with more of the brandy Grenville had left into my hand, and I drank it down.

  “Thank you,” I said, wiping my mouth. “You’ve been a great help, Brewster.”

  “Mr. Denis’s orders.”

  “I know that,” I said impatiently. “But there’s carrying out orders, and there’s carrying them out well. I understand the difference.”

  Did Brewster grovel in the face of my thanks? No, he grunted and sat down on a striped damask sofa, pouring himself some of the brandy. My new friends in Mayfair would be horrified to see a man like Brewster sitting in the drawing room with me, drinking the finest brandy France produced from an elegant crystal goblet. I saw no reason for him not to, and drank with him in silence.

  “What will you do now?” Brewster asked after a time.

  I sighed. “Hunt up Mr. Travers the elder. Though I do not relish the task of breaking this news.”

  “Maybe you should leave it to Mr. Derwent’s father.”

  I thought of Sir Gideon, a man of feeling who hid none of his emotions. Reverend Travers would end up comforting Sir Gideon instead of the other way about. “No. I’d better do it,” I said.

  “I’ll come with you, sir.”

  I glanced at him in some surprise. “No need. I doubt an elderly clergyman will pose any danger to me.”

  “All the same. Mr. Denis says I’m to see you want for nothing and follow you everywhere. So that’s what I do.”

  I knew I would not persuade him otherwise, and I was too weary to try. I drained my glass. “Very well, then. He lives in Bermondsey. It is very late, but if it were my son dead, I’d want to know right away.”

  Brewster nodded. He finished his brandy more leisurely, then rose. “I’ll fetch a hackney.”

  I tucked Grenville’s box with flask and now-dirty glasses under my arm and left the house with him. Brewster carefully locked the door with a large key, and then led me back out to High Holborn and a hackney stand.

  *

  Bermondsey was a place of dockyards and wharfs, where waterways cut into the land, expanding the unloading areas. In spite of the newer dockyards that had sprung up farther east along the Thames, the wharves here were lined with tall ships in a crowd of masts, the place teeming with activity.

  The vicarage Grenville directed me to was tucked into a lane far from the wharves, behind a church with a high, square steeple. The lane, narrow and cobbled and squeezed with houses, dead-ended not far away into an open field. Some places in London could be like that, city giving way to country in two steps.

  I was not certain what to expect as I knocked on the door of the vicarage. It was midnight, the church clock behind me chiming serenely. The dockyards at the other end of town had been a hive of activity, even in the darkness, but in this lane all was quiet.

  A maid jerked open the door, her pale-eyed glare raking us in distrust. I could not blame her—splattered with grime and dried blood, Brewster and I resembled nothing less than street toughs or madmen. “They’ve gone to bed,” she snapped. “What you want?”

  I removed a card from the silver case in my pocket and handed it to her. “Please tell your master I need to speak to him at once. It is a matter of some urgency.”

  “Are you a constable?” The maid took the card and glanced at the writing on it, but her eyes didn’t move, nor did her face show any comprehension. She couldn’t read.

  “My name is Captain Lacey. I’m a friend of Reverend Travers’s son Gareth. Please.”

  She studied me then Brewster again and seemed to make up her mind. She stalked back inside, then returned after a few minutes and beckoned me to follow her up a narrow,
creaking staircase to the next floor. She gave no invitation to Brewster, but he came anyway.

  We were shown into a sitting room furnished with leftovers from the last century. Tables with delicately curved legs stood here and there, a wing chair faced the fireplace, and the footstool in front of the chair sagged with use. Next to the chair was the most modern piece of furniture in the room, a Canterbury filled with large books. A tea table stood at the ready, as did a sideboard in the Chippendale style, with a decanter of sherry and crystal glasses on its top.

  The door opened behind us, but instead of the middle-aged and portly vicar I expected, I was confronted by a fairly young woman with a trim body and oval face. She was fully dressed in a long-sleeved, plain gown of gray cotton, with a high ruffled collar modestly outlining her throat. A few strands of hair were out of place beneath her cap, but other than that she was neat and alert enough to receive afternoon callers.

  I pulled myself out of my surprise and made her a polite bow. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “I came here to speak to Reverend Travers.”

  “Who is asleep,” she answered in a crisp voice. “He retires at ten precisely every evening. I am Mrs. Travers. May I help you …” She glanced at the card in her hand. “Captain Lacey?”

  “It is a matter of delicacy,” I said, my throat tightening. “Bad news, I am afraid. Your husband ought to hear it.”

  “Then he will hear it from me.”

  She stood firm, obviously having no intention of rushing off to rouse her husband. Mrs. Travers could not be much older that Gareth himself—I put her a year or two younger than Donata, who had reached her thirtieth year last spring. The hair beneath her cap was light brown, and she had very blue eyes. Her youth and comeliness contrasted acutely with her gown of drab and respectable gray, and she stood with her hands folded over my card.

  “It concerns his son,” I said. “I’m afraid he’s been hurt.”

  Mrs. Travers blinked once, then she lifted her chin and said frostily, “I must inform you, Captain, that Reverend Travers has nothing to do with his son. We wish him a speedy recovery, but bid you good night.”