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

by Ashley Gardner

  “That’s what Bow Street’s for, innit?” Richards’s speech began to slip into its East London origins.

  “Yes, but we wish to assist any way we can. Young Leland is a dear friend.”

  “Of course, sir. Of course.” Richards snapped back into his butler-like tones. “But I do not believe Mr. Derwent left this club with anyone but Mr. Travers. Mr. Travers would know, sir. Thick as thieves those two are.”

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Travers was hurt as well, and can tell us nothing,” Grenville said. “Thank you, Richards. If you hear anything else, you will send word to me, won’t you?”

  Richards assured him he would, and we moved into the heart of the club.

  The games room was quiet this morning. Its heavy chandelier hung dark from the vaulted ceiling, which formed a graceful arch over us. The large round tables were empty except for a few gentlemen who idly drank coffee and read newspapers.

  I recognized one as the Honorable Mr. Henry Lawrence, son of a marquis. Mr. Lawrence had the reputation of being a man of many appetites, some of them disreputable, though no one had ever stated this to me outright. There were whispers, however, that did not bear close examination.

  In light of what had happened to Leland and Gareth, I wanted to know more about him. If the two lads had been lured away, someone like Lawrence might be able to point to where they’d gone and why.

  Mr. Lawrence’s red-rimmed eyes, peering over his newspaper as we boldly sat down at his table, told me he’d had a very late night and wished he’d remained in bed this morning. He had thinning dark hair and a face covered with dark bristles. His hazel eyes, though bloodshot, held intelligence, and he twinkled them at me as though he guessed my interest in him.

  “Mr. Derwent and Mr. Travers,” Lawrence said after he and Grenville had exchanged polite greetings, and Grenville had asked the question. “I did not speak to them much, Captain Lacey,” he said to me. “I promise. They are much too innocent for me, though Mr. Derwent has the loveliest hair. Like spun silk it is, do you not think?”

  Grenville gazed at him steadily. “May we keep this civilized, Lawrence?”

  “Of course, my dear Grenville.” Lawrence set down his newspaper and lifted his hands in surrender. “But the captain wanted you to speak to me, because he believes I lust after young Mr. Derwent, and he does not approve. Look at his face. You know it to be true.”

  I frowned at him, my hands curling in my lap. “We are only interested in where Mr. Derwent and Mr. Travers went after they left here.”

  “Hmm, well.” Lawrence debated, lowering his hands and closing his long fingers around a coffee cup. “You will have to promise me that if I confide in you, Captain, what I say will never come to the ears of your Runner friend.”

  “You have my word,” I answered. As long as Lawrence himself hadn’t hurt Leland and Gareth—or any other young man—I’d leave him alone.

  He seemed to understand my terms, because he gave me a tight but knowing smile. “In that case, I can tell you they might have gone any number of places for entertainment. You’ll find establishments beyond Drury Lane theatre, all the way to Lincoln’s Inn. You know of the White Swan? Near Clare Market?”

  “I thought that had been raided and closed long ago.” I had read tales of the molly house that had been invaded by patrollers some years past. Quite a few men had been arrested, and those tried and convicted had either been hanged or given to the mob at the stocks. The incident had happened when I’d been on the Peninsula, but the story had been in newspapers shipped in from London.

  “Indeed,” Lawrence said. “Such houses cannot stay closed for long. Gentlemen like Mr. Derwent and his friend Mr. Travers need somewhere they can be themselves, don’t they?” He sent me a smile. “Did you know, they take ladies’ names in these houses? What do you suppose Mr. Derwent calls himself? Miss Lucinda? Or something more regal? Miss Regina, perhaps?” He was baiting me, goading the captain with the reputation for taking matters into his own hands. Perhaps he wanted to see me explode into violence again, for his entertainment.

  “Mr. Lawrence,” I said, losing my patience. “Mr. Derwent and Mr. Travers were attacked last night. I am trying to discover by whom. If you know anything, you must tell us.”

  Lawrence’s brows shot upward, his arrogance dying into stunned surprise. “Attacked?” He looked to Grenville for confirmation, and Grenville nodded.

  Lawrence lifted his disheveled newspaper from the table and nervously began to fold it. “Good Lord, gentlemen, you ought to have said so at once. The Swan, or something like it, is exactly where you should begin to look for a culprit. The more unenlightened residents of the area could have set upon them—the bastards will lie in wait to beat down a gentleman emerging from one of the houses. Or a jealous rival, which happens. A man can be a molly and of prodigious strength. I knew a blacksmith once with thighs like tree trunks. He could bend an iron bar in half without sweating. He had many admirers.”

  “They had gone to Seven Dials,” Grenville broke in.

  “Ah.” Lawrence set down the newspaper, his brows drawing together. “There is a tavern in Seven Dials called the Bull and Hen. Not Mr. Derwent’s usual sort of haunt, I would have thought. It can be a bit rough. My blacksmith used to go there, though he’s rather elderly now, and not prowling the houses any longer. The Bull and Hen is in Little Earl Street. You’ll find it easily enough.”

  The twinkle came back into his eyes, as though daring me and Grenville to rush there on the moment.

  “Thank you,” I said, meeting his gaze. He could enjoy himself imagining what I’d do all he wanted. If Leland and Gareth had gone there, I would find out and also who’d they’d met.

  “I do remember something else,” Lawrence said. “If you are interested.”

  “You know we are, Lawrence,” Grenville said, giving him a look of disapproval. “Have done with the japes, please. This is serious.”

  “Yes, very well, forgive me. Teasing Captain Lacey is too tempting. But believe me, I am concerned about young Leland. He is a good lad. Kindhearted. Not many are these days.” He lifted his cup and took a deep sip of coffee. “He and Mr. Travers were here, as I’ve said. They were arguing with each other. I could not hear everything that passed between them, but I heard them arguing about deep play. Leland admonishing Mr. Travers that he played too recklessly, and Mr. Travers saying there was nothing in this club that was reckless enough for him. I cannot imagine why he’d think so—gentlemen win and lose entire fortunes here. But Mr. Travers said he wanted to know a place where the play was more intense. Leland was annoyed with him, but then, his heart is not in the games. Young Leland only lifts a hand of cards to be polite.”

  “Did they discover a place of deeper play?” I asked. “One of the hells, perhaps?”

  Lawrence chuckled. “Can you see Leland Derwent in a gaming hell? I do not know where they went, and there isn’t much card playing at the Bull and Hen. But the two lads were in conversation with Saunders before they departed. Left in a hurry, actually, Mr. Travers looking eager, and Saunders walking out with them.”

  “Lord Percy Saunders?” I asked, surprised.

  “Indeed.” Lawrence’s amusement returned. “Don’t know whether he’ll speak to you, Grenville. He’s very carefully trying to avoid you.”

  Grenville did not change expression at all. He conveyed with every part of himself, including the brush of a gloved finger over his cheek, that he was sublimely indifferent to anything Lord Percy did. “If he has been trying to avoid me, he failed in the attempt,” Grenville said in cool tones. “We’ve just been in the company of Lord Percy.”

  “And he said damn all about speaking with Mr. Derwent,” I said, annoyed.

  Lawrence reached for his newspaper, sighing. “I am greatly unhappy I missed that meeting. Do have your more interesting conversations in front of us from now on, Grenville, there’s a good chap. Relieves my ennui something wonderful.”

  Grenville quirked his brows, but gave him a
nod, as though acknowledging and approving of the joke.

  I was less patient. “I suppose we shall have to hunt up Saunders again,” I said.

  “Indeed.” Grenville’s mouth tightened, but he gave no more sign of caring. “Good morning to you, Lawrence. That first edition of Gibbon you’ve had your eye on—it is yours.”

  “Ah.” Lawrence looked genuinely delighted, losing his supercilious expression. “You are a gentleman, Grenville. Thank you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “First edition?” I asked as we climbed into Grenville’s carriage again.

  “The Honorable Mr. Lawrence collects books,” Grenville answered me distractedly. “We have been rival bidders at auction a time or two. But he gave us good information, and I know he wanted the Gibbon.”

  Grenville did generously reward those who pleased him. A boy slammed the door, and the carriage moved forward into the rain.

  “Lord Percy coveted the book too,” Grenville said as he settled himself. “Another reason to sell it to Lawrence.” He stopped and gave me a despairing look. “I must nip this thing in the bud, Lacey. Dear God, I will be a laughingstock—I already am.”

  “Hardly a laughingstock,” I answered. “Those who’ve met Marianne will understand. She is not your usual sort of woman.”

  “Do not remind me.” Grenville’s eyes darkened, sadness lurking behind his anger. “I regret I made the thing public. If I had continued in discretion, we might have parted without this foolishness.”

  “I disagree. If you had tried to keep your affair secret, Marianne would have fled you long ago.”

  “I suppose that is true.” Grenville gazed moodily out the window. “But do not worry. I shall bring my attention to the matter at hand instead of becoming irritable and maudlin. What did you make of Mr. Lawrence’s claim that Leland and Travers ended up at the Bull and Hen in Seven Dials?”

  “We will have to find out,” I said. “I suppose hunting up the proprietor is called for, finding out if any of the denizens of the house saw them.”

  “I have heard of the place,” Grenville said. The carriage was moving purposefully through the streets, but what direction Grenville had given his coachman, I had not heard. “You say denizens, but I imagine you’d find many of the same gentlemen there who had spent the early part of the night at Brooks’s or at a soiree with the highest of the ton. I cannot quite imagine Leland at the Bull and Hen, however. Lawrence is correct in speculating it was not Leland’s sort of haunt. Leland is not interested in having it off with gentlemen in general, if you see what I mean. He was fixed on Travers alone.”

  I moved uncomfortably, remembering that Leland had, briefly, fixed upon me. “They were in love, you mean. Not out to satisfy base lusts.”

  “Exactly. They were devoted to each other—well, you saw them. A molly house in Seven Dials is hardly a place Leland would wish to go.”

  “What about Travers?”

  Grenville closed gloved fingers around his walking stick. “He was another matter, from what I understand. A little more interested in the thing, don’t you know. I suppose he could have persuaded Leland there. Perhaps that was what he meant by deep play. Innuendo, not a complaint about dull gaming at Brooks’s.”

  “They could have been followed when they departed the club,” I said, picturing it. “They might have been cornered at the Bull and Hen, killed there, perhaps, and carried to the passage. Or chased there. We must find out.” My agitation grew with my words. I longed to find the culprit and wrap my hands around his throat.

  “Yes, well, if you are feeling the need to dash to Seven Dials and shake the house to its foundations, please think on it a moment,” Grenville said. “Unless you plan to lead a force and close the place, you going there will be remarked upon, most viciously. Do not think your nemesis in the Runners, Spendlove, would not use it as an excuse to arrest you.”

  Indeed, I imagined Spendlove would take great pleasure in arresting me for unnatural behavior. Even if the magistrate released me for lack of evidence, Spendlove would have blackened my name.

  If I did lead Pomeroy and his patrollers to close the house down in my zeal to catch Travers’s killer, a good many men who had nothing to do with the murder might lose their lives. What had happened with the White Swan was still spoken of. Men arrested there had been put to death, and the mob had gone insane over those locked in the stocks. From what I’d heard and read, the crowd Travers and I had witnessed at Charing Cross had been tame and pleasant in comparison.

  As much as I wanted the murderer within my grasp, I wanted to put my hands around the correct throat. I could not condemn a dozen gentlemen to death or ruin simply because they enjoyed a night in one another’s arms.

  We would have to try another approach. I studied Grenville, who sat upright on the carriage seat across from me. He was dressed in a slim-fitting black coat and trousers, a greatcoat that was light for spring, and boots that were never meant to get dirty. His polished, elegant hat rested on the seat beside him, and his kid-leather gloves were as soft as finest silk. He was the picture of a wealthy, privileged, English male.

  “You cannot go there either,” I observed. “While there would be disapproval of me entering such a house, London would crumble and fall if it was put about that you did. Even if your motives were pure.”

  “It is a dilemma,” Grenville agreed without false modesty. “I could hunt up a few gentlemen I suspect frequent the place, and question them, but no one is supposed to know. Even Lawrence took pains to imply he’d never been there, and no one has any doubt about his proclivities. Ah, well, I will see what I can do.”

  I’d already had an idea how to make inquiries, but I decided not to share it with Grenville yet. I had to mull it through, in any case.

  “Where are we off to now?” I asked him. A glance out the window showed me the tall houses of Piccadilly going by.

  “Tattersall’s,” Grenville said. “Percy Saunders, when he departed from me today, said he was heading there. He might have only been making conversation—he tried desperately not to mention what we truly wished to shout at each other about—but I would like to hear what he has to say about his encounter with Leland and Travers.”

  “Which he never brought up,” I pointed out again. “Damn the man.”

  “Too distracted by the charms of Marianne, I would speculate. And perhaps he had no idea of our interest.” Grenville let out a breath and relaxed his tense façade. “Do you know, Lacey, that though Marianne could provoke me to despair, when we shut out everything but the two of us, it was wonderful. We laughed—oh, she can laugh. She knows the best stories of the theatre, things that would appall you as well as tales that would have you laughing until you couldn’t stop. We’d have competitions for the best filthy jokes we heard in a given week—” He broke off and flushed. “I beg your pardon. I do not mean to impart confidences you do not want.”

  “Not at all,” I said warmly. “I am glad to hear you were happy.”

  “We could be. When we were nobody but Lucius and Marianne, when we shut out the world, it was delightful.” Grenville’s eyes flickered, and he turned suddenly to look out the window. A light rain had begun to fall, streaking the glass like tears.

  “She could forgive you,” I said, watching him. “If you were humble enough.”

  Grenville gave a short laugh and faced me again. “Ah, yes, and she would trample me with her pretty silk slippers. Which I purchased for her, by the way.”

  “She will grow tired of it.”

  “Of trampling me, or of the slippers?” Grenville let out another laugh. “Both, I suppose. Never mind, Lacey. I will weather this.”

  As we pulled to a stop near Hyde Park Corner, I reflected that even getting stabbed nearly to death in one of our adventures had not dampened Grenville’s spirits as much as had finding Marianne with Lord Percy this morning.

  We emerged from the carriage and went into the enclosure that was Tattersall’s, where the Jockey Club met, and pr
ize horseflesh was bought and sold. Several horses paraded around the ring today, those interested in buying standing in clusters with those selling, while trainers and riders put the horses through their paces.

  Always interested, I stopped to admire a brown mare with a good arch to her neck, but Grenville had already headed to the club rooms.

  Inside, Grenville was greeted with a hearty welcome, and I was politely nodded to. When Grenville asked whether Lord Percy was about somewhere, we were informed that he was in one of the back stables looking over a gelding. The gentlemen present did not hide their amusement that Grenville was hunting Lord Percy, and one or two openly guffawed.

  “Your laughter is unwarranted, gentlemen,” Grenville said, drawing out his quizzing glass and letting it dangle from his fingers. “At our last meeting, Saunders and I parted as friends.”

  “He did not use the word friends,” another gentleman said, and rumbles of laughter followed.

  The rumbles died away under Grenville’s long, cool stare. “I have no hostility for Saunders,” he said, when he had everyone’s attention again. “The man has my blessing.”

  A few gentlemen looked abashed; others remained amused but at least strove to hide it.

  One gentleman, slender as a reed and full of himself, made a derisive snort. “I hardly think a blessing for such a tart is in order. You are a wise man to trade her for the Carlotti woman. English whey is no competition for Italian wine.”

  Grenville’s gaze could have cut marble. Even the smallest snickers died away as Grenville directed his gaze to the slender gentleman.

  When the room was utterly silent, Grenville spoke. “I would pronounce you a wit, Yardley—however I haven’t heard a word you’ve said as I’ve been trying to decide whether those brown spots on your very green waistcoat are meant to be there, or whether someone has sprayed you with mustard.” He leaned forward and delicately sniffed. “Or a more noxious substance, perhaps.”