Why Kill the Innocent

by C. S. Harris

  * * *

  At this time of day, Nathan Rothschild could typically be found at his station in the Royal Exchange, a massive arcaded baroque building that stretched between Cornhill and Threadneedle Streets and that was the center for buying and selling and all kinds of deal making. Given the weather, Sebastian wouldn’t have been surprised to discover Rothschild’s position deserted. But the financier was there, leaning against his customary pillar on the eastern edge of the Exchange’s vast open quadrangle.

  A short, stout figure in a threadbare greatcoat and a misshapen top hat he wore pulled low over his eyes, he looked more like a tradesman or shopkeeper down on his luck than the kind of man who lent money to kings and emperors. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his expression, as always, utterly unreadable. When Sebastian paused before him, Rothschild simply blinked and turned his head to stare at the arched arcade on the far side of the snow-choked courtyard.

  “Go avay. You’re bad for business.”

  Sebastian cast a significant glance around the largely deserted quadrangle. “The Exchange isn’t exactly booming at the moment.”

  “All the more reason for you to go avay.”

  Sebastian tipped his head to one side. “Now, why wouldn’t you want to talk to me? I wonder.”

  Rothschild fixed Sebastian with a deadened glare. An extraordinarily ugly man with a big round head, protruding cleft chin, and large pouty lips, he looked to be somewhere in his late forties or fifties, his red hair already fading to gray. But he was actually still in his thirties, just five years older than Sebastian himself. “You think I don’t know vhy you’re here?”

  “Actually, I assumed you did.” The Rothschild family—which included four other brothers strategically placed in Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Naples—was said to maintain a magnificent network of spies, informants, and courtiers that rivaled or perhaps even exceeded those of powerful statesmen such as Jarvis and Metternich.

  The financier’s eyes narrowed with what looked like a cross between annoyance and animosity. “Jane Ambrose ceased to function as my daughter’s piano instructor veeks ago.”

  “So I’d heard. Why? I wonder.”

  “Do you, indeed? And yet I fail to see vhy I should answer any of your decidedly impertinent questions.”

  Sebastian let his lips pull back into a smile. “I suppose the answer to that depends on how much you have to hide.”

  A sound that might have been a laugh shook the other man’s fleshy frame. “Are you threatening me? Seriously? Me?”

  “You find that statement threatening?”

  “Have you by chance spoken vith your father-in-law?”

  “No. Should I have? I’d no notion Jarvis was involved in the selection and dismissal of your children’s music instructors.”

  Rothschild shrugged. “Jane Ambrose vas no doubt an excellent pianist. Unfortunately, my daughter Anna has exhibited little interest in music and even less talent. Hence the decision to terminate our arrangement.”

  “Really? That’s odd.”

  “Odd? Vhat? Vhy?”

  “Because I’m told Jane Ambrose considered your daughter an unusually promising student.”

  “I can only assume that if Mrs. Ambrose did indeed say such a thing, then she vas simply being kind. Despite a father’s inevitable prejudices, even I must admit that my little Anna vas a vaste of Mrs. Ambrose’s time.”

  “And your money.”

  “Obviously.”

  “What I find particularly curious is that Jane Ambrose wasn’t simply upset by her dismissal. She was frightened.”

  Rothschild pursed his full lips. “She told someone that? Who?”

  “Not in so many words. I gather it was more along the lines of an observation.”

  “Mmm. Curious. I know of no reason vhy the woman should have been frightened. But I assure you, it had nothing to do vith me.”

  “When was her last lesson with your daughter?”

  Rothschild shrugged. “Surely you don’t expect me to recall precisely? It was near the end of the Great Fog. The lessons were always on a Tuesday.”

  “And when did you terminate your arrangement with her?”

  “That afternoon.”

  “You spoke to Jane Ambrose yourself?”

  “As it happens, I did, yes.”

  “And she didn’t seem upset at the time?”

  “She expressed disappointment. But she acknowledged that given Anna’s lack of talent, there vas little sense in continuing.”

  “I see. And your daughter is how old?”

  Rothschild hesitated a moment, as if the response required some calculation. “Ten.”

  “Would you mind if I spoke to her?”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible. The poor child is naturally grieved by the death of someone she both knew and respected. I vouldn’t vant to do anything that might upset her further.”

  “Of course,” said Sebastian, settling his top hat lower on his forehead. “Thank you for your assistance.”

  Rothschild simply inclined his head and dug his hands deeper into his pockets.

  Sebastian started to turn away, then paused to glance back and say, “You wouldn’t by chance know what might have taken Jane Ambrose to Clerkenwell yesterday, would you?”

  “Hardly. I vas scarcely acquainted vith the woman.”

  “Yes. So you said.”

  Sebastian was aware of the rich man’s gaze following him as he crossed the quadrangle toward the main entrance with its ornate looming clock tower. And it came to him as he pushed his way through the small knot of shivering Barbadian, Jamaican, and Spanish traders congregated around a brazier there that for someone who claimed he had no explicable reason to be interested in Jane Ambrose, Nathan Rothschild was nevertheless curiously well informed about the true nature of her death. Because Sebastian would never have been here asking questions if Jane hadn’t been murdered—and Rothschild obviously not only understood that, but he hadn’t been surprised by it.

  Not only that, but for reasons Sebastian couldn’t explain but certainly intended to discover, Rothschild had likewise taken it for granted that her death involved the Regent’s powerful cousin and Sebastian’s own father-in-law, Charles, Lord Jarvis.

  Chapter 8

  Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, granddaughter of King George III, only legitimate issue of the Prince of Wales, and heiress presumptive to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, lived with her attendants in a cramped and decrepit seventeenth-century brick structure known as Warwick House.

  Lying on the far side of a narrow lane to the southeast of the Prince’s own palace of Carlton House, Warwick House had served as Princess Charlotte’s home ever since her father—in the grip of one of the endless remodeling schemes for his grandiose palace—had cast covetous eyes on his daughter’s apartments and decided to move her out. She’d been eight at the time.

  Charlotte had lived alone ever since, with no one in the house who wasn’t paid to be there with her. Her mother had been banished years before and was seldom allowed to see her. Her father, the Prince, visited even less. Her care was entrusted to the oversight of a succession of aging noblewomen who held the honorary title of Governess to the Princess. The current holder of that position was the middle-aged Dowager Duchess of Leeds, an ostentatiously grande dame with annoying airs of condescension—and a long-winded, boring fixation on her own health—who typically put in an appearance at Warwick House between the hours of two and five. Assisting the Duchess were two live-in ladies, also gently born but considerably more impoverished. Although officially styled as subgovernesses, they essentially functioned as minders. The Princess’s actual education was managed by the Bishop of Salisbury, a humorless, pretentious prelate who oversaw an array of specialized tutors and instructors.

  The previous
year, as her seventeenth birthday approached, Charlotte had dreamed of throwing off her fusty old governess, replacing the subgovernesses with true companions styled as ladies-in-waiting, and finally being free to attend balls, dinners, and the theater like any other young lady her age. That ambition was ruthlessly squashed by her father, the Regent.

  Charlotte then looked at her aging, unmarried aunts, the daughters of George III who were living out their wasted lives shut up at Windsor Castle in what Charlotte had long ago nicknamed “the Nunnery,” and panicked.

  * * *

  Hero arrived at Warwick House midway through the morning. Unable to use her carriage in the snow-filled streets and scorning sedan chairs, she pulled on demi-broquins of fine morocco lined with fur, wrapped herself in a fur-trimmed pelisse with a matching Swedish hat fastened up on one side, and walked.

  It was a shockingly outré thing, to call on a royal princess on foot and stomp snow all over the cracked tiles of her dilapidated entrance hall. But then, Hero hadn’t come to visit Princess Charlotte. Hero was here to see her friend Miss Ella Kinsworth.

  A tall, angular woman with graying dark hair, Miss Kinsworth had in years past enjoyed the kind of adventurous, independent life a younger Hero had once envisioned for herself. The unmarried daughter of an admiral, Miss Kinsworth had lived abroad for decades with her widowed mother and supported herself by writing books. But the wars eventually made continued residence on the Continent dangerous, and the death of her mother had diminished her income. Now in her late fifties, alone and impoverished, Miss Kinsworth was reduced to serving a royal family not known for endearing itself to retainers. For seven years she had held the position of companion to George III’s foul-tempered Queen before being appointed to serve as one of Princess Charlotte’s subgovernesses. In a spirited, daring rebellion, Miss Kinsworth had honored the young Princess’s wishes by insisting on being called a “lady companion” rather than a “subgoverness.” It was a tribute to both the force of her personality and the respect in which she was held that she’d been allowed to get away with it.

  “This ferocious weather!” said Miss Kinsworth as she whisked Hero up to her small private sitting room on Warwick House’s first floor, not far from the Princess’s bedchamber. “You should have let me come to you, my lady.”

  “Nonsense,” said Hero, ridding herself of ice-encrusted mittens, hat, scarf, and pelisse. “The walk was”—she paused, searching for the right word as she sank into a chair beside the sitting room’s fire, and finally settled on—“bracing.”

  Miss Kinsworth took the seat opposite, the smile in her gray eyes fading. “Don’t tell me you’re here because Jane Ambrose was murdered.”

  Hero looked up from holding her cold hands out to the blaze. “What makes you think it was murder?”

  “I didn’t think it before. But I’m not vain enough to believe you tromped through the snow on a day such as this simply to pay me a social visit. Was Jane murdered?”

  “I’m afraid she probably was, yes.”

  Miss Kinsworth’s face quivered and she looked away. “Ah. Poor Jane.”

  Hero studied the older woman’s tightly held profile. “How well did you know her?”

  “I’ve known Jane for years. She used to teach piano to Princess Amelia when I was with the Queen, and she’s been Charlotte’s instructor since the girl was quite small.” Miss Kinsworth drew in a deep, shaky breath. “Needless to say, Charlotte is devastated. Jane was with her longer than almost anyone except perhaps her personal maid, Mrs. Louis. The Prince is constantly dismissing the Princess’s servants, you know, as well as her governesses, subgovernesses, and tutors.”

  “Why?”

  Miss Kinsworth turned her head to meet Hero’s gaze. “Do you want to know the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s because he wants them to be loyal to him and him alone, and to unhesitatingly enforce his most arbitrary and heartless decrees. But Charlotte is a sweet, generous, likable soul who quickly wins the hearts and allegiance of those who are around her for long. And when that happens, the Prince dismisses them.”

  “Beastly man,” said Hero.

  “You can say that, my lady. Unfortunately, I cannot. At least, not aloud.”

  Hero gave a soft laugh. “So, was Jane Ambrose here for the Princess’s lesson yesterday?”

  “She was, yes. She left as usual shortly after twelve o’clock—just as the snow was beginning to fall. I remember because I happened to look out the window and saw her crossing the courtyard toward the gate.”

  “Do you know how she planned to spend the rest of the day?”

  “Sorry, no. I assumed she was going home, but I don’t know for certain. I saw her when she first came in and said good morning, but that was about all.”

  “Did she seem nervous or frightened in any way?”

  “Frightened? I don’t think so, no. Although I did sense a certain . . .” Miss Kinsworth hesitated. “I don’t quite know how to put it. We’ve all been under a bit of strain lately, and she did seem preoccupied by something. She was trying to put a cheerful face on it, but I had the feeling her thoughts were elsewhere.”

  “You’ve no idea what might have been troubling her?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Given that Jane had been raped a day or two before her death, Hero suspected her preoccupation might well have been tied to that. But it was awkward to discuss such things in polite company. To even address the subject was a delicate exercise to be wrapped up in all sorts of polite euphemisms such as “interfered with” or “an act too infamous to be named.” Hero said bluntly, “She never mentioned anything about someone forcing himself on her?”

  Miss Kinsworth’s face went slack. “Good heavens, no. You think that’s what happened to her? Is that why she was killed?”

  “It’s possible. Or it could be completely unrelated.”

  “Oh, poor Jane.” The older woman’s lips parted. “She never said anything to me.”

  Hero wasn’t surprised. Women who were raped usually didn’t talk about it if they could help it. For most, their rape was a dark, shameful secret to be hidden and dealt with in private, if at all. It was also possible that Edward Ambrose had violently forced himself on his own wife. In that case, under British law such an act would not have been considered rape or illegal in any way.

  Hero cleared her throat. “Jane had children?”

  “She did, yes: two boys. But both died last year. She lost the younger child first, to the flux, and the other, Lawrence, just last autumn to consumption.”

  “How unbearably tragic,” said Hero.

  “It was, yes. Music and those children were Jane’s world. When she lost the boys, it was as if a light went out of her life.”

  “Was she happy in her marriage, do you think?”

  Miss Kinsworth smoothed a hand over the skirt of her sensible worsted gown. “To be honest? I wouldn’t say she was, no. But it’s sometimes hard to tell, isn’t it? We never discussed it.”

  “What makes you think she might not have been?”

  “It wasn’t anything she said precisely. But I sometimes suspected she had a certain measure of resentment toward her husband.”

  “Resentment? Do you know why?”

  “No. Although sometimes I wondered . . .” The other woman paused.

  “Yes?” said Hero.

  Miss Kinsworth looked troubled. “I’ve sometimes wondered if she didn’t in some way resent Edward Ambrose’s success as a composer. I hesitated to say it because that makes her sound like a petty, jealous person, and she wasn’t that way at all. She was good and kind and giving—a truly warm, caring person. And yet . . . you know what it’s like for women. She was forced to give up performing even though she was every bit as talented and accomplished a pianist as her twin brother. She was also an amazing composer who could have produced pieces much g
rander than the glees and ballads and simple chamber music she was known for.”

  “So why didn’t she?”

  “I asked her that once. She said it’s one thing to write an opera or symphony but something else entirely to find an orchestra willing to perform a piece composed by a woman.”

  “Ah, yes, I can see that.”

  “When her brother James was alive, he actually published some of her pieces as his own. She said he hated that she didn’t get credit for them, but he thought they deserved to be performed and he knew that was the only way it would happen.”

  “I’ve heard Mozart did the same for his sister, Maria Anna.”

  “I suspect it’s far more common than anyone would like to admit,” said Miss Kinsworth. Hero nodded, and the two women sat in companionable silence, quietly sharing a lifelong cold anger at the limitations society placed on their sex.

  After a moment, Hero said, “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to see her dead?”

  “Who might have killed her, you mean?” The older woman pressed the fingers of one hand to her lips.

  “There is someone, isn’t there?” said Hero, watching her.

  Miss Kinsworth thrust up from her chair and went to stand at a narrow-sashed window looking out over the snow-covered city, her arms crossed and her elbows held close to her chest. After a moment, she said, “This is very delicate, given the circumstances, but . . . there is a gentleman attached to the Dutch embassy—van der Pals is his name, Peter van der Pals.”

  “Yes. I met him recently when I was visiting my father,” said Hero. “I understand he’s become quite popular with London’s hostesses in a surprisingly short time.”

  “He has, yes. He’s an extraordinarily handsome, charming man. At one point he was quite friendly with Jane.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Oh, nothing serious. Please don’t misunderstand me. But he did single her out, and I think she was flattered by his teasing attentions. What woman would not be? He is very attractive.”