Why Kill the Innocent

by C. S. Harris

  “And Charlotte referenced this incident in her letters to Hesse?”

  Miss Kinsworth nodded miserably. “Charlotte swears nothing happened and that Hesse behaved most gentlemanly. But if it becomes known . . .”

  “She’ll be ruined,” said Hero. “Utterly, irreparably ruined. Princes can get away with such behavior—and far, far worse. But not princesses.”

  The older woman’s lips tightened into a thin line. “Prinny hasn’t helped matters, either. He’s spent the last ten years and more endlessly accusing his child’s mother of adultery, all in a sordid attempt to divorce her. He even paid that horrid Douglas woman to swear the Princess gave birth to one of the little boys she fosters! If word of Charlotte’s relationship with Hesse gets out, people will say, ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ and everyone will believe the worst.”

  Hero stared out over the snow-filled garden. “When did you learn the Hesse letters had been taken from Portsmouth?”

  “It’s been several weeks. Word came on a Sunday evening. I remember because poor Charlotte was so distraught she cried all night, so that by the time Jane arrived for their lesson the next morning, the girl was hysterical.”

  “Jane already knew of the letters’ existence?”

  “Oh, yes. Charlotte told her about them months ago, when she first started trying to get the letters back from Captain Hesse. You have to remember that Jane taught Charlotte from the time the girl was six or seven, so they were unusually close. It was Jane who offered to go out to Connaught House and ask Caroline if she had the letters.”

  “But Caroline didn’t have them?”

  “So she claimed.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. It’s been weeks now since the letters disappeared, yet no one has come forward with them. Obviously I’m grateful that they haven’t been published. Yet at the same time, I can’t help but worry.” The older woman was silent for a moment. “What I don’t understand is how the Hesse letters can be implicated in Jane’s death . . . unless of course she somehow discovered who has them. Is that possible?”

  “Who do you think has the letters?”

  Miss Kinsworth’s face hardened. “Honestly? I’d say the most likely culprits are the Whigs around Caroline, rather than Caroline herself. Not Earl Grey, but someone such as Brougham or Wallace. They’d do it. They’re passionately opposed to the Dutch alliance, and I don’t believe either of them would hesitate to ruin Charlotte if they thought it would stop the marriage.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” said Hero. “Who else?”

  “There must be forces in the Netherlands who feel the same way, but I know nothing of them.”

  “You said the Regent didn’t know about Hesse at the time the cousins were meeting in Windsor Park. That implies that he does now.”

  Miss Kinsworth brought up one hand to rub her forehead. “I can’t begin to guess how he discovered the truth, but he’s said one or two oblique things that made it obvious he found out somehow. He has so many spies. Everywhere.”

  “Could the Prince himself have sent someone to steal the letters?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it? He knows Charlotte is furious with him for tricking her into the betrothal to Orange. And she is determined to fight his attempts to set things up so that she’ll be forced to spend most of her life outside of Britain.”

  “You’re suggesting the Regent might see the letters as some sort of insurance against the possibility that the Princess could try to break her betrothal? So that he could essentially blackmail her into marrying Orange? Surely even he couldn’t be that contemptible and conniving.”

  “Oh, he’s that contemptible. As for being that conniving, perhaps not the Regent himself, but someone determined to see that His Highness gets what he wants.”

  “Someone like Jarvis, you mean.”

  “I didn’t say that, my lady.”

  “No.” Hero gave her friend a slow smile. “You were very careful not to.”

  * * *

  On Sebastian’s second visit to Connaught House, he found Caroline of Brunswick seated beside a roaring fire in her rather sparsely furnished morning room. She wore a tattered shawl over a plain gown with a plunging round neckline and was fashioning a crude doll out of wax when he was shown into her presence.

  She looked up, her plump face breaking into a wide smile. “I thought you’d be back.” She did not give him permission to sit, so he stood with his hat in his hands and watched her work on what he realized was a wax image of her husband, the Prince of Wales. She said, “Do I take it you’ve learned something new?”

  “Jane Ambrose’s husband was murdered yesterday.”

  “So I heard. He vas a nasty man.” She used her shoulder to swipe at a loose curl tickling her cheek. “I told Jane she should leave him long ago. But she never listened to me, and now she’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “You think he killed her?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know. The question is, if he did, then who killed Edward Ambrose?”

  “Obviously someone who did not like him. I’ve no doubt there are many.”

  “Valentino Vescovi is also dead.”

  “Ja. That death is far more triste.” She gave a heavy sigh that heaved her ample expanse of exposed bosom. “He played the harp like an angel, and now he plays vith the angels.”

  The sentiment was undeniably maudlin, but Sebastian suspected the tears he saw glittering in her eyes were real. He said, “Several weeks ago, someone stole a packet containing letters Charlotte once wrote to her cousin Captain Hesse. Do you know who did that?”

  She focused on draping a doll-sized purple velvet cloak around the wax figure’s shoulders. “You think it vas me?”

  “No, Your Highness.” Not necessarily. “But I’m hoping you might have some idea who did.”

  She smiled faintly as she settled a miniature tin crown on the figurine’s head. “Vhen I vas first married, Vales gave me my own rooms at Carlton House and furnished them to his own taste. And then, several months after we ved, he sent servants to take back most of my furniture. He said he could not afford to pay for it. But I noticed none of the furniture in his rooms disappeared.” She held the wax figure at arm’s length, studying it. “He also took back the pearl bracelets he gave me as vedding presents and gave them to his mistress, the putain Jersey. She delighted in wearing them in my presence. And there was nothing—nothing—I could do about any of it.”

  The implication was clear: As a new, young bride she had been alone and powerless, unable to defend herself in any way, let alone strike back. She was not so powerless anymore.

  Is that what this is? he wanted to ask. A game of revenge against your bastard of a husband? With your daughter as the helpless pawn?

  Except of course that one did not say such things to the Princess of Wales.

  She took a pin and thrust it into the wax doll’s foot, her face twisting with bitterness as she shoved it deep. Then she laughed and said, “I hear he has a bad case of gout. I vonder how that happened?”

  She picked up another pin, then paused to look over at Sebastian. “Vhen Vales sent my daughter down to Vindsor for months, trying to keep her avay from me, young Charles Hesse vas kind enough to carry letters back and forth between us. Then, vhen he and Charlotte were forbidden to meet, she came to me in tears, begging for my help.” The Princess shrugged. “So I passed correspondence between them and arranged for them to meet in my apartments in Kensington Palace. It vas all intensely romantic and utterly innocent, and I regret none of it.”

  And locking them alone together in your bedroom? thought Sebastian. Was that “innocent”?

  Caroline thrust the next pin deep into the wax figure’s bowels. “Are you familiar vith vhat happened to Sophia Dorothea, the mother of King George I? Her husband imprisoned her
in the castle of Ahlden vhen she was just twenty-seven, and he kept her there for thirty-three years until she died. Then he ordered her casket thrown into the castle’s cellars.”

  When Sebastian said nothing, she continued. “My aunt Caroline Matilda was sister to the present King. She married her cousin, the King of Denmark, who like Orange preferred men and vas all messed up in the head. He had her arrested and strangled at the age of twenty-three.”

  Sebastian had heard George III’s unhappy sister died of scarlet fever, but he also knew that could simply be a tale put out for public consumption. She had most certainly died while under arrest, and her husband was utterly mad at the time of her rather convenient death.

  “And you know vhat happened to my sister,” said Caroline darkly.

  Sebastian nodded. Caroline’s sister, Augusta, had married Prince Frederick of Württemberg when she was just fifteen. He beat her so viciously the young Princess was given asylum by Catherine of Russia, only to then die under suspicious circumstances and be hastily buried in an unmarked grave.

  Choosing another pin, Caroline thrust it with slow deliberation into the wax figure’s groin. “I vill do anything,” she said, “anything I must, to stop vhat the Regent is trying to do to my Charlotte.” She looked up to meet Sebastian’s gaze. “But I don’t have the Hesse letters, and I don’t know who does.”

  It was a dismissal. Sebastian thanked her and bowed low.

  As he backed slowly from her presence, he saw her throw the wax effigy into the flames and watch, smiling, as it flared up and then melted into nothing.

  Chapter 47

  Devlin was seated behind his desk, a disheveled lock of dark hair falling over one eye, his pen scratching furiously across a sheet of paper, when Hero came to stand in the library doorway.

  “What are you doing?”

  Looking up, he spun the page—covered with a rough graph of horizontal and vertical lines—around to face her. “Trying to make sense of four very tangled threads.”

  As she drew closer, she could see that across the top of the page he’d written Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday . . . “With a calendar?” she said, coming to lean over the desk.

  He nodded. “Of the last weeks of Jane Ambrose’s life. As far as I can tell, her trouble started here.” He pointed to the first Tuesday in January.

  “The last day of the Great Fog,” said Hero.

  Devlin leaned back in his chair. “That’s the day Jane accidently overheard Rothschild discussing his gold shipments to France, as a result of which he both dismissed her and threatened her.”

  “Which had the unintended effect of sending her to visit her uncle Sheridan,” said Hero. “The first time.”

  Devlin pointed to the following week. “This is when Jarvis sent one of his men to pick up Jane from Warwick House and bring her to him at Carlton House. He warned her to shut up and threatened dire consequences not only to her but to anyone else she should tell about the gold.”

  “And it worked,” said Hero. “She shut up.”

  “She did. She doesn’t appear to have told anyone else—not her brother, not Liam Maxwell.”

  “Because she didn’t want to risk their lives,” said Hero quietly. “So she kept it all to herself. The poor woman. She must have been so frightened, and with no one to turn to for advice or support.”

  Devlin pointed to the following Sunday. “It was just a few days after that when Princess Charlotte received word that the packet containing her letters to Hesse had been stolen from his trunk in Portsmouth. By the time Jane came for their lesson on Monday, the Princess was in a panic, and Jane offered to ask Caroline if she knew what had happened to the letters. She went out to Connaught House the very next day—Tuesday. But Caroline said she’d had nothing to do with the letters’ theft.”

  Hero studied the calendar. “Then what?”

  Devlin tapped the square representing the day after Jane’s visit to Connaught House, a Wednesday. “This is when Jane went to see Lord Wallace. Given the timing, I seriously doubt it had anything to do with piano lessons for young Miss Elizabeth Wallace.”

  “Jane suspected Wallace was involved in the letters’ theft?”

  “I think so. And if she was right—if Wallace actually was behind both the theft of the letters and now all these deaths—then how the devil do we prove it? Because you can be certain his lordship isn’t doing his own dirty work.”

  “Something obviously made Jane decide to ask Wallace about the missing letters but not the other Whigs around Caroline—not Brougham, not Earl Grey, but Wallace. Why?”

  “Because she knows him for the nasty piece of work he is?”

  Hero gave a startled huff of laughter. “Perhaps. Although I can’t help but wonder what she hoped to accomplish by going to see him. Surely she didn’t expect him to actually admit to the theft, let alone give her the letters?”

  “Probably not. Although she might have thought she could convince him not to publish them by appealing to his better nature.”

  “Does Lord Wallace have a better nature?”

  “He must. His belief in everything from the evils of slavery to the need for public education suggests a basic core of decency—somewhere deep down below all that massive self-regard and natural abrasiveness.”

  Hero frowned as she studied the rough calendar. “Your handwriting is appalling. What happened on that Thursday—exactly one week before she died?”

  “That’s the day Peter van der Pals asked Jane to spy on Princess Charlotte for Orange—and promised nasty repercussions if she told anyone about it.”

  “Only, this time Jane didn’t keep silent. She felt honor bound to speak up, and so she warned Miss Kinsworth.”

  “She did. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize the lovely Lady Arabella was listening at the keyhole. Which is why on the following Monday—just days before Jane was killed—she and Vescovi had that argument beside the ice-skating pond in St. James’s Park.”

  “That’s when Vescovi told Jane about the Prince of Orange’s sexual interests.”

  Devlin nodded. “Jane went the very next day to see her uncle Sheridan and ask him for the truth. It was as she left Savile Row that van der Pals waylaid her and raped her.”

  “To punish her for telling on him,” said Hero.

  “To punish her, yes. But it could have been more than that. I suspect he knew Vescovi told Jane about Orange. Van der Pals was familiar with their argument by the canal, remember? And while he claimed he didn’t know most of what was said there, I think we can be fairly certain that was a lie.”

  “So the rape was not only a punishment, but also a warning?”

  Devlin nodded. “Jane ignored van der Pals when he threatened her the first time. So the rape was his way of showing her that he was deadly serious. I suspect he warned her that if she made the mistake of telling the Princess about Orange’s sexual exploits, he’d kill her. And then, out of pure spite, he told her about Edward Ambrose’s mistress.”

  “After which Jane went to Covent Garden to see the woman for herself. Oh, heavens. Poor Jane.”

  Devlin leaned forward again. “That’s the same evening she was arguing with Ambrose on the steps of the Opera. When I asked Ambrose about it, he claimed they were quarreling about her recent visit to Caroline at Connaught House. But looking at this, I think he lied. I think she confronted him about his mistress.”

  “Given the timing, it makes sense,” said Hero. “It also might explain the strange things she said to Liam Maxwell the next day.”

  Devlin nodded. “I think she’d decided to leave her husband.”

  Hero looked up at him. “So Maxwell is lying?”

  “Perhaps. Although it’s also possible she simply hadn’t told him yet.”

  “You think that’s why Ambrose killed her? Because he found out she was going to leave him?”

  Devlin
scrubbed his hands down over his face. “On the one hand, it seems to make sense. The problem is, if he did, then who killed Ambrose and Vescovi?”

  “Maxwell. He realized Ambrose had killed the woman he loved, and murdered him for it.”

  “He could have. Although if he didn’t, I suspect whoever left that Indian dagger in Ambrose’s chest wants me to think that.”

  “So you doubt it? Why?”

  “Mainly because Maxwell had no reason that I can see to kill Valentino Vescovi.”

  “Van der Pals could have killed Vescovi,” reasoned Hero. “For telling Jane about Orange. Or his death could somehow be linked to the letters. For a harpist, he was involved with some nasty, dangerous people.”

  “He was indeed. As was Jane—through no fault of her own.”

  “As was Jane,” Hero said softly, her gaze meeting his.

  * * *

  Phineas, Lord Wallace, was eating a beefsteak in the dining room of Brooks’s when Sebastian came to sit opposite him.

  His lordship glanced up, then calmly went on cutting a thick slice of meat, merely saying, “And if I prefer to eat in solitary splendor?”

  “Answer my questions, and I’ll be gone,” said Sebastian. “I know why Jane Ambrose came to see you the week before she died.”

  “Oh?”

  “She thought you had in your possession certain letters—sensitive letters stolen from a trunk entrusted by a handsome young Hussar captain to his friend in Portsmouth. She was hoping to convince you to return them to the young lady who wrote them.”

  A faint smile curled the Baron’s lips as he swallowed. “An interesting theory.”

  “I notice you don’t claim ignorance of the letters.”

  “Oh, no, I am fully aware of the existence of the Hesse letters, and have been for weeks now. As it happens, Mrs. Ambrose did indeed accuse me of being involved in their disappearance. Unfortunately, I don’t have them.”