The Rose in the Wheel: A Regency Mystery (Regency Mysteries Book 1)

by S K Rizzolo

  In fact, what made Partridge different was not his ardent devotion to reform which others shared, but his magnetic personality. Even Packet seemed to respect the man. It was the M.P.’s reputed charm that intrigued Chase because he sensed that such a man could command admiration even from a single-minded spinster like Constance Tyrone.

  A gathering later this afternoon would afford an ideal opportunity to seek out Partridge as he addressed a select group about his most recent project to assist the poor. And for reasons Chase did not care to examine too closely, he had decided to ask Penelope Wolfe to accompany him. He told himself that if for some reason access to the M.P. proved difficult, he could always convince Mrs. Wolfe to identify herself as her father’s daughter. No doubt that would open doors.

  He spotted her now, picking her way through the high grass, stepping around the piles of muddy leaves which someone had gathered but not yet swept up. Idly, he wondered why she hadn’t stayed on the path, but supposed she had been reading some of the epitaphs on the rows of headstones.

  “This is become something of a habit,” he called.

  “Good day, Mr. Chase,” she said blithely as she approached. “Good of you to obey my summons.”

  The day was bright, the sun illuminating every corner of the yard. The newer headstones glowed, standing tall and clean. But far more numerous were the older, moss-covered memorials whose legends had been obliterated by the omnipresent London smoke, stones falling askew or toppling altogether. No one was near, though Chase could hear the murmur of a service being conducted in the church.

  He drew her down on a bench. “What is it, Mrs. Wolfe?” he asked, watching her face. Her message had said only that she had important intelligence to impart and would be glad of his presence. But suddenly he felt he knew this woman. For all her prickly decorum, she found the challenge of a murder inquiry exhilarating. It was an intellectual puzzle that elevated her above the mundane, the dull. Though his own curiosity was aroused, Chase sat calmly with arms folded.

  She smiled at him and stretched out one leg to regard a neatly booted foot. “’Tis a fine day, but the ground is yet muddy after yesterday’s damp. A good thing I am possessed of the appropriate footwear.”

  Chase waited. When he didn’t say anything, she went on, “Particularly if one has errands to perform abroad at this season, one cannot rely upon accommodation from the weather. And what a pity to risk the ruination of a pair of slippers, for instance.”

  “You’ve found her boots. I suppose I should have thought of that. Where were they, and why the deuce wasn’t she wearing them?”

  Penelope looked annoyed; then her face brightened. “Oh but she was when she left at two o’clock that last day. Maggie saw her. And Fiona found the boots much later, cleaned them, and placed them in the armoire.”

  “Where you just happened to stumble upon them.”

  “Yes. Winnie was ill, and I was looking for some medicine to ease her.” She waved an impatient hand. “Don’t you see what this means, Mr. Chase? Constance must have come back at some point that afternoon.”

  “Another conundrum,” he murmured. “Why should she change a pair of sturdy boots for those slippers if her design was to depart soon after?”

  “Perhaps she was called away suddenly and didn’t have time to replace her outdoor garb. But I have some further intelligence for you, sir. I believe you were right about Winnie’s involvement in the housebreaking.” She described the old woman’s unguarded comments during her delirium.

  “Ah, your helpless old woman has helped herself to an opportunity. I cannot say I’m surprised.”

  Her expression was troubled. “It may be so, but she is dreadfully poor, Mr. Chase. I do not think we can truly imagine…”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the church doors had been thrown back. Two men bearing a wool-wrapped bundle stepped into the yard, followed by the curate. With the curate were another man and a veiled woman who moved with a faltering step, as if she had just disembarked from a ship. Her companion held her up grimly. Chase looked again at the shroud, noticing for the first time how small it was, and knew that it held a child.

  The sight took him back to the many times he had seen his father perform this sacrament. Death had come frequently to the bleak village where the family lived. Indeed, death had been a regular visitor in their own house, taking seven of Chase’s twelve brothers and sisters before their fifth birthdays. Whenever he thought of these children, it was to imagine an inexorable shadow advancing over their tiny forms, at length to darken hearts and eyes. It was no wonder his mother had lost her faith. But it was the horror of her struggle to live in peace with herself and her churchman husband that had marked the boy Chase had been.

  Now, the group had reached the graveside marked by a small mound of fresh dirt. As the curate began reciting the traditional words, the woman raised her veil, and Chase heard Mrs. Wolfe’s gasp. Dead eyes, utterly blank. It wasn’t right to look at them.

  Turning away, he took Penelope’s arm and led her down the path skirting the churchyard. Her arm felt stiff beneath his fingers, and he saw that her happiness was gone. But by unspoken consent, neither said a word about the tableau upon which they had unwittingly intruded.

  She said, “Perhaps if you were to inquire again, you would find someone who saw Constance later that day. It seems odd no one has spoken up so far.”

  “It is odd. Perhaps Miss Tyrone returned, changed her footwear, and departed. In a carriage probably—which would explain why her remaining slipper was not soiled when we found her. Then, returning late that night, she was attacked before she could reach safety.”

  “But at the inquest you said she had left her keys in the office. She would not have been able to enter.”

  “That is so. Then maybe the man in the carriage was the murderer. They argued; he killed her and decided to discard her body in front of the church. That would account for any number of puzzling facts; a dead woman needs no key, for instance.”

  “It’s possible.” She thought a moment. “Do you suppose Joan Snowden erred in her statement? She might have mistaken a private equipage for a hack. We shall need to find out if Daniel Partridge, or indeed anyone else, was in the habit of taking Constance up in his carriage.”

  “I see someone who might know,” said Chase, coming to a sudden halt. “Isn’t that Winnie Skirl? What do you suppose she does here?”

  He pointed to a figure half hidden in the shadow of a yew tree. Leaning heavily on a headstone for support, Winnie seemed intent on the final words of the service. Enveloped in a dirty green shawl, she clutched a wilted posy in one hand and a battered prayer book in the other.

  As they approached, Penelope spoke first. “Winnie, you should not be out of doors. This warmth won’t last, and if the weather alters suddenly, you’ll catch your death.”

  “Death is all around me.” Winnie nodded at the grave markers. “It comes to us all, but when it visits the little ones, I got to pay my respects. That’s Peggy Anson, burying her youngest.”

  She gestured at the black-clad woman who stood with a handful of dirt trickling through her fingers, dull horror fixed on her features. Her husband, who had already tossed his offering into the hole, waited at her side. Curate Wood reached down, gently took the woman’s rigid hand, and helped her sprinkle the last of the soil. Then he guided her back toward the church.

  Winnie watched the little cavalcade go. “I been acquainted with the family for years. Lost three of my own, you know. George, Clementina, and my youngest, Thomas. He’d be nigh on thirty years old now, which is a thing not possible to conceive. They’s all laid here, and I know where each one is, though there’s nothing left to mark ’em. But I always come to see the children get settled proper.” She smiled.

  “You must go inside now,” said Penelope.

  “Curate is a good man, mum,” said Winnie as if she hadn’t heard. “He do his best by us. The whole service; don’t scrimp none. Flowers too and a bereavemen
t call upon the family.”

  “Most commendable. I am certain that such consideration affords enormous solace.”

  Penelope didn’t look very certain, thought Chase, and truly he doubted whether a clergyman, no matter how well meaning, could do anything to assuage such grief. Were it his child…

  Cutting off that thought, he said, “How much were you paid to leave the French window unlocked, Winnie?”

  Her jaw dropped. “How’d you?…it were a guinea,” she muttered. She looked as if she wanted to cry. “I meant no harm. I wouldn’t do nothing against people what has been good to me. Are you aiming to tell Miss ’Lizabeth?” She gripped Penelope’s hand.

  “Mr. Chase? Surely it isn’t necessary to mention it.”

  “Should it become necessary to the success of this inquiry, I’d not hesitate for an instant.” But he knew that a guinea was a fortune to someone like this old woman. The temptation had been severe.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “The thief must have bid you keep out of the way. Was it he who put the scratches on the window lock?”

  “No, I done that myself. I was afraid, you see, after I seen the scramble he’d made. I wanted it to look like someone had bust in.”

  “Who gave you the money, Winnie?”

  Hanging her head, she stared down at her straggling bunch of flowers and whispered, “I didn’t ask his name.”

  ***

  Daniel Partridge paused to wipe his brow. The pause was calculated, occurring as it did at the height of his speech, and it produced the desired effect on the spectators, who launched into tearful, enthusiastic applause. He finished his speech and waited on the platform, taking a moment to catch his breath and survey the room before jumping into the fray.

  Bedecked in the finest muslins and silks, the ladies had relished his histrionics—entertaining enough to these jaded appetites. But they enjoyed their own virtue even more, for in giving nodding homage to a worthy cause, they proved the tenderness of their hearts and the liberality of their opinions. He knew it made them feel good to cry about the cruelties visited upon the poor. At the same time, he knew that the money any one of these women spent on a seasonal wardrobe or carriage trimmings would feed a family of Spitalfields or Seven Dials for years.

  Yes, Daniel Partridge, one time fiery radical, had become a cool statesman, a practiced player. As a young man back in the nineties, his overriding concern had been the great issue of the day: the much needed reform of Parliament. While he and his friends had shared an interest in the sufferings of the destitute, they believed that only by modifying the existing political structure could this problem be alleviated. Ultimately in their quest to uphold the individual’s natural and inalienable rights, they had gone so far as to promote universal male suffrage.

  It had seemed then that anything was possible and that a more enlightened age had been ushered in. But in the wake of unremitting government persecution, the movement had dwindled, and though it had revived in the last few years, today’s reformers were a different breed: less quixotic, more practical in their aims, less certain of their eventual success. At least Partridge was.

  Yet sometimes the charade of it all sickened him, as now when faced by an assembly of ladies given over for the moment to charity. And looking out unseeingly on the rows of faces, he thought of Constance, a woman who embodied truth. Her sincerity and friendship had given him brief hope. But truth, after all, is a risk few men are willing to take…

  The sea of eyes shifted slightly, and he sensed a new presence, a penetrating gaze trained upon his face. He peered in that direction, but the afternoon sun pouring through the windows was making it difficult to see. After a moment, he could just make out a rather ordinary looking young woman standing a few yards away. Partridge was used to being stared at, but there was something oddly focused in this woman’s expression. He inclined his head politely, raising his brows in inquiry, but her companion touched her arm, and she pulled her eyes away. Partridge should have been glad, but he wasn’t. Perversely, he wished she would look at him again.

  The crowd was beginning to disperse, so he stepped off the platform and approached a bevy of ladies who were waiting to speak to him. As he gave himself over to their exclamations, he caught one last glimpse of the woman as her friend led her off.

  “What did you make of it, ma’am?” asked Chase, escorting Penelope to some chairs against the wall.

  “A brilliant address, Mr. Chase, but most disturbing. Who can bear to think of eight-year-old children whipped to make them work harder in the mills? Parish apprentices starved and neglected. Chimney sweep boys dying of terrible lung complaints. Truly only a nation of barbarians would allow it.”

  He saw with amazement that she had tears in her eyes. Brushing them away, she fumbled in her reticule for a handkerchief.

  “I meant what did you make of the man?” he said hastily.

  “Do you want to know what logic tells me, or would you rather hear my intuitive response?”

  Chase grinned. “Favor me with both, I suppose.”

  “Well, ’tis obvious he is most charming and persuasive. I can see Miss Tyrone may well have been captivated enough to endanger her reputation. That, of course, gives him a possible motive for wanting her dead had she threatened a scandal.”

  “Just what I thought,” said Chase, pleased.

  “But that doesn’t seem right somehow. I cannot believe she would have relations of that nature with a married man, nor, I’m persuaded, would she seek to hold hostage his good name.”

  Chase’s lip curled. “You have remarkable faith in human goodness, else you’ve yet to experience certain aspects of life. Have you forgot the sketches your husband drew? He apparently glimpsed something quite other in Constance Tyrone.”

  Penelope gripped her hands in her lap as if to restrain herself, but replied composedly enough, “I do not deny she may have felt a powerful attraction for Mr. Partridge.”

  “I could tell you were rapt in his speech like every other woman here. But I wouldn’t trust the man if the angels themselves were to vouch for him.” He got to his feet. “Come now. We shall attempt to waylay him.”

  Daniel Partridge had disengaged himself from the crowd and was making his way toward the exit, a small entourage in his wake. His progress was slow, for he had to stop every few feet to bow to acquaintances. Chase and Penelope attached themselves to the train and pushed forward until they were right behind the M.P.

  “Mr. Partridge. John Chase, Bow Street. I need to speak to you about Constance Tyrone.”

  Partridge swung round. For an instant his smile wavered, but his self-command was paramount. He schooled his features into civil inquiry, ignoring the speculative glances and whispers that erupted from those around him.

  “Of course. How may I help you, sir? Shall we speak privately?” Without waiting for an answer, Partridge made his way into a small office, Chase and Penelope following.

  Light from the window illuminated his face as he turned to confront them. Partridge had clear olive skin, even features, and vivid, dark eyes. One felt immediately his enormous energy and strength of purpose.

  Leaning against a desk, he said in a carefully nonchalant tone, “This has to do with that unfortunate woman’s death, of course. I read of it in the papers.”

  “I understand you were acquainted with Miss Tyrone,” said Chase, giving Penelope a quelling glance as she opened her mouth to speak. For the first time, Partridge looked at her also, eyes widening, but didn’t comment upon her presence.

  “Yes. She was an exceptional person, and if there’s something I can do to help you catch the villain who took her life, you need only tell me. I presume that’s why you’re here, sir?”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Sometime toward the end of October, when we toured a local almshouse. Much of what you heard me speak of today we observed on that expedition. She was anxious to advance her proposals for the education of the destitute.”
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br />   Penelope appeared to absorb his every gesture and intonation as if she analyzed some foreign object, yet at the same time she also radiated a warm empathy that Partridge must sense. Chase wondered what her “intuition” was telling her. To him, Partridge seemed a smooth customer who wouldn’t hesitate to lie outright to gain an advantage.

  “So Miss Tyrone was your…colleague in the quest for social betterment?”

  Surprised, Partridge replied with dignity, “Indeed, she was. The very best sort: intelligent, dedicated, and immensely talented. I shall miss her.”

  “I believe your relationship was closer than you let on. Would you care to describe it?”

  “No. I would not.”

  Icy hauteur had replaced Partridge’s former cordiality, and Chase recalled suddenly that this was not a man to antagonize with impunity, but he never considered backing down.

  “A pity that. Your reluctance to be candid may perhaps be misconstrued.”

  “Not by anyone who knows me.” The M.P. had lost his too-casual stance. The bridge of his nose looked pinched; the worry lines about his mouth had deepened. And he was looking again at Penelope Wolfe.

  “Ah, but who truly knows anyone?” Chase inquired softly. “Even the most public of men has his secrets to be kept hidden at any cost.”

  At that Partridge blanched, and Penelope broke in. “Mr. Partridge, you say you had great esteem for Constance Tyrone. Will you not help us find her killer?”

  “That’s presuming you are not speaking to him right now, ma’am,” Chase bit out. “In which case, I take leave to doubt he would make a push to help you.”

  The astonishment on Partridge’s face should have been comical. “You cannot think I killed her?” He began to laugh, an acid sound that grated on the ear. He said to Penelope on a rising note of desperation, “You don’t think that of me?”