by J. A. Rock
“Cease at once.” Gale knew his protests were futile. He took the cup of tea offered by a servant and wished it were sherry.
“Of a girl what’s called Lady Mirabelle Sapstrom,” Elise said in her high voice, gesturing to Eugenie, who sashayed into the centre of the room, then collapsed onto the floor. “Who was murdered!”
“I wish I had drowned last night,” Gale hissed to his mother.
“You might consider enjoying yourself,” she whispered back.
“Did anyone stop to think that the subject matter is insensitive to Elise?”
“The whole thing was her idea,” his mother replied.
“And you!” Helene pointed to Gale, their mother, and Chant. “You’re all the investigators who must figure out which of us committed the dastardly crime.”
Gale groaned. Beside him, Chant laughed and clapped. “All right!” Chant said. “We are ready.”
No, Gale thought. We really aren’t.
One by one, his sisters stepped forward and introduced their characters and their relationship with the deceased. One had always been jealous of Lady Sapstrom’s jewels—here, Elise plucked a number of surprisingly tasteful accessories off Eugenie—a sapphire necklace, a ruby bracelet, an opal ring—who was trying unsuccessfully not to laugh.
“Be quiet, Eugenie!” Anne-Marie hissed. “You are a corpse!”
Another was a neighbour who’d been annoyed by Lady Sapstrom’s barking dog. Here, Clarissa provided altogether too-convincing barks.
Another had been the lady’s chemist, and so on, and so on…
Gale might have walked out of the house if not for the warmth of Chant beside him. Chant had been bitterly disappointed in him last night, of that Gale was certain. Yet the man seemed as genial as ever, casting Gale a smile as the girls continued their performance.
Would Chant want to know, immediately after this debacle ended, whether Gale meant what he’d said last night?
“I cannot bear another courtship with a man who needs me less than I need him.”
I do not need you at all, Gale wanted to say. Yet that suddenly seemed as feeble a protest as telling his sisters to stop their pageant at once.
“All right, the time has come!” Clarissa said at last, her face flushed with such exhilaration that Gale nearly smiled without realising it. A pang of regret hit him. He had never been good at playing games with his sisters. Had never understood the point of such frivolities. Chant had said last night that what he wanted from Gale was something most people gave willingly. What if Gale was never “most people” enough for Chant?
“Investigators!” Helene waved at them. “Who do you think did it? Who murdered Euge—I mean, Lady Sapstrom, and why?”
“Which person in this room could be such a devil?” Elise demanded, giving her little peg-toothed grin.
Gale sighed and said in a bored tone: “Lady Forthright, clearly, but with Miss Camden, the chemist’s help. Her alibi doesn’t hold up as her pianoforte lessons were on Thursday nights, not Wednesdays. The medicine drops she brought over earlier that day that would help Lady Sapstrom calm her dog were actually poison, bought from Miss Camden. She added some to Lady Sapstrom’s scone, and voila. A recipe for death.”
Chant nudged him and spoke to the group. “I disagree. Miss Bellwether, the pianoforte instructor, said earlier that she had to change the day of Lady Forthright’s lesson due to illness, so Lady F was not lying about her alibi. Miss Bellwether herself visited the chemist to get medicine. I put forth that she was never ill. You said she was an actress in her younger days? I think she only feigned illness as an excuse to visit the chemist where she bought the poison. She sent tea cakes to Lady Sapstrom to apologise for missing their luncheon date, and the tea cakes were laced with poison.”
A cheer went up from the performers. “That’s correct!” Anne-Marie said. “Mr. Chant, you are a better investigator than our own Christmas.”
“Well,” Chant said modestly. “I don’t know about that…”
Gale rolled his eyes and kept them rolled back until his head throbbed again.
“Delightful!” their mother said. “And here I was thinking Lady Sapstrom had faked her own death as her corpse could not seem to keep still.”
This sent Eugenie into another fit of giggles.
Helene ran up to them. “Did you like it, Mr. Chant? We only wrote it yesterday.”
“That surprises me not at all,” Gale muttered.
“It was excellent,” Chant said. “I’ve not had such fun in a long while.”
Cordelia stepped out from the pianoforte, grinning. “Could you really not solve it, Christmas?”
“I suppose I am… distracted,” Gale replied. He felt Chant tense beside him, then heard the rumble of Chant’s laughter, which tore at him in a way he did not wish to explore.
Elise approached a bit shyly.
“This was your idea, Elise?” Chant asked. Elise nodded. “Splendid.”
“I thought you and Lord Christmas might like it, sir.”
“We certainly did!”
Gale said nothing, and Chant nudged him again, less affection and more elbow this time.
“Yes, it was delightful,” Gale forced himself to say. “We must only hope that Mr. Chant keeps this a secret. With the spotlight thrust onto our family recently, the last thing we need are rumours spreading that such well-bred young ladies spend their time putting on ghastly theatricals.” He set his tea cup aside. His sisters were maddening, the whole bloody lot of them.
He realised with a faint start as he gazed at the girls that somehow he had included Elise in that mental assessment and had since the moment he’d entered the drawing room. What madness was that? Elise was not a Gale, and yet somehow the thought of sending her into the care of the parish once this was all over was distressing to him. It made his stomach clench in the same unpleasant way it had when de Cock had confronted him yesterday. Gale was fearful.
He stared at his tea cup for a moment, wishing to pick it up so that he might have something to do but also wary that the rattle of the cup against the saucer might give away the sudden tremble in his hands.
Gale was not unused to fear—he had been in many situations in the past where a sudden burst of it had given his body the speed to escape—but he could not recall ever having been afraid of losing another person before. This was Chant’s fault too, no doubt. He had weakened Gale’s heart to the point that even a small child could squeeze it uncomfortably hard.
Gale felt the sudden urge to reach out and take Chant’s hand, just to reassure himself the man truly was flesh and blood. How could a mere man do this to him? It seemed impossible, and yet there he was, all these awful, useless feelings churning inside him.
He realised there was something he needed to do, even before he talked to Chant. He leaned down. “Elise? Could you come with me for a moment so we can talk?”
She eyed him warily but nodded. “Yeah. ’Course.”
He led her into the empty dining room and pulled out a chair for her and then one for himself. He placed his hands between his knees and drew a deep breath, wondering where to start. “I’m sorry we haven’t found Flum,” he began.
Elise chewed her lip, swinging her legs. “Maybe he doesn’t know where to find me because I been here so long. When I go back to my house, maybe he’ll come then.”
“Maybe,” Gale agreed, deciding that the matter of Elise going “back to her house” was a conversation for another day. He wet his lips and tried again. “Elise, I think I know who killed your papa.”
She didn’t fall down wailing like a banshee like she had the night Gale had announced her father’s death, so that was something. She stared at him with her disconcertingly wide-set eyes and waited.
“We think it was the captain,” he went on cautiously.
Still she stared. “Will he hang?” she asked.
“He certainly ought to. Mr. Chant and I want to make sure justice is served to anyone responsible for your father’s
death. But we need more… evidence, you understand? Proof.”
“You could make him confess,” she suggested.
“Right. We could, possibly. But first we need proof enough to have him arrested. And I think the key to this whole thing is Flummery.”
“You need to find Flum? I told you that.”
“You did. What I need, though, is to know if there was anything unusual about Flum. Any reason at all the captain might have wanted him so badly.”
Elise’s eyes seemed to grow even more strange. There was something almost ghostly about them, as though if Gale looked into them, he wouldn’t see his own reflection. He was so close. He could feel it. She was holding something back, and if he could just manage, for once in his life, not to say the wrong thing…
“I need the truth, Elise.”
“He was a good dog,” she whispered. “Maybe that’s why the captain wanted him.”
“I’m sure he was. But the captain is not a good man. I don’t know that he would care about having a good dog.”
Not a muscle moved in Elise’s face. But there was a fierceness in her eyes that, for a second, scared Gale more than the prospect of loving Chant.
Chant.
He’d told Chant that honesty went both ways. He supposed that was true whether he was speaking to a lover, a friend, or an orphaned child.
He took another deep breath. “I know it can be hard to tell the truth if we think it will hurt someone or… or hurt us, I suppose. I myself cannot seem to find a middle ground between telling harsh truths much too bluntly and keeping important things to myself. But your father is gone now. And all that’s left is to prove this captain killed him. If I promise to protect you from whatever comes of it, could you tell me the truth?”
Elise’s chin wobbled slightly. Gale would have missed it if he hadn’t been searching for some sign that she understood.
“What is it, Elise?” he asked softly. “What’s valuable about Flum?”
Just then, a footman slipped inside the dining room. Gale could have bashed him over the head with the table’s centrepiece. The spell between himself and Elise broke, and she was swinging her legs again, watching the footman.
“My lord,” he said, bending close to Gale’s ear and speaking in an undertone. “A message has arrived from a Mr. Fernside. He says a corpse has been recovered in Rotherhithe and that you would wish to be informed.”
Gale rose. A corpse? Well then, yes, he must go to Rotherhithe at once. But…
He looked back at Elise, who didn’t meet his gaze. “Pa was a cheat at cards,” she said to the table. “Maybe he cheated the captain.”
He’d asked her that first morning if her father’s death might be related to his gambling. She’d been adamant that they weren’t in debt. He hesitated, wondering if he should stay and do whatever it took to get this confession out of her. Then he remembered trying to call Flum to him. He didn’t have the necessary skill to persuade children or dogs to do as he asked.
And he was not going to bully a child who was scared and hurting.
He and Chant didn't need Flummery at this point.
They needed de Cock.
“Maybe so,” he said.
Elise looked up. “He’s a good dog. The best dog. When you meet him, Lord Christmas, you’ll see. Anyone would want him.”
Chapter 14
Chant had never been in a cab that rattled as much as the one he was currently in did. He felt like a cork bouncing on a storm-tossed ocean as they headed for Surrey Quays. His knees kept banging into Gale’s, and the cab smelled of both cheap perfume and the stench of unwashed bodies, sickly sweet and sour.
“You talked to Elise?” Chant ventured.
“I did. I didn’t traumatise her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It wasn’t. But I’m glad to hear it all the same.”
“Whatever she’s holding back, she doesn’t feel she can tell us. So we’re going to have to proceed without her help.”
“Do you have any theories about the corpse?”
“I won’t until I see it.”
“Very well. Then might we speak about last night?” Chant asked.
Gale stared out the window. “I’m not sure we have anything to speak of, sir.”
Chant tried not to let his frustration transform into anger. “Last night you talked of us sharing ourselves. Do you remember?”
“Last night I was drunk,” Gale said and pressed his mouth into a tight line.
Chant huffed out a short, sharp breath. “Then we will speak no more about it.”
Gale turned his head quickly and stared at him, and Chant imagined a thousand regrets in his suddenly wide, desperate gaze. For a moment, his heart pounded fast, and he imagined Gale’s walls crumbling in beautiful defeat, and Gale falling into his arms—but Gale did not. He simply looked out the window again and paid Chant no more attention at all.
Chant had thought—foolishly, as it happened—that last night had been a turning point in their relationship, an acknowledgement that they were attracted to one another, and that they could have more than a friendship. But it seemed Gale did not feel the same. And Chant was weary. He’d hardly known Gale any amount of time at all, but already the man had wrung him out. He’d be damned if he’d live every day in the hope that Gale might offer him a scrap of affection if only the planets all aligned in whatever complicated pattern they had to for Gale to admit he cared. And he’d be damned if he’d be with any man who could only admit he had a heart when he was drunk.
The rest of the trip to Rotherhithe passed in silence.
It was drizzling when they arrived in the street outside Fernside’s house, and Chant tugged his greatcoat around himself peevishly while Gale, for some reason, squinted at Fernside’s dour little house and paced back and forth outside it for a while. He appeared to be counting his steps. Then he paid close attention to the houses on either side of Fernside’s.
“What the devil are you doing, man?” Chant asked at last.
Fitz, Fernside’s assistant, stood watching from the open front door, his expression clearly asking the same question. He was an odd little fellow, Chant thought. He could have been as young as a teenager—his face was unmarked by wrinkles, but there was a bleak, ageless quality about him too as though his face had been cast in porcelain. He leaned in the doorway and watched Gale stride back and forth along the wet street.
“Gale!” Chant called again, and Gale heeded him at last. He stopped his pacing and joined Chant at the front of the house.
They entered, and Fitz shut the door behind them.
“Door to the cellar is just ahead to your left,” Fitz said. “The body’s down there.”
Chant shivered as they took the stairs down. It was colder down there than upstairs, and in the lamplight the walls shone a little with moisture, and Chant remembered how close they were to the river. There was a peculiar smell lingering; lye and vinegar overlaying something unpleasantly reminiscent of a butcher’s shop. The chill in the air thankfully took the edge off the worst of the smell, but Chant pressed his cuff to his nose in any case.
There were three long tables in the cellar, and two were occupied.
“Ah,” Fernside said, turning his attention away from the corpse on the table in front of him. An elderly man, Chant saw before Fernside drew a sheet up over him, his lined face pale and pinched in death, his jaw tied shut. Fernside moved to the next table. “He was pulled from the river this morning. Visser.”
He drew the sheet back.
Visser was bloated, discoloured, and missing an ear. Worse, he had been slashed down the torso, from throat to belly, leaving an awful, gaping wound behind.
“Dear God,” Chant managed, bile rising in his throat. “What kind of a monster…”
“Oh,” Fernside said, looking startled. “No, that cut was mine. I was checking his lungs to see if he’d drowned.”
Gale stepped forward to inspect the body more closely. “And did he?”
“No!” Chant exclaimed. “I am sure we can take your word for it.”
He turned away.
Gale, quite unexpectedly, slapped him on the shoulder. “Courage, man.”
Chant resisted the urge toward some snide response. Yes, Lord Christmas Gale would know all about courage, wouldn’t he?
He checked himself. If Gale did not wish to court anyone, then he did not wish to court anyone. He had as much right to desire an unpartnered life as Chant did to desire a partnered one. And truly, a man was dead. Why was Chant still thinking about his own unrequited affection? He forced himself to focus on the corpse, which only served to turn his stomach again. And so he forced himself to focus on the far wall of the cellar instead, fixing his gaze on the uneven brickwork as he listened to a series of peculiarly wet, squelching sounds as Fernside and Gale poked around in Visser’s chest cavity. The sounds reminded him of Wellington boots being sucked into mud.
He was heartily relieved when the inspection was over, and Fitz led the way back upstairs to the kitchen and set about making tea while Fernside and Gale washed their hands to get rid of the stench. Chant sipped his tea and listened to Fernside and Gale discuss animalcules and something they called Kircher’s little worms of the blood. Chant preferred not to imagine that every surface in the world was teeming with poisonous creatures so ubiquitous that they even lived inside people’s bodies, and he wasn’t enough of a scientist to follow much of the conversation. He wasn’t sure what consensus was reached, if any at all, only that Fernside and Gale both washed their hands a second time before they took their tea.
Gale did not drink his tea. He stared at it for a moment as though it might have been holding all the mysteries of the universe and then set it down and strode out of the kitchen. A moment later Chant heard him pacing along the hallway, stopping every few moments and making a soft thumping sound, as though he was kicking the baseboard mouldings.
