Fraser 03 - The Mask of Night

by Tracy Grant

  Roth let out a low whistle. “I’m surprised I wasn’t packed back to Bow Street. They want you to investigate?”

  "Yes, though that was almost the only thing they were able to agree on. One of these days those two are going to come to blows."

  “I'd put my money on Carfax if it comes to that," Mélanie said. "People in intelligence are always more willing to bend the rules. I’m glad you agreed to investigate, darling. I'm far too curious to leave such an intriguing crime alone.” She gave a smile designed to deflect more than illuminate.

  Roth’s gaze skimmed between them. Charles had known from the first that the runner was a master at picking up on undercurrents. He had learned that Roth was also adept at pretending to turn a blind eye to them when he deemed it appropriate. Which made him all the more dangerous.

  Mélanie moved to the table. “We did make one discovery, though I'm not sure what it has to do with Julien St. Juste.” She held up a narrow graceful earring of diamonds set in antique gold.

  Charles studied the rich gleam of the gold and the depth of the fire in diamonds. Like her, he could recognize craftsmanship and expense. Though given the pedigree of the guests at the ball that did not limit the field very much. “Where did you find it?”

  “By the far side of the fountain. It's possible whoever lost it saw something. It's even possible the earring belonged to the killer."

  “The knife he was killed with is definitely designed to be a weapon,” Roth said. “So either the killer is in the habit of going about armed or he—or she—brought it to the ball with the intention of killing St. Juste.”

  “Or to protect him or herself against St. Juste,” Charles said.

  “It could have been the dead man—St. Juste's—weapon.” Mélanie blew on her hands against the cold. “They could have grappled for it or the killer could have got it away from him by deceit. The killer got within a handsbreadth of St. Juste with no sign of a struggle. It almost has to be someone he knew.”

  "Which could apply to any number of people present tonight, given St. Juste's history and the sort of guests at the ball.” Charles looked at Roth. "The guests are departing?"

  Roth nodded. "The Regent left with his party as soon as word got out that something had happened. The other guests are leaving now. Mr. Lydgate made a brief speech explaining there'd been an accident. Dawkins, the patrol I brought with me, is taking down their names and directions as they leave, with the assistance of Mr. Lydgate's secretary. Lady Isobel is supplying me with a guest list."

  "Sensible," Charles said.

  Roth grimaced. "Mrs. Fraser tells me there are two royal dukes inside as well as a handful of Cabinet ministers and God knows how many MPs and ambassadors. A number of them would have refused to remain and we couldn't have stopped them from leaving. Better to acquiesce gracefully than to be over-ruled."

  Charles nodded. "There’s little more to see here tonight and it’s damned cold. I suggest we go inside and discover what’s to be learned of the guests.”

  They moved to the terrace. "I must say," Roth added in a lighter voice as they climbed the steps, between the glittering flambeaux and beneath the crimson Japanese lanterns, "I never thought I'd find myself investigating a murder with Romeo and Juliet."

  Mélanie smoothed her full skirt. “Please, Mr. Roth, Charles and I are far too experienced to succumb to tragic twists of fate like the star-crossed lovers. We’re supposed to be Beatrice and Benedick. After they’re pretending that Hero has died.”

  Roth opened the nearest French window. “Of course. I should have known not to assume the obvious with either of you.”

  "So you should.” Charles stepped aside to allow his wife and Roth to precede him into the ballroom, wondering how long it would be before he could speak with Mélanie in private. And if there was the remotest chance he could get her to tell him the whole truth.

  Chapter 5

  Do come and dine with us next week, Mr. Roth. Though I warn you, Colin is bound to pester you with questions about Bow Street and 'how many thieves you've taken.'

  Mélanie Fraser to Jeremy Roth,

  27 December 1819

  Mélanie glanced round the empty ballroom. It had the feel of a stage after the players have taken their last bow and gone off to drink in a Covent Garden coffee house. Red and gold medieval draperies sagged against the walls, one torn at the hem. Ferns and ruinously expensive red hothouse roses drooped in their vases. A beaded mask hung drunkenly from the corner of a pedestal, a silk fan lay abandoned on a damask settee, a stray kid glove was draped over a gilded chair arm.

  She and Charles and Roth crossed the empty expanse of tiled marble, scuffed by dancing shoes and sticky with spilled champagne and rataffia and lemonade. A footman in a red and gold tunic, loading empty champagne glasses onto a silver tray, told them that Lady Isobel and Mr. Lydgate were in the library. She and Charles led the way down a carpeted corridor lined with family portraits and a couple of Renaissance oils to a pair of ornately carved doors topped by a classical frieze.

  She felt Roth hesitate as Charles flung open the doors. This room was far more casual than the ballroom, but it bore the unmistakable stamp of privilege: jewel-toned Turkey carpets spread over a polished wood floor with a careless grace that concealed precise geometry, tufted leather furniture, gleaming oak wainscoting, an Italian marble fireplace flanked by Grecian pillars. When she first came to England as Charles’s wife, she too would have felt like an outsider stepping over the threshold. Now she counted the Lydgates among her closest friends. But even that friendship was dependent on keeping the truth from them.

  She touched Roth’s arm. “Bel and Oliver don’t bite nearly as hard as Charles and I,” she whispered. “And you’ve quite got used to us.”

  Roth gave a reluctant grin and followed her into the room.

  The smell of Islay malt filled the air. Oliver, still wearing his toga and imperial purple cloak, was pouring drinks from a cut-glass decanter. Isobel sat on a leather sofa on the opposite side of the room beside her brother David. Lord Carfax’s son and daughter. David had dark hair and eyes and Isobel was a blue-eyed blonde, but looking across the room at them Mélanie was struck by how they resembled each other. Both wore blue velvet cavalier costumes, but more than that they carried themselves with the same contained self-command. They knew very clearly what they had been born to, though neither would be so ill bred as to allude to it.

  Simon Tanner was leaning against the bookshelves behind the sofa. Officially, he and David shared rooms in the Albany. Unofficially, they had been lovers since they met at Oxford. She saw Roth’s gaze flicker between them. He had met David and Simon at a dinner party she and Charles gave. She suspected he might guess the truth of the relationship.

  Oliver turned toward the door as the new arrivals stepped into the room. “We’re drinking,” he said, lifting the decanter with a flourish, “because there doesn’t seem to be any other possible response to finding a corpse in one’s garden in the midst—” The decanter shook, flashing in the candlelight. He clunked it down, spattering whisky on the satinwood tabletop. "Oh, Christ."

  Charles clapped him on the shoulder. "The guests have all gone?"

  "With surprising speed. I never thought so many carriages could assemble so bloody quickly.” Oliver drew a breath and handed Mélanie a whisky with a smile of careless warmth. Even at a time like this, his smile dazzled brighter than the candlelit crystal. He handed a second whisky to Charles. His gaze moved past Charles and lingered on Roth for a moment. His eyes narrowed. "Whisky, Roth?"

  Roth inclined his head. "Thank you, Mr. Lydgate. Just a small one."

  Mélanie perched on the arm of the sofa and put her arm round Isobel. Isobel leaned against her. “I still can’t believe it happened. It’s just so—”

  “Bloody awaful,” Mélanie said.

  Isobel looked up at her. "I could scarcely think what to do or say. And there you were, asking all the right questions, knowing just what to do—"

&nbs
p; "I've seen dead bodies before. It's one of the hazards of war."

  Isobel shivered.

  “How’s Lucinda?” Mélanie asked.

  “Remarkably resilient.” Isobel pushed a strand of hair back from her face. She had removed her hat, and her thick straight hair, usually swept into a smooth chignon, fell about her shoulders with uncharacteristic abandon. “She didn’t want to leave, but I persuaded her she had to look after Mama.”

  “And your father?” Charles said.

  “He left with Lord Castlereagh.” Oliver replaced the stopper in the decanter. “Do you know what the devil the Foreign Secretary has to do with this?”

  “Yes, actually.” Charles dropped into a straight-backed chair. Mélanie sipped her whisky, letting her husband take the lead on how much to say. Charles had grown up with David and Isobel and had known Simon and Oliver since university. He and David and Oliver were all MPs now. She and Charles and David and Simon and the Lydgates had spent countless fortnights at one another’s country houses, shared picnics and rides and rambles, played games of chess and whist and battledore-and-shuttlecock, debated plays and operas at after-theatre suppers, argued political strategies round one another’s dining tables. Even Lord Carfax had left it up to Charles to decide how much to reveal to his son and daughter and son-in-law about Julien St. Juste. Perhaps he too recognized that Charles knew them better than he did himself.

  Charles was silent for a long moment. The past weeks, Mélanie knew, had taught him the risks of trust. But they had also taught him that one had to take help where one could find it. To learn who had committed the murder and why they would have to unlock the secrets of those who had been at the ball this evening. Who better to help than the entertainment’s hosts?

  Charles took a sip of whisky, glanced round the room at his friends, and told them what Carfax and Castlereagh had told him about Julien St. Juste.

  David closed his eyes in recognition of what this meant for his sister and her husband. Isobel sat absolutely still. Simon frowned into his whisky.

  “God in heaven,” Oliver said. He had moved to a high-backed armchair with carved lions on the arms. He looked like a young Roman Emperor, receiving the news of a rebellion by the Praetorian Guard. “Are you saying this St. Juste was at our ball because of some sort of international conspiracy?”

  "We don’t know what he was doing at the ball."

  "But it's a fair guess he wasn't just looking for a diverting evening. Whom was he working for?"

  "The possibilities are endless," Charles said. "French Ultra-Royalists. Bonapartists. Russians. Spanish monarchists or liberals. Austrians, Prussians—"

  "English Radicals," David said in a flat voice. "That's Father's theory, isn't it?"

  "He did mention it."

  "What a surprise," Simon murmured.

  David shot him a look of concern. Simon shrugged. Then he met Mélanie's gaze for a moment. No matter how close the six of them were, he and Mélanie would always share the fellow feeling of outsiders.

  "You think St. Juste came here to meet someone and that person killed him?" Oliver asked.

  "Possibly," Charles said. "Or someone from his past could have recognized him."

  Isobel lifted two sheets of embossed writing paper from an ebony-inlaid table and handed them to Mélanie. “The first is the list Officer Dawkins and Oliver’s secretary compiled of the guests as they left. The second is a list of the invited guests.”

  Mélanie scanned the papers. She had helped Isobel with the cards for the ball, but seeing all the names written out brought home just how powerful a group they were dealing with. Powerful and therefore dangerous. These were the sort of people who might well kill to conceal secrets.

  She carried the papers over to Charles and Roth. "An impressive array," Roth said. "Admirably organized, Lady Isobel."

  Isobel gave a strained smile. "I'm a politician's wife. Organization is my stock in trade."

  “How many of those present at the ball tonight weren’t actually invited?”

  "More than I could have wished. It's the hazard of a masquerade."

  "Card sharps and half-pay officers and toadies hoping to ingratiate themselves," Oliver said.

  Isobel flashed her husband a look that said one did not speak so freely before a stranger. "But there's no one I can point to as particularly suspicious," she added.

  “Surely it’s possible the killer gave a false name and direction,” David said.

  “It is.” Charles raised his gaze from the papers. “We’ll only know for a certainty by tracking everyone on the list to verify their presence here this evening.”

  “It’s also possible the killer left between the murder and the discovery of the body,” Mélanie said.

  Isobel nodded. "The footmen remember a half-dozen or so guests leaving but they couldn’t put names to them or even describe their costumes in any detail.”

  Mélanie pulled the earring from a pocket in her skirt. “Do any of you recognize this? We found it in the garden.”

  Isobel took the earring and held it up to a brace of candles. “No. I don't think so. Though any number of ladies were wearing diamonds tonight.”

  Oliver and David examined the earring and shook their heads.

  “Pity we didn’t know sooner,” Simon murmured. “We could have checked all the ladies for missing earrings on their way out.”

  “Did any of you see anyone go onto the terrace during the evening?” Charles asked. “Or go outside yourselves?”

  All four shook their heads.

  Simon frowned at the earring he still held. “The lady who lost this was most likely outside for a rendezvous that had nothing to do with St. Juste's death. You start poking into this, and her reputation could be ruined.”

  “That can be an unfortunate side effect of murder investigations, Mr. Tanner,” Roth said. “I’ll do my best be discreet.”

  Oliver crossed back to his chair and picked up his whisky. “For a fire-breathing Radical, Simon, you’re very well-versed in the nuances of life among the beau monde.”

  “My dear Oliver, any general would tell you one has to know the enemy. Anyway, Charles is a Radical too. So are you, according to some of the papers.”

  “Not me.” Oliver took a sip of whisky. “I’m a devoted member of the Whig party. Who wants to push reform along.”

  “And you’d better remain that way,” Charles said. “One of us has to have a prayer of a Cabinet seat if the Whigs ever get back in power.”

  “At the rate things are going, David’s likely to be in the House of Lords by the time the Whigs get anywhere near Downing Street,” Oliver said. “Then Simon can write diatribes against him.”

  "For God's sake," David said. "Are you forgetting a man was killed tonight?"

  "I don't see how I could forget it, much as I might like to.” Oliver flung himself into his chair. “I must say I’m a bit surprised my Tory father-in-law and the Foreign Secretary took you into their confidence on this, Charles.”

  “So am I,” Charles said. “But they need to find out who killed St. Juste and what St. Juste was doing in England.”

  David’s gaze shot from Charles to Mélanie. “My God, you’re in no state to—“

  “I’m advising Roth, that’s all.”

  “Not, I imagine, if my father-in-law has anything to say about it,” Oliver said.

  “Mélanie—“ Isobel turned to her.

  “It’s all right, Bel. Charles and I are remarkably sturdy.”

  David leaned toward Charles. “Depending on what you learn, Father may feel he has no choice but to hush the whole thing up. Don’t underestimate him, Charles.”

  Charles folded the list of guests. The paper crackled in his fingers. “I’ve been in Parliament for three years, David. I know better than to underestimate the opposition.”

  Charles had suspected there was something Mélanie wasn’t telling him from the moment he stepped back onto the terrace after his interview with Carfax and Castlereagh. Bu
t even when they left the Lydgates, he was not immediately able to ask her about it for they had Roth and Officer Dawkins with them, as well as David and Simon whom they had driven to the ball in their carriage. It was a silent journey. Most of what could be said had been said in Oliver and Isobel’s library. David frowned into the shadows. So, uncharacteristically, did Simon. Roth stared out the dark window, as though the flashes of lamplight in the gloom beyond held answers. Dawkins, a tow-headed young man of little more than twenty, shifted nervously on the watered silk seat.

  As he swung down from the carriage in front of the Bow Street Public Office, Roth murmured that he’d call on Charles and Mélanie the next day. David said something similar when they reached the Albany. He paused at the base of the carriage steps and stared at Charles for a moment, his gaze night-black, as it had been since their school days when he was trying to warn Charles of danger. Simon touched his arm, and he turned and strode across the forecourt, his cavalier cloak billowing about his shoulders. Simon walked beside him, an incongruous match in his Francois Villon tunic and boots.

  Charles squeezed Mélanie’s hand, but he didn’t attempt to discuss the events of the night and neither did she. There was too much to say and not enough time before they reached their own house in Berkeley Square.

  They lit candles in the entrance hall, nodded to Michael, the footman, and climbed the stairs. A cream-colored note card stood on the demi-lune table on the second floor landing. Mélanie snatched it up and held it to the light of her candle.

  Colin fell asleep while I was reading Robinson Crusoe to him. No nightmares.

  L.D.

  Since Colin’s abduction last autumn, Laura Dudley, the children’s governess, had taken to leaving word for them when they were out for the evening. They eased open the door of their son’s room and heard the soft, even sound of his breathing. He was sprawled beneath the quilt, not curled into a tight ball as he’d been wont to do just after the abduction. Charles stared at his son’s tousled dark hair, cursing Julien St. Juste and Carfax and Castlereagh and whoever had wielded the knife in the Lydgates’ garden.