Fraser 03 - The Mask of Night

by Tracy Grant

  Roth surveyed the Frasers. A bruise was rising on Charles Fraser’s jaw, his clothes were filthy, and he had lost his hat and greatcoat somewhere. Mrs. Fraser’s hands showed scratches when she stripped off her obviously borrowed gloves. “Your son’s a sensible lad,” Roth said. “I don’t think either of you gets into brawls lightly.”

  “It wasn’t the brawl that did most of the damage,” Mélanie Fraser said, unfastening her cloak and letting it fall over the sofa back. “It was crawling over the roofs. And whatever Charles got up to running through the courts and alleys of Seven Dials.”

  Her voice was crisp, but the light from the lamp illumined eyes that were darker and more haunted than they’d been this morning. Fraser’s gaze held similar scars. Before Roth could speak, the door opened to admit Miles Addison, quiet, fair-haired, and unflappable, and Blanca Mendoza, petite, elfin-faced, and inclined to bursts of emotion. Both were neatly attired and unbruised. They ran sharp-eyed gazes over the Frasers.

  “It looks as though you had the worst of it this morning,” Miss Mendoza said. "I never thought looking at jewelry could become so pesado. Dawkins is still making inquiries, but I don’t think we’re going to find the person who purchased this earring.”

  “We had to try,” Mrs. Fraser said. “Thank you.”

  “You’ve learned something?” Miss Mendoza asked, as she and Addison moved to the settee.

  Charles Fraser turned from poking up the fire. A welcome waft of pine-scented air pushed out the January chill. “We don’t know who killed St. Juste, but we know whom he was working for. Probably.”

  “Someone known to you?” Roth asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Fraser returned the poker to its stand. “Raoul O’Roarke.”

  Miss Mendoza drew a sharp breath. Addison put a hand on her wrist. Roth sat back and looked from Fraser to his wife. Though O’Roarke had worked with them at the time of Colin’s abduction, Roth wasn’t entirely sure what Raoul O’Roarke meant to either of Colin’s parents. Save that he was quite sure he didn’t know the whole story about the links among the three. “You lot do like to stick together, don’t you?” he said. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

  They did, though Roth suspected they didn’t reveal all the details, such as exactly how they knew Sam Lucan. Addison kept his gaze on Fraser throughout the account, with the air of one adept at checking for damage without being seen to do so. Miss Mendoza pleated the fabric of her skirt between her fingers.

  Roth went past the cross-current of unexpressed feelings in the room to the bare bones of the facts. “So at least we know why St. Juste was at the masquerade. He had a rendezvous with O’Roarke.”

  “Perhaps,” Mélanie Fraser said.

  Roth looked into her eyes. He was sure Mélanie Fraser knew the trick of revealing shocking truths to make it easier to keep other truths hidden. “I've made some discoveries of my own.” He fished his notebook from his pocket. "It seems Mr. Tanner wasn’t entirely forthcoming last night. In part, I suspect, to protect Mr. Lydgate.” He recounted what he had learned about Tanner's and Pendarves’s presence on the terrace and Pendarves’s revelations about over hearing Oliver Lydgate and Lady St. Ives.

  “According to Pendarves, Mr. Lydgate and Lady St. Ives are old friends,” he concluded.

  “They once wanted to marry,” Charles Fraser said. He had dropped into a chair and was staring at his hands.

  Mélanie Fraser swung her gaze in her husband's direction.

  "It was years before you and I met," Fraser said. “Lack of fortune on both sides and the expectations of her family made it out of the question. Oliver was a country lawyer's son who'd gone to Oxford on a scholarship. Sylvie—Lady St. Ives now—was the daughter of French émigrés. But they were—the attachment between them seemed to run deep.“

  "Charles," Mélanie Fraser said, "are you telling me you knew Oliver and Lady St. Ives were lovers?" Her voice held shock such as Roth had rarely heard in it. He recalled the friendly ease with which she had embraced both Oliver and Isobel Lydgate when they left St. James’s Place last night, the way the Lydgates had stood on the steps to see them off, shoulders brushing in connubial solidarity.

  "I didn't know anything," Fraser said. "I still don't. I'm saying I can imagine how they might have become lovers."

  “What Lord Pendarves overheard sounds as though Mr. Lydgate was trying to end the relationship and Lady St. Ives resisted.” Roth looked at Charles Fraser for a moment. “You know Mr. Lydgate well."

  “Since Oxford. David and I were friends from Harrow, but we met Oliver and Simon in a production of Henry IV Part I. David was the King. Simon was Falstaff and quite brilliant at it, though he was every bit as thin as he is now. I was Hal and Oliver was Hostpur.”

  “So you met as opponents.”

  “On the stage. Oliver was more gregarious than David or I, but we shared a classics tutor and a general agreement about the ills of the world. We took to meeting in the same coffeehouse, arguing over our essays and holding forth about how we’d order the world differently.”

  Addison, who must also have known all the gentlemen since Fraser’s Oxford days, was frowning at the toes of his boots, uncharacteristically mud-splashed. “How much do you think Mr. Tanner knows about Mr. Lydgate’s conversation with Lady St. Ives?” he asked.

  The Frasers exchanged glances. “You know how Simon recognizes voices,” Mélanie Fraser said. “If Pendarves knew it was Oliver and Lady St. Ives in the garden, I imagine Simon knew as well.”

  Miss Mendoza wrinkled her nose. “Men like Lord Pendarves, they do not easily reveal secrets that might damage a lady’s reputation. Especially to—“

  “Someone of lower station,” Roth said.

  She shot him a look of fellow feeling. “Si.”

  Fraser tented his hands and frowned at his fingertips. “I’m not surprised Simon tried to protect Oliver. But I own I’m surprised Pendarves admitted what he heard.”

  “So was I,” Roth said. “I wondered if he was trying to divert my attention.”

  “From whatever he’d wanted to discuss with Simon? Entirely possible. In that case it’s unlikely to have any bearing on the murder.”

  “Not based on what we know so far,” Roth agreed.

  Mélanie Fraser gripped her elbows. “It’s a fair surmise that R-O’Roarke and St. Juste planned to meet last night. We don’t know if they actually did so. They seem to have been working together, and we have no evidence that they had a falling out.”

  “But—?” Charles Fraser said.

  “Raoul O’Roarke is one of the few people at the ball who would have had the skill to kill a trained killer like St. Juste.”

  “True,” Fraser said after the briefest pause. “But it doesn’t prove that he did so. Someone else could have taken St. Juste by surprise or have talents we don’t know of.”

  Mrs. Fraser nodded. “We can begin by making inquiries at the Crystal Heart.” She looked at Addison and Miss Mendoza. “I think you’d be best at that. O’Roarke may have given them descriptions of Charles and me.”

  Addison inclined his head. “Of course.”

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Fraser turned to her husband. “Do we go to Lady St. Ives or Oliver first?”

  “Sylvie,” Fraser said. “I want to hear her version before Oliver’s.” He regarded his wife for a moment. “She’s more likely to confide in a woman.”

  “Darling,” Mrs. Fraser said. “You’re the one who knows her enough to call her Sylvie.”

  “But I’m a man who went to university with her husband. And you’re so very good at drawing confidences from people.”

  “Which means that you want to go with Mr. Roth to investigate the address in Rosemary Lane that Bet saw on Billy Simcox’s slip of paper.”

  “Well yes. But I also think you’ll do better with Sylvie.”

  “How very convenient for you,” Mrs. Fraser said. Her tone of wifely resignation was layered expertly to cover all the undercurrents in the room.

&
nbsp; It very nearly succeeded.

  Chapter 12

  I understand Mrs. Charles Fraser is the toast of the diplomatic corps and Wellington's aides-de-camp. My compliments. I knew you perfectly suited to the role.

  Raoul O'Roarke to Mélanie Fraser,

  21 March 1813

  Mélanie stared across the expanse of Grosvenor Square. On the far side stood Glenister House, the scene of the opening gambit in the adventure she and Charles had been embroiled in two and a half years ago. Another life, in which secrets had still hung between them. In which Charles had had no notion that Raoul O’Roarke was more than an old friend of his family’s.

  She shivered and gripped her arms, for reasons that had nothing to do with the chill air cutting through her pelisse. Damn Raoul.

  She turned her back on the square and climbed the steps of the St. Ives house, a coolly elegant building of cream-dressed stone. A footman in buff-and-blue livery admitted her to an entry hall tiled with Siena marble. He informed her that Lady St. Ives was at home and conducted her up a curving staircase lined with family portraits, including one of an auburn-haired beauty with a discontented mouth and another of a fair-haired gentleman with Gallic features. The gilt nameplates identified them as the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Fancot, Sylvie St. Ives’s émigré parents.

  The footmen opened the door of a first-floor salon. The smell of potpourri, exquisitely blended of pine and cinnamon, filled the air. “Mrs. Fraser,” he announced, in resonant tones which made Mélanie wish she could see him as Figaro.

  “Mrs. Fraser.” A well-modulated voice with the faintest of French accents sounded from the room beyond.

  Mélanie stepped forward to greet Lady St. Ives. She had not been in this chamber of the house before. It was smaller than the more public rooms, with walls painted a bold turquoise that just matched Lady St. Ives’s eyes. Reliefs of classical cameos adorned the moldings and the ormolu fireplace bore the stamp of Robert Adam. The perfect setting for its mistress, a tall, slender woman with golden hair arranged in Grecian ringlets and delicate features that might have adorned one of the cameos.

  “I trust you are well, Mrs. Fraser,” Lady St. Ives said. “I was sorry not to have a chance to speak with you last night. What a sad end to the evening.”

  “Very.”

  Lady St. Ives gestured Mélanie to a chair covered in cream satin. “Shall I ring for tea? Or would you prefer a glass of rataffia? Do say yes. I’m quite longing for one myself.”

  “Then how can I refuse?”

  Lady St. Ives moved to a gilt pier table that held a blue glass decanter and glasses. Mélanie watched the other woman as she poured. She was a study in perfection, from the fall of her ringlets to the delicate curve of her wrist as she lifted the decanter. And yet her knuckles were white, and the film of liquid in one of the glasses implied that this was not the first drink she had consumed this afternoon.

  “There were a host of rumors circulating in the Lydgates' ballroom last night,” Lady St. Ives said, carrying a glass over to Mélanie. "One of the few I suspect is true is that you and Mr. Fraser are assisting Bow Street with the investigation into the unfortunate man’s death.”

  “My husband has undertaken such investigations before.”

  “With your help.” Lady St. Ives sank down on a Grecian sofa. “I may be sadly frivolous myself, but I quite admire your initiative. I’m afraid I can’t be of much help with your investigation however.”

  Mélanie took a sip of the sweet, almond-flavored wine. “On the contrary. I have it on good authority that you were on the terrace not long before the murder took place.”

  Lady St. Ives’s fingers clenched round the cerulean blue stem of her glass. “Whose authority?”

  “I prefer to keep names out of it.” Mélanie leaned forward. “It is not my wish to pry into anyone’s life. The only information that interests me is what may pertain to the victim and his killer. But I should tell you that you and Oliver were overheard on the terrace last night.”

  Lady St. Ives’s delicate shoulders jerked straight. “Oliver and I have been friends for years.”

  “According to Charles, at one time you hoped to be more."

  Lady St. Ives gave a harsh laugh. “Who doesn’t hope for more at that time of life. Didn’t you, at seventeen? Or were you waiting chastely in your Spanish castle for Charles to sweep you off your feet?”

  At seventeen, Mélanie had been an ex-whore spying for the French and sharing Raoul O’Rourke’s bed. She’d have laughed in disbelief at the thought that she’d ever be married, let alone in love with her husband. By all rights she still should laugh. “I’m sure we’ve all done our share of dreaming. But neither you nor Mr. Lydgate had the good fortune to persuade your parents to agree to the match.”

  “Or the initiative to run off to Gretna Green. Though Oliver wanted to.” Lady St. Ives took a quick sip of rataffia. “I was too much of a coward.”

  “Or too prudent.”

  “Perhaps. That’s what Caroline told me at the time.”

  “Caroline?”

  “Lady Pendarves now. We’ve been friends since we were in the schoolroom, though she’s never known what to make of my fits and starts. Caro wouldn’t dream of straying beyond the line. I used to think that made her life sadly dull, but as time goes by I’ve come to believe she’s the happier for it. The night I told her I was thinking of running off with Oliver, she said nothing but misery could come of a secret marriage made on impulse. I daresay she was right. You seem to love your husband, Mrs. Fraser. Would you claim love is any guarantee of happiness?”

  “I don’t think anything is a guarantee of happiness.”

  “Quite. I expect Oliver and I would have driven each other to insanity or infidelity. Or both. Neither of us was meant to be poor.”

  “Yet your attachment continued beyond your respective marriages. It’s understandable.”

  “I may be a shallow creature, but I’m not the sort to turn my back on my friends.”

  “Oliver was overheard telling you it had to end. And you were overheard saying you couldn’t bear for it do so.”

  “And you thought— You’re a clever woman, Mrs. Fraser, but not so clever as to rise above the conventional interpretation.” Lady St. Ives fingered the stem of her glass. “Do you remember living in Paris? As a child I mean.”

  “Before the Revolution?” Mélanie said. The cover story of her growing up was very close to Sylvie St. Ives’s actual childhood. “No, I was only a baby when we left.”

  “I confess I’m a few years your senior. My memories are fragmented, but still vivid. The orange trees in the Tuileries. My mother’s salon. A mob smashing one of our windows. I’d been playing on the carpet and suddenly there was broken glass all about me. My mother snatched me up and told my father this settled it. We had to leave. Your family escaped to Spain. Mine came here. But even growing up in England, I never really belonged. Not the way my husband and yours and the Mallinsons do.”

  “To really belong to that world, one has to be born to it.”

  “Marrying into it was the closest I could come. In that sense, Oliver and I are very much alike. Even then I wonder if I’ve really escaped my past.” Lady St. Ives took another sip of rataffia. “Both my parents are inveterate gamesters. They gambled away half their fortune before the Jacobins took the rest. When we came to England, they had delusions that they could recoup our fortunes through the turn of a card or a throw of dice or a lucky horse. Instead, we drifted ever deeper into debt. You’d think I’d have profited from their example. Instead, I seem to have inherited the weakness.”

  “You’ve run up gambling debts.”

  “To put it mildly. My husband has settled some of them, but I’ve never been able to confess the full extent of my weakness to him.”

  “But you could to Oliver?”

  “Oliver’s always understood. Perhaps because I know his own weaknesses.”

  “You’ve stayed very close.”

  “A first
love is always a first love, don’t you think?”

  Mélanie, thinking of her own first love, who had apparently employed Julien St. Juste to do God knew what, could only nod.

  Lady St. Ives set her glass down on a porcelain-inlaid side table. “I don’t see that my fidelity or lack of it is any concern of yours, Mrs. Fraser. But Oliver has never been my lover in the carnal sense, before or after my marriage.”

  “Then last night—?”

  Lady St. Ives adjusted on the gold clasps that held her gown closed at one side. “I was obliged to pawn some of my jewelry to dispose of a debt. Oliver undertook the commission for me. Last night, he was telling me he’d been successful.” She reached for her glass and tossed back another swallow. “I don’t know how much your informant overheard, but Oliver went on to tell me that my gambling had to stop. And I told him I told him that I wasn’t sure I could bear to stop.”

  “And then?”

  “We spoke a trifle longer.”

  “By any chance did you lose an earring in the garden?”

  “No, thank God. I can’t afford to lose any of the jewelry I have left.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the garden?”

  “I didn’t see anyone. But I overheard two gentlemen. One of whom, I assume, is your informant.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I’d like to hear it from you.”

  “Lord Pendarves and Simon Tanner. They were only there for a minute or so. I think they became aware of our presence at about the moment we became aware of theirs. They beat a hasty retreat. I was afraid we’d been overheard, but at the time I comforted myself that they’d been arguing too vehemently themselves to take heed of our words.”

  The rataffia turned to bitter almonds in Mélanie’s mouth. “They were arguing?”

  “I didn’t hear much, but Pendarves said something like ‘For God’s sake tell me the truth.’”