“Well, that’s a relief,” I leaned against him, “because I’m freezing.”
“Me too,” he sighed, finally shoving the coin into his pocket and slipping on his glove. “Besides, we have a previous engagement.”
“A previous engagement?”
“Indeed. We’re due at the Roynton estate at half past nine this evening. The comely widow is expecting us.”
“Abigail Roynton? She invited us to her residence? Whatever for? And who says she’s comely?”
He laughed. “I’m guessing she would have to be, given her ability to attract both Arnifour men.”
“Any woman with a bit of money and a reserve of spirits could attract the Arnifour men.”
“You have a point.”
“Why would she contact us?”
“Actually, I sent her a message this morning informing her of our investigation. I told her we hoped she might be able to offer some insight. Her answer came as we were leaving tonight—she said she’d be charmed.”
“Charmed? Seems an odd word given we’re conducting a murder investigation.”
“But you forget,” he arched an eyebrow, “she is a scorned woman. Remember what Warren Vandemier said about her being recently replaced in the Earl’s affections.”
“Do you really put much stock in what he says? He hardly seems a reliable source.”
“True. But ask yourself: Who among that coterie of character witnesses is any better? Should we really dismiss his word any quicker than that of the Earl’s family or staff?” I had to concede that he had a point. He yanked out his watch and glanced at it. “I do think that’s enough for tonight,” he said as he rapped his free hand on the metal rib of the cab’s top.
“And what about Victor? Varcoe’s got a dragnet across this whole area and I told you there was a photograph of Nathaniel in the Times today. It all but accused him of the killings. If he’s spotted he’s liable to be lynched without a second thought.”
“I’ve got some lads who’ll take over for us. Not to worry. Hello?” he called out again. “We’d like to go to the second address, please.”
“Aye!” the man shouted back, snapping his crop at the lone horse and guiding us out of the thicket.
“We’ll let the boys fill in for the rest of the night.” And sure enough I caught sight of a young man settling in by a hedge, his collar pulled up to cover the better part of his face as though he was hunkering down for a lengthy stay, which undoubtedly he was. I only hoped it wouldn’t rain. “They’ll come by in the morning for their stipend,” Colin added.
“I’ll give them something extra if it rains.” They would earn their money this night, but at least we were keeping them out of their usual mischief for one evening.
“Unless Victor makes a move to go to Nathaniel tonight we’re going to have to stop by tomorrow and apply more pressure. He’s got to do something before that incompetent inspector blunders onto the boy. They’re as likely to shoot him as arrest him. They like nothing more than to tidy up a case—damn the details.”
Our cab passed beneath the imposing gates of the Roynton estate, quite literally the next home over from the Arnifours’, if some considerable distance away. Given the increasing moodiness of the night sky with its dense scent of rain, I was grateful we made good time.
The horse clacked down the cobbled drive through a forest of trees that led along a sharp curve before finally revealing a glimpse of the house. The difference between this home and the Arnifours’ was startling. It wasn’t simply the architecture, the Roynton estate having been built in the style of a French château with four rounded turrets topped by steep pointed roofs of black slate delineating the corners of the palatial structure. No. What immediately struck me was that every one of the scores of windows dotting the massive stone-block façade was ablaze with light, making it look as though the house must surely be filled with a thousand people. Even the half-moon forecourt hugging the face of the building was lined with gas torchieres that broke the night’s austerity with their warm glow. And the building was immaculate, from its cream-colored walls rising four stories without a mar to the cement spiraled colonnades encasing the front doors and large paned windows stretching across the entirety of the ground floor. The Roynton residence was precisely tended and full of life. It was, in effect, the antithesis of the Arnifours’.
The cab came to a gradual stop in the forecourt.
“We shouldn’t be long,” Colin said as we climbed out. “A couple of hours at the most.”
“Right then. I’ll be waitin’ under the portico if it starts ta rain. Just give us a whistle when yer ready.”
“Fine.” The cab clattered off to the side of the building as we climbed the half-dozen steps to the expansive porch. “It would seem the widow must have something against the dark, as she clearly keeps her staff busy banishing it from her home,” Colin said as he grabbed one of the knockers, a great brass lion’s head with a ring clutched in its teeth, and heaved it. In less time than it had taken us to climb the steps, the doors swung wide to reveal an elegantly dressed white-haired gentleman with the stiff manner and regard of one of the Queen’s own staff.
“Mr. Pendragon.” He nodded at Colin before throwing me the usual vacant stare. “And guest,” he added.
“Ethan Pruitt,” Colin corrected with a nod to me, but offering no further explanation.
“Madame is expecting you,” he answered blithely before ushering us inside and taking a careful moment to firmly bolt the doors behind us. I couldn’t help wondering if that wasn’t a habit put in place in light of the recent murders at the Arnifours’. “If you would follow me, please.”
The man’s face remained unreadable as he led us through the foyer where a massive double-spiraled staircase wound in and out of itself all the way up the full four stories. Yet, as is so often the case when Colin and I are shown in, we were deposited in a library filled with leather-bound books, overstuffed furniture, and a lifetime of collectibles. In this case the collection consisted of tiny porcelain figurines placed on every conceivable surface, including the mantel top, which encased such a roaring fire that I was sure it was being fed by a steady stream of gas.
We were offered drinks, which we both declined, and with his duties thusly completed were shut inside the giant, yet somehow claustrophobic, room.
“He had about as much personality as Mrs. O’Keefe.” I snickered.
“If you’d grown up in an atmosphere as stuffy as this one,” he muttered as he began poking through the books, “you would find our Mrs. Behmoth a great deal more agreeable than you do.”
“I wasn’t born on the streets, you know,” I shot back.
“I know. . . .” He waved me off. He knew I’d not been raised an urchin. That had come later. That had been my own doing.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” a smooth, husky voice filled the silence. I turned to find the storied widow, Abigail Roynton. I no longer recollect what I’d been expecting her to be like, but it was definitely not the radiant woman who stood at the door in the reflection of the warm, honeyed glow of the gas lamps. She was tall and slender, and held herself with a bearing that spoke of an upbringing above even that which Colin had known. Her face was round and open and as flawless as fresh-fallen snow, not simply the result of her age, which I knew to be in her middle thirties, but because she had clearly lived a pampered life free of anything more than a passing familiarity with the sun.
Her hair was a lush and curly black, spiraling down the sides of her face even though it was pulled up in back. She wore a dress of deep greens and gold, striking for both its simplicity and the way it accentuated her meticulously trim figure. The smile that parted her lips was warm and genuine, and I was taken aback to think that perhaps this might prove to be the one person of substance among the many schemers in the late Earl’s life.
“You’ve not kept us waiting at all.” Colin nodded, a master of diplomacy when it served him.
She moved into the r
oom as though she were floating above the floor. “I trust you both were offered a drink?”
“We were.” Colin waited for her to settle herself on a settee near the fireplace before following suit. “I apologize for having to bother you on such a matter as this. We’re grateful you’ve consented to meet with us and shan’t stay a moment longer than is necessary.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. There is no bother. Your note mentioned the murders of the Earl and his niece, and as you can imagine, I am anxious to help in any way I can. I’m afraid I’m unlikely to be of much use, however, as I haven’t seen either of them for some months.”
“Ah . . .” Colin rocked back in his chair. “Was it months, then?”
The door to the library opened delicately and a young woman in a black serving uniform eased into the room causing no more distraction than a slight wisp of air. She carried a silver tray upon which sat a split of champagne in a silver bucket and three crystal flutes. Drinks, it seemed, were destined to be a part of this interview.
“Perfection!” The lovely widow beamed as the girl set the tray on a side table beside her before uncorking the bottle and pouring a glass for each of us. The solemnness of our topic was momentarily banished with peculiar ease.
The drinks were served with Colin and me accepting ours as etiquette dictated. A silent toast was offered by means of thin smiles and bobbed heads as the serving girl retreated from the room, and only after we’d all had a sip did Colin persist in pushing ahead.
“Do you happen to recall the nature of your last visit with the Earl, Mrs. Roynton?”
“Do call me Abigail.” She flashed an easy smile. “I simply cannot bear undue ceremony.”
“Abigail then.” He returned his own generous grin. “Do you recall, Abigail, your last visit with the Earl?”
“I most certainly do.” She smirked at him as she paused long enough to take another languorous sip of champagne. “Samuel was bringing about an end to our trysts, and quite badly, I might add.”
“Trysts?!” Colin nearly spat the tug of champagne he’d been taking.
She threw her head back and laughed. “Come now, don’t tell me I’ve shocked you?”
“I would say . . . ,” I spoke up, fearful that Colin might yet choke on the swallow he was still wrestling to contain, “. . . we’re simply not used to such forthrightness.”
Abigail continued to laugh as she saluted me with her glass. “Yes, I would suppose not. Most people are too busy trying to bury the truth beneath a veneer of respectability. I can never figure the point in that. No matter what one does, the tongues will wag. It seems to me one should simply claim their reputation.”
“Honorable,” I said, and easy for a person of her means to say, I thought.
“Not really.” She winked, setting off her throaty laugh yet again.
“So the Earl—” Colin cut in, having finally managed to regain himself.
“You mean Samuel,” she corrected. “He had no claims to that title. One of his forebears did a turn for a balmy king and a hundred years later his progeny gets to wave around the pedigree. It doesn’t sit well with me.”
Colin took another nip of champagne. “Samuel then,” he said with a bit less grace. “Samuel was ending your affair?”
“Affair?” She gazed off toward the fireplace for a moment, a distracted look on her face. “To me the word ‘affair’ suggests foreign travel and clandestine meetings in romantic places. That’s not what Samuel and I had. We had trysts. Right here. No travel, no romance, and only the barest nod to the idea of being clandestine. Really, Colin . . . ,” her voice dropped lower, hitting a timbre that threatened to raise the hairs on the back of my neck as she turned her considerable focus back on him, “. . . are you truly such a prig?”
He held her gaze as he cocked his head to one side. “Now there’s something I’ve never been accused of.” He slid his eyes to me and I gave him a look that I hoped would warn him to say no more. I didn’t particularly like this woman, her familiarity and unflinching zeal to speak her mind. I couldn’t see what made her any better than Mademoiselle Rendell and yet knew she would be aghast at such a suggestion.
“My apologies.” Colin tipped his flute in her direction. “Do tell me then, how long was it that you and Samuel were having it off?”
“Two and a half years.”
“Indeed?! That’s quite the extended tryst. And to what end were the two of you carrying on?”
“The usual, I should think.” She fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly.
“My point . . . ,” he pressed on, “. . . is that I’m trying to understand if you and the Earl, your Samuel, had been entertaining any sort of more permanent plans? Marriage perhaps?”
Once again she threw her head back and roared with delight, the curls on top of her head shaking appreciably as she rocked back and forth. “Marriage?!” she gasped as she took a sip of champagne and tried without success to regain her composure. “Now why in the Queen’s name would I ever want to marry that insolvent, self-absorbed, lecherous old bore? I simply will not believe that you’re being serious.”
“Am I missing something?” Colin leaned forward and I could tell from his stiff posture and the slight pursing of his lips that he was finding this a great deal less amusing than she was. “Would I have found you so disparaging had we met in the midst of your inflagrante delicto?”
“Oh!” She brought a delicate hand up to her mouth. “Latin. Everything sounds so much better in a dead language.” She snickered.
“I’ll have your answer, please.”
“Will you?” She kept her eyes on him as she emptied her glass. “My late husband left me a very wealthy woman. And as I’m cursed with childlessness . . . well, I think you can imagine how tiresome such an existence can become. I abhor gossip, which means that gallivanting about with my peers in their saber-toothed decimation of one another is out of the question. And you simply cannot expect me to take up with the servants, although I hear that’s worked for some of the neighbors.” One side of her mouth curled up as she continued to smirk at him. “I don’t know what more to tell you other than Samuel was available and I was crushingly bored. He was also exactly the man I described to you. Perhaps not at first, but even a chameleon shows its true color eventually. I even let him swindle me out of a bit of money just as he did to everyone else.” She shrugged. “Rather like paying him for his services, meager though they were.”
“Under what pretext did he take your money?”
“He called it an investment. Turned out to be opium. So banal.”
“You’re talking about his business with Warren Vandemier?”
She gave a start. “Well, you really are as clever as they say.”
“You flatter me.”
“I doubt it.”
“What can you tell me about Mr. Vandemier?”
“Mr. Vandemier?” She curled her lips as she picked up a little bell and rang it delicately. Instantly the young woman who’d brought the champagne came back, moving to refill her mistress’s glass. We were also topped off before she neatly plunged the bottle back into its bucket and made a hasty retreat, once again pulling the doors quietly shut.
“Now let me guess,” Abigail started again. “I’d be willing to wager a considerable sum that upon your meeting Warren he told you that Samuel came up with nary a farthing to start their venture, leaving him to front the entire enterprise himself. Am I correct?” She waited for Colin’s nod. “Tell me you didn’t believe the boorish little shit?”
“It seemed unlikely.”
She grinned. “Very wise.”
“I also wonder if perhaps he didn’t decide to end your dalliance rather than pay you back. That would relieve him of a financial obligation you’d have had a sorry time trying to collect anyway. Am I close?”
Abigail Roynton looked positively buoyed with astonishment at Colin’s having reached so obvious a possibility. “You clearly are a man worthy of his reputation.” She chuckled, but
this time I knew she meant it. “And do you know why I let Samuel talk me into giving him that money?”
“Not for love.” He smirked.
“Heavens no. Never for love.”
He studied her a moment and I wondered if he was trying to divine an answer or determine whether he should share whatever else he suspected when he suddenly blurted out, “Because you are a shrewd businesswoman.”
She smiled wickedly, leering at him as people will do when they share a devious secret. “Do go on.”
“Opium,” he said.
She clapped her hands. “Yes, yes.” She shrieked with laughter. “You’ve got it!”
And indeed he did. For there is no more loyal customer than that of an opium dealer. Once an addict is hooked, you almost always have them for life—however long that proves to be.
Her amusement soured my mood. I was beginning to find this woman a great deal less principled than Mademoiselle Rendell.
“Shrewd,” Colin said dully.
But she didn’t seem to catch his tone. “I thought so. So when it was over between us it wasn’t so much that I’d lost the occasional afternoon’s amusement as that I’d gained a share in a burgeoning business. Warren’s only trying to peddle his story of self-funding because he thinks he can nip me out of my share of the profits. But he is sorely mistaken. He’ll soon learn he can’t play me for a fool.”
“I’m certain of that,” Colin said. “And would you happen to know who took your place in Samuel’s bed?”
“Bed?!” She leaned back in her chair and rolled her champagne flute absently across the exposed skin of her plunging neckline. “Please don’t think me so old-fashioned.”
“Nevertheless . . .”
“Of course I know.” She raised her glass and sipped from it, glaring at him from over the rim, the gleam in her eyes almost as hot as the embers in the fireplace. “But you won’t believe me if I tell you.”
CHAPTER 22
Foreign Minister Randolph Fitzherbert sent word the next morning that the men from Her Majesty’s cutter the HMS Renard, had succeeded in running down and boarding the Ilya Petrovina, where it was discovered that she not only carried the cargo listed on her manifest—tobacco, spare carriage parts, and an assortment of fine ladies’ undergarments—but also sixteen young girls ranging in age from nine to thirteen with nary a traveling document among them. The Ilya Petrovina’s captain had immediately accused them of being stowaways, but Her Majesty’s naval staff had not been so easily deceived. With the information provided by Colin and transferred through Mr. Fitzherbert’s office to the commanding officer of the Renard, the Ilya Petrovina’s captain had been placed under arrest and the ship was being escorted back to Dover. The expected arrival date was five days hence. We had no way of being certain that Angelyne was one of the girls, yet the odds were in her favor and at the very least we were still rescuing sixteen innocents.
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