A Scandalous Deception

by Lynn Messina

  Reluctant to interrupt, she stood awkwardly on the threshold for a moment, and moved forward only when the front door opened behind her and a man called loudly, “Advertising!”

  Although the voiced boomed through the subdued space, nobody looked up except for a dark-haired man in spectacles. He nodded at the newcomer and indicated with a gesture that he should step forward.

  Appreciating the effectiveness of the approach, Bea shouted, “Death notice!”

  To her surprise, it produced the desired effect, with the relevant editor raising his arm, if not his head. Bea walked across the floor and waited for him to acknowledge her presence, which he did with an outstretched hand. Not immediately understanding, she began to explain that she’d like to publish an obituary in the next day’s paper but broke off when he wiggled his fingers. She took the notice out of her reticule and handed it to him.

  He read it quickly, confirmed it would run tomorrow and barked out an amount.

  Bea handed him the shillings, paused a moment to make sure he needed nothing else from her and thanked him for his assistance.

  The whole exchange was neat, quick and efficient, and Bea, congratulating herself on how easily she had resolved the difficult matter of Mr. Theodore Davies and his troublesome scar, strode purposefully to the entrance. She was only a few feet away—possibly three, most likely two—when a gentleman in a pristine coup au vent haircut and an immaculate Oriental knot stumbled through the door, stepped into the office, opened his mouth to speak and, failing to articulate a single word, promptly dropped at her feet.

  Protruding from his back, its jade handle glistening with jewels, was a knife.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Although she considered herself to be a generally kindhearted and compassionate human being, Bea’s first thought as she stared at the supine gentleman on the floor of 132 Strand was of herself.

  She did not ponder the remarkable unlikeliness that a shocking death would cross her path for a second time in less than five months, nor wonder what cursed star she’d had been born under that she continued to be afflicted with freshly made corpses. No, her mind darted at once to her family and what conclusions they might draw if they discovered she had been in the offices of the London Daily Gazette on the very same day the death notice for her former lover had been placed in the paper. Would her uncle take the two disparate pieces of information and draw a line between them, effectively connecting the dots?

  Yes, as Beatrice stood there, watching the blood seep into the fibers of the dandy’s burgundy superfine coat, all she could think was that her aunt must never know Mr. Davies was a fiction.

  “Step back, miss, step back,” someone told her. The voice was stern, authoritative and a little impatient, as if annoyed with her for blocking his view of the crime.

  It was, she discovered, the dark-haired man who sat closest to the door. He pushed past her, dropped to his knees to examine the victim, pressed his fingers to the throat and affirmed what Bea already felt to be true. “We’ve got a clay pot! Clay pot in the doorway,” he yelled to his colleagues in the newsroom. “Guv’nor’s as dead as my Grandaunt Martha.”

  Again, he told her to step back, but she was too stunned to move. The newspaperman grabbed the knife by its handle, a delicately carved jade horse’s head swathed in rubies and bedecked with elegant pearl flowers, and wrenched it out of the man’s back.

  Bea gasped in horror.

  Other men, more than she had imagined were in the building, crowded the scene as they also told her to move away, gently shoving her, one by one, farther and farther back until all she could see was the top of the dead gentleman’s head.

  The room was filled with chatter now, as the reporters argued over how to proceed and whom to call and what to write about the dramatic event that had unfolded in their very own entranceway.

  What a veritable stroke of luck, one of the men said.

  A call went out to turn him over, from whom Bea couldn’t tell, and two reporters rolled the dead man onto his back so they could inspect his face.

  Curious, Bea pressed closer, squeezing her way between the reporters until she had a clear view of the victim’s face. It was a rather handsome visage, with its straight nose, dimpled chin and well-formed lips. His dark hair was brushed forward in the dashing style and artfully arranged to look as if he had just ridden his horse in from the moor. His clothes, impeccably tailored and so well fitting they seemed as if to have been sewn on, gave the contrasting impression that he sat all day in the bow window of White’s providing an amiable site for passersby.

  He was not an amiable sight now, Bea thought, shuddering with cold horror as she contemplated the lifeless expression on his face.

  Mr. Otley had spared her the unnerving view by dying facedown and remaining facedown during her entire examination of him. Naturally, Kesgrave deserved the credit for that, for he was the one who had the good sense not to move the body from its original position. Knowing nothing about the pursuit of murderers, he had intuited the usefulness of not disturbing the scene itself until all possible information could be gathered.

  “Goddamn it,” bellowed a man in beaver as he glared down at the victim. “Who turned him over? Who did this?”

  The room fell silent for a moment as the men registered the harsh disapproval, then exploded in commotion as several perpetrators were identified and disavowed.

  “I have one rule about the care and upkeep of the office, gentlemen. One rule,” the man said angrily. “No blood. It was instituted after Miller broke Adam’s nose over the Courtauld affair, but it applies as much to stabbing victims as to untrustworthy colleagues who steal your sources.”

  An offended reporter—presumably Adams—insisted that he had merely borrowed the source and the information gathered during the loan pertained to a story wholly unrelated to Lady Courtauld’s stolen diamond necklace, while another lamented his failure to sufficiently damage his associate’s appendage. “It was only severely bruised,” Miller grumbled.

  The bickering reporters were ignored as the man in the beaver hat sought to impose order on the chaos by discovering what gears had already been set in motion.

  Was someone outside interviewing witnesses?

  Yes, Johns and Bryant.

  Had a doctor been sent for?

  Green ran to get old man Turner.

  And the Runners?

  Peterson, sir.

  As the voices whirled around her, Bea slowly took several steps backward, determined to call no attention to herself as she charted her exit from the busy newspaper office. It would not be easy, as the entry was crowded with a dozen reporters and getting to the door would require sliding past all of them unnoticed. In their rush to examine the oddity of a dead body in their very own office, they had forgotten about her, but sooner or later they would remember the woman at whose feet their victim had fallen.

  All too easily Bea could imagine the effusive article juxtaposing the brutal ugliness of the dandy’s slaying with the delicate fragility of its female witness.

  Although the prospect of being subjected to such mortifying prose made her escape a vital necessity, the fact that the article could unintentionally reveal the truth about her own elaborate story gave the matter particular urgency. Even if the newspaper elided her presence or failed to include her name in its report, she would still be hopelessly entangled in the investigation, for it seemed impossible to her that one could be interrogated by the Bow Street Runners for witnessing a murder and no word of the event get back to one’s family.

  Clearly, this affair would garner the interest of the ton, for everything about the victim indicated nobility, wealth and breeding. The cut of his coat alone unequivocally stated that he was Someone of Note, and although not a single word about the matter had been written yet, she could imagine the reams of newspaper pages it would consume.

  A nine days’ wonder would be succinct in comparison.

  The man in the beaver hat, who revealed himself to be th
e chief editor when, frustrated by his inability to silence the cacophony, he yelled, “Goddamn it, I’m the chief editor and you will listen to me,” claimed everyone’s attention with his outburst. A dozen pairs of eyes flew to the speaker, and Bea, grateful for the distraction, walked swiftly behind their backs and slipped gently out the door.

  Her relief at stealing away unseen was short-lived, for the throng of pedestrians on the sidewalk had coalesced into another crowd outside the London Daily Gazette’s door, as word of the murder had quickly spread. Several newspapers called the Strand home, and reporters from neighboring buildings—the British Press to the right, the Morning Chronicle to the left—clamored for a glimpse of the victim, some claiming to be witnesses in hopes of gaining information from Bryant and Johns.

  “I saw everything,” insisted a man in a brown coat with sewn patches and side whiskers in need of trimming. “It was a knife, wasn’t it? With a long and slender handle? The sly cove stabbed him in the shoulder and ran away. Let me inside. I saw the whole thing.”

  Bea tilted her head down and, hoping to blend in with the crowd, began to mutter about death and murder. “In the middle of the day…shocking…shocking… Is no one safe?”

  Even when she was well clear of the throng, she continued to mumble, as the words seemed to take on the air of a magic incantation, protecting her from harm or discovery.

  She stopped only when she had secured a hack and was safely on her way back to Portman Square. With her head pressed against the worn fabric of the coach seat, she tried to make sense of what had just happened. She understood the basics, of course, which was to say that a man’s life had been ended when an enemy drove a knife between his shoulder blades into his heart. And she realized there was a story behind that act, an entire world of hatred and betrayal and seething resentment, either at the man or for the man or near the man or around the man. Even if the thrust had been issued in complete anonymity, even if neither victim nor villain had ever seen each other before, the event was the product of myriad unaccountable decisions blossoming and festering into action.

  Even so, Bea couldn’t quite elude the conviction that the murder had somehow been contrived for her benefit to demonstrate the dangers of lying.

  Naturally, she knew such thinking was not only absurd but also revealed an egotism that was as puffed up as it was unsupported. In the whole of her six and twenty years, fate had done nothing to make its interest in her known and she very much doubted it would start now in such a ruthless fashion. The dandy’s death had no more to do with her than the chief editor’s favorite flavor of snuff, and in considering her place in the universe she was reminded rather forcefully that she didn’t have one.

  If she did merit consideration from providence, then she would not have had to sneak off to the offices of the London Daily Gazette to place a death notice for a fictitious beau.

  But as firm as her comprehension of the truth was, she continued to feel a niggling sense of unease that somehow the gentleman in the newspaper office had died to atone for her sins.

  “You are the most inane creature,” she said as she climbed down from the hack and paid the fare to the driver.

  Slipping into the house was as easy as slipping out, and although her aunt was standing in the hallway examining the salver for invitations, she barely acknowledged Bea as the girl walked past. It certainly did not occur to her to wonder if her niece had been outside, and if so, where she had gone without a maid in tow.

  Flora, as well, seemed to be under the impression that her cousin had been present for the whole afternoon, for when Bea appeared in the drawing room for tea—in a jonquil walking gown, of course, not her mourning weeds—she addressed her as if they were already in the middle of a discussion.

  “You’re right, of course. There’s no reason to worry about it before it happens,” Flora said with amiability. “The Otleys are most likely not even in London, and if they are, they would certainly not be accepting callers. I cannot say if one is supposed to mourn for the full year a man whose immoral character brought about his own brutal death, but four months cannot be long enough. It’s indecently short, and it’s well-known that piling one wrong on top of another does not create a proper situation.”

  Given that the conversation had started without her, Bea was confident it could continue in the same vein and nodded absently at this observation.

  A few minutes later her aunt entered the room to simultaneously bemoan the discouraging lack of festive opportunities for the week and preen over an invite to go to the opera with Lady Marsham in a few days’ time.

  “She’s Amersham’s aunt, a real highflier. Not quite the type Hyde-Clares usually consort with, but we don’t want to give offense to the earl,” Aunt Vera said, pouring herself a cup of tea. “He was so lovely to us after that unpleasantness in the Lake District, and I would enjoy seeing him again. Flora, you might want to consider encouraging his interest. His fortune is secure, and I think you would enjoy the privileges of being a countess.”

  “Yes, of course, Mama,” Flora said with little enthusiasm.

  Bea could hardly blame her for her lack of eagerness, as Lord Amersham had done nothing to endear himself to the Hyde-Clares during their stay at Lakeview Hall other than be of noble blood. A gentleman of only four and twenty, he displayed none of the maturity one would want in a husband, preferring to spend all his time with Mr. Skeffington, another young man rapidly approaching his majority and yet gaining no maturity.

  To change the subject, Flora raised the issue of the Otleys, for now that they were back in town, they could no longer ignore their obligation.

  Aunt Vera darted a baleful look at Bea, for she considered the dreadfulness of the situation to be her niece’s fault. If she hadn’t staged that dramatic scene in the Skeffingtons’ drawing room during which several disagreeable details emerged about Mr. and Mrs. Otley’s inappropriate relationships, then nothing awful would have happened during their stay—well, nothing more awful than Mr. Otley losing his life to an unfortunate blow from a candlestick. If ignorance had prevailed, they could have visited Mrs. Otley and her daughter with all the feigned delight of the best social calls.

  But Bea had deprived them of that pleasure with her insistence on the truth.

  Although there were several things she could say in her defense, Bea kept her lips firmly shut and her expression bland. It did not matter to her aunt that the esteemed Duke of Kesgrave had also been determined to discover who had killed the spice trader.

  “I’m not sure we have to settle the matter yet, my dear, as we don’t know if the Otleys are in London,” Aunt Vera said.

  Flora smiled with approval and announced she thought the exact same thing. The two women, in perfect accord, switched to another, more pressing topic and debated the exact number of pairs of gloves they would need to confront the season with aplomb. After they had discussed it to their satisfaction, they consulted Bea, who, despite being present for the entire exchange, had no opinion on that matter.

  When both women gaped at her in disappointment, she selected a number at random—eight—which caused them to laugh with genuine amusement.

  By any measure, it was an entirely ordinary afternoon in Portman Square, but far from taking comfort in the small mundanities of her life, Bea felt agitated by them, for they served only to throw the extraordinary events of the day into high relief. At nine-thirty, she retired to her bedchamber because she was exhausted from apprehension and restless with anticipation and didn’t know how to handle either one without calling attention to herself.

  Although the clock in her bedroom marked the time with the same evenhanded tick as always, tonight each second seemed to boom more loudly than the next—as if, she thought, counting down to some dire moment.

  The revelation that Mr. Davies had passed out of this world wasn’t that shocking, and yet she could not stop herself from imagining how her aunt would react. She kept picturing Aunt Vera divining the truth from her expression an
d casting her out once and for all, furious that she’d lied not just to her family but also to all of London.

  Even as she created these dismal scenes, Bea ordered herself to stop, for she could not believe she was so self-absorbed she couldn’t spare a single thought for the man who had died at her feet just that afternoon.

  She found her indifference particularly disturbing in light of how ardently she had pursued justice for Mr. Otley. From the moment she had stepped free of the bookshelves and saw his lifeless form in the moonlight, she had been determined to discover the truth. As the Duke of Kesgrave made repeated efforts to shoo her away, she came up with excuse after excuse to linger. She feigned missish helplessness in order to examine his boots up close to confirm that the dark patch near his heel was mud. (In fact, it was not.)

  Surely, this unknown gentleman deserved the same respect.

  And yet even as she chastised herself for her failing, she knew the two situations varied wildly. At Lakeview Hall, she was the only one who cared to discover the truth about what happened to Mr. Otley. Ultimately, she learned Kesgrave was also investigating his death, but that information was not immediately available to her.