The Hanover Square Affair (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries #1)

by Ashley Gardner

  The door opened and a maid I had seen in the servants' hall came in. Dark hair showed through the white cotton of her cap, but her face was not young. It was an intelligent face, with a sharp nose and rather narrow eyes.

  She looked at the pale, sleeping girl on the bed, and her nostrils pinched.

  "You sent for me, sir."

  "Yes. Hetty, is it?"

  "Yes, sir. I'm downstairs maid. And I help cook."

  I gestured to the bed and kept my voice low. "Did you know that this young lady was in the house?"

  "She's not a young lady, sir. And I didn't know until John told me a moment ago. I thought she'd gone."

  I clamped down on my anger at her self-righteousness. "Do you remember when she first came here? She came with another girl, the girl Mr. Horne called Lily."

  "Oh, yes, I remember."

  "Was Lily the girl's real name?"

  "How should I know, sir? They give themselves names, don't they?"

  My fingers curled around the head of my walking stick. "How did they arrive here in the first place, Hetty? In a carriage?"

  "I don't know, sir, I never saw. I was out shopping for cook the day they came. When I came home, cook was in a foul temper and said we had to make up for more people. She sent me right out again for more vegetables. She was that glad when they left again. What do you want to know, for?"

  I held on to my patience. "Did you see them go?"

  "I never did. But the master said they'd gone. Both of them."

  "You knew why they'd come in the first place."

  Hetty flushed. "Of course I did, sir. But it's not my place to say anything, is it? If the master wants to keep young ladies about, it's not my business."

  "But you didn't like it," I prodded.

  "No, sir. John laughs and says the master has lively appetites. But it's wrong, isn't it? John says I read too many pamphlets."

  "Yet you stay," I pointed out.

  Her eyes flickered. "It's a good place, sir. Hard to get another place with wages so good. And Lily spoke kind, for what she was."

  "Would it surprise you to learn that Lily was in truth a respectable gentleman's daughter, brought here against her will?"

  Hetty looked doubtful. "Indeed, sir, it would surprise me very much. I thought she was an actress or dancer or some such. Are you sure? She never tried to run away."

  No, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure of anything.

  "Would you have stayed if you had known she was really a respectable young lady?"

  Her voice dropped a notch. "I'm ashamed to say I don't know, sir. The wages is high."

  I tapped my fingers on my walking stick. "If Mr. Horne was so generous, and this is such a large house, why aren't there more of you? You said you have to double as the cook's assistant."

  Hetty shrugged. "Sometimes there's more. They come and go. Cook and Mr. Bremer, they've been here forever. I've been here the longest after that, then John, then Grace, then Mr. Horne's valet, Marcel. He's French. Henry--he's the boot boy--has only been here a sixmonth. He'll not last long, though. He doesn't like it." Her face grew mournful. "But we're all out of a place, aren't we, sir? Now that the master is gone. He's truly dead?"

  I gave a short nod. "He is most definitely dead. Did anyone go upstairs to the master's chambers today, Hetty? After he gave orders not to be disturbed?"

  She thought a moment. "Mr. Bremer and Grace. They're the only ones he lets in. No one else. But most of the afternoon I was in the kitchens with cook and Henry, so I don't know who all went up and down in the front."

  So Bremer had already lied. He'd told me he hadn't seen Horne since Horne gave orders not to be disturbed.

  I said, "But there was a visitor earlier in the day. A thin gentleman. Bremer let him in."

  Hetty nodded. "Oh yes, sir. I served him port in the downstairs sitting room. Mr. Bremer took him upstairs."

  "Do you know who this gentleman was?"

  "Yes, Mr. Bremer told me. He was a gentleman called Mr. Denis. A friend of the master's, Mr. Bremer said."

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eight

  "Bury me cold," the constable breathed. "Look what they done to the poor bugger."

  The constable for the parish, a round-faced young man, blacksmith by trade, stood in the doorway of the study and stared at the carnage within.

  I sat at the kneehole desk near the window, leafing through Horne's collection of calling cards. Pomeroy planted his fists on his hips and surveyed the dead body, the pool of blood, and me rifling the desk.

  "Did you find him, Captain?"

  I didn't look up. "The butler found him. I was in the reception room. Bremer rushed down and fetched me."

  "He's the gent you were asking me about, ain't he? Friend of yours? "

  I chose my words with care. "He is a friend of a friend. I called to pay my respects."

  "To be sure. And you found him like this."

  "The butler found him," I repeated. "He fetched me, and I followed him upstairs. Horne was lying as you see him now."

  Pomeroy advanced to the edge of the stain, pudgy fingers stroking his chin. "Bled like a pig, didn't he? Took a while for that lot to dry, though, wouldn't you say? Crows would be at him by now."

  I said, "The butler and footman say Mr. Horne came into this room this morning and asked not to be disturbed. After that--" I spread my hands, indicating anything could have happened after that.

  "Well, I'll be questioning the butler and footman, to be sure. Now, if you don't mind, sir, the constable and I will be at it."

  I palmed the card of Mr. James Denis, slid it into my pocket, and closed the card box. "Carry on, Sergeant."

  I crossed the room to the door and went out. The constable remained in the hall, staring at the body, his pasty face shiny with sweat.

  I said kindly, "The footman can fetch you brandy or port."

  "Them are the devil's drinks, sir."

  Dear God, A London constable who was a Methodist. I silently wished him luck.

  As I neared the staircase, Hetty put her mob-capped head out of the bedroom. "She's awake, sir. I told her the master was dead. She's a bit bewildered by it all."

  I glanced back at the study, but Pomeroy and the constable were not watching me. Pomeroy's loud and cheerful tones floated down the hall. I motioned Hetty back inside the room, then stepped in quietly and shut the door.

  The yellow-haired girl watched me from the bed, her dark eyes pools of confusion.

  "Aimee?"

  Her voice was a shallow whisper. "Yes."

  I sat down in the chair I'd pulled close to the bed, and she flinched and closed her eyes.

  "I'll not hurt you, Aimee," I said in the gentlest voice I could. "I've come from the Thorntons."

  Aimee's face relaxed, and after a moment or two, her eyes drifted open. She had brown eyes, but the brown was swallowed up by the black of her pupils. I read shock there, and hurt so deep I could not reach it.

  "My name is Captain Lacey," I said. "I've come to find you and Jane. Do you know where Jane is?"

  Tears filled her eyes and streaked silently down her cheeks. "No, sir. She's gone. He sent her away."

  "Do you mean Horne? Where did he send her?"

  Aimee shook her head against the pillow. "He wouldn't tell me, sir, no matter how much I begged."

  "I'm going to find her," I said.

  Aimee's eyes remained hopeless.

  I suddenly hated Josiah Horne with all my strength. I no longer gave a damn who had killed him, and I raged at them all--the nervous Bremer, the oblivious John, the self-righteous Hetty. They'd known their master for what he was, they'd known of Jane and Aimee, and yet they stayed and said nothing, silently consenting to what he did.

  "I've sent for Alice," I said. "Do you remember Alice, the Thorntons' maid? I will stay until she comes."

  Aimee nodded faintly and closed her eyes.

  I rose, trembling with anger and helpless frustration. Hetty looked up, but I said nothing to her as
I let myself out of the room, closing the door on the ruined creature on the bed.

  *** *** ***

  I searched for Bremer again and found him in the servants' hall. He'd moved to the long table and held a tumbler of clear liquid between his shaking hands. His eyes had lost focus. "I've never seen the like in all my days."

  I had seen worse in the army, acts of atrocity not always committed by the enemy, but I did not tell him so.

  I sat down next to Bremer, noting that the room boasted a comfortable fire and a sofa under the window. I'd discovered what Horne had spent his money on--high wages and comfortable furnishings for servants who would stay with him no matter what crimes he committed.

  "The girl I found in the wardrobe," I said. "You know who she is."

  Bremer exhaled a volume of gin-scented breath. "She's nobody, sir. Just a maid."

  I resisted the urge to shove him off the chair. "When her mistress left, she stayed behind. How long ago did the other girl, Lily, leave?"

  Bremer searched for inspiration in his glass. "Three weeks gone now."

  I stared at him. "Three weeks? How could John and Hetty not know that Aimee hadn't left with her mistress? Aimee had to eat, to sleep somewhere. Are you claiming that half the household did not know your master kept Aimee here for three weeks?"

  Bremer shrugged. "He had her in an upstairs room, where no one is allowed to go but me."

  "And Grace."

  "And Grace. Mr. Horne had to have someone see to her, didn't he? So Grace brought her meals and cared for her."

  "And told no one? No whispering it to Hetty or John, no games that she knew something they did not?"

  "Indeed, no, sir. Grace knows her place. He pays her extra wages. And me."

  "The cook must have known," I said. "She would have to prepare meals."

  Bremer shook his head. "Grace was sent out for her meals, and took them up to her. And the door to her room was always locked, and only I and Mr. Horne had the keys."

  Damn the man. I had been angry with Hetty, but she truly had not known the extent of her master's crimes. Bremer had openly helped him. "And Aimee never raised an outcry? A healthy, young girl locked up in a room would make some noise. She would bang on the door or shout out of the window."

  "Mr. Horne gave her opium to keep her quiet."

  I sprang up, no longer able to sit. Here was Bremer, warmed by a good fire with a thick carpet under his feet, drinking from a crystal tumbler, while a young woman was fed opium and beaten and raped.

  "Why did Horne send Lily away?"

  "I don't know, sir."

  "You do know, damn you. Tell me."

  "I think because he'd got her belly-full."

  I grabbed Bremer's tumbler from his hands and smashed it to the floor. "And you stood by. You knew what he was and what he did, and you said nothing. You did not tell the girl's family, or the magistrates, or anyone. You let him ruin a girl and her maid, right before your eyes."

  Bremer choked out, "He paid good wages, sir."

  I grabbed Bremer by his coat and hauled him onto the fine veneer of the table. "Damn your wages. He destroyed an entire family. I hope you murdered him, because it would prove you had one ounce of human feeling in you."

  "I didn't," he gasped. "I didn't."

  "But you know who did. You must. You are the only one who knows everything about this household."

  "No."

  Pomeroy's battlefield voice floated into the room accompanied by his heavy tread. "Not much to see up there. Just one very dead cove minus his ballocks. What are you doing, Captain?"

  I eased my hands from Bremer's coat, and the butler slumped back into the chair, eyes bulging.

  "Just having a word with Mr. Bremer," I said.

  "Oh, aye? I know how that usually plays out. Don't break his neck yet, sir, I want to ask him some questions. Beginning with who was the girl in the wardrobe?"

  Bremer opened his mouth, but I glared him to silence. "She has nothing to do with this. I am taking her home."

  "She the young lady you were looking for?"

  Pomeroy was always too tenacious for his own good. The constable looked on, his breathing shallow and rapid.

  "No," I said. "Leave her alone. She's been through much."

  "All right, sir, if you like. But she might have killed the gent upstairs."

  "Unlikely. The wardrobe was locked from the outside and her hands were tied."

  Pomeroy shrugged, as if such facts were mere inconveniences. "If she's ill, she'll not go far. Now then, sir, I want to talk to this butler before he's completely trimmed. I hope you won't take offense if I ask you to go. Your temper's a bit wild, and he can't answer me if you break all his teeth. Thank you, sir. I knew you were with me."

  *** *** ***

  I did not want to wait in Aimee's room for Alice, because I couldn't bear to look again into those hopeless eyes. I made my way to the kitchens, instead, which I found empty. The boy, Henry, was still out, and there was no sign of John.

  The cook stamped into the room. She dumped a bag onto the flour-strewn kitchen table and began to pile things in it--knives, towels, spoons. She was a handsome woman, tall, large boned, and ample chested, a woman I might have found attractive in another circumstance. Now her brow was clouded in high indignation, and her lips trembled.

  "Such goings-on in this house," she snapped. "I never heard the like."

  I leaned against the dresser and folded my arms. "I assume Bremer or John told you about Aimee. Did you know she hadn't gone?"

  "Well, how could I? I work down here all day and all night, don't I? Making his meals and baking his bread." She swept an angry arm across the table and flung abandoned dough and flour onto the flagstone floor. "And Grace helping him like his abbess. I gave her the sack, I can tell you."

  I had wondered where Grace had disappeared to. "What about John? Where is he?"

  She thrust a handful of towels into the bag. "How should I know? With his mates at the public house, I expect, filling their ears with the tale. Well, no more for me, thank you very much. I'm off to stay with my brother and his wife. They have an inn on the Hampstead Road, and she's got her hands full because he was always a shiftless lout."

  "The constable will want to speak to you before you go."

  "Well, I don't want to speak to him. Here I am in this kitchen all the day long, cooking dainties to please the master's delicate appetite. The dishes I created for him and him alone. He would come down those stairs some nights and thank me, smiling so friendly-like, and take my hand . . ." She stopped. "And now there's rioting outside the house one day, and murder inside the next." She picked up the bag, which clanked. "I'll have no more of it. Good evening to you, sir."

  She marched past me, lips firm, head high, and out through the scullery. After a moment, I saw her climb the steps outside, gray skirt swirling to reveal shapely ankles and stout shoes.

  I knew I ought to go after her, to escort her somewhere safely at least. A young woman walking alone, no matter how robust, in London, had much to fear. But somehow I sensed that any would-be assailant would get the worse end of the bargain in an encounter with her tonight.

  No, I left her, I left Bremer sobbing in the servants' hall under the onslaught of Pomeroy's questioning, and I left that house.

  Outside, fog rolled over me, thick and clammy, but I inhaled as if I stood in a fragrant spring night of Portugal. I leaned against the railings and let the rain beat on me, and was still there when Alice came, worry and relief on her work-worn face, to take Aimee home.

  *** *** ***

  Grenville's carriage stood at the head of Grimpen Lane when I arrived home, coach lights throwing a sickly yellow swirl into the fog and rain. Despite the weather, my neighbors had turned out to ogle it and the fine horses that pulled it, but the sight did nothing to relieve my temper.

  Grenville sat in the same worn wing chair Louisa had occupied the night before, with something crumbly and bready in his hands. He had stoked the fire
high and the room hung with heat.

  "Ah, Lacey," he said as I entered. "Your Mrs. Beltan does a fine crumpet. I'd have her supply my house entirely, but my chef would never speak to me again. Thinks he's a genius with pastry." He peered at me. "Good Lord, Lacey, what happened?"

  I was soaked through, and my face must have been grim as an undertaker's. I moved to my bedroom and began peeling off my clothes.

  I heard Grenville rise and follow me. "Are you all right?"

  "Ask Mrs. Beltan to bring me some hot water," I said and slammed the door in his face.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Nine

  I soaked in the steaming water for half an hour as the heat slowly leached into me. I heard Grenville and Mrs. Beltan in my front room, discussing me.

  "He gets like this sometimes," she confided. "Won't speak to a soul. I've seen him take to his bed two days at a time, and not even look at me when I come to see if he's all right. Melancholia, they call it."

  "What do you do?"

  "Nothing, sir. I make sure he's well and leave him be. He comes out of it on his own and goes on right as rain."

  I let them talk, although I could have told Mrs. Beltan that my mood did not stem from melancholia. Rather, I wanted to wash the evil of number 22, Hanover Square from my skin.

  I knew evil existed in the world. I had seen men, fire in their eyes, thrust bayonets through other men they did not even know. I had seen scavengers swarm battlefields to take everything from the fallen, even the coats on their backs. I'd seen such a scavenger put a gun to the head of a soldier, who might have lived with a small amount of help, and pull the trigger, all so that the murderer might steal his boots. But never had I felt the clinging, clammy evil of Horne's household, the gruesome secrets that hid behind a mask of respectability. At least the evils of war had been committed in the open.

  The gray shadows of my bedchamber chased each other over the carved posts of my bed as the day died and the water warmed me. The wooden flowers and leaves became eyes and mouths, open and round.

  I rose from the bath, dried myself, and dressed. Grenville was alone again when I emerged.

  "Horne is dead," I said before he could speak. "Someone murdered him."

  Grenville stared at me in open-mouthed astonishment. "Good God. You didn't--Lacey, you didn't--kill him yourself, did you?"

  "No. I only wanted to."

  I told him everything. We sat in the darkening room, the firelight's shadows on the curved beams rendering the room a cavern of hell. I hadn't wanted to talk about Horne's murder at all, but the words came out of me, forced out as though another entity moved my mouth.