Maggie MacKeever (24 page)

“That,” remarked Ivor, “is precisely what Crump said.”

Dulcie’s enigmatic gaze rested on her niece. “Mignon! Jessop is in need of some stimulant, I believe. You will find brandy in the sideboard.” She smiled at the Viscount. “My husband is not a patient man, and uninclined to wait for servants to fulfill his various whims. Hence there are bottles of brandy and other delicacies readily available in practically every room of Bligh House.”

With hands that were not quite steady, Mignon opened the rosewood cupboards, lined with brass inlaid in a honeysuckle motif, and extracted both a decanter of brandy and a crystal glass, which she placed on a table at Lord Jeffries’ elbow. She still did not meet his eyes.

“Mignon,” observed her aunt, “you are looking fagged to death. You take things a great deal too seriously, child.”

“It’s nothing.” Mignon was very conscious that Ivor’s eyes rested on her face, which was pale and shadowed from a sleepless night. She was briefly tempted to announce that, in the space of twenty hours, she had received a threat of ravishment from a handsome actor, an offer of marriage from an earl, and a proposal of a less honorable sort from a man who might well be a murderer. “I am not accustomed to keeping such late hours.”

“One must expect to encounter various small inconveniences in the pursuit of justice,” reproved the Baroness. “Do sit down, my dear, before you fall asleep on your feet. Now, Jessop! Continue with your tale. How did you persuade John to let you go free?”

Lord Jeffries watched Mignon cross the room. “By showing him the note that I received from Zoe, in which she said she’d been bribed to disprove my alibis. Crump could hardly deny that she had written it, since he had one himself, and in the same handwriting.”

“They underestimated her loyalty.” Lady Bligh clasped her hands on the skull’s gleaming dome. “What else did the note say?”

“That, much as she could use the money, Zoe would not play me false. She asked for my protection, fearing her refusal would bring unpleasant consequences.”

“You did not believe her.” Dulcie was stern. “I fear that a lack of faith in the fair sex is among your chief shortcomings, Jessop.”

The Viscount ran a hand through his red-gold hair. “I had the note too late to do other than I did. It was directed to my home. My valet, a most discerning individual, suspected it might contain something of importance, and delivered it to me here. You may confirm that if you wish. Bow Street has already done so.”

“Oh, do come out of the sullens!” snapped Lady Bligh. “Were the various members of your family not so quick to take offense, we would not be in this fix.” She eyed her butler. “Gibbon?”

Gibbon was so terrified of reprisals from Bow Street that he had leaned in a most unbutlerlike manner against the marble fireplace. He startled, and then struggled mightily for self-control.

With shaking hands, he reached into his pocket. Without comment, Lord Jeffries retrieved his snuffbox from Gibbon’s extended hand. “This,” mused the Baroness, “is a trifle too much. In the matter of planting incriminating evidence, our villains are greatly overplaying their hand.”

Miss Montague was a discerning girl, except in matters of the heart, and thus concluded that Lord Jeffries’ snuffbox had been left in Zoe’s home. Had it been placed there on purpose or left behind in careless oversight? Were Ivor and his mother being made to look the villains—or were they guilty indeed? It seemed to Mignon that Dulcie might have spoken more truly than she knew when she said that the evidence was overwhelmingly against Leda Langtry and the Viscount, so much so that it seemed false. Was it a case of maligned innocence? Or was it only meant to seem so?

“How progressed your endeavors?” inquired Lady Bligh of her butler. “Before you were interrupted by Crump? That clever little man is on his way to becoming a nuisance. Well? Don’t bother to explain how it was that you were caught.”

Gibbon was a picture of chagrin. “I found nothing, my lady,” he said, and drew from another pocket a packet of letters. “Save these.”

The Baroness glanced at him. “Those are hardly of interest, though excessively foolish. The King bought back various of Prinny’s letters for £5,000, though the bond was later canceled. Give them to Mignon, if you will.” Miss Montague, recognizing her own handwriting, felt as if for the first time in her life she might swoon.

“Disappointing,” said Dulcie, “but no more than I expected. Reward yourself, Gibbon, with a flag’s worth of lightning.” She smiled at her dumbfounded niece. “That, my dear, is four pence worth of gin.”

Mignon felt it incumbent upon her, considering the various speculative glances that were being cast in her direction, to speedily change the subject. “If Lord Jeffries is innocent, then who did kill Zoe?”

“As I have said,” replied the Baroness, “they have overplayed their hand. Zoe had to die, of course, once they had been so foolish as to approach her, and once she had so nobly refused, but they acted with too much haste and made a sad botch of the thing. There is another possibility, one that I’m sure Bow Street has considered: you yourself could have killed Zoe, Jessop, after forcing her to write those notes.”

“When could he have done it?” queried Mignon, despite her extreme reluctance to do anything to help the man. He was remarkably cool, she thought, about the brutal murder of a woman who had been his mistress for several years. “Lord Jeffries was with us at the theatre, and then later here.”

“Brilliant!” Lady Bligh threw her arms into the air. The skull tumbled from her lap and rolled gruesomely across the floor with Casanova in animated pursuit. “Of course that is how the thing was done. There was more than ample time between our departure from the theatre and our reconvening here. Not that we can prove it, for there is no way of telling precisely how long Zoe had been dead before her body was discovered.”

Mignon stared, the letters crushed in her cold fingers. Was Dulcie saying that Ivor
was
a murderer?

Willie gazed upon the skull that had come to rest at his feet, and sighed. “One thing I can tell you: Zoe
was
offered a bribe, some days before her death.” He glanced unhappily at the Viscount. “It seems she at first agreed to it, then later changed her mind. Truly, I know no more. Gossip travels fast in theatrical circles, and much of it must be discounted.”

“You know a great deal more than is good for you, Willie! Had I a less magnanimous nature, I would leave you to Bow Street.” The skull having rolled beyond her reach, Dulcie leaned over and drew the orange cat into her lap. Casanova rolled over on his back, purring loudly in an excess of ecstasy. “We have limitless suspects, it seems,” she added.
“By pausing in transit between the theatre and Bligh House, any of our guests could have killed Zoe. Even my nephew is not beyond suspicion, for he arrived here belatedly.”

The letters dropped from Mignon’s hands to the floor. “Maurice?” she gasped. “He was late because he escorted Mrs. Harrington-Smythe to her home.”

“No, he did not,” said Willie, unhappily recalling the words of the craniologist and wondering who among Lady Bligh’s guests of the previous evening had such a highly-developed murderer’s ridge. “I can’t say with whom the lady left, but she wasn’t in your brother’s company.”

“Dulcie!” protested Mignon. “You can’t think Maurice a murderer! What reason could he have? “

“Can I not?” mused the Baroness. “Perhaps you are correct. But your brother, dear Mignon, may have more motive than you think.” Abruptly she set the cat aside and stood. “That will be all, I think. I thank you all for coming, but have no more need of you today.” In the general exodus, Mignon too made an escape to the privacy of her room.

“Culpepper,” said the Baroness, when she and her abigail were at last alone. “What did you find out?”

Culpepper, who had spent the past hour in a stern vigil in the hallway outside the Grand Saloon, reached into the bodice of her drab gown and drew forth a string of pearls. She held them as gingerly as if they were hot coals. Lady Bligh quirked an inquiring brow and the abigail nodded. “They were where you said, my lady. And that’s not all. The house of that opera dancer was robbed, but in such haste that half the valuables were left behind.”

“An afterthought.” Dulcie picked up the skull. “Very interesting, Culpepper. You may go.”

Silence descended rapidly upon Bligh House as its occupants, with some exceptions, resumed their usual pursuits. Chief among these exceptions was Gibbon, who had locked himself in the butler’s pantry
in
anticipation of a siege by Bow Street. Culpepper was stretched out corpse-like on her narrow bed, a damp cloth on her aching brow; and Miss Montague, having torn up the letters that had caused her so much trouble, had cried herself to sleep clutching one of her aunt’s priceless Persian dolls.

The Baroness, however, was not so easily overcome by adversity. She was seated at a dainty writing desk, the surface of which was cluttered with sheets of pristine foolscap. Bluebeard slumbered atop the grinning skull, and Casanova made desultory swipes at the inkwell. Thoughtfully, Lady Bligh tugged at an unpinned pink curl. Literary or deductive brilliance did not come easily that day. “Hell and the devil confound it!” said Dulcie, and threw down her pen.

Chapter 25

Crump had passed an exhausting forty-eight hours, beginning with a journey to the races in the wake of Maurice Montague and Lord Barrymore. There he viewed a wide heath covered with herds of racehorses showing their paces in a morning promenade. He then followed his instincts back to London, where he saw Lady Bligh enter a certain apartment in the Albany, to which she apparently had a key. The purpose of this visit remained unclear, for the Baroness was inside only brief moments before she exited again, nearly catching Crump with his eye to the keyhole. The place looked unexceptional enough, he thought, save for the shocking paintings on the walls. The Runner could not be expected to recognize Mars and Venus sporting on a couch, or Cleopatra with Antony’s head on her naked bosom, but he knew what he liked, and such scenes were not among them. He obtained no enlightenment from the manager of the hotel: the name of the gentleman who leased those apartments meant nothing to Crump.

Next came a visit to Leda Langtry in Newgate, which could not be said to have improved the Runner’s frame of mind. Leda nurtured scant reverence. But she had at last revealed the source of her income. Part of it was her divorce settlement, part of it payment rendered in return for Leda’s resumption of her maiden name and renunciation of all further claim on the Jessop family. It seemed an odd concession for so spirited a female to have made; Crump would have thought it far more characteristic had Leda made an all-out effort to trample the noble Jessops in the mud. Yet the Runner was convinced she was telling the truth. For once, he thought sourly.

Even then Crump was not allowed to rest, for he was forced to sally forth on information received that there was to be a duel between two gentlemen at Wormwood Scrubs. The Runner arrived in good time, interrupting the contestants in a forceful manner and whisking them off to Bow Street. Sir John read them the usual severe reprimand and then released them. Crump was very doubtful that the mere fact of having been taken before the Chief Magistrate would dissuade the duelists from trying again.

Only then had Crump been free to retire, and little enough sleep he’d found, with unanswered questions and visions of battered corpses whirling through his brain. With Zoe’s death, this case had taken on a more personal aspect. The Runner did not lament the death of a man like Warwick, from all accounts a damned cold fish, or the reclusive Mary Elphinstone, but he regretted Zoe. She had been a lively lass, and might have looked forward to several prosperous years before she met the fate of others of her kind, from starvation, the pox, or at the hands of a drunken lout whom she’d picked up on the streets. Crump was not alone in his feelings. Lord Jeffries had offered a staggering reward for the capture of Zoe’s murderer.

That generous gesture could have been the cleverest of ploys, equal to the other strokes of genius that characterized this case, but Crump had begun to entertain doubts. If he took Jeffries and Leda at their words, it was evident that someone had seen in them excellent scapegoats, and in him a supreme dupe. But why Leda? Had she been merely convenient due to her antagonism to Warwick, or was there some more sinister reason for her involvement?

Yet if there were any truth in these reflections, then all his previous conclusions were false. If not Leda, who was behind these robberies? It was clear to Crump that the crimes had been planned by a person of no small intelligence and executed by underlings. That very day the Runner, pausing to catch his breath in a filthy and rat-infested grog shop, had heard rumors of a daring plan to rob the Bank of England. If only the Chief Magistrate were less skeptical. Sir John didn’t believe a word of it. To Crump, the rumors had the ring of truth.

If Leda was innocent, then what of Willie, who obviously was not? Crump would have frightened the truth out of that sly fellow, had not the Baroness persuaded Sir John to let him go free. Crump was well aware Willie possessed information that could prove illuminating to Bow Street; he would have spared no efforts to loosen Willie’s tongue, with red-hot pincers if need be. And what of the handkerchief he’d found at White’s, with its intricate monogram that no one had been able to decipher? One thing was certain: The monogram did not match the initials of anyone suspected in this case.

Crump sighed. Perhaps his best course would be to cast aside all his conclusions and to start over again. Methodically going through the calendar of crimes— the robberies of White’s, Rundle and Brydges, Lady Coates; the murders of Lord Warwick, Mary Elphinstone and Zoe—he walked down St. James’s Street to Bligh House.

Had the Runner been less well-acquainted with the eccentric workings of that establishment, he would have been startled to be admitted not by one of Lady Bligh’s countless servants, but by Miss Montague, who was clad in a spotted cambric dressing gown, her red hair making a wild, unruly halo around her head.