Murder in Grosvenor Square (30 page)

“Who wants it so much?” I asked, not moving. “Who would go to all this trouble to obtain it?”

“That’s our business,” the first man said. “It’s someone as pays, innit?”

“Why didn’t he come directly to me? If he knew I had the book?”

The head man obviously did not know or care. “Just hand it over.”

I held up the book in one hand, stretching the other toward Marianne. “At the same time,” I said. “And don’t you dare hurt her.”

A problem was that Grenville and I and the ruffian behind us blocked the way downstairs. We’d have to descend surrounded by the men, and it was a long stretch between my door and Russel Street, where Jackson and the coach waited. They could box us in and simply kill us.

The lead man gave me a nod. He grabbed Marianne by the wrist and shoved her at me, simultaneously taking the book from my hand.

Marianne stumbled into me, her eyes round in rage and fear. I righted her and swung her behind me at the same time. “Take her out,” I ordered Grenville.

Both Marianne and Grenville hesitated. I was momentarily flattered that my friends did not want to leave me to the mercy of the toughs, but their action was not sensible at the moment.

“Go,” I said sternly. I would defend their escape. There was not much else I could do.

Marianne gave me a worried look but let Grenville slide a hand to her waist and pull her down the stairs with him. The man below us moved to let them pass, and I held my breath until Grenville and Marianne safely reached the bottom of the stairs, and went out.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Tell me who hired you,” I said to the lead man as the man on the stairs below me closed the door behind Grenville. “I can make it worth your while.”

“No chance,” the first man said. “Best you be off with your friends, guv.”

“These are my rooms,” I said, jaw tightening. “
You
be off.”

“Don’t tempt me, duckie; I’m spoiling for a fight.” He came down a few steps. “Your toffy friend there was too easy for me. He was mother naked, and worried about the actress. More fool him. I know you’ll have sent for help so we’ll be gone. If this is the right book, I get paid, and you’ll never have to worry about me. If it’s the wrong one, I’ll come for you, don’t think I won’t. All your toff friends won’t be able to stop me having a go at you, and your missus.”

My red-hot temper stirred at the mention of Donata, but I knew better than to let him goad me into rashness. I folded my arms and leaned against the worn wallpaper, a faded shepherdess smiling at me from the opposite wall.

The first man’s face hardened. “If that’s what you want.” He jerked his chin at his partners. “Put him down.”

At his signal, the man behind me rushed my back. Though he had to move up several steps, he came fast. I moved my weight to my good leg, brought my substantial cane up and whacked him in the middle.

The man doubled over. I hit him again, getting around him and down a few steps, but he was strong. He came to his feet, roaring, his fists already moving.

I had retreated far enough from him to draw the sword from my walking stick. The repaired sword was firmer than ever, and I had just enough room in the stairwell to bring it to bear on the man who swung to fight me.

Swords were old-fashioned nowadays, but I’d been trained to use one—several different bladed weapons in fact. I was also good at firearms. I took from my left pocket the
other
pistol from Grenville’s carriage and pointed it into the man’s face.

My attacker backpedaled away from the sword and the pistol. “Bleedin’ ’ell,” he said before scrambling up the stairs past the others and into my front room.

“You can only get one of us with that,” the lead man said. He sounded unworried that it would be him. “But I brought my own.” I found myself facing the round opening of a black-powder pistol that looked as though it had seen plenty of use. “Say your prayers, guv. Last words you’ll ever speak, I’m thinking.”

Withdrawal was prudent, but I stood my ground. “I’m a dead shot, at any distance.” I aimed my pistol to hit him between the eyes.

A few weeks ago, I’d stood in a similar position, facing another opponent, waiting for him to shoot me. But the duel I’d fought with Stubbins had been like a play—exact lines and rehearsed moves, a formal dance. That had been a staged battle; this was a real one, deadly, final. There, I’d been in the fresh green of the park, surrounded by cool mist. Here, the sour odor of sweat filled the close air of the stairwell.

The man’s eyes widened slightly, and his finger moved on the trigger. I dropped to the stairs just as the pistol blasted. The ball whizzed over my head. It struck the wall with a crash of plaster, passing clean through the neck of a wallpaper shepherd.

I brought up my pistol and fired. The man above me bellowed in pain and fell toward me. I caught him, his shoulder bleeding fiercely, his eyes full of hatred as he tried to get his hands around my throat.

We stumbled and slammed into the wall, me fighting his giant hands. He was slow, the wound weakening him. He could have chided me about my boasting of being a dead shot, though I’d hit him exactly where I’d meant to. I wasn’t a murderer.

He was one, unfortunately, and fought me with silent ruthlessness. This was the man, I knew, who’d struck Gareth his fatal blow.

The two other men clattered down to help their friend. I fought, losing my footing, but I used the momentum to carry us both down the stairs. I needed to get them out into the open, where others would see, and help would come.

It did come, in the form of Brewster, who yanked open the door at the bottom of the stairs. He shouted as he charged upward, and I heard the roar of another pistol.

Brewster’s shout changed to one of pain, but he kept coming. If he’d been hit by a bullet, he did not let it slow him. He had the lead man off me, wrestling him down the stairs. The lead man smacked into the door frame and stumbled outside, straight into the arms of Milton Pomeroy.

“Jared Draper, as I live and breathe,” Pomeroy said cheerfully. “Been looking for you a long time. How about I arrest you now?”

“Fuck you,” Draper said, and he tried to run.

I could have told him it would make no difference. Pomeroy was on him in two strides. I made it out the door to the street, panting, to see Pomeroy grab Draper by the injured shoulder and swing him, face-first, into the nearest wall.

Draper yelled in pain and rage, and Pomeroy had shackles on him with speed. Two other patrollers, large lads, jogged in to help me. Brewster had already grabbed a second man, and the patrollers swarmed up the stairs for the third.

Grenville hurried back toward the bakeshop, with Marianne behind him. I leaned against the wall of the shop as Mrs. Beltan popped out to see what was happening, her eyes wide.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Beltan,” I said struggling to catch my breath. “Just another evening in the life of your tenants.”

*

By the time I had conveyed to Pomeroy that I believed Draper to be the killer of Gareth and Mackay, and asked a boon of him—one which would catch Draper’s employer—the street around my door had emptied. The curious followed Pomeroy and his patrollers with the three villains out of Grimpen Lane, and I returned upstairs.

My front room was a mess. Draper and his fellows had knocked over my writing table with its meager contents, and strewn my books across the room. As I started to pick them up, I glimpsed movement in my bedchamber, and looked in through the half-open door.

Grenville and Marianne stood in the middle of the room, on the new rug Donata had bought for the chamber. Grenville touched Marianne’s face with gentle fingers, then he made a raw sound and pulled her into his arms. He held Marianne close, tumbling her hair.

Neither saw me. Marianne laid her head on Grenville’s shoulder, eyes closing, her fingers curling on his back.

I closed the door silently and left them to it.

*

Brewster lumbered up the stairs not long after that. He had blood on his sleeve, but it was a small patch, already drying, and he did not behave as though he were hurt. “Your Mr. Pomeroy dragged everyone off to Bow Street,” he said. “But you took a chance, guv. I might not have got here on time.”

“I knew you would,” I said. “Denis enjoys looking after me, and I he has as much curiosity in him as I do, in his own way.” I straightened up from putting my bookshelves to rights, and faced him. “Did you bring it?”

Brewster flushed dark red. This was the first time I’d seen the man truly disconcerted.

“How’d you know?” he asked.

“I did not, until today. Once I ran through all possibilities, I realized there could be only one solution.”

“Huh,” Brewster said. “No worry. I brought it.”

I wondered what Denis’s reaction had been when he’d read the note I’d directed Bartholomew to deliver. Anger? Amusement? Indifference?

I’d written, imitating Denis’s abrupt style, only two lines.

Send the book Brewster took from my rooms back to me. I need it to catch a killer. Lacey.

“You stood here,” I said, indicating the spot in front of my small bookcase, “going through my books, even sitting down to read one. When we left, you held up a book—I couldn’t see which one, but I assumed the one you’d been perusing—and asked to borrow it. I told you to take it, paying no attention. But you switched it, didn’t you? While I was seeing Marianne off, you switched it for the other book you’d found on my shelf, the one Mackay had left.”

Brewster nodded, looking embarrassed to be caught but not ashamed he had done the theft. I remembered him standing in the ruined kitchen of my Norfolk house, holding up stolen silver he’d found there, and offering to split the take with me when he sold them. That had been one of the images that had poured through my head when I’d stood with Grenville in Donata’s reception room.

“I saw what it was,” Brewster said. “And I knew his nibs would be interested in it. He likes that sort of thing—art and old books, especially old books what have pictures.”

“And he pays you a percentage when he sells it?”

“He does. Or gives me a fee just for bringing him the bloody things. I’ve learned over the years what he wants.”

“You’re a thief, Brewster.”

Brewster shrugged. “Never pretended to be anything else, have I? Anyway, you didn’t know nothing about the book. I found it shoved with the others, which ain’t worth nothing, I have to tell you. Knew you didn’t know a thing about it, or you’d never have let me get near it.”

I gave him an impatient frown. “How the devil did you suppose the thing had gotten into my bookshelf in the first place?”

Another shrug. “Not my job to reason how a thing gets to where it is. I sees it, and if it’s worth something, I take it to Mr. Denis. Your Mr. Grenville comes here all the time—I thought maybe he’d left it behind. He has so many, he’d never miss it.”

I pointed a rigid finger at him. “That book is the key to the brutal death of one of my friends.”

“Well, I wasn’t to know, was I? You didn’t know either, or you’d have kept it safe.”

To be fair to Brewster, none of us had known about the damned thing until too late to save Gareth and Mackay. Even though Brewster had been with me when Freddie had started to talk of books, neither I nor he had realized its significance. Freddie had talked about erotica, but I now knew that the book was something quite different.

“Let me see it.”

Brewster heaved an aggrieved sigh. “Hang about.”

He walked past me without explanation, out the door, and down the stairs. I did not hurry to follow or doubt he’d be back. If Denis had told him to bring the book to me, Brewster would do so.

I tapped on the door of my bedchamber and went in when Grenville’s baritone rumbled that I should. I found Marianne and Grenville sitting together on the edge of my bed—simply sitting, thighs touching.

“Are you all right?” I asked Marianne. “If Draper hurt you, I can tell Pomeroy to put his boot pretty hard up his backside.”

Marianne dragged her loose hair from her face, and I saw that her cheek was dark with bruises. “No, I am fine,” she said, her look daring me to contradict her. “He didn’t let his men do anything too permanent. He truly only wanted that blasted book, whatever it was.”

Grenville gestured to the small leather-bound book on my night table, the one we’d brought from Donata’s library. “Pomeroy took it off Draper and gave it to me for you. Kind of him. But it doesn’t matter. It did the trick, which was the point.”

“Tell your wife I thank her,” Marianne said.

“I will, if she ever speaks to me again for stealing a book from her house and running off to fight three villains,” I said dryly. “How fortunate that I still have these rooms at my disposal.”

“She will scold but forgive you in time,” Marianne assured me. “I understand ladies of her character.”

I hoped Marianne was right, but first I needed to find the instigator who had employed Draper in the first place.

“Both of you might want to remove yourselves,” I said. “The danger is not yet past, and Marianne has been tangled in this enough.”

“Agreed,” Grenville said, his voice taking on a stern note.

Marianne gave him an almost fearful look. “Please do not take me back to that bloody house in Clarges Street.”

Grenville gentled his tone. “You may stay wherever you like,” he said. “But for right now, Lacey is right. It’s not safe here.”

Marianne’s eyes narrowed. “What about for you?
You’re
going to stay, aren’t you?”

Grenville gave her a nod. “I want to see this thing through.”

Marianne flashed an irritated glance at me then one at Grenville. “Well, if you’re staying, then I am too. I’m not one to sit wringing my hands, wondering if her man will return alive.”

“That is indisputably obvious,” Grenville said. “A compromise. You retreat upstairs to your rooms and lock yourself in. Then we’ll leave together once Lacey and I see this thing to its conclusion.”

“You know that Pomeroy can simply beat the name of the person out of Mr. Draper,” Marianne pointed out. “I imagine he’s already doing so.”