Nero's Fiddle (30 page)

“Last month Bill had to move, to be closer to the family. I went with him. I would follow him anywhere.” She gripped Nan’s hand.

“I know, dear heart. You love him, of course you wanted to be with him.”

Nessy nodded. “They were horrid. His family forced me into the servant’s quarters. I wasn’t allowed to use the front stairs. Every day they treated me worse, trying to make me leave.” The tears stopped all conversation as she cried out her heartache.

Bella did her best to offer comfort. She rummaged in the wooden chest and walked over to the sofa. “Nessy?” she said, and with the last astrolabe ornament in her grasp, she placed it in the crying woman’s lap.

The selfless action made Nessy raise her head. She wiped away the tears on her cheeks and with a deep inhale, took the bauble. She held the string, the little arrow piercing the rotating globe. “Thank you, Bella. Isn’t it wonderful? Would you help me find somewhere to hang it?”

The child nodded and, with a serious look, regarded the one-sided tree. After long moments contemplating her options, she took Nessy by the hand and then led her directly to the bough struggling to hold up the weight of five other identical ornaments. She pointed.

“There,” she said with a solemn expression on her face.

“The perfect place for it, precious.” Nessy kissed the child on the top of her head and added one more trinket to the overburdened branch.

They all gave a laugh as the tree lurched to one side, pulled by the relentless weight. Gideon arrested the sideways motion and the footman rushed over with an end table. The two men managed to prop the table under the tree so the ornaments could stay exactly where Bella placed them.

Nessy straightened and turned to face her friend. The worried look settled between her brows. “Can you ever forgive me? The things I said—”

Nan hushed her and reached up and removed the broken comb from her hair. “There is nothing to forgive. I know the words were thrown in pain. We are two halves, you and I.”

Nessy extracted the other half of tortoiseshell from her pocket. They held the two pieces together to make a whole. “Friends forever, no matter what,” she whispered and then hugged her friend.

“There is more to my tale.” She smoothed her skirts over her stomach. Her gaze darted from Nan to Gideon. “I am with child.”

Nan’s eyes widened and focused on Nessy’s midriff. Only the tiniest bump visible under the cotton of her dress. A hand drifted down her own body. She remembered the first time she felt Bella stir and flutter under her skin. A sensation she would never again cherish.

“Bella will adore having company in the nursery,” Gideon said. He placed his hand on Nessy’s shoulder. “Congratulations, Nessy. We are blessed to add to our family. You are, of course, back for good?”

Nan looked at her husband, her daughter and then her best friend. Tears shimmered in her eyes. Gideon could divorce her and marry another woman to bear his heir. She had tried to urge him to think of the future. He refused. It was the one topic that provoked a violent argument between them. She could not have children but they would welcome Nessy’s offspring.

“Yes, of course Nessy is back with us. And Bella will adore a little brother or sister,” Nan said.

Nessy kissed Gideon’s cheek. “I hope it’s a boy. I want my son to grow up to be the sort of man you are. I want you to teach him how to ride and shoot and torture worms with a fishing hook.”

A son.
A tiny sliver of hope entered Nan’s soul. The child could save the estate. Everyone knew how close the three of them were, it would take no effort to let people think Gideon had fathered Nessy’s child. He could adopt a boy and make him his heir.

They would be safe.

London, Monday 10
^th
February, 1862

xhaustion settled over Fraser’s frame and pushed his head toward the desk. Warm hands dropped to his shoulders and massaged his tired muscles.

“You work too hard, Hamish,” the woman behind him murmured as she worked.

“I cannot stop,” he said. “There are always monsters to hunt and slay.” One particular monster took more of his energy and focus than any other. He laid his traps and herded his prey. Close, so close now.

“Exactly. They will always be there, waiting in the shadows. The monsters will win if you work yourself into an early grave, or sink so low you become what you hunt.” She lifted her hands, depriving him of her touch.

He imagined her hands on full hips, ready to berate him for spending too long at headquarters again. A smile on dark red lips would entice him further into the dark with her promise of pleasure. His body ached and he raised a hand to pull her to him.

“Faith,” he whispered as he reached for her.

Only to find himself alone.

He inhaled and frowned. The faintest trace of lilacs lingered in the air. He only saw Faith when he took the laudanum, his imagination must have supplied her scent. He shook his head to clear the fuddle.

Did I slip and take it with my tea, or fall asleep at the desk?

He sat in his chair for so long, staring at his blackboard, he couldn’t remember if he was working late or starting early. He ran a hand over his chin and scratched the emerging stubble. He needed to go home and shave, if only he could bear the thought of the cold and empty house.

The dull grey clouds blanketing the city parted company and allowed a shaft of sun to break through. Morning light bounced off the metallic turbines on the roofs opposite and shot bright slivers over his walls, highlighting the names on his board. Rising from his chair, he stretched tired muscles held too long in one position. Scrawled names and dates covered the board dominating one wall and his mind followed one line lit up by a sunbeam.

Three deaths in a most violent manner and the prospect of a phantom killer on the loose spooked the population. Winter clung to London, every day they sunk deeper in the cold dank grip. The underclass was convinced God had turned his eye to England’s capital and that he hovered above, seeking out his next victim to smite. Paperwork grew, cells were overcrowded and tempers flared. He wished the super would disperse the sinners to the churches, the priests had far fewer forms to fill out.

Three names and three occupations; a physician, a lady’s maid, and a country midwife. Some thread bound these particular lives and drew them all together. An idea niggled in his brain, a constant scratch like a dog at the door wanting inside. He patted his jacket pocket but found it empty. The purple glass bottle absent, left behind in his small parlour. He felt a glimmer of relief; he did not suck the poppy at work. Not yet. Then a huff of air escaped his tired lungs. His mind needed to fly, to dip and soar to find the path they needed to follow. And he needed to shave.

The neat pile of typed notes drew his attention; the secretary finished the last hand-scrawled page the night before. They spent hours talking to those who knew the three victims, covering decades of history trying to find the commonality. The lives of the first two intersected all the time, the physician attended the duchess at least once a month over a forty year period. He and Penelope knew one another and the acquaintance grew as the woman rose through the ranks of attendants from housemaid to the most trusted position of lady’s maid. Mundane illnesses and intimate social events threw the two together on a routine basis. Fraser knew they followed the wrong path concentrating on Nigel and Penelope. The answer lay in the extraordinary, not in the everyday.

Claudette Foreman was the fly in his ointment. A country midwife with no known association to the other two, at least none visible on the surface. The itch told him it was there, he just needed to keep digging the find the truth.

The silver ring rested on top of the file. Watery sunlight filtered through the window and played over the crest. A bird with outstretched wings and something covering its feet. Water? Grass? The pattern was so worn by years of long use he couldn’t make out the etched detail.

Dropping back to his chair, he dragged over the large and dusty peerage tome. A burgundy strip of ribbon marked his place and he flicked the book open. Crests, titles, and estates stretching back to the Doomsday Book swam in his vision. His gut told him the ring was his linkage. Why would a country midwife have a signet ring? Years of experience taught him anything out of place, however small, usually bore a larger significance. Or did his mental dog have him barking up the wrong tree?

Connor pushed his way into the office and dropped the morning paper on his desk. “Damn fish wives at it again, they should find some other piece of gristle to chew.” He gestured to the headline, where the reporter announced a growing movement for an investigation into the allegations surrounding Victoria’s parentage. Medical experts weighed in on the fate of the little prince and commented there was no sign of haemophilia in the House of Hanover, proving the Duke of Kent could not have fathered the queen. Some priests even weighed in, saying God’s disapproval of the current reign was the cause of the coldest winter in hundreds of years.

“At least they are taking a break from declaring God is seeking vengeance on random English citizens. Although the French are delighting in spreading that tale,” Fraser said as he flicked a sideways glance to the paper and then returned to stare at another prancing animal on a field of fleur de lys. The hand outstretched to the mug of tea never made contact due to the gunpowder that exploded in his brain as a vague thought coalesced and ricocheted around his head.

“Good God.” He leapt on the paper and he devoured the lead news story.

“Not you too.” Connor crossed his arms and leaned on the window frame. “Didn’t think you’d believe such drivel about the queen.”

“Victoria’s legitimacy is the key!” He smacked the paper and gestured to his blackboard; the lines untangled themselves and began to make sense. “What if there was a very old secret, one that has been unearthed and brought into the light of day? What would somebody do to protect that secret from being revealed or confirmed? Perhaps tidy away a few loose strands before they talked?”

A deep crease formed in Connor’s forehead. “You’ll have to catch me up. You think Queen Victoria is having the old servants snuffed out to keep the reporters quiet?”

Fraser’s hands took on a life of their own and drew patterns in the air before picking up the newspaper. “Rumours have circulated for decades that the Duke of Kent was not Victoria’s true father and that her mother dallied with John Conroy. Nobody ever gave such stories any credence, until little Leopold was born and diagnosed with haemophilia.”

The newspaper danced across Connor’s field of vision as Fraser held it aloft. The frown still sat on the sergeant’s face. “But that’s all it is. Gossip.”

Fraser’s eyes lit up as his brain ploughed a new field. “People gossip, but a hereditary disease that follows a predetermined medical pathway is much harder to refute than vague rumours. Haemophilia plagues the prince, but it is a disease not known to afflict the Duke of Kent or anyone of the Hanover line. Rumour is, the evidence is so compelling that parliament will soon order an enquiry.”