When Maidens Mourn (29 page)

She returned to Covent Garden just as the slanting, golden light
of early evening was beginning to flood the mean, narrow streets. The residents of Molly’s lodging house were already stirring.

“What have you found?” Hero asked Molly as a raucous trill of laughter floated from somewhere on the first floor above and two blowsy women pushed past them toward the lodging house door. The lodging house was not a brothel, although there was no denying that many of its occupants were Cyprians. But these women took their customers elsewhere, to establishments known as “accommodation houses.”

One of the Cyprians, a black-haired woman in feathers and a diaphanous silver-spangled gown, smacked her lips and cocked one hip provocatively at Hero. “Shopping for a bit o’ muslin to raise yer old sod’s flag, are ye, me lady? Bet I can do the trick. Do you like to watch?”

“Thank you, but no,” said Hero.

“Lizzy, ye foulmouthed trollop,” hissed Molly, flapping her apron at the woman. “Ye mind yer bloody manners and get out o’ here.”

Lizzy laughed and disappeared into the night with a jaunty backward wave of one white hand.

“I’ve a girl by the name of Charlotte Roach waiting for ye in me sitting room,” said Molly, drawing Hero toward the rear of the house. “Although if truth be told, I’m not certain a gently bred lady such as yerself should be hearing wot she’s got to say.”

“Nonsense,” said Hero. “You should know by now that I am not so easily shocked.”

Molly paused outside the closed door, her broad, homely face troubled. “Ye ain’t heard wot she’s got to say yet.”

Charlotte Roach couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old. She had a thin, sharp-boned face and straw-colored hair and pale, shrewd eyes rimmed by short, sparse blond lashes. Her tattered gown of pink and white striped satin had obviously been made
for someone both older and larger, and then cut down, its neckline plunging to expose most of the girl’s small, high breasts. She sat in an unladylike sprawl on a worn settee beside Molly’s empty hearth, a glass of what looked like gin in one hand, her lips crimped into a tight, hard line that didn’t soften when Hero walked into the room. She looked Hero up and down in frank appraisal, then glanced over at Molly. “This the gentry mort ye was tellin’ me about?”

“I am,” said Hero.

Charlotte brought her gaze back to Hero’s face, one grubby finger reaching out to tap the sketch of Childe lying on the settee beside her. “’E yer Jerry sneak?”

“If by that you mean to ask if the man in that sketch is my husband, then the answer is no.” With slow deliberation, Hero drew five guineas from her reticule and laid them in a row across the surface of the table before her. “This is for you…
if
you tell me what I want to know. But don’t even think of trying to sell me Grub Street news, for I’ll know a lie if I hear it.”

A flash of amusement shone in the girl’s pale, hard eyes. “What ye want to know, then?”

“When was the last time you saw this gentleman?”

The girl took a long swallow of her gin. “That’d be goin’ on two years ago, now. I ain’t seen ’im since I was at the Lambs’ Pen, in Chalon Lane.”

Hero cast a quick glance at Molly. She had heard of the Lambs’ Pen, a discreet establishment near Portland Square that catered to men who liked their whores young—very young. Two years earlier, Charlotte Roach couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Even though the girl was only confirming what Hero had already suspected, she felt her flesh crawl. With effort she said, “Go on.”

“’E used t’come into the Lambs’ Pen the first Monday o’ the month. Always the first Monday, and at nine o’clock exactly. Ye coulda set yer watch by ’im. A real rum duke, ’e was.” Charlotte sucked her lower lip between her teeth, her gaze drifting back to
the shiny guineas laid in a row across the top of the table. “Anythin’ else ye want t’ ’ear?”

Swallowing the urge to simply give the girl the money and leave, Hero went to sink into the broken-down chair opposite her. “I want to hear everything you know about him.”

H
ero paused at the entrance to the Reading Room of the British Museum, her gaze sweeping the rows of clerics, physicians, barristers, and antiquaries hunched over their books and manuscripts. The room was dark, with rush matting on the floor and a dusty collection of stuffed birds that seemed to peer down at her from above.

Bevin Childe was not there.

“Miss. I say,
miss
.” A bantam-sized, plumpish attendant in a rusty black coat and yellowing cravat bore down on her, his hands raised in horror, his voice hushed to a hissing whisper. “This room is not part of the museum tour. Only registered readers are allowed in the library. You must leave. Leave at once.”

Hero let her gaze sweep over the little man with a look that not only stopped him in his tracks, but also caused him to stagger back a step. “I am Lady Devlin,” she said calmly. “Lord Jarvis’s daughter.”

“Lord J—” The man broke off, swallowed, and gave a shallow titter. “Oh…Lady Devlin, of course!” He bowed so low his
bulbous nose practically touched his knees. “How—how may we assist you?”

“I require a word with Mr. Bevin Childe.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Childe is in one of our private research rooms.”

“Then if you would be so kind as to direct me to him?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Childe does not like to be disturbed when— I mean, of course, Lady Devlin. This way, please.”

He led her down a cramped corridor and around a dogleg to pause before a closed, peeling door. “Mr. Childe is here, my lady,” he whispered, his somewhat prominent front teeth digging into his lower lip. “Shall I announce you?”

“Thank you, but I’ll announce myself. You may leave us.”

A wave of relief wafted across his lumpy features. “Yes, my lady. If you should require anything—
anything
—please do not hesitate to call.”

Hero waited until he had bowed himself back down the corridor. Then she turned the door’s handle and quietly pushed it open.

The room was small, lit only by a high dusty window, and hemmed in by piles of crates and overflowing shelves. Seated in a straight-backed chair, Bevin Childe had his head bent over the tattered pages of a manuscript held open on the table before him by a velvet-covered, sausage-shaped weight. He had a pen in one hand and was running the index finger of the other down a row of figures. Without even looking up, he said tartly, “You are disturbing my concentration. As you can see, this room is already engaged. Kindly remove yourself at once.”

Hero shut the door behind her and leaned against it.

Childe continued frowning down at the figures, apparently secure in the assumption that he was once more alone. She walked across the room and drew out the chair opposite him.

“Did you not hear what I said?”
His head jerked up. His myopic gaze focused on Hero and he dropped his pen, the loaded nib
splattering a blot of ink across the pages of his notes. “Good heavens. Not you again.”

Smiling, she settled herself in the chair and leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her chin propped on her hands. “What a nice, private place for a comfortable little chat. How fortuitous.”

He half rose to his feet.

“Sit down,” said Hero.

He sank back into his seat, hands splayed flat on the surface of the table before him, lips puckering out in a scowl that clenched his eyebrows together. “When will you and your husband simply leave me alone?”

“As soon as you stop lying to us.”

Childe stiffened. “I’ll have you know that I am a respected scholar. A very respected scholar! Nothing I have told you is false. Nothing!”

“Really? You told me your argument with Miss Tennyson last Friday was a scholarly disagreement over her identification of Camlet Moat as Camelot. That certainly wasn’t true. The quarrel was over the Glastonbury Cross.”

His face reddened. “Miss Tennyson was a very contrary woman. After a point it becomes difficult to correctly separate these choleric episodes in one’s mind.”

“I might believe you if she hadn’t ended that particular confrontation by hurling the cross into the lake. That strikes me as a comparatively memorable moment.”

Childe pressed his lips into a tight, straight line and glared at her from across the table.

Hero settled more comfortably in her chair, her hands shifting to the reticule in her lap. “I can understand why you were selected to play the starring role in this little charade. Your skepticism toward all things Arthurian is well-known, which means that for you to be the one to step forward and present the Glastonbury Cross and a box of crumbling bones—particularly with the added
fiction that they were found amongst Richard Gough’s collection—would obviously help to make the discovery more believable.”

“This is an outrage!” blustered Childe. “Why, if you were a man I would—”

“You would—what, exactly? Challenge me to a duel? I’m a very good shot, you know.”

“To the best of my knowledge,” said Childe through clenched teeth, “the cross I discovered in Mr. Gough’s collection is the very same artifact presented to the world by the monks of Glastonbury in 1191. As it happens, the scholarly community will soon have the opportunity to judge for itself. The cross has been recovered from the lake and will be made available for inspection next week.”

“Having a new one made, are you?”

Childe leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “I see no reason to dignify that statement with a response.”

Hero smiled. “But there’s another reason you were selected for this charade; is that not so, Mr. Childe? You see, I kept thinking, Why would a respected scholar possessed of a comfortable independence lend himself to such a scheme? And then it came to me: because you have a deep, dirty little secret that makes you vulnerable to blackmail.”

Childe shifted uncomfortably, his jaw set.

“That’s why you killed Gabrielle, isn’t it? Not because she somehow discovered the true origins of your so-called Glastonbury Cross, or because she spurned your suit, but because she found out about your taste for little girls.”

He jerked, then sat very still. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the Lambs’ Pen. And don’t even think about trying to deny it. They keep very good records, you know. And—”

Childe came up out of his seat, his face purple and twisted with rage, one meaty hand flashing toward her.
“Why you bloody little—”

Hero drew a small brass-mounted flintlock muff pistol from her
reticule, pulled back the hammer, and pointed the muzzle at his chest. “Touch me and you’re dead.”

He froze, his eyes flaring wide, his big, sweaty body suspended over the table, his chest heaving with his agitated breathing.

“If you will recall,” she said calmly, “I did mention that I am a very good shot. True, a weapon of this size is not particularly accurate, but then at this distance it doesn’t need to be.
Now, sit down.
”

He sank slowly, carefully back into his chair.

“You, Mr. Childe, are a fool. Did you seriously think that I would closet myself in private with a man I believe could be a murderer and not come armed?”

Having been red before, his face was now pasty white. “I did not murder Miss Tennyson.”

“You certainly had a motive—several, actually. You have just displayed a shocking propensity for violence toward women. And last Sunday, you were at Gough Hall in the afternoon and in your rooms in St. James’s Street that night. You could easily have killed Gabrielle and her young cousins while traveling between the two.”

“I wouldn’t do that! I would never do that!”

“And why, precisely, should I believe you?”

Childe swallowed.

Hero rose, the gun still in her hand. “Stand up, turn around, and put your hands on the boxes in front of you.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked, throwing a quick glance at her over his shoulder as he moved to comply.

“Keep your eyes on the wall.”

“But what are you going to
do
?”

Hero opened the door behind her. “That depends largely on you, does it not?”

“What does that mean?”

She heard him repeat the question again when she was halfway down the hall.

“What are you going to do?”