Let's Talk of Murder (27 page)

As Black, with his spectacles removed and his hair returned to normal, arrived with a tea tray at that moment, she had to invite Byron to stay for tea. To conceal his rampant jealousy, Luten added his urgings to hers. And Byron, hoping to smooth the matter over, felt his darting off would suggest some amorous wrongdoing and accepted the invitation. The doctor’s arrival provided a welcome diversion. Black took him upstairs. The remaining group sat by the fire, grateful for the warmth of the leaping flames.

As they sat, sipping tea and talking over the case, Coffen said, “I’ve been busy myself this afternoon. Had another go at Morrison. He’s the fellow the neighbor saw calling on Fogg. Morrison says they didn’t argue, though. Got along like a house on fire. Must have been Clare that was arguing with Henry. Morrison says he went to call on Fogg the night of the murder. He knew Fogg was going to Hertford’s place to try for a loan and told him he’d drop around later to see if he got it, which he did. Drop around, I mean, I don’t know about the loan.

“Fogg was already killed when Morrison got there. The ring and lock of hair was already gone. He was afraid he’d be accused of it, and ran out into the night. He walked the streets for hours, fretting and trying to figure out who had done it, and of course worrying if he was next. He thought it was because of their being lovers.

“He knew about Fanny, and that Lord Clare had got her into the Morgate place. Fanny seemed happy enough, but when she started dropping hints in her letters about this and that ‘gentleman friend,’ as she called them, Fogg got suspicious. That’s when she admitted she wasn’t enceinte at all. She never intended to stay at the Morgate Home. Her plan was to go on the stage. But then she met Clare and fell into a passion for him, and next thing she knew, she was earning her keep at the house in Lambeth.

“Fogg was horrified. Afraid his papa, or Fanny’s, would come after him with a horse whip. He tried to visit Lord Clare, but he always let on he was out, so at last Fogg wrote him a pretty threatening letter, saying he had no choice but to discuss it with Lady Hertford. Clare came running fast enough then. They had an argument. Henry wanted him to send Fanny home. I daresay Clare knew Fanny would never keep her mouth shut if he did that. Henry gave Clare twenty-four hours, which could explain why Clare was rash enough to take a shot at him that very night. I daresay he didn’t recognize Prinney or he would have waited.

“Anyhow, the letter goaded Clare into action. Or so Morrison thinks. He believes Clare followed Fogg home and killed him, but he had no way to prove it and was afraid to go up against a lord in the courts. He figures the missing ring and the lock of hair was red herrings, since Clare had no notion Fogg didn’t care for ladies.”

Some of this was new to Byron, who listened with the keenest interest and asked a few questions.

Luten asked, “Was it Morrison who went back and burned the papers you found in the grate?”

“It was. Henry had given him a key. He’d been writing to Henry, you see, and when he settled down to some hard thinking, he wanted to make sure the billets doux wasn’t found. Townsend had already been there, but the letters were hidden in a secret drawer of a desk. He burned them and some he found from Fanny as well.”

“Will Morrison testify to this in court?” Luten asked.

“Not about the billets doux. I wager we can talk him into telling the rest of it, if we can keep quiet about how things were between him and Fogg,” Coffen replied. “Let on they were just chums, I mean. That’s what Clare thought they were. Morrison says if the truth comes out, he’ll kill himself, rather than face his family and friends, to say nothing of a judge and jury and gibbet.”

“And we call ourselves civilized!” Byron said with disgust.

“How did you convince him to admit all this to you?” Prance asked.

“I didn’t. At some point he just seemed to think I knew. In fact, he thinks I’m one of them. Knowing which way Fogg’s taste ran, I was careful not to show any disapproval. Once he got started, it all came gushing out. I fear the lad’s developing a bit of a tendre for me. Bit of a problem.”

Byron’s lips moved in silent amusement. “Tell him you’re already spoken for,” he suggested.

Coffen shook his head. “It’ll break his heart.”

“He can hardly be that enamored of you yet,” Prance said.

“It came on fast, in his lonesome state. He was at loose ends, just looking for a raft to cling to.”

“Love at first sight, in fact,” Prance said with a sneering smile. “Let’s visit him together. I shall pose as your
cher ami
, but to provide a more seaworthy raft for him to cling to in his stormy sea of grief, we shall take him to a club I happen to know of where he’d feel right at home. I’ll speak to a friend and see that he’s made welcome.”

“That’s decent of you, Prance. I appreciate it. But don’t go snuggling up to me in public or I’ll wallop you.”

“I shall endeavor to restrain my ardor. It won’t be difficult.”

The doctor came down and said that Beth was recovering and should be able to talk by evening.

Luten rose and said, “I’m going to Bow Street to see if Townsend is there yet.” He was careful not to look at Byron, but he was stiff with tension, listening to hear if Byron was also going to leave. He had said he only waited to learn Beth was alright.

“I’ll be running along now as well,” Byron said at once.

Prance turned to Coffen. “Shall we visit Morrison now?”

“The sooner we get it over, the better.”

“Will you come back for dinner?” Corinne said. She turned to include Luten and Byron. “All of you,” she said.

Byron and Luten exchanged a long, questioning stare, then Byron turned to Corinne and said, “Thank you for the invitation, Corinne, but I’m promised to Lady Melbourne this evening.” He had never called her by her first name before. She had never asked him to. He did it now to show Luten that, while he allowed his rival the inner track on this occasion, he wasn’t out of the race entirely.

Corinne looked surprised at hearing this new familiarity, but didn’t want to make an issue of it in front of Luten. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Prance adored Byron’s nerve in calling her Corinne. He felt like clapping. She turned to Luten. “Will you come back for dinner?”

“But of course, my dear,” he drawled with a smile that would freeze the hobs of hell.

Coffen, more interested in his stomach than this battle of hearts, asked, “What are we having?”

“Food,” Prance said.

“Ah, good.”

“He’ll be here, and so shall I,” Prance said, and placing one hand on Luten’s elbow, the other on Coffen’s, he led them out, with a smile behind their backs at Byron, who followed them from the room.

Corinne went abovestairs and sat with Beth, thinking, planning, remembering. How contrary of Byron to call her Corinne, as if they were much closer than they were. And Luten! You shouldn’t call a lady “my dear” in that arctic tone of voice. It was practically an insult.

How pale Beth looked, and her little hands cold as ice. She chafed them a moment, then put them under the coverlet. She sat until the lengthening shadows of twilight told her it was time to dress for the evening.

Prance and Coffen were the first to arrive. They hadn’t changed into evening clothes. “All is well,” Prance crowed. “It was nip and tuck for a moment whether young Morrison wasn’t going to transfer his fickle affections to me, but I clung to my beloved,” he said, squeezing Coffen’s arm and batting his eyelashes. Coffen gave him a shove that sent him reeling against a table. “There’s gratitude for you!” Prance snipped. “Morrison was suitably grateful when Nigel Barnes invited him to join him for dinner. I think they will deal admirably, those two rafts adrift on the sea of lost love. Nigel has just been jilted by Eric Wolfe. He’ll see that Morrison gets a decent haircut and jacket.”

“How’s Beth?” Coffen asked.

“Still sleeping,” Corinne said.

Luten arrived soon, still in his blue jacket and buckskins, and with Townsend in tow.

“What’s new?” Coffen asked.

Townsend looked around the group with a triumphant smile. “Was I right or was I right?” he crowed. “I caught Mrs. Bruton on her way out the back door with her bag in her hand, headed to Clare, I have no doubt. I sent a young fellow who was loitering about off for a hackney to take her in for questioning.”

“That lad, he’d be Willie Sykes,” Coffen said.

“Aye, he did say his name was Willie. A sharp little gumboil. I was surprised to learn Lord Byron has a finger in all this. He’ll get a poem out of it, no doubt,” Townsend continued. “He don’t have to go scrambling off to Persia to find horrors to write about. Mrs. Bruton hasn’t told all she knows. She’ll talk fast enough when I threaten her with being an accessory. She clammed up like an oyster when I mentioned Rosalie Higgins but her face tells me she knows all about it.

“The hackney cab that took us to Bow Street was Tom Noonan’s. He didn’t have his passenger’s name, but the description matches Clare, barring the false beard he was wearing. It’s suspicious that the vicar, so-called, arrived across the bridge in one hired rig and changed to another. Trying to cover his tracks, you see. After I pick Clare up, we can get a firm identification. The driver took the vicar and Fanny to an inn in the country but was told not to wait as friends would be picking them up. The lady seemed willing. I wager Clare convinced the foolish chit he was setting her up as his mistress, or even his wife. It seems there was hand holding and so on when they reached the inn. Ah, the poor lass had no idea how bad a card she was dealing with.

“I took a quick dash out to the inn, the Green Man it was. The proprietor told me Fanny was not feeling well when they left. She had to be supported out to the rig. A dose of morphine, I fancy. The gent had driven his curricle there earlier and left it in the stable to be waiting for him. He took a hackney home. He used his sporting carriage so he wouldn’t have to have a coachman as witness, you see, for the weather was pretty chilly for the open rig. It was all planned in advance. Premeditated. He must have drugged her, and somewhere along the road, he shot her. After dark, he dumped her body into the river. No hope of a witness, I fear. In that fog, nobody could see him, not if they were three feet away.” After a murmured chorus of muted outrage from his listeners, he asked, “How is the lass abovestairs?”

“She’s recovering,” Corinne said.

“I’ll just nip up and see if she’s able to talk yet while you folks have your mutton. I see I am keeping you from it.”

“Won’t you join us?” Corinne asked.

“Nay, I’d rather get on with business, if you don’t mind.”

“Perhaps a tray in Beth’s room while you wait?”

“That would be dandy, milady. Thank you.”

Dinner was a strange mixture of joking and sobriety bordering on mourning. Prance was inclined to make merry at Coffen’s amorous success with Morrison, which left Mrs. Ballard in total confusion. Corinne felt she was a monster of selfishness. She had begrudged poor Fanny her second hand gowns, and now the girl was dead. She kept thinking of Beth, too, wondering what her story would be. She could see that Luten was also preoccupied. His glance was often on her, questioning, weighing, with a grim set to his lips.

When these friends dined with Corinne, they made short shrift of the gentlemen’s privilege of port and a cigar after dinner. They joined the ladies within ten minutes, at which time Mrs. Ballard silently disappeared from the room.

Corinne was just pouring tea when Townsend came down. “Well, she is awake now, and it’s a sorry tale she told,” he said, shaking his head. He accepted a cup of tea and continued. “Clare usually got his girls for the bawdy house off the street–petty thieves, prostitutes. Occasionally one of them would not go along with his plans for her. He would feed her opium, to keep her in line.”

“That ain’t what Sally told me,” Coffen said. “She said there was no drugs, and she was free to go.”

Townsend nodded. “Yes, he had some actresses and prostitutes working downstairs that he treated well enough. That was to ensure a ready supply of girls in a good humor for the ordinary patrons, and to give the place an aura of decency when the law came calling. We’re not in a hurry to close down a well-run brothel. It keeps it off the streets. I am speaking of the girls he used in his tableaux abovestairs, young, frightened girls with no one to turn to. Like Beth, she has no family now. She came from the country looking for work a month ago when her mama died. Clare picked her up as she was leaving a cheap hotel. Her pockets were empty.

“Fanny, now, is a completely different case. She was a willing victim. She was being trained up as one of what Clare called his actresses. I daresay he convinced the peahen it would be good experience for the legitimate stage. Perdita was the role he had in mind for her. He meant to go ahead with it, in spite of my warnings. Fanny warned Beth that Clare had her in his eye to replace Emma Hamilton. Beth looks remarkably like her. Pretty little thing. The girls’ looks don’t hold up long, once they start taking opium. The Emma Hamilton and Nelson skit is very popular, it seems. Beth would have been the third Emma.”

“What about Beth’s bruises?” Corinne asked.

“She tried to run away once and was hauled back pretty roughly. Kept on bread and water for a week. With Bruton guarding the front door and the back door locked, the girls were pretty well kept prisoner. And where could they go if they did get out, poor souls? They’d never dream of coming to the police. I wonder if Rosalie Higgins was foolish enough to threaten it, and that’s why she was tipped off the roof. But you were asking about Beth’s bruises, milady. Some of them were from Bruton pinching at her and hitting her with a broom or mop handle when she stopped working to catch her breath. Bruton’s job, I believe, was to make the girls Clare chose so miserable they were happy to get to the annex. And from the annex they were easily spirited upstairs for what he called the tableaux. More like a one act play really.”

“Did he have a particular reason why he needed money?” Prance asked. “Is that why he sunk to running this despicable business?”