Wycliff stood on the corner and waited for a phaeton and pair to clatter past. As one day turned into another, his investigation into the murdered cloakroom attendant made little progress. He had spent two days ratting around in the man’s life and hadn’t found anyone with so much as a harsh thing to say about him.
A young boy next to him clutched an armload of scandal sheets. The lad waved one at Wycliff. “Read all about it, sir. Gruesome murderer on the loose!”
Wycliff shook his head as he carried on his way home. Lady Miles had set free a greater rumour to counteract the murder during the Loburn ball, but two gruesome murders couldn’t be ignored. The last thing they needed was publicity about the Afflicted’s habits that would panic the population. No Londoner would feel safe if they thought a well-bred lady were circling behind them with a canapé fork in hand.
He had proposed to Sir Manly Powers that all the Afflicted be rounded up and kept in a secure location until their culprit revealed herself by her actions. That had not been well received, even though it would protect the ordinary people of London. Yet again, those with power and influence dictated the course of events.
His hands curled into fists. He would discover the murderer and then perhaps those higher up would finally see reason. Nobles should be treated no differently than the common born. Wealth and position should never be used as a shield with which to escape justice.
Today, Wycliff headed to the home of Lord Albright. While Albright might not have direct knowledge of the murderer, it was a noteworthy coincidence that two murders had occurred at events he attended. There was a slender chance the man could help Wycliff better understand any potential motives of his previous wife. Finding a motive for the murders might then reveal the person responsible.
Albright was not at home, but his butler directed Wycliff to a local mews, where his lordship was inspecting a new purchase. Wycliff approached the stables with a lighter step. He had managed to keep hold of his horse. He should have sold the mare to pay down his father’s debt with a blacklegs at the racetrack, but couldn’t part with his sensitive and responsive mount. Life had taken so much from him already that he clung to the quiet joy found in riding the horse.
Horses had a soothing presence and the rhythm of their breathing made him take deep, steadying breaths. They were much like dogs and didn’t care a whit for a man’s title or pocketbook. They judged a man on his actions and how he treated them.
The mews bustled with activity as some horses were ridden out, and others were mucked out. A row stood waiting to be shod by the brawny smith working in an open yard. The ring of metal hitting cobbles mingled with equine snorts and soft human conversation.
Wycliff held out a hand to a dark bay tied to a rail, patiently waiting to be shod. The gelding snuffled at his glove and nibbled the leather. He scratched the horse’s neck as he peered into the wide breezeway, looking for Lord Albright. He found him running his hand over a leggy grey mare.
Albright was in his fifties and cut a trim figure. Probably to draw attention away from the fact that his hair had vanished like grass during a drought. When he bent over to examine the horse’s hoof, the light played over his bald head. His face was defined by sharp cheekbones and a narrow jaw, with small lips that made him look perpetually annoyed.
As Wycliff walked into the stable, he inhaled the sweet aroma of hay and horse. Why didn’t women use such scents to attract a man, instead of cloying perfumes that assaulted the nostrils with all the subtlety of a cavalry charge?
“You have a handsome creature there, Albright.” Miss Miles was uppermost in his mind and to appease her memory, he tried a more relaxed approach rather than thrusting in with a direct question.
Albright looked up and grunted. “She should be, for the amount she cost. Saddle her up, I’ll take her out myself today.” He gestured to the waiting groom and slapped the mare on the rump. “If you think I know anything about these murders, you are mistaken.”
Wycliff watched the horse led away and resisted the urge to sigh like a deprived child. “Actually, I wanted to discuss your wife.”
The man’s upper lip pulled back in a sneer. “I assume you mean my former and now deceased wife.” The reminder of his previous wife evoked a physical response in Albright. Invective flowed into his mouth and flew past his lips as spittle when he spoke.
“Indeed.” Wycliff moved out of spitting range and leaned on a stall door. “Did you converse with her at either the Loburn ball or The Harriers?”
The man’s eyes widened and he inhaled sharply. “Felicity is dead. I don’t converse with her at all and I am kept much occupied by my lovely present wife and children, all of whom possess a pulse. To address your question, I did see her at Loburn’s with that ridiculous black veil, but I had no idea she was at The Harriers.”
Wycliff waited while a stable boy wheeled a cart of manure along the aisle. “She told me she wished to talk to you, but went no farther than the entrance. Do you think your former wife capable of murderous intent?”
Albright snorted. “Highly improbable. The woman was like tepid porridge while alive—bland and easily forgotten. I never once heard her raise her voice or saw her display any passion for life.”
A description that dovetailed with Miss Miles’s assessment of the late Lady Albright. Although Miss Miles had worded it more delicately. “Then what matter do you think she wants to pursue with you?”
The groom returned with the saddled horse and Albright ran a hand under the girth. “I have no idea. She is none of my concern any longer.”
The man dropped his responsibilities with remarkable ease. Wycliff wasn’t so sure he could turn his back on someone who had once shared his bed and home. Even the dead needed somewhere to rest their bones and someone to safeguard their eternal sleep. “No concern at all? You married her and vowed to honour and cherish her.”
“My vows were until death us did part. Felicity died. What was I supposed to do, share my home with a corpse?” Albright’s eyes narrowed and the flow of spittle increased with his agitation. The horse danced sideways and the groom at her head tightened his grip on the reins.
Wycliff thought that was exactly what some did. A woman’s lack of pulse didn’t preclude her from contributing to daily family life. He only had to consider the guest list for the Loburn ball to see that a number of the Afflicted had been included in the celebration, despite their deceased status.
“If I might enquire, how did you become aware of the late Lady Albright’s condition?” Wycliff pitched his voice low, as though he spoke to the nervous horse. He didn’t want Albright bolting before he dug a little deeper. The voice in the back of his head said this was a thread worth chasing.
“I assume she bought herself one of those jars of fancy face powder, trying to look younger. Then she sickened and died, much like many other women. Felicity’s cousin insisted I delay the funeral to allow distant relatives from the countryside time to reach London. I said I didn’t want her body at my house, and so she was laid out at her cousin’s.”
From the rumours Wycliff had heard, the new wife had been secured and moved in before the old was even cold. All of London knew his new wife had delivered a healthy full-term heir just four months after the hasty wedding.
There would have been quite the scene if the two wives had met in the parlour when one was resurrected. Chaos had resulted in homes around London as mourners saw the deceased apparently revive before them. A miracle that, over the passage of weeks, revealed itself as being instead a nightmarish curse. “So the late Lady Albright regained consciousness at her cousin’s?”
Albright’s hand tightened into a fist around his riding crop as he waited for a lad to lengthen the stirrups. “Yes. I should have kept a tighter grip on events. Then I could have ensured she was properly buried and not free to haunt my waking moments.”
Wycliff wasn’t entirely sure he understood the other man’s meaning. “You would have buried her after her revival?”
Albright glanced toward the grooms and then leaned in close to Wycliff. “Do you think I would have been the only man to inter a troublesome wife who didn’t have the dignity to go quietly to death? I was just bloody unlucky that others saw her sit up. Otherwise she would have been dispatched to her grave to leave the living in peace.”
Wycliff’s stomach clenched. Albright’s words exactly reflected Wycliff’s own views and thoughts on the matter of the Afflicted. Yet to hear his innermost thoughts voiced by another man made them seem…wrong. The dead deserved to rest. What peace would there be for women forced into coffins and buried in the ground while they screamed and clawed at the unyielding wood? Perhaps Miss Miles was right to argue that they be allowed to exist undisturbed…so long as they obeyed English law and didn’t dine on the servants.
Wycliff recalled a soft patch of lawn with Hannah Miles at her mother’s feet while the two women chatted as though one were not a rotting piece of flesh. The young woman spoke with respect of her mother and treated the Afflicted as though they were any other breathing person. Had he been wrong all along, and a person actually retained their soul beyond death?
Albright nodded to the groom, who laced his hands and provided a stirrup to lift him into the saddle. He gathered up the reins and then flicked out the tails of his jacket.
Wycliff stepped back. “You have been most helpful, Albright. If you do recollect anything about your former wife that might be of assistance, do pass it along to me.”
Albright nodded and put heel to the mare, trotting out of the mews and along the road.
Wycliff left in a thoughtful mood. His beliefs had been challenged by hearing them from another’s lips and as he walked, he re-examined his interactions with the Afflicted women.
As he neared his rented home, he considered his options. If Lord Albright didn’t think his former wife capable of murder, that left two viable suspects—Emma Knightley and Gabriella Ridlington. But how to flush the right prey from the undergrowth where they hid from him?
As he approached his front door, a man on the pavement hailed him. He vaguely recognised him as being one of the Bow Street Runners who investigated the everyday crimes that plagued the streets of London.
“My lord, the magistrate sent me to tell you about a stiff we pulled out of the river the other week.” He took off his cloth cap and clenched it between his fingers.
Ah. Finally his request for any information about similar murders in London had yielded an answer. “Was the body missing its brain?”
The man nodded, then glanced around and waited for a couple to pass before continuing. “Head was bashed in and the skull was empty. He’d been in the Thames for a few days before we pulled him out and we just assumed fish had been at him. They tend to nibble on bodies thrown in the water.”
Fish were a distinct possibility. But so was an Afflicted with an appetite to satisfy. “When was this?”
The man screwed up his face as he thought. “Three weeks ago?”
That would make three such deaths within the space of three weeks, assuming the same hand had emptied all three skulls. Excitement built inside him. This could be the pivotal piece of information he needed. “And where did you fish him out?”
The man gestured off toward the east. “Over at the West India docks. We asked around and from all accounts, he was an argumentative bugger and probably picked a fight with the wrong person. Happens a lot around there.”
Damn. No fine lady would be wandering around the docks at night. The murder might not be connected at all if fish were responsible for the missing brain. But this was the first similar crime his questions had uncovered. “Thank you. You have been most helpful.”
As Wycliff approached his door, he pondered how a murder at the wharf could be related to two in more civilised surroundings. Then one thought crashed through his mind. There was a new business at those docks. A high-end business that supplied the ton. Rowley and Sons, importers of French champagne.
He called out to the Runner before he disappeared along the road. “One more thing. Did you identify the corpse?”
The man tugged his cap back on his head. “Oh, yes. He worked for Rowley and Sons. Is that all, my lord?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Such was his gratitude that he tossed the man a coin he could ill afford to give.
While a theory coalesced in his mind, he pushed into his house and picked up the assortment of envelopes on the hall table. One was a notice from his landlord, giving him until the end of the week to vacate the premises. The eviction was not unexpected. The rent was just one of many bills he had neglected as he sought to satisfy his father’s debtors.
He walked through to his cold front parlour and tossed the letters into the grate. At least the invoices were good for something. He would use them to start a fire tonight.
He leaned one hand on the mantel while he stared at the scattered papers. Miss Miles might have been justified in her defence of the women Afflicted. He was beginning to suspect they were not responsible. Or at least not directly. For there was one deceased woman who had a connection with Rowley and Sons.
Lady Gabriella Ridlington.
Suspicions and theories would never satisfy his superior, especially not when members of the ton were involved. He needed proof, or even better, a confession.
Afternoon edged toward evening as he set out in search of Lady Gabriella and her beau, Mr Jonathon Rowley. He tried the most obvious place first—the large and imposing mansion in Mayfair.
The butler opened the door and then threw down the gauntlet for a staring competition. It would seem the lady in question had been quite adamant when she’d said she didn’t want to see Wycliff again. The infuriating guard dog at the door wasn’t going to admit him.
“I can come back with soldiers and force entry,” he informed the man. “Before I seek reinforcements, perhaps you could answer a simple question. Is Lady Gabriella at home?”
The butler narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “No, my lord. My lady has departed for the evening.”
“Where has she gone?”
“That I am not at liberty to say. Good evening.” The solid door was slammed shut in his face.
“Damn it!” He pounded his fist into the brick by the door. If not for his glove, he would have removed a layer of skin from his knuckles.
This butler might be paid for his silence, but he would wager someone in the Rowley household would know where the prodigal son had gone.