Once he had examined Miss Diamond where she lay and looked around the front parlour, the coroner asked Prue to show him the dining room, and then the kitchen, while the Runner and David carried Miss Diamond’s body up to her room.
They laid it out on the bed, and the coroner let the two men stay, but insisted Prue leave while he examined the body in more detail. “This is no sight for a woman, Mrs. Worth.”
After fifteen minutes, he came out and requested a bowl of water so he could wash his hands.
Prue offered to conduct him on a tour of the other floors, but he refused.
“I will convene a coroner’s jury with all speed,” he announced. “We will meet here, in the room adjoining the parlour where Miss Diamond died. Gifford, make sure no one enters either room or the lady’s bedchamber until we meet. I’ll send some men to help.”
Prue let the coroner out. “How soon will the jury convene, Sir?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, I imagine. No one is to leave the house, mind.”
It might be difficult to keep all the maids for another day. Quite apart from their need to find another position as soon as possible, they would not want to be involved in a coroner’s enquiry. Prue would have to explain what was going to happen next, warn them that leaving might make them suspects in the murder, and soothe the ruffled sensibilities of the cook, who was offended that Miss Diamond had died after eating her food.
Gifford, the Runner, was questioning David, who didn’t mention their investigations or Tolliver, but just claimed to be “an acquaintance of Mrs. Worth, the housekeeper, who sent for me when she sent for you.”
Gifford frowned. He was a small man on the northern side of middle-aged, shorter than Prue, but solidly built. A florid complexion under a balding head could mean too much drink. Or, Prue thought more charitably, it might just mean a fast walk here through a cold wind.
“Why did you send for Wakefield, Mrs. Worth?” he demanded.
“He investigates crimes, Sir,” she said, trying to sound suitably humble. “Murder is a crime, is it not?”
“You’d best not try being clever with me, Mrs. Worth.” The Runner frowned still more deeply.
“Sir?” Best to act bewildered. And to avoid sarcasm. He wasn’t quite as stupid as he looked.
The three men sent by the coroner arrived, which freed Gifford to question Miss Fraser and Madame Dupont. He dismissed Lord Jonathan as irrelevant to the investigation. Prue, careful to keep her thoughts from showing on her face, suspected he was more concerned Lord Jonathan was too well-connected to annoy.
To Prue’s surprise, given Gifford’s hostility to David, he invited the thief taker to join him in the interview. Prue would have loved to be there, too, but would have to content herself with questioning David.
After the interview, Miss Fraser sent for Prue. Madame was crying, a hopeless sobbing that tore at the heart, shuddering to a stop as she tried to collect herself, then dissolving again with a lost wail. “Will you help her to bed, Worth?” Miss Fraser asked. “She won’t let me help her.”
Lord Jonathan, who had followed Prue into the room, sat down beside Madame and took her into his arms.
“There, now,” he said, gently. “There, now.”
Prue was grateful for Lord Jonathan’s help as they persuaded the dresser to wash, drink a little brandy, and lie down in her room.
While Prue was busy, Gifford sent for her three times, commanding her to come and answer questions. Twice, she sent back a polite answer, explaining she was caring for Madame Dupont and promising to be there as quickly as possible. The third time, Lord Jonathan waved her on her way.
“I’ll sit with her,” he said. “You go answer the Runner’s questions.”
Gifford had commandeered one of the first-floor rooms and set himself up behind a solid table, seated in authority while those he questioned had to stand before him. David leaned casually against a nearby wall, feigning sleepy boredom. Prue caught a gleam from under one half-closed lid. He was no more asleep than she was.
Better not to look at him.
“Name?” Gifford barked.
She told him her name was Mrs. Worth, and she held a temporary appointment in the household as housekeeper. He noted both in the notebook open on the table in front of him.
To further questions, she explained the temporary nature of her position and gave him a brief and colourless account of the activities in the short time she had been here. Had it really been less than forty-eight hours?
She didn’t mention Tolliver, of course, or her real reason for being in Miss Diamond’s household.
Gifford didn’t bother to conceal his opinion of Miss Diamond. “Do you often work for whores, Mrs. Worth?”
The answer was ‘yes,’ in the broadest sense of the term ‘whore.’ Gifford would probably not apply the term to the Society ladies she usually investigated for Tolliver, though Prue thought that distributing sexual favours to those who gave the best gifts deserved the label.
“This household is unique in my experience, Mr. Gifford,” she said. That was true enough, if non-committal. Gifford made no comment beyond a grumpy snort.
She stood quietly, her hands modestly together in front of her apron. If he thought she would talk just because he didn’t, he needed to think again.
Gifford broke the silence first, moving to his next question. For several minutes, she told him about the food and drink Miss Diamond had been served. He might be a grouchy and mannerless oaf, but he knew the essentials of his business, asking her about the notes that came with each gift, how they were delivered, and how Miss Diamond reacted to them.
When he had exhausted her powers of observation, he dismissed her. “But don’t leave the house,” he warned. “And send in the cook.” She caught David’s eye again as she left the room, and took heart at the quick droop of one eyelid.
Down in the kitchen, the maids were talking one another into a state of panic. The Runner was going to arrest them; the murderer would kill them in their beds; they would be thrown into the street tomorrow, and no one would employ them ever again.
The last was a real possibility. Prue resolved to try what she could. Perhaps the agency Tolliver used to place her with her targets could be convinced to find the maids positions. She set them to work. Nothing like a bit of scrubbing to help people manage emotional excesses.
The cook returned in a worse state than the maids, indignation warring with fear. “I never heard the like, Mrs. Worth,” she complained. “Never in my born days. I wouldn’t be in this house if the pay wasn’t so good, no I would not, and so I told that Runner. ‘Why would I kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?’ I told him. ‘That would be daft,’ I told him.”
Prue persuaded her to sit down and served her with a cup of tea from the pot Prue had ready, then talked her into cooking a meal for the Runner and his men. “And for Lord Jonathan and Mr. Wakefield if they are staying,” she said. “I doubt Madame Dupont will want to eat, poor thing.”
“French,” the cook said, nodding. “Very emotional.” And, finding her own emotional balance in the satisfaction of being English, she bustled off to call her assistants to order and begin dinner preparations.
The evening dragged on. Lord Jonathan left, apologising for not being able to stay any longer. David went, too. He would have stayed, Prue thought, but Gifford was clearly suspicious and insisted on them leaving together. She had not missed the interplay between Miss Fraser and David, but there had been no chance to ask him about it.
Would he let Tolliver know about the murder? She had no way of sending a message without alerting the Runners.
Prue told a maid to sit with Madame Dupont, and sent everyone else down to the kitchen for a meal. She took dinner on a tray to the two men left to guard the locked ground-floor rooms, and another tray to Madame Dupont’s room. She then brought a plate of food to the man who guarded the courtesan’s bedroom.
“Oh, but you cannot eat it standing here in the hall,” she said.
“Can’t leave the door,” the man said, his nostrils flaring at the savoury aroma.
“I don’t suppose… No, I shouldn’t even suggest it. You wouldn’t think of having it in Miss Diamond’s room, would you? Only she has a table and chair, and you would still be on guard…” She shuddered. “…I wouldn’t do it for all the tea in China. But I supposed you’re used to it. A man must be so brave to be a Runner!”
The guard, on his mettle, agreed that he could very well eat in Miss Diamond’s room, and she set the table for him and left him to his meal.
Then, having ensured at least thirty minutes of privacy, she took her lock picks to the book room door.
The lock was sturdy, but should have fallen easily to her picks. She’d trained on one very similar. She examined it carefully by the light of her candle. Why wouldn’t it unlock? Unless… She tried the handle and it turned easily, the door swinging open under her touch.
The small room held a desk, a sturdy bookshelf, and a large trunk. The candle revealed the signs of a hasty search. Papers were strewn across the desk, spilling over onto the floor. The trunk was open, and the books and papers it contained were in a jumbled mess, as if someone had shoved them carelessly to one side while rooting beneath them. The shelves held journals of two sizes, and some roughly tumbled scrolls.
Miss Fraser. It had to be her. While Prue and Lord Jonathan were with Madame, and Gifford was interrogating the staff on the floor below, she was alone upstairs for at least ten minutes. Clearly time enough to break into the room and ransack it, but not enough to leave no trace of her presence.
And now that she thought of it, Miss Diamond’s room showed the same signs of a hurried search.
Prue stacked and sorted, trying to deduce what was missing by what had been left.
Love notes and poems. Tradesmen’s bills—the household used a surprisingly large number of candles, coal, and wine. The clippings from the news-sheets were interesting: politics and war news; reports on the debate in the House of Commons on the Abolition Bill; reports on shipping arrivals and departures. Except for the most recent, they were neatly pasted into a journal the same size and shape as the larger ones on the shelf.
Sure enough, when she checked the shelved journals, each neatly labelled on the spine with a date range, they also bulged with pasted news clippings. The smaller journals were also dated, but were ledgers, with neat columns of figures on each page. Expenses on the left, income on the right? Yes, though Prue raised her eyebrows at some of the entries. ‘Informer: five shillings’, said one entry on the expenses side. And, on the income side, if this record could be believed, a long list of gifts Miss Diamond had turned into cash. A lot of cash.
A notation after most of the entries was easy to decipher. The names of the admirers she knew gave her the clue. BHy: Baron Hurley. JGd: Lord Jonathan Grenford; Tt: Captain Talbot, perhaps? GW enclosed in a heart was easy: Lady Georgiana Winderfield. No SSS: Prue remembered Miss Diamond’s confidence that Lord Selby had not sent flowers.
The journals with the clippings were all there, each date range matched with its successor. Several date ranges were missing from the set of account books.
Prue picked up one of the scrolls that had fallen to the floor from the bottom shelf and unrolled it enough to confirm that it was a detailed map of a harbour, but not one she knew.
Downstairs, the door knocker sounded. Prue checked she’d left the disarray as she’d found it, then hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Everything in the room needed to be carefully considered, but Prue was more interested in what Miss Fraser had taken with her than what she had left behind.
The caller had knocked twice more by the time Prue reached the front hall, and the man stationed by the parlour door was looking pained and uncertain.
“I didn’t know if I should answer, Missus,” he told Prue.
“Do not trouble yourself. I will get it,” Prue told him. “But thank you.”
As soon as she opened the door, Lord Selby brushed by her again, Mr. Annesley hard on his heels. What were they doing here? She had sent a message: ‘I regret to inform you that Miss Diamond has died.’ She could not have been clearer.
Selby and Annesley were heading for the stairs.
“Stop,” she said. Then, “Please, stop them,” to the Runner, who put his burly self between the two men and the stairs.
“Here, now, you can’t come in here like that.”
Selby spared the Runner barely a glance, just putting out a hand to shove him sideways. “Out of my way, oaf. I have something to retrieve from the whore’s bedroom.”
“This house is a crime scene, Lord Selby,” Prue said. “This gentleman and his colleague cannot permit you to go into any part of it, or take anything away, until the coroner’s jury have examined the scene.”
The Runner, who had been about to step to one side, firmed his shoulders, and said, “That’s right, gents. So if you’ll just be on your way, like.”
Selby argued and Annesley blustered, but the guard stood firm, and when his colleague came out of the dining room to lend his support, the two visitors gave up the attempt.
As they left, Annesley fixed Prue with a glare. “I won’t forget this. I’m adding it to the account you owe me.”
Selby stopped in the doorway and looked straight at Prue for the first time. “Is this the one, Annie?” He didn’t wait for Annesley’s nod, but continued, “I’ll remember you, too. Worth, isn’t it? One day soon, Worth, my friends and I will find out just what you are… worth.”
Annesley giggled. “Just what you are worth, yes.”
Selby ignored the interjection to peer at Prue in the dimly lit hallway. “Do I know you?”
Prue shook her head. It was true enough. Nobody knew her except, perhaps a little, David.
“She’s the housekeeper, Sel,” Annesley told him. “She probably let you in when you came to see The Diamond.”
“It’s not that,” Selby said. Prue waited for him to make the connection with the Sutton soiree, but instead he said, “I have it! She looks a bit like my wife.”
“Which one?” Annesley asked, the question setting him sniggering again. “Which one? That’s a good one, Sel.”
Selby stared at Prue a moment more, while she cast her lashes modestly down to hide the eyes: the feature she shared with her sister.
Selby’s next words appeared to be for himself rather than Annesley.
“No. Just the general colouring. There must be a thousand women in England who look a bit like Charrie. And she doesn’t have any relative called Worth.”
“Are you coming, Sel?” Annesley said, impatiently. “We can’t rub bellies with The Diamond tonight, so we need to find another whore.”
Selby shook his head then, a swift movement as if to dislodge his thoughts. “Coming, Annie. And I think I know just the girl to give us both a little joy.”