He had to acknowledge this home truth, but was still not entirely convinced of its application to the Washbourn case. “To Sophy’s credit, she never tried to kill me, at least not to my knowledge. I think that would have ended my calf-love in very short order.”

“And you say she married into the aristocracy?” Julia asked thoughtfully.

Pickett nodded. “She is now Lady Gerald Broadbridge.”

“Sophia Broadbridge? Oh John, you didn’t!”

He grimaced. “I did. Julia, I’m afraid your husband is a fool.”

Julia did not know Lady Gerald well—in fact, they had never been formally introduced—but she did remember her own first Season in London as the bride of Lord Fieldhurst, and she well recalled witnessing the spectacle of the former Miss Sophia Granger pursuing the middle-aged Lord Gerald Broadbridge from Tunbridge Wells to London, until at last he caught her. Given her own husband’s background, Julia suspected he would have stood little chance against Miss Granger if that rather ruthless young woman had set her sights on him.

In fact, knowing of his past history with the merchant’s daughter gave Julia some unexpected insight into his character: she remembered his conviction (still not entirely banished, she feared) that he was unworthy to aspire to marriage with her, and wondered to what extent the faithless Miss Granger was responsible for his feelings of inadequacy. In the light of this revelation, Julia revised her earlier thinking: instead of presenting Lady Gerald Broadbridge with flowers, she contemplated with pleasure the thought of putting her hands around the woman’s throat and choking the life out of her.

Although she said none of this to her husband, something of her thoughts must have shown in her face, for Pickett set aside his fork and laid his hand over hers. “My lady, don’t think you need have anything to fear from Sophy, for nothing could be further from the truth! What I felt for her—it seemed real to me at the time, but only because I had no idea then—” His voice was filled with wonder. “I didn’t know how it could be, between a man and a woman.”

She turned her hand over so that she might give his a little squeeze. “No more did I, and I had been married for six years! You need not regret Sophy, for she and Frederick were necessary, in their way, so that we would recognize what we’d found in each other.” Turning back to the business at hand, she asked brightly, “What will you do now? About the investigation, I mean.”

“I’d like to learn a bit more about poisoning with prussic acid, if I can,” he said. “What was the name of the doctor who treated me while I was injured—Portman, was that it?”

“Good heavens, no! Dr. Portman was that horrid man who wanted to drill a hole in your skull. Dr. Gilroy is the one you want—Thomas Gilroy. I believe he has offices in Harley Street.”

Pickett made a note of the name, and the conversation turned to other things. It was not until much later that Julia’s thoughts turned again to her husband’s first love. She had got up in the middle of the night to use the chamber pot—an increasingly frequent occurrence of late; really, it was no wonder she was tired so much of the time—and had just come back to bed. The evening was mild for late April, and so the bed curtains had been left open. Curzon Street had not yet been fitted with the gas street lamps that lit Pall Mall near St. James’s, but the moon was almost at the full, and its silvery light spilled through the window and illuminated the face of her sleeping husband. The sheer beauty of the man took her breath away, and she stood there for a full minute, just watching him as he slept.

Be kind to him, the magistrate had said, and she realized that he, too, knew about Sophy, who had not been kind at all. Small wonder Mr. Colquhoun had disapproved so strongly of her own friendship with his protégé! She hardly knew whether to curse the girl for hurting him, or to bless her for the ambition that had blinded her to the treasure that might have been hers. But as for her own treatment of him, she might have assured Mr. Colquhoun that they were two very different things. Sophy had only been out for what she could get; she, Julia, wanted only to lavish on him all the things that life had heretofore denied him. Unfortunately, it appeared that her stubborn, foolish love had no desire to be lavished upon. She stifled a sigh and climbed back into bed.

“Julia?” Pickett mumbled. “Is anything wrong?”

“It’s nothing, darling, only answering nature’s call.” She kissed him on the forehead. “Go back to sleep.”

He muttered something unintelligible and rolled over, apparently taking this advice to heart. But she lay awake for some time afterward, thinking of a pair of mocking black eyes and a nineteen-year-old boy with a broken heart.

 

12

 

Which Finds Mr. and Mrs. Pickett at Cross-Purposes

 

The following morning, Pickett stopped in Bow Street only long enough to acquaint Mr. Colquhoun with his plans before setting out for the Harley Street office of Mr. Thomas Gilroy, Physician. His recollections of the doctor were of necessity vague, given the fact that he had been unconscious during much of his time under Dr. Gilroy’s care, but at the sight of the doctor’s tall, lean figure and wire-rimmed spectacles, what few memories Pickett retained emerged from the fog. By contrast, the physician seemed to remember him quite well, as was evidenced by the warmth with which he was greeted.

“Why, Mr. Pickett, it’s a pleasure to see you again,” he exclaimed, offering Pickett a firm handshake. “But you need not have come in person. A message would have brought me to you. Tell me, are you still troubled by headaches? They will pass with time, I assure you.”

“Only very rarely,” Pickett answered him. “I can’t even remember the last time I had one. But I’m in no need of medical care today. In fact, I wanted to consult with you on a—a matter of some delicacy.”

Dr. Gilroy’s eyebrows rose. “Mrs. Pickett, then? Is she—?”

“No, no,” Pickett put in hastily, eager to put an end to any expectations the doctor might have of ushering a bouncing baby Pickett into the world. “Nothing like that.”

“Ah well, it’s early days yet. I daresay it will happen in its own good time.”

Privately, Pickett rather doubted it. After all, six years had not been enough time for Julia and her first husband to conceive a child. But he had not come to Harley Street to discuss his wife’s fertility or lack thereof.

“Actually, I wonder if you can advise me regarding a case I’m investigating,” he said.

“I can certainly try,” the doctor promised, waving him to a chair. “Pray sit down, and tell me what it is you would like to know.”

Pickett sat. “I should like you to tell me the symptoms of poisoning by prussic acid.”

The physician gave a short laugh. “The most striking symptom is death.” Seeing Pickett rather taken aback by this speech, Dr. Gilroy hurried to explain himself. “That is, death usually occurs before any symptoms can manifest themselves. Consequently, its influence is easier to identify after death than before.”

“I see,” Pickett said, rather daunted by this information. “And what identifiers might one expect to see then?”

The physician regarded him keenly. “If you examined the victim shortly after death occurred, you probably know them as well as I do: the unnaturally flushed face, the almond odor—” Pickett’s eyes lit up in recognition, and Dr. Gilroy added, “Perhaps it is I who should be asking you. I must confess that although I recall studying that particular substance in medical school, I have never actually seen a case.”

“Then Dr. Humphrey—Edmund Humphrey, that is—he was correct when he said such occurrences are rare?”

The doctor hesitated a moment before replying. “Professional ethics make it impossible for me to tell you what I think of Edmund Humphrey, but in this instance, at least, he was telling the truth.”

Pickett was as gratified by the knowledge that someone shared his low opinion of Dr. Humphrey as he was by the information itself. “And where might one obtain such a poison? From an apothecary?”

“I suppose one might ask,” Dr. Gilroy said, with such a lack of conviction that Pickett put no very great faith in this source. “Better yet an artist, or a seller of art supplies.”

“An artist?” Pickett echoed incredulously. “Why would an artist be in possession of a deadly poison?”

“Because the substance is derived from the pigment Prussian blue, which may be found in any artist’s paint box.”

“An artist,” Pickett repeated thoughtfully, recalling the large portrait holding pride of place over the mantel of the Washbourn drawing room, the portrait in which Lady Washbourn was depicted wearing a dark blue gown. It would be interesting to know who had painted it and when, and how active Lord Washbourn had been throughout the process: if he had observed the painter at work; if he had asked any questions or otherwise taken an unusual interest in the proceedings; or, perhaps most intriguing of all, if the artist had noticed his blue paint missing at the conclusion of this commission.

 

* * *

 

Pickett returned to Curzon Street that evening eager to share his findings with his wife over dinner; however, it soon transpired that Julia had made other plans. She usually greeted him at the door, having kept an ear cocked for his return, but on this occasion he was met by Rogers, who relieved him of his hat and gloves and informed him that the mistress awaited him upstairs with what she termed a “little surprise.”

“A surprise?” echoed Pickett, regarding the butler with an arrested expression. “Upstairs, you say?”

Rogers inclined his head. “Yes, sir.”

As most of the rooms on the upper floors were still unfurnished, “upstairs” could only mean the bedchamber. Pickett promptly lost all interest in dinner. He stammered his thanks to the butler and climbed the stairs, resisting the urge to take them two at a time. He reached the door to the bedchamber and froze on the threshold. The room was empty.

“John, is that you?” Julia called from a room further down the corridor. “I’m in here.”

Pickett followed the sound of her voice, and found her in one of the unfurnished spare rooms. A large white sheet had been spread on the floor, and the chair that usually stood before her dressing table had been brought from the bedchamber and placed squarely in the middle of the sheet. Julia stood at one corner, smiling proudly up at him—and she was not alone. She was accompanied by a dapper little man wielding a hairbrush in one hand and a scissors in the other.

“John, this is Monsieur Albert. Monsieur, my husband, Mr. Pickett.” As if further explanation for the Frenchman’s presence was required, she explained, “Monsieur Albert is going to do something about that spot you dislike so.”

“Bonjour, Monsieur Pickett.” He pronounced the name “pee-kay,” as if Pickett were as French as himself. “If it will please monsieur to take off his coat and sit down?”

He gestured toward the solitary chair. Feeling rather foolish (to say nothing of sexually frustrated), Pickett shrugged out of his brown serge coat and sank numbly onto the chair.

“As for you, Madame Pickett,” he continued in a heavily accented mixture of English and his native tongue, “if you will please to leave us?”

“Of course.” Julia took Pickett’s coat, then gave him a wink and a smile and removed herself from the room.

“And now, monsieur, voila! We begin.” Suiting the word to the deed, he began to ply his brush.

“There’s a short spot at the crown,” Pickett said, finding his tongue at last. “It had to be shaved—”

“Oui, oui, madame has told me all,” Monsieur Albert assured him. “It is not difficult. Madame’s first husband, le vicomte, had a thin spot, oh, of the smallest, which I had the honor of helping him to conceal. But this—” He ran one hand through Pickett’s thick curls. “This will be un plaisir. Monsieur has hair for which many a lady would commit murder.”

“So I’ve been told,” Pickett muttered, remembered the lascivious lady at the Washbourn masquerade. Being favorably compared to Julia’s first husband, however, had gone some way toward reconciling him to the process, and he relaxed somewhat in his chair—until he heard the metallic whisper of blade sliding against blade, and realized to his dismay that his head felt curiously light.

He whirled about in the chair, and stared with horrified disbelief at the sheet covering the floor. On its pristine folds lay a hank of long brown curls, tied at one end with a black ribbon.

“You cut off my hair!” He clapped one hand to the back of his head, and narrowly missed being stabbed with the Frenchman’s scissors.

“Have a care!” Monsieur Albert exclaimed. “You will do yourself an injury, non? But oui, I give monsieur a coiffure of the most fashionable, as madame has desired. I will now trim the ends, if you will permit.”

“My permission doesn’t seem to be necessary,” Pickett grumbled under his breath. Still, the damage had been done, and so he had no choice but to let the man finish what he’d begun.

At last Monsieur Albert pronounced himself “fini.” He gave Pickett a hand mirror and stepped back, confidently awaiting the expressions of praise and gratitude that must surely follow when his client gazed upon his reflection. His client, however, was speechless, and not necessarily with admiration. Pickett, looking into the mirror with some trepidation, was relieved to discover that from the front, at least, he did not look so very different. It was only when he turned his head to the side, and saw the ends of his hair just curling over the collar of his shirt, that he could tell the extent of the violation that had been perpetrated on his unsuspecting head. He reached back gingerly and fingered the shorn ends at the nape of his neck.

“If monsieur will notice,” the hairdresser put in, “the spot he so deplored is quite hidden.”

That much, at least, was true. Now that the curls at his crown were no longer confined to their ribbon, the tuft of short hair was easily lost among them. He supposed he should be grateful, but it was the principle of the thing that offended him. He had never agreed to have his hair cut, had never even said he wanted to have his hair cut, and yet Julia had taken it upon herself to—

“Oh, my,” breathed a soft feminine voice, a voice that certainly did not belong to Monsieur Albert.

Pickett turned and saw Julia standing in the doorway, staring at him wide-eyed. Her obvious admiration acted as a balm to his wounded pride, until he reminded himself that of course she would like it; she had orchestrated the whole thing, and had done so without his knowledge or permission. He turned away from her, hardening his heart.

“Thank you, Monsieur Albert,” Julia told the hairdresser quickly, realizing at once that all was not well with her husband. “How much do I owe you?”

“I will send madame my bill,” he promised, being wise enough in the ways of the aristocracy to know that his noble clients would consider it shockingly vulgar for him to demand payment at the time his services were rendered.

As soon as the Frenchman had taken his leave, Julia turned to Pickett. “Darling, what is the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” he echoed incredulously. “What’s the matter? Julia, I didn’t want my hair cut! I never said I wanted my hair cut!”

“You did,” she reminded him, taken aback by his vehemence. “I offered to send for Monsieur Albert, since he’d always cut Frederick’s hair, and asked if you would prefer me to ask Emily Dunnington who cuts her husband’s, and you said it wouldn’t be necessary. So I sent for Monsieur.”

“I said it wouldn’t be necessary to send for anyone at all!”

“You didn’t!” she insisted. “I’m sure you didn’t!”

“Well, it’s what I meant!”

“And am I supposed to be able to read your thoughts?”

“No, but you might at least have asked!”

A hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach suggested to Julia that he might have a point. Still, she had spent long six years deferring to a husband who always managed to put her in the wrong, and she had no intention of falling back into the same pattern with her second husband. “For heaven’s sake, John, it’s hair! If you don’t like it, you can always grow it out again.” Seeing he was not convinced, she wrapped her arms around him and ran her fingers through the short curls at the back of his neck. “I think it looks splendid. Can you not at least try to like it?”

“I like you,” he said, heaving a sigh of resignation as he returned her embrace. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

And it must be said to his credit that he tried hard to believe it.

* * *

Pickett arose the next morning with his good humor apparently restored, but it seemed to Julia that there was an invisible wall between them that had not been there before, and she knew (the warmth of his farewell kiss notwithstanding) that she was not entirely forgiven. After he had set out for Bow Street, Julia decided to try and restore herself to his good graces with a little investigating of her own. With this end in view, she dressed for the day in a Pomona green walking dress with a matching spencer, and set out on foot for Grosvenor Square. Upon arriving at the Washbourn residence, she sent up her card, and within a very few minutes was ushered into the drawing room where Lady Washbourn sat waiting to receive her.

“My dear Mrs. Pickett,” the countess said, rising to drop a curtsy. “How kind of you to call! Won’t you sit down?”

The walk had not been long, but the sun was warm, and Julia was only too thankful to sink onto the brocade sofa, conscious once again of the sense of fatigue that had plagued her all too frequently of late.

“Would you care for tea?” asked her hostess, reaching for the bell pull. “Or something a bit stronger—sherry, perhaps, or a glass of peach ratafia?”

“No!” Recalling her husband’s suspicions regarding the peach ratafia, Julia was certain she would never be able to drink it again, and certainly not under Lady Washbourn’s roof. Seeing her hostess regarding her with raised brows, she added in a more moderate tone, “That is, tea would be lovely, thank you.”

Lady Washbourn gave the necessary orders to the butler, along with her instructions that he was to deny her to any other callers. After he had left the room, she turned back to Julia. “Dare I hope—that is, have you some news for me?”

“I’m afraid you are laboring under a misapprehension,” Julia said. “I have not come as an emissary for my husband. I only wanted to thank you for your hospitality in inviting Mr. Pickett and me to your entertainment, and to express my regret that it ended in such a tragedy.” Which was not entirely accurate, Julia reflected, but it was true insofar as it went.

“Oh. I see. Yes, I thought it was going rather well, until—until what happened to poor Annie.” Lady Washbourn gave her a strained smile. “I fear I am not quite comfortable in company. It was my husband’s mother who suggested that we host a party to allow me to practice entertaining.”

Privately Julia thought an intimate dinner or two, followed by perhaps a card party or a musical evening, would be less demanding for an inexperienced hostess, and therefore more suitable, than a large masked affair at which guests would be prone to take advantage of their anonymity in order to conduct themselves in ways they never would have risked, had their identities been immediately apparent. Aloud, however, she merely said, “You are fortunate, then, in your mother-in-law. I wish mine had been as understanding.”

“Mother Washbourn has been everything that is kind,” the countess agreed, “which is all the more remarkable when one considers that she was once Lady Beatrice Frampton, the daughter of the Duke of Moring, whose holdings apparently include most of Hampshire.”

“But—forgive me, your ladyship—”

“Oh, pray call me Eliza.”

Julia thought their acquaintance was rather slight to have progressed already to the use of Christian names, but credited it to the poor little countess’s hunger for friendship, rather than any intentional impropriety on her part.

“Eliza, then,” she said, acceding to this request, “I was under the impression that you and Lord Washbourn had been married for two years already. How is it that you have only now begun entertaining?”

Lady Washbourn nodded. “Yes, we married in the summer of ’07. But Washbourn’s father died very shortly after the wedding—he had been ill for some time, and was particularly wishful to see his son wed before he died—and then my own father died not long after, so we have spent most of our marriage in mourning.”

Julia searched these words for any implied criticism of her own failure to mourn her first husband for the full twelve months Society judged proper, but found nothing beyond a simple statement of fact. “A sad beginning to your life together,” she said sympathetically. “Let us hope the end of your mourning marks the beginning of happier days ahead.”

“I hope so.” The countess’s bleak expression held very little hope for this desirable outcome. “Mrs. Pickett, may I—may I ask you a personal question?”

“I suppose so,” Julia said warily.

“How long after your marriage—your first marriage, that is—was it before you realized you’d made a mistake?”

Julia blinked, taken aback by the question in spite of her hostess’s warning as to the personal nature of her query. Julia would most likely have given a sharp set-down to anyone else presumptuous enough to press for such confidentialities on so short an acquaintance, but decided to indulge Lady Washbourn for the sake of her husband’s investigation. After all, if Lady Washbourn were to receive such confidences, then she could hardly balk at answering Julia’s own inquiries.

“It was not so bad at first,” Julia recalled, casting her mind back to that time almost seven years earlier when she and her first husband had been newly married. “Indeed, our wedding trip was quite—quite pleasant.” Pleasant, yes, but six weeks with Lord Fieldhurst in Paris during the brief Peace of Amiens had been nothing to compare to six days with John Pickett in a shabby two-room flat in Drury Lane. Still, she had been a bedazzled nineteen-year-old girl, with no knowledge yet of how glorious—or how painful—marriage could be.

Lady Washbourn eagerly leaned forward in her seat. “Oh, yes! Our honeymoon was lovely, too.” A shadow crossed her face. “I knew Washbourn did not love me, of course. He had hoped to marry Lady Barbara Stafford, but in spite of her father’s exalted rank, Lady Barbara’s dowry was no more than respectable, and Washbourn had to wed a fortune if he hoped to salvage his family’s heritage. I knew I was not his first choice, and yet I thought—I hoped, anyway—that I could make him happy, that in time he might learn to love me.”

“But honeymoons have to end sometime, don’t they?” Julia remarked sympathetically. “In my case, it was a summer in Brighton that sounded the death knell, for it was there that I discovered Fieldhurst had a predilection for opera dancers. We had been married for almost a year by that time, and while there had been signs that he was unfaithful—unexplained absences, women of the demi-monde who smiled at him a bit too familiarly when we encountered them at the theatre or in the park—he assured me I was worried about nothing, and I was only too ready to believe him. Then, too, I was unable to conceive a child, and that eventually drove a wedge between us.”

“In my case, there was nothing so definite as that,” Lady Washbourn recalled sadly. “By the time we returned from our honeymoon, we were—friends—or at least I thought we could be, in time. I had every reason to believe we might learn to be happy together. But after we returned to Washbourn Abbey, something changed. Little things began to annoy him, and although I’d had charge of my father’s household after Mama died, I didn’t do things at the Abbey the way Washbourn’s mother, and his grandmother, and his great-grandmother had done.”

“And I suppose your predecessor’s remaining beneath the same roof hardly helped matters,” Julia remarked, belatedly thankful that her own mother-in-law had removed to the Dower House in anticipation of their return from Paris.

“No, no, you do Mother Washbourn an injustice,” the countess protested. “She has been nothing but supportive. Whenever I committed some faux pas through ignorance, she always defended me. I remember one incident shortly after we returned from our wedding trip, when I ordered that the medieval tapestries in the hall should be taken down so they could be cleaned and repaired. Washbourn was beside himself when he saw they were gone, and it was Mother Washbourn who reminded him that I was brought up with a different set of values, and did not understand the significance of an ancient tradition and ‘elegant decay,’ as she put it. And I must say she was right,” she added with unexpected candor. “I cannot see the sense of letting one’s family treasures fall apart through respectful neglect when they could be saved by a discreet stitch or two on the back, where no one could possibly notice.”

Julia was inclined to agree, provided the restoration could be done in such a way as to render the repairs invisible, but she suspected the Fieldhursts would not have agreed with this philosophy any more than the Washbourns had done.

“And then,” continued Lady Washbourn, “Lady Barbara’s husband died in a hunting accident. Now she is free, and Washbourn—isn’t.”

“Your ladyship—er, Eliza,” Julia began, choosing her words with care. “My husband told me that he suggested you might leave London for a time, and that you refused even to consider it. Under the circumstances, would it not be better—?”

“No!” Lady Washbourn shook her head emphatically. “I won’t run away and leave Lady Barbara a clear field. Perhaps I might do so if I thought she truly cared for him, if I thought he might find with her the happiness he has not been able to find with me. But she is an odious creature who cares for nothing but herself! He might be unhappy with me, but he would be utterly miserable with her.”

“Perhaps if you were to go away for a time and leave him to her, he might discover that for himself,” Julia suggested, trying another tack. “It is quite possible that without the lure of the forbidden, the lady would lose much of her appeal.”

“I understand what you are saying, but I cannot,” the countess insisted. “Besides Washbourn, there is our daughter to consider, you know.”

“And for your daughter’s sake, you must do what you can to stay alive,” Julia pointed out with some asperity.

She might have saved her breath. While Lady Washbourn was perfectly willing to concede Julia’s point, she remained adamant. In the end, Julia was forced to admit defeat, and took her leave without persuading her hostess to take what steps she might to save herself. Still, she could not feel the visit was a complete waste, for she had made one interesting discovery: Lady Washbourn, in spite of her suspicions, was deeply in love with her husband.

 

13

 

In Which Comedy Turns to Tragedy

 

Pickett, meanwhile, entered the Bow Street Public Office to considerable fanfare.

“Will you look at Lord John!” one member of the Foot Patrol exclaimed loudly enough to be heard over a chorus of appreciative whistles. “His lady wife is going to make a gentleman of him yet.”

“Turn around,” commanded Mr. Dixon, making a spinning motion with his hand. “Let us see the back.”

Suppressing a huff of annoyance, Pickett turned.

“Very smart,” said Mr. Colquhoun, observing this exchange from the bench. “Still, you might have warned us. Mr. Carson here might have arrested you as an imposter.”

“You had as much warning as I did,” Pickett said with some asperity. “When I got home last night, Julia had a curst Frenchman waiting for me with scissors in hand.”

“Ah well, you may find you like it, once you get used to it. And if not, well, it will always grow back. It’s only hair, you know.”

“So she said,” Pickett grumbled.

“All jesting aside, what do you intend to do today regarding the Washbourn investigation?”

Pickett resisted the urge to protest that it was no jesting matter, and instead described for the magistrate his meeting with the doctor. “Which sounds rather suspicious, given that there’s a large portrait in the Washbourn drawing room which shows her ladyship wearing a blue dress,” he concluded. “I intend to call in Grosvenor Square and find out who painted it, and when.”

Mr. Colquhoun nodded in approval, and Pickett set out for Grosvenor Square. Upon reaching the Washbourn residence, however, he suffered a check.

“Her ladyship is otherwise engaged,” the butler informed him, “but if you would care to leave a message—?”

Pickett was tempted, but reminded himself that any such message might reach the ears of Lord Washbourn or the dowager countess. He shook his head. “No, no message, thank you.”

Deprived of his primary object, Pickett satisfied himself instead with calling at a nearby art supply house, and inquiring of the proprietor whether he included Prussian blue among his inventory.

“Oh, aye,” the shopkeeper informed him. “It’s one of my most requested paints, and no wonder. A hundred years ago, you know, the only blues available to artists tended toward gray or green, like cerulean, or else were so costly, like ultramarine, that only well-established artists could afford them.”

In fact, Pickett had not known, but the information gave him an angle from which to introduce his next question.

“I’d never thought of painting as being so expensive a pastime,” he remarked, and wondered aloud whether the shopkeeper numbered any of the aristocracy among his clientele.

“Aye, several,” the man said proudly. “Especially those with daughters who paint in watercolors.”

As Lord Washbourn’s daughter was still an infant, Pickett doubted she was painting much of anything except the seat of her clouts. “I wonder if you’ve ever done business with an acquaintance of mine,” he said. “Lady Washbourn, whose husband is the earl of that name.”

“Washbourn,” the shopkeeper echoed thoughtfully, his brow creased in concentration. At last he shook his head. “No, I can’t say I recall her ladyship, nor her lord, neither.”

“Ah well, their daughter is a bit young for art lessons as yet,” Pickett said, displaying a talent for understatement.

“When her little ladyship is ready, I hope you’ll put in a word for me with her parents.”

Pickett agreed to this, privately hoping that the girl’s mother would still be alive at that point to take his advice, and took his leave. He repeated this exercise at some half-dozen art supply houses in all, each one chosen for their proximity to the Washbourn residence, and received the very same answers. He gained a new understanding of the difficulties of reproducing Nature’s hues on canvas, which had apparently become somewhat easier with the accidental discovery of Prussian blue a century earlier, but came away with no firm knowledge of how Lord Washbourn might have come by this substance.

At last, finding himself in the vicinity of Curzon Street (and painfully aware that he had parted from Julia on less than idyllic terms), he set out for Number 22 with the intention of having a bite to eat in the company of his wife before returning to Bow Street. He entered the house, and found her in the hall, just putting off her bonnet and pelisse.

“Why, John, what a pleasant surprise,” she said, lifting her face for his kiss. “Are you hungry? Shall I ring for tea and sandwiches?”

He agreed to this plan, and within a very few minutes they were seated side by side on the drawing room sofa.

“Only think, if I had been five minutes later, or you five minutes earlier, we should have missed one another,” she remarked as she dispensed tea into two delicate Sevrès cups. “I have spent most of the morning closeted with Lady Washbourn.”

Pickett set his plate down with a clatter. “You what?”

“I called on Lady Washbourn,” she said again, bewildered by his reaction. “I knew her refusal to leave her husband had you baffled, and I thought—quite correctly, as it turned out—that she might be more inclined to confide in the widow of a viscount than in a Bow Street Runner.”

“Thank you for reminding me of my place, my lady,” he said, tight-lipped. “For a while there I was in danger of forgetting it.”

She set down the teapot and gave him a reproachful look. “Oh, John, don’t be that way! Your ‘place’ has nothing to do with it. Poor Lady Washbourn has so few friends, thanks in large part to the machinations of ‘Aunt Mildred,’ that I thought she might welcome a confidante.” Seeing he was not satisfied with this explanation, she added coaxingly, “You used to like my help.”

“It was my only excuse for spending any time with you,” he pointed out.

“Oh, was that it? How stupid of me! I actually thought I was being useful!”

“Of course you were,” he amended hastily. “But on those occasions we worked together. You didn’t go haring off on your own like this without so much as a by-your-leave!”

“Oh, so now I must ask your permission before I pay a simple morning call?” she demanded, her bosom swelling with indignation.

“Not a simple morning call, no. But this was something more than just a simple morning call, wasn’t it?”

“It is only common courtesy to call on one’s hostess the day after an event to thank her for her hospitality!”

“This isn’t the day after the event,” he pointed out.

“No, for an inquest was held the morning after. And I don’t see why you are making such a great to-do over nothing! I should have thought you would be grateful to me for discovering the real reason for Lady Washbourn’s refusal to leave Town, while you were wasting your time calling on that horrid Lady Gerald Broadbridge!”

“I wasn’t calling on Sophy; I was calling on her father, and she just happened to stop in.”

“She actually paid a morning call?” Julia exclaimed in scandalized tones. “I hope she had her husband’s permission!”

“Will you please leave Sophy out of this? As it happens, I tried to call on Lady Washbourn myself—I wanted to ask her who painted that enormous portrait over the mantel—but I was turned away with the information that her ladyship was otherwise engaged.”

“But that’s easy,” Julia insisted. “The artist was Mr. Henry Tomkins, of the Royal Academy.”

He blinked at her in confusion. “Lady Washbourn told you this?”

“She didn’t have to. Mr. Tomkins is the most fashionable portraitist in London at the moment, and his depiction of light and texture is quite distinctive. So you see, you didn’t have to ask Lady Washbourn, after all. You had only to ask your wife.”

Perhaps it was the note of triumph in her voice, or maybe her rather smug smile, that goaded him beyond endurance. “Very well,” he retorted. “Perhaps my wife can also tell me when it was painted, and whether Lord Washbourn watched the proceedings, or showed any undue interest, or whether Mr. Tomkins happened to misplace any of his paints during the process.” Finding her lost for speech, he prompted, “Well, Mrs. Pickett? Am I not to have the benefit of your expertise?”

Whereupon Julia, to her own dismay and her husband’s horror, promptly burst into tears.

“Julia?” Pickett slid from the sofa and dropped to his knees before her, taking her hands in his and alternately chafing and kissing them in a futile effort to stem the flood. “Julia, sweetheart, don’t—please don’t cry,” he pleaded helplessly, utterly floored by the sight of the same woman who had only a year ago faced the prospect of the gallows with an almost stoic calm now dissolving into tears at a few cross words (at least, he thought there had only been a few—hadn’t there?) from her husband. “Never mind, my love, you had no way of knowing I meant to call on her ladyship. I’m a beast to speak to you so.”

Her tears showed no signs of abating, and he transferred both her hands to one of his own, so that he might have a hand free to reach into his coat pocket for a handkerchief. Unfortunately, this proved to be a relic of the days before his marriage, when he had been obliged to purchase such things at secondhand; consequently, it bore someone else’s monogram in one corner. Apparently the sight of it disturbed her, for it seemed to Pickett that her tears fell all the harder.

“Look,” he said in increasing desperation, recalling something else he’d felt in his pocket while fumbling for his handkerchief. He reached in once more, and drew out a small coin purse. “Today I got my wages for the week—twenty-five shillings. Let’s blue it all, shall we?”

This suggestion, it seemed, was unusual enough to make her emerge, puffy of eyes and red of nose, from the folds of his secondhand handkerchief. “What, all of it?”

“As you said yourself, it’s not as if we need it to live on.” He was rather proud of the careful neutrality in his voice. “What do you say? Dinner at Grillon’s? The theatre? Not Drury Lane, obviously, since it burned to the ground, but they must be staging something at Covent Garden.”

“Oh, John, do you mean it?” she asked, smiling tremulously through her tears.

Her eagerness made him feel ashamed. Since returning from their wedding trip, they had made only one social appearance—the Washbourn masquerade—and even that had been a matter of professional necessity. For his part, he could think of nothing more pleasurable than coming home to his wife at the end of the day; he tended to forget that she was accustomed to evenings filled with social engagements, to which his solitary companionship must pale in comparison.

“I do,” he announced recklessly. “I’ll take you anywhere you like, and you may dress me up however you wish.” He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “I have to be getting back to Bow Street now, but shall I stop by Covent Garden Theatre and purchase tickets?”

She readily agreed to this plan, and kissed him fondly (several times) in between profuse apologies for wrecking his plans for the investigation. He was obliged to insist, with perhaps more diplomacy than truth, that she had done no such thing, and they parted on such exceedingly good terms that he was halfway to Bow Street before it occurred to him that he just might have been played for a fool.

No, his heart argued with his mind, it isn’t possible. She’s not that sort of woman.

But his misgivings were not allayed when he stopped by the box office at Covent Garden Theatre, and discovered that the evening’s offering was a comedy with the inauspicious title of The Bridegroom Deceived.

 

* * *

 

Julia, for her part, reflected upon the incident with mingled shame and bewilderment. Why, she had never done such a thing before in her life! In fact, she despised the sort of female who resorted to tears and hysterics in order to get her own way. She had no idea what had brought on the sudden bout of crying, much less the reason for its equally sudden cessation, but in retrospect she could see how her uncharacteristic outburst might be interpreted in just such a light. It was too galling to think he might believe her capable of such manipulative scheming.

There was only one thing to do, then, to make sure she was restored to her husband’s good graces: she would spend the afternoon lying down with cold compresses over her eyes to reduce the swelling, and then, when he returned to Curzon Street that evening, she would devote herself to the task of captivating him anew.

 

* * *

 

Thus it was that, when Pickett returned to Curzon Street that evening with a large bouquet of flowers in his arm (having purchased this from the same market at Covent Garden where, in his younger days, he had once picked pockets or pinched the occasional apple), Rogers relieved him of his hat and gloves and informed him that he might find madam upstairs preparing to go out for the evening.

Pickett thanked the butler for the information, then took the stairs two at a time. He tapped lightly on the bedroom door, then opened it, stepped inside—

And froze, the flowers in his hand forgotten. His lady stood by the window (was it possible that she had been watching for him?), dressed for the evening’s entertainment in a high-waisted, low-necked gown of some diaphanous white fabric that appeared golden in the light from the setting sun. He had seen her like this once before, only on that other occasion it had been the fire in the grate that had gilded her like the touch of Midas.

“You remember,” she observed with some satisfaction, seeing the recognition in his eyes.

He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came. He shut his mouth, swallowed, and tried again. “You were wearing that dress on the night we met.” It was a curiously romantic interpretation of the evening of a man’s murder, but perhaps understandable under the circumstances. Pickett shook his head in wonder. “If anyone had told me then that in less than a year you and I would be married, I would have thought he belonged in Bedlam.”

“The best thing Frederick ever did for me was lead me to you.” Her gaze dropped to the burden in his arms. “But what’s all this?”

He looked down at the flowers he held as if surprised to see them there, and then stuck them out awkwardly in her direction. “They’re for you. It’s just that, well, I’ve never made you cry before. I never want to do it again.”

She found herself blinking back tears as she took the flowers from him. “Too late,” she said, laughing a little at her own foolishness. “It was sweet of you, John. I’ll have Rogers put them in water, shall I?”

“Rogers can wait,” Pickett said, and pulled her into his arms and kissed her in a way that posed a considerable threat to the flowers trapped between them.

At length she felt his fingers dislodging her hairpins, and was moved to protest. “John, you’re wrecking my coiffure.”

“Hang your coiffure,” he retorted, making no very noticeable attempt to mend his ways.

“What a domineering man I’ve married,” she complained with a marked lack of regret. “But you had best change your clothes, if we are to reach Covent Garden Theatre before the curtain call.”

Reluctantly agreeing to this plan, Pickett shrugged off his workaday brown serge coat and washed up, then rang for Thomas to assist him into the evening clothes he’d worn for his wedding. When this operation was complete (and Pickett was forced to concede that it took less time with Thomas’s assistance than it would have taken him alone), the Picketts, man and wife, set out for Covent Garden.

And if it occurred to either of them that they were both trying perhaps a bit too hard to avoid resuming the subject of their earlier disagreement, it is doubtful that they would have recognized this as anything but a good thing.

 

* * *

 

Upon being set down before the theatre at Covent Garden, Pickett and Julia were the objects of cheers and not a few jesting remarks by members of the Night Patrol just coming on duty at the Bow Street Public Office adjacent to the theatre.

“Ignore them,” Pickett said, glaring at his colleagues before escorting his wife inside.

She left her new evening wrap in the cloakroom (hoping that it might be spared the fate of its predecessor, which had perished in the Drury Lane Theatre fire), and then took Pickett’s arm as they climbed the stairs to the boxes above. She was rather taken aback to discover that her husband, usually so careful in matters of money, had spared no expense where this outing was concerned; the box he had hired for the evening was one of the best and, consequently, the most expensive. The tickets, together with the flowers he’d bought, must have made quite a dent in his twenty-five shillings.

After they had taken their seats, however, she noticed his gaze darting about the theatre, and realized he was less concerned with making a lavish gesture than he was with scouting out the exits and determining the best route of escape in case of emergency; clearly, she was not the only one who retained vivid memories of their flight from the burning Drury Lane Theatre two months earlier. She could not help thinking this a good thing, as it served to distract his attention from the curious stares, raised quizzing glasses, and occasional pointing fingers leveled at them. Lifting her chin defiantly, she moved her chair closer to his and proceeded to flirt outrageously with him.

Or at least she tried. It was difficult to flirt with a man who wouldn’t flirt back.

“What is it, John?” she asked at last, finding his gaze fixed on some point on the opposite side of the theatre.

“Look at that box—the fourth one from the proscenium. Is that Lord and Lady Washbourn?”

“I think so,” she said, reaching instinctively for her reticule before remembering that the object she would have sought was not there. “I do wish I hadn’t lost my opera glasses in the fire!”

He laced his fingers through hers. “I’m just glad that was all you lost.”

“I lost my evening cloak, too,” she reminded him, and then gave his hand a squeeze. “But only look what I found.”

There was no opportunity to say more, for at that moment the curtain rose and the play began. The Washbourns and their troubles were forgotten until the interval between acts, at which time the boxes emptied as aristocrats decamped to the lobby for refreshments.

“Would you like something?” Pickett asked, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the lobby. “Champagne, perhaps? I’m not on duty tonight, you know.”

He did not seem precisely eager at the prospect of going downstairs to fetch it, and she realized that he had been more aware of the gawking looks than he had let on. She should not have been surprised; after all, his livelihood (at least until he had married her) depended upon his being observant. Although a glass of champagne sounded tempting, she would not subject him to the sort of scrutiny he would face were he to go in search of it.

“Thank you, darling, but I’m not thirsty,” she said with less than perfect truth. “Let’s just stay here, shall we? Oh, look! Now, what do you think of that?”

Without being so vulgar as to point, she contrived to position her fan so that it directed his attention to a box across the theatre, one level lower than the Washbourn box and some distance to its right. Lord Washbourn had just entered this enclosure, and stood talking to a lady whose ample bosom threatened to spill out of her low-cut gown.

“At a guess, I should say that was Lady Barbara Brennan,” he said.

Julia nodded. “The very same. And in the meantime, there sits poor little Lady Washbourn all alone.”

“There’s something we can do about that, anyway,” Pickett said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Everyone else appears to be visiting. Why shouldn’t we?”

“An excellent notion.” She gave him her hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. “I can’t help wondering, though, if it is simple human kindness that inspires you, or if you are hoping to learn something useful.”

“A bit of both, perhaps.”

She nodded wisely. “I suspected as much. Very well, Mr. Pickett, lead on!”

He did, and as they traversed the long, curving corridor to the other side of the theatre, she noticed once more that the awkwardness with which he faced purely social situations disappeared once he became a man on a mission. Pickett, for his part, counted doors as they passed, wondering how they would know the right box when they came to it. Thankfully, this dilemma was resolved when he recognized a footman in the Washbourn livery stationed outside one such door.

“Lord and Lady Washbourn?” Pickett inquired, just to be certain.

“His lordship has stepped out, but her ladyship is within.”

“Excellent!”

The footman flung open the door and stepped back to allow them entrance.

“Back so soon, my dear?” Lady Washbourn began, turning at the sound of the door opening. “Oh, Mr. Pickett! And Mrs. Pickett, I’m so pleased to see you.” She rose from her chair and dipped a curtsy.

Greetings were exchanged, and then the countess gestured toward the chair vacated by her husband. “Washbourn is not here at the moment, but he should be back directly. In the meantime, will you not sit down?”

They seated themselves, and Pickett broached the subject he had been unable to raise with the countess that morning. “Your ladyship, my wife and I have been discussing the portrait hanging over your drawing room mantel,” he said, which was certainly a novel way of describing the conversation that had taken place a few hours earlier. “Mrs. Pickett says it was done by a Mr. Tomkins.”

“You have a good eye, Mrs. Pickett,” she told Julia, then turned to Pickett. “Yes, Mr. Henry Tomkins of the Royal Academy.”

“Was it painted shortly after your marriage, or more recently?”

Lady Washbourn regarded him keenly, realizing there was more behind his innocent questioning than an interest in art. “It was done six months ago, when we were in Town for the autumn session of Parliament. Mr. Tomkins is much in demand, you know, and his services are practically impossible to procure during the Season.”

“Did your husband watch Mr. Tomkins at work?” Realizing they might be overheard by curious ears in the adjacent boxes, Pickett added in an offhand manner, “I suspect his lordship paid a pretty penny, so I shouldn’t be surprised at his wanting to make sure he was getting his money’s worth.”

“No, for Mr. Tomkins will not allow anyone to watch him paint. I confess I was more than a bit nervous about the finished product, for I don’t need an artist to tell me I am no beauty. Still, I can’t but be pleased with the results. It is an excessively flattering likeness, is it not?”

“On the contrary, I thought the artist captured you very well,” Pickett said. Lowering his voice, he asked, “When Mr. Tomkins completed the commission and presented his bill, did he mention any of his paints being lost, or misplaced?”

“Why, no, Mr. Pickett,” she responded in kind, but her expression was puzzled. “Should he have done?”

“That is what I would like to know, your ladyship. If you should happen to recall any such incident, will you send word to me, at either Bow or Curzon Street?”

“Of course.” Correctly assuming the subject to be closed, at least for the nonce, she addressed Julia in a very different tone. “Tell me, Mrs. Pickett, what do you think of The Bridegroom Deceived?”

Julia shook her head. “It’s a very amusing play, but I fear I cannot think much of the intelligence of any man who fails to recognize his wife through a disguise.” She smiled up at Pickett. “I suspect my own husband would very quickly penetrate any such ruse.”

“Yes, but then, you are wed to an unusually clever man,” her ladyship pointed out. “Then, too, Mr. Goodman had no reason to suspect that his bride was a princess, and so he would have no reason to expect to see her in such a rôle.”

“It will be interesting to see how he reacts when he finds out,” Pickett remarked with perhaps undue solemnity, given that the play under discussion was a farce.

“You will not have long to wait, for the second act should begin soon. I do hope Washbourn will not be late—ah, there you are,” she said a bit too brightly, looking at some point beyond Pickett’s shoulder.

“Forgive me, my dear—Mrs. Pickett, Mr. Pickett,” he added, nodding to each of the visitors in turn. “Some nonsense about a missing fan. Lady Barbara is convinced she must have lost it on the night of our masquerade.”

“She summoned you to her box for the purpose of discussing a lost fan?” Lady Washbourn asked, apparently unable to prevent a trace of skepticism from creeping into her tone.

His lordship nodded. “This particular fan had been a gift from—a former suitor.” His slight stumble left Pickett in no doubt as to the identity of the suitor in question. “I told her you had not mentioned finding such a thing—although poor Annie’s death might well have driven it from your mind—and that she would do better to address her inquiries to you.”

“Yes, of course,” the countess agreed with an eagerness Pickett found both touching and pathetic. “I don’t recall any such item turning up, but I shall ask the staff.”

The conversation became more labored with the earl’s arrival, and it seemed to Pickett that they were all trying a bit too hard to avoid the subject of Annie’s death. All in all, it was a relief when the gong sounded to signal the theatre patrons to return to their seats for the second act.

Alas, Pickett only traded one set of problems for another. He escaped from the real-life drama of the Washbourn marriage only to be immersed in the fictional one being enacted onstage, in which the obtuse Mr. Goodman’s dilemma reflected rather too closely Pickett’s own situation.

Apparently Julia was equally conscious of the parallel, for they had scarcely settled themselves in their seats when she looked at him keenly and remarked, “I expect Mr. Goodman will be very pleased by his unexpected rise in the world.”

“They could be quite happy living on his income,” he pointed out. “It isn’t as if they would be begging in the street.”

“Yes, but why should they? Why should she have to give up her kingdom merely for the sake of his pride?”

“ ‘Mere’ pride, Julia? There is also the little matter of deception, you know. They don’t call it The Bridegroom Deceived for nothing. She should have told him.”

“Perhaps she felt she could not,” Julia retorted. “Perhaps she knew that if she had told him from the beginning, he would have been too—too confoundedly noble to marry her at all!”

“Blast it, Julia, he found out on his honeymoon! From his father-in-law, of all people!”

“What?” Utterly bewildered, she looked down at the printed program in her hand, whose description of the plot bore absolutely no resemblance to the scenario he had just described.

At that moment, perhaps thankfully, the curtain opened on the second act.

“Never mind,” muttered Pickett as he fixed his eyes on the stage, uncomfortably aware of having said too much.

The play wound to its inevitable conclusion: the lovely Gwendolyn was revealed as the true princess of Sylvania, the handsome but dim Mr. Goodman took his place at her side with nary a qualm, and everyone lived happily ever after. Still, something of the evening’s early promise had been lost. When they returned to Curzon Street and prepared for bed, Pickett gave Julia a perfunctory peck on the cheek, then snuffed the candle and rolled over. But it was a long time before he fell asleep.

 

14

 

In Which John Pickett’s Investigation

Takes an Unexpected Turn

 

Before reporting to Bow Street the next morning, Pickett called at the Bond Street studio of Mr. Henry Tomkins, R. A. As he opened the door, a bell mounted over the doorframe announced his entrance, and a masculine voice from the floor above called down to inquire as to the nature of his business.

“John Pickett, of Bow Street,” he said, feeling more than a bit foolish at having to shout up the stairs in the direction of the unseen speaker. “I should like to ask a few questions, if I may.”

“Bow Street, you say? Oh, very well,” the disembodied voice conceded grudgingly. “I suppose you’d better come up.”

Pickett mounted the stairs to the floor above where, he assumed, the artist would be working in the room at the front of the house in order to take advantage of the light from the large windows overlooking the street. This theory proved to be quite correct; alas, Pickett discovered to his chagrin that the artist had company. In fact, Mr. Tomkins was hard at work on a new portrait whose model was draped sinuously over a chaise longue, clad in nothing but a strategically placed scarf.

“Er, um, I’m sorry,” Pickett stammered, blushing crimson and quickly turning his back on the overexposed and quite unembarrassed model. “I didn’t know—I thought you were alone.”

Mr. Tomkins laid down his brush, then picked up a cloth and began to wipe the paint from his hands. “It’s quite all right, Mr. Pickett,” he said with a sigh that indicated otherwise.

Too late, Pickett realized that he should have given his direction as Curzon Street, and offered some tale about wishing to engage the portraitist’s services. The artist’s next words, however, drove such petty considerations from his mind.

“If you will excuse me, Persephone, you may rest for a bit before we resume.”

“Persephone?” At the mention of the name, Pickett whirled about to confront the artist’s model, her lack of clothing forgotten.

But not for long. The woman had let her scarf fall to the seat of the chaise longue and picked up a satin dressing gown, which she appeared to be in no great hurry to put on. Upon hearing her name called in a voice of incredulous dismay, she looked up at Pickett and winked.

Mr. Tomkins looked from one to the other. “You two know each other?”

“We’ve, er, we’ve never been introduced, exactly,” Pickett temporized.

“Of course we have,” the artist’s model put in, shrugging her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown. “Dr. Humphrey introduced us. Don’t you remember?”

In fact, Pickett tried his best not to think of that experience at all, but it was unlikely he would ever forget his encounter with Persephone or Electra, another member of the same sorority, who had been tasked with proving his virility (or, more specifically, any lack thereof) for the purpose of obtaining an annulment, while Dr. Edmund Humphrey observed the proceedings and took notes. Pickett had hoped never to clap eyes on any part of that unholy trinity again, and here he had crossed paths with two of the three in less than a fortnight.

“I, um, er—”

“Never mind, poppet, I won’t tell,” she assured him, her gaze drifting down his person in fond remembrance. “I trust that little business was settled satisfactorily?”

“Most—most satisfactorily,” Pickett said with a hint of defiance. “In fact, the lady and I decided to stay married.”

“Oh, well done,” she purred approvingly. “I must say, I thought at the time that it was a right shame.”

“If you’ll wait for me in the other room,” the artist interrupted impatiently, “I’d like to take care of this business with Mr. Pickett, so I can get back to work before I lose the morning sunlight.”

“Of course, Hank,” she cooed, then chasséd from the room.

“Now, Mr. Pickett, what can I do for you?”

“I believe you recently painted a portrait of the Countess of Washbourn.”

Mr. Tomkins nodded. “Yes, about six months ago. What of it?”

Pickett regarded Persephone’s abandoned chaise longue with some consternation as a new and unwelcome thought occurred to him. “Did Lady Washbourn come here to your studio for her sittings?”

“No, no, certainly not. The studio is all very well for persons of Persephone’s stamp, but for a commission such as Lord Washbourn’s, I am of course at his service—or her ladyship’s, as the case may be.”

“And having commissioned you to take his wife’s likeness, did his lordship take any particular interest in the proceedings themselves—wanting to watch as you painted, for instance?”

“No, he didn’t, and for that I’m grateful,” confessed the artist. “As a general rule, I don’t allow others to watch me at work, but when one is paying as much as Lord Washbourn—well, it would have been an awkward prohibition to have to enforce.”

Pickett glanced at the open paint box on a table positioned next to the artist’s easel. “It must be a challenge, working somewhere other than your studio. You must have to be careful not to leave anything behind.”

“Not so very much,” Mr. Tomkins said, to Pickett’s disappointment. “Long before I could afford to set up a studio, I made a practice of soliciting commissions from door to door, so I already had an established routine for working at various locations. The greater risk is that of leaving something at the studio, and then wishing I’d thought to put it in my paint box. Of course, that’s not to say I never forget anything. In fact, a day or two after I’d completed the Washbourn commission, I realized I had left something at their house in Grosvenor Square.”

“Did you indeed?” asked Pickett, his ears pricking up at this revelation. “A tube of paint, perhaps?”

The artist’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Why yes, as a matter of fact, it was. How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” Pickett said cryptically. “I trust you were able to get it back?”

Mr. Tomkins shook his head. “There was no need to trouble her ladyship over such a thing. The tube was almost empty, and ocher is cheap in any case, so”—he broke off with a shrug.

“Then the missing paint was not Prussian blue?” Pickett asked, conscious of a pang of disappointment.

“No, it was ocher, a yellowish-brown that I used—in combination with several other pigments, of course—to render her ladyship’s hair, as well as certain parts of the background and the carpet at her feet.”

“I see,” Pickett said, abandoning with some regret what had appeared to be a very promising theory. “Well then, I’ll take no more of your valuable time.”

The artist nodded in dismissal, clearly impatient to get back to work, and Pickett quitted the premises. When he returned to Bow Street, he found Dr. Gilroy lying in wait for him with a thick book under one arm, its leather binding cracked and its pages dog-eared from much use.

“The good doctor here wants a word with you, Mr. Pickett,” Mr. Colquhoun informed him without preamble. You can use my chambers for privacy, if you wish.”

Pickett nodded. “Thank you, sir.” He showed the doctor into the magistrate’s private office, and then closed the door behind them. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Dr. Gilroy. You have information for me?”

“I believe I may, although you will be the best judge of whether it is any use or not.” The physician set the heavy book on the desk and began flipping pages. “I took the liberty of looking up prussic acid in my medical texts to make sure I hadn’t missed anything that might have been of use to you.”

“And?”

“And it appears the pigment Prussian blue is not the only source of the poison. It also occurs naturally in certain plants, including the seeds of common fruits.”

“What fruits?” asked Pickett, as a new and entirely unexpected possibility began to take form in his brain.

The doctor ran a finger down the page. “Apples, for one, as well as stone fruits such as apricots, cherries, peaches, plums—” Dr. Gilroy interrupted his reading to inquire, “Are you all right, Mr. Pickett?”

“Yes, I’m—I’m quite all right,” Pickett stammered, squeezing his eyes shut against the blinding light of revelation.

He could not recall afterwards exactly what he’d said to the doctor. He hoped he had thanked the man for the information before sending him on his way, but he could not have sworn to it. He did, however, remember waiting with his head spinning until Mr. Colquhoun concluded his business at the bench.

“I’ve been looking at it backwards,” he told the magistrate, as soon as he could have a word alone with his mentor.

“Have you, now?” asked Mr. Colquhoun, his bushy white brows lowering thoughtfully. “In what way?”

“Lord Washbourn is not trying to kill his wife. Lady Washbourn is trying to kill her husband.”

“Bless my soul! Are you sure?”

“No, not entirely, but it certainly looks that way.” He ticked the sequence of events off on his fingers. “Lady Washbourn—whose father was a brewer, let’s not forget that—makes her own ratafia flavored with peaches and almonds; shortly before the masquerade, her ladyship goes downstairs and instructs the staff to serve this in addition to the champagne and negus she’d ordered for the party; Lord Washbourn brings her a glass of that same beverage, which she sets down untouched; and, finally, an unsuspecting maid picks up a glass of ratafia, drinks it down, and dies within minutes.”

“We don’t know that it was the same glass,” the magistrate pointed out.

“That’s true, sir, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t lay you very long odds.”

“Even if that were the case, wouldn’t it be Lady Washbourn giving the glass to her husband, rather than the other way ’round?”

“I haven’t worked out all the details yet,” Pickett confessed. “I hadn’t even considered the possibility until just now.”

“I see,” Mr. Colquhoun said, nodding. “In the meantime, perhaps you can tell me why her ladyship would wish to do so, and why she would set a Bow Street Runner on the trail.”

Pickett thought of Lady Washbourn, sitting in miserable solitude while her husband indulged in a tête-à-tête with the lady he had once hoped to marry. “The oldest story in the world,” he told the magistrate. “She’s in love with her husband, but he loves another woman, one whom he had thought at one time to marry, and who may even now be his mistress. Lady Washbourn decides that if she can’t have him—all of him—then no one will.”

“And her reasons for bringing you into the matter?”

“To establish her own innocence. She sets herself up as the intended victim, and then, if a tragic ‘accident’ were to befall his lordship, what would I think but that he’d been hoist with his own petard, so to speak? The maid’s death even helps her in that regard. After all, there’s already been one unintended victim; why not another?”

The magistrate shook his head. “It makes a certain sort of sense, but she would be taking a terrible risk. She couldn’t know for sure that you wouldn’t tumble to the truth.”

Pickett’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Yes, well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been underestimated.”

“So, assuming this theory of yours is correct, how do you intend to prove it?”

“There’s the rub, sir,” Pickett said with a sigh. “To start with, I should like to have a look about Lady Washbourn’s still-room, where she makes the stuff. So I suppose it’s back to Grosvenor Square.”

“No, that won’t do.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but why not?”

“Because a house in Town wouldn’t be equipped with such a thing. Think, man! Lady Washbourn’s still-room would be attached to the country house, where his lordship’s orchards are.”

“Oh,” said Pickett, rather nonplussed. “Yes, I see.”

“So I expect you’ll be wanting to go to Surrey, to Washbourn Abbey.” Mr. Colquhoun turned in his chair and looked up at the large clock mounted on the wall over his bench. “If you hurry, you can catch the noon stage from Cheapside, and reach Croydon by nightfall.”

“You don’t mind?” Pickett asked, taken aback by his magistrate’s ready capitulation to a scheme which he’d thought would take considerable persuasion.

“I’m not entirely convinced, mind you, but your theory holds enough validity that it must be eliminated, anyway. I only hope you can find sufficient evidence to either condemn her ladyship or confirm her innocence.”

“So do I,” said Pickett with feeling.

“And now, you’d best be going home.” The magistrate regarded his most junior Runner with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “Besides packing your bags for the journey, I expect your farewells are likely to take some time.”

 

* * *

 

“I wish you were not going back to Sussex so soon, Emily,” Julia complained to Lady Dunnington when she called in Audley Street that morning. “Whatever shall I do without you?”

“The same things you were doing before I arrived,” Emily pointed out. “Shopping, visiting Hookham’s Library, walking in St. James’s—” She broke off this catalog of entertainments to make a practical observation. “Even if I were to stay in London, I would not be able to accompany you for much longer. Little Lady Genie is making her presence increasingly difficult to hide—and I do mean increasingly,” she added, and although she made a moue of distaste, she patted the bulge of her abdomen with affection.

“But I wasn’t doing anything before,” Julia confessed. “Not really. There are only so many times one may arrange flowers for the hall, or plan meals for the week, or give instructions to the housekeeper, or darn one’s husband’s stockings—oh, but I must mark that one off my list, for I bought him new ones, and got rid of the old. Monogramming handkerchiefs, perhaps,” she murmured, recalling the one with which he had dried her tears.

Lady Dunnington wrinkled her nose. “Monogramming handkerchiefs does not sound like my idea of being giddy to the point of dissipation, but so long as it gets you out of the house”—she shrugged her shoulders.

“Actually, I would probably have the haberdasher send over half a dozen—or perhaps a full dozen,” Julia amended, thinking of the additional hours the extra embroidery would fill.

“Julia Runyon Fieldhurst Pickett, are you in hiding?” Emily demanded.

“Of course I’m not! Well—yes—I suppose I am—that is, sort of,” Julia confessed sheepishly.

“Then you are regretting your mésalliance!”

“No, not at all! If anything, my feelings for John have grown stronger over the last two months. It is only that if I go out, I am sure to be stared at, and whispered about, and pointed out—if I am not given the cut direct, which is equally likely.”

“You knew it would be that way,” Emily pointed out, albeit not unkindly. “Still, you went to the theatre last night, did you not?”

“Yes, but that was different, for John was with me. I can face anything so long as we are together. I have only to look at him to know he is worth ten of whomever is doing the snubbing.” She sighed. “But he has to work during the day, and so I am left rather at loose ends.”

“He might give it up,” the countess pointed out. “Your jointure was set up in such a way that it continued even after your remarriage, did it not?”

“Yes, and I suggested that.” She shuddered at the memory. “It did not go well.”

“No, I daresay he is not the sort of man who would be content to live as Mr. Julia Fieldhurst.”

Julia came swiftly to her husband’s defense. “Nor would I want him to be!”

“I must say, I think the better of him for it. But my dear, you cannot hide from the ton forever. You must face them down. The sooner you do so, the sooner they will find something—or someone!—else to gossip about.”

“I know you’re right,” Julia conceded. “Still, it is a great deal easier said than done.”

Emily leaped to her feet as quickly as her increasing bulk would allow, and held out her hand to Julia. “Then let’s confront them together, shall we?”

With some misgiving, Julia took her friend’s hand. “And what of little Lady Genie?” she asked, gesturing with her free hand toward Emily’s middle.

“I shall wear my fullest pelisse, and unless we are walking into a stiff wind, I daresay no one will notice. And if they do, they will have two shocking women to talk about, instead of one!”

Emily in full flow was a force to be reckoned with, and she shot down one by one every objection Julia put forward. By the time they reached St. James’s Park, Julia was more than reconciled to the outing; in fact, she actually looked forward to it. The trees in the park were unfurling their new greenery, and the flowers were beginning to bloom, and it seemed to Julia that the abundance of Nature served to reflect the promise of her new marriage.

Alas, they had not gone far along the path before her earlier fears were confirmed. Several ladies of long acquaintance took great pains not to meet her eye, and others gave her only the curtest of nods in passing, while two young bloods ogled her quite boldly through their quizzing glasses, as if her descent in the world excused them from showing her even the most basic forms of courtesy.

Her detractors, however, had reckoned without the Countess of Dunnington. “Why, Mrs. Langford-Hicks!” Emily exclaimed, hurrying forward to seize the hands of a starchy-looking female who had shown every indication of drawing her skirts aside lest she be contaminated by some accidental contact with the former viscountess. “How delightful to see you looking so well!”

“Lady Dunnington,” acknowledged the woman, detaching herself gingerly from Emily’s grasp. “How do you do?”

“All the better for having my dear Julia’s company,” she declared, dragging Julia into the conversation, will she or nill she. “You are acquainted, are you not?”

Having no choice, Mrs. Langford-Hicks nodded stiffly. “Your ladyship—er—that is—”

“Mrs. Pickett,” Julia said, supplying the proper term of address with more than a hint of defiance.

“Yes, for she has recently remarried, you know,” Emily put in.

“So I had heard,” their companion said, wrinkling her nose as if she smelled something that offended her. “To a Bow Street Runner, or some such person, if rumor doesn’t lie.”

“Oh, but not just any Bow Street Runner, for her Mr. Pickett is quite the cleverest of the lot, and very likely the handsomest as well.” Lady Dunnington went on to describe Pickett’s person and prospects in such glowing terms that that young man would scarcely have recognized himself. “I should not be at all surprised if he is made a magistrate by the time he is thirty, and knighted by forty,” she concluded. “Then all those who snubbed him in his Bow Street days will look a pretty set of fools, won’t they?”

“Really, Emily,” Julia chided, choking back her laughter until Mrs. Langford-Hicks had withdrawn stunned and reeling from the assault. “I had no idea your opinion of John was so high!”

“No, and if you ever tell him I said such a thing, I shall deny it with my last breath! But Mrs. Langford-Hicks’s pretensions needed depressing, for what was she before her marriage but Mr. Langford-Hicks’s housekeeper?” Seeing Julia’s expression of shocked delight, she added, “Oh, didn’t you know? Quite the scandal of ’92, it was—or do I mean ’93? Either way, she has no room to look down her nose at anyone. And the fact that you made your come-out ten years later and had never heard the tale only proves what I have been trying to tell you: people will forget—or at least lose interest—when some new scandal comes along.”

Whatever Julia might have said to this assertion was to remain unspoken, for at that moment she was hailed by a feminine voice.

“Mrs. Pickett! You are Mrs. John Pickett, are you not?”

Gratified that someone, at least, seemed eager to acknowledge her, Julia turned and beheld a young woman with crimped dark ringlets and a walking dress so lavishly decorated with frogs and braid that the crimson sarcenet beneath the ornamentation was scarcely visible. “Yes, I am Mrs. Pickett. How may I be of service to you?”

“Lud, I’m sure there’s nothing you can do for me! I’m Lady Gerald Broadbridge, you know.”

In fact, Julia had recognized her husband’s first love from the moment she saw her approaching, but she refused to stroke the young woman’s vanity by letting on. “I’m pleased to meet you, Lady Gerald,” she said, curtsying. “Tell me, are you acquainted with Lady Dunnington?”

Sophy appeared less than gratified by the introduction, no doubt because a countess must take precedence over the wife of a mere fourth son, even if his father was a duke. “Lady Dunnington,” she said without enthusiasm, dipping the briefest of curtsies.

“Lady Gerald.” Emily, who knew to a nicety how to dampen pretensions, gave Lady Gerald Broadbridge a curtsy that somehow combined the dictates of courtesy with just the right amount of condescension.

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, both of you,” Sophy said, turning to Julia with a mixture of eagerness and malice. “But especially you, Mrs. Pickett. I knew your husband, you see.”

“Yes, I know,” Julia said, maintaining her smile with an effort. “He once worked for your father, I believe.”

Sophy was not best pleased with this reminder of her own humble origins, but, having claimed acquaintance with John Pickett, she could hardly deny the charge. “Yes, he was Papa’s apprentice. How you would have laughed, if you could have seen him as I did, all black with coal dust! He was quite mad for me, you know—in fact, he begged me to marry him.”

“Yes, so he told me,” Julia said, determined to rid Sophy of any illusion that John Pickett still nursed his youthful passion as a deep, dark secret. “What a good thing it is that we are not allowed to marry our first loves! When I was sixteen, I conceived a grand passion for one of the stable hands.”

“For me it was my dancing master,” Emily agreed.

“Yes, but John was nineteen,” Sophy pointed out.

“Worse and worse!” exclaimed Julia. “When I was nineteen, I married Fieldhurst!”

Emily nodded. “It is curious, is it not, that young ladies are considered marriageable at nineteen, or even younger, but how many young men of that age do you see embarking upon matrimony? One might assume it takes them longer to mature.”

“Perhaps it is Nature’s way of preventing them from making disastrous marriages,” Julia suggested blandly.

“Like yours with Lord Fieldhurst?” Sophy suggested with a brittle smile. “I only hope poor John lasts longer than your first husband did.”

“So do I,” agreed Julia, resolutely ignoring Sophy’s too-intimate use of her husband’s first name, as well as the implication that she had been responsible for Lord Fieldhurst’s death. “But if—God forbid!—he does not, at least he will have the satisfaction of dying happy. I only hope Lord Gerald may be as fortunate.”

Sophy looked a bit puzzled by this remark, as if sensing some insult she could not quite pin down. “Speaking of my dear Gerry, I mustn’t keep him waiting,” Sophy said a bit too brightly, glancing over her shoulder at the portly, red-faced gentleman tottering along the path in their direction. “So pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Dunnington, Mrs. Pickett.”

She spun on her heel and hurried away in Lord Gerald’s direction, the dyed ostrich plumes on her bonnet bobbing indignantly with every step.

“Cat!” said Emily, choking back her laughter.

Julia glared at Sophy’s retreating back. “Yes, isn’t she?”

“I was talking about you, my dear. ‘I only hope Lord Gerald may be as fortunate!’ Really, Julia, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, but I could not let her flatter herself that John has been wearing the willow for her all these years!” She sighed. “It’s very lowering to think that one’s husband, who is in all other respects an exceptionally clever man, could have succumbed to the wiles of such a creature!”

“Did you flatter yourself that because you were the first woman in his bed, you must also have been the first to touch his heart?” Emily shook her head. “Your Mr. Pickett may be young, but he is a healthy, red-blooded Englishman, you know, and if it’s true that he was once a collier’s apprentice, I daresay few respectable females came his way. I should have thought it more remarkable if he had not succumbed. In any case, it seems to me that you, with your stable hand, have little room to talk.”

Julia looked rather shamefaced. “There was no stable hand. Well, there were, of course, but I never had the slightest romantic interest in any of them. I only wanted to put that dreadful female in her place.” She shot a resentful glance at Lord Gerald Broadbridge, his belly straining the buttons of his flowered waistcoat as he ambled along with labored steps that suggested his lordship suffered from gout. “Look at him! He must be more than twice her age, for Lord Gerald is fifty if he is a day—and looks every bit of it, thanks to years of running with Prinny’s Carlton House set. And yet he is held to be a prize catch, while my poor John is an anathema, so far as Society is concerned—at least until they have need of him,” she added bitterly.

“It’s the way of the world, Julia,” Emily said, not without sympathy. “You may flout the rules at your peril, but you will never change them.”

 

15

 

In Which the Honeymoon Comes to an Abrupt End

 

After leaving Bow Street, Pickett did not head for Curzon Street at once, but instead set out for Grosvenor Square. There was one bit of business that had to be addressed before his journey. He knew it was a necessary preface to his inquiries at Washbourn Abbey, but this knowledge did nothing to lessen the feeling that he was betraying Lady Washbourn in suspecting her of the very crime against which she had engaged him to protect her.

He shook his head as if to clear it. Mr. Colquhoun had cautioned him long ago against becoming personally involved in the cases that would come his way—and those warnings had been repeated with a vengeance when the newly widowed Lady Fieldhurst had first crossed his path. In all other cases (well, most of them, anyway, at least those that had not involved the lady who was now his wife), he believed he had succeeded in maintaining a professional distance. But something about Lady Washbourn’s situation echoed a bit too closely his own. Like the countess, he too had wed above his station, and although the parallels were not exact—he had no fortune, for one thing, nor did he believe Julia harbored the slightest desire to put a period to his existence—the failure of the Washbourns’ marriage seemed somehow to bode ill for that of the Picketts.

Having reached the Washbourn residence in Grosvenor Square, he sent up his card to her ladyship, and was soon shown into the now-familiar drawing room.

“Good morning, Mr. Pickett,” the countess said, rising to greet him. “Have you any news for me today?”

“I’m afraid not,” he said, waiting until the butler had closed the door behind him to continue. “I must go to Washbourn Abbey to follow a—a possible lead, however.”

“A lead? At Washbourn Abbey? What—?”

“I can say no more at present, your ladyship,” Pickett said hastily. “Pray don’t ask me questions I can’t answer. In the meantime, though, I wonder if you might give me a letter to take to your staff there. I should hate to travel all the way to Croydon only to be turned away at the door.”

“Yes, of course.”

The countess moved without hesitation to the writing desk before the window, apparently never suspecting that in granting his request, she might be sealing her own fate. Either his suspicions were wide of the mark, Pickett reflected, or the lady was confident he would find nothing that might implicate her. He rather hoped it was the former.

For the next several minutes, there was no sound save for the scratching of pen on paper. At last Lady Washbourn returned the pen to its standish and sprinkled sand over the wet ink, then folded the single sheet and sealed it with a wafer.

“That should suffice, Mr. Pickett,” said her ladyship, handing him the letter. “I have given instructions that everyone on the staff is to cooperate fully with your investigations, including answering any questions you might ask or showing you anything you may wish to see. I trust that will be sufficient.”

“Yes, thank you, your ladyship.”

He tucked the letter into the inside breast pocket of his coat and took his leave, feeling rather like Judas must have done.

 

* * *

 

He returned to Curzon Street to find Julia absent, and was conscious of a pang of disappointment; given that they were soon to be separated, he didn’t want to lose a minute of her company in the meantime.

“She should be back very soon,” Rogers assured him. “She has gone to Audley Street to call on the Countess of Dunnington. If you would care to send a message, sir, I shall have young Andrew, the new footman, deliver it.”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Pickett said, suppressing a sigh. “I’ll just go upstairs and pack my bag. With any luck, she will have returned by the time I’ve finished.”

“You are going away, sir? Will you require Thomas to accompany you?”

“Good heavens, no!” Pickett said, alarmed at the very idea of trying to conduct a discreet investigation with a valet in tow. “I don’t expect to be gone above a day, so I can manage very well on my own.”

“Thomas will be disappointed, sir,” observed Rogers.

“Very likely, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”

Having dealt firmly with the matter of Thomas’s delicate sensibilities, Pickett betook himself up the stairs and finally ran his battered valise to ground in one of the unfurnished rooms. He carried this back to his bedchamber, where he laid it out on the bed, then opened the clothespress and dragged out fresh linens sufficient for an overnight stay. And it was here, a quarter of an hour later, that Julia found him.

“John?” Her gaze fell on the half-filled bag on the bed. “Are you going away?”

“I have to make a short trip to Croydon.”

Her face lit up. “Excellent! I’ll send for Betsy to pack my things. When do we leave?”

“ ‘We’ don’t, my lady,” he said apologetically, abandoning his packing long enough to take her in his arms. “I’m sorry to have to go without you, but if all goes well, I should be back by tomorrow evening.”

Twenty-four hours earlier, Julia would have accepted this dismissal with a good grace. But twenty-four hours earlier, she had not been snubbed by the very same people who had once courted her favor, nor been condescended to by Lady Gerald Broadbridge. Suddenly the prospect of being left alone in London, abandoned to the mercies of such people as these, was more than she could bear.

“Won’t you take me with you?” she pleaded, clinging to him when he would have returned to his packing.

“I’m going on Bow Street’s shilling,” he reminded her. “I have only enough to cover one fare on the stage, and God only knows what sort of lodgings I’ll be obliged to put up in once I reach Croydon.”

“I won’t be a burden,” she said coaxingly. “After all, I can pay my own way.”

It was the worst thing she could have said. “This is not about your money, Julia,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument. “Even if you were to pay your own fare, I could hardly drag you along on the common stage. We’d have to arrange for the hire a post-chaise, and then locate an inn suitable for a lady. I could be there and back by the time all the arrangements were in place.”

“Your flat in Drury Lane wasn’t suitable for a lady, and yet I lived there quite happily for almost a fortnight,” she reminded him. “We would be together, and that, surely, would more than make up for any discomfort.”

“But we wouldn’t be together,” he pointed out. “I would be at Washbourn Abbey, and until I finished my business there, you would be obliged to wait at the inn, where you would no doubt be bored to tears. I’m sorry, Julia. Perhaps another time, but not today.” Considering the matter closed, he turned back to the clothing on the bed, picked up a shirt, and began to fold it.

“But I could help you,” she insisted, clutching at his sleeve.

“Like you ‘helped’ me by calling on Lady Washbourn?” Recalling his suspicions about the countess, he added in quite another voice, “Speaking of her ladyship, I must ask you not to call on her again until I return.”

“Oh, must you?” she challenged, her bosom swelling in indignation. “In that case, I wonder you don’t want to take me with you, so you can be sure I don’t do anything of which you might disapprove!”

“Julia—”

“I see what it is!” she said accusingly, bright spots of color burning in her cheeks. “You’re jealous! You’re jealous because I’m the one who knew who painted Lady Washbourn’s portrait, and I’m the one who found out she was in love with her husband, and now you’re afraid I may discover something else of importance before you do!”

“Julia, that’s utter nonsense, and you know it!” he snapped, flinging the shirt into the bag with a force that completely undid his careful folding job.

“Oh, do I? What other reason can you have for—for shutting me out like this?”

At this grossly unfair accusation, the dam of his patience ruptured, and a dozen small resentments, each one suppressed for the sake of marital harmony, all burst forth. “Shutting you out? I should like to see me try! For God’s sake, look at me! I don’t even look like myself anymore!” His angry gesture took in everything from the new garments hanging in the clothespress to his newly shorn head. “You’ve got me living in your house, you’ve got me dressing like your first husband, you’ve got your first husband’s barber cutting my hair, you won’t let me eat dinner until I tog myself out like the Prince of Wales, and now you won’t let me conduct a simple investigation—which I was doing very well long before I ever met you!—without getting your fingers on that, too. Good God, am I to have no part of my life that’s strictly mine?”

His voice had risen in volume with each new allegation, and Julia responded in kind. “If you feel that way, I wonder you wished to marry me at all!”

“I don’t recall that I was given much choice in the matter!”

“No, but you consummated it readily enough when you had the opportunity!”

“What? I was barely conscious at the time!”

“Well, that explains a lot!”

He opened his mouth to make some retort, but froze as her implication became clear. Julia saw the stricken look in his eyes, and would have given up every last farthing of the fortune he so deplored, if by doing so she could have called the words back. But they could not be unsaid; once uttered, they hung in the air like an invisible barrier, substantial as any wall and just as impenetrable.

“I see,” Pickett said at last in a cool, detached voice quite unlike his own. “In that case, my lady, I suppose there is nothing more to be said. I’m sorry I couldn’t oblige you by being impotent, but maybe your solicitor can think of something. Apparently it’s near enough as makes no odds.”

He snapped the valise shut and hefted it off the bed, then turned and left the room without another word. Everything in her urged Julia to go after him, to call him back, but she stood rooted to the spot. She had played variations of this particular scene before, with her first husband, and although the matters at issue had varied, the ending had always been the same: she had always been the one to beg his pardon, even if it had been Lord Fieldhurst who was responsible for forcing the quarrel in the first place. She refused to set such a precedent in her second marriage, even though a small voice inside her head whispered accusingly that she had wounded her beloved second husband as much as, if not more than, her first husband had ever wounded her. She heard Pickett’s footsteps echoing down the stairs, heard him exchange some word with Rogers (who had no doubt got an earful), and, finally, heard the faint thud of the door closing behind him.

I will not cry, she told herself as she moved to the window, watching his retreating form until her own breath fogged the glass. She wiped away the condensation with her sleeve and pressed her face to the windowpane, following his departure until he turned the corner and disappeared from view. I will not cry, she told herself as she turned away from the window and approached the bed, which still bore the imprint of his valise on the counterpane. I will not cry.

She collapsed onto the bed and sobbed until no more tears would come.

 

* * *

 

Pickett was obliged to take a seat on the roof of the crowded stagecoach for the first part of the journey, and found himself in the unusual position of being grateful for the discomfort this entailed. So long as he was forced to hug his coat closed for warmth, or keep a hand on his hat to prevent its blowing off, he could forget, even if only for a moment, the rift with Julia and the open wound left by her parting words. He had feared from the first that she would eventually come to regret their hasty marriage, but in his imagination it had always been her loss of status in the eyes of Society at the root of her remorse. The reality, now that it had come, was infinitely worse. It was not his social standing that she found lacking; it was himself.

He had not known she felt that way. He had never even suspected. The early days of their marriage, spent in his Drury Lane flat, had been the happiest of his life, and he had assumed she’d felt the same. If she had found his inexperienced lovemaking clumsy—and he acknowledged that she must have done—she had never let on. She had given him a bit of gentle guidance when it was needed, and because she had been tactful (or—lowering thought!—had suffered in silence), he had flattered himself that he’d been a quick study. But then, he had no previous experience against which to measure it; she had, and it was clear that he did not appear to advantage in the comparison.

It occurred to him that, if only he had allowed her to accompany him, he might still be living in happy ignorance, and bitterly regretted his own stubbornness in not acceding to her wishes in the matter. He’d yielded to her in so many other areas—in fact, therein lay the whole problem—surely one more would not have hurt, not if by doing so he might have saved his marriage. Why hadn’t he given in, when he saw how much it meant to her? As if in answer, her accusation came back to him. You’re jealous . . . you’re afraid I may discover something else of importance before you do . . .

Could she have been right? Was he really that petty? No, he could not believe it. Long before they were married (before they had known they were married, in any case), they had formed an unusual partnership, with her finding out things that, due to the difference in their stations, he would have no way of discovering. It had not troubled him in the least. On the contrary, he recalled, smiling a little at the memory, it had been rather gratifying to see her begin to realize she had capabilities far beyond the merely ornamental, and to think he’d had something to do with that. His smile faded abruptly. At least he had done that much for her, even if he could not satisfy her in other ways. No, painful as it was, he had done the right thing by insisting he make the journey without her, and thereby forcing the ensuing quarrel. It was better, surely, to face the bitter truth than to go on living even the sweetest of lies.

The stagecoach drew into the yard of the Blue Boar just as the sun was setting. The inside passengers disembarked first, and Pickett and his fellow sufferers on the roof followed somewhat stiffly from the heights. He waited while the bags were removed from the boot, then claimed his valise and followed the crowd shuffling inside to bespeak rooms for the night. He was directed at last to a tiny attic chamber with a ceiling so low that he could not stand up straight without banging his head on the rafters. Far from deploring these primitive lodgings, he felt vindicated; this was certainly no place for a lady, and Julia would no doubt have been appalled at the prospect of sleeping in such humble surroundings. Ruthlessly rejecting the memory of his first week of marriage, when he and his lady wife had blissfully shared a bed certainly no wider than the one this room offered, he deposited his valise at the foot of the narrow cot and went back downstairs to the public room in search of dinner, feeling a small—a very small—sense of satisfaction in sitting down to eat in rumpled and travel-stained clothes.

The Bull’s Head prided itself on two things: the Yorkshire pudding which was prepared daily by the proprietor’s wife, and the strength of its home-brewed ale. While it cannot be said that Pickett actually tasted any of the former (although as he blinked at the empty plate on the table before him, he realized he must have done so), he was considerably more receptive to the latter. In fact, when he realized with some surprise that his tankard was empty, he asked the barmaid to fetch him another. And then another. And still another. Alas, whatever its fine qualities, the beverage proved insufficient to erase from his mind the memory of Julia, or the last words he would ever hear her speak. For it was obvious he could never go back, not now, not knowing how she felt about him, about their marriage. He must return to Bow Street, of course—he still had a position there, even if he had lost the only other thing that had given his life meaning—but he could not go back to Julia. Never again. Never . . .

“Sir? Beg pardon, sir, but we’re closing up for the night.”

Gradually Pickett became aware of someone shaking him by the shoulder, and realized he had gone to sleep with his head on the table. He opened one bleary eye, and saw a young woman who looked vaguely familiar. In one hand—the one that wasn’t shaking his shoulder—she held a pewter tankard. His razor-sharp brain instantly deduced that she must be the barmaid who had been keeping him lubricated all evening.

“I know who you are,” he informed her, realizing with mild curiosity that his words were oddly slurred.

“I don’t wonder at it, sir, for you’ve kept me busy most the night,” she said. “But we’re closing now, so you’d best go home.”

“Can’t go home,” he said. “Can’t ever . . . go home . . .”

He would have put his head back down on the table, but the girl still had him by the shoulder, and hauled him upright again.

“You have a room for the night here? Do you need some help getting up the stairs to it?”

“Upstairs,” Pickett echoed stupidly, and heaved himself to his feet.

“Do you need some help?” the barmaid asked again.

“No, thank you,” Pickett said. He took a step forward, and realized he’d spoken too soon, for the wooden floor beneath his feet would not behave as a floor should. It refused to stay still, for one thing, and the boards persisted in crisscrossing one another in a way that made every step a potential hazard.

“Let me help you, sir,” the barmaid said, slipping beneath his shoulder to support him with his arm draped across the back of her neck.

His first step had been sufficient to inform Pickett that accepting the girl’s assistance was probably a wise move. He made no further protest, but allowed the young woman to turn them both in the direction of the door. Climbing the stairs presented a challenge, but with the railing on his right hand and the girl on his left, he managed to reach his small room without mishap.

“There you go,” she pronounced at last, easing out from under him. Deprived of her support, he collapsed onto the narrow bed, where he expressed a fervent desire to die.

“Nonsense!” she said briskly, tugging off his boots. “You’ll have an aching head in the morning, but otherwise you’ll be fine. It’s the ale, you know. It takes some folks that way, ’specially if they aren’t used to it.” She regarded his recumbent form with a speculative gleam in her eye. “It’s right cold in here with no fire. If you like, I could stay for awhile. Keep you warm, you might say.”

Drunk he might be, but Pickett was not so far gone that he did not understand exactly what she was offering. He opened his eyes and regarded her sadly.

“You wouldn’t enjoy it anyway,” he said with surprising clarity, then closed his eyes once more and surrendered to oblivion.

 

16

 

In Which Julia Receives Surprising News,

but Has No One with Whom to Share It

 

Julia awoke the following morning heavy-eyed from lack of sleep. Granted, she had not slept particularly well in several weeks, but the previous night had been by far the worst. She had tossed and turned all night, and when she had finally drifted off, her slumber had been troubled by unpleasant dreams that were surely no worse than the waking nightmare she now faced. She rolled over in bed (unsurprised to discover that at some point she had reached for her husband’s pillow and apparently passed the rest of the night with it clutched to her breast) and looked at the ormolu clock over the mantel. It was not yet eight; he had said he would return before nightfall. How long, she wondered, might she have to wait? Eight hours, perhaps? Ten? Twelve?

She wished she might remain abed longer, to sleep away as many of the empty hours as possible, but she knew too well what would happen: sleep, so elusive even during the dark watches of the night, would evade her entirely in the light of day, and she would lie awake reliving in her memory every word of their quarrel. With the clarity that inevitably came with morning, she recalled every one of his accusations, and realized to her chagrin that he had every right to resent her. She had known, of course—although the discovery had come too late to change anything—that she had overstepped in arranging for a barber to cut his hair, but she had not recognized how this relatively minor infraction must appear when taken in sum with the others. She had only wanted to help him adapt to the new world into which their marriage had thrust him. He, on the other hand, had received a very different message: You are not good enough for me the way you are . . . you must change if you are to appear worthy of me . . . It was the last thing she had meant, of course, but she should have known he might interpret it that way, especially in the light of his past experience with Sophia Broadbridge.

But she could not blame Sophia for their quarrel, for the blame fell squarely onto her own shoulders. Mr. Colquhoun had tried to warn her, and she had ignored him, certain that she knew her own marriage best.

With a sigh of resignation, she threw back the covers and reached for her pink satin wrapper. She shrugged her arms through the sleeves, tied the belt around her waist, and made her way downstairs to the breakfast room. The sunlight streaming through the windows hurt her eyes, and she instructed Rogers to draw the curtains.

“And Rogers,” she added thoughtfully, when he had carried out this request, “what did Mr. Pickett say to you when he left the house yesterday?”

He gave her a look of wordless sympathy. They had a long history, she and Rogers, dating back to the time of her first marriage. “He merely thanked me, madam. I had just given him his hat and gloves, you know, so he thanked me.”

“I see,” she said, conscious of a pang of disappointment. She was not quite certain what she had hoped for—some word regarding his return, perhaps, or some message of apology or forgiveness—but it was clear that despite his humble origins, her husband knew instinctively not to air his dirty linen before the servants.

The butler gave a discreet cough. “Er, madam—”

“Yes, Rogers?”

“If you will forgive me, madam, it is not unusual for newly married couples to quarrel. It can be difficult, learning to live with another person, no matter how deep the affection one feels for them.”

She should have delivered some crushing rebuke designed to put the butler in his place, but she found she could not do so. They were old allies, she and Rogers, dating back to the early days of her marriage to Lord Fieldhurst, and following the viscount’s murder, Rogers had stood in Mr. Pickett’s debt, just as she had; in fact, she suspected that the deference the butler had shown his new master from the day of Pickett’s arrival in Curzon Street went beyond mere professional courtesy.

“Thank you, Rogers,” she said, giving him a grateful little smile.

She turned her attention to the breakfast laid out on the sideboard, and lifted the lid of a silver chafing dish. The aroma of freshly cooked bacon, usually so pleasant in the morning, now assailed her, an offense against her nostrils. She dropped the lid back in place with a clatter, and turned away just in time to be violently ill all over the floor. As if things could not possibly get any worse, a knock sounded on the door at the front of the house.

The butler glanced helplessly at his mistress and then in the direction of the front door, clearly torn as to where his duty lay.

“See who that is, Rogers,” Julia gasped between retches. “Tell them I am indisposed.”

“Yes, madam,” he said, and hurried from the room.

He returned a very short time later, hovering awkwardly in the doorway. “Begging your pardon, madam, but it is the doctor—Mr. Gilroy. Under the circumstances, I thought perhaps you might wish to see him.”

As if on cue, the physician’s head appeared over Rogers’s shoulder. Julia removed the napkin she had pressed to her mouth. “Forgive me, Doctor. I don’t know what happened, but it appears to be over now—all except for cleaning up the mess,” she added, grimacing at the disgusting puddle at her feet.

Rogers assured her of his willingness to see to this task, and suggested that she might perhaps be more comfortable in the drawing room. Dr. Gilroy took her arm to assist her to this chamber, adding over his shoulder that the butler might bring his mistress a little—a very little—dry toast.

“In fact, I came in the hopes of finding your husband at home,” the doctor said as he guided her into the drawing room. “It occurred to me that he might wish to borrow my medical text for its information on prussic acid, at least until he has completed his investigation of that particular case. But while I seem to have missed Mr. Pickett, it appears I’ve come at a good time nonetheless.”

“I’m quite all right now, truly I am,” Julia said shakily, allowing the physician to settle her on a chair. “It is only that I have not been sleeping well recently, and have not had much appetite of late. As for the other, well, I fear it does not take much to make me ‘cast up my accounts,’ as the saying goes.” It was true. On one occasion not so very long ago, the mere sight of John Pickett in a passionate embrace with another female had provoked just such a reaction. Small wonder, then, that so bitter a quarrel as they’d had the previous day should eventually yield the same result.

The doctor, however, seemed uninterested in this disclaimer. “Never mind, Mrs. Pickett. You’ll find that such symptoms are not uncommon for a woman in your condition, but they usually pass after the first few months.”

“My ‘condition’?” echoed Julia, bewildered. She hadn’t been aware that quarreling with one’s husband constituted a “condition,” much less that it manifested certain telltale symptoms. “What condition is that?”

“I beg your pardon,” the doctor said in some consternation. “It appears I may have spoken too soon. Naturally, I assumed—but—forgive me for asking so personal a question, Mrs. Pickett, but when did you last have your menses?”

“It was—” She broke off abruptly. When had it been? Not while she had been nursing the injured John Pickett in Drury Lane—she certainly would have remembered that!—nor had it occurred while they were visiting her parents in Somersetshire following the wedding. “February,” she said at last. “I don’t recall the exact date, but I was certainly finished by the twenty-fourth, for that was the night of the fire at Drury Lane Theatre.”

“Some women occasionally miss a month,” he remarked.

She shook her head. “Not I. Mine are usually like clockwork.” Her eyes widened in dismay as the doctor’s implication became clear. “Dr. Gilroy, if you mean to suggest—”

“Just so, Mrs. Pickett,” he replied, bestowing an avuncular smile upon her. “It is perhaps a bit too early to be entirely certain, but I am reasonably sure that you are going to have a child, very likely by Christmas.”

She gave a bitter little laugh. “I can assure you, Doctor, it is no such thing.”

“What makes you say so?”

“To put it bluntly, Dr. Gilroy, I am barren. In six years with my first husband, I never showed the slightest sign of being enceinte.”

“I see. And did it never occur to you that the fault might lie with your first husband, rather than yourself?”

“Oh, no,” she said decisively. “The physician was quite clear on that point.”

“Was he? How did he know?”

She looked at him blankly. “I beg your pardon?”

“Unless there is some obvious indicator—an absence of menses on the woman’s part, for instance, or a lack of vital fluids on the man’s—it is practically impossible to assign a definite cause to a couple’s childlessness. So again I ask: how did the physician know?”

“He never said,” she confessed. “He informed Lord Fieldhurst—my first husband—that the deficiency was mine, and that it was doubtful anything could be done to correct it, but he never stated the basis for his conclusion. I assumed it must be some complicated medical reason that we would not have understood, even had he attempted an explanation.”

The doctor nodded sagely. “I suspected as much.”

“But why? Why would Dr. Humphrey lie about such a thing?”

“Humphrey? Do you mean Dr. Edmund Humphrey, by any chance?”

“Why, yes. Do you know him?”

“Only by reputation, but that is enough. Dr. Humphrey has made a long and lucrative career out of telling aristocrats what they most want to hear. He would not want to jeopardize a valuable source of income by informing Lord Fieldhurst that he was sterile.”

Julia was glad to be sitting, for she suddenly felt faint. Now that she thought of it, in spite of her first husband’s serial infidelities, she had never heard the slightest whisper of his having fathered a child on any of his mistresses. And no wonder: Frederick had been sterile. All those years, it had been he, not she, who was responsible for his lack of an heir and his cousin’s eventual assumption of the title.

“Fieldhurst knew, nonetheless,” she said at last. “He must have known. And yet he let me bear the blame all those years!”

“It was very wrong of him, of course,” the doctor said, “shamefully so. And yet, if I may offer a word of advice, Mrs. Pickett, Lord Fieldhurst is dead. Let his sins against you die with him, and concentrate instead on celebrating the birth of your child with your new husband.”

She nodded. “Yes, that is good advice, Doctor. Thank you. But you spoke of ‘symptoms,’ in the plural. What other symptoms may I expect?”

“It appears you are experiencing some of them already.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Alterations in sleep patterns, loss of appetite, and nausea, particularly in the morning. Some women also notice changes in temperament —emotional outbursts, for instance, such as sudden bouts of tears or uncharacteristic querulousness . . .”

“I see,” she said slowly, recalling several incidents over the past weeks that appeared very different in the light of this revelation. Perhaps her husband might forgive her more readily, once he knew the reason for her inexplicable moodiness. She glanced up at the clock, and saw that it was not yet nine. Hurry home, she silently begged across the miles. Please, please hurry.

 

* * *

 

Pickett, for his part, awoke that same morning in some confusion as to where he was and why he had apparently slept in his clothes, as well as why he should be possessed of a pounding head and a mouth that felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton wool. Gradually, however, the memories returned: the quarrel with Julia which had ended in the realization that he was unable to satisfy her; the stagecoach journey to Croydon; the previous evening’s overindulgence.

Bracing himself against the pain he knew would follow, he sat up in bed, clutching his hands to his head. He had been drunk exactly twice in his life, and those experiences had been sufficient to demonstrate why he had no desire to cultivate the habit. The first had occurred a year earlier, while he was investigating Lord Fieldhurst’s murder, and had been purely unintentional: he had been questioning a person of interest in a public house, and had not realized until much too late that the man was attempting to drink him under the table. Last night’s excesses, however, had been quite deliberate, a desperate attempt to forget, if only for a few hours, all that he had lost. The only trouble with drinking to forget, he reflected bitterly, was that one returned to sobriety only to discover that nothing had changed: the thing one had hoped to forget was still there, and in the meantime, one felt considerably less able to face it. Then, too, there was still the investigation that had necessitated the journey in the first place; he could hardly show up at the door of Washbourn Abbey in his present condition. Responding reluctantly to the call of duty, he swung his legs to the floor, stood up—and cracked his pounding head against the rafters.

He let out a ragged sigh. It was going to be one of those days.

Half an hour later, feeling somewhat the better for having washed, shaved, and consumed several cups of strong coffee, he inquired of the innkeeper the direction of Washbourn Abbey and set out on foot. A Londoner born and bred, Pickett was no great lover of country living, and did not look forward to a seven-mile trek along rutted country lanes, especially when his head pounded anew with every step. Consequently, when a farm wagon drew alongside him and the driver offered to take him up, he accepted the offer with gratitude; besides accomplishing the journey in much less time, the obligatory small talk which courtesy demanded he make with the farmer served to distract him from endlessly rehashing the angry words he’d exchanged with his wife, and her final accusation.

At length the wagon rounded a curve, and the vista that came into view inspired Pickett to interrupt the driver’s engrossing account of how Farmer Dawson’s cow had given birth to a calf with two heads.

“Is that Washbourn Abbey?”

“Aye.” The driver leaned over the side of the box so that he might spit onto the road below. “That’s it.”

Away to their right, the ground rose in a long, gentle swell of green meadow. A massive house of weathered grey stone commanded the rise as if looking down on the lesser beings in the valley below, its powerful lines reflected in the ornamental lake spread out beneath it like a robe at a monarch’s feet. Behind it, the dark green of a line of trees stood in stark contrast to the pale stone of the house as well as the blue of the sky beyond. Staring at it, Pickett could not help feeling a pang of sympathy for Lady Washbourn; it must have been quite a shock to go from being Miss Eliza Mucklow, daughter of a wealthy brewer, to the mistress of such a pile. His own rise from Drury Lane to Curzon Street, while disconcerting in its own way, was nothing to this. Perhaps if he had admitted his ignorance, had asked . . . But no, the same pride that balked at living as his wife’s pensioner forbade his asking her for instruction on a matter at which, to his mind, any man worthy of the name would have excelled instinctively. Well, he hoped he and his pride would be very happy together.

He shook off the unproductive train of thought and dragged his attention back to the matter at hand. Julia had claimed that Lady Washbourn was in love with her husband, having coaxed such a confession from the lady’s own lips; what, then, had the poor little countess endured to drive her to so desperate an action as plotting the murder of her husband? He found himself in the curious position of hoping he did not find the evidence against her that he had come from London to seek.

“Mind you, five years ago it didn’t look so fine as this,” the driver remarked. “The old place was well nigh falling to rack and ruin before his lordship was wed. But a regular Midas, her ladyship’s father was, and a whole army of workmen descended on the house and its outbuildings before the ink on the marriage lines was dry. Kept half the countryside in work for more than a year, it did.”

“I see,” Pickett said. “If you’ll set me down here, I can walk the rest of the way.”

The driver drew up his horses, and Pickett thanked him and offered him a shilling for his pains, which the man rejected with the easy generosity of country people. Pickett thanked him once again and climbed down. He stood watching as the wagon lurched out of sight, then turned and set out for the grey house on the hill.

He did not approach the massive double doors at the front of the house, but followed the raked gravel drive around the eastern façade to an unassuming door at the rear. Recognizing this as the service entrance, he stepped up to it and rapped sharply. A moment later it was opened by a young maidservant in a mobcap and a voluminous apron.

“Yes, sir?” she asked, gaping at him.

“My name is John Pickett. I’ve come from Bow Street, in London.” He gave the girl his card, wondering as he did so if she could read it. “I should like to have a word with the housekeeper, if I may.”

“Yes, sir,” the girl said again. “If you’ll come this way, I’ll fetch Mrs. Hawkins.”

She bobbed a curtsy and left him just inside the door. When she returned a short time later, she was accompanied by a gaunt female of indeterminate years. “This is Mr. Pickett, mum,” she said, then bobbed another curtsy and took herself off.

“Well, Mr. Pickett? Betty says you’ve come from Bow Street.” Mrs. Hawkins eyed him with disfavor, as if she suspected this tale was nothing more than an excuse to conceal his nefarious intention of seducing the female staff. If only she knew, Pickett thought with a sigh.

In fact, the prospect of explaining the reason for his visit to the Abbey had caused him considerable unease. As there was no possible way he could justify this as part of an inquiry into Lady Washbourn’s missing rubies, he had no choice but to reveal his continuing investigation into a death which a coroner’s jury had determined was no murder. He only hoped Lord Washbourn would forgive him, given the possibility that his findings might save his lordship’s life.

“I’m looking into the death of one of Lady Washbourn’s housemaids, Ann Barton by name.” The identity of the dead girl inspired no spark of recognition in the housekeeper’s eyes, and Pickett realized that, with the probable exceptions of his lordship’s valet and her ladyship’s abigail, Lord Washbourn maintained two completely separate household staffs, one for his Town residence and the other for his country estate.

“Yes, what of it?” challenged Mrs. Hawkins, still on her guard.

Fortunately, Pickett had expected this response, and now withdrew Lady Washbourn’s letter from the inside pocket of his coat. “I have here a letter from her ladyship stating that I am to be given the full cooperation of the staff during the course of my investigation.” Recognizing that this news would hardly endear him to the very people upon whose cooperation the investigation depended, he added, “I will not require much, Mrs. Hawkins. In fact, I hope to be out of your way very shortly.”

“Very well, Mr. Pickett,” she conceded with a cautious nod. “What do you want of us?”

“Very little. I only want to have a look about her ladyship’s still-room.”

“Her still-room?” echoed the housekeeper, with a skeptical lift of one eyebrow. “Whatever for?”

“I’m sure you can understand that I am unable to discuss the case in detail,” Pickett said. “Suffice it to say that the girl was known to have drunk a glass of her ladyship’s own peach ratafia just before she died.”

Mrs. Hawkins gave a disdainful sniff. “Her ladyship has made that particular beverage for years, from her own mother’s receipt, and gives the vicar a bottle every Christmas! If there were anything wrong with it, he and his wife would have been dead these ten years and more.”

As Lord and Lady Washbourn had married only two years earlier, Pickett knew this for an exaggeration. “Nevertheless, I should like to see it,” he reiterated, standing his ground.

“Very well.”

With the air of one bestowing an undeserved favor, she led Pickett through the kitchens to a small room whose windows looked out onto the herb garden. A work table of plain deal was positioned beneath the window to catch the light, while overhead, bunches of herbs and flowers hung from the rafters, giving off a faint but pleasant odor as they dried. All in all, it seemed a rather cheerful place to plot a murder.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hawkins,” Pickett said firmly, seeing the housekeeper showed no inclination to leave. “If I require anything else, I will be sure to ask.”

Mrs. Hawkins gave him one final glare, but left the room without argument. Alone in the small chamber, Pickett closed the door and looked about him, unsure exactly what he was looking for, let alone how he should go about finding it. He selected a glass jar at random and unstoppered the cork, wrinkling his nose at the sharp aroma that rose from the fine reddish-brown powder inside. Conceding that Ann Barton was unlikely to have been poisoned by cinnamon, he replaced the cork stopper and returned the jar to the shelf. In truth, he was more than a bit daunted by the task that he had traveled all the way from London to complete; he had not expected to be confronted with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with unlabeled jars, bottles, and boxes, each containing some unfamiliar and faintly sinister-looking powder or liquid. It would have been helpful to discover one marked “prussic acid,” “poison,” or even a more general “keep out,” but Pickett put the chances of such a felicitous discovery somewhere between slim and none. He thought wistfully how much more quickly the search might have been accomplished—to say nothing of how much more pleasurable the task would have been—if Julia had been there to examine the shelves on the right-hand side of the room, while he took those on the left.

Banishing from his mind an image too painful to dwell on, he began with the nearest shelf and began inspecting the containers one by one, sniffing this one and shaking that, and wondering all the while if he would even recognize the substance if he were to happen upon it. Dr. Gilroy had said the substance was derived from a blue pigment; did that mean it would appear blue? But no, surely any obvious color would have turned the peach ratafia dark or cloudy, alerting any potential victim—intentional or accidental—that something was amiss with the beverage. Besides, the doctor had also said it occurred naturally in peach pits, apple seeds, and cherry stones, none of which possessed any such hue. Abandoning this promising idea, he resigned himself to the necessity of recognizing the substance by the same bitter almond odor he’d recognized on the maid’s body.

Alas, his nostrils were soon so inundated with the pungent scents of cloves, anise, and peppermint—among others—that he was obliged to open a window and take several great gulps of fresh air before returning to his task. As he turned away from the window, his gaze fell on a small book bound in black leather, a book so old that its cover was spotted and stained, and its binding cracked. Pickett was suddenly seized with the fanciful notion that he beheld a witch’s book of spells, and that if he were to open it, he would find its pages inscribed with directions for placing curses on one’s enemies or concocting charms to open the heart of one’s beloved. The latter reminded him, not unnaturally, of his estrangement from his wife, and he flipped open the pages with a rather wistful sigh.

He was disappointed (though hardly surprised) to discover that it yielded no such useful information. Here was a receipt for black butter made from apples, and here was one for quince preserves, both transcribed in a graceful, feminine hand. Unwilling to turn back to his odoriferous investigations just yet, he spent a few minutes flipping through the pages, noting that the book contained directions for concocting medicines and beauty aids as well as jams and jellies. He grinned as he read one such entry, wondering what Julia would have to say about a face powder whose main ingredient appeared to be dried horse manure. His smile faded as he remembered he would never have an opportunity to describe this concoction to her.

He found, too, that it was easy to see which entries were the most popular: while some of the pages resisted his attempts to part them, others all but fell open at a touch. At last he found the receipt he sought, the one describing the preparation of peach ratafia flavored with almonds. While it was interesting in its way, it was of little use to him as far as the investigation went; there was certainly no mention of the fact that one might use the leftover peach pits to create a poison whose effects would be hidden by the flavor imparted by the almonds. Heaving a sigh, Pickett closed the back cover (for he was almost at the end of the book by now) and turned it over, prepared to set it aside and return to his examination of the still-room shelves. But he failed to grasp the front cover securely, and so only succeeded in flipping the book open to the flyleaf, where the owner had written her name, along with the year in which she had begun compiling her herbal.

Instead of Eliza Mucklow, the title page bore the inscription Mildred Frampton, 1747.

 

17

 

In Which Victory Turns to Ashes

 

The stagecoach rattled into the stable yard of the Swan with Two Necks in Gresham Street, Cheapside, just as darkness descended over Town. Pickett, perched once again on the roof, waited with ill-concealed impatience as the inside passengers disembarked, then scrambled down, claimed his valise as it was tossed from the boot, and entered the inn. Here he was obliged once again to wait his turn while those passengers meaning to break their journey for the night were assigned rooms. At length, when the last of these arrivals had been directed upstairs, the innkeeper turned to Pickett.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we haven’t any more room.”

“That’s all right,” Pickett said with a sigh, mentally revising his plans for the night. “But I wonder if you might be willing to hold my luggage until I send—until I call for it,” he amended lamely, belatedly remembering that there would be no dispatching a footman on such an errand. Like his marriage, those days of prosperity were over, just as if they had been nothing but a vivid dream. Maybe it was better to think of his brief taste of marital bliss (when he had to think of it at all) as just that: a dream, and one from which he’d been rudely awakened.

Having arranged for the storage of his bag, he set out on foot for the Grosvenor Square residence of Lord and Lady Washbourn. He sent up his card and was soon shown to the drawing room, where he found not only the lady of the house, but her husband and her mother-in-law as well.

“Why, Mr. Pickett,” exclaimed the countess, rising to greet him. “How fortunate that I should be home tonight to receive you! We—we have good news, you see. Only today my husband has been appointed to the British embassy at Constantinople, and we are to sail within a se’ennight. Washbourn wished to have this evening to celebrate quietly with his family before facing the congratulations of his friends.” Her gaze fell to Pickett’s brown coat, wrinkled from travel and almost white with the dust churned up from horses’ hooves and carriage wheels. “Am I to understand that you have just returned from—from your errand, and have some new information?”

Pickett glanced down at his person. “You are, ma’am, else I would not have inflicted myself upon you in all my dirt.”

“Never mind that.” She turned to her husband. “My dear, if you and Mother Washbourn will please excuse us—”

“Forgive me, your ladyship,” Pickett interrupted, “but what I have to say concerns them, too.”

“Have you found the Washbourn rubies, then?” Lord Washbourn demanded eagerly. “Good man!”

Pickett made no reply, but addressed himself to the countess, who sat ramrod straight at one end of the sofa. “Throughout this investigation, your servants have made mention of the peach ratafia which ‘her ladyship’ makes with her own hands. I always assumed they meant you, given your father’s occupation. I have since asked the housekeeper at Washbourn Abbey for confirmation, but I should like to have the truth from your own lips, if you please: who made the peach ratafia that was served on the night of the masquerade?”

“Why, Mother Washbourn,” said the countess, ges-turing toward her mother-in-law. “Everything having to do with the still-room falls under her authority. She is far better at that sort of thing than I will ever be, so everyone benefits from the arrangement.”

Not quite everyone, Pickett thought. It hadn’t worked out so well for Annie. Aloud, he merely said, “Thank you. And whose idea was it that the ratafia should be served at the masquerade?”

“Mother Washbourn suggested it. She is justifiably proud of it, you know, for it is very good, and the receipt was handed down from her mama.”

“So I’ve been told.” Pickett turned to the dowager. “What was your mother’s name, ma’am?”

The older lady looked down her aristocratic nose at him. “My mother was a Frampton of the Hampshire Framptons, Mr. Pickett, but what it can possibly have to do with my daughter-in-law’s loss of the Washbourn rubies quite escapes me!”

“And her Christian name?”

The dowager’s haughty gaze never wavered. “Mildred.”

The young countess, apparently seeing the direction of his questioning, made a faint whimpering sound.

“Look here,” Lord Washbourn protested. “Surely you can’t mean to imply that my mother had something to do with the disappearance of the rubies!”

Pickett glanced toward Lady Washbourn for consent, and found her staring at her mother-in-law with a stricken expression. He turned back to the earl. “No, your lordship, your mother had nothing to do with the missing rubies. In fact, they aren’t missing at all. They are in my wife’s jewel case.”

“What?” Lord Washbourn whirled about in his chair to confront his wife. “I trust you have some good reason for this, Eliza.”

“Yes,” she said unsteadily, her eyes never leaving the dowager’s face. “At least, it appears that I did.”

“With your permission, your ladyship?” Pickett asked. Receiving a distracted nod from the countess, he addressed himself to her husband. “The rubies were never missing, my lord. Their absence was nothing more than an excuse for me to confer with your wife on another matter entirely.”

The earl’s face darkened. “If this has to do with that maid, Annie, then let me remind you that the coroner’s inquest found her death to be due to natural causes! Now either you will let the poor girl rest in peace and cease persecuting my wife, or I will go to your magistrate and lodge a complaint against you!”

“Annie’s death enters into it only indirectly,” Pickett told him. “In fact, her ladyship sent for me because she feared her own life was in danger.”

“Can this be true, Eliza?” demanded the earl in some consternation. “As I told you before, they were nothing more than unfortunate accidents. I had no idea they had upset you so much. My dear, why didn’t you tell me?”

Lady Washbourn found her tongue at last. “Because I thought—I thought it was you,” she confessed, her voice low and breathless.

“Me? You thought I was trying to kill you?” Lord Washbourn sounded more injured than angry.

“Lady Barbara’s husband had just died,” the countess said in her own defense. “If you could only be rid of me, there would be nothing to prevent you from marrying her.” She gave him a brave and, Pickett thought, rather pathetic smile. “I know it was she you had wanted all along.”

“My dear Eliza!” The earl took her hand in both of his. “My father was ill. He insisted that I marry before he died, and I had long ago come to realize that marriage for me must mean an alliance with a woman of property, no matter my feelings for the lady herself—or hers for me, for that matter. My fascination with Lady Barbara was nothing more than a stubborn man’s last act of rebellion against the fate that had been forced on him by his ancestors’ extravagance.”

“You answered the summons to her theatre box readily enough,” she reminded him.

“Only because I wanted to make it clear to her that whatever had once existed between us was over, and to beseech her to put an end to advances that could serve no purpose but to embarrass us both.” He grimaced at the memory. “If you desire proof, you have only to ask the people in the boxes on either side, for she did not accept the rebuff quietly. No, Eliza, within forty-eight hours of the wedding ceremony, I knew that any marriage between Lady Barbara and me would have been an unmitigated disaster. By the time you and I returned from our wedding trip, I was in the unexpected position of blessing my forebears for the profligacy that made it necessary for me to make a match which otherwise I would never have had the wisdom to seek.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “So you see, my dear, your fears have been groundless.”

Pickett, feeling very much de trop by this time, cleared his throat. “Not quite groundless, your lordship.”

Lord Washbourn turned toward Pickett as if surprised to see him still there. “Eh, what’s that?”

“In fact, there was someone who wanted your wife dead—someone who pretended to be her friend while losing no opportunity to poison first her reputation, then her marriage, and, finally, her peach ratafia.”

“You brought me the glass, my love,” Lady Washbourn reminded her husband. “I was obliged to set it down untouched, but Annie drank it—and Annie died. You can see how it looked—why I thought—”

Lord Washbourn’s gaze slewed from Pickett to the countess, and back again. “Is this true, Mr. Pickett?”

“Quite true, your lordship, no matter what any coroner’s jury might have said to the contrary. I’d heard of a poison that left behind an odor of bitter almonds, and when I learned that a beverage flavored with almonds had been added to the menu at the last minute, I couldn’t help thinking it would have been a very convenient medium in which to hide a poison. Although I failed to convince the coroner of its significance, I did a little investigating on my own, with her ladyship’s permission. I recently learned from a physician that the poison I had in mind occurs naturally in the pits of peaches, and so I traveled to Washbourn Abbey in search of some evidence that might confirm my suspicions.”

He wisely neglected to mention the fact that his suspicions at that time had centered on Lady Washbourn herself. Instead, he reached into the inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a small book bound in worn black leather.

“I found this in the still-room there. I’d been told that ‘her ladyship’ made the peach ratafia from her mother’s old receipt, and I found the receipt here, so well-used that the page has almost detached from the binding. But when I saw the name and date inside, I realized that it hadn’t belonged to Lady Washbourn—her maiden name had been Mucklow—but to the dowager countess. Then, too, it is dated 1747—too early to have belonged to Lady Washbourn’s mother, even if Mrs. Mucklow had borne a child very late in life.” He turned to the dowager, who sat as if turned to stone. “Well, ma’am? What made you do it?”

“Have the goodness to leave my mother alone!” put in Lord Washbourn, very much on his dignity. “Why, Mama has been nothing but kind to my wife since the day I brought my bride home to Washbourn Abbey!”

“Kind to her face, perhaps, I’ll grant you that,” conceded Pickett with a nod. “And all the while spreading the most vicious half-truths designed to cast her in as unfavorable a light as possible.” He looked to the dowager for confirmation. “Isn’t that right, your ladyship—or should I say, ‘Aunt Mildred’?”

The earl stiffened. “You are offensive, sir! How dare you suggest that my mother has anything to do with that scandal-rag?”

“That—that was you, too, Mother Washbourn?” the countess stammered, addressing her mother-in-law for the first time since Pickett had entered the room.

The older woman regarded the younger as if she might a particularly repulsive species of insect. “I am not your mother, you—you common little adventuress! I never have been, and I never shall be!”

“And—and you killed Annie—”

The dowager pressed an affronted hand to her bosom, and the red stone on her finger winked accusingly in the light. “Is it my fault you are so lax with your servants that they think they can help themselves to whatever they please?”

Lord Washbourn, who had listened in mounting horror to this exchange, now stared at her in revulsion, as if his parent had suddenly turned into a serpent before his eyes. “You gave me that glass and bade me take it to Eliza, saying she must not be allowed to tire herself out,” he recalled in stunned disbelief. “You were so thoughtful, so solicitous of her, and yet—all the while—”

“Oh, do be quiet, Charles!” interrupted his mother. “I did it for your sake! What do you think it does to a mother’s heart, to see her son forced to give up the woman he loves? And all for what? Why, to wed the daughter of a tradesman!” She all but spat the word. “Your father and his father before him needed money no less than you did, and yet they married daughters of the aristocracy. They knew what was worthy of their name!”

Lord Washbourn practically erupted from his chair, and began pacing restlessly back and forth. “In other words, they closed their eyes to the looming disaster, all the while congratulating themselves on their exalted lineage!”

“Yes, they married to please themselves, and they chose women deserving of their lofty rank,” the dowager insisted. “My dowry may not have been large, but I was accounted a great beauty in my younger days, and descended from the Framptons of Hampshire, whose ancestors sailed to England with the Conqueror! Why should you alone of all the Washbourns be forced to sacrifice yourself? It was not fair, it was not right!”

He had reached the end of the room by now, and whirled about to confront her. “Not right, Mama? Not right? What, pray, is ‘right’ about marrying an innocent young woman, possessing myself of her inheritance, and then plotting her death so that I might be free to lay my ill-gotten gain at the feet of another lady? What is ‘fair’ about that? No, don’t interrupt,” he said quickly, when she opened her mouth to answer. “Since you feel my wife is so far beneath you, I will not force you to remain in her presence. If you recall, I have a small Scottish holding, a castle in the Outer Hebrides, which I believe will suit you very well. If I remember correctly, it came to our family through my great-grandfather’s marriage with the laird’s daughter; I’m sure you will appreciate the irony.”

“Begging your pardon, your lordship,” Pickett put in, “but the only place your mother will be going is Newgate.”

The dowager wrung her hands, and the large red stone on her finger flashed erratically. “I won’t! I won’t go to prison, and I won’t be exiled to some ruin while that vulgar little creature takes my place!”

Before anyone realized what she was about, she wrenched the gem to one side, tipped her head back, and poured down her throat the powdery substance that had been concealed inside her ring. Pickett leapt toward her, even as he recognized the futility of intervention. Within seconds, the dowager was choking and gasping for breath even as the earl pounded her frantically on the back; within minutes, she lay twitching convulsively on the floor in her son’s arms, unresponsive to his attempts to revive her. At last she lay still and the room fell silent, the quiet sobs of the countess the only sound.

“Hush, my love, don’t cry,” Lord Washbourn chided gently. He carefully lowered his mother’s head to the floor, then rose to his feet and took his trembling wife in his arms. “Perhaps it’s better this way. We will return to the Abbey long enough to see Mama laid to rest next to Papa in the family vault, and then we will prepare for the journey to Constantinople. By the time we return to England, I hope to have persuaded you to forgive me for my blindness.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she insisted, “at least not from you. No one could suspect his mother of such a thing, or even believe her capable of it.”

“Perhaps not, but I dismissed your very real concerns as nothing more than foolish megrims, and you might well have paid for my obstinacy with your life. I will not soon forgive myself for that.”

“If you will pardon the interruption,” Pickett put in, “may I suggest that the coroner be sent for?”

“What? Yes, I suppose there is no way around it,” the earl said with a sigh, recalled to his responsibilities. “But how Mama would have hated it!”

Pickett glanced down at the woman’s body. Her face had assumed an unnaturally rosy hue, and he had no doubt that, if he were to bend over the body, he would catch the scent of bitter almonds. But he remained determinedly upright. While he had been set on obtaining justice for Annie Barton, he felt no such compulsion where the dowager countess was concerned. Her troubles had been of her own making, and in his opinion, the sooner her son and daughter-in-law could begin to repair the damage she’d done to their marriage, the better off they would be. Lord Washbourn’s appointment to the British embassy at Constantinople seemed a good place to start.

“It is not uncommon for persons of the dowager’s age to go off in an apoplexy,” Pickett observed blandly. “After all, she was facing the prospect of being left alone in England while her beloved son and his family spent the next few years abroad. If you point this out to the coroner, I’m sure you’ll get no argument from Mr. Bagley.”

“But you know it isn’t true, Mr. Pickett,” objected Lady Washbourn.

Pickett shrugged. “I won’t be here to protest any such conclusion. Aside from the fact that Mr. Bagley would not be pleased to find me here, I believe I’ve trespassed on your hospitality quite enough already.”

“I see,” the earl said, and the creases in his forehead lessened somewhat. “Thank you, Mr. Pickett. My wife and I are much obliged to you.”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” exclaimed her ladyship, recalling the pretense by which she had first engaged his services, “what about the rubies, Mr. Pickett?”

“I’ll send them—” He broke off abruptly. With the resolution of the case, the death of the dowager, and the reconciliation of Lord and Lady Washbourn, he had been able to forget, if only for a little while, the shambles that was his own marriage. He could not send a footman to Grosvenor Square with the rubies, or even return them himself; he would not be going back to Curzon Street, not ever again. He wondered if, in the midst of all the preparations for burying the dowager and then going abroad, either of the Wash-bourns would remember the reward he had been promised, and realized he really didn’t care. Through his own incompetence, he had lost something worth far more than fifty pounds. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. “If you’ll call on—on my wife—in the morning, she will restore them to you.”

The Washbourns thanked him again and bade him farewell. Pickett said all that was proper (at least he hoped he did; he could never afterwards remember) and stumbled out into the night, unsure where to go or what to do with himself. Reminding himself that he had, after all, just solved a troublesome case, he resolved to inform Mr. Colquhoun of his findings, and with this end in view, set out for the magistrate’s residence.

Mr. Colquhoun was rather surprised to receive a visit from his most junior Runner at so late an hour, but he instructed the butler to admit the caller, and listened attentively to Pickett’s account of his visit to Washbourn Abbey and its aftermath. At the end of this recital, he shook his head.

“I don’t like it, Mr. Pickett,” he growled. “You should have waited until morning, got an arrest warrant, and followed the proper procedure. The dowager should have had to stand trial. Instead she managed to cheat the hangman, and that with your assistance. It was badly done of you.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I can’t agree. Who is to say she might not have had another go at killing Lady Washbourn—and a more successful one—overnight, while I was waiting to go through the proper channels? As for the lack of a trial, well, she’s dead either way, so does it really matter how? Besides, his lordship is to take up a diplomatic post in Constantinople; surely such a blemish on his family’s reputation could do nothing to strengthen national relations with the Turks. I’m sorry to disappoint you, sir—I’m well aware of how much I stand in your debt—but if I had it to do over, I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t do the same thing.”

The magistrate regarded him appraisingly for a long moment. “You’ve grown up, John,” he said at last. “To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Ah well, it’s getting late, and we both have to be back at Bow Street in the morning.”

Mr. Colquhoun heaved himself out of his chair as he spoke, giving Pickett to understand that the interview was at an end. Unable to think of any reason for delaying his departure, he took his leave of the magistrate and stepped from the warmth of the house into the dark and unwelcoming night. He turned his steps eastward with no particular destination in mind, and soon found himself in the vicinity of Covent Garden, where he had once picked pockets as a boy. The theatre had apparently let out only a short time earlier, for a throng of well-dressed patrons milled about the streets, their presence a jarring contrast to those members of the lower classes who hawked flowers, hired themselves out as chair men, or eked out a living by less legal means. It was hard to believe that only a few days ago he might have been found amongst the former group, after having spent his formative years as one of the latter. Now, he reflected morosely, he belonged to neither. The aristocrats ignored him, and the flower women and chair men, several of whom were old acquaintances, no longer seemed to recognize him. The habit of years reasserted itself, and he found himself watching the people lingering about the street even at so late an hour, appraising which ones would make the easiest mark for a practitioner of his former trade. Suddenly a boy barreled into him, a skinny lad with curly brown hair stuffed beneath a shapeless cap.

“Sorry, gov’nor.” The youth gave him a cheeky grin and tugged his forelock. “My mistake.”

“Yes, it was,” Pickett agreed, grabbing him by the wrist and twisting his arm behind his back. “I’ll thank you to give back whatever it was that you just pinched from my pocket.”

The boy raised limpid brown eyes to his. “I didn’t take nuffink! I’m innocent, I tell you!”

“And I’m the tsar of all the Russias,” Pickett scoffed. “Next time you decide to lighten someone’s pockets, you might do well to choose someone besides a Bow Street Runner. Now, are you going to give me back what’s mine, or do I haul you before the magistrate?”

Reluctantly, the boy opened his hand. Three ha’pence and a farthing lay within his grimy palm. “How did you know?” he asked in grudging admiration.

“Because I was on the budge myself long before you were ever born,” replied Pickett, slipping easily back into the language of his youth. “And making a better job of it, too. I had three guineas on me, and yet you come up with nothing but a handful of copper.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” retorted the boy. “It’s not like you was gonna stand still while I turned out your pockets, is it?”

“You learn by feel,” Pickett answered impatiently. “I can tell you never had my father for instructor! He made me practice blindfolded until I could tell one coin from another with just the tips of my fingers—and he rapped my knuckles for me if I guessed wrong. You’re going to end up dancing at the end of a rope someday if you don’t improve your technique.”

It occurred to him that Mr. Colquhoun would hardly approve of him giving professional advice to a fledgling member of his erstwhile profession, but then, he knew better than most that the boy’s illegal activities most likely owed less to moral deficiency than they did to the simple need to put food in his belly. He himself had been lucky; for most young criminals, there was no Mr. Colquhoun to take an interest in setting their feet on a better path.

“On second thought, here.” He took the boy’s arm and poured the coins back into his hand. “Go and get yourself something to eat. Not Blue Ruin, mind, but something good—something filling.”

The boy regarded him suspiciously. “Why? So’s you can haul me into Bow Street and tell the magistrate I stole it?”

“No, so you don’t have to pick any more pockets, at least not tonight.” His expression softened, and he added more gently, “I remember what it’s like, you know—being hungry.”

His words fell on empty air, for the boy had taken to his heels as if afraid his unexpected benefactor might change his mind. He need not have worried. Pickett had seen something of himself in the young pickpocket, something of the boy he had once been. Ten years ago, he reflected, it might have been him, right down to the curly brown hair and the big brown eyes trying their best to look innocent.

Ten years ago . . . It had been almost eleven years since his father had been transported to Botany Bay, but if Moll—Da’s woman and his own de facto stepmother—had conceived shortly before he’d been shipped off . . .

Pickett shook his head as if to dismiss the unproductive train of thought, and set his mind to the more urgent task of finding a place to stay. It was perhaps inevitable that his steps should lead him eventually to Drury Lane, where he had once resided in a two-room flat over a chandler’s shop. In fact, it had been in these unprepossessing surroundings that he and Julia had consummated their irregular Scottish marriage, putting an end to the plans that had already been made for an annulment. At the bittersweet memory, a dull ache settled somewhere in his chest, and his gaze drifted down the lane, past the Cock and Magpie to the chandler’s shop beyond, and then upward to the flat above, where a light burned in the window like a beacon.

He froze. A light! She had come for him! He ran down the lane to the shop, groped for the key hidden over the doorframe, then unlocked the door and took the stairs two at a time until he reached the door at the top. He would have flung it open, but this, too, was locked. He was glad of it; these were hardly the most salubrious of surroundings for a lady alone. He pounded on the door until he heard the click of the key turning in the lock, and a moment later it opened. There in the doorway stood a worn-looking woman with a baby on her hip and a toddler clinging to her skirts. Pickett had never seen her before in his life.

“Well?” she asked impatiently. “What do you want?”

“I—I’m sorry,” Pickett stammered. “I thought you were—I hoped—I beg your—my—my mistake.”

The baby began to wail, and she turned her attention to it, closing the door on Pickett. He turned and staggered back down the stairs, the pain of blighted hopes lancing his belly like a knife. He had thought it would be Julia, had believed for one brief, shining moment that she’d been as miserable as he was, and was waiting for him in the flat where they’d once been so happy. He plodded his way down to the Strand and stood on the corner, lost as to where to go or what to do in this city he knew so well. The air was heavy and damp with the promise of rain and the fishy smell of the Thames, just out of sight beyond Somerset House.

He had not been aware of following the familiar odor, but eventually he found himself standing on the quay looking out over the water. The darkness was broken at intervals by the lanterns of boats riding at anchor, their faint lights tipping each tiny wave with gold. Soon, he knew, the lighters of coal would be arriving from Newcastle, and at dawn the heavers would swarm aboard with their shovels and sacks, ready to fill the wagons that would deliver the fuel to warm London’s homes. He should know; he had spent five years of his life at the grueling work, and might have been there still, had not Mr. Colquhoun seen some potential in him and taken an interest.

Perhaps, he thought bitterly, he would have been better off if Mr. Colquhoun had left him there. He had been only too willing to leave the Granger household at the time, but the pain of Sophy’s rejection had been mere child’s play next to what he felt now. Surely it would have been better never to have known Julia at all than to—

He realized with a start that if he had never come to Bow Street, Julia—Lady Fieldhurst, as she was then—might well have been hanged for the murder of her husband. She would be dead now, would have been dead for almost a year, and he would never have been the wiser. No, he could not regret knowing her, not regret loving her, even knowing how it must end.

He looked down at the black water at his feet. The tide was just beginning to ebb, and by dawn the muddy riverbank would be visible. Some of his earliest memories were of mudlarking along the banks of the Thames at low tide, scavenging for any scrap of bone or metal that might be exchanged for coin. It would be fitting in a way, for his life to end here, where so much of it had been spent. And Julia would be free of him, but on his own terms, with no need for pettifogging by the Fieldhursts’ solicitor.

He frowned at the thought of Julia. However unsatisfactory she found him as a husband, he had to believe that she had loved him once. He would have to make the thing look like an accident, for her sake. His magistrate, however, would be more difficult to deceive. Julia might wonder, but Mr. Colquhoun would know, or quickly deduce, what had happened, and would blame Julia for it, however unfairly. Pickett had no desire for his death to become a bone of contention between the two people he loved most in the world. He let out a ragged sigh. It appeared that even this final door was closed to him.

And then, just when he thought things could not possibly get any worse, the heavens opened and the floods descended. He pulled his hat forward to keep the rain out of his eyes, and shuddered as the cold water trickled down the back of his neck where his queue used to be. Head down, he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, scarcely knowing or caring where he was going until he found himself standing on a familiar front stoop. He rang the bell, and a moment later was shown into the drawing room.

The master of the house sat before the fire in his slippers, reading a journal, but upon the entrance of a creature more closely resembling a drowned rat than a human being, he flung down his magazine and shot to his feet. “John? Good God, man, what’s happened?”

The look Pickett gave him was one of utter desolation. “I think—I think I’ve left my wife.”

 

18

 

In Which Julia Fieldhurst Pickett

Takes Matters into Her Own Hands

 

Scolding like a mother hen, Mr. Colquhoun soon had Pickett out of his sodden coat and steered him to a chair drawn up before the fire, where he might warm himself and dry off.

“Now,” he said at last, having dispatched the butler for brandy, “what’s all this nonsense about you and Mrs. Pickett?”

Pickett shook his head. “I’m sure you did your best, sir, but it looks like I’m still my father’s son, after all.” Except, of course, that the elder Pickett’s faithlessness stemmed from his being too appealing to women; the younger, it seemed, could not even please the one woman he loved, and who had professed to love him in return. Even love, it seemed, had its limits.

“Nonsense!” his mentor repeated briskly. “Even the most devoted couples have lovers’ quarrels now and again. It’s not the end of the world.”

“No,” Pickett said bleakly. “Just the end of a marriage.”

The magistrate forbore to comment. He had seen this rift approaching ever since the couple’s wedding day, when he’d discovered, quite by accident, that John Pickett labored under the mistaken belief that his wife’s jointure would end with her remarriage, and that he fully intended to support her as best he could on his own meager wages. Mr. Colquhoun’s misgivings had increased exponentially when he had spoken to the lady herself and realized she hadn’t the slightest notion as to the blow the reality had dealt to her young husband’s pride, much less the need for softening it as much as possible. When the inevitable confrontation had come, it had apparently come with a vengeance.

“But where is your bag?” he asked bracingly. “Surely you didn’t travel to Croydon with nothing but the clothes on your back!”

“No, sir,” Pickett said, staring morosely into the flames. “I had a valise, but I left it at the Swan and promised to call for it later. They had no more rooms, and I—I didn’t know where else to go.”

“I’ll send a footman to fetch it, and have the housekeeper make up a room for you.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m sorry—”

His apologies fell on deaf ears. Mr. Colquhoun betook himself from the room, but made no visible effort to summon his housekeeper. Instead, he went across the hall to his study, where he composed a short note that made no mention of Pickett’s bag at all. Having shaken sand over this missive, folded it, and sealed it with a wafer, he rang for a footman and surrendered this correspondence into his keeping, with very specific instructions as to its delivery.

“You want me to take the carriage, sir?” the footman asked stupidly, experience—as well as the name of his position—having long since taught him that such errands usually entailed trudging across Town, even in the midst of such a rainstorm as this one.

His employer lifted one bushy white eyebrow. “Didn’t I just say so?”

“Yes, sir. But—am I to wait for a reply?”

“Unless I miss my guess,” the magistrate predicted, “you will need to wait for a passenger.”

 

* * *

 

He was not coming back. As she stared out the window onto the darkness that was Curzon Street at midnight, Julia finally admitted to herself what she had feared ever since he had departed the previous morning. She had not dared to leave the house all day for fear of being absent when he returned, and she had listened for his footsteps in the hall long before she had any realistic expectation of hearing them. But afternoon had turned to evening and evening to night with still no sign of him, and she had finally pushed her dinner plate away untouched and sent Thomas to Cheapside to inquire whether the stagecoach from Croydon and points south had arrived yet. Thomas had returned some time later with the information that the stagecoach had indeed reached London three hours earlier (“safe and on time,” the booking agent had reported proudly), and that a passenger fitting Mr. Pickett’s description had disembarked just before nightfall, leaving his bag at the inn until such a time as he should call for it.

“Should I have fetched it home while I was there?” Thomas asked uncertainly. “I would have done, but I thought maybe he wouldn’t like coming for it and finding it gone.”

“No, you did right.” Julia turned away from the window and summoned up a feeble smile. “If he has made other plans, I am sure he would not thank us for interfering with them.”

Julia dismissed the footman and turned back to the window, watching the rain that beat against the glass panes, unceasing as a widow’s tears. She rehearsed in her mind every word, every gesture in the quarrel that had culminated in his leaving without even saying goodbye. She had spoken in anger, she thought desperately, she hadn’t meant any of it. Surely he must have known that! Oh, must he? a small voice whispered back accusingly. How? How would he have known? Unlike herself, he had never been married before, never even had a longtime sweetheart unless one counted the faithless Sophia. She had been well aware, of course, that he feared she might someday come to regret their marriage; perhaps, believing his worst fears had come to pass, he had thought to salvage what remained of his pride by leaving her before she could order him to go.

Now he was out there alone in the darkness somewhere, and she had no idea where he was or even if he had sufficient funds remaining from his journey to procure a roof over his head for the night. Every instinct cried out to her to go after him, to search every thoroughfare and backstreet of London until she found him, but it was not safe for a woman to go gadding about Town alone at such an hour, even if she’d had any idea where to begin looking for him. She pressed a hand to her abdomen. Had it been only her own safety at risk, no danger would have been too great, no peril too hazardous. Now, however, she had someone else’s welfare to think of, someone whose existence would be the only thing that might comfort her for his loss.

A hollow feeling formed in the pit of her stomach at the thought of the new life she carried. Someday, when the child was old enough, she would have to tell it about its father: who he was, and how very much she had loved him—and, finally, how she had driven him away. She pressed her forehead to the cool glass, and closed her eyes against the tears that threatened.

Her bleak reflections were interrupted by a light scratching at the door.

“Begging your pardon, madam,” Rogers said apologetically, “but had you not best turn in? It is quite late, you know, and the young master will not want you wearing yourself out waiting for his return. I will be happy to stay up to admit him myself, or to receive any message concerning him—in which case I should naturally apprise you at once.”

She cast one last, longing glance up the rain-soaked street before turning reluctantly away from the window. “Yes, I suppose I should. But you need not wait up, Rogers.” She gave the butler a forlorn little smile. “I do not think we will see Mr. Pickett again.”

“Mrs. Pickett—madam—” He was spared the futile attempt at consolation by the sound of a vehicle drawing to a stop before the front door. “Forgive me, madam,” he said, bowing himself from the room as someone in the street below wielded the door knocker with vigor.

Propriety, of course, required that she wait patiently in the drawing room until Rogers returned to announce the visitor, or until (as she infinitely preferred) her husband should join her, expressing his profound apologies for the long delay. But propriety made no allowances for the agonies endured by a woman estranged from her husband for more than thirty-six hours, the last four of which had been spent in envisioning increasingly grim scenarios ranging from a permanent, irreparable breach to the discovery of his lifeless body in a back alley off Drury Lane.

“Oh, hang propriety!” she muttered under her breath.

Picking up her skirts, she ran from the room and raced down the stairs, reaching the hall below just as Rogers opened the door to admit the caller. It was not, as she had hoped, her husband who entered the house, but a stranger in servants’ livery who stood there holding a letter in his hand. Rogers spoke to him in hushed tones, then took the epistle and conveyed it to his mistress.

“From Mr. Colquhoun, madam,” the butler murmured.

She broke the seal with hands that shook, and unfolded the single sheet. There is a very unhappy young man at my house, it read. If you want him, please come and get him. P. Colquhoun, Esq.

“Will there be any reply, ma’am?” asked the footman, observing her sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks.

“Yes, there will,” she said resolutely. “But I shall deliver it in person. I’m coming with you!”

She disembarked before the magistrate’s house a short time later. Heedless of the cold rain that now fell in sheets, she hurried up the stairs onto the portico with such haste that the footman was hard pressed to reach the front door ahead of her. He flung it open, and she stumbled over the threshold into the hall, where Mr. Colquhoun waited.

“Where is he?” she asked without preamble.

He nodded in the direction of a closed door opening off the hall. “Am I to understand, then, that you’ve come to fetch him back home?”

“Yes.” Now that the moment of reunion was at hand, however, she hesitated. “I have much to thank you for, Mr. Colquhoun, and much for which to beg your pardon. You tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen.” She glanced toward the uncommunicative door. “If he refuses to come with me, I shall have only myself to blame.”

The magistrate’s bushy eyebrows arched toward his hairline. “Surely it isn’t as bad as all that!”

“I was angry and hurt,” she said, hanging her head in shame at the memory. “I said—I said something unforgivable.”

“In my experience, there are very few things unforgivable, provided the love is there,” he said, more gently than was his wont.

“Yes, but I knew he was—I knew he had not—”

“It seems to me, Mrs. Pickett, that these self-recriminations would be better addressed to the young man beyond that door,” suggested the magistrate.

“Yes.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Yes, I’m sure you are right.”

She slowly crossed the hall and put her hand on the panel. She glanced over her shoulder at Mr. Colquhoun, then, receiving a reassuring nod, pushed the door open and stepped inside.

He had removed his coat, and now sat before the fire in his shirtsleeves, with his back to the door. She could not see his face, but the slump of his shoulders, outlined sharply against the damp linen of his shirt, told its own tale. She advanced tentatively into the room and gently closed the door behind her.

“I’m sorry to impose on you at this hour, sir,” he said without looking around. “If you can put me up for the night, I’ll see about finding a place of my own first thing in the morning. Someone else has my old flat now and, well, I didn’t know where else to go.”

“You could always go back to your wife,” she said softly.

He whirled around to stare at her, his expressive countenance a curious mixture of hunger and fear, as if he dared not believe the evidence of his own eyes.

“Please, John—I’m so very sorry—”

She got no further. He crossed the room in three strides, caught her up in his arms and began raining frenetic kisses on her lips, cheeks, eyes, hair, and anything else with which his mouth came in contact.

“Oh John, I’ve been so worried—don’t you ever—ever do such a thing again!” she said in between frenzied kisses, softening this scold by clinging to him all the more tightly.

“No—I won’t—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine, all mine,” she insisted, and once the passion of reconciliation had spent itself and coherent conversation was possible, she enlarged upon this theme. “You tried to tell me, even Mr. Colquhoun tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. I’ve been so happy, I didn’t want to think that you—weren’t.”

“But not because of you, my lady—never because of you. From the moment we met, you’ve had my whole heart, Julia, but I can’t be the man you deserve. You’re going to have to tell me what to do—what you want—”

Her face had been buried in the front of his shirt, but at that she looked up. “Darling, what are you talking about?” she asked, very much afraid she already knew.

“I don’t please you.” The pain contained in those four simple words was plainly written on his face.

She drew a ragged breath. “I was right, then, in thinking that was what drove you away. John, to say I owe you an apology doesn’t even begin to cover it. When I came home yesterday and found you packing, I was still smarting over a—an unpleasant encounter I’d had in the park. Then I realized you meant to go away and leave me to the mercy of such people—” But that episode seemed a lifetime ago, and it was absurd now to think that they had parted, even temporarily, over anything so unimportant. “At that moment I wanted to hurt you as I had been hurt—and I did. I said something cruel and stupid, something that wasn’t even true. It is very precious to me, the knowledge that you have been with no other woman but me, and however inexperienced you may have been when we married, I can say in all honesty that I have never known such happiness as I have found in your arms. You may be my second husband in terms of chronology, but you are first in my heart, and you always will be. And that, my darling, is the truth.”

Pickett could find no words with which to answer this declaration. There was a gesture, however, one that he had promised more than half in jest, but that seemed to be the only response that would even begin to express what was in his heart. And so he dropped to one knee and lifted the lower edge of her gown, then bent his head and pressed it to his lips.

“No, John, don’t,” she protested, tugging at him. “We’re equals in every way that counts. Besides, there is something we must discuss. It—it concerns the matter of finances. I knew you were troubled by it, but I didn’t realize how much.”

At her urging, he rose to his feet. “Julia, I will never be completely reconciled to the fact that I can’t support my wife in the manner to which she’s accustomed, but neither do I want you to give up any more than you already have in marrying me. If that’s the price I have to pay, then I’ll pay it willingly.”

“Nevertheless, I have a proposition to put to you. For the next six months, we will live wherever you wish: in Drury Lane, or Covent Garden, or under a bridge, if that is what you want—”

“I think we can eliminate the bridge,” he put in.

“Don’t interrupt,” she said, pressing a finger to his lips. “As I said, for the next six months we will live in whatever lodgings may be had for twenty-five shillings a week. But after that, I must insist we find somewhere else to live—if not Curzon Street, then some other house we will choose together. I will not compromise on this.”

“Your proposition sounds remarkably like an ultimatum, my lady,” he said, although the tenderness in his voice robbed the words of any belligerence.

“Does it? Oh dear, I suppose it does,” she confessed, conscience-stricken. “Still, you must admit your Drury Lane flat is rather small for three people.”

“On the contrary, I could show you whole families living in—wait—what—three? Who—?”

The radiance of her smile rivaled the sun. “You’re going to be a father, John Pickett.”

He took a step backwards, staring at her. “But—but that’s impossible!”

“Yes—except that it isn’t.”

“You told me you were unable to have children,” he insisted, “that in six years with Lord Fieldhurst—”

“With Fieldhurst, yes. It turns out that the failing was not mine, but his—a failing, furthermore, that my second husband does not share.”

“A baby,” Pickett said stupidly, still trying to take it in. A baby, which meant that a nursery must be furnished and a nurse engaged, and perhaps another laundry maid as well, to wash all the clouts the baby would tear through every day, and then, when the child was older, there would be the matter of schooling—none of which could be accomplished on twenty-five shillings a week, not in a manner befitting the child of his lady wife. And yet somehow it didn’t seem to matter so much anymore, not when he looked into her glowing face. He had given her the one thing her first husband, for all his wealth and position, never could. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough. “When—? How soon—?”

Surprisingly, Julia had no trouble deciphering this disjointed query. “December—very likely before Christmas.” She smiled up at him. “Not too shabby, for a woman who was supposed to be barren and a man who was supposed to be impotent.”

Stunned as he was, Pickett was still capable of performing a simple mathematical calculation. “December? That—that didn’t take long!”

“No, it didn’t.” She stood on tiptoe to press her lips to his slackened jaw. “So let us hear no more about your inadequacies as a husband.”

Whatever he might have said to this was interrupted by a light tap on the door. It inched open, and Mr. Colquhoun stuck his head in. Assessing the situation with a clinical eye, he noted that his protégé looked rather dazed, but the condition of the boy’s cravat—to say nothing of his lady’s hair, most of which had been pulled loose from its pins—was sufficient to inform the magistrate that the reconciliation was everything the lad might have wished.

“Forgive the interruption,” he said, “but I have a coachman and a housekeeper awaiting instructions.”

“Sir, we’re having a baby!” Pickett blurted out.

“Well, don’t have it here,” recommended Mr. Colquhoun. “The offer of a room for the night still stands, but I rather think it will not be needed, is that correct?”

“Quite—quite correct,” Pickett said, taking Julia’s hand and looking down at her with a rather fatuous smile. “I think we’d best go home now, my wife and I.”

“As you wish.” Mr. Colquhoun turned to give the order to his coachman, and Julia picked up Pickett’s still-damp coat and held it open as he shrugged his arms into the sleeves. There would be other misunderstandings, she knew —other quarrels, even—but next time they would be better prepared. As Mr. Colquhoun had said, the love was there, and it would see them through any storm.

Outside, the rain had stopped and the carriage waited in the newly washed street. The coachman opened the door and let down the step, but it was Pickett who handed Julia inside. Once in the vehicle, however, she paused and turned back.

“But where is home, John?” she asked. “Have you decided?”

He looked up at her, and saw his whole world reflected in her eyes. “Home is where you are,” he said simply, and turned to address the coachman. “Curzon Street. Number twenty-two,” he said, then climbed into the carriage after her and shut the door.

 

 

 

 

Author’s Note

 

Frequent readers of mysteries will no doubt have recognized cyanide as the almond-scented poison that featured so prominently in this book. People in Regency England would not have known it by that name, as the substance—derived from and named for the pigment Prussian blue, just as I’ve described it here—did not acquire its scientific name until 1826, almost two decades after the events in Mystery Loves Company. If you love words and their origins, as I do, you might be interested to know that the root word in cyanide is the same as the name given to the cartridge of blue ink in the color printer on your desk: cyan.

As for John Pickett, if you’d like to know more about his journey from juvenile delinquent to collier’s apprentice to Bow Street Runner (including his ill-advised romance with his master’s daughter), you can find it in Pickpocket’s Apprentice: A John Pickett Novella, a companion piece to the mystery series, available in paperback, electronic, and audiobook formats.

 

THE JOHN PICKETT MYSTERIES

 

PICKPOCKET’S APPRENTICE

(A John Pickett novella)

 

IN MILADY’S CHAMBER

 

A DEAD BORE

 

FAMILY PLOT

 

DINNER MOST DEADLY

 

WAITING GAME

(Another John Pickett novella)

 

TOO HOT TO HANDEL

 

FOR DEADER OR WORSE

 

MYSTERY LOVES COMPANY