Chapter 18

 

Which Introduces a Mysterious Lady

 

Since there was nothing to be done about his father’s property until Dr. Gilroy had made his inquiries, Pickett could devote his full attention to investigating his father’s murder. His next move, he decided, must be to discover where Sir Horace and his wife had taken up what was quite likely temporary residence, and to pay a call on Lady Stapleton at an hour when her husband was least likely to be at home. In fact, he was undecided as to what his attitude should be in approaching the lady. Ought he to be a former Bow Street Runner determined to bring his father’s killer to justice, or a bereaved son trying to piece together the last few days in the life of a parent from whom he had long been estranged?

When the following morning found him still undecided, he presented his dilemma to Julia as he sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, idly grazing from the leftovers on the breakfast tray that was, along with all her other meals, brought up to her room every day so that she might partake of it in bed.

She did not disappoint him. Julia had no hesitation in plumping for the latter of the two alternatives. “You wish to express your gratitude to her for the friendship”—she gave the word the slightest of emphases—“that brought your father so much happiness in what were to prove his final days.”

“You think so?” he said doubtfully.

“I know so. What a pity there is nothing amongst your father’s effects which you might present to her as a remembrance! You could say you were sure he would have wanted her to have it, et cetera.”

Pickett cast his mind back over his father’s possessions, then offered, “I wonder what she would say to six hundred acres along the western border of New South Wales.”

“The perfect gift, to be sure!” exclaimed Julia, entering into the spirit of the thing. “What a pity you’ve given it to Dr. Gilroy instead! I daresay she would have leapt at the chance to unburden herself to so sympathetic an audience.” Her smile faded, and she added in a more serious vein, “If she was sincerely attached to your father, it cannot be very comfortable for her, being obliged to grieve in secrecy.”

Pickett leaned forward to dip the remaining crust of Julia’s toast into the small pot of honey on her tray. “What makes you so sure she is grieving him? For all we know, she may have been the one who killed him.”

“My dear John, what makes you think she can’t do both? A lady may love a man and yet still be quite capable of murdering him.”

He paused with the toast halfway to his mouth. “That ought to make me sleep better at night.”

“As well it should!” she retorted, choking back a laugh. “If it hadn’t been for Camille de la Rochefort, we would never have met, and you would be sleeping alone.”

“I’m sleeping alone now,” he pointed out, regarding the camp bed in the dressing room with disfavor.

“It is rather beastly, isn’t it?” She bent a reproachful gaze upon her distended abdomen. “It seems to me that this child of ours has a great deal to answer for.”

Pickett, his mouth full of toast, was spared the necessity of uttering what could only be inane assurances that it would not be much longer now—a fact of which she was quite as fully cognizant as he, and very likely more so. In any case, the conversation was interrupted by a light scratching at the door.

“Come in,” Julia called.

The door was opened to reveal the butler framed in the doorway. “Pray forgive the interruption, madam, but there is a lady below who wishes to see the young master on a matter of some delicacy.”

“Oh?” Julia’s blue eyes shifted from Rogers to Pickett, who was even now unfolding his long legs and reaching for his boots. She had no fears at all concerning her husband’s fidelity, but although he might be rather endearingly unaware of his own appeal, she was not—and there was no denying the fact that the advanced state of her pregnancy made her feel at a decided disadvantage where other females of the species were concerned.

“As the lady asked only for ‘Mr. P,’ I believe it is in response to Mr. Pickett’s most recent advertisement in the Times,” Rogers offered, by way of either explanation or assurance; she was not quite sure which.

“Did she give her name?” Pickett asked.

“She did not, sir.” After a brief but significant pause, Rogers added, “She is heavily veiled, which I took to mean that she did not wish for her identity to be known.”

“Oh!” Julia said again.

“Tell her I’ll be down directly, and offer her a glass of whatever it is that ladies drink at this hour,” Pickett instructed the butler, then turned his attention back to Julia. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go? Plump the pillows, or move the tray, if you’ve finished with it?”

Julia agreed to both of these proposals for her comfort, well aware that her consent had more to do with asserting her prior claim than with any real need for the services he offered. Pickett removed the tray and set it on the floor beside the bed, then removed the two pillows supporting her back, punched them into shape, and replaced them.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much better,” she assured him. “Now if you will only put Mrs. Edgeworth within reach, I shall do very well.”

Pickett, happy to oblige, placed her book on the bedside table, well within her reach. “I’ll be back shortly,” he promised, and she resisted the urge to detain him still longer by lifting her face to be kissed.

He started down the stairs, but when he reached the half-landing, he paused before the gilt-framed looking-glass on the wall to straighten his cravat and brush what looked like a crumb of toast from the lapel of his coat. He wanted to present as professional appearance as possible to a potential client, but had no desire to give his wife the idea that he was preening himself for a tête-à-tête with another woman—even if it was, strictly speaking, true.

Upon his entrance into the drawing room, the lady rose from her seat on the sofa to dip a curtsy, and Pickett found that the butler had not exaggerated. His visitor was a tall, slender lady, although her height might have been exaggerated by the lady’s costume, which was one of unrelieved black. Her pelisse was severely plain, with no ribbons, ruffles, buttons, or any other of the ornamentation that usually adorned ladies’ apparel. Clearly, her determination to remain anonymous extended even to her clothing; anyone asked for a description would be hard-pressed to supply any detail of either the lady herself or her toilette. As for the veil Rogers had mentioned, it fell from the brim of her plain black bonnet to somewhere below her chin, and comprised so many layers of black netting that Pickett could only wonder how she had contrived to enter the house without running into the wall.

All these impressions flitted through his brain in less time than it took to cross the room and take her black-gloved hand.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Mrs.—er, Miss—?”

“I think we shall dispense with names, if you please, at least for the nonce.”

Her voice was low and somewhat husky. If her face matched her voice, Pickett decided, she would be a very attractive woman, albeit one no longer in the first blush of youth, who had given her husband the requisite heir and so was now free to indulge in “matters of some delicacy”—one of which, seemingly, must have gone awry.

As if aware of this silent appraisal, she said, somewhat defensively, “Your advertisement said you would undertake discreet inquiries. You are ‘Mr. P.,’ are you not?”

Pickett nodded, then realized she could probably not see this gesture through the many layers of black netting. “I am, and it did. Am I to understand that you wish me to make such an inquiry on your behalf?”

“Perhaps.”

Obviously, the lady would not be rushed into confidences. When the butler entered the room at that moment bearing a silver tray, Pickett all but fell upon his neck.

“Here is Rogers with some refreshment for you,” he said, with more enthusiasm than was warranted by the appearance of a glass of sherry and a plate of cakes. In fact, he had no idea if it was customary for ladies to drink alcoholic beverages so early in the day—he had assumed Rogers would furnish the caller with a glass of the lemonade which Cook made daily for Kit’s benefit—but if sherry would lower the lady’s inhibitions and loosen her tongue, so much the better. “Won’t you sit down? Perhaps we can determine how I might be able to help you.”

The lady sank gracefully onto the sofa and accepted the glass, but any hopes Pickett might have entertained of her putting back her veil were doomed to disappointment. The glass, along with the black-gloved hand that held it, disappeared beneath the curtain of black netting, only to reappear a moment later with the level of liquid it contained slightly lowered. Still, the sherry had its effect, for after a few minutes of the most banal conversation he had ever endured, much less instigated, she was at last ready to talk.

“I confess, I had expected someone rather older,” she began.

The usual irritation Pickett felt at the inevitable reference to his lack of years was on this occasion secondary to a feeling of surprise that she could see him well enough to make any judgments as to his age at all.

“But as they say, beggars can’t be choosers,” she continued, then paused to fortify herself with a long pull from her glass. “Here is the situation in a nutshell. My husband and I have just returned from—from a colonial posting abroad. The passage was quite long, you understand, with few amusements and only a handful of one’s fellow passengers for companionship. After a couple of months at sea, we were all heartily sick of our own company.”

A chord of recognition stirred in Pickett’s brain. “Go on.”

“Yes, well, one of these passengers was a man—not a gentleman, you understand, but he was good-looking, and amusing, and he and I—well, I suppose you could say we began a flirtation. Nothing so serious as an affaire de coeur, of course,” she put in hastily, “just a way of beguiling the tedium of the journey.”

“I see.” In fact, Pickett suspected the lady would be surprised to know just how much he did see.

“At least, that was the plan,” she said with a sigh. “But as we drew nearer to London, I thought how much I should dislike to drop the acquaintance. There is so little privacy on board a ship, and I had become quite curious about how our friendship might develop if only we were free of such artificial restraints.”

What was it about Da, Pickett wondered, that made otherwise sensible females completely lose their heads over him? Aloud, he merely observed, “And so you hoped to continue the flirtation, perhaps even expand upon it, once you reached London.”

She nodded, or rather, the folds of netting pooled about her neck as her black bonnet dipped, then straightened as the bonnet lifted. “In short, I wrote him letters—three, in all. You will say it was foolish, even reckless of me, and you would be right, of course.”

At some point, Pickett knew, he would have to take pity on her and tell her that her shipboard suitor was none other than his own father, and that her incriminating letters were even now in his own possession. But not just yet. Not until he learned a bit more about the Stapletons’ marriage. “Did your husband know about this, er, flirtation?”

“He could hardly have been unaware of it, given, as I said, the lack of privacy on board a ship. Still, he had no reason to suspect that it might develop into anything more than an amusement to pass the time at sea. And it is imperative that he should remain in ignorance,” she added urgently. “As I said, we have only just returned to London. His position abroad was not a particularly illustrious one, but the limited society of the colony meant that we were received in all the best circles. He quite enjoyed the illusion of belonging to a higher rank than ever he would hold in London society, but not I. The long, tedious dinners at Government House, where one saw the very same people one had seen at the last long, tedious dinner at Government House, and the one before that, for five years on end—I can’t bear it, not again! I crave the theatres—the concerts—the balls! But if my husband had cause to believe that I was pursuing what he would term—quite correctly, I suppose—an adulterous union, he would apply for a position in the remotest colony he could find! I have endured five years of exile; I can’t bear the thought of being dragged off again to parts unknown! And who knows where or how long this time?”

“And the content of these letters would be enough to enlighten him? Is that it?”

“Yes, but I fear it is worse than that. Within twenty-four hours of disembarking, my—my friend’s body was discovered in a back alley. He’d been stabbed to death, and now I have no idea what has become of my letters—into whose possession they may have fallen, or what that person may do with them once he realizes their potential. It is imperative that they be retrieved before they fall into the wrong hands.”

“Exactly what is it that you fear, ma’am?” He knew, of course, but he dared not appear to know any more about the letters than a stranger would.

She made a sweeping gesture no doubt intended to suggest any number of possibilities. “Oh, any one of a dozen things! Someone might offer to sell them to my husband, or coerce me into paying him not to do so—I believe such a coercion is called ‘blackmail,’ is it not?—or, given the manner of my friend’s death, the letters might even be taken as evidence that I myself might have killed him.” She gave a shaky little laugh. “I fear I rather threw myself at his head. I had so little time to make my case, you see, until we made port and parted forever.” Covered with chagrin at the memory of her own lack of discretion, she pressed a hand in the general direction of her forehead. For a brief moment, the layers of black veil molded themselves to the shape of a short, straight nose.

It was almost unfair, Pickett knew, to use her ignorance against her, but considering that he was about to refuse payment for a potentially quite lucrative case that he could have resolved with almost no effort at all, he thought he could be forgiven for taking full advantage of an opportunity that had fallen quite unexpectedly into his lap.

“Given your fondness for the fellow, why would your letters constitute evidence of murder? I should think they would be more likely to exonerate you.” But even as he made this optimistic prediction, Pickett recalled Julia’s words to the contrary. A lady may love a man and yet still be quite capable of murdering him…

His guest must have let out a long breath, for her shoulders rose and fell, while the curtain of netting covering her face fluttered ever so slightly. “They might have proven my innocence if I could produce any passionate letters that he had written to me in response. But I can’t. In fact, there were no letters from him at all. His communications to me were always spoken, never committed to paper.” She sighed. “I suppose he was wiser than I.”

Or more experienced in duplicity, Pickett thought, but did not say.

For the first time, it occurred to him that his surrender of the letters, along with the revelation of his true identity, might not be greeted with unadulterated joy. In fact, the lady might well be furious with him for stringing her along. It was her own fault, really, he reasoned. If she hadn’t insisted in swathing herself in black veils, she would have recognized her lover’s son at a glance. Emboldened by the thought, he continued his probing.

“Tell me, did your husband make a habit of collecting curiosities from any of his colonial postings?”

“Curiosities?” she echoed in bewilderment. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

“I believe many of the men who hold such positions return to England with items crafted by persons indigenous to the regions where they served—carved figurines, or weapons, or musical instruments—”

She stiffened as the meaning behind this simple query became clear. “It is true that my—friend—was stabbed with a knife made by the natives of—of that particular colony. I don’t know how you were aware of that, but surely you don’t mean to suggest that I would steal such a weapon from my husband in order to murder the man with whom I had thought to cuckold him!”

“Not at all,” Pickett assured her with perhaps more tact than truth. “In fact, I was thinking of your husband. You say he was aware of your flirtation with this man. Is it possible that he might have killed Da—er, this ‘friend’ of yours, in a fit of jealousy?”

“I should say no, of course not,” she said with a marked lack of conviction. “It is true that my husband was absent from the house that night, but he had gone to his club. At least, he’d said that was his intention, but when my friend’s body was discovered later that same night, I did wonder. I had hoped to meet with my friend, you see, perhaps for the last time—and yet the first truly private meeting we’d ever had. Indeed, when the time of death was fixed at so late an hour, I wondered if he had been on his way to my house when—when it happened.”

As the narrow passage called Gin Alley would make a very odd route to the sort of neighborhood where Sir Horace and Lady Stapleton would no doubt have hired lodgings, Pickett rather doubted this, and said so.

“But,” he continued, “you think your husband’s temperament would not rule out his taking such a course of action?”

She spread her black-gloved hands in a gesture of helpless confusion. “As to that, who can say what another person might do, given the right circumstances? My husband is almost fifteen years my senior, and I believe it was not uncommon for the men of his generation to settle such matters with pistols at twenty paces. In fairness to him, however, I must admit that although ours has not been a passionate union for many years, I myself would not greet with equanimity the realization that some other lady was setting her cap for my husband. Does that make me a shocking hypocrite? I suppose it does.”

“I should say, rather, that it makes you human,” Pickett said, judging it time. “If you will excuse me, ma’am, I shall be back directly with something that I think will interest you very much.” Or something that will make you want to hurl that glass of sherry at my head, he added mentally as he betook himself from the drawing room. I’m not quite sure which.

“Done so soon?” Julia asked, looking up from her book in pleasurable surprise as he entered the bedchamber and headed straight for the worn valise standing against the far wall.

“Not quite,” he said, opening the valise and extracting the three perfumed letters, once again tied together with their ribbon, just as his father had left them. “Although I’m about to resolve a case in record speed. I shall tell you all about it directly.”

He sealed this promise by dropping a light kiss onto the top of her head, then hurried down the stairs and back to the drawing room where his visitor waited.

“I believe this is what you’re looking for,” he said, and dropped the neatly tied bundle onto her lap.

He didn’t have to see her relief on her face. It could be read in every line of her suddenly relaxed form. “You’ve had them all along? But how—why—?”

“At the beginning of this interview, you chose to dispense with names, so I didn’t give you mine. But if you will lift your veil, I think your questions will answer themselves.”

She hesitated only a moment before seizing the lower edge of the black netting and pulling it up. Wide blue eyes stared up at him. “Why, you—you must be—”

Pickett nodded, and supplied the answer she couldn’t seem to form. “Jack Pickett’s son—John Pickett the Younger, you might say.”

“Although not quite so young as I originally thought,” she said, subjecting him to a long, appraising look as she rose to her feet.

The observation contained an unspoken question. Following her lead and abandoning his place on the sofa, Pickett shrugged and said, “I suppose that depends on what you originally thought.”

She tilted her head and regarded him through narrowed eyes. “Twenty-three, perhaps?”

“Twenty-five,” he said, yielding to the inevitable.

“Goodness! Your father must have been very young when you were born.”

“Yes, I believe he was.”

“Very well then, John Pickett the Younger, age twenty-five, how much do I owe you?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing. I’ve been trying to settle my father’s affairs, and I’m pleased that this, at least, was resolved so easily, and so satisfactorily.”

She offered her black-gloved hand, and he took it.

“You do look very much like him, you know,” she said wistfully. “I don’t suppose you would be interested—? No,” she conceded with some regret, seeing Pickett blush crimson. “I feared as much. Lightning rarely strikes twice in the same place. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

And with this philosophical pronouncement, she took her leave.