CHAPTER 9
The change was subtle, but the air in the parlor suddenly felt charged with the same sort of thrumming current that presaged a summer thunderstorm. Charlotte didn’t need to look up from her notebook when in the next instant a long shadow fell across the sofa.
She knew who it was.
The earl seemed to suck all the oxygen from the room as he crossed the carpet, compressing the space around her and making it hard to breathe.
“Did you learn anything at the brothel?” she asked, after finishing what she was writing and setting down her pencil.
“Yes.” He moved to one of the armchairs, but didn’t sit. The planes of his face, always sharp to begin with, seemed chiseled to a harsher edge. Fatigue dulled the green of his eyes to a slate-dark hue. “However, you’re not going to like it.”
As if anything about this dreadful nightmare doesn’t send a shiver of dread down my spine.
“Be that as it may, I need to hear it.”
Wrexford hesitated for an instant. “How well did you know Chittenden?” he countered.
Fear squeezed at her lungs. What horror had he uncovered? The earl was not in the habit of pulling his punches.
“I should think it’s obvious I knew him very well,” she replied.
“But not, perhaps, as well as you might think.” He ran a hand through his wind-snarled hair. It needed trimming, she noted.
“Let’s stop playing cat and mouse, sir. Our previous investigations were hardly all sweetness and light. Haven’t I proved myself capable of hearing grim news?”
“Actually, no,” replied the earl softly. “You fell into a dead faint at learning of Chittenden’s death. That begs the question of . . .”
Charlotte shifted uncomfortably under his hooded stare. “Sit down, Wrexford. I’m getting a crick in my neck staring up at you.”
He didn’t smile.
A stab of guilt cut through her conscience. She didn’t blame him. Were she in his boots, she would take the lack of trust as a slap in the face.
“Sit down, Wrexford,” she repeated.
The words were barely more than a breath of air, but the earl must have sensed the change in her tone, for he did so.
Swoosh, swoosh. With a well-tailored whisper of wool, his broad shoulders settled against the upholstered back of the armchair. Muscles rippled beneath the soft charcoal-colored superfine, reminding her of a stalking panther. A coiled tension radiated from every pore.
“You deserve an explanation,” said Charlotte softly. “I know that.”
His expression was inscrutable. They both were good at keeping parts of themselves well hidden.
“That you’ve respected my privacy on this matter is . . .” Charlotte was unsure of how to go on.
A moment ticked by, and then a tiny twitch pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Actually, I haven’t. I asked Tyler to dig around for Locke’s connection to you. It didn’t take him long to unearth the answer.”
She waited.
He shrugged. “I took his copious notes—you know what a stickler Tyler is for research—and . . .” Again he hesitated.
“The devil take it,” she muttered, after he let the silence stretch out for an interminable moment. “You’re worse than Sheffield at drawing out a dramatic moment.”
“God forbid.” His rumbled laugh seemed to dispel the tension in the air. “I took Tyler’s notes and consigned them to the fire. Without reading them, I might add.”
Conundrums within conundrums. “Why?”
“Because it was an act unworthy of our friendship.”
Charlotte made a wry face. “Thank you—for making me feel smaller than a gnat on a flea’s arse.”
His eyes lit with a fleeting smile.
“Oh, Wrexford . . .” She looked away. “I’m so sorry. Cedric’s death was a terrible shock. And that Nicky may have . . .” A pause. “It’s confusing. I’ve been struggling to sort it all out.”
He rose and came closer. She closed her eyes as his palm pressed lightly against her cheek. “Then let me help.”
His touch seemed to still all the churning in her gut. “Thank you.”
The earl let his hand linger a moment longer, then returned to his chair.
“Cedric and Nicky are my cousins, and were my closest childhood companions. Of all my family, they seemed to understand me and how confined I felt by the gilded cage of my existence. They encouraged me to read, to explore ideas thought unfit for a girl.” Charlotte paused to steady her voice. “When I confided my plans to elope, they gave me their pocket money and said to spread my wings and fly.”
“I see,” murmured Wrexford.
“They wished to keep in touch, but I soon stopped writing to them. I didn’t . . . I didn’t wish for them to worry about me.”
“I understand.”
“I shouldn’t have pushed away their friendship. But . . .”
“The past is the past,” he said brusquely.
She huffed a low laugh in spite of herself. “How unlike you to utter mundane platitudes.”
“Well, as you know, I have a great many faults.”
And a great many strengths.
“As do I. However, I suggest we put them all aside for now.” She shifted in her chair. “Please tell me what you’ve learned about Cedric.”
Wrexford hesitated. “Where are the Weasels?” he asked abruptly. “Their ears are better than those of a bloody bat, and while the details would likely not come as a shock to them, I know your sentiments about discussing man’s baser depravities in front of children.”
“They are at their lessons with Mr. Linsley,” replied Charlotte. “By the by, both of them are thriving under his tutelage. I’m grateful to you for suggesting him.”
He shrugged off the thanks. “Perhaps a rigorous regime of studies will help keep the little beasts out of trouble.”
She held back a smile. Despite his sarcastic needling, she knew he was very fond of the boys. “We have the house to ourselves as McClellan is out doing some errands. So, please, no more prevaricating.”
“Very well. According to Locke’s doxy, your late cousin was also sharing her favors,” began Wrexford.
An oath slipped from her lips.
“However, it seems neither of them knew it, so Chittenden can’t be accused of sordid depravity.” A pause. “However, my interview with the young woman revealed a different cause for concern.”
Charlotte listened with a sinking heart as the earl described the doxy’s mention of the strange marks on Chittenden’s body and the visit he and Henning had made to the morgue. By the time he finished explaining about Westmorly and Nicholas’s misleading statement about the gambling debts, she could no longer deny what was staring her in the face.
“Much as I hate to admit it, brotherly jealousy may very well be the motive for murder,” she murmured. “Given Nicky’s rant about Cedric getting everything by virtue of his being the older by several minutes, it might have triggered a fit of uncontrollable rage.” Her hands knotted together in her lap. “The mutilation certainly fits in with such a scenario.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions. I’ve asked Sheffield to look further into Chittenden’s friction with Sir Kelvin Hollister, in case there is more to it than a romantic rivalry,” Wrexford counseled. “But, yes, there are a great many more questions that Locke needs to answer.”
His gaze turned searching. She could feel it poking and prodding into every tiny chink in her armor.
“I was able to arrange with the warden for a visit with him later this afternoon. But there’s no reason you need to come along. I’m perfectly capable of questioning him on my own,” continued Wrexford.
It was tempting. But giving in to self-serving weakness was merely another name for hypocrisy. Let that happen and she might as well toss her pen into the River Thames. She would be no better than any other of the silk-swathed scoundrels and liars in Town.
“Since when,” asked Charlotte, “have you known me to take the coward’s way out?”
“There is a first time for everything.” He was gentlemanly enough not to mention her swoon again.
“Hypothetically speaking, yes. But I’m not about to dance stark naked down Piccadilly Street or crown myself Queen of England, either, so we can set aside absurdities that aren’t going to happen.”
“There’s nothing absurd about feeling emotionally involved with a loved one,” he said quietly.
Charlotte sighed. It was true. Love addled the wits. It made one behave irrationally. “Be that as it may, if we try very hard, I think it’s possible to make ourselves overcome emotions.”
The earl’s eyes hadn’t left her face. “But at what cost?”
Damn him for asking a question I don’t dare contemplate.
Unclenching her hands, she looked down and started smoothing a crease from her skirts. As she did so, her fingers brushed up against paper. Hawk’s drawing, along with the packet containing the snuff, had slipped from the cushions to become tangled in the folds of sprigged muslin.
Lud, the earl’s revelations had chased all thoughts of her own discoveries from her mind.
“What have you there?” asked Wrexford as she carefully cupped the two items in her upturned palms.
“You were not the only one out looking for clues yesterday.” Charlotte quickly told him about her foray to Kensington Gardens, and the inquiries made by the boys.
With his usual scientific detachment, the earl studied the crinkles and smudges for a long moment before taking up the sketch and subjecting it to a more thorough scrutiny.
“Wellington,” he murmured.
Her eyes widened. “The duke?”
“No, the hat.” He refolded the sketch. “It’s called a Wellington.”
“I don’t suppose that helps.”
“Not particularly. Any number of hatters make the style.”
Charlotte now felt even more foolish offering the grains of snuff. “You needn’t bother looking at this.” She closed her hand around the clue. “It won’t be of any use.”
“The scientific method is to not make assumptions, even if common sense seems to indicate that you are right.” The earl held out his hand. “The workings of the world don’t always conform to expectations.”
She reluctantly gave him the pouched paper.
After a cursory peek at the snuff, he leaned closer.
Sniff, sniff.
Hope—irrational, though it was—flared to life. “The scent seems distinctive.”
Wrexford looked down his long nose at her. “Have you any idea how many variations of snuff mixtures there are in London?”
“I’m not a mathematician—large numbers befuddle my brain,” she shot back. Her shoulders slumped. “I know, I know. It’s ridiculous. I was simply grasping at straws.”
“If you’ll allow me to take the evidence with me, I’ll have Tyler examine it under the microscope and see if he spots anything useful. But I wouldn’t have high hopes about it.”
“The poor man will be cursing me from here to Hades for adding yet more work to his list of duties,” said Charlotte.
“He’s not paid to curse, but to perform whatever sartorial or scientific tasks need to be done,” replied Wrexford dryly, pocketing the items. “And be assured, it’s a princely amount. He has no cause for complaint.”
Given the earl’s mercurial moods, she thought, the valet likely earned every farthing.
His sardonic smile had already disappeared, replaced by a tight-lipped grimness. Rising, he began to pace the perimeter of the room. “You had better change into your urchin’s garb if you intend to come along to Newgate. We need to be leaving shortly.”
As Charlotte moved to the door, she heard a faint scuff.
Wrexford must have caught it, too, because he spun around, his eyes narrowing to a slitted stare.
Silence. But neither of them was fooled. The boys possessed the light-footed quickness of their namesake weasels to go along with their batlike hearing.
“As you are so fond of saying, Mrs. Sloane,” he muttered softly, “no matter how much discretion one uses to keep them well-guarded, no secret is ever safe.”
* * *
The stench, the screams, the ooze of utter despair bleeding from flesh and stone—a second visit only seemed to amplify Newgate’s horrors. Wrexford followed the gaoler through the endless turns of the grimy corridor, their thudding steps lost in the cacophony of curses and howls.
Head down, Charlotte kept pace. Whatever she was feeling, she kept it well hidden.
Thank God. He didn’t dare contemplate the consequences if she were to lose her nerve.
Nicholas’s cell was marginally less revolting. There was a small table and several straight-back chairs . . . decent bedding . . . a hamper of food and drink . . . extra clothing brought from his lodging. All of which had not come cheap.
The earl hoped the fellow was worth it.
A look at him sitting on his bed, shoulders slouched against the wall, didn’t inspire much confidence. His hair was matted, his jaw unshaved, his gaze dulled with apathy.
Or was it guilt?
“Nicky.”
Charlotte’s sharp voice roused naught but a momentary flicker of awareness.
“Go away,” he mumbled. “Don’t waste your time with me.”
During the carriage ride to the prison, Wrexford had counseled her that a show of sympathy might salve her own spirits, but it wouldn’t save Locke’s neck. To have any chance of proving him innocent, they had to rattle the truth out of him.
“Feeling sorry for yourself, are you?” Charlotte crossed the small cell in several swift strides. “Fine. You have two choices—curl up like a muckworm and wait for the hangman to put you out of your misery.” A kick to the bedstead punctuated her words.
Nicholas was suddenly sitting up straighter.
“Or pull your bloody wits together and help us figure out who murdered Cedric!”
“And then there’s a third option,” murmured the earl into the momentary silence. “You can confess your guilt here and now, and save us all a great deal of aggravation.”
A flash of fire lit in Nicholas’s eyes. An angry flush rushed to his cheeks. “I didn’t kill my brother!”
Perhaps there is a spark of hope, thought Wrexford.
“Then stop throwing sand in our eyes, Nicky.” Grabbing a chair from the table, Charlotte turned it to face him and took a seat. “No more half-truths and prevarications.”
“I didn’t—” began Nicholas.
“Westmorly,” cut in Wrexford. “You neglected to tell us you owed gambling debts to Westmorly.”
“Because it had nothing to do with Cedric!”
“You really think the fact that your brother paid off your vowels is irrelevant?” demanded Charlotte.
The color drained from Locke’s face. “Cedric paid them? I—I had no idea!”
Unless he was a consummate actor, Locke’s surprise appeared unfeigned. But then, a cold-blooded killer would be skilled at hiding his true self.
“Why?” added Locke, looking truly puzzled. “Why would he do that? I have a generous allowance.”
“You tell me,” she countered. “Word is, when Westmorly paid off his debt, Cedric asked to take your vowels as partial payment, and Westmorly was happy to comply.”
Locke did naught but lift his shoulders in reply.
“You implied there was friction between them, and yet witnesses said the two of them were quite cordial,” said Wrexford.
“I wasn’t lying,” said Locke hotly. “I don’t care what the gamesters might have seen. There was some sort of bad blood between Westmorly and Cedric.”
Charlotte leaned forward. “Just how much did you owe Westmorly, Nicky?” she asked abruptly.
Locke’s gaze slid away to a clump of dirty straw on the floor.
Her expression hardened.
Wrexford shrugged as she darted a quick look at him. “Never mind that right now. The more pressing concern is the Eos Society and their activities.”
Every muscle in Locke’s body seemed to tense. Save for a tiny tic at the right corner of his mouth.
“Your little group does more than just talk, don’t it?” went on the earl. “Given your inquisitive scientific minds, I would imagine you engage in experiments.”
“Sometimes,” came the wary reply.
Charlotte rose, setting the rancid shadows pooled on the floor to rippling across the rough stone. Locke’s breathing turned shallow, as if he were panting for air.
A step brought her closer to him.
Twitch, twitch. The quivering grew more pronounced.
“You’re no better now than you were as a child at keeping your face from giving you away, Nicky,” she observed.
A deeply feral sound—it reminded Wrexford of a wounded animal—stuck in Locke’s throat.
Her fingers spasmed. For an instant, the earl thought she might strike her cousin.
“I had a look at your brother’s body,” said the earl. “What dark games was he playing?”
It took a moment for Locke to master his emotions enough to speak “That’s just it.” His anguish was sharp as the shattering of glass. “I don’t know!”
He looked up at Charlotte. “Some things about us don’t change from childhood, Charley. But others do. Everyone, including you, saw Cedric as the paragon of a perfect gentleman—all glittering, golden sunshine against a celestial blue sky. But a change came over him when we came to London. He became more . . .”
“What?” prompted Charlotte.
“Secretive. Obsessive.” Locke closed his eyes for an instant. “God knows, I’ve let myself be seduced by London’s enticements, and my behavior has been less than exemplary. But for him to rake me over the coals for partaking in normal pleasures, when his own passions were taking a dangerous turn.”
“You knew about the marks on his body?” she asked.
Locke released a shuddering exhale. “I came into his room one morning as he was dressing and caught sight of his chest. He . . . He refused to tell me anything. Said I wouldn’t understand.”
“Can you hazard a guess as to what caused them?” asked Wrexford.
The question hung suspended for a moment in the sour fugue of smells before Locke gave a grim nod.
“A voltaic pile.”