Chapter Seventeen #2
“Nothing, as it happens, though there was a letter written by your neighbor, Miss Morton. Which explains the axe.” Harris hesitated then took a bound book from his desk.
“We did find this. It’s Veronique’s, half journal, half list of her customers and their—er…
weaknesses. The name Jacintha St. John is here, at the bottom of the page, underlined as a heading, and then… ”
He flashed the open book at them, just long enough for them to see that the next page had been torn out.
“No, I didn’t do it,” Harris said dryly. “And Veronique says she didn’t either. But I think she knows who did.”
“Kenny,” Solomon said grimly. “We need to find him. I don’t want him trying to use this against Bella or Cordell.”
Harris looked from one to the other. “You know what it says. We couldn’t find a word against Mrs. St. John, and believe me, we tried. It’s very often the wife, you know.”
“Oh, we don’t believe she murdered her husband or Neville,” Constance said quickly. “Inspector, could we talk to Veronique?”
Harris considered, leaning his head to one side as he regarded them. “Not without my presence,” he said at last. “But I suppose you might get her to talk where we didn’t.”
With one of his characteristically sudden flurries of movement, he sprang up, dispatched a constable to fetch his prisoner, issued a string of orders to his other underlings, and led Constance and Solomon on a quick march along dingy corridors to a small room with one rickety table and two hard chairs.
After politely inviting Constance to sit, he vanished again and came back with two more chairs.
Veronique sailed in a moment later, dressed in her usual smart but modest dark dress, her head held high.
A female warder followed her in and stood silently against the closed door.
Veronique’s turbulent gaze swept around the other occupants of the room.
Surprise registered briefly and then she laughed.
She sat in the one remaining chair without invitation or command and met Constance’s gaze with open mockery. “Shouldn’t she be sitting in my place? Don’t you know she’s just a brothel-keeper?”
“Not just,” Constance said mildly. “At least I can afford your prices. Even when you inflate them, although, you know, I wouldn’t have paid those.”
Veronique looked her up and down with contempt. “They all say that. At first.”
“And some of them pay at first and then object,” Constance said. “Especially the oblivious husbands. When did Mr. St. John object to your prices? When the invoices came without dresses? About two or three weeks ago?”
A wary look entered Veronique’s eyes, but the faintest twitch of her brow betrayed something more like puzzlement. And that made Constance uneasy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Veronique said grandly.
“Where did you meet him?” Solomon asked. “At the shop? Was your husband there too?”
Veronique met his gaze and smirked. “She calls herself Mrs. Grey, you know. Don’t your rich nob friends laugh at you? Or don’t you mind lending her out for cash?”
Constance’s fingers itched to touch Solomon’s, to stop the flow of his anger. But not for the first time, he surprised her. He didn’t twitch a muscle, merely continued to regard Veronique as though she were a rather curious insect.
“Like Kenny lives off you?” he asked. “And swaggers about his old low-life drinking and gambling haunts in his gentleman’s garb to impress his less-fortunate cronies? When did he meet St. John?”
“It’s a mystery, isn’t it?” Veronique retorted. “They didn’t exactly use the same low-life haunts.”
“I suppose that’s where he is now,” Constance said, “rubbing his hands together over the pages stolen from your book, ready to collect from all your hard work while you rot in prison. You picked a good man there, girl.” She let her accent shift a little with the sarcasm and hint of contempt.
“You haven’t got the hang of this at all yet, have you?
You want to see the light of day ever again, you blame it all on him, get him in here instead of you.
That’s what he’s done, after all. We businesswomen can’t afford to stand loyally by our treacherous men—that’s always been women’s weakness.
You and I, we’re not weak. Live to fight another day, girl.
Tell us where he is and I know a clever lawyer will get you off. ”
Veronique stared at her, her eyes still hard and defiant.
Constance smiled. “Scary cove, is your Kenny, by all accounts. Weep to the judge, play the kind of woman you despise—and walk.”
Was there a flicker there? Constance thought she had sown a seed, but it wasn’t growing fast enough. They needed Kenny now. Yet Veronique continued to meet her gaze with contempt.
“You know your man’s listening to this,” she mocked.
“Her man is thinking exactly the same thing,” Solomon said.
“So is the inspector here, and the lady by the door. How many other poor fools do you imagine they’ve seen pass through here to the courts and the prisons and the scaffolds, loyal, stupid women who take the punishment for their faithless men? I suspect they pity you. I know I do.”
Veronique looked as if she’d spit at him. She was not ready to give Kenny up, though she might in the end—by which time it could be too late. Kenny could have fled and begun again elsewhere, perhaps with Veronique’s lists, perhaps just with her ideas. Either way, the trail of misery would go on.
And besides, they wanted Kenny for St. John’s murder. She hoped…
A brief knock, and Sergeant Flynn stuck his head in the door. Harris rose and went to him, while Veronique leaned back in her chair and regarded Constance and Solomon with yet more undisguised contempt.
“You think I didn’t know you,” she said unexpectedly. “I did, the moment you entered my shop. I thought of throwing you out, actually—Kenny was in the back. But I make it my business to know things, and I know you hooked a rich man, a foreigner who doesn’t know any better.”
Constance laughed. “Like you? Madame, do yourself—and womankind—a favor. Give us your faithless coward of a husband.”
Veronique started out of her chair, about to lunge across the table, but the warder’s hand was already on her shoulder, pushing her back down, while Inspector Harris loomed over her, smiling genially.
“Dear, dear, Mrs. Kenny. What have we here?” He dangled a medicine bottle in front of her. It was only half empty, so the liquid sloshed up its sides. The label was perfectly clear.
Laudanum.
“My sergeant found it beneath the floorboards of your fancy water closet.”
Now, at last, there was genuine fear in Veronique’s eyes. And a flicker of confusion, quickly hidden. “Why shouldn’t I have laudanum? I need it to help me sleep sometimes. The doctor recommended it.”
“Then why on earth keep it under the floorboards?” Harris asked.
“Kenny does not like me to take it,” Veronique said with dignity.
She was lying. Constance knew it with every instinct.
“Rubbish,” she said. “He didn’t care till he needed it himself.
Half that bottle is more than enough to kill a man.
Two men. And that’s exactly what he did, isn’t it?
He met with St. John to discuss the halt in payments and found he would not budge.
Probably St. John threatened to go to the police and end your entire operation.
Somehow, Kenny managed to pour a lethal quantity of laudanum into his flask.
And then he hid it under the floorboards, just in case. You couldn’t find it, could you?”
“Somehow?” Veronique mocked, though she was rattled. She was twisting her fingers together, gripping hard, and her face had lost all color. She understood the significance of the find. “I don’t see how. You’ll have to explain that to the judge.”
“It would be better coming from you,” Solomon said.
“Either way, Mrs. Kenny,” the inspector intervened, “your little blackmail venture is turning into very small beer beside a charge of murder. That’s the scaffold.”
“For you,” Constance murmured. “Or for Kenny.”
This time, Veronique did spit. Her fear emerged in a virulent stream of furious French and English obscenities, ending with, “Go to hell!” And after that, she refused to open her mouth.
*
“She will talk,” Constance said as the carriage carried them from Scotland Yard to Silver and Grey’s offices.
“I think she’ll even give him up once she’s adjusted to the fact that her great love isn’t so great, just a squalid little partnership in crime.
But we can’t wait for that. We need to find Kenny. ”
“It’s possible she doesn’t even know where he is,” Solomon said.
“For more than ten years she’s kept a facade of respectability and hard work.
She probably never wanted to know when he skulked back to his old haunts.
She certainly couldn’t afford to be associated with them.
Either way, you’re right. We have to find him. ”
The police were looking, of course. They were not unfamiliar with Kenny and his regular haunts. Though he would be stupid to go near any of those.
“We need Janey and Lenny,” Constance said. “Even my mother. I’ve been away too long to know where the desperate go to hide from the law. I want to warn Mrs. St. John too, though I don’t see how…”
“I can warn her discreetly,” Solomon said, “while mentioning no details. The same with Cordell.”
“Then let’s make plans.”
A general council of war was held in the office. It helped that Lenny was present. Having completed his latest commission early, he had a free day before he needed to begin his next.
“You need to look out for each other and take no chances,” Constance instructed them. “You know what I mean, Janey, and the sorts of places I mean.”
Janey, who probably didn’t want Lenny to see the sort of world she had once called home, had turned scarlet to the ears but was nodding gamely.