Chapter Two
Lady Mary
That night and the following morning were a practice in patience.
It took over a half hour for the constable to arrive and two more before a magistrate could be roused to pay attendance.
The insufferable man, one Sir John Stauncey of Bow Street, had only a handful of questions for me, Miss Lynton, and Bobby, but he repeated them over and over until my temper got the better of me.
“I’ve told you. Repeatedly. I saw no one except Miss Lynton and my workers after closing.
” I tapped my fingers against my opposite elbows.
“Would you like one of my men to make you some coffee? Your mind seems to want sharpening.” Throughout my life, I’d discovered that irritation was a much more comfortable emotion to feel than horror.
If I focused on the magistrate being a lackwit, it kept the images of Lady Richford’s purpling face at bay.
The magistrate’s lips pinched. He was only about my height, so the intimidating atmosphere he was attempting to impart was sorely lacking. He scraped his hand through his thinning brown hair. “If you or the young lady or your servants didn’t kill Lady Richford, then someone else was in here.”
“It’s a club, not a prison.” I narrowed my eyes at the constable who sidled up next to the magistrate. “I don’t keep guards on all the entrances.”
“What?” Stauncey barked at the man, dragging his glare off me.
“We found this on the corner of the stage almost hidden by the curtain.” The constable held up a narrow red ribbon.
Stauncey snatched it from his hand. “A velvet ribbon. Do you recognize it?” he asked me.
“It looks like any other red ribbon.” I relented at his soft growl.
“There is a member who sometimes likes to wear such a ribbon around her neck. Miss Abbott. She held a discussion in the Great Room five days’ past on the ideals of the French Revolution.
” I sniffed. “Well, it was more of a lecture, really.” The woman barely let another member get a word in edgewise.
“Did you not sweep your floors between then and now?” the magistrate asked.
“It was a discussion, not a picnic. That ribbon could have been laying there for a fortnight.”
Stauncey leaned close, an approximation of commiseration on his face. “Having a difficult time affording decent help, are you? Don’t make enough to pay for a maid?”
“I am doing quite well,” I said between gritted teeth. “And if anyone is lacking for an attendant, it is you.” I pointed at his crumpled neckcloth. “You have mustard, just there.”
His face flushed darkly.
I feared the magistrate and I had a small chance of becoming friends. After my pointed comments about his person, he let me return home, but I spent the rest of the night only chasing sleep and eventually gave up when the sun rose.
“More coffee?” Jane, my lady’s maid of over three decades, lifted the silver pot in crepe-skinned hands, the lid rattling ever so softly with the effort.
“I’ll get it.” I took the pot from her and filled both our cups.
We were in my morning sitting room, the windows opened to the early morning activity in my tidy garden.
The September morning was brisk without being cold, and a robin took advantage of the remaining days of decent weather with a bath in a marble fountain.
It hadn’t rained for weeks, and the fountains and baths in my garden had become increasingly popular with the wildlife as other water sources dried up.
It looked to be a beautiful day. If only my spirits could match it.
“What are the reasons a person would kill, Jane?” Becoming so angry as to wrap a cravat around a woman’s throat and choke the life out of her was an emotion I couldn’t quite fathom.
I wasn’t na?ve: revenge, jealousy, greed were always strong motives, but there had to be more.
Besides, I had watched as the cocksure magistrate had gone through Lady Richford’s reticule.
A roll of bills had been inside. At least I knew robbery hadn’t been the motive.
Jane blinked. “To remove a competitor for your lover? To punish the person who didn’t reciprocate your feelings?”
I pressed my lips flat. Jane was a romantic. Love was always at the forefront of her thoughts. She’d never married, and as such had some fanciful ideas about the hallowedness of the relationship between a man and a woman.
“And how did the killer get into my club?” Needing the extra vigor, I put two lumps of sugar in my coffee.
“Men aren’t allowed, except for my workers, of course.
” The two service doors, one next to my office and one off the Great Room where Lady Richford’s body had been found, had been locked from the inside.
I’d checked while the magistrate had been browbeating poor Miss Lynton.
No one had escaped that way. And a man walking, cravatless to boot, through the club would have been noticed. Wouldn’t he?
“I need to speak with Lord Richford.” I nodded, a bit of my unease settling with the decision. It was the not knowing how to act that was the trouble. Once I made up my mind to do something, life always became easier.
“Poor man,” Jane murmured. “Of course you must go express your condolences to him. Though might it be more proper to wait a couple of days?”
I dipped my chin and looked at her from lowered brows. When had she ever known me to do what was proper? Nothing notable was ever accomplished by fretting about improprieties.
She sighed. “I need to change my shoes if we are to go out.”
I downed my coffee and stood. “You needn’t bother. I don’t need an attendant for this call.” I made myself ready and asked Mr. Stavers, my butler, to call the carriage.
It was shockingly presumptuous to be calling on the family so soon after Lady Richford’s death.
I hadn’t known Susan Bannister, Viscountess of Richford well, and her husband even less so.
But the man had just lost his wife. He would be too grief-stricken to care about the proprieties.
And if he wasn’t grief-stricken, well, that was something I wanted to know.
The woman had been killed in my club, right under my very nose. A life cut short by the most vicious of means. A killer had been under my roof. I gritted my teeth. And that pompous magistrate didn’t have the wit to discover the villain. No, a couple of well-placed inquiries wouldn’t go amiss.
One lesson I’d learned well in life was that if one wanted a task successfully managed, it was best to do it oneself.
*
Lord Richford was a handsome man, in the bland sort of way so popular among the peerage these days.
In his early fifties, his hair was still dark and trimmed to just above his shoulders.
His clothes were well-tailored and without a hint of personality.
His physique was neither fat not thin nor muscular.
He was the type of person you would look upon pleasantly and forget thirty seconds after he left your view.
The only thing to distinguish him was the current anguish that wiped the color from his face.
“Tea?” he asked for the second time, his finger poised to call the footman who stood as still as a ficus tree along the wall of his sitting room.
“No, thank you.” I smoothed my skirts and tried to ignore the fact that the silk-upholstered settee beneath my rump was as uncomfortable as a boulder.
“I wanted to tell you what a marvelous addition Lady Richford had made to The Minerva Club. She was liked and respected wherever she went.” I had no idea if that were true, but it seemed to bring her husband a bit of comfort.
I had a vague recollection of when he and Lady Richford had married.
He had only been a couple of years her senior, and by all accounts it had been a love match.
He gave me a watery smile. “She truly was amazing. A force of nature. And she spoke highly of you, as well,” he added as an afterthought.
I gave him my own smile. It was all terribly polite. We were hitting all the right notes of decorum, but the conversation wasn’t getting me anywhere. “I was hoping—”
The inner door swung open, and the butler stepped through. “Mr. Frederick Rollins, my lord.”
Lord Richford jumped to his feet and hurried to the young man who entered. He shook Mr. Rollins’s hand vigorously. “Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what to do.”
The newcomer scanned the room, his eyes pausing on me before continuing their perusal. “Of course, my lord. My sympathies on your loss.”
“Please, please, sit down.” Richford showed him to a chair. “Tea?”
Rollins cautiously lowered himself into the harp-backed chair.
Perhaps in his late twenties, he was a tall man, and seemed much too large for the delicate seat.
His clothes, though not as finely tailored as the viscount’s, were just as well pressed, his black top boots holding a lingering sheen from a recent cleaning.
His aquiline nose bent a shade too much to be considered fine, his lips were a bit too thin for current fashion, but even though each individual element of his face was imperfect, they came together as a whole to form a most attractive face.
He inclined his head to me, a lock of dark auburn hair falling across his forehead. “Shall I wait until your meeting has finished?”
Richford sank back into his seat. “Excuse my rudeness. Mr. Rollins, this is The Lady Mary Cavindish. She owns the club where Susan…where my wife….”
“I own The Minerva Club.” I ran my finger along the jeweled handle of my walking stick. “And you are?”
“An officer of the Bow Street magistrates.” He nodded again.
“A Runner?” I shifted to the edge of the settee. I’d never met one of those before, which seemed like a shocking omission now that I thought of it.
He gave me a brittle smile. “We prefer to be called officers of Bow Street magistrates.”
I pushed my spectacles up my nose. “That doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so nicely, though, does it?”