Chapter 4 #3
“Of course, my lady, but first, may I introduce myself? Ignacio Bernadetto, at your service.” He bowed deeply after coming around the desk to stand before the duchess. As he straightened, Bernadetto reached for his top hat, on the chair in front of the desk, and popped it into place.
“Mr. Bernadetto, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m Audrey Sinclair, Duchess of Fournier.”
At her name, the manager’s welcoming grin sunk faster than a rock tossed in the Thames. His complexion turned ruddy, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.
“Your Grace.” He ran a palm down the front of his jacket. “You are here to inquire about Miss Lovejoy.”
Hugh stepped into the cramped office. “You are aware then, that the Duke of Fournier was arrested in connection with her death?”
Bernadetto observed Hugh, his nostrils flaring as he took stock of him. Quickly, he must have deduced he was not of the same station as the lady, for he sniffed at him. “And you are, sir?”
The duchess spoke before Hugh could. “A private inquiry agent assisting me with the gathering of facts.”
She peered at him, those spring green eyes flashing with a dare to refute the statement.
He bit back the urge, wanting only to keep Bernadetto talking.
If he knew Hugh hailed from Bow Street, he might clam up entirely.
It seemed the duchess had the forethought to know that, too.
The sooner she got her answers, the sooner he could shuffle her back into a carriage and to the fashionable square her grand home was perched upon.
“I see,” the manager said, his eyes still lingering on Hugh’s face another moment. He then cut his attention back to the duchess. “Yes, I am aware the duke has been arrested, though I am not sure I can help you with anything else.”
The lack of condolences told Hugh that Bernadetto was not in the least sorry to hear of the duke’s predicament.
“Did His Grace frequent Miss Lovejoy’s performances?” Hugh asked as the question came to him.
“He has a box, yes, and he attended a number of our productions.”
The duchess took the opening. “Whether Miss Lovejoy was performing or not?”
“Belladora was in nearly every production, Your Grace,” he replied, his cold disdain beginning to leak through his earlier pretense of cordiality. “I cannot know if His Grace attended for the sake of the arts or for the sake of…something else.”
“Did she have many admirers?” Hugh asked before the duchess could protest Bernadetto’s statement.
The manager let the tension out of his shoulders as he circled back behind his desk. It was a tired, loping motion, and Hugh presumed he and the rest of the theatre troupe had struggled through the night’s performance.
“Her fair share, I suppose. She received bouquets and notes after every performance for being so lovely and expressive and…attentive to her audience.”
“But not just any audience members,” Hugh said.
He knew how the theatre worked. Roles were not handed out based on merit alone.
To operate, the theatre required wealthy patrons, and those patrons held sway over who received lead roles.
Had Miss Lovejoy had a patron of her own, and he wished to see her in the lead role time and again, it could be easily purchased.
The duchess’s suspicious glance hinted that she had caught on to his meaning.
“You are inquiring as to whether or not Belladora had a benefactor,” the manager stated.
“Did she?” Hugh asked.
Bernadetto settled into his chair once again and crossed his legs. “Her personal affairs are not for me to discuss. I will not tarnish her memory with such loose gossip.”
“We do not intend to tarnish her memory.” In her fervor, the duchess stepped closer to the manager’s desk. “We intend to find the man who harmed her.”
A new voice entered the room from behind them. “You mean the man who slit her open like a pig.”
Hugh swiveled on his heel, his hand reaching under his jacket to the smooth handle of his pistol.
The whistling man from the dressing room stood just outside the office entrance.
Hugh berated himself for not having heard the footsteps coming along the corridor.
It wasn’t like him not to keep an ear open.
It was the duchess’s presence, he suspected.
He’d been busy sparing her attention when he should have been directing it to better use—like not allowing their exit to be cut off.
“Away with you, Porter,” Bernadetto hissed.
The man, Porter, ignored the order. “Who do they want to help, I wonder…the bastard sitting in the Stone Jug, or our sweet Belladora?”
Like chins hitching or fingers fidgeting, Hugh had learned to pay close attention to words. Porter’s use of ‘our sweet’ chimed like a warning bell.
“The man who has been arrested is not the man who killed Miss Lovejoy,” the duchess said.
Bernadetto shot up from his seat. “What?”
“That hasn’t been proven,” Hugh bit off, keeping his eye on Porter. The actor blocked the only exit.
“However, we will prove it,” she went on. Hugh sent her what he hoped was a clear and persuasive glare to cease speaking.
Porter took a step inside the office. “You see, Ignacio, they just want to spring the blue blood. They don’t give a damn about what happened to Belladora.”
“I didn’t say that—” the duchess began.
“Porter. Out,” Berdadetto barked. Once again, the command went ignored.
“The nob was there, covered in her blood.”
There had been dozens of people peeking inside the apartment before Hugh arrived. The tales of what they had seen had likely gone out far and wide within hours, but Hugh wondered if perhaps Porter had been there, as one of the onlookers.
“I don’t deny that, but he wasn’t her benefactor. Who was?” the duchess pushed on. Hugh wanted to throttle her. And by the look of Porter’s bulging eyes, so did he.
“She weren’t no ladybird,” he growled.
Not a kept mistress? Hugh didn’t believe it for a moment. It was simply the way of their world. Porter was either lying, ignorant, or he was protecting someone.
“Your Grace. Sir,” Bernadetto said, addressing them. “I think you should take your leave. We have told you what we know.”
Hugh wanted out of this backstage warren, but he couldn’t walk away from a lie. “Her roles. Who purchased them?”
If he could get the benefactor’s name—the duke’s name preferably—he could serve up his case like a roast on a platter to the chief magistrate, Gabriel Poston.
Bernadetto rubbed his temple and bared his teeth.
“Miss Lovejoy needed no endorsements, sir. If she had an arrangement with a gentleman, I was not aware of it, nor was it my business to pry. Now I would like you to leave, at once.” He made a half-hearted bow toward the duchess.
“Your Grace, forgive me my terseness, but it has been, as you can imagine, a trying day.”
The duchess wouldn’t turn her back on Porter, who still stood within the doorway. It was perhaps the most intelligent thing the woman had done all day.
“For us all,” she said, and with a tight nod to the manager, moved toward Hugh and the door. Porter remained where he was. Though taller than Hugh, the actor was lanky and had an underfed look to him. He would fight well, Hugh determined, fueled as he was by anger.
“Step aside,” Hugh warned, his voice low, his hand flexing on his pistol’s handle.
“Porter,” the manager said, this time his voice like the lash of a whip.
The actor heeded the order and cleared the doorway. Hugh saw the duchess through first, and then followed, turning back to make sure the man didn’t lunge after them. Porter slipped into Bernadetto’s office and the lamplight inside blotted out as the door shut.
“Here.” Hugh cut ahead of her and opened the door to the corridor that the broom sweep had shown them through.
“I know where I’m going,” she replied as she shuttled past him.
“Do you? What a relief.” He slammed the door shut, closing them in darkness.
He heard her skirts swishing on ahead. Hugh took long strides over the old carpet to catch her just before she entered the light of the single candle sconce.
He knew it was a mistake as he reached for her elbow, and yet he still did it, jerking her to a stop.
Alarm and…something else…widened her eyes as she stared up at him.
Fear? That’s what he thought he saw before she wrenched her elbow from his grasp.
“I can’t bloody begin to count how many mistakes you made back there,” he said, his tongue loose and wild, his blood pumping fast.
The duchess gathered herself up, looking as if she were ready to launch a fleet of war ships right at him. “At least I asked the questions that needed asking!”
“And what answers did you receive that will help the duke? None. You bungled it all up by giving them your name.”
“My name?” she echoed, incredulous. She was a dragon, all hard scales and flaring nostrils. If she could have breathed fire, Hugh would be ducking right then.
“You tossed your title out before you, no doubt believing it would buy you respect and what? Some level of importance? However, this time, Your Grace, that name of yours tripped you up and sent you sprawling.”
Hugh pressed forward before she could respond.
“The people here, they don’t give a damn about you or your husband.
You are nothing to them. Belladora Lovejoy was their friend, their colleague.
And you traipsed in there and told them the man arrested for her murder was innocent, dashing their hopes for justice.
What did you believe they would do, thank you? Devote themselves to your cause?”
The flame of the candle reflected off the tin shield behind it, scattering low, changing light over the duchess’s face. Pricks of color stained her cheeks, and her eyes looked glassy. Whether it was with ire or humiliation, Hugh couldn’t be certain.
“Philip was not her benefactor,” she said, twirling around a direct answer to his question like any skilled debutante. No, nothing so young and innocent. This was a married woman of status. Far from a debutante. “You heard them both deny that she possessed one.”
“A woman can have a lover without him keeping her as a mistress,” he scoffed. Her color darkened, and Hugh felt a pinch of remorse. “You opened this door, Your Grace, so you should be prepared for unsavory truths.”
“As you should be, Mr. Marsden, like the fact that you arrested the wrong man,” she replied before moving farther down the corridor, drenching herself in darkness again. “That Porter fellow seemed overly protective of Miss Lovejoy.”
Once they were back in the foyer, with the candelabras snuffed out and the broom sweeps gone, he fell into stride beside her.
“She had her admirers in the audience, as well as among fellow performers. I’m sure Porter was one of them,” he agreed.
Jealousy could have been why he’d so vehemently denied Miss Lovejoy was a kept mistress.
It gave Hugh a moment’s pause as he opened the door for the duchess and held it wide as she glided outside, drawing up her cloak’s hood.
Jealous men killed in mad rages. He’d seen it a number of times before.
Women killed as well, though it was rare for them to use blades.
Women chose poison more often than not, or a bullet direct to the back of the head.
The opera singer’s body had been mutilated, and it could not be denied the person who’d done it had been in a violent rage.
If Porter had followed Miss Lovejoy to the duke’s rooms and seen them together, it was possible he could have lost his temper. He nearly had tonight. But then, why leave the duke without so much as a scratch? And how had the duke’s clothes become so wrecked with blood?
“You look like you’ve swallowed old mutton. What has come to your mind?” the duchess asked as she came to a stop beside her hired hack. The jarvey and his tired nag, and even more tired carriage, still sat in front of Hugh’s own.
“Nothing that I care to discuss,” he replied, and then, remembering the etiquette ingrained in him as a child, bowed slightly and added, “Your Grace.”
She scoffed, the scraping sound in her throat unladylike. “Don’t pretend at good manners now, Mr. Marsden. You’ve already sworn and shouted and jostled me around plenty this evening.”
He wanted to refute her claims but couldn’t. It was true. His reputation was already in shambles among the peerage, and his lack of patience with the whole lot of them was why.
“Very well. No more pretending. I warn you off from this absurd investigation of yours. You’re out of your element, duchess. Keep going, and you could get hurt.”
“You are quite right—I am out of my element. But you see, I’m not afraid of getting hurt.” She moved toward her hack, the jarvey having already opened the door for her. He handed her in, but caught the door when he went to shut it. She held it open a moment as she looked down at Hugh.
“What I am afraid of, is becoming a widow,” she said, then latched the door. “Goodnight, Mr. Marsden.”
She slid back, out of view, and Hugh curled his hands into fists. The woman was a stubborn ox.
“Are we done yet?” Sir called impatiently from the open hack door. Hugh hopped inside. Home beckoned, but not until he knew for certain the duchess had, at least for tonight, ceased her efforts.
“Nearly.” He rapped the roof. “Follow her.”