Chapter 9 #2
‘He was – but he was recruited in Italy for Bonaparte’s army. If the newspapers have it right, Old Boney has gobbled up most of Europe and, like them Roman Emperors, he takes all nations into his army. But never you fear, we’ll beat him in the end. Rule, Britannia, eh?’
That didn’t feel very likely with Napoleon striding across Europe, heading for Russia, but Dora wasn’t here to talk military campaigns. ‘Had Lorenzo been in here before?’
‘Oh, yes, he was a regular what with the house only being a couple of doors down. Regular bit of trouble he was too. Temper like a tiger and proud as anything. No wonder he deserted from the French army. That weren’t principle; that was not liking being told what to do, if I know anything about a man’s character.
’ His expression turned pensive. ‘Some of my girls thought him handsome, but I didn’t see it.
We all knew to walk softly around him, if you know what I mean? ’
‘I do indeed. Were you surprised to hear what he had done?’
‘’Course I was! He wasn’t drunk – I wouldn’t’ve let him go out of here if I thought he was a danger to anyone.’ He said that quickly, to shield himself from any of the blame. ‘It was morning – he came in, one drink – then off to commit carnage. Talk about unexpected!’
‘But not unimaginable, if he had a temper?’
The landlord scratched his chin. ‘Now that’s a trickier question.
In the inquest it sounded like he’d planned it.
He knew the lord and lady had weapons in their rooms, primed pistols and daggers.
The maid, Susannah Black, nice girl, said he’d fired one of their pistols two weeks earlier, and was told off for doing so. ’
‘They had loaded pistols in both bedrooms?’ Now that was a telling detail.
‘Must’ve been terribly afraid of burglars, mustn’t they?’ He gave her a hard look suggesting he had his suspicions. ‘Or old enemies.’
And the couple didn’t sleep together. That wasn’t unusual in high society, but if they were fearing an attack, they hadn’t joined forces for defence. That suggested a rift in the marriage. Were they seeing other lovers?
‘Leaving loaded pistols lying around does seem like a recipe for disaster,’ said Dora.
‘You’re right there. I prefer a cudgel – doesn’t need loading and sorts out the unruly.’ He drew one from under the counter.
‘You are very wise.’ But if they still had loaded pistols in the house several weeks after Lorenzo had fired one, it sounded as if they did not suspect he would turn the weapons on them.
If old enemies were after them, they thought the danger would come from outside.
Had they feared reprisals from Napoleon?
It wouldn’t be the first time a despot had sent people to kill his enemies abroad.
‘You mentioned Susannah Black, the maid. Do you know where I can find her?’
He nodded. ‘She’s still at the house. Julien, the new comte, has asked her to shut the place up. He don’t want anything to do with it. Who would? The owner is going to have a devil of a job letting it again with that blood staining the doorstep.’
‘Thank you. Is there anything else I should ask you, so that I get my money’s worth?’
He chuckled. ‘So many things, love, but none of them about that murder. Good luck to you.’
With a nod to Miss Austen, Dora headed back out onto the street. Her companion joined her, putting her notebook away.
‘Helpful?’ Miss Austen asked.
‘Yes. The maid who gave evidence at the inquest is still at the house, so we go there next.’
It was only a few doors away, which gave Miss Austen no chance for further questions. Dora wished she could demand the lady stay in the tavern, but had no authority to do so, not when the client was paying for this. She had, however, to establish some rules.
‘I anticipate Susannah Black will be deeply upset over what she witnessed and likely to retain some loyalty to the family she serves. We had better not mention your cover story of you writing a book or she will think we are muckrakers digging for scandal to sensationalise in the press.’
‘Then we should tell her the truth – that my family are friends of the comte and comtesse. It is possible she will remember my visit last year; she will know my brother and sister-in-law.’
Dora nodded, much happier with this solution than spreading yet more lies. ‘Agreed.’
She knocked on the door of a fine terrace house which looked out over the brown waters of the Thames.
The retreating tide was leaving the muddy banks bare, barges and pleasure boats huddled in the deepest parts of the channel.
The air was rank with the weed baking in the sun and the distinct odour of drains.
After a pause, she could hear footsteps inside and the door opened a crack.
A young woman in a mob cap peered around the edge, chain still on.
‘Yes?’
‘Susannah Black?’
The woman’s pale blue eyes grew cold with suspicion. Her skin had the papery pallor of someone who had been indoors too long, like a house plant starved of sunlight. Dora had the odd sensation that she was talking to a ghost. ‘Who’s asking?’ she whispered.
Dora introduced herself and her companion.
‘My brother and Eliza want to find out what really happened to your mistress and master,’ said Miss Austen, bumping Dora to one side. Dora didn’t bump her back but it was a close-run thing. ‘I hope you don’t mind us coming to you for help?’
Unbending a little, the maid pushed the door closed, but only so she could release the chain. ‘You’d better come in then.’
She opened the door wide enough for them to slip inside. The foyer was full of packing cases, all neatly labelled.
‘It’s only me now,’ said Susannah. ‘The carrier is coming for these tomorrow and then that’s done.’ Dressed in black with a white apron that hung off her bony shoulders, she looked as if she had missed a few meals.
‘Do you have a place to go to?’ asked Miss Austen, placing a gentle hand on the young woman’s forearm.
‘I’m going home – to Dorset. I’ve had enough of city life.’ She waved them to take seats on the cases. ‘Sorry – the chairs have already gone to the auction house.’
‘Do you remember me, Susannah?’ asked Miss Austen. ‘I was a guest of the late comte and comtesse last year at a musical evening.’
Susannah wrinkled her nose. ‘Truth be told, miss, I don’t, but I remember your sister-in-law. Pelisse of green merino cloth, gold buttons, ermine tippet?’ A little life was returning to the wraith-like girl.
‘You have an excellent memory. Yes, I remember she wore that – very becoming.’
‘Madame Antoinette’, Susannah’s voice shook a little at the mention of her mistress, ‘asked me to change the buttons on hers when she saw how well it looked.’
‘Susannah, we understand that you’ve told the inquest everything you knew about the incident, but would you mind repeating it to us now, along with anything else you’ve remembered since?’ asked Dora, thinking it was high time she, the professional, took over the questioning.
The maid swallowed and looked away up the empty stairs, eyes brimming. How often this grand house must have echoed with company and music and now it was home only to the shades of the departed. ‘Do I have to?’
‘Of course not – we are friends, not the law; however, it might help your late mistress if we can understand what really went on. It would give us the ammunition to counter any slander against them.’
Sharpness returned to Susannah’s expression, drying up her tears. ‘What slander? She was a good woman, she was!’ Her voice now had the snap of a birch rod to it.
‘We know that,’ said Miss Austen calmly, butting in again – that really had to stop, ‘but unfortunately the ton has not yet had time to dig into the crime as it happened right as the season ended. When they come back, the gossip will flare up again and we wish to douse the flames before they spread.’
With a nod, Susannah acquiesced. ‘It was a normal morning. Hah!’ She rubbed her hand over her face wearily. ‘I suppose that’s the way of this kind of thing – it blows up out of the blue, the storm that sinks the ship. Like the one that killed my brother off Portland.’
‘You were on duty?’ prodded Dora when Susannah looked as if she’d run out of words, wandering in memories of those she’d lost.
Susannah forced her spine to straighten. ‘Yes – very busy, in fact. We were about to move to Queen Anne Street and were on the point of getting into the carriage. I’d packed her favourite gown – she was going to a p-party.’ Her voice hitched and she trembled, hugging her arms to her sides.
Dora shot Miss Austen a look, warning her not to interfere. ‘Then what happened?’
‘Hebditch had brought the carriage round, so I came down the stairs with the mistress. I saw Lorenzo just there.’ She pointed to the entrance. ‘So I asked him to open the door for madame, you know, like he normally would. He ignored me – just brushed past us as if we weren’t there.’
‘He didn’t attack the comtesse when he had the chance?’
‘No, not then. He went upstairs as if he owned the place. It weren’t right – I knew something was off about him, but what could I do?
Then we heard gunfire. The comte came to the top of the stairs, staggering – he wasn’t a young man so I thought he’d had an accident with his pistol when packing it up for the journey – but then Lorenzo appeared behind him and …
and stabbed him in the back. When the comte fell, we saw that Lorenzo had a pistol in the other hand – the one he’d fired, I suppose, because he didn’t use it. ’
Dora gazed at the top of the stairs, imagining the ghoulish tableau playing out. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ Susannah gulped. ‘We all stood here like statues, shocked to pieces. It felt like a play – like they’d staged it and the comte would get up and laugh at our faces – but it was real.’ She repeated it in a lower tone. ‘It was real.’
‘And then?’ said Dora quietly.
‘Lorenzo stepped over the comte and rushed down the stairs. I thought he was going to make a run for it, but he came at us and stabbed the comtesse in the breast.’ She touched the place on her chest reflexively.
‘Why? What harm had she ever done him? If he had a quarrel with the comte, then that’s a matter between men, but to stab a woman who had no weapon, who did nothing to provoke him?
The savage – the bloody, beastly savage!
’ She fisted her hands on her lap. ‘I wish I’d had a knife to kill him myself – I would’ve rammed it in his throat – but the coward turned tail when we all started moving out of our shock.
He ran back upstairs, got the other pistol from the comte’s room – it must’ve been already loaded because seconds later he shot himself in the mouth.
Blew his brains out – I know because I had to mop up after him, though, thank God, I didn’t see him do it. ’
Three bodies in less than five minutes, thought Dora. The Jacobean playwright, John Webster, would’ve been proud of that bloody denouement. ‘Did the comtesse say anything, about why he did it, I mean?’
Susannah shook her head. ‘She never had a chance. We called in two surgeons to aid them but neither the comtesse nor the comte spoke. They just died quietly, which if you knew them you would understand was out of character. If she could’ve done so, she would’ve cursed Lorenzo, or asked for a priest, something. She wouldn’t have wanted silence.’
The rest is silence, thought Dora, reminded of Hamlet.
No wonder Susannah had found it like a play – it had the choreography of a staged death, a fittingly operatic ending.
‘Then I’m sure she would appreciate you speaking up for her now.
Tell me, Susannah, was there any sign that Lorenzo was going to do this?
The inquest said a fit of insanity, but what do you think? ’
The maid shivered. ‘Don’t you believe them. He wasn’t mad. He knew exactly what he was doing, planned it even.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I caught him firing a pistol a few weeks before, didn’t I? When I asked him what the hell he thought he was playing at’—she glanced at Miss Austen—‘pardon my language…’
‘Do go on,’ said Miss Austen. ‘It sounds like an occasion where strong language is warranted.’
‘Too right it is.’ Now she’d got the story off her chest, Susannah was rallying.
The wan maid was transforming into an avenging one.
‘He told me it was an accident. An accident? Pig’s swill!
No, I think he was practising – I think he’d already decided to kill the comte.
Did they tell you he brought a can of oil with him and put it inside the carriage?
I think he was going to burn us all alive in there if he got the chance. Vicious bastard.’
‘Why would he do that?’ asked Dora as Miss Austen looked away. That curse was a little strong for the lady.
‘’Cause he hated everyone – hated the comte for telling him off when he didn’t do his job properly, the comtesse for scolding him – me as well for when I took him to task for firing that pistol indoors. I was lucky he didn’t stab me. No, he wasn’t mad. He was angry, so very angry.’
Perhaps it really was the case of a servant who snapped and ran amok in a killing rage? The inquest might’ve been broadly right in seeing it as an isolated incident.
‘It is strange for anger to burn so slowly, to plan and plot,’ said Miss Austen softly.
She was right, thought Dora. Killing in a red rage was one thing.
Letting a scolding fester for a couple of weeks, buying oil, not striking out at the comtesse at first but returning to finish the job, that all sounded like premeditation.
And he fired the pistol before all of that happened. He did that first.
The loaded pistols were a piece of the puzzle that she needed to understand. ‘Susannah, did you think it odd that your master and mistress kept loaded weapons in their bedrooms?’
She shrugged and looked away. ‘It weren’t my place.’
Which meant she had thought it strange.
‘Who were they afraid of? Not Lorenzo, clearly, as he had the run of the house.’
‘I don’t know, miss, but the comte did say he had enemies “over the water”. He became afraid in the last few months, told us all to take precautions and not to talk to strangers.’ Susannah grimaced. ‘It seems I didn’t learn that lesson ’cause I’m talking to you, aren’t I?’