Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
A Name With a Face
Cosmos and I had agreed to take supper as though nothing had happened.
He had taken his place at the head of the table, changed and composed, as if the morning had never handed him into a carriage and driven him to Scotland Yard.
Our siblings, taking their cue from him, let themselves believe in the performance and performed in return.
Holly and Ivy bickered over the bread in their usual way.
Petunia wore her bravery like a borrowed coat a size too large, announcing twice that she was not at all frightened.
Laurel said little but watched her brother’s face.
Chrissie kept her chin level, though her eyes were rimmed with pink.
Cosmos carried on as ever, asking Fox a question about his carnivorous plants as though the answer were the most pressing matter in London.
So long as Cosmos held steady, the table held with him.
And then the front door bell put an end to it all.
It was not the hour for calling. Far from it. We were a course into our meal. A caller at this hour meant news. The only question was whether it was good or bad. I half-rose, but Cosmos’s hand settled flat on the cloth. Stay put, it said.
Then Honeycutt appeared at the dining room door, with an air of unease. “Lady Edmunds, my lord. I have put her in the hall. She is anxious to be received.”
Claire had not stayed put in the hall. She brushed past Honeycutt on a draft of warm air, pale to the lips, a gloved hand pressed to her chest.
“Cosmos.” His name came out of her, cracked down the middle. “I have only just heard. I did not stir from the house today. I was not feeling well. Sarah came back from the chemist’s with the news that you—”
Cosmos had come to his feet as soon as she’d walked through the door.
Whatever he had meant to perform for the table was at an end.
Something else had taken its place. Concern for Claire.
He came round the table to her. “You should not have come out if you were ill. Come. We’ll talk in my study, where it’s quiet.
” To me, low, over his shoulder: “Rosie. Mind the table.”
“Of course. Go.”
He took her out, his hand at her elbow steadying more than guiding. When the door closed on the two of them, I was left with six faces and the wreckage of our pretending.
“Lady Edmunds is upset,” Petunia said, her bottom lip quivering.
“She’s not feeling well, poppet. Cosmos will see to her. Now eat your supper.” I poured her more lemonade, if for no other reason than to occupy my hands. “The rest of us as well. Cook has made pudding, and the sooner we finish, the sooner we have it. Eat.”
It held, just. I kept the talk moving over the surface of the meal and did not let myself think.
I had gotten them to the pudding when Honeycutt came again with a note on a silver salver.
“From across the square, milady.” He did not say Steele’s name. He had not said it in three weeks. He simply set it at my elbow with care.
The note was brief, as everything from Steele tended to be when the message was urgent.
R,
The victim’s name is Sir Basil Crane.
—S
The name meant nothing to me. Sir Basil Crane was a stranger—a dead one who had contrived, by means I did not yet understand, to be shot with my brother’s pistol at Kew Gardens.
It was the answer to the question that had hung over the whole of the day.
And Cosmos was in his study, behind a shut door.
I could not sit eating pudding while I held the one piece he wanted. “Chrissie. Take them up once they’ve finished their dessert. I’ll come and say goodnight as soon as I can.”
At the study I knocked once and opened the door without waiting. And then I stopped on the threshold.
Claire was in my brother’s arms. Not collapsed—held—her face against his coat, his hand spread between her shoulders, his cheek bent to the top of her head.
He was murmuring something I could not catch, in a voice I had never heard him use, low and steady and meant for one person in the world.
I had known there was an attachment. I had not known the shape of it until now.
It told me, before either of them spoke, how much there was to lose.
Cosmos lifted his head. “Rosie.”
“Steele has sent the dead man’s name.” There was no soft way to set it down. “I came to bring it to you.”
Claire turned within his arm. Something in my face, or in the simple fact of my coming, had already begun to frighten her.
“His name was Sir Basil Crane,” I said.
Claire made a small sound and her knees gave. Cosmos’s arm took her weight before she could fall.
Over her bowed head my brother looked at me with an expression I will not soon forget. Not surprise. Recognition.
“You know who he is,” I said.
It was Claire who answered. “He was blackmailing me.”
Good heavens! “Why?”
“I—he—” She would have crumpled to the floor had Cosmos not gotten her into his desk chair.
“Some brandy, perhaps, Claire,” he offered.
“No.” She curled a hand around her stomach. “I don’t think—no. Thank you.”
It took her a moment to gather herself, and then she looked at me. “I was married before, as you know.”
“To Lord Edmunds.”
She nodded. “Given his age, he was not always able to…perform. He had a chemist make him a potion—I never knew what was in it, only that it gave him more…vigor. The last night we were intimate, he was sorely frustrated, for the potion had not worked. So he took more of it. The larger dose did its work. But while we were—”
“I understand,” I said. “Go on.”
“He collapsed. I could not rouse him, so I rang for his man, who had no more success than I. We sent for his physician. But there was nothing to be done. Edmunds was dead.”
I had known her husband died in the act. I had not known about the potion.
“At the inquest the physician testified that Edmunds had died of a weak heart. He gave only a few details about the potion, though it had been made up to his own prescription. The verdict was death by natural causes.”
“So how does Crane come into it?”
“A few months ago, he called on me. He told me he knew about the potion. And then he explained, in the gentlest voice, that a coroner might be brought to wonder whether Edmunds’s tired heart had been helped to its rest, or hurried to it, by me.
He said he would rather not put the question to the authorities.
And then he said he was short of funds.” Her hands knotted in her lap.
“I have been paying him these four months. Every month the sum has risen.”
“Did you tell Cosmos?”
“No, she did not,” Cosmos said. “But one night I was waiting for her in the morning room. We had set a time to meet, but Claire had been delayed. An open envelope lay on her desk, a note half out of it. I should not have looked, but curiosity got the better of me. That is how I learned of it. I told Claire the payments would stop. The next day I ran Crane to ground at his club. Told him I had a matter to discuss in private. We went into one of the side rooms.”
“When was this?”
“A month ago. I told him the payments were at an end, and that if he troubled her again he would answer to me. And then, God help me, I struck him.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “I did not think we were overheard.”
“This is all my fault,” Claire said, tears streaming down her face.
Cosmos put his handkerchief into her hand. “You did nothing wrong, dearest.” It was the gentlest voice I had ever heard from my brother.
I addressed Cosmos. “So you quarreled with him in a private room at his club a month before he turned up dead at Kew with your pistol by his side.”
“That is the gist of it.”
“Somebody must have overheard your quarrel and carried it to the man who arranged Crane’s murder.
And that man arranged for your pistol to be left by the body so the blame would fall on you.
” The very thought of how well the plan had been crafted and carried out made me ill.
“And sometime in the near future, Dodson will be handed the blackmail story and an account of your quarrel with the deceased.”
“My motive, made to order,” Cosmos said.
“But you would never be so stupid as to leave a murder weapon beside the body, Cosmos,” Claire said, color returning to her face.
“It fell from my pocket,” Cosmos said. “Simple as that. That is how it will be made to read.”
“But—” Claire looked between us, helpless.
“It was neatly done,” I said. “You have to grant him that.”
“Grant whom?” Claire asked.
“The masked man who took the pistol from me at the Floralia during the Thames investigation. Who came to our masquerade and danced with me.”
Claire blinked. “I don’t understand.”
After I explained the turn of events which had led to this moment, Claire asked, “Why would this masked man do such a thing?”
“Because he is fascinated with me, Claire. His own word.” I gave a laugh with no humor in it. “He wants me and he is using Cosmos to get to me, because he knows I will do anything to save my brother.”
“Never,” Cosmos said with a depth of feeling I’d never heard him express before. “I would sooner hang.”
I shuddered. “It will not come to that. Steele and I will find the man who did this.”
“I want to help,” Claire said.
“No.” I shook my head. “You cannot be seen with Cosmos—not here, not at your house, not anywhere. We will not hand Dodson his ammunition.”
“Cosmos.” She looked up at him, anguish in her face.
“Rosie is right, Claire. It is for the best.”
“You must go home now,” I said. “Is your carriage outside?”
“Yes.”
“Goodnight then.”
I stepped out of the study to give them a moment alone to say their farewells. And then I climbed the stairs to Petunia’s bedchamber so I could read to her. Only then, beyond everyone's sight, did I realize my hand had begun to shake.