Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
A Most Elevated Evening
Claire's note arrived just after breakfast.
I knew before I opened it that she had not slept. Her hand was ordinarily a graceful thing, all elegant loops and careful restraint. This had been written by a woman who had spent the night pacing.
My dear Rosalynd,
You asked where Mr. Crane was most often found. I wish I could tell you he was not found anywhere at all, but that would be a comforting lie.
He had a talent for appearing in drawing rooms where no one quite remembered inviting him.
Musicales and small soirées were his natural hunting grounds.
He did not thrive at large balls, where too many gentlemen knew him for what he was—or nearly so.
But among widows, young wives, and self-appointed patrons of the arts, he prospered exceedingly.
Lady Pembury is holding a musicale two evenings hence. Mr. Crane attended several of her gatherings. If you can contrive to be present, you may hear something useful.
I dislike sending you into rooms where he was welcomed. But needs must. Forgive me.
C.
A musicale. So I had been right after all.
Sir Basil Crane’s secrets had not been confined to dark alleys and whispered bargains.
Men like him cultivated respectability as carefully as vice, and drawing rooms often concealed as much as any shadowed street.
A drawing room was no safer merely because the lamps were lit.
Arriving alone, however, would invite questions I preferred not to answer. I needed a companion. Fortunately, I had a sister. Unfortunately, it was that particular sister.
I found Chrissie in her bedchamber with a fashion journal open upon her lap. She looked up as I entered, regarded me for a moment, and quietly closed the magazine. "You have that look again."
"What look?"
"The one that means you've had an idea and I am about to suffer for it."
"I hardly think suffer is the word."
"It usually is."
I seated myself opposite her. "Lady Pembury is holding a musicale two evenings hence."
"No."
"You haven't heard the rest."
"There needn't be a rest. You said musicale."
"Most people wait until they know what they're refusing."
"Not when experience has rendered further evidence unnecessary."
I smiled despite myself. "Chrissie—"
"No, Rosie. I refuse. Musicales are dreadful. One spends an hour listening to an opera singer murder Italian, another listening to a gentleman attack a pianoforte as though it had insulted his mother, and, if Providence has abandoned us entirely, there is a violin."
I bit the inside of my cheek. Experience had taught me that encouraging Chrissie once she had begun cataloguing the deficiencies of musicales only prolonged the recital.
"And afterward everyone congratulates one another on what a splendid evening it has been, though every soul in the room was praying for it to end.”
"Then consider this an opportunity to suffer in good company."
"Rosie…"
"This is for Cosmos."
The complaint vanished from her face. "How is our attendance at this musicale going to help?" she asked quietly.
“Sir Basil was often found at musicales and small soirées, according to Claire. If we attend this one, I may learn who welcomed his acquaintance—and who profited by it."
"Will it help Cosmos?"
"It might."
She lowered her gaze to the journal resting in her lap. "Then I shall attend.”
"You needn't sound as though I have sentenced you to transportation."
She released a theatrical sigh. "I am trying to be brave."
Petunia's dramatic tendencies had not sprung from nowhere. She had learned them from Chrissie.
“Will there be a violin?" Chrissie asked.
"I have no idea."
"If there is, I hope it plays briefly."
"Your sacrifice shall not be in vain."
She fixed me with a solemn look. "I expect chocolate afterward."
"Agreed."
"And perhaps new gloves."
"You drive a hard bargain."
"I learned from the best." And then she offered a triumphant smile.
Two evenings later, Lady Pembury's house blazed with light, carriages lining the street. From the open door came the murmur of voices and one alarming trill from a soprano warming somewhere out of sight.
Chrissie stopped dead. “That,” she said, “was not human.”
“It may have been an exercise.”
“It sounded like a plea for rescue.”
I threaded my arm through hers. “Courage.”
“I am thinking of Cosmos.”
“Very wise.”
“I am also thinking of chocolate.”
“Equally wise.”
Lady Pembury received us with the air of a general reviewing troops. “Lady Rosalynd! Lady Chrysanthemum! How delightful. We are to have a most elevated evening.”
Beside me, Chrissie made a small sound.
“How delightful,” I said.
“Mr. Bellweather is to play first,” Lady Pembury continued. “A most sensitive young man. He feels Chopin very deeply.”
“That is what I feared,” Chrissie murmured.
I tightened my grip upon her arm.
The drawing room was crowded but not yet seated. Ladies drifted in little groups while gentlemen congregated near the mantel.
At the far end of the room a young man sat before the pianoforte with such an expression of suffering that I feared for both him and Chopin.
I had just begun surveying the room when a voice behind us said, “Lady Rosalynd.”
I turned to find Lord Redmayne, impeccably dressed, looking as though he would gladly have exchanged the musicale for pistols at dawn.
His gaze shifted. “Lady Chrysanthemum.”
Chrissie smiled. Politely. Barely. “Lord Redmayne, how pleasant to see you.”
A silence opened between them.
He bowed. “I trust you are well.”
“Perfectly, thank you. Decorative, but perfectly well.”
For the briefest moment he looked uncomfortable.
I intervened before blood was drawn. “How fortunate to meet you here, my lord. I did not know you were fond of musicales.”
“I am not. But my mother is.”
Across the room stood Lady Redmayne, speaking to Lady Pembury while keeping one eye firmly upon her son. The poor man had been dragged here by his mother who was eager to find a bride for him.
Before I could provide further comment, Lady Pembury called the room to order. The music was about to begin.
A rustle of silk, a scraping of chairs, and the resigned movement of gentlemen toward their seats followed. And somewhere in this room, I hoped to find a thread that would lead me to the man who had set Crane upon Claire.
Mr. Bellweather seated himself at the pianoforte with the gravity of a man about to announce a national tragedy. He lowered his hands, and the first chord emerged.
With a suffering sigh, Chrissie closed her eyes and more than likely prayed for providence. Alas, her prayer was not answered as a second chord soon followed.
The piece lurched between violence and melancholy before ending in a triumphant final chord, followed by Mr. Bellweather holding his hands aloft.
The company dutifully applauded.
“I believe,” Chrissie whispered, “that he has killed the poor thing.”
“The piano?”
“Chopin.”
I tightened my lips to keep from laughing.
Still, Chrissie noticed. “Do not laugh. I am in mourning.”
Mr. Bellweather rose and bowed deeply while a lady in the front row dabbed her eyes.
“She must be related to him,” Chrissie murmured.
Once the applause faded, Lady Pembury declared that refreshments would be served before the next performance.
The company rose with remarkable speed and headed toward the refreshments table.
“Oh, thank heavens,” said a familiar voice.
A young lady in pale blue had suddenly appeared beside us.
“Eleanor!” Chrissie exclaimed.
Miss Eleanor Fairchild seized both of her hands. “I thought I saw you. Mama has been admiring Mr. Bellweather's interpretation of Chopin. I can endure no more of it.”
“You have my deepest sympathy,” said Chrissie.
“Come and rescue me.”
Chrissie glanced at me.
“Go on,” I said.
“You're certain?”
“Perfectly.”
She leaned close. “If the violin appears, I may never recover.”
“Then I shall send for a physician.”
She smiled and allowed herself to be carried away by her friend. Within moments the pair had disappeared into a cluster of young ladies near the tea table.
I watched them a moment. Then I turned my attention to the room. The atmosphere had changed. Music had a way of setting tongues loose. The perfect condition for an investigation.
Somewhere in this room, Crane had listened and gathered secrets. And perhaps, one of them had killed him. I hoped someone knew why.
I accepted a glass of ratafia from a passing footman and made my first circuit of the room.
Murder investigations would be considerably easier if one could simply ask, Did anyone happen to know who directed the victim's blackmailing enterprise? Unfortunately, society required a gentler approach.
I stopped beside two ladies discussing Mr. Bellweather's performance.
"He plays with such feeling," one said.
"He certainly plays.”
However Mr. Bellweather's feelings might be judged, they were unlikely to assist my investigation. At the first opportunity, I said, "Did you hear about poor Sir Basil?”
"Oh, yes,” one of the ladies said. "Poor man."
The dead acquired many virtues they had never possessed in life.
“You knew him?" I asked.
"Not well, no. He was simply…there."
"Everywhere," her companion agreed.
"He attended Lady Drummond's dinners."
"And Mrs. Beckett's readings."
"And the Whitmores' musicales."
I nodded. "He was very sociable, then."
The two ladies exchanged a glance.
"Not exactly."
"He had a talent for attaching himself to people."
"To useful people," the other corrected.
I tucked that observation away.
"And did he have close friends?"
"Oh, I should not think so."
"No, he was too…adaptable."
I thanked them and resumed my circuit of the room.
For several minutes I collected little beyond confirmations that Crane had possessed an astonishing gift for appearing wherever influential people gathered and disappearing before anyone could remember precisely who had invited him.
Then I found myself beside three older ladies seated near the fire.
One of them was saying, with considerable satisfaction, that she had disliked Sir Basil from the beginning.
"I never trusted him," she declared.
I paused. "Indeed?"
She looked up.
"Lady Rosalynd. Yes, indeed. There was something about the man."
"What sort of something?"
"He listened too closely."
"To what?"
"Everything."
Her companions nodded.
"He always seemed to know things one had never told him," said the second.
"And remembered them," added the third.
"That sounds rather alarming,” I said.
"It was. In his company one felt that one's words ought to be counted before being spoken."
Interesting. "And yet he was received everywhere."
"Oh, yes," said the first lady. "He knew everybody."
"No," corrected the second. "He knew somebody who knew everybody."
I turned to her at once. That was a distinction worth making. “What do you mean?"
"He was forever hovering about poor Sir Reginald Harcourt," she said. "Not that Sir Reginald ever seemed to encourage it. But if Sir Reginald attended a musicale or a soirée, one could be fairly certain Sir Basil would appear before the evening was over."
That was interesting. I opened my mouth to ask what Sir Reginald had made of the attention.
But before I could do so, a deep, rasping cough sounded somewhere behind me.
It was followed by another. And then another.
The fit seemed determined to empty the gentleman's lungs entirely.
Conversation around the room faltered for a moment before resuming, everyone evidently accustomed to the interruption.
"Oh, poor Sir Reginald," one of the ladies murmured.
"His dreadful chest," said another.
"And his gout. Poor man."
I turned.
An elderly gentleman occupied an armchair near the window. One leg was stretched before him, a silver-headed cane resting across his knees. Every few moments he pressed a handkerchief to his mouth as another bout of coughing overtook him.
A respectful circle of empty space surrounded him. No one was unkind enough to avoid him deliberately. No one, however, appeared eager to stand too near him either.
"The catarrh has settled in his chest these last few years," one of the ladies said.
"He bears it remarkably well."
"He never misses a musicale."
"No, indeed. I do not believe Sir Reginald Harcourt would let death itself keep him at home."
A little laugh went around the circle.
"He is to be admired," I said politely.
"Very much so."
The conversation drifted back to the evening's performers.
I waited for an opportunity to return to Crane, but none presented itself. Instead, the ladies compared sopranos, debated whether Mr. Bellweather had taken the final movement too quickly, and lamented the decline of proper accompaniment.
None of it brought me any nearer to discovering who had wished Crane dead.
After a few courteous remarks, I excused myself and continued my circuit of the room. As I did, my gaze strayed once more toward Sir Reginald.
He had begun coughing again, one hand pressed lightly to his chest.
A footman approached with a cup of tea.
Sir Reginald thanked him kindly as he accepted it.
Then he looked up, and our eyes met.
He smiled at me. I smiled back.
Poor man.