Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
A Second Thread
No sooner had the door to the morning room closed behind Steele than I set out for the stairs. Claire needed visiting, which meant that I needed to change into a suitable gown. A half hour later, I made my way down in a dark blue walking dress, along with a simple hat.
Honeycutt appeared in the hall almost at once.
“Venturing out, my lady?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I have the carriage brought round?”
“No.” The Rosehaven carriage carried the family crest upon its doors. It would announce my movements to the whole of Mayfair. There were afternoons when that was useful. Today was not one of them. “I should like a hansom instead.”
“As you wish.” His tone conveyed his opinion of hansoms with great economy. Ladies of my position did not rattle about London unescorted in hired cabs. Ladies of my position did a great many things, proper or otherwise, provided no one watched them do it.
A few moments later he opened the front door for me. A hansom was already at the curb.
“Belgrave Square,” I told the driver.
The cab smelled of leather and old tobacco, and the seat had been worn to the shape of a hundred strangers.
We rattled out of the square and south, past the park railings, where the fashionable hour had not yet begun and the paths belonged to nursemaids and their charges.
I settled back and rehearsed nothing. That was the difficulty of questioning a friend.
One could not arrive with the questions laid out like instruments on a tray.
Claire would give me more if I let her find her own way to it.
If Claire remembered one more thing about Sir Basil Crane, one thing she had thought too insignificant to mention before, it might be enough. Investigations, I had learned, often turned upon the smallest of recollections.
Belgravia received me with its usual white-stuccoed composure. Whatever went on inside those houses, the outsides never revealed a thing.
Claire’s butler admitted me at once. Once upon a time, I had been a frequent visitor. Before the investigations consumed a fair amount of my time. Before Steele occupied a large part of my thoughts.
“Is Lady Edmunds receiving?”
“Yes, my lady. In the morning room.”
He showed me in.
The house seemed subdued, as though it had drawn its curtains against the world and intended to remain that way. The hall was dim, hushed in the manner of a house where the servants had taken to walking softly.
Claire was seated by the window with a piece of embroidery in her lap and a basket of silks at her feet. A shawl lay about her shoulders, though the room was not cold.
She looked up as I stepped into the room. “Rosalynd.” A smile touched her face, but it did not last long.
I crossed the room and kissed her cheek. It was cool beneath my lips. “Am I interrupting?”
She glanced down at the embroidery. “Not in the least. I’ve spent the last quarter of an hour untangling the same piece of silk.”
The silk had not improved from her efforts. It lay in a small, stubborn knot of blue and silver upon her lap.
I sat beside her, close enough that our skirts touched. Some conversations went better within reach. “How are you?”
She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know.”
The answer hurt my heart.
I took one of her hands. Her cold fingers curled around mine at once. She had been holding herself together by sheer determination and was glad, for a moment, of something else to hold.
“Any news?” Her voice fairly vibrated with hope.
Unfortunately, I had none to offer. “Not yet. But Steele has Finch looking into Crane. He expects a report soon.”
She tried to smile and failed.
I had never seen Claire fail to smile before. She had always possessed a vibrant cheerfulness, a way of making a room seem warmer merely by sitting in it. Now she looked pale and tired, and there was a strain about her eyes that made her appear older than her twenty-six years.
Her hand drifted, almost unconsciously, to her middle.
“Have you eaten?” I asked.
She looked surprised. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s nearly two o’clock. Have you eaten?”
“I believe so.”
“You believe so?” I resolved to have a word with her cook before I left.
A tiny laugh escaped her. “You sound exactly like Cosmos.” The mention of his name dimmed her expression at once. “I wish he were here.”
I pressed her hands. “He will be soon.”
A small silence settled between us. Beyond the window, Belgrave Square went on with its afternoon. A nursemaid herded two children along the pavement. A tradesman’s cart stopped some doors down.
She took a deep breath and gazed at me. “You didn’t come merely to inquire after my health.”
“No.”
She laid aside the embroidery, the knot of silk sliding from her lap into the basket, and gazed squarely at me. “Ask what you need from me.”
I loved her very much in that moment. She was being extraordinarily brave.
There was no gentle way into what I had come to ask, so I chose the direct one. Claire had never yet thanked anyone for wrapping a hard thing in tissue paper.
“How did Crane learn about the potion?”
No flinch came from my question. The shame of the thing had burned away. Only the fear for Cosmos remained. And fear could be put to work.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He wouldn’t say. I did ask.”
“Think about it.”
She was quiet for a long moment. I let her be quiet.
“He might have learned of it through the inquest, but I cannot see how. There was only a brief notice in the papers, and the verdict was death from natural causes. The potion was never mentioned. Besides, the inquest was held in Hampshire.”
“You never told anyone?”
“No.”
“Would Lord Edmunds have shared that information?”
She gave a little laugh. “Edmunds would sooner have announced his bank balance.”
I smiled despite myself. “He was that private?”
“Private and vain. An unfortunate combination.”
“Vain?”
“Oh, terribly.” A little more color came into her face. Talking of him did that. “Once, after a gentleman mistook him for his elder cousin, he spent an entire week examining himself in every looking glass in the house.”
I laughed.
“He was perfectly ridiculous.”
The room grew quiet again.
I did not hurry her out of it.
“So who did know?” I asked gently.
“The physician, of course. The chemist.”
She fell silent.
“And?”
She looked at me, a gleam of light in her eyes. “My husband’s valet. Benson. He not only fetched the potion from the chemist but prepared it for Edmunds.”
“So Benson knew,” I said, almost to myself.
She nodded. “Benson knew everything.”
Of course he did. No man is a hero to his valet—and no man is a mystery to one, either.
“What else did he know?”
Claire’s mouth curved, faintly and despite herself.
“My husband’s little vanities.”
“Such as the looking glasses?”
“And his hair.”
“His hair?”
“He had begun losing it years ago. Benson used to make him a special pomade that was supposed to restore it.”
“Did it?”
“Not in the slightest. He remained as bald as before, though he faithfully applied it every evening.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
“This was Benson’s special concoction?”
“Yes. It smelled dreadful. Edmunds insisted it was improving matters.”
“But it was not.”
“No. It merely made him bald and faintly medicinal. Whenever we were intimate—never mind.”
I pressed my lips together. I could only imagine the scent of the man.
“Benson knew everything about him. Edmunds trusted him completely.”
The smile faded from my face. Secrets. Benson knew Edmunds’s secrets, and Crane had made a profession of other people’s secrets.
A private embarrassment. A potion fetched discreetly from a chemist. A vain husband. A trusted valet. A widow with much to lose. But the information did not simply fly through the air and settle where it pleased. Someone had carried it.
Half of what society knew about itself traveled below stairs long before it reached a drawing room. A man in Crane’s trade would have known where to shop. And a valet did not leave his knowledge behind with the pomade recipes when he left a house. It went where he went.
“What became of Benson after your husband died?”
Claire spent some time on the question. “He asked for a reference.”
“And you gave him one?”
“Of course. He had been a faithful servant. Edmunds liked him very much.”
“Do you know where he went?”
She frowned, thinking while the clock upon the mantel ticked softly and a carriage rolled past outside.
I kept my hands folded and my face pleasant and did not prompt her. Whatever she was reaching for, she would reach it sooner without my help.
“I believe I do,” she said at last.
I went still.
“He entered service again almost immediately.”
“With whom?”
“An elderly gentleman.”
Something in me tightened.
“What elderly gentleman?”
“I should know it.” She gazed into the distance while she searched her memory. “I wrote the reference myself.”
I waited.
Her brow furrowed. “It began with an H.” And then her eyes widened. “Harcourt. Sir Reginald Harcourt, that’s who it was.”
I went very still. The gentleman at the musicale. The one with the coughing fit.
For a moment I simply stared at her. Could it be? Benson had gone into Harcourt’s service. Crane had been seen in Harcourt’s company. And Benson possessed precisely the sort of knowledge Crane had used against Claire.
A chill found me, there in Claire’s morning room, with the silks bright in their basket at our feet.
“Rosalynd,” Claire said softly. “What is it?”
I drew a long breath. “I think Crane learned about the potion from Benson.”
“How?”
“Crane was a sycophant, a hanger-on who befriended people for their secrets. He may have attached himself to Harcourt expecting to find something useful. Instead, he found Benson.”
She stared at me. “You mean Benson told him?”
“I think it’s a possibility. One that we’ll need to explore.” I came to my feet. “I hate to rush off, but I must get this information to Steele so he can alert Finch.” I kissed her cheek.
“You will let me know what comes of it.” It was not a question.
“Of course.”
But before I left I stopped by the kitchen and had a pointed discussion with her cook.