Chapter Eleven
Brett
“This is not nearly so diverting as I thought it would be.” Marie slumped back on the seat of the carriage.
Fortunately, Lady Mary’s coach was a plain black conveyance with no distinguishing marks.
With the curtains covering most of the window, no one who saw them would know who was in the carriage—or understand their purpose.
Brett leaned forward, squinting. He’d instructed Ernest to park as far from the street’s gas lamp as possible while keeping Mrs. Shaw’s front door in sight.
Mrs. Trent had ordered her own carriage drawn in front of her sister’s house this fine Friday evening, but it had sat there unoccupied for going on forty minutes.
“Yes, your information concerning Mrs. Trent’s Friday evening habits appears not to be completely accurate,” he said.
Marie scowled, looking much too much like an angry kitten in the dim light. “It’s not my fault the woman is running late.”
“I didn’t say it was.” Brett’s lips twitched. When he’d first started working for Lady Mary, he had put all his effort into learning his job and learning it well. He hadn’t given the pretty maid much thought.
Since a body had appeared on their doorstep and he’d begun working more closely with Miss Marie Murphy, the flame-haired beauty had lingered in his thoughts more and more.
Miss Murphy, or Marie as he now thought of her, was a diverting, mischievous, kind-hearted sort of woman—with everyone but him.
She had a bit of sass to her, even when speaking to Lady Mary, but it was always of a good-natured variety.
Her speech was decidedly more sour when directed his way.
It had puzzled him for several days, why her smiles had dimmed when he was present. Why an otherwise graceful woman walked into doorframes when she caught sight of him. He might not be everyone’s preferred cup of tea, but he didn’t usually engender hostility from others.
At last he’d understood.
“That maid might have given me a poor account, as well.” Marie batted a lock of her curly hair off her cheek. “Too interested in what she’s going to eat for dessert to read the clock right when her mistress leaves.”
“You don’t have to defend yourself.” Brett breathed deeply, the faint scent of rose water filling the carriage’s interior. He wondered if Lady Mary had gifted the maid the rose water or if it was an indulgence she allowed herself. “As I said, I’m not laying any blame at your feet.”
Instead of appeasing her, his words only deepened her scowl. She bobbed one of her feet up and down in a staccato rhythm.
A lightness filled his chest. Brett wasn’t a proud man, but he had enough experience with the opposite sex to know when a woman was attracted to him. It was the only thing that explained her actions. Miss Marie Murphy was interested in him but desperately didn’t want to be.
An idea struck him, one he was surprised hadn’t occurred to him before.
Marie was intelligent, lively, and loyal, which had always appealed to him.
The good Lord knew she had a figure that could make grown men weep.
She obviously had a strong sense of justice if she spent her time trying to track down a killer.
All in all, she couldn’t be more perfect for him.
Brett hadn’t come to London with the idea of finding a wife, but now that he’d found Marie, the idea made complete sense.
And with the same instinctual decision-making he’d relied upon all his life, the choice was made. He would wed Marie Murphy.
“What are you grinning at?” his future bride asked, suspicion deepening her voice.
“Nothing.” His smile widened. “I understand there are some lovely paths in Hyde Park. Perhaps one of these afternoons you’d be kind enough to show them to me?”
Marie recoiled. His feelings would have been hurt if he hadn’t already decided that she liked him and this was just one of her quirks. “Walk in the park? Why would we do that?”
He chuckled. “If you don’t know, I can’t wait to show you.” Motion caught his attention. He held up his hand before she could respond. “Look. Someone’s coming out.”
They both leaned forward, their heads nearly touching as they peered out the carriage window. A woman hurried down the front steps and into the coach waiting in front of the house.
“That’s ’er,” Marie whispered. “Mrs. Trent. Leaving ’er daughter to go be with another man.” She tutted.
Brett didn’t comment on her dropped h’s. He found her accent charming, and if she never wanted to say another h in her life, he would be fine with that. “We don’t have proof she’s going to a lover, only gossip.” He knocked on the ceiling of the carriage. “Let’s see where she heads.”
Ernest knew to follow the carriage, and they started after her coach at a sedate pace.
They turned onto a busy street, the sounds of horses’ hooves and pedestrians’ chatter filling the air.
It took them twenty minutes to reach their destination on Chiswell Street.
It was a well-maintained neighborhood, lacking in pretension and pomp.
Mrs. Trent wore a veil over her face when she exited her carriage. She hurried up the steps to a three-story townhouse. The door opened before she could knock.
“Well, that confirms that.” Marie sniffed. “That embrace could only mean one thing.”
Brett had to agree. The man had been in shadow, but his clinch on the doorstep with the recent widow had been in full view. “Wait here.” He hopped out of the carriage and strode to the house next to the one Mrs. Trent had entered. He found the servants’ entrance and knocked on the door.
An irritated looking man peered up at him, holding a spindly candle. “What do you want?”
“I have a delivery for…” he pulled his notepad from his coat pocket and pretended to read from it “…146 Chiswell.”
The man blew out a breath. “This is 144. It’s that house you want.” He jerked his head next door.
Brett ran his hand up the back of his head. “I apologize for bothering you. Just to make sure I don’t get it wrong again, your neighbor’s name is…?”
“Gray. Driscoll Gray. Go bother him.” And the door was smartly shut in his face.
Brett rocked back on his heels. Well, that was an interesting development. He could only imagine Lady Mary’s reaction to the news that two of their top suspects were having a liaison with each other. Gray not only had a financial motive for wanting Trent dead, but he had a romantic one, as well.
Brett trotted back to the carriage. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for Trent. His wife was sleeping with the man he blamed for damaging his business.
When he told Marie what he’d learned, she shook her head. “Don’t be feeling sorry for him. He wasn’t faithful, neither.” She leaned back and tapped her plump bottom lip with her thumb. “Should we go home and tell Lady Mary or wait here to see if Mrs. Trent goes anywhere else?”
“She’s most likely in for the night. It could be hours.” Brett pursed his lips.
“We might miss something if we leave.”
“There’s always that chance.” It was a warm night. It wouldn’t be unpleasant being ensconced in a close carriage with Marie for hours on end, but it would be foolish.
Marie opened her reticule and pulled out a deck of cards. The cards were well-loved, their edges brown and ragged. She shuffled them briefly, then held the deck up to him. “Pick one. If you get high card, we leave. If I get high card, we stay.”
It seemed a silly way to make a decision, especially as he’d already decided his course, but he decided to indulge her. He cut the deck and peeled off a card. “A nine.”
She pulled out her own card. “Eight. We leave.”
Brett nodded, relieved the cards had worked in his favor. He leaned out the window and spoke to Ernest. When he settled back in, his knee pressed against Marie’s. “But I think there’s somewhere else we should go before heading home. I want to see where Trent was stabbed.”
Marie leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. The creamy skin above her bodice glowed golden in the lamp light. Brett forced his gaze not to linger. “How do you expect to get in the Trent house?”
“Charm and my natural ability for persuasion.”
Marie huffed out a laugh, a sound that warmed Brett straight through. “This I have to see.”
The footman Brett had met earlier seemed immune to his charm. He did, however, accept the five quid Brett slipped his way to let them in.
“Persuasion, huh?” Marie rolled her eyes as she walked past him into the house.
They followed the footman to Trent’s study. The walls were painted a deep bottle green, and a large rectangular desk dominated the space. The floor was bare. A one-foot wide strip of hardwood planks by the large casement doors was faded a lighter shade of oak than the rest of the floor.
“The carpet has been removed?” Brett asked the footman.
“There was no getting it clean.” The kid sidled up to Marie. “You work for that Lady Mary, too?”
“I do.” She spun in a slow circle. “Aside from the missing carpet, it looks like a normal office.”
“Well, we cleaned it up.” At Brett’s look, he added, “After the magistrate said we could. It was a right mess. The lamp was knocked over, oil spilt everywhere. Books and papers strewn everywhere. And that had to be replaced.” He pointed to the floor-length curtain that hung over one of the casement doors.
“It looks like Mr. Trent pulled it down as he stumbled out that door after he’d been stabbed. ”
There was no grief in the footman’s voice when he spoke of his employer’s murder, and Brett wondered at it. “Was Mr. Trent a good master?”
The young man shrugged. “He was fine.”
“Who let him in that night?” Brett picked a gold ink well up from the desk, testing its weight. “Was it you?”
“Nah. He didn’t make us wait up for him.” The footman stepped close behind Marie and pointed over her shoulder at the empty floor. His gaze flicked down to her bosom. “The pool of blood was right there.”
Brett forced his hand to unclench. Marie wasn’t his yet. She wouldn’t appreciate his planting a facer on someone being inappropriate with her. Other men would look. As long as that’s all they did.
Marie scooted away from the footman. “And no one heard anything? Not a shout? Not those books or drapes falling to the ground?”
“We’re up on the top floor.” There was that stupid shrug again. “No one heard anything.”
“And is anything missing?” Brett asked. He walked to where Marie stood, fingering the fireplace instruments.
She answered for the footman. “The fireplace poker. It’s not in its place here.”
“The magistrate took that. Thinks it was used to beat Mr. Trent before he was stabbed with something else.” The servant scratched his jaw.
“We did tell Sir Kelsey that Mr. Trent usually keeps a small sum of cash in his top desk drawer. There wasn’t any there after his murder.
But it wasn’t much usually. Not more than twenty quid or so.
He could have taken it earlier that night when he went out. ”
Or one of the servants could have lifted it when cleaning the room. Brett narrowed his gaze at the footman.
The boy shifted his weight from foot to foot. “One thing interesting though. It wasn’t missing, it was found.”
“What do you mean?” Marie asked.
“One of the girls found an embroidered handkerchief. Real fancy like. Tucked into the cushion of that chair, there.” The footman pointed to a squat, harp-backed chair. “Had initials embroidered on it. Real flowery like.”
Brett waited a moment, gritting his teeth. “And? What were the initials?”
The footman must have had a flair for the dramatic. Or a flair for irritating Brett. He gave a theatrical pause before answering. “The initials were M.E.R.”