Chapter 3 #2
“I meant physically. Were they all killed in the same manner, with their throats cut, their ears taken?” he clarified, but before Mr. Gye could answer, Officers Tyne and Stevens approached. Stevens looked to Tyne to take the lead.
“We need to speak to Mr. Gye now,” Officer Tyne said, his tone mockingly submissive. “Of course, only if you’re done with your own questions, my lord.”
Hugh grinned. “That’s good of you, Tyne. I am finished. For now.”
Stevens’s own demeanor was less frosty than his superior’s. “Officer Mars—I mean, my lord, the men over there told us that guttersnipe of yours called the dead man ‘father’.”
Hugh nodded. “That’s correct.”
Tyne scoffed. “What’s it you call the boy again? Mister?”
“Sir,” Hugh replied, unamused. The boy had not won himself many friends at Bow Street over the few years he’d gone there, time and again, smelling of refuse and ordering about the constables. He suspected Tyne took some pleasure in belittling Sir, if only to irritate Hugh.
“Where is he now?” Tyne asked.
“I’m not sure.” Hugh paused, wondering at the question. “He saw his father’s body and ran off.”
“Why would he run?” Tyne pressed.
Hugh stared down the officer, who was unmistakably aiming to cast Sir in some guilty light. The utter fool.
“It was a shock, naturally,” Audrey answered when Hugh’s jaw remained locked tight. “He was upset.”
“Poor lad,” Stevens said. “Had to be a horrible thing to see.”
Tyne sent him a flat look of annoyance before saying, “We won’t keep you or the dowager duchess. Everything’s under control here.” Tyne then added, “My lord.”
The tacked-on address smacked of sarcasm.
That Hugh had ascended into a viscountcy surely gave the men at Bow Street something to disparage him over.
At least Tyne had not called Audrey “your duchess” as he’d been inclined to do after their first investigation into the murder of an opera singer.
Hugh had been teased relentlessly about the titled lady taking an interest in him, especially after she’d summoned him to Fournier Downs to solve another murder a few months later.
“Good to see you, Stevens,” Hugh said, purposefully snubbing Tyne as he held out his arm to Audrey. She flexed her fingers around his forearm as they left the privacy of the large screen.
“Gracious, Officer Tyne was chilly. I had no idea he disliked you so deeply.” She spoke softly as they cut through the spectators, ignoring looks of interest, and refusing to stop to answer questions of what lay behind the screen.
“I imagine he disliked me even before I became viscount.” His title would have only bolstered the man’s feelings.
Hugh partly understood; those with peerage titles were often nothing but trouble to Bow Street officers.
In the beginning, he’d felt much the same about Audrey and her family.
Now, however, he counted them as friends.
“I suspect he is envious.”
Audrey’s shrewd suggestion was most likely correct. When wealth, power, and influence were unavailable commodities, those who possessed them could easily appear as the enemy.
“As he should be,” Hugh replied, and at her stunned look, grinned. “He does not have you to tell him all the secrets Harlan Givens’s flask gave up to you.”
She rarely simpered as he’d come to notice many other ladies of the ton, young and old, doing. But the crafty expression inching across her lips right then was natural mischief, rather than practiced. She lowered her voice, brought herself closer on his arm, and told him what she’d seen.
“I was anxious at first, as all I could see was darkness. It makes sense, of course, because a flask would have been kept in his pocket most of the time.”
Hugh nodded, understanding that the visions she was given were often limited to what environment the object was in. The object would only hold so much energy too. Once depleted, the visions would cease.
“I had to push further back, so unfortunately when I did see something, it was quite grainy.”
“What was it?” Anything at all, even something obscure, may assist them.
Audrey waited to speak until they’d passed a man and woman, strolling toward them on the walk. The man canted his head in a polite greeting, and the lady fawned with a bright, “Your Grace. My lord.”
“Lord and Lady Stanwick,” Audrey whispered once they’d passed. “She is good friends with Lady Dutton.”
“Ah.” Hugh recognized the name. He had, on several occasions, been invited to the dowager viscountess’s gatherings over the Season, but as with all the others, he’d found excuses not to attend.
He vastly preferred not mingling with members of the ton, and he suspected Audrey felt the same.
He dreamed of whisking her away to his estate in Surrey and becoming contented recluses together.
“A street corner,” Audrey said. Then, at his puzzled glance, explained, “My vision. I saw a street corner. A lamppost shed some light on two men, a fine carriage behind them. It had a cross, painted white, stamped on the door. But it was inverted.”
“The cross was upside down?” She nodded. “Were the men with Givens?”
“Yes, but they were not friends. They were angry, accusing him of telling someone something that he shouldn’t have.” Before, Audrey had described how voices and sounds in her visions came to her in muffled form, like she’d dunked her head under the surface of bathwater.
“Anything else?”
She shook her head. “It went dark after that. But they did mention a boss, or ‘guv’ as they said. That Mr. Givens had crossed him.”
And he’d wound up here, at Vauxhall, dead.
“The two men you saw,” Hugh said. “They are most likely the men who killed Givens. How well did you see them?”
Audrey slowed her gait, and as he had several times before, Hugh wished that he could clear from her mind the wretched things she had seen.
Her determination to put her ability to good use, to provide information that would otherwise be unattainable, never failed to impress him.
But it was a burden for her, whether she admitted it or not.
“I saw one of them more clearly than the other. Dark hair, unfashionably long. Common clothes. Big, broad shouldered. Larger than Mr. Givens. The other man was slimmer, with a beard.”
She’d come to a stop near the supper boxes, the gas jets lighting the area into a kaleidoscope of color.
The orchestra was playing, though the tempo of the music had become less sedate and melodic.
Vauxhall came to life after the sun set, and yet Audrey’s pinched brow and distant eyes set her apart from all of it.
Hugh touched her cheek, drawing her attention back to him.
He did not drop his hand very quickly, and he noted two ladies in a supper box leaning in to whisper to each other.
“Did you know they were watching?” Audrey asked, having seen them too. Caressing her cheek while standing in the middle of the Grand Walk had certainly been an intimate gesture.
“I don’t care who is watching. I just can’t seem to keep my hands off you,” he replied, winning a bashful grin and blush.
Their evening had not gone according to plan, but at least there would be talk the next day about something other than just a body being found at the pleasure gardens. They continued walking toward the gate.
“The men from my vision could also be involved in the other two murders Mr. Gye spoke of,” she said.
“Possibly, but first we should know who the other two victims were and if they have any connection to Givens,” Hugh said. “I’ll call on Sir Gabriel tomorrow.”
“After you visit Portman Square?”
For a moment, Hugh didn’t take her meaning.
But then with a burst of clarity, recalled the missing Miss Bethany Silas.
Finding her was unquestionably important, though his interest in that inquiry paled in comparison to the murder of Sir’s father and the other two recent murders at the pleasure gardens.
Had he still been at Bow Street, he would have taken lead on the latter, and given the former to Tyne and Stevens.
Ahead, near the gate, the bright lights illuminated Thornton, Cassie, and Ruth, none of them conversing. Thornton was sipping a glass of what appeared to be Vauxhall’s famous and heady arrack punch, while Cassie stood stiffly. When she saw Audrey, she rushed toward her.
“No success finding Sir,” she said, her distress high. “We walked everywhere too. All the way to the Hermit’s Walk, even.”
“You should not have gone there alone,” Thornton grumbled, the glass to his lips.
The secluded part of the gardens was in the farthest corner of the property and was known for its many scandalous rendezvous.
“Yes, because all the rogues in London have conspired to linger in the bushes there for the chance to jump out and ravish unsuspecting ladies.”
Audrey gaped. “Cassie!”
Hugh held up his hand to stop his friend from saying anything more—Thornton had lowered his glass of arrack punch and parted his lips to do just that.
“We need to find Sir. Have you checked our rig in the coach field?” The boy might have been waiting for them there.
Thornton dropped his irritation with Cassie and focused on the larger problem. That was something about him Hugh always appreciated; his ability to change tack swiftly and give the new matter his entire concentration.
“I’ve been. He’s not there,” Thornton said.
“You should go to Bedford Street. He could be there by now,” Audrey suggested, pressing her hand to Hugh’s arm before releasing him and stepping aside. He hoped she was correct.
“I’m not interested in supper any longer,” Cassie said.
“I don’t think any of us are,” Hugh agreed. He took Audrey’s hand and lifted her knuckles to his lips. “I’m sorry the evening turned out as it did.”
He was sorry for more than just the lost evening, though.
Disappointment flooded his gut when he thought of what Mr. Gye had indicated—that Bow Street officials had agreed to keep the murders at Vauxhall from the public.
Sir Gabriel Poston had not wanted to investigate the disappearance of his own niece, and now Hugh questioned if the chief magistrate was the “connection” Mr. Gye had spoken of.
“As am I,” Audrey replied. “I will send word about my meeting with Miss Bertram.”
She took Cassie’s arm and started for the exit, leaving Hugh and Thornton to stand there and watch them go.
“I would say I’m sorry the evening concluded early,” his friend said after draining the dregs of his glass. “But had I known Audrey would bring Lady Freeze, I would have made other plans.”
Hugh clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure Cassie feels the same way.”
Thornton gave a passing waiter his empty glass. “What the devil was Givens doing here? I thought he was working security at the Seven Sins.”
The gaming hell in Temple catered to the upper crust, or at least to anyone who could afford the exorbitant membership fees, be they male or female. The proprietor, Mr. Lars Vance, did not much care, so long as his members were flush.
It had taken Thornton’s connections there to arrange a job for Givens, an offering that had been made to look as if Hugh had held no part in it.
The arrangement hadn’t been an act of charity for Givens, but rather for Sir’s mother and younger sisters.
Not that the position had cured the man of his many shortcomings.
In early February, quite some time after securing the job at the Seven Sins, Givens had shown up at 19 Bedford Street one late afternoon.
Mrs. Peets had complained loudly about a visitor at the back door, drawing the attention of Whitlock and Basil.
Givens had been half-pissed, and he’d refused to leave until the master of the house spoke to him.
Sir had been out, thankfully, and not wanting him to return to find his father present, Hugh had gone to the kitchen’s back door.
“You’ll no longer give Davy his allowance,” Givens had said, slurring his words. “He’s just a lad and as his father, that blunt should come to me. I’ll see fit what’s to be done with it.”
Had Mrs. Peets not been looking on in shocked awe at the exchange, Hugh might have clocked the bastard in the jaw.
Instead, he’d regulated his temper and replied evenly, “I won’t be handing you a single farthing, and neither will Sir.
If I ever learn you’ve touched his earnings, you will find yourself in a cell at Newgate. Do I make myself clear?”
He’d then slammed the door on the man’s face. That was the last he’d seen of Harlan Givens. Until tonight.
“I am not convinced he was killed at the Cascade,” Hugh said, thinking back to the insignificant amount of blood pooled underneath the body.
“You think his body was brought there?” Thornton asked as they now started for the gate.
They’d given Audrey and Cassie a decent enough start for the coach field.
To be seen leaving together might have inspired too much gossip for one evening.
More importantly, it could inspire corresponding gossip involving Thornton and Cassie.
“I don’t know, really, and I suppose it isn’t my job to,” Hugh answered. Though, he couldn’t deny the bit of envy he felt for the work Tyne and Stevens had before them. “Let’s go back to Bedford Street. It’s far step across the river to take on foot, but he’s resourceful.”
“He’ll be fine,” Thornton assured him.
Hugh hoped his friend was right.