A Regimental Murder

Chapter Four

I asked Lydia leave to speak to her servants. I hoped that the valet, who had been with Colonel Westin throughout the war, might be able to impart something about the incident in Badajoz. Also, I wanted to know what the servants could tell me about the night of Colonel Westin's death. Lydia might be convinced of who murdered her husband, but I was not so sanguine. The quicker I ferreted out the truth, the better.

She agreed to let me ask questions, though limited me to the three servants already in on the secret. I also mentioned Grenville. If I were to investigate the gentlemen she'd named, I would need an introduction to them. Grenville, beloved of society, whose acquaintance was much sought after, could smooth my way in that regard.

She was reluctant to let me enlist his help. I assured her that Grenville could hold his tongue, but I understood her hesitation. It was one thing to confide in a nobody like me, yet another to tell your secrets to the gentleman at the top of society.

At last she conceded, but made me promise to tell him nothing about the death of her husband beyond what was in the newspapers. I disliked to lie to him, but I agreed.

I spoke to William, Mrs. Montague, and Millar in the servants’ hall. I explained that I had agreed to help Mrs. Westin as much as I could. They eyed me doubtfully, and I did not blame them their reluctance. She had literally plucked me off the street and asked for my assistance. I could sell them out to the journalists as easily as breathing for all they knew.

They answered my questions politely enough, but the stony light in their eyes told me that they had decided it their duty to answer me only because their mistress wished it.

I recalled asking similar questions of servants in a house in Hanover Square not long ago. My experience here was much different. Those servants had been inefficient, impudent, and lazy. They had stayed employed only by virtue of the fact that they would look the other way at their master's disgusting proclivities. The three facing me now had been hired by Lydia Westin. Their manners were impeccable, and they spoke correctly, deferentially, and coolly.

Only the valet, Millar, a Frenchman with a round face, betrayed emotion. He dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief while he spoke, blinking back tears that would not completely cease. One person in this household, I thought, had looked upon Colonel Westin with true affection.

I did not, overall, learn much from them. They concurred that Colonel Westin had gone to bed at half past eleven on the night of the tenth of July and had been found dead in his bed the next morning at ten o'clock. No one had entered the house, as far as they knew, all night, though they admitted that between the hours of one in the morning and five, they would have all been asleep. No one had come in via the scullery early the next morning, save the coal man, but they all knew him and he had not lingered.

I thanked them for their time, a bit depressed at their lack of information, and left the servants’ hall.

When I emerged onto the ground floor, I collided with a spare, blond gentleman just hurrying in through the front door.

He stopped short and stared at me. I waited for him to beg my pardon, to explain what the devil he was doing walking into the Westin house unannounced, but he merely raised his well-groomed brows, and looked me over from head to foot. Annoyed at his impudence, I did the same.

The gentleman was younger than I, but not by much, possibly in his early thirties at the least. His blond hair was pomaded into place, but so artfully that it appeared to wave naturally. Women probably found him handsome. His face held the sculpted perfection of a Greek statue, and was just as alabaster. He could be described as beautiful; only a squarishness to his jaw saved him from a womanly appearance.

Lydia emerged on the landing above. She gripped the rail with a white hand.

"Captain," she said, "May I present Mr. Allandale. Mr. Allandale, Captain Lacey."

The understanding fiance. He regarded me coolly. "Who is he, mother-in-law?"

"He was in the army with Colonel Westin," Lydia replied, stretching the truth a little. "I have asked him to look into the matter of Captain Spencer."

"I see," Mr. Allandale answered, still looking at me.

"He is also a friend of Mr. Grenville," Lydia continued.

Mr. Allandale’s lip suddenly uncurled, and his expression changed to instant politeness. "Ah yes. Captain Lacey. I have heard your name." He held out his hand. "You must take supper with us one day soon. A week Monday?"

Lydia remained silent. I spoke some polite, noncommittal words, and shook his offered hand.

Allandale nodded as though all were settled. "We will stay quiet, because of the colonel’s death you know. But I would be glad to make your acquaintance. Good morning, Captain."

It was a dismissal. I bowed to Lydia, who inclined her head and said nothing. Allandale saw me out the door, smiling and friendly all the way, but his eyes were watchful.

I returned to Grimpen Lane and wrote to Grenville, telling him I had come upon something interesting. I said nothing more than that, hoping to pique his curiosity. I had not spoken to Grenville in at least a month, and I did not know if he had even remained in town, nor if he would take offense at the presumption that he would help me the instant I asked. But I had to risk it.

I boldly wrote to Lady Aline Carrington, asking whether she knew of Louisa's whereabouts. Brandon had told me that Lady Aline had claimed to know nothing, but what Lady Aline would tell Brandon and what she would tell me was bound to be different. Lady Aline did not much like Colonel Brandon.

But it worried me that Louisa had not contacted me, even with a brief letter to assure me she was well. The most logical thing to assume was that Brandon had annoyed her in some way, and she had simply gone away to think things over, as he'd said, undisturbed. I could not discount, however, the possibility that she had been spirited away and the note sent as a blind. I knew the second speculation was not as far-fetched as it sounded. London abounded with opportunists waiting to seize a lady for a number of purposes. I'd heard of lone women robbed of all they had, and then held for ransom. Even a lady of good standing could be lured into a trap by someone pathetically requesting assistance. Once the generous lady entered the house, she could be seized, robbed, or worse.

I seriously doubted that Louisa would have gone out alone to some dire part of London. She was brave, but not foolish. All of which pointed toward the first scenario-she'd left to think something over.

But though I tried to make myself believe that the first speculation was more likely, the vision formed in my mind of Louisa lost, beaten, robbed, insensible, her golden hair lying in an arc beneath her limp, pale body. The vision would not release me.

I toyed with the idea of persuading Milton Pomeroy, the Bow Street Runner, to, as a favor to me, keep an eye out for Louisa. Runners, in addition to solving crimes-often they were hired by the victims of those crimes-also helped track missing persons. Those hiring them offered a reward, and the Runner, if he found the criminal and obtained a conviction or found the missing person, reaped it.

I did not have the means to offer a reward, but I might convince Pomeroy, who was not as thick as he pretended to be, to help me. But I disliked revealing what might be Louisa's personal quarrel with Brandon, did not like to set the tenacious Pomeroy on her.

I posted my letters then went to Covent Garden market to purchase the necessities of life, including more candles, made easier because my half-pay packet had been recently released to my bank. I had paid Mrs. Beltan for my rooms the previous day, but I had to make what little was left last for another quarter.

Many officers came from wealthy families-even second or third sons might have a generous allowance-and their army pay was a secondary income. Then there were officers like me, gentlemen, but destitute. My father had been furious with me when I'd run off with the army, following Brandon, who was then a captain, to the 35th Light Dragoons. My father had cut me off from whatever funds he possibly could.

Which was laughable to me, because my father had already managed to squander away most of the Lacey money before I even reached my majority. He had disgraced himself with debts and spent his days scrambling to pay them. He'd sold off every scrap of land that was not entailed, and allowed the house we lived in to fall into rack and ruin. I'd gone to school only because my mother, before her death, had put money in trust for my education, a trust so firmly set with traps that my father had not been able to touch the money, no matter how he'd tried.

After I'd arrived on the Peninsula, my father, who had celebrated my desertion by going into yet more debt, went into a decline, and died the day I was promoted from lieutenant to captain, the morning after the bloody battle at Talavera.

The creditors had stripped the house of everything before they'd at last declared the debts satisfied. Nothing was left of the estate now except the house, which was entailed to the son I doubted I would ever have. I could let the house, but either I or a zealous tenant would have to spend an enormous amount of money to repair it and make it livable. So far, I had not found that zealous tenant. So it sat, forlorn in its corner of England, waiting for the last Lacey male to come home.

Absorbed in these thoughts, I wandered through Covent Garden market. Golden peaches like pieces of sunshine mounded on stalls, and carts overflowed with bright greens from fields beyond London. The sky held clouds, some of them still gray with last night's rain, but Covent Garden shimmered with an air of festivity. The summer day was warm, riots of blue, red, and gold flowers overflowed baskets, women in cool linen haggled prices like the best of fishwives, game girls in bright reds and blues and greens sashayed about, darting into dark corners with gentlemen or hiding behind carts when a watchman strolled by.

I touched a peach, letting my fingers find joy in its downy softness. I paid the seller with a coin as bright as the fruit and bit into the peach's delight.

As I savored the fruit, sweet as a summer day, I thought again of Lydia Westin.

Her husband, who had been headed for disgrace and notoriety, was now conveniently dead. Lydia's foremost thought was to clear his name and save her daughter and herself from the stain of it, and to punish those she held responsible. She claimed she wanted justice, but I'd seen the look in her eyes, heard the note of fury in her voice. What she wanted was revenge.

I wondered anew if she had loved her husband. I did not believe I had witnessed a widow's grief at losing her heart mate; rather, I had seen wounded pride and great determination. She wanted her husband's name respected, but the relief she had exhibited when she spoke of his death had been true.

I also realized I felt more than mere curiosity, even my form of curiosity, which liked to pick apart events to find their cause or their source. Lydia Westin was deeply beautiful, and that beauty, even marred with dirt and blood and fear, struck a responsive chord within me. I recognized that, and I recognized the danger.

Behind her agitation lay a woman of profound serenity, as calm and clear as an unruffled lake. A man could close his eyes and lose himself in that beauty.

Wrapped in these thoughts, I emerged into crowded Russel Street and halted when a carriage door was nearly flung open in my face. The stopped carriage was opulent, with varnished wood inlay outlining the doors and windows. The wheels were picked out in gold, which matched the trim of the horses' harness. The coachman wore red livery with a brush in his hat; the footman who leapt from his perch and reached in for the passenger was dressed in blue satin.

I had seen the carriage before. Had ridden in it-once. And I was acquainted with the man who descended from it not a foot in front of me.

He saw me, and stopped. A fairly young man, he was lean of build, though as tall as I. His face might have been called handsome, but his blue eyes were cold as the depths of the Thames.

His name was James Denis. I had met him in the spring, and I loathed him. What he thought of me, I had no idea, for his habitually cool eyes betrayed nothing. They were soulless eyes, eyes of a man who cared for nothing, and no one.

James Denis procured things for people, for wealthy men who wanted something unobtainable through ordinary means. They made an appointment with Denis at his elegant Curzon Street house, and the item was made available to them for a high fee. Once, Lucius Grenville had hired him to help a French aristocrat recover a family painting that Napoleon had commandeered. Denis and his associates had managed to purloin that painting from under the emperor's nose. How, Grenville had declined to ask, and had advised me to do the same. Grenville thought it likely that much of the Prince of Wales's lavish collections of art had been obtained by James Denis.

Denis had not been guilty of the human trafficking I'd first suspected him of, but that fact did not relieve my qualms about him. The last time we'd met, he'd coolly dispatched a servant who'd had a hand in the murder of a young girl-not because of the heinous crime, but because the servant had acted without Denis's permission.

I had been enraged with the servant in question, and I had not tried to stop Denis meting out his own style of justice. Denis had afterward claimed that I owed him a favor. I had no intention of ever letting him call it in.

Now the two of us stared at one another in tense silence. His eyes glittered, cold and dispassionate. I did not bother to hide my dislike.

We regarded one another for a long moment, then he ever so slightly tilted his head in the ghost of a nod.

I cut him dead. Turning my back, I marched back across the street, my stick ringing on the pavement. A cart swerved to miss me, but I made it to the opposite side without mishap.

I longed to look back to see how he took my insult, but that would have ruined the impact of the cut direct. I strode on toward Grimpen Lane, the remains of the peach dangling from my nerveless fingers.

I returned to my rooms, tired and churning with emotions. I had not slept at all the night before, so I locked my door, stripped off my clothes, and lay on the sheets Lydia Westin had occupied. Her perfume lingered on them.

The day was sweltering, and I thought to lie awake contemplating all Lydia had told me. I scrubbed at my face, feeling prickly beard beneath my palms. Lydia had great faith in me. One did not lightly accuse a lordship of a crime. They could stand trial and be hanged, just like the rest of us, but one would have a hard fight on one's hands to get them to trial at all. These gentlemen and their families would never allow me, a nobody, to topple them, and well I knew it.

I did not lie awake as I'd expected. A few moments after I stretched upon the bed, I sank into slumber, my lack of sleep finally punishing me. I woke to the sun low in the west and someone banging on my outer door.