When Gods Die

Chapter 15

The breeches were of the finest plush velvet, with a coat of satin-trimmed blue velvet to match. Together with the silk stockings and snowy white shirt, they formed a livery fit for the footman of a duke—or at least for the boards of the Covent Garden Theater, which is where the costume was normally seen.

Twitching uncomfortably in his starched shirt, Tom supposed there were some fellows who might find the ensemble attractive. But as far as he was concerned, the rig made him look like a popinjay.

“Stop fidgeting,” said Kat, her normally precise diction slurred by the need to speak around a mouthful of pins.

Tom fell obediently still. His back itched unmercifully, but he didn’t move. He had a sneaking suspicion Miss Kat wasn’t above sticking one of her pins into him, if he didn’t do what he was told.

They were in Miss Kat’s dressing room at the theater, and she was busy adapting to his small frame the page’s livery she had borrowed from the theater’s costume collection. “I don’t see why we’re doin’ this,” Tom grumbled. “I got me a bang-up livery already, what the Viscount give me when he made me his tiger.”

“Huh.” Miss Kat moved around to do something to a seam of the breeches. “One look at that yellow-and-black-striped waistcoat of yours, and Lord Anglessey’s servants would mark you down as coming from the household of a sporting gentleman. Those in service have very decided opinions on the subject of young sporting gentleman, and few of those opinions are charitable. You’d be lucky not to find yourself sent off with a flea in your ear.”

Tom swallowed the argument he’d been about to make. The humiliation of yesterday’s failure to scout out anything of use at the Pavilion still burned within him. He was determined to wheedle the information Devlin needed from Lady Anglessey’s servants, and if that meant dressing up like some eighteenth-century fop—well, then, he’d do it.

Tom craned his neck to get a better look at the seam Miss Kat was taking in. “That’s crooked.”

“I’m an actress, not a seamstress.” She bit off her thread and sat back on her heels to survey her handiwork. “And this livery belongs to the theater. You tear it, or spill anything on it, and I’ll take the cost of it out of your hide.”

Tom stepped off the low box she’d had him standing on. “’Ow would I tear it?”

She laughed, an open, spontaneous laugh that made him grin. She was bang-up, for being such a famous actress and all. She was also the best pickpocket he’d ever seen, although he supposed most folks didn’t know that.

“Tell me about this man, the one who was following his lordship yesterday,” she said in an offhand kind of way as she bent to assemble her scattered pins and threads.

“I didn’t see ’im afore ’e come up with us. But then, no one’s got eyes and ears like his lordship’s.”

She nodded, not looking around. “Do you think he might have something to do with this murder his lordship is looking into?”

“Don’t know what else it could be about. I mean, it stands to reason, don’t it? You go pokin’ around in a murder, you’re liable to stir up some weery desperate people.”

Tom thought it was all pretty exciting, but then he got a look at Miss Kat’s face and he suddenly regretted having said so much. He snatched up the ridiculous scrap of satin and velvet that was supposed to serve him as a hat. “Well, I’m off, then.”

Her face cleared so suddenly he was left wondering if he’d simply imagined the troubled shadows he thought he’d seen there. “Remember,” she told him as he balanced the tricorne on his head and started to dash off. “No scuffling with the linkboys.” She raised her voice to shout after him. “And no eating or drinking.”

THE MARQUIS OF ANGLESSEY’S TOWN HOUSE was an enormous pile on Mount Street.

Tom stood on the flagged sidewalk, his neck aching as he tipped his head to look up four stories and more to the stately house’s pedimented gray slate roof. The Marquis himself was obviously still in Brighton, for the knocker was off the door. But his servants had already draped the house in mourning, festooning the tall, silent windows with crepe and hanging a black wreath on the entrance.

Adjusting his starched stock, Tom marched up the short flight of steps and used his fist to beat a lively tattoo on the shiny, black-painted panels of the front door.

When there was no answer, he pounded harder.

Beside him, an iron railing separated the main front door from the area steps that led down to the service entrance. When Tom knocked a third time, the service door jerked open and a middle-aged woman with a bulbous red nose, plump cheeks, and wiry gray hair covered by an old-fashioned mop cap stuck out her head and peered up at him. “What you doing there, lad? Can’t you see the knocker’s off the door?”

Tom held up the folded, sealed letter Miss Kat had prepared for him. The letter was empty, of course, but then he had no intention of giving it to anyone. “I got a message here, for Lord Anglessey from Sir James Aston. He says I’m to give it into Lord Anglessey’s hand and no one else’s. Only, ’ow’m I supposed to get anyone’s attention when there’s no knocker?”

The woman let out a snorting laugh. “You’re new to service, then, aren’t you? Don’t you know what it means when the knocker’s down? It means the family ain’t in residence. You’ll either have to leave your message or take it back to your Sir James and tell him the Marquis ain’t expected till nightfall.”

Tom blew out a long breath and lifted his page’s cap to swipe one forearm across his brow. He didn’t need to pretend to sweat: the velvet was fiendishly heavy and the sun was out in earnest now, blazing down unnaturally hot for a June day. “Oh, Lordy,” he said, making his voice pregnant with weariness. “I was hopin’ to be able to sit a spell and maybe get somethin’ to drink while his lordship was writin’ his answer.”

The woman’s pleasant face puckered with motherly concern. “Oh, poor ducky. It is mortal hot today, isn’t it?” She hesitated a moment, then said, “Why don’t you come down here and have yourself a nice glass of lemonade before going back?”

Tom made a show of hesitating. “Well, I don’t know….”

“Come on, then.” She swung the door in wide and beckoned him with one hand. “I got a son just about your age, in service with Lord McGowan. I’d hope if he were standing all hot and thirsty on some gentleman’s doorstep, that cook’d be kind enough to bring him in and give him somethin’ and let him sit a spell.”

Tom figured it wouldn’t do to give her a chance to change her mind, and clambered quickly down the steps.

He found himself in a white-tiled room with stone flagged floors and big old wooden dressers laden with massive copper pots. Mrs. Long—as she identified herself—led him to a bench beside the kitchen table and sent one of the scullery maids scurrying to bring him a tall, frosty glass of lemonade. Mindful of Miss Kat’s dire warning, Tom thrust his neck out and drank very, very carefully.

“You said the Marquis won’t be in till nightfall?” he said, eyeing her over the lip of his glass.

“That’s what we’re expecting.” She heaved a great sigh and swiped at one eye with the corner of her apron. “He’s coming to bury that beautiful young wife of his, poor man.”

Lined up along the stone windowsill to cool stood three freshly baked pies. Cherry, Tom figured, sniffing longingly at the afternoon breeze, and maybe apple. He jerked his attention back to Mrs. Long’s plump face. “She died, did she?”

“You mean to say you haven’t heard?” She came to slip onto the bench opposite him, her voice hushed as she leaned forward conspiratorially. “Murdered, she was.”

Tom led his mouth go slack with shock. “No!”

“That’s a fact. They found her all the way down in Brighton—in the Pavilion, no less—with a dagger sticking out her back. Although what she was doing there is more than I can understand.”

“But I thought you just said his lordship was in Brighton?”

“Aye, so he was. But she weren’t. Stayed here, she did, this last week and more. Why, she sat up there in the morning room the very day she was murdered, eating the salmon with dill mayonnaise I’d fixed for her nuncheon. Not that she’d had much of an appetite lately, poor thing.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Mrs. Long propped her elbows on the table, her chin sinking onto her fists as she thought about it. “Why, must have been just an hour or two after that. One of the footmen called her a hackney and she went off.”

“A hackney?” Tom had to work excessively hard to keep the thrill of triumphant excitement off his face. Here was exactly the sort of information Devlin needed. “Just goes to show, don’t it?” Tom said, keeping his voice slow and casual. “I mean, who’d have thought a lady what lived in a swell establishment like this couldn’t afford to keep her own carriage?”

Mrs. Long let out a peel of laughter that rocked her back in her seat. “Get away with you. Lord Anglessey’s warm enough he could set up a hundred carriages, if’n he had a mind. Don’t you know nothing, lad?” She leaned forward suddenly and dropped her voice to a whisper, as if imparting a secret. “A lady takes a hackney when she don’t want her lord to know where she’s going.”

“Oh.” Tom nodded with wide-eyed comprehension, as if this were all new to him. “Did she do that often?”

“Often enough these last few months, that’s for sure.” Spreading her palms flat on the table, she pushed up from the bench as if she suddenly regretted having said so much. “Now, then, ducky, how about a piece of pie to go with your lemonade?”

Tom wanted that pie so badly his mouth was watering. But he dutifully swallowed and shook his head. “Oh, no, thank you, ma’am.”

Reaching down, she patted his cheek with one plump hand. “Your mama taught you real good, ducky. But there’s no use you trying to pretend you don’t want it, because I seen you eyeing them pies, sure enough. Now, what kind you want? Apple or cherry?”