Page 20 of What Cannot Be Said

Chapter 13

Amongst London’s upper classes, it was considered rude and déclassé to make social calls before three o’clock, which was why Hero waited until that magic hour to pay a visit to the sprawling St. James’s Square mansion of Laura McInnis’s friend Veronica Goodlakes.

Hero found the wealthy widow dressed in an elegant high-waisted gown of pale pink silk and seated at a delicate inlaid Italian writing table positioned so that it overlooked the lush private rear gardens. By birth, Veronica was a Trent, from a proud old family connected to some of the grandest houses in Britain. But her father, the late tenth Baron Trent of Mollis, had gambled away most of his substantial inheritance by the age of thirty, then spent the next several decades plunging deeper and deeper into debt. Faced with the prospect of either eating the muzzle of his pistol or dying in debtors’ prison, his lordship had chosen instead to auction off his only daughter to the highest bidder. A socially ambitious Bristol shipbuilder named Nathan Goodlakes coughed up a small fortune for the privilege of joining his plebeian blood to that of the nobility. But in the end Goodlakes’s gambit failed, for despite eighteen years of trying, the union produced no offspring. When he succumbed to a nasty case of influenza at the age of sixty-nine, he left Veronica a very wealthy young widow.

“Lady Devlin,” she said now, rising quickly to come forward with both hands outstretched. “I was just writing to you.”

“Were you?” said Hero, taking the widow’s small, slim hands in hers. Now in her late thirties, Veronica was still a nice-looking woman with a headful of bright guinea-gold curls and a delicately curved mouth that smiled with gentle amiability. But unlike most people, Hero had long ago noticed the gleam of cold steel that could sometimes glitter in the woman’s pale gray eyes before being quickly hidden by lowered lashes. It was said that, at Nathan Goodlakes’s insistence, she had remained on easy terms with both her father and elder brother throughout her marriage. But she publicly cut both men immediately after Goodlakes’s funeral and had never spoken to either one since. And although Hero knew that Lord Trent had recently died, Veronica was obviously refusing to go into mourning for him.

“Do I take it you know why I’m here?” said Hero as the widow drew her over to sit on a blue silk–covered settee beside one of the cavernous room’s empty marble-framed fireplaces.

“I think I can guess. Laura McInnis was my dearest friend since we were in school together, and it’s not exactly a secret that Bow Street has involved Lord Devlin in their attempts to catch whoever is responsible for these shocking murders. I’d like to help in any way I can.”

“You know something that could explain what happened?”

“I might,” said Veronica, her hands coming up together, palm pressed to palm as she leaned forward. “Are you aware of Laura’s clashes with a certain master sweep?”

“You mean a chimney sweep?”

Veronica nodded. “Dobbs is his name; Hiram Dobbs. Sir Ivo brought the fellow in to sweep the chimneys in McInnis House this last spring, and Laura came upon him deliberately burning the bare feet of one of his little apprentices to make him go up the chimney! The poor child couldn’t have been more than four or five, and was so afraid of the chimneys that he wouldn’t go up them otherwise. Laura was horrified; she tried to get the authorities to take the boy away from the man, but they refused to interfere. And then a week or two later she discovered that the child had died. Laura was shattered—blamed herself for not having tried harder. She thought the sweep would be taken up for murder—or at least manslaughter. But he managed to convince the authorities the child had died of the flux, and the workhouse gave him another little boy.”

“Good heavens.”

“Shocking, isn’t it? Needless to say, Laura was in a rage about it. And when he found out she was trying to get his other apprentices taken away from him, Dobbs walked right up to her in the street one day and told her to her face that if she didn’t leave him alone, she’d regret it.”

“In those exact words?”

“Yes.”

“So did she? Leave him alone, I mean.”

“Oh, no. She truly was determined, even though he tried his best to intimidate her.”

“In what way?”

“Following her... watching her. That sort of thing.”

“Was Laura afraid of him?”

“I don’t know if I’d say she was afraid, exactly. But she was definitely concerned, yes. That’s why I was writing to you, because it seemed to me that Lord Devlin ought to know about this fellow.”

“You say his name is Dobbs? Where does he live?”

“Some mean court off St. Martin’s Lane, I believe.”

“Is he the only person you know of who might have wished her harm?”

Veronica thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “If there was anyone else, she never mentioned them to me.”

“Was she happy in her marriage, do you think?”

The widow dropped her gaze to her now-clenched hands and bit her lower lip. When she looked up again, her face was strained. She said, “How much do you know about Laura’s marriage?”

“Very little. Why?”

“Sir Ivo was essentially her father’s choice. If it had been up to Laura, she would have married a young officer she’d known most of her life.” A faint, wistful smile touched her lips. “I remember him quite well. Very tall and handsome he was, and quite dashing in his new regimentals. But he was a younger son of a younger son, with his way still to make in the world, and her father refused to agree to the match. Laura swore she’d wait for him and marry him as soon as she came of age, whether her father gave them his blessing or not. But then the young man went off to war, and she heard he’d been killed. She married Sir Ivo two or three years later.”

“Was she happy with him, do you think?”

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