Page 11 of Murder at the Seven Dials
“Odd how you so easily found your way to your husband’s rooms, when last night you claimed to know nothing of them.”
She stayed quiet, though Hugh imagined her pulse had just taken a running leap.
“The slighted wife of a powerful duke, shoved aside for some tart of an opera singer,” he went on, aiming to lead her out. He did not for one moment believe the grasping woman standing in the darkened room before him was a murderess, but the sooner she felt offended, the sooner she would trot right back to her fine home and leave his case alone.
“Absurd,” she replied. “You cannot frighten me with your ridiculous theories. If I had been the one to kill Miss Lovejoy, do you truly believe I would be here, proclaiming my husband’s innocence? Wouldn’t I instead allow my philandering husband to take the blame?”
Hugh wished the candle she’d been holding hadn’t gone out. He didn’t enjoy arguing in the dark. Something about it balanced the scales and allowing this duchess any amount of power was a mistake.
Her husband was a murderer, and yet she had endangered her own life coming here to investigate, as she’d called it. Investigate what? An empty room? Hugh had scoured it thoroughly after delivering the duke to Bow Street but had found nothing to point to a scenario different than the one presented to the magistrate. The only difference tonight was the missing mattress. It made the four-poster look skeletal in the moonlight. Hugh imagined it had been hauled outside and burned. The people of St. Giles re-used much around here, but there could be no second life for something with so much gore soaked into the fibers.
“Whatever your intent here, it was misguided and foolish. Come with me. I will see you home.” Hugh was finished with this room and with the tedious Duchess of Fournier.
She was not unlike other young ladies of her circle with a newly minted title. Hugh didn’t keep a close eye on the gossip of theton, but he thought he’d heard of the lady’s marriage to the Duke of Fournier a few years back. A bit of scandal had been attached to it, but Hugh hadn’t cared enough then to dig into it. He still didn’t, though it might shed some light on the goings on from last night.
“No need.” She swept past him. Hugh traced a warm, honeyed scent. “I have a carriage waiting outside.”
He’d seen the worn coach and its hunched jarvey when he and Sir had arrived. The usual footpads and whores had been milling about, along with a few lads likely on their way back to Bertrick’s flash house with their pickings. The Canary wasn’t too far down Little White Lyon, and it was only one of the dens of thieves and criminals in this scum hole. The duchess was lucky she’d made this far without being accosted.
Hugh followed her from the room—which had been locked up by the landlord on Hugh’s orders the night before, to keep the vagrants out. He eyed the duchess’s trim figure as she exited Jewell House and wondered if she’d found a key among her husband’s possessions at home.
“Don’t be naïve. By now, a thief could be sitting in that hack you’ve got waiting outside. I will see you home safely.”
“I am not going home,” she announced. “Nor do I wish for you to deliver me anywhere at all.”
It had been a long time since Hugh had been forced to converse with society’s upper crust. He had not missed the acute feeling of being several shades less worthwhile than those around him. It was how he’d felt his entire childhood.
There had been some benefit to growing up in the servant quarters of Neatham House, the ancestral seat of the Viscount Neatham. Hugh’s mother had been nanny to Lord and Lady Neatham’s children, and she’d been allowed to keep Hugh with her. He’d been given a proper education—something a servant’s child was never afforded.
For a time, Hugh believed his mother was an exception because of her position. As nanny, she was needed by the viscount’s children at all hours of the day and night. However, as Hugh grew older, and his resemblance to the viscount became more and more distinct, he began to understand the whispers, stares, and upturned noses he received. His mother’s position as nanny wasn’t the reason Lord Neatham allowed for Hugh’s presence. Guilt was the reason, and because the viscount had been a fairly decent man, he’d taken responsibility for the boy and for Hugh’s mother.
“If you are not going home, I can only presume that you intend to carry on with your personal investigation,” he said as he and the duchess stepped into the thick brume outside.
The dense smog was a sour-looking greenish yellow by the light of the carriage lanterns and gas-lit streetlamps. The hackney’s jarvey climbed down from his driver’s bench and opened the coach door for his approaching customer. Hugh stepped in front of the duchess and glanced into the hack, to make sure the inside was empty.
“You’ve concluded your investigation, haven’t you? Leave me to mine, sir,” she replied.
The duchess glared at him until he stepped away from the hackney door, and then she ascended into the cab. While she may have wished for a quick exit, her jarvey stood waiting for her instruction. Hugh remained where he was, hands deep in his trouser pockets, and waited as well. From inside the coach, she grumbled, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, if you will.”
The jarvey tipped his hat and closed the door. “Aye, miss.”
Hugh went to his own hired hack, where Sir still lounged inside. Any other child, and Hugh would have been sending him home to bed, but from what he’d gleaned about his young cohort, the boy might very well be safer riding around London in the middle of the night with a Bow Street officer.
“I’ve earned me coin, haven’t I?” Sir asked as Hugh instructed the driver to follow the hackney cab.
“Stop whining. We’ve one more stop to make.”
Within minutes, they were pulling up behind the duchess’s hackney cab outside the theatre. Though it was well on to one in the morning, the night’s performance had ended not long before. Actors and actresses would still be hanging about, he figured, and he had the sinking sensation that the duchess intended to speak to them. What in hell kind of duchess would lower herself to speak to the performers?
A desperate one,he mused.
He and the duchess descended onto the curb at the same time. Her plain cloak and serviceable boots could not detract from her regal poise or air of entitlement. When she speared Hugh with a vexed look, he took no small amount of pleasure in it.
“Must you follow me?” she asked.
He left the hack once again, with Sir groaning and grumbling inside.
“I’m curious what you think you will discover here,” he replied.
