Page 38 of Murder at the Seven Dials
Only tonight, that sensation wasn’t as keen as usual. He reached for the glass of scotch he’d set on the bedside table, prior to removing Gloria’s gown and then his own clothes, and tossed the liquid back. It burned his throat, but after a moment, the tension in his shoulders remained.
“You are distracted tonight,” she said as she crawled back onto the pillows beside him and curled her legs beneath her.
He supposed after a year of keeping a standing weekly appointment with Gloria, she would begin to take note of his moods. She wasn’t a prostitute, nor was she his official mistress. Gloria was a seamstress with Madame Gascoigne, one of the most popular modistes in town. They had met the previous year during an inquiry. A robbery at the shop, which had been resolved easily enough once Hugh questioned another of Madame Gascoigne’s seamstresses. The girl dissolved into tears and confessed to helping arrange the burglary. Dire circumstances at home and her father’s many unpaid debts had been her motivation.
Gloria had taken Hugh aside and advised him to take a deeper look into the father’s debts. When he had, he’d discovered an underground betting racket. He’d sought Gloria out to thank her. Their mutual interest had been clear from the beginning, as had the terms. Nothing permanent, nothing with ties. A bank note arrived at her residence once a month via messenger, so there need not be a physical exchange of money between them. She visited him, and him alone, or their arrangement was at an end. And vice versa, she let it be known. Hugh had assented, unbothered by the constriction. He barely had time to entertain Gloria once a week; he couldn’t imagine dealing with more than one woman at a time.
He took another sip of his scotch, wishing it would relax the tight clench of his shoulders and back. Neither spirits, nor the interlude with Gloria, had managed to erase the thoughts that plagued him since that afternoon at Wimbly Manor. It didn’t matter that Hugh had been given a living—a generous one—in the late Viscount Neatham’s will, and that with it, he could afford the residence on Bedford Street and a gentleman’s lifestyle. To the rest of society, Hugh was nothing but a blue-collar by-blow—and a reprobate too.
He’d been turned away from Wimbly Manor that afternoon, the housekeeper and butler insisting that the marquess was out. Hugh didn’t believe the excuse and had kept pressing, until the butler had lost his temper and reminded him that the marquess was under no obligation to speak with a Bow Street officer unless he was placed under arrest. He was above the law, until such a time passed. Lord Wimbly would not see him, and that was that.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed to Gloria. “I don’t mean to be inattentive.”
She curled one of her fingers around a lock of his hair and settled in next to him, companionably. “You were hardly inattentive.” She laughed huskily. “But I felt something…missing from you tonight.”
Hugh frowned and turned his head to the side to peer at her. “There is no need for insults,” he said, a slow grin working its way across his lips. Gloria nipped at his earlobe playfully.
“You know what I mean,” she said, laughing again.
She was always so companionable; Hugh wouldn’t have admitted it to her, but he enjoyed their meetings for more than just the sharing of pleasure. As a Romany from Wales, Gloria had come to London with a few of her brothers. They had wanted to put down roots, unlike their nomadic family, and she had found a place to showcase her talent with Madame Gascoigne. One of the qualities Hugh admired most about her was her direct and honest tongue. Another was her purely rational way of thinking.
“My apologies,” he said again. “The case I’m investigating has seemed to demand all my energy and attention lately.”
Gloria hummed understanding. “The opera singer’s murder.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised she knew of it. There had been a number of articles in the news sheets the last two days, along with vulgar caricatures and illustrations depicting the scene. But he still furrowed his brow. “What have you heard?”
“That the duke has always been a bit uncanny,” she said.
“How so?”
Gloria shrugged as she rose onto her elbow, one of her delectable legs inching over to rest atop his thigh. She swirled her fingertip in the golden hair sprinkling his chest.
“Just that he’s secretive. Bland, really. No one knows much about him or his duchess. They don’t stand out.”
As a duke and duchess, they most certainly should have stood out among the rest of their fellow aristocrats. Hugh looked to the ceiling again, in thought.
After the inquest, Hugh had returned to the Brown Bear and questioned Fournier for a few minutes, repeating questions that the duke had already ignored before, while taking a furtive inspection of the duke’s hands and arms; his neck and face. His memory stood correct: there were no defense wounds.
Hugh left Bow Street in a foul mood and had arrived at his home ill prepared for a meeting with Gloria.
“He isn’t speaking,” he said now. “The duke. He says he doesn’t remember that night.”
He didn’t usually discuss his cases with Gloria, but whenever he did, he found her to be blunt and level-headed.
“Was he foxed?”
“It certainly seemed as if he was,” Hugh answered, though the absence of any liquor fumes on his breath had been noted. “But I think he was just severely stunned.”
“You found nothing in the room that indicated another vice? Opium? Hashish?”
“No.”
“What does the wife know?”
Audrey, Audrey, Audrey.Fournier’s incessant moaning of his wife’s name crawled under Hugh’s skin for a reason he could not quite understand.
“She is insistent that he did not have a mistress.”
