Page 54 of Murder at the Seven Dials
Porter looked up from his sewing. The glittering beads caught the light of the table lantern and sent it over his dark, pitted skin. Old scarring from adolescent spots, perhaps a case of the pox. He had no scratch marks on his face or neck, or on his hands, which continued to deftly stitch even as he held Hugh’s stare.
“I told her that when they found out, she’d catch hell.”
The marquess and his heir were unaware they shared her, then? The Wimbly heir, Lord St. John, could not be very old, perhaps still at university.
“And did she?” Hugh asked. “Catch hell?”
“Never happened, far as I know.”
Hugh recalled Wimbly’s comment from the Seven Sins. “Did she ever mention anything about wanting to go to the Continent?”
Porter scowled. “The Continent? Never. What would she want to go there for?”
If she worried about angering Wimbly or his son with her duplicity, it might have been an attractive option. Though, Hugh couldn’t picture the marquess angering over her deception, even if it was with his heir. How St. John would react, however, was uncertain, as Hugh didn’t know much about the boy.
“Where does the Duke of Fournier come into play?” He was asking Porter as much as he was musing aloud.
Hopefully Sir was nosing around Jewell House right then, asking what others might have known or suspected about the toff in apartment twelve. The theory that the duke had been meeting other men, rather than women, felt right.
“Belladora never mentioned him,” Porter answered. “But she ended up in his room, dead, didn’t she?”
“Tell me about the night of the murder,” Hugh said, coming back around to why he’d made the trip to Spitalfields. “How did Miss Lovejoy seem?”
“Her normal self.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary happened that night, before or after the performance?”
Porter ripped the end of the thread with his teeth and looked at his work with an assessing eye. He then set the green silk down. “I wouldn’t call it strange, as Belladora received flowers and notes most nights, but there was something different about a letter she got before the performance.”
Hugh silenced his many thoughts and paid close attention. Whatever Porter was about to reveal, he sensed it was important. “Different how?”
“A tiger delivered the letter instead of messenger boy.”
Messenger boys had their territories staked out and would usually be readily available for any servant who opened a back door and hollered for them. Sir ran messages from time to time, but he complained it was dull work. A tiger, on the other hand, rode along with a lord who was at the reins himself, or whose driver could not spring down from the box so easily—like Thornton’s driver for instance. Tigers often wore livery, just as a driver or footman, would. There was no need to question Porter’s intelligence—he would know the difference between the two.
“That didn’t happen often, I presume,” Hugh said. Porter gave a shake of his head. “Do you know what the letter said?”
Again, Porter shook his head. But then, after a moment of hesitation, said, “Belladora was thoughtful after, though. Like whatever the letter said confused her.”
There wasn’t much room to pace while thinking, but Hugh took a few steps forward and back as his mind spun in different directions. “Did she share the letter with Bernadetto?”
Porter got up from his chair and started gathering his sewing supplies. “I don’t see why she would’ve.”
“Did she have a dressing room? A place she might have kept her things? This letter, perhaps?” Hugh chastised himself for not thinking to look around for her dressing room earlier.
“She had a room, sure. Hettie asked Bernadetto to clean it out, though, now that she’s taking the lead role.” Porter frowned. “You think the letter is important?”
“Possibly.”
The actor grabbed the green silk, rolled it between his fingers, then set it down again. “Ask Bernadetto about it, why don’t you?”
There was no reason to keep the truth from him any longer. He would learn of it soon enough anyhow. “I can’t. He’s been murdered.”
Porter went utterly rigid. He stared at Hugh, nostrils flaring. “You said you were just with him.”
“I lied.” Porter shoved aside a chair and came toward Hugh. Quickly, he continued, “I needed to be sure it wasn’t you who killed him—or Miss Lovejoy, for that matter.”
Porter drew up short of Hugh. “I would never have harmed her. I got nothing against Bernadetto either.”
