Page 68 of Murder at the Seven Dials
“Your job,” he snorted, dismissively. “You are a reprobate. Good evening, Your Grace. Thornton.” With that, St. John slipped away.
Audrey watched him go, brimming with excitement. St. John’s anger over the arrest of the duke had been the lynchpin in her theory.
Mr. Thornton whispered something in Mr. Marsden’s ear, then with an assenting nod, he withdrew as well.
“I assume you don’t wish to stay for the second act?” Mr. Marsden asked her.
Numerous eyes bored into her back, and heat swamped her chest. Here she stood, conversing with the man who arrested her husband. Audrey could only imagine the tsunami of gossip about to flood London.
“I am fetching my maid and leaving.” She turned on her heel and stormed away from him.
It had to be done, for appearances sake—something she hated, especially considering she would have much rather told Mr. Marsden what she had just discovered: St. Johnhadbeen at Jewell House that night. He’d been the very last image the doorknob to the building had shown her, the murky and smoky energy dissolving into nothingness as St. John barreled down the stairs. She’d noted the mole on the unknown man’s cheek then but had promptly forgotten it and him—until tonight.
Greer was waiting for her in the receiving room. The maid only had to see Audrey’s expression to know that they were quitting the opera.
The brief ride home was utterly quiet. Greer’s discomfort and curiosity and Audrey’s muddled thoughts mingled to create a black storm within the carriage.
St. John had fled Jewell House before the body had been discovered. Before the murder, or after? She tried to recall whether he’d had blood on him in her vision, but the energy had been evaporating; she had barely been able to make out his face. The only thing she was certain of was that he knew more than he was claiming. Also, whatever Lady Wimbly had wanted the footman to burn was evidence that might implicate her son—and exonerate Philip.
When she and Greer finally stepped through the front door to Violet House, Audrey only wanted a finger of whisky and a hot bath before slipping into bed and sleeping for a dozen hours. Like a turtle, drawing its head into its shell, Audrey wished for solitude. She wished for the whole world around her to stop and hold still for as long as it took her to know how to breathe again. To know how to piece together what to do next.
Unfortunately, Barton announced a visitor just as he was removing her cloak. She whipped her head toward him.
“A visitor?”
“The officer from Bow Street. He insisted on seeing you, Your Grace, though I threatened to throw him out into the mews if he so much as set one boot—”
Audrey held up her hand. “Where is he?”
“In the kitchen, Your Grace. Shall I get rid of him?”
She closed her eyes, exhausted. But if he had come here at this late hour, after that fiasco at the opera, it was for a reason. “No. Show him to my study.”
“That room is unprepared,” Barton replied, sounding sorry for it.
“I will light a few lamps,” she said, brushing off her butler’s concern.
“Will you want tea, Your Grace?” Greer asked.
“No, thank you. He won’t be staying long.”
Audrey started for the small room on the first floor. Philip’s study was far larger, and much more masculine, in comparison. Audrey’s study had been done in soft blues and greens and creams, the furniture a honey oak rather than dark mahogany. It suited her, and it was the one room in all of Violet House where she didn’t entertain visitors.
Why she’d told Barton to send Mr. Marsden there perplexed her. If she saw him in her study, it might not feel like a true meeting. Or perhaps it was only that the room would feel isolated from the rest of the city, set as it was at the back of the house, the drapes drawn. No one would need know Mr. Marsden had visited at all.
She arrived at the darkened room at the same time as a footman. Two lamps were glowing, a third wick being brushed with a flaming taper when Barton’s knock rapped the closed door. He opened it, and with great displeasure, announced her visitor.
“Officer Marsden, Your Grace.”
The footman placed the glass chimney onto the lamp and turned up the wick. Mr. Marsden stepped inside, still wearing his opera attire, though the cravat had loosened a bit.
“Thank you, Barton. Stephens. You may leave us,” she said, though she knew the butler and footman would not go more than a door or two down the hallway.
Mr. Marsden waited until the door snicked shut, then whistled. “He doesn’t like me.”
She crossed her arms. “Calling so late at night is unseemly.”
The officer rubbed a hand along his jaw as he glanced around the room. “Especially after we ran into one another at the opera.”
