Page 37 of Murder in Matrimony
Drawing the handkerchief over the shoulder means Please follow me.
Drawing the handkerchief through your hands means I loathe you.
Yours in Secret,
Lady Agony
That evening, Amelia was in the library, enjoying a well-earned spot of brandy. The soiree had been trying from start to finish. It had begun with an oversized statue of Dionysus and ended with a makeshift defense of Lord Traber and Lady Marielle being alone together in Lord Applegate’s study. Whether or not Simon bought it was of littleconsequence. They were released from any wrongdoing by the excuse, and while Simon did not like his sister’s suitor any better after the incident, he did not mention it again.
She had the good sense to remind him that had they wanted to, Marielle and Lord Traber might have begun their own line of questioning. Simon and Amelia had also entered the study alone, and Amelia actively sought out writing materials on Lord Applegate’s desk while opening the curtain. If the situation had been any less tenuous,theymight have been the ones under scrutiny.
For the moment, Amelia forgot all that, sipping the brandy and briefly closing her eyes. Her life was a maelstrom of issues right now: her sister’s wedding, the impending visit of her extended family, the blackmailer, and Mr. Cross’s murderer. But surrounded by books, with a spot of brandy, she could forget all that and pretend her most pressing issue was fiction or nonfiction.
Amelia had no sooner picked up a book than she heard a familiar tap at her window.Isaac Jakeman.She set down the novel and went to the curtain, pushing it back discreetly. A hooked nose was the first feature she recognized, and as he drew closer to the window, the second was his small eyes, intelligent and missing nothing. His lips curled into a smile as she stepped to the side to allow him entrance.
“You received my note on Mrs. Hines.” She didn’t wait for an answer but went immediately to the library door and locked it. “Brandy?”
“Please.” Isaac Jakeman waited by the decanter.
She was not stingy with the pour, and Jakeman took the snifter appreciatively.
He drank, then examined the color of the brandy. “It is good.”
“Thank you for coming.” She gestured to a chair before taking one herself. “I wrote when I heard of Mrs. Hines’s attack behind the Plate & Bottle. I was surprised you had not mentioned it.”
Isaac shook his head almost imperceptibly. “You call me, I tell you everything I know since the beginning of time. Is that how this works, Lady?”
She’d obviously offended him. “Not at all. I just thought you might have mentioned her, but perhaps you don’t know her?”
He drank deeply before answering. “I’ve met her. I didn’t know her. She was a friend of Mrs. Rothschild and worked in the dining room before they closed it. Now they serve only liquor. Though, Mrs. Rothschild still bakes her biscuits because no one can do without them.”
“Who committed the crime against her?” Amelia puzzled over the information. “I never heard about it in the papers.”
“You think every East End crime is reported in your Mayfair papers?” He tsked. “Lady, you don’t know much about anything.”
She bristled at the criticism, probably because it was true. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. As Lady Agony, she assisted readers from every area of the city. She tried to educate herself on the many ways of living outside her small circle. When readers had problems beyond her scope, she did everything she could to learn about them so that she could assist them better in the future. “Help me understand then. I want to know.”
He put down his glass. “Look, I like you. You think you want to help. But what you actually want is to find justice for your high-born priest. That is all. What happened to Mrs. Hines or Miss Rothschild?” He waved away the idea in the air. “You do not really care about those women.”
“Yes, I do!” Amelia was just as surprised as Isaac Jakeman at the forcefulness of her answer, and her quiet repetition was admission of it. “Yes, I do.”
“Why?” He took out a cigar and tapped it on the table. “Because they are tangled up with your priest?”
“Because an attack on a woman should not be commonplace. In the East End or the West.” Amelia felt a passion ignited that until now had lain dormant. “It should not be ordinary; it should be extraordinary. In the papers, it is reported thatA woman was killed, as if she did the killing herself. The culprit remains unnamed. No more obfuscation. No more silence.” She shook her head. “I must know who harmed these two women.”
Isaac lifted his long, arched eyebrows. “I did not know you felt this way.”
“Nor did I.”
“Your priest felt the same way.” He tapped his cigar again. “Maybe you are more like him than you know.”
She felt the words like the wing of an angel. Even in death, Mr. Cross was teaching her what it meant to care, to love. It was easy to love thy neighbor. It was a little harder to love a stranger from the wrong end of town. She cared about Mr. Cross because he had been good to her, but she hadn’t really understood why she should care about these two women. He had taught her why, yet she still had much to learn. She promised herself she would be open to more lessons. “Do you know why Mrs. Hines was attacked?”
“For your sake, Lady, I wish I did.” He sniffed his cigar, then replaced it in his pocket, leaning forward. “What I do know is this: if the priest was to blame, I would happily say so. However, he came to the East End only after the old priest became ill in February. Mrs. Hines was attacked long before that.”
It was a question of simple math. Mr. Cross might have encouraged Miss Rothschild to leave the public house, and one of his reasons might have been the previous attack on Mrs. Hines. He did not serve St. George-in-the-East, however, at the time of her attack. “As far as you know, it was a case of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Yes, and that’s as far as anyone will know unless the attacker comes forward, and that will not happen in my lifetime.” He crossed one leg over the other. “You give me your sad story. Now let me give you mine. My dear wife, Francine, you know how much she enjoys the fashion. I bought her a new horse at Tattersalls, and she requires a habit for riding.”
