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  A Gentlewoman’s Guide to Murder © 2019 by Victoria Hamilton.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2019

  E-book ISBN: 9780738759340

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  Acknowledgments

  There are many people who made this book better with their sharp eyes and intelligent criticsm.

  First, I’d like to thank Jessica Faust and James McGowan for giving me valuable insight and direction in my first efforts to form the storyline of A Gentlewoman’s Guide to Murder. It would not have been the same book without them.

  I’d also like to thank Joshua Ian for his spectacularly insightful comments after his read-through of chapters 1 and 2. It helped more than I can express!

  And finally, I’d like to thank Sandy Sullivan, production editor, for saving me from innumerable errors, and for sharpening and focusing the story with dedication and precision. Good editors are the making of a book.

  Thank you all!

  October 22nd, 1810, Edition of The Prattler

  By: The Rogue

  The Knight and the Vengeful Hobgoblin

  Your Roguish Correspondent has been informed that there is a troublesome Sprite afoot. This Masked Avengeress has rescued little girls in perilous circumstances from the Gentlemen who use them for their Pleasure with no thought to their Innocence. This Woman of Mystery and Malice has, we are told, visited upon many men of Doubtful Character a Warning. We at The Prattler are offering a reward to anyone who can name this Implacable Hobgoblin.

  Who will be her next Victim?

  Perhaps we know already!

  Your Wayward Rogue has lately learned that there are some men who cannot keep from attempting Congress with any Female, even should the Female be a Child. So it is with a certain Knight of the Ale, who, the Rogue has learned, will inflict his French Pox on the merest Maid. So Particular is his taste that he prefers those not yet troubled by the Menses. We hesitate to name him, but should such Wickedness persist, we see it as our Duty to the Scullery Maids of our Nation and will tell all the Certain Sir’s predilections.

  But it is possible that he will receive a visit from the Masked Avengeress, who will more forcefully echo our counsel.

  one

  October 24th, 1810

  Clerkenwell, London, England

  Night had wrapped its arms around the city, and though folks were still about, even their most innocent dealings were cloaked in mystery and shadow. The moon was just a sliver, the waning quarter, at eight in the evening. The clopping of the horses’ hooves and rumble of carriage wheels was muffled by fog that had rolled up the Thames and into the heart of London.

  In the dark confines of a closed carriage, Miss Emmeline St. Germaine adjusted her mask of elegant black lace, retrieved from lost items left behind after a masquerade ball. Her gown was from the last century and over it she wore a crimson velvet cloak from a Shakespeare drama, theater castoffs too disreputable even for a period piece. She carried a slim dagger in a sheath on her belt.

  From the open air of Chelsea they had traveled through the city to the open streets of Clerkenwell, taking longer than anticipated; her nerves were as taut as stretched catgut, every beat of her heart carrying the word “hurry” thrumming through her veins. The carriage, drawn by a sleek team of matched dun mares, finally creaked to a halt. She swung open the door and descended without aid. Josephs, her coachman, knew better than to offer his hand on a night like this. His task was to help the girl into the carriage and move swiftly once they were done. They must not be caught.

  This was her seventh such outing, and her fame was increasing with every one; five girls and one boy had so far been saved, but this rescue may well be more dramatic, if what she had been told was true. She pulled the velvet cloak about her and shrank back into the shadows as a lamplighter trudged past along Chandler Lane, carrying his ladder and trailed by his apprentice. Once they passed, Emmeline looked to Josephs. Her driver, a shadowy figure in a many-caped greatcoat concealing his livery, pointed down the narrow alleyway.

  He had sketched a map for her before their departure: a row of townhomes faced Blithestone Street, and business buildings faced the parallel thoroughfare to the west, Samuel Street, dwellings above each shop and office. Chandler Lane, bordered on one side by an open green, joined the two streets, and an alley ran from Chandler between the rear courtyards of each row of conjoined buildings. The structures were recent, constructed ten years or so before. At the back, each Blithestone residence had a brick convenience and a low brick wall around its tiny courtyard, with a gate that remained unlocked so the nightmen could empty the cesspits, removing human waste regularly to sell to farmers outside of the city.

  There was a brick archway, open to the alley. Emmeline ducked through it; carrying a lanthorn and staying out of the light spilling from some windows, she crept down the alley, counting down the back courtyards of the connected townhouses that faced Blithestone, holding her breath against the odor of offal from the middens and human waste from the conveniences. She held the light high; there … that was the residence, marked by Josephs on his scouting trip with a barely visible chalked blaze on the low brick wall that contained the townhome’s back courtyard. She crept through the gate, the scuffle of her soft shoes echoing upwards, and approached the back door; it swung open at a push, as promised, silent on oiled hingepins. She set the lanthorn down by the door, then softly stepped on slipper-shod feet along the whitewashed wall, down the stone steps, and into the kitchen, pausing for a moment to let her eyes become accustomed to the light within. A woman, heavyset and sweating from the steamy heat, stared at her in alarm.

  “I was sent to rescue the child,” Emmeline muttered to the cook, her heart hammering against her rib cage. The woman glanced quickly about the kitchen—the potboy was to have been kept occupied elsew
here—and then nodded, swiping at her beaded forehead with one sleeved arm. The dim chamber was sweltering from a bubbling pot over the fire, steaming a pudding for the next day.

  “Hurry, miss,” the cook said, in a strangled tone and with a worried expression. “’E’s got ’er.” She pointed to a doorway, then returned to her task, punching down and kneading the dough she prepared to set near the hearth to rise for the next day’s bread.

  Quivering with a thread of anxiety mingled with excitement, Emmeline tiptoed through the kitchen. Every time she performed a rescue it was the same: the abject fear, the trembling in the pit of her stomach, the sense that she was about to cast up her accounts. And yet never had she been about to catch a villain in the act of abuse; a pure stream of apprehension pounded through her veins.

  She took a deep breath, swallowed hard, pulled her cloak more tightly around her, and slipped into the passage the cook had indicated, down a whitewashed hall lit by flickering sconces toward the housekeeper’s office, supposedly deserted this time of night. The hallway was quiet but for the sound of her own breathing, which was surprisingly loud, echoing off the stone foundation of the townhouse. As she advanced, she heard grunting, muttering, and then the keening cry of a young girl.

  Fury swept her nerves away. Urgent lashings of anger sped her pace. Had she miscalculated her timing? She hastened down the narrow hall swiftly and silently as a cat after a rat, pushed the housekeeper’s office door open with one toe, and heard these words grunted: “Shut up, Molly! Be a good lass and stop yer wriggling.”

  With an intermingling of revulsion and burning fury, Emmeline pulled the dagger from her belt and stepped into the room. A young scullery maid moaned in fear and discomfort at the heavy weight upon her on a narrow divan. A man, grunting and heaving, thick hands scrabbling at her skirts, humped ineffectively. Hellfire! Emmeline had meant to arrive earlier and stop the vile animal before the girl suffered such brutishness.

  “C’mon, girl, first time’s the hardest, then it’ll get easy.” He grunted and groaned, fumbling with her skirts. “Come, my little temptress!” he growled. “I’ll give you sweetmeats, ribbons, ha’pennies. Be a good girl and stop squirming so damned much!”

  Be a good girl. Emmeline’s fury chilled to resolve. She crept up to him and thrust the tip of her cunning little dagger into the saggy white-skinned rump that gleamed palely in the yellow glow of one tallow candle, a serving girl’s faint light. A jewel-like droplet of ruby red blood oozed; he howled in pain, then stilled, the wail dying down to a whimper of fear.

  “If you do not stop your persecution of the child this instant,” Emmeline said, lowering her voice to a threatening snarl, “I shall insert this dagger where it will leave you so sore you’ll be standing to eat your supper.”

  The scullery maid’s employer, Sir Henry Claybourne, clambered off the shivering child and whirled, holding his injured bottom. His male member waved a salutation, then deflated like a pig’s bladder, shrinking and softening as Emmeline waved the dagger menacingly. She was relieved to see that the girl, no more than thirteen years of age, had not yet had her skirts pushed up to her waist. At least Emmeline had prevented the worst of his assault, though the child was clearly terrified, her pale face tear-stained.

  Swallowing back repulsed shock at the sight of his scrofulous, canker-marred prick, Emmeline lifted her gaze and noted that his bulbous nose was now red and his expression filled with both rage and apprehension. Unease squeezed her stomach. She must handle these next few moments carefully. She could not afford one second of carelessness. Every rescue was different, and each required intense concentration, but never had one been performed at such a pivotal point as this. “Child, go to the back alley,” she muttered. “Pick up the lanthorn by the door and find the carriage at Chandler Lane. Safety awaits, I swear it.”

  The girl, moaning in fear, skittered away. Red-faced, Sir Henry incoherently babbled as he started to tug at his fawn breeches. One hand bloody from holding his rump, he fumbled, trying to pull up the fall. Emmeline pointed her dagger at his shrunken male member. This was no time to become queasy; she must persevere. “Did I say you were to do that?” She lunged and slashed, a ribbon of red oozing on his saggy thigh. “Leave that fall down, if you please, Sir Henry.” Emmeline deduced that the thorny conversation would progress more easily if the knight felt vulnerable, and no man felt more defenseless than with his male appendage exposed. “You have raped your last scullery maid.”

  “Rape? It is not rape,” he blustered, his neck waddles waggling in indignation. His thin gray hair was standing straight up, his pate gleamed in the faint light, and his chin was shiny from saliva. His waistcoat was disarranged, his breeches sagging down over his stockings. “They have a place to lay their head at night. I buy the girls sugarplums and trinkets aplenty, and any bastard born is sent away to a decent home.”

  “You speak of by-blows like they are unwanted kittens. How fortunate for them you do not drown them in the stew pond.” Her mask, both actual and figurative, was starting to slip; t’was time to leave. Every second she spent with an execrable male like his lordship his confidence would increase, and thus her safety decrease.

  “Bitch! Who are you?” he bellowed. He had decided Emmeline wasn’t going to use her dagger to wound him mortally and was tugging at his breeches, his paunch drooping and concealing his penis like a coverlet over a bedpost.

  She must make haste and leave, but she had a message to deliver first. “Listen to me, you poxy cit,” she commanded, swirling her cloak like a jaunty highwayman. He stared up at her, his eyes protruding from his pouchy face. “If you defile one more maid—just one more—I swear there are a legion of women like me, and one of them may slip a knife between your shoulder blades while you sleep.” He was about to bluster but she waved the dagger menacingly, and finished with, “Or she may decide the offending member must come off. Remember that when next your prick stiffens at the sight of a child!”

  Emmeline turned and slipped swiftly back through the hallway and thence to the kitchen, witnessed only by the cook and another woman—probably the housekeeper—who huddled in the shadows together. The second female was a big, raw-boned woman, red of face right down to the cleft tip of her hooked nose. Both were silent witnesses to their master’s depredations on young scullery maids, and one had summoned the courage to get a message to Emmeline’s group, who were becoming known in certain circles for helping the downtrodden, especially females. Sir Henry’s behavior was predictable, and her intervention had been perfectly timed to catch him in the act but before real harm had been done the child, so as to make the warning more effective.

  Or was that true; real harm? Emmeline muttered a prayer that the girl would recover from her fright. She put one finger to her lips, then skipped up the steps and out the back door into the alley, and thence to her waiting carriage. She climbed in and banged on the roof with the hilt of her dagger. She heard the knight bellowing as he erupted from the townhouse before her carriage swiftly rattled away, turning a corner and—with any luck—disappearing into the night fog.

  The child cowered in the corner. “Molly, fear not,” Emmeline said, gently. “You’re safe now. I promise you, on my word of honor, that you are going to work in a home where your employer will never abuse you.”

  Two

  Miss Emmeline St. Germaine, elegantly clothed in a new fall gown of russet net over cream muslin, and her companion, her mother’s cousin Comtesse Fidelity Bernadotte, shrugged out of their cloaks in the hall of their hostess’s home, a gracious townhouse in a newly fashionable square in London. All was perfection, from the gold silk-hung walls to the red and gold Turkey rugs, Oriental pottery, and family portraits. Lady Sherringdon’s home was lovely, perfumed with the dueling scents of sandalwood and old dog.

  An elderly maid, her tightly curled gray hair confined by a modest white cap, looked burdened too heavily by the cloaks necessary to ward off the la
te October chill. Emmeline watched her totter away, hoping the weight would not topple her. From experience, she knew it would be some time before the maid would return to announce them to the others. Her companion fidgeted with her reticule and smoothed her hair, adjusting her bonnet in the mirror over the Sheraton dressing table that Lady Sherringdon had placed there to hold the calling card tray and oddments. Emmeline bent down to pat Hugo, the friendliest pug dog of the house, as it snuffled and waggled on the marble floor at her feet, his asthmatic snorts and wuffles of welcome making her smile. Two more cautious pugs, rescued from unsuitable owners, watched from the dim reaches of the hall beyond the stairs.

  Lady Sherringdon was a charitable soul; no human or animal in need escaped her goodness, and so her home was filled with servants barely able to work and pets no one else wanted. A one-eyed black cat glowered down from the landing above, its missing eye and abbreviated tail the sad victims of destructive street boys. In the years since her release from penury and abuse her ladyship had rescued more animals and humans than anyone could enumerate. Emmeline loved Adelaide Sherringdon for her generous heart and optimistic nature.

  Adelaide was older than Emmeline’s companion, Fidelity—who was fifty-three—by a dozen or so years. Addy, as her closest friends called her, had suffered deeply, first at the hands of her father, who sent her north to wed a man she’d never met. Her husband, Viscount Sherringdon, was cruel, breaking her spirit as casually as one does a horse’s and with some of the same techniques: punishment, fear, and pain. When he died after twenty years of wedded misery, her relief was exquisite. She was wooed and won by a younger man (whom she married, though retaining her title as a courtesy), who swore to cherish her but instead wasted all her money at the gambling tables, then contracted a disease and died, leaving her penniless and ill.

  One may have expected that her son by her first marriage, who had inherited his father’s title and estate, would have invited his mother into his home. Offended by her second marriage, he did not; even shame would not move him. For a time, Adelaide lived with a cousin as poor relation, until she was left a legacy and this London townhome by a family friend, a kindly gentleman who was more father to her than her own had ever been. She now lived in comfort and shared her good fortune.