A Gentlewoman's Guide to Murder Read online

  “I am well, Mr. Kauffman,” Fidelity replied. “How are Miriam and the children?”

  “All very well, my good lady.” Civilities done, kindness paid, Simeon turned back to Emmeline, his fine dark eyes flashing with a bit of lamplight that streamed through a crack in the window shade. “Now tell me, my young friend, what brings you here?”

  She told him of her visit to Sir Henry Claybourne, not sparing the anatomical details she had unfortunately witnessed.

  He was rigid with disapproval, and his cheeks flooded with color. “Emmeline, that is mishegas! You should not have done it.”

  Faced with her friend’s agitation, Emmeline smiled. “Mishegas … Simeon, you say that often about my behavior, but I don’t understand Yiddish unless you translate it for me, you know.”

  Simeon Kauffman was Ashkenazic Jew; his parents had arrived in England from Germany forty years before, just before he was born. “Mishegas, Emmeline, is foolish. To witness such things, an unmarried young lady … it’s unthinkable.”

  “I’m not a sheltered hothouse flower, Simeon. You know that better than most. I had to do what I did. There was a child involved, a little girl a year or two older than your daughter. When I was that age, I was playing with dolls and running in the garden, not being abused by some filthy old lecher.” Her rage had overtaken her and she was shaking. Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself. “You’ve often told me Et hanaaseh ein lehashiv,” she said. “What’s done cannot be returned. I can’t undo it now. What I have to say is—”

  “Of course I understand, Emmeline. I suspected your hand in this the moment I heard about it. You were the masked assailant who conspired with the scullery maid to rob him … or so the people are saying as they jest about this crime.”

  He knew of her identity as the Avengeress, and disliked it, but he had not rebuked her. She once asked him why he didn’t openly criticize; he replied that while disapproval was his right, doing what she wanted was her right. His was a unique position for a man, in her experience. Still …“How can you make light of this, Simeon?” she cried, her voice cracking.

  “I am simply reporting what the people are saying. I have a man investigating the murder—for I don’t expect you are guilty of that—and we’ll be putting out a broadsheet tonight. He has likely returned to the coffeehouse now, so I must get back.” Simeon squinted, twisted his mouth in a grimace, and then sighed “I must tell you something unpleasant. The magistrate’s men were at the newspaper office today. They wanted to know, who is the Rogue? And how did he know about Sir Henry and the girl he was abusing?” He gazed at her with a worried look. “And also they wish to know … how did the Rogue know the Avengeress would visit Sir Henry, or was it a message to that lady?” He shook his head, his expression filled with worry. “What would they say if I did tell them who the Rogue is?”

  What would they say if it was discovered that Miss Emmeline St. Germaine, genteel spinster, was also the renowned and scandalous gossip columnist the Rogue?

  Three

  “You didn’t tell them—”

  “Of course not, Miss St. Germaine!”

  “I did not expect the fellow to die when I rescued the child from his clutches.”

  “That was a truly unfortunate turn of events,” Simeon said. “And a dangerous one, for you.”

  “For all of us,” she replied.

  In her alter ego as the Rogue, Emmeline was gossip columnist, radical critic, and, it was rumored, man-about-town, a roguish roué. She used the assumption she was male to say things as the Rogue that would be unacceptable from a woman. Perhaps she had been too blunt in her column, but when she wrote it, she had not foreseen Sir Henry’s brutal murder the very night she raided his home. Asking for the public’s help in unmasking the Avengeress had been a ploy to establish distance between her two personas, and maybe that would work to her benefit.

  “I worry they will discover your identity, though it will not be from me,” Simeon said.

  “I worry that you will be jailed for refusing to tell.”

  “That is not your concern,” he assured her. “As a radical newspaperman, I run that risk every day I publish. The truth is not appreciated by men in power, and so a free press is their enemy.”

  Emmeline was deeply shaken by the knowledge that the magistrate was already questioning the connection between the Rogue’s column on Sir Henry’s despicable sexual proclivities and his murder. It was of the utmost importance that she never be named as the Rogue and as the Avengeress. One or the other accusation would cause her to be the object of scandal, and could banish her from polite society. It would change her life forever, but she might weather the storm with haughty denial and grim determination. Both revelations together would be disastrous, and her family would likely cast her out.

  If she were named a murderess, though, it would send her to the gibbet.

  “I could not leave little Molly with that beast, Simeon.” He nodded. “Now … it is vital I am never exposed as the Rogue.”

  “No hint will come from my lips.”

  Simeon was a devoted father and a good man; the welfare of the children of London, Jew or gentile, concerned him deeply. So he encouraged her social commentary. Besides retailing society gossip and scandal, she also used her column to rail against the hypocrites of their city who piously prayed in church and then returned home to prey on their maidservants. He was as sickened as she by the women who knew about it—as Sir Henry’s wife must have known—and did nothing to stop it, though women trod a precarious path, reliant on their husbands for almost everything.

  “What do you know about the murder?” she asked, pushing away the fear that chilled her.

  He shrugged and exhaled gustily. “Little, so far. The housekeeper and cook had set the latch for the evening, they say, and thought the master had gone upstairs for the night after the masked marauder invaded the house. They were frightened, but their master told them he would summon the magistrate in the morning. He was too upset to do so that evening.”

  “That is odd behavior,” Fidelity said.

  “I find it so,” Emmeline agreed.

  “Then, early this morning, he was found dead in the alleyway behind the townhouse.”

  Had she been used, Emmeline wondered? By summoning help for the scullery maid, it was possible that the housekeeper or cook had intended for the Avengeress’s visit to serve as cover for a confederate robbing the house. Perhaps Sir Henry had caught them at it and been murdered. That seemed a tortured plot, though; there were simpler ways to rob the household. It was common enough for a maid to leave the latch undone after inviting one of her followers to make away with the silver.

  What puzzled her more was Sir Henry’s delay in calling in the magistrate. Why did he need time, unless he had planned to do something else first? Or perhaps, to tell someone else first. Did it indicate a guilty conscience? Sir Henry had not seemed the sort to have scruples of any sort.

  “Look at her,” Simeon said to Fidelity. “When she gets that look, I know she’s thinking.” He tapped the side of his head. “The wheels and cogs, they are turning. Go home, Miss Emmeline St. Germaine. This has been a shock; get some rest.”

  “You will send me the broadsheet when it’s ready?”

  “That and whatever else I learn.”

  He opened the door, looked both ways, and clambered down, slamming the door and rapping on the side of the vehicle. The carriage lurched into movement. Emmeline told her companion what she was thinking: that either the cook or housekeeper was involved. “Was I duped? Lured there to make me a suspect in his murder?”

  Fidelity pondered that, but shook her head. “Surely the intent was honest, to catch him in the despicable act, rescue the child, and warn him to cease. If it wasn’t his nature and his habit to abuse the little girl, he could not be tricked into doing it.”

  “True.” She must ponder the pos
sibilities.

  Emmeline and Fidelity returned to Chelsea and had a late dinner. Her stomach was in knots, but her rigid social training supported her through the meal as Birk, the butler, stood by, ordering the removes. She sipped her soup—excellent as always; Mrs. Riddle, the townhome cook, was a sorceress of the soup pot—then broke up her food and made it look like she had eaten while talking inconsequential nonsense with Fidelity as servants brought food, then took it away, moving silent and efficient in their duties.

  After dinner, they retreated upstairs to the sitting room. The ground floor of the spacious townhome, which had been in the St. Germaine family for at least two generations, was devoted to the reception room and dining room; the first floor to the sitting and music room, and a small library; and the second floor to bedrooms. Birk carried up a parcel that had arrived by messenger and offered it to her on a tray. His tiny, porcine-like eyes sparked with curiosity that was doomed to disappointment. Emmeline had a grave suspicion that Birk, in the employ of her eldest brother, Leopold, whose house this was, reported to Leopold any irregularities in her life: where she went, who she saw, and likely from whom letters were received. Simeon knew this. The messenger would have been a boy earning a few pennies, and the package held no return address to reveal its origin—Simeon Kauffman of The Prattler—nor did the messenger wait for a reply.

  She and Fidelity retreated up the narrow stairs to their bedchambers. Emmeline’s room, elegant and serene, papered in pale green and cream and with moss-green furnishings, was spacious, taking up the whole front of the second floor of the townhome, overlooking the Thames through a large bow window. Fidelity’s smaller room was one of two that overlooked the back courtyard. Emmeline was greeted by her lady’s maid, Delia Gillies, who helped her mistress into her night attire and braided her long hair. Then Emmeline sat down on a low chair by the marble fireplace, her hands trembling as she untied the string that bound the pages. Gillies was tidying her dressing table when there was a light tapping at her chamber door; Emmeline nodded.

  The maid crossed the room and peeked out. “The Comtesse, miss,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Come, Fiddy, read with me. Gillies, come … I have no secrets from you two.” The three women drew together, Fidelity on a low stool and Gillies hanging over her shoulder as Emmeline took out the Prattler broadsheet announcing the awful event. It was illustrated with a woodcut of a stylized thief in a long cloak, the miscreant slyly glancing back over his shoulder. Emmeline appreciated Simeon’s deft use of the imagery to deflect public reaction; many would see it and think the masked intruder was male, even if the story correctly relayed that the interloper was female.

  Emmeline read the story aloud:

  “Most Horrible Murder!

  An atrocious act of savagery—gruesome murder!—striking at the very heart of our great city of London, has been committed. The Prattler has learned details.

  Last evening, October 24th, this year of our Lord 1810, at the home of Sir Henry Claybourne, newly knighted manufacturer, two crimes were committed. It is alleged that a masked intruder crept into the home some time after the dinner hour when the lady of the house had retired to her chamber. The purpose of this visit has not been established, though other newspapers will no doubt speculate with base rumors and conjecture. Also that evening it is said that the scullery maid, a newly hired child by the name of Molly, escaped the house; why, it is not clear, and neither is it sure that she took anything, though the silver cutlery is said to be missing.

  The housekeeper—one Mrs. Young—and cook, a Mrs. Partridge, both assert that the latch was on that night after the intrusion and the escape of the scullery maid. In the morning the latch was found undone and the door to the courtyard open. A fish delivery boy found the slaughtered body of Sir Henry in the alley beyond the courtyard of his townhome, his throat slit. The boy claims that

  the gentleman was disemboweled, but there is no other information asserting that terrible image. Blood did flow freely; the pavement was awash in it.”

  Emmeline looked up at a noise from Fidelity. “Oh, Fiddy, I’m so sorry!” Her friend and companion was shuddering, her lined face drawn and bleached, her mouth trembling. “Gillies, do help her.”

  Her maid was sturdy and phlegmatic; no amount of talk of blood could shake a woman who had seen her own child dragged dead from a coal mine after suffocating to death in poisoned air. Gillies dampened a cloth in the wash basin and held it to Fidelity’s forehead as the Comtesse took in a deep and shaky breath.

  “For a moment, I remembered Jean Marc,” she said faintly. Eighteen years before, as mobs ruled Paris during the Revolution, Fidelity’s husband had attempted to help some priests who were attacked while being transported to prison in a tumbrel. Comte Jean Marc Bernadotte tried to take some of the men of God into his carriage—he and Fiddy were fleeing the city—when the angry horde attacked them, too.

  “It was the talk of blood,” Fidelity explained. “I saw my darling Jean Marc pulled from our carriage and slaughtered in front of my eyes on the Rue St. Martin. His throat was cut, and it was like a river of blood flowed down, drenching his snowy cravat. I’ll never forget it.”

  It was a ritual, her repetition of the salient points of her husband’s death; it appeared to soothe her, somehow, to reiterate the horror. She had fled France alone, having lost every sou of the Bernadotte family wealth in the Revolution, returning to England as a poor relation. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Go on, Emmeline. Thank you, Gillies.”

  Although Gillies was Emmeline’s lady’s maid, she served them both. As hardy and self-sufficient as the Scotswoman was, she adored the fragile and sensitive Fidelity, who had nursed the maid through a ghastly illness two years before. Gillies patted the Comtesse’s hand, then tidied the washing stand while listening to Emmeline as she continued to read the broadsheet.

  Emmeline found her place. As she’d suspected would be true, Simeon had managed to make light of the masked intruder and leave aside any suggestion of the sex of the interloper. “Let’s see … uh …

  “The watch was called, a constable summoned, and the local magistrate was also sent for. Lady Claybourne, upon being informed of her husband’s murder, fell down insensible on her bed and could not be roused. It is reported that a neighbor witnessed two villainous men approaching the house by way of the back alley in the middle of the night; the watch accosted them, whereupon the villains beat him senseless, then fled. The same neighbor has stated that Sir Henry often had dealings with unsavory types, such as the evil-appearing man who brought the young scullery maid to work at the Claybourne residence a month ago.”

  This was interesting. Someone had witnessed the man who brought Molly to work at the Claybourne residence? And the neighbor saw two men in the neighborhood the night of Sir Henry’s murder, as did the watchman who was beaten for his troubles. Had that inquisitive neighbor seen her arrive? Emmeline resolved to ask Simeon the neighbor’s name.

  Gillies paused in her tidying. “That Sir Henry, miss … you saw him doin’ his worst. Ain’t it likely there are others who’d want him dead?”

  “Others could have wished him ill, certainly.” If he made a habit of assaulting little girls, what else had he done, and to whom? “But murder?”

  “I’d tear out the black heart of any man who harmed one of my bairns.” Gillies’s eyes gleamed with a savage light. She had assaulted the mine owner after her child’s death. A sympathetic local magistrate had saved her from transportation or worse, on the promise that she keep the peace and never return to Scotland. Widowed and with the rest of her children grown and able to fend for themselves, she had departed for England.

  “It’s none of your concern, Emmeline, who killed him.” Fidelity’s voice was taut. Though she appeared outwardly calm, she plucked and frayed one edge of her shawl.

  Gillies said, “Miss, if it comes out that you’re the masked intruder, there’ll be
trouble.”

  “There’s no reason to worry about that yet. Let’s see what else Simeon has sent.” Emmeline laid out the other sheets, along with a letter. “These are broadsheets from other publishers,” she said. The headline of the top one foretold worse to come. It read, Masked Strumpet and Killer Maid Slaughter Knight. She pushed it aside, under one of the others. “I’ll read Mr. Kauffman’s letter first.” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat, then turned away and composed herself.

  “Dearest, is everything all right?” Fidelity asked.

  “I’m contemplating what Simeon has said.” Emmeline swiftly read the letter. In it, he warned her that the broadsheets were terrible and worse would likely come. He recommended that she not read them, but acknowledged that in sending them, he knew she would. He recommended she retreat from the city to her brother’s estate, though he knew she would not regard his guidance. In short, he said, while he had all manner of good wishes and advice to offer her, he was certain his counsel would end like most did, unheeded.

  He was correct in one thing; she would not retreat.

  Simeon gave her what information his writer had so far gleaned. The magistrate’s men had questioned neighbors about what they heard or saw, but there was little to be learned. A neighboring potboy heard men arguing. Another neighbor saw two men in Sir Henry’s courtyard quarreling with him but thought they left him alive and well, though he could not be certain. This all happened at least two hours after the masked woman stole away with the scullery maid. Though they had spoken with the servants in the Claybourne home, no one had yet spoken to Lady Claybourne, who was reportedly still distraught, so The Standard, even with as solid a reputation as it had, was lying when the writer implied they had. The area was on high alert, everyone fearful that the killer would strike again.