A Gentlewoman's Guide to Murder Read online

  “I would do anything to help you, miss.” Gillies finished the outfit with a small dab of precious Houbigant perfume on Emmeline’s neck. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

  Emmeline turned away from the mirror and took her maid’s hand, staring up into her pale blue eyes, the faded freckles beneath them spattered across a creased and wise face, that of a fellow crone. “Gillies, whatever you may have owed me, if you indeed ever did, you repaid long ago. You are one of the very few people I trust completely,” she said, squeezing her hand. “And you know I do not say that idly, given what I have experienced.”

  “You’re a rare person, miss. Rare and fine.” The maid, tears in her eyes, turned away and busied herself with gathering what Emmeline would need for the day.

  Emmeline shook her head. If only she was half as good as her maid thought her.

  October 26th, 1810, Evening Edition of The Prattler

  By: The Rogue

  Who Killed the Knight?

  And so the Notorious Abuser of female children your Rogue spoke of four days ago is dead, Slaughtered, the Fishmonger’s lad states, like an overfed Hog. Does that give your Wayward Rogue pleasure? Aye, for the Loathsome Knight will never force sexual congress on another serving Lass again, as Whispers and Rumors (the Offspring of Mother Gossip) said he had for many a year. He has paid in Blood for his crime, though Hangman’s Noose would never have been secured around his neck, such is the terrible lack of value our Nation has for its poor children of either sex.

  Should the Knight not have paid on this earth for his Crimes? Your Rogue challenges ye Britons of good conscience; how can we call ourselves a Civilized Nation when such as that dark-hearted Knight are allowed to exist unchallenged?

  However, there is a Law to take such as him to task, but who will prosecute the laws of our nation when it concerns an Impoverished Waif? It leaves your Roguish Correspondent to wonder, did one of us decide to take the Law into his own hands and fulfill a Deadly Sentence? Someone in his circle must have known his habits. Perhaps that is the natural End to our collective Failure that one of us executed the man our Royal Sovereign saw fit to elevate to Knighthood.

  Your Roving Rogue vows to find the truth.

  Five

  Fidelity was unwell and so stayed abed while Emmeline consulted with Mrs. Bramage, the St. Germaine housekeeper, concerning meals for the next couple of days, then visited their local stationer to complain about the quality of the quills. They frequently split, which was dreadfully inconvenient to someone who wrote as many “letters” (Rogue articles) as she.

  The stationer, a Chelsea shop tucked in between a baker and a tailor, was small and crowded, smelling deliciously of ink and paper. Three customers departed, and Emmeline waited to be served behind two ladies making purchases. They were discussing the scandal in all the papers, Sir Henry Claybourne’s brutal murder.

  “I have heard that Sir Henry was nobly protecting the little girl in his employ,” one said. She was a lady in her middle twenties, Emmeline estimated, fashionably but not frivolously dressed in a mustard-yellow pelisse trimmed in fox. She wore a chip straw bonnet with yellow silk ribbon trim over her rich auburn hair.

  “Protecting her?” the other, an older woman gowned in a drab style of five years before and likely either a poor relation or companion, murmured deferentially, yet with doubt in her tone. “Perhaps not protecting her, but—”

  “I believe that the dreadful female who invaded the house threatened to cut him and stole the child away for whatever nefarious unnatural purposes of her own!” Then the young woman leaned toward her companion and hissed, “Brothel!” Her abundant curls swung free from her bonnet in indignation and utter bliss, the opiate of gossip coursing through her veins.

  Emmeline drew her breath in swiftly and held it. So that’s what people thought? It was worse than she had even suspected if the Avengeress was reported to be in league with panderers. And yet she knew how gossip worked; it built, like steam in a kettle, until it poured forth in a hot stream of nothingness that evaporated once it hit the cold air. It did on occasion leave a scald, though, damage that took time to heal.

  The older woman hesitated, watching the other, and then said, “Do you believe the cloaked lady came back and slaughtered Sir Henry?”

  “I think it likely, indeed!” As the clerk disappeared into the back room to wrap her order, the younger woman glanced around and met Emmeline’s eyes, but let her gaze slip away. “Perhaps he recognized her and she feared being revealed. I find it highly suspicious that the Rogue, that titillating columnist for The Prattler, knew so much about what the woman invader would do as retribution for some imagined slight on the serving girl. I wonder what their relationship is? Could they be lovers, do you suppose?” She tittered behind her gloved hand and the older woman dutifully joined her in mirth. “A bawd and her bully?”

  The clerk came back with the package of quills and a sheaf of paper. The older of the two took the package into her market basket and they departed. Emmeline, still reeling from what she heard, was attended by the clerk, a tall fellow she had dealt with in the past. She made her complaint about the quills splitting.

  “Perhaps you place too much pressure on the quill, Miss St. Germaine,” he said, looking down his long thin nose, collars stiffly framing his narrow face, his skinny neck wrapped in a voluminous cravat tucked into a frilled shirt and canary waistcoat. “Not to criticize, of course!”

  “Of course,” she said, anger building. He was the essence of politeness in manner but there was a faint sneer, an underlying implication that she must be unladylike to exert so much pressure. Where once she would have meekly agreed and gone away, she would no longer put up with inferior treatment. “I think ’tis not the writer who is in the wrong, but the quills,” she rejoined tartly. “Your supplier is cheating you, and you are cheating me. They have not been dutched properly,” she added, referring to the repeated heat-treating required to produce sturdy quills. He was reluctant, but she knew more about quills than he did, and in the end she came away with a package of replacements that she hoped would be better quality, or she would need to change stationers.

  More significantly, she came away with a sense of how the public viewed the murder of the knight. It was a dangerous turn of events, the gossip bandied about by the young lady. It was perilous for the Rogue and the Avengeress to be coupled in the common view. The Rogue had stirred the gentle world with anger, it seemed, by presuming to care about the safety and treatment of scullery maids.

  Josephs had returned with replies from her group; all agreed to attend Lady Sherringdon’s that afternoon. She knew nothing of how the crime happened, or why, or by whom the slaying was committed. But she deeply feared someone who knew of her mission that night had whispered it to the murderer, making her a handy scapegoat. It was a matter of self-preservation to discover the truth, if that was even possible.

  What she feared most was that one of them knew more than she was revealing. Her group was a unique assembly of ladies who all had one thing in common; the male half of creation had been unkind—in some cases criminally so—to them. Had one of them planned Sir Henry’s execution? It should have been unthinkable, but it wasn’t. She knew from experience that murder could seem a rational alternative when life became unthinkably heartbreaking.

  She had considered the possibility that one of their group was involved somehow. Emmeline didn’t truly know them well enough to decide if she could discount the idea completely. She had been close to Lady Adelaide Sherringdon for years, and Miss Juliette Espanson was the daughter of family friends, but some of the others were new acquaintances, women who had, in some cases, lost every bit of safety and privacy they had ever known. A year before, Emmeline had had a conversation with Lady Sherringdon concerning young Lady Clara Langdon.

  “I’m worried for her … deeply worried,” Lady Sherringdon had said. Clara was Adelaide’s niece by ma
rriage, the daughter of her late husband’s sister.

  “I know she has been through difficult times, but she appears, the two times I have met her, to be self-possessed, cool, calm, and intelligent,” Emmeline had replied. “I was thinking how admirably she holds herself, unlike most young ladies her age.”

  Lady Clara Langdon had returned to England from her family’s plantation in Jamaica. Though Emmeline was not in possession of all the details, she knew that the young lady had suffered a crime against her person at the hands of a man, another plantation owner.

  “She is very self-possessed, and—to my mind, at least—overly calm. Perhaps that is my worry,” Adelaide said. “I would not expect someone who has been abused as she was to be so composed. She should be falling to pieces.” Her breath caught in her throat on a sob. “But instead she is as cheerful as a ewe lamb.”

  “So you are concerned because she is handling too well the abuse that was meted out to her?” Emmeline asked. “Lady Adelaide, are you not judging her based on your own reactions? Perhaps she doesn’t feel things as deeply as you.”

  The woman appeared troubled, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening to seams. “Or perhaps she feels them even deeper. She is as brittle as plate glass. And afraid of men to this moment; I have seen her flinch when a gentleman so much as smiles her way.”

  That gave Emmeline pause. When had women learned to be wary of men, to fear the stranger, yes, but even more to fear the familiar? And would it always be thus? Emmeline had agreed to issue the invitation for Clara to join their group and had never broached the subject with Lady Sherringdon again, nor had she attempted to push into Clara’s private affairs. The lady had lost enough without losing the privacy of her mind and heart. Emmeline knew from bitter experience that there was no safe space but one’s own thoughts, and even they failed one far too often.

  But now she was hampered by not knowing enough of her acquaintances’ intimate feelings. Had one of the ladies, either through an inability to restrain her gossipy instincts—Martha Adair came to mind—or through active malice betrayed the group?

  That afternoon, Emmeline climbed alone into the St. Germaine carriage to go to Lady Adelaide Sherringdon’s home. Fidelity was still too shattered by the events of the previous day to accompany her. As they traveled, Emmeline pondered; Lady Clara was the best example of how little she knew about some of her new acquaintances. That she could wonder if one was capable of murder should give her pause. Perhaps, in truth, she had kept them at arm’s length because she had her own secrets to keep.

  Six

  Gillies rushed through her duties—spot-cleaning a dress for stains and mending a tear in a shawl—and then informed Birk that her mistress wished her to do some errands in the city, among them to fetch thread to repair her favorite dress. If she left that moment, she might catch the post stage as it passed. She could have joined her mistress for the journey into town, but Miss Emmeline might forbid her plan, and Gillies was determined to help. The butler gave her a few more small tasks to perform while out, and then watched with squinted eyes as she donned her cloak and bustled out the door. She must do all her errands, for Birk would be sure to enquire when she came back. He was a gossipy old fart, that one.

  It was a long ways to Clerkenwell, but Gillies was fortunate to take the post stage for a good part of the way. Once she was in the city, though, it was shanks’ nag. She was used to walking miles; it gave her time to think. The knight’s neighborhood in the daylight was no fearsome place. There were shops and tradespeople abundant. Lock-making and clock-making, printing and book-binding: all were represented along the main thoroughfares. And then there were the new townhouses, rows of them, each with their back alleys and squares. Gillies knew from a past evening of entertainment, when she had accompanied the Comtesse and Miss Emmeline, that they were quite close to Sadler’s Wells Theatre, too.

  But while the shop windows were enticing, none of this interested her today. Her mistress ofttimes made use of Gillies’s connections to other servants and tradespeople to gather information for her writing. It was vital that she keep such information-gathering secret, so she had become creative in her quests for knowledge. It gave her a bit of a thrill knowing how much she helped Miss Emmeline gather gossip and secrets for the Rogue, but it was her mistress’s work helping folk while disguised in a mask and cloak that she was more interested in.

  The Brackenthorpes’ chandler shop was on Samuel Street around the corner from Sir Henry’s address on Blithestone, midway down a row of connected shops constructed of cheap brick, some with wood fronts and glazed bow windows. She made her way along the narrow walk, jostled by women carrying trays and lads pushing barrows. There were others, servants like herself, on errands too, and it was with another such as she that she entered the chandlery. She waited her turn until the other woman departed with her parcel of candles in her market basket. When the clerk finally turned to her, she said, “Is Tommy Jones working in the back? I have a message for him from a friend.”

  The clerk glared at her, eyeing her plain but serviceable cloak and maid’s attire. He was new, not someone Gillies had seen at this establishment, a family-run business, before.

  “That little street rat is gone,” the fellow drawled, tugging at his cheaply made but smart-looking coat. “Lazy as the day is long. Wouldn’t get up in the morn even when I kicked him.”

  Kicked him. That was his way of getting a child up from a too-brief sleep? Her heart ached for the lad, but she must not give voice to her ire. “Where did he go?” she asked. It was Gillies who had procured the boy this job after her mistress had rescued him from a brutal position as climbing boy, apprentice to a chimney sweep.

  “Do you think I ’ave nothing better to do than foller a dirty little street arab to see where he went? He was turned away from here, that’s all I care.”

  With his superior and offensive attitude, he was unlikely to tell her anything if she asked about the murder; a wasted trip, most likely. Gillies returned to the street outside, dodging a man carrying a barrel on his shoulder. Where was Tommy? Originally, she had wished to speak with him to discover if he knew what was going on in the late Sir Henry’s household, but now she just hoped the boy was alive. Life on the streets was vicious and short for the young, the old, and the weak.

  Next to the chandler’s was a haberdasher, a narrow shop with a bow window in which hung a tempting display of lace and ribbons. Hargreaves Haberdashery was lettered in script on a sign that stuck out from the doorjamb. It was a newer shop on the street. She decided quickly; now was as good a time as any to find the thread to mend Miss Emmeline’s favorite “at home” gown. Miss was hard on gowns, especially the elbows, as she planted them firmly on her desk when she was writing articles and letters. Gillies prided herself on making mends that didn’t show.

  She entered, a silvery chime of bells above her head announcing to the haberdasher her arrival. He looked up from his accounting ledger and rose, peering down his long hooked nose from his towering height. His gaze was assessing, but Gillies had no fear of what he would see. She was a respectable lady’s maid, which surprised even her, given her previous life as a miner’s wife in Scotland. Miss Emmeline had both saved her from destitution and given her a purpose. “Mr. Hargreaves, is it?”

  “I am,” he said, his tone haughty.

  She saw through the superior act; he was just a Clerkenwell haberdasher who would provide second-rate buttons and ribbons to ladies trying desperately to ape their betters. “Do you happen to know a lad by the name of Tommy Jones? Wee scrap of a fellow, used to work for the Brackenthorpes?”

  His lips curled. “I don’t associate with them,” he said, his tone becoming even haughtier. “Not since they’ve employed that … that gentleman. And I don’t recognize the lad’s name.” His gaze strayed back to his ledger.

  Gillies surveyed the shelves laden with cardboard boxes of buttons, a sample attached to th
e front of each, and skeins of ribbon and new machined lace, a cheap reproduction of Lille. “I would generally buy my mistress’s threads at Wilding & Kent,” she said, naming the superior London draper and haberdasher. “But as I’m here, I may save myself a trip.”

  He nodded regally, his attention sharpening with her expressed intent to buy. “Mr. Benjamin Hargreaves at your service. What thread are you looking for, Miss …?”

  “Gillies,” she said. “Just Gillies. Do you have green silk?”

  “Of course!”

  She found the exact shade of green she was looking for as they chatted about the neighborhood, which Hargreaves bent enough to admit was not as up-and-coming as he had hoped when he rented the shop and first floor apartment for himself and his sister, Miss Aloisia Hargreaves, several months before.

  “Terrible business, that murder in the alley behind,” Gillies said, eying him as she perused a tempting display of ribbons not of a high enough quality for Miss Emmeline but better than she could afford for herself.

  “Shocking, but that fellow got what he deserved,” Hargreaves said, his tone dark.

  Gillies placed her hand over her heart, but then leaned across the oaken counter. “Why d’you say that, Mr. Hargreaves? The man was a respectable brewer, weren’t he? Heard he was knighted?”

  “Knighted! Sword should’ve ’it ’im a little harder, you ask me,” the haberdasher said, his diction slipping as he got to the juicier gossip. “You want any of the peach ribbon? Would suit your coloring.”

  Perhaps ribbon was the price of gossip. “I’ll have a yard o’ the peach grosgrain. What was wrong wi’ Sir Henry, as the broadsheets name him?”

  The haberdasher took down the skein and picked up his long sheers, measuring the ribbon against the edge of the counter, where notches indicated length. “He was a foul fellow … crude, grubby. Not a gentleman.”