A Body in Berkeley Square (20 page)

"I thought you might be anxious to interview
him," Denis answered without expression. "I began to call at your
rooms, but my man said he'd seen you walking toward Maiden
Lane."

And he'd know that I liked to come to the
tavern here. I wished I could meet this "man" of his, who watched
all my movements and reported them to his master.

"I have an appointment tonight," I said. "As
much as I wish to interview Colonel Naveau, I will have to leave it
until morning."

"I will accompany you to your
appointment."

I wondered why the devil Denis was so anxious
for me to see this colonel right away. "It is with a lady," I
said.

His eyes flickered in surprise, then slight
distaste, as though speaking with a lady should never come between
a man and his business. I had never bothered to wonder why there
was no
Mrs.
Denis. James Denis was cold all the way
through.

"Very well, then," he said, his expression
still neutral. "We will fix an appointment for breakfast tomorrow.
Nine o'clock. I will tell Colonel Naveau that he is welcome to
spend the night with me."

I was certain that Colonel Naveau would not
like that arrangement one bit. I was equally certain that Denis
would give him no choice.

I took a casual sip of ale, as though his
turning up at one of my haunts did not unnerve me. "You could not
tell me, while you are here, who murdered Henry Turner?"

The corners of his mouth moved in what might
be an expression of amusement in a more feeling man. "I am afraid
not, Captain. I had not anticipated that your colonel would get
himself into trouble at a society ball, or I should have had a man
in place to prevent it."

I was not sure whether he jested or not.
Denis's countenance was as blank as ever as he rose to his feet. He
did not shake my hand, but he bowed and took up his hat. "Until
morning, then, Captain."

I nodded stiffly in return. Denis made for
the door and exited, placing his hat on his head in the precise
moment before he stepped outside. His lackeys fell in behind him
like trained dogs.

Bartholomew drifted back to the table. "Well,
that was what I call interesting," he said.

"Yes." I watched the dark doorway that Denis
had exited. "I will know more what he wants tomorrow. Tonight, we
will take a hackney coach to Cavendish Square and pay a call." I
drank the last of my ale and thumped the tankard to the table. "No
doubt Denis's man will follow and tell him exactly who we visited
and why."

Bartholomew grinned, a little shakily, and
then we left the tavern. The married Anne Tolliver smiled at us
both as we went.

*** *** ***

The house in Cavendish Square was no
different from its fellows, being tall and narrow with tall, narrow
windows and a tall, narrow front door with a polished knocker.

I arrived at half-past three precisely, and
the maid, Grady, answered the door. She seemed used to dealing with
visitors at all hours, because she calmly took my hat and ushered
me upstairs to a sitting room.

The room was rather anonymous, with
fashionable upholstered Sheraton chairs in a salmon-colored stripe
and studded wood, salmon-colored swags on the windows, and cream
silk on the walls. Nothing personal marred the room, as though the
house's inhabitants had ordered the furnishing to be as elegant yet
innocuous as possible.

I expected Mr. Bennington to pop up at any
moment, drawling sarcasm about his wife receiving male visitors in
the small hours of the morning. Grady must have noticed me looking
for him, because she said, "Mr. Bennington is staying at his hotel
tonight," and departed to fetch her mistress.

Again, I wondered at the strangeness of the
Benningtons' relationship. They'd married for convenience, that was
certain, but what convenience? Would a husband truly vacate the
house so that his wife could receive a gentleman caller?

I paced the room while I mulled this over.
The room was cool despite the fire on the hearth, its anonymity
shutting me out.

I turned when the door opened behind me.
Claire Bennington paused on the threshold just as she'd paused on
the stage earlier tonight, waiting for the adulation to die down
before she spoke her lines. She was dressed in a peignoir, similar
to the one Lady Breckenridge had worn when she'd received me two
days ago.

The difference was that Lady Breckenridge
wore her peignoir with an awareness of how it enhanced her body. I,
as a man, had not been unmoved by the garment. Mrs. Bennington
looked like a child in clothes too old for her.

Mrs. Bennington glided to the center of the
room. She had no rehearsed lines, and she obviously found it
difficult to begin. She wet her lips, but said nothing.

I was struck anew with how young she was. I'd
read in newspaper articles that she was in her twenties, but she
could not be far into them. She might be comely, and she might have
lived in the harsh world of theatre, but she seemed far less
conscious of her enticements than had the game girls to whom I'd
given shillings earlier tonight.

"Mrs. Bennington," I said after the silence
had stretched. "Why did you ask to see me?"

She wet her lips again and touched the lapel
of my coat, her fingers light as a ghost's. "Captain Lacey," she
said. "I am so very much afraid."

She let the words roll dramatically from her
tongue. But I realized that as much as she embellished her
delivery, her eyes held real fear.

"Of what?" I gentled my voice. "It is all
right. You may tell me."

She studied me with round eyes, then drew a
breath and said, "I am afraid of Mr. Grenville."

* * * * *

Chapter Twelve

The statement was so unexpected that I
started. "Of Grenville? Good Lord, why?"

Mrs. Bennington shuddered, her fingers
trembling on my chest. "Please tell him to stay away."

"You needn't worry about Mr. Grenville," I
said, trying to sound reassuring. "He might not show it at times,
but he has a good and kind heart. There is no need to be afraid of
him."

I felt as though I were stilling the fears of
a child. Mrs. Bennington swung away from me. "Yes, there is need.
He comes here, and to my rooms at the theatre, and remonstrates
with me. He scolds me, grows angry when I speak to young men. Why
should I not speak to young men? There is no harm in it. Mr.
Bennington sees nothing wrong in my speaking with gentlemen. But
Mr. Grenville will have none of it. He shouts at me." Her hazel
eyes filled with tears. "He is so jealous that he frightens
me."

"Jealous?" I had never seen Grenville behave
like a jealous lover. With the exception of his obsession with
Marianne, he'd always conducted his affairs coolly, never voicing
any disapprobation of the lady, no matter how she behaved. When he
ended the liaison, he departed from the lady just as coolly.

Only Marianne had ever angered him, and that
was not jealousy, but frustration. Marianne could drive anyone
distracted.

The idea that Grenville drove off Mrs.
Bennington's suitors and took her to task for speaking to them was
beyond belief.

"It is true," Mrs. Bennington said fiercely.
"Ask Grady if you do not believe me. The last time he came to see
me, he was in a horrible temper. He saw Mr. Carew try to kiss my
hand. Mr. Grenville threw his walking stick across the room and
threatened to give the poor Mr. Carew a thrashing if he ever came
near me again."

Grenville
had? These actions sounded
more like me in a temper, not those of the man whose sangfroid
London gentlemen tried to imitate.

"Forgive me, Mrs. Bennington, but I find this
difficult to credit. Was this Carew behaving badly to you?"

"Indeed, no. Mr. Carew was quite the
gentleman. But Mr. Grenville did not like it." Mrs. Bennington
clasped her hands in a pleading gesture. "You must believe me,
Captain. I am not lying. I do not know how to invent things. Mr.
Bennington says it is because I have no imagination."

"Mr. Bennington should not be so rude to
you."

She shrugged, as though her husband's jibes
slid easily from her. "Mr. Grenville said so too. He also said that
I should try to obtain a divorce from Mr. Bennington. Or an
annulment. I have grounds, he says, because Mr. Bennington cannot
father children." She mentioned this impotency without a blush.
"But I did not marry him for children. I do not want children. I
could not go on the stage if I were increasing. Mr. Bennington said
he would allow me to continue acting, which is the only thing I
like to do. I was very popular in Italy and Milan, but I had run
into a bit of difficulty with debts, you see."

"And he offered to pay them if you married
him?"

"Mr. Bennington has ever so much money, from
a legacy, from the Scottish branch of his family, he says. He paid
my notes as though they were nothing." She toyed with the frills on
her bosom. "His name is not really Bennington, you know. That's my
name. He said I ought to keep it because I'm already well known by
it, but I'm not supposed to tell anyone that."

I wondered how many other people she'd
babbled this to, and if Bennington knew she was the kind of woman
who could not keep a thing quiet.

"What is his real name?" I asked.

"Do you know, I no longer remember. It has
been five years since we married.
I will be called Mr.
Bennington,
he said to me.
And you are Mrs. Bennington. And
none need to know any other.
" She did a fair imitation of
Bennington's drawling voice, which might have amused me any other
time.

I wondered. Perhaps the reason Bennington had
lived in Italy was that he dared not return to England under his
own name. Trouble with creditors? Or over a woman? Or some more
sinister crime?

Perhaps those long-fingered hands had held a
knife before, knew how to thrust it with uncanny accuracy into a
heart to stop it beating.

Bennington, or whatever his true name had
been, had promised to take care of Claire's debts and let her stay
on the stage that she loved. So that he might return to England
under a new name? His wife so eclipsed him that most people thought
of him, when they bothered to, as "Mrs. Bennington's husband." A
good hiding place. But hiding from what?

This young woman seemed to find the
arrangement perfectly acceptable, at any rate. She had what she
wanted--freedom to remain on the stage and security from creditors.
And she provided a blind for a husband for whom she cared nothing.
Her seeming vacant-headedness when she said she no longer
remembered his true name sounded sincere, but then, she was an
actress.

"I am beginning to agree with Grenville," I
said, half to myself.

Her eyes widened. "Please do not say that you
will take his side. He has me very frightened. His jealousy will be
the death of me, I think." Her voice rose to a fevered pitch.

"I will speak to him," I promised.

She sighed, putting every ounce of her stage
presence into the throaty little moan. "Thank you, Captain Lacey. I
knew you would not fail me."

She flung herself away from me, the skirts of
her peignoir swirling. Then, rather anticlimactically, she stopped
and rang for her maid.

"You attended the ball at the Gillises' the
night Henry Turner died," I said, trying to bend to my true purpose
for visiting.

Mrs. Bennington's dramatic expression faded,
and she made a face, much like a girl who has been given porridge
when she expected thick ham. "Yes, that was quite horrible."

"It was. Did you know Henry Turner?"

"No. I'd never heard of him until he got
himself killed." She sounded sublimely uninterested.

I asked a few more questions about Turner and
whether Mrs. Bennington had seen him or Colonel Brandon enter the
anteroom, but it soon became clear that she had noticed nothing.
Mrs. Bennington noticed only the people who noticed her.

Grady entered the room in answer to the
summons and frowned at me.

"Grady," Mrs. Bennington said. "Tell Captain
Lacey how Mr. Grenville behaved the other night."

Grady looked me up and down, like a guard dog
eyeing an intruder. "He did rail at her, sir, that is a fact. I was
afraid I'd have to call for the watch."

"And he threw his walking stick?" I asked,
still surprised.

"Yes, sir. Look." Grady marched to the wall
and put her hand on the cream silk. "Just there. It's left a
mark."

Below her work-worn hand was a faint black
mark and a tear in the fabric. "The footman couldn't quite get it
to come clean. Have to do the whole wall over, like as not."

I straightened up, very much wondering. "I
will speak to him," I said.

Grady gave me a severe look. So had my
father's housekeeper looked at me when I was a small boy and came
home plastered from head to foot with mud. "See that you do," she
said.

I would have smiled at the memory if the
situation had not been so bizarre. I thanked Mrs. Bennington for
her time, promised again that I would look into the matter of
Grenville's strange tempers, and departed.

*** *** ***

Grenville and Marianne had gone from my rooms
by the time Bartholomew and I returned to Grimpen Lane.

I felt I could hardly look up Grenville that
night to make him explain what he meant by terrorizing the
feeble-witted Mrs. Bennington, so I went to bed, conscious that not
much later, I would be breakfasting with James Denis and my
Frenchman.

In the morning, I dressed with cold fingers
and rode across London in a gentle rain to number 45, Curzon
Street. The façade of this house was unadorned, and the interior
was elegant and understated, in a chill way. Mrs. Bennington's
sitting room had reminded me a bit of this house--cool and
distant.