Death of a Fop (Bow Street Consultant series Book 1) (2 page)

The whole business was revolting and humiliating. However better to have found these things for herself than have some stranger do so. Jane sighed and looked them over again to see what inferences she could draw; and what things still remained unfathomable.

The first letter was from Mr Churchill, Frank’s uncle and was written some four months into their marriage. It read,

“
My very dear Frank,

It is with sadness that I read your request to have more of your capital forwarded to you; I am sorry indeed that you find yourself unable to manage on a very generous income as well as the wages you receive as clerk at Chorleigh, Wright and Jekyll’s where Mr Wright has been so kind as to find you a position. It surprises me that dear Jane should be such a poor manager as to fail to manage a household on what must be around twenty pounds a week; a sum on which many families manage yearly. It appears to me that if you are exceeding your income perhaps you should do better to practise economy; surely you do not need more than three servants, a maid, a man for yourself and a cook-housekeeper? And I concede a nursery maid in the future when you begin a family.

Yet I know that you keep in addition another maid and a groom and a footman.
It is quite impossible for me to break the entail on Enscombe; the allowance of one thousand pounds a year that
I pay you and your wage should be more than sufficient.

There is moreover the legacy of your Aunt; you surely did not spend it all in purchasing a house? Had you been satisfied with a less fashionable part of
London
than Kensington, or had rented rather than buying it would have been far more economical. I fear you show signs of being as financially unsteady as your father and your poor mama, my sister, who lived above their means. It is for your own good, my dear Frank, that I must refuse your outrageous request for such a sum as two thousand guineas.

I remain your most affectionate uncle, Jasper Churchill.”

Jane sighed. She loved their tall narrow white terrace house on the south side of Pembridge Square; though she had questioned Frank’s wisdom in purchasing such a place. It was on the less expensive side of the Square for facing north, but with the extensive servants’ quarters in the half-basement, four floors above that and the attic level for the maidservants to sleep in, it was a big house. And they employed a footman, Fowler, a housekeeper, Mrs Ketch, her own abigail Ella, Frank’s man Emerson, a maid called Juliet, Annie the young nursemaid to little Frances and Annie’s young sister Molly, the tweenstairs maid. In addition there was Palmer the groom who saw to Frank’s horse. It was too much; and really Ella and Emerson had been quite unnecessary as they were not society people needing to dress in a hurry and requiring aid. But Frank had his own ideas of what was due to what he saw as his own consequence. Sometimes Jane had wondered if half the reason he had encouraged her to play the part of being disinterested while they were engaged was because he found playacting more exciting than reality, and perhaps even had difficulty distinguishing between the two.

Jane had already written that morning to Mr Jasper Churchill, who had returned long since to his estates of Enscombe in Yorkshire, apprising him of the death of his nephew; and to Mr John Weston in Highbury who would be devastated at the death of his son.

She needed to see Mr Chorleigh who was the family solicitor to find out what her own financial situation might be; and perhaps Mr Armitage might accompany her as doubtless he would also wish to question Frank’s nominal employer. Frank went most days to the office but Jane strongly suspected that he did very little work.

Mr Churchill had desired Frank to take a position in some respectable business since he married and had found this position as clerk at some seventy pounds a year; a good wage for a clerk just starting out, though Frank was older than most clerks at the bottom of the profession. Frank turned this wage over to Jane and a further allowance of ten pounds weekly on which she must pay for the servants’ wages and have food purchased by Mrs Ketch the cook-housekeeper. It was a struggle. Twelve pounds seven and sixpence did not run to lavish dinners; for which Frank blamed her too. She had suggested timidly turning off Ella, her abigail; and Frank had shouted at her, asking if she wanted people to think that they could not afford an abigail to give his wife respectability. When Jane equally timidly suggested that actually they could not, he had struck her and told her to find better ways to economise without compromising their standard of living. It should be easy to live on his allowance and this extra seventy pounds; the servants’ wages were a little more than his clerkly wages, coming to eighty seven pounds a year; but why did he only give her half of his allowance? True he paid for his horse out of that; some sixty pounds a year; and he must have money for diversions; but more than four hundred pounds? Jane had thought that his – what had Mr Armitage called the woman – light o’ love, must be very expensive. She had not then found the worst of it which now lay before her with the proof that he had tried to raise money with begging letters to all his relatives.

The next letter was from Frank’s father; and was dated a few days later than the one from his uncle.

It was terse as one might expect from a man who had been a captain of the militia.

“Frank; what is this nonsense? Where am I to raise a sum such as you ask? You have a generous allowance from your uncle; this request is preposterous. If you and Jane have been living above your means, I suggest you sell the house in
London
and come and live with us at Randalls for a time to recoup your finances. Your loving father, John Weston.

PS Anna blows a kiss to her big brother and your loving stepmamma sends you and Jane all her affection.”

Jane sighed. She was very fond of Mr and Mrs Weston; it hurt to think that they might believe that she would be a party to living beyond their means; as they would not be if she had only been given all the housekeeping she needed from Frank’s income. However it was like the generosity of the Westons to suggest that Frank and Jane should rusticate at Randalls for a while to recoup their fortunes; and a sensible suggestion to sell the house and do so, or at least rent it out. Had she known of this letter she would have urged Frank to take this sensible course; because renting out meant that the investment of the property remained intact.

Unfortunately it was Frank who had been living beyond his means and was not apprising her of this fact; and she had found out where such money as did not go on the mistress had been spent. She laid out the next document.

It was not strictly a letter that Jane laid down; but a scrap of paper containing her husband’s vowels to that preposterous sum of two thousand guineas, with the word ‘redeemed’ and some initials scrawled over them.

She had thought that his expenditure had been excessive, even taking a mistress into account; it seemed that the worst of the expenditure was in the form of gambling debts; but there were other things that were also worrying – and puzzling.

Frank had given her fifty pounds in paper money to help defray the cost of household expenses not long after these letters; and where had that come from?

Up until then he had become enraged any time she mentioned a need for money; that he was worrying about his debts might have explained why he had been short with her at first; but evidently that he found consolation with a mistress explained far better his subsequent distance; even if paying for the same would scarcely help his money worries.

But how had he found the fifty pounds – and how had he paid off those vowels?

The next letter was written in the same illiterate hand as the letter she had found that had killed any love she had left for Frank, the one she had discovered in the worn money purse she had taken to mend, just after little Frances had been born.

This one however was dated earlier, a few weeks after the ones from his uncle and father, around the time Frank had managed to provide that extra fifty pounds housekeeping. Jane read it through with some distaste.

“Frankie me darling I do love me little nook wot you have found for me! It is our own speshul nest to bill and coo in, and play pritty games. I am waring only me stockings and shemees while I rite you this dear Frankie; your little bird, Dolly”

Jane shuddered and after translating ‘shemees’ into ‘chemise’ moved, on to the final and fifth document. This letter was even more worrying; it had been thrust into the escritoire and was dated only a few days earlier, ironically on St Valentine’s day. The previous Valentine’s Day had brought with it a sentimental missive for her; and a heart cut from paper in the most delicate filigree that must have taken Frank long hours to do. Unless, thought Jane cynically, he had paid some poor silhouette-cutter a pittance for it. This year she had received nothing but a complaint that the toast was burned. Frank had however seen fit to send a gift to his mistress.

“Frankie me deer darling! You are the best man ever! Your little bird just
LOVES
her Valentine’s diymond necklass! I am waring it
RITE NOW
Frankie, and it is so loverly that it is all I need to ware!”

Jane groaned as she read this one again with its heavily underscored emphatics. The sort of woman who would write that had to be totally cheap. And for such a woman Frank would buy a diamond necklace?

He did not buy his wife diamond necklaces. More to the point he did not provide his wife with enough housekeeping. Unless this were paste with which to satisfy a greedy mistress. But even a paste necklace that looked convincing would not come cheap; where was he getting the money?

She was horribly afraid that her husband might be so totally sunk below reproach as to be spending his evenings persuading the gullible into cheating games, for she could think of no other way he might be gaining enough money!

The knock on the door must be Mr Armitage; and soon Fowler would show him in. She must remain like ice and betray no emotion about this iniquitous business.

Caleb Armitage was grateful to be asked to sit; not so much that his leg pained him today but that he felt large and clumsy in Mrs Churchill’s dainty room. It was a room that suited the occupant; Mrs Churchill was a slight, neat figure, graceful more than dainty, thought Mr Armitage, the dark eyebrows and eyelashes more of a contrast in her pale face, framing steady grey eyes. She had put on a gown as close as she might have to mourning at short notice, a half dress of calico in dove grey print of scrolling leaves on white. Mr Armitage thought her very composed and ladylike; perhaps cold and unfeeling, perhaps very good at concealing her feelings. Genry-morts, ladies of the upper classes, were taught that it was ill-bred to display emotion after all.

The room must reveal something about Mrs Churchill to give some idea about her.

It was tidy; but that might be blamed on the maids. The chairs were fashionable but comfortable; the décor was all in the combination of silver grey, mazarine blue and cream, a cool-looking combination that suited Mrs Churchill very well. Dark blue velvet curtains were caught back from the window with a silver cord, the carpet was blue and cream, and the Florentine silk upholstery was in stripes of all three colours, the walls draped with a paper printed in ivory with darker cream and silver grey foliage forming the overall striped design. The colours were not those that Mr Armitage would ever have thought of as going together at all but they were surprisingly lovely together. Restful. Yes, that was it. He wondered whether Mrs Churchill was a naturally restful woman. Somehow the unusual combination made him suspect that cool as the look might be, she was not as cold as he had wondered; it did not go with an original eye and imagination. He wondered if it were she who played the beautiful pianoforte or if it had been her husband; a proper grand it was too, none of your cheaper uprights!

He read the letters she showed him, the vowels and the rather sketchy and mysterious pocket book with odd sums entered in it. He grunted once or twice, shuffling them around on the dainty table to look at one then another.

“As I see it,” said Jane, “my husband tried to move with a faster set than he had means to accomplish; became heavily in debt in what I presume were gambling hells; and the IOU was a pressing need to be paid off, in order that he not be required to flee the country after the same fashion as the likes of Beau Brummel last year. He appears to have acquired sufficient wealth to not only cover that debt but also to keep a mistress in her own rooms, and subsequently to provide her with what she at least
believes
to be a diamond necklace. He provided me also with housekeeping money above the usual amount, which enabled me to pay off some of our most pressing creditors; one hates to be in debt to the tradesmen.”

“Lor’ love you, Mrs Churchill, the swell coves – the nobility and the like – are always in debt to their tradesmen” said Mr Armitage.

Jane frowned.

“Well I consider it immoral” she said.

“Yes ma’am; but when did anyone say that the gentry – the ‘ote tone they call themselves – were moral?” said Mr Armitage cynically.

Jane was faintly shocked. She had always been brought up to respect the haut ton – if that was what he had been trying to say – and this view of them was a little disconcerting.

“Does my summation cover what you are reading here?” she asked.

He nodded.

“If I may ask, what did he give you for housekeeping; and what was your understanding of his income?” he asked “I know it is an impudent question, Mrs Churchill, but a discrepancy is always a clue; look into anyone’s life, especially once they’ve left it as you might say, and any discrepancy can point to exactly why they left it.”

Jane nodded.

“I can see that” she said. “I have nothing to hide; let me fetch my own housekeeping books” she exited through a door at the end of the room, set in an alcove, her step brisk and decisive whilst remaining graceful and feminine.