Murder While I Smile (18 page)

The banshee wail caused Luten and Coffen to leap, stare a moment at each other in alarm, then run down the hall to the open doorway. Luten just touched Corinne’s shoulder in passing, as if to ascertain she was all right, before he hurried on to the bed. She watched as he lifted the lifeless arm and stared at the corpse’s face. His own face looked very much the same—all rigid and gray—as he stared at the remains of Boisvert. Then she turned away, feeling faint.

Luten took a long, hard look at the lifeless form. Were it not for the crinkly, tawny gold hair and the smock, he might not have recognized the artist, for his face was discolored and distorted in horror. The head rested at an odd angle, the neck obviously broken. There was no sign of a weapon or blood. This ruthless murder had been performed with the bare hands, which told him that the comtesse had not done the job herself.

“Is that Boisvert?” Coffen asked in a hushed voice, as he peered over Luten’s shoulder. Luten nodded. Coffen leaned over and lifted the lifeless arm. “I notice the arm moves easily. He ain’t rigor mortified yet. Can’t have been dead long. Strangled, from the color of his face, poor blighter. We’d best call Bow Street, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s have a look for clues before we go.”

Luten looked around the room. “Where’s Corinne?”

“Straggled down the hall. Studio, I believe. Or maybe outside, retching. Not a pretty sight,” he added, his gaze flickering to the truckle bed and the sad relic of humanity on it.

“Would you mind taking her home, Pattle? I’ll go to Bow Street.”

They went to the studio, where Corinne stood beside the empty easel. Luten drew her into his arms. “Are you all right?” he asked gently. She nuzzled her head into his shoulder a moment, then lifted it.

“She did this,” she said, in a small, angry voice. She drew back and stared at him. Her eyes glowed like coals in her pale face. “She killed him. She came here and discovered we had been here.”

“He didn’t know who we were.”

Corinne detached herself from his arms and said angrily, “He had our description. She would recognize it. She knows you are on to her, and she killed him to prevent him from testifying. You must go to Bow Street and tell Townsend everything, Luten.”

“Let’s see if she left any clues first,” Coffen said, and began looking around.

“Yvonne didn’t kill him. It would have taken a strong man,” Luten pointed out. “He was strangled.”

“She wouldn’t have done it herself.” Corinne’s face was stiff with grief and anger and determination. “She probably hired that Frenchman who broke into Coffen’s house. He always does her bidding. You ought to make an effort to find him. And search Boisvert’s desk, too. She might have sent him a note that she was coming.”

“There ain’t no desk in his room,” Coffen said.

“If there’s anything here, Bow Street will find it,” Luten said. “I’m calling there immediately. Coffen will take you home, my dear. You’re upset.”

“Of course I’m upset!” she cried, in a voice edged with hysteria. “It’s our coming here that caused that poor man’s murder!”

“We don’t know that,” Luten said, trying to assuage her remorse and his own. “We don’t know what else he might have been mixed up in.”

“We know the Watteau has disappeared. She took it back so there would be nothing to connect her to Boisvert. I wager the copy was on that easel that’s now empty.”

A small table stood beside the empty easel. It held a palette, some pigments, brushes, and rags. It also held a watercolor sketch, about sixteen inches by twenty, of a country estate. The sketch was marked off in squares for enlargement, obviously in oils as oils were Boisvert’s medium. The mini palace, standing in the middle of a parkland of grass and stately oaks and elms, had its name in Gothic script at the bottom of the watercolor. Gresham Hall.

Coffen took up the sketch. “I don’t think he was painting the Watteau,” he said. “I believe this is what he was going to paint. The oils on the palette are gray. He’s got greens for the grass and trees, blue for the sky as well. It’s this big house he was going to paint.”

He handed it to Luten, his index finger pointing at the words “Gresham Hall.” Corinne looked at the sketch.

“Gresham! We know how he happened to hire Boisvert,” she said. “He’s Chamaude’s friend. She sent him here.”

“It looks that way,” Luten agreed. A grim smile pulled at his lips. “Brougham will be interested in this. It would help if I could find some evidence she was having the Watteau copied. Let’s have a search before we call Bow Street.”

A hasty search revealed no trace of the Watteau, nor further copies of Coffen’s Poussin either. As they hastened back toward the carriages, they discussed the matter.

“Not really much to tie Chamaude to it,” Coffen said. “Who’s to prove she sent Gresham to him? Even if she did, it ain’t against the law to have a picture painted of your house. You have half a dozen of the abbey, Luten.”

“Boisvert is not well known,” Luten pointed out. “How would Gresham, a man from Manchester, have discovered him? Yvonne certainly sent him there. She’s Yarrow’s mistress
—
”

“Was,” Coffen amended.

“Was, and may still be for all we know. In any case, she was Yarrow’s mistress when the rocket contract was given to her friend Gresham. There has to be a way to prove it. You take Corinne home, Coffen. I’ll see Brougham after Bow Street finishes up here. He’s looking into the awarding of that rocket contract.”

He assisted Corinne into Coffen’s carriage. “I’ll call on you as soon as I’ve finished. Try not to let this prey on your mind, sweetheart.”

“You have to prove she did it, Luten,” she said, clutching at his fingers. “The woman is a devil.”

“A silver lining anyhow,” Coffen said. “Always is, so the saying goes. Prance. This’ll kill his passion for her. Pity he’ll have given her the bracelet before we can tell him.’“

“It’s a small price to pay for opening his eyes,” Corinne said grimly.

They drove home, and Luten drove posthaste to Whitehall.

Chapter Seventeen

No sooner had Coffen delivered Corinne to her doorstep than Prance darted across the street to join them. He wore his best afternoon jacket and a cravat of such intricacy that it had obviously taken aeons to arrange. A wanton lock curled artfully forward over his lean, greyhound face, but it was his petulant expression that his companions noticed first.

Coffen directed a questioning look at him. “The tiger made quick work of you this time,” he said. “It’s only half after three.”

“I didn’t go,” he said. “She put me off. A note arrived just as I was leaving my door. Her ladyship has the megrims. She might at least have come up with a convincing excuse! A megrim named Yarrow, I warrant.”

“No, a megrim named Boisvert,” Corinne said, and led him into the room, where he lifted his coattails and perched on the edge of a wing chair to hear the explanation.

Black, aware that his beloved was in the boughs, hastened in to inquire if she would care for tea.

“Brandy is more like it,” Prance snorted.

Black ignored him. “Wine, your ladyship?”

“If you please, Black, and tell Mrs. Ballard I am home.”

“Mrs. Ballard is having a lie-down. Shall I call her?” His look at Prance suggested he required no chaperonage. Black poured the wine and handed it around.

“No, let her rest,” Corinne said, grateful for the privacy.

“Pray, what has Boisvert to do with anything?” Prance demanded, when Black had retired to his listening post beyond the doorway.

Corinne briefly related what had happened, with plentiful interruptions from Coffen.

Strangely, Prance was mollified by the tale. After expressing his shock and concern over Boisvert’s murder, he said, “At least it was something serious that put off our rendezvous. I feared she was through with me—had found me inadequate as a lover. That would have been a catastrophic blow to my pride, for I put forth my best effort. I shall just dart around now and see if Yvonne is all right.”

“Reggie! Have you not been listening?” Corinne asked. “She is a murderess.”

He quelled down the frivolous urge to say, “No one is perfect,” and said instead, “This so-called evidence is highly circumstantial. Boisvert is dead—well, murdered. Who is to say he was not killed by a burglar, or some lifelong enemy, or as a spy for that matter? In any case, she has no reason to murder me.”

“She gave your
Rondeaux
to Marchant,” Coffen said. “The copy you signed for her. That copy Marchant asked you to sign for him—’twas the one you signed for her. I have it at home.”

Prance was vexed that Yvonne had not noticed the exchange but decided to forgive her. “An innocent mistake. Marchant took his copy with him when he visited her and picked up the wrong book when he left.”

“Does she still have a copy?” Coffen asked.

Prance gave a smirking grin. “I was otherwise engrossed on my last visit. I shall tell you when I return from my call.
Adieu, mes amis. A bientôt.”
He finished his wine, set the glass down, made a graceful bow, and left.

“He’ll not get a toe in the door,” Coffen said. “I’ve half a mind to follow him and see. My carriage is still outside.”

“I’ll go with you,” Corinne said. The little house on Half Moon Street held a dreadful fascination for her. To explain her eagerness, she added, “I cannot like to sit home alone, thinking of poor Boisvert.”

“Come along then. I wouldn’t mind the company. It’ll stop me from thinking about him as well. Terrible sight on an empty stomach.”

Corinne ignored the hint for sustenance. They had to wait a quarter of an hour before Prance’s carriage was brought around. They let him get around the corner before leaving.

“Half Moon Street, Fitz,” Coffen ordered. “And make sure you don’t overtake Prance’s rig. Go by Berkeley Street and make a right-hand turn at Piccadilly.”

“Right hand?” Fitz asked, frowning.

“The hand you shave yourself with.” He stared at his coachman’s whiskered face. “When you bother to shave,” he added.

Fitz began a pantomime motion of lathering his face. “Right hand. I’ve got it now,” he said, and held up his left hand.

“The other one.”

It was not to be expected that Fitz could negotiate the shorter route via Charles, Queen, and Curzon Streets, which would require the prodigious feat of remembering three street names and three tricky turns.

“I hope Prance doesn’t give her the bracelet,” Corinne said, as they clipped along.

“He’s so besotted he’ll leave it off at the door when she don’t let him in, gudgeon.”

After making a right turn onto Curzon when he should have turned left, and having to turn the carriage around in midstreet, Fitz finally reached Half Moon Street. It wasn’t Prance’s carriage standing outside the door that caused Corinne to stiffen like a shirt left out in an icy wind. Of Prance’s rig, there was no sign. It was Luten’s infamous hunting carriage just leaving the door that turned her to ice. As the carriage turned the corner, two heads were visible at the window. One of them was Luten’s; the other was a lady’s head, with a capuchin hood drawn over it to conceal her profile. The heads were close together, giving an air of intimacy. The small trunk tied to the roof indicated an overnight journey.

Corinne’s heart pounded so violently in her chest she feared it would break her ribs. Her lungs collapsed, hardly allowing her to draw a breath.

“Follow them,” she said in a hollow voice to Coffen. Her hands clenched into white-knuckled rigidity.

“That I’ll not,” he declared. “It ain’t what you think, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“It is exactly what I think, and you obviously know it, or you would do as I ask. You’re just trying to protect him. If you won’t take me, let me down and I’ll hire a hackney.”

“There ain’t a one in sight. I wonder if Prance saw them. Must have seen the hunting carriage parked in front of her house. Dash it, we’ll have a duel on our hands. That would suit Prance down to the ankles.”

He paid no heed to her protestations but just lowered the window and hollered out, “Home, Fitz. And spring ‘em.”

The carriage picked up speed until they were jostling along so swiftly that it proved impossible for Corinne to leap out the door as she was sorely tempted to do when she spotted a hackney cab going the other way. Within minutes, they were back at her front door.

“I’ll never forgive you for this, Coffen,” she said. Her eyes blazed like green fire in her pale face.

He knew it was Luten she was angry with and felt sorry for her. “A glass of wine will settle your nerves,” he said, and just shook his head at Black’s questioning gaze as the butler admitted them.

Black was speechless with excitement to see his beloved so distraught.

“Bad news, madam?” he inquired in Lord Blackmore’s most solicitous tone.

She lifted her chin. “Certainly not. Bring us brandy at once.”

“The brandy is already there, your ladyship. Sir Reginald is awaiting you in the saloon. He requested it most forcefully.”

“Is Mrs. Ballard down yet?” Corinne asked. It would really be the end if she had to smile at Mrs. Ballard and pretend nothing was the matter at this moment of crisis.

“Yes, milady. She has gone to visit the deCoventrys.”

“Good.”

Sir Reginald was pacing the small saloon, with a glass of brandy in his left hand, his right hand shading his eyes, which were moist with delighted grief. He looked at Corinne and said in a dying voice, “Betrayed, and by one we loved like a brother.”

“Are you being more than one person again?” Coffen demanded. “Thought you was over that foolishness.”

He gave a sympathetic glance at Corinne. “Ah no, Pattle. Methinks I am not alone in my agony. It was the ‘brother’ that led you astray. I meant only one close to our hearts.”

“If you are referring to Luten’s betrayal of me—of us both,” Corinne said in a voice rough with emotion, “you need not mince your words. We saw him driving off with Chamaude and her trunk. I daresay Simon is rushing Luten’s trunk to the love nest in his other carriage. Pour me a glass of brandy, Coffen. A large glass.”