The Bride Wore Pearls (15 page)

“Peveril took exception to his future fiancée tumbling into my lap at the Haymarket Theatre,” said Rance grimly, “and merely waited to exact revenge. He had no cause to call me out and so decided to call me a cheat instead.”

“Heavens!” Anisha lightly lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t believe I ever heard this part.”

Rance twisted uncomfortably in his chair. “Because there’s nothing to hear,” he said. “Wilfred Leeton invited me to sit in his box one night, and the girl was there with her father. Leeton often entertained his regular customers in such ways, back before he became a respectable theater owner himself.”

“In our line of work, one must keep one’s best customers happy,” murmured Quartermaine.

Rance made a dismissive sound. “More like the old adage to keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he replied. “I did not delude myself. But in either case, I did not know Sir Arthur Colburne was to be there, or I wouldn’t have gone. At the time, Arthur was playing deep, and squiring his eldest around in desperate hope of a title. She was a baited trap—we all knew that—and quite a beauty. I tried to keep my distance.”

“But she made it impossible?” Quartermaine suggested. “She flirted with you?”

Rance lifted one hand in an impotent, offhand gesture. “I suppose,” he said almost wearily. “Peveril thought so, at any rate.”

“You suppose
—
?” Anisha murmured.

“Aye, then. She flirted with me.” Rance’s voice was tight. “It was my father’s wealth and title, I suppose. Her attentions were so marked it was dashed awkward. Literally, at one point, she tripped and nearly fell into my lap. I had to catch her—giggles, décolletage, and all—whilst half the theater watched.”

“And afterward?” Anisha pressed.

“Afterward, I don’t know what lies the girl whispered in Peveril’s ear, for I had no designs on her,” said Rance. “But it brought old Percy to the point and he bristled at me ever after. He was just the second son of a duke, but in the end Sir Arthur was patting his pockets pretty hopefully, for it was said the duke cut some lucrative marriage settlements to get the boy what he wanted. But the truth is, Peveril wasn’t a bad sort; merely spoiled and a little hotheaded.”

“Most young gentlemen are,” said Quartermaine evenly. “Indeed, most days they are my very bread and butter. But you’re saying that after the betrothal, the jealousy prompted Peveril to drink too deeply, then challenge you to play?”

“Yes, and I was hotheaded, too, when it came to cards,” Rance admitted. “In those days, I took all comers.”

“And you were at Leeton’s?” Quartermaine murmured. “He ran a rather dangerous—and very discreet—establishment, I believe?”

“Aye, out of his house in Bloomsbury.” Rance’s smile was bemused. “One had to be invited, and he only invited gentlemen. The play was strictly cards, no dice, and for very high stakes. And Leeton never kept books; it would have seemed vulgar.”

“Thus he pretended it wasn’t a hell at all.” Quartermaine looked equally bemused.

“Oh, it was a hell,” said Rance on a harsh laugh. “For a few chaps, it was an outright inferno. But it was ever so politely done. If you owed him money, you dropped it in a glass jar on the pianoforte as you went out, or gave him your vowels. And likewise in the other direction.”

“Oh, I rather doubt there was much
likewise,
” murmured Quartermaine. “And on this particular occasion? I should like to hear your view of what happened.”

Rance lifted one shoulder. “I was on a bit of a streak that night, and it seemed to stir Peveril’s ire. He threw down a private challenge, and Leeton acquiesced. He produced a fresh deck at Peveril’s insistence, but when I still thrashed him, there was quite a row, with Peveril insisting the cards were marked.”

“Were they?” asked Quartermaine pointedly.

“Not by me.” Rance’s jaw was set stubbornly. “Leeton testified they were not on the witness stand. And he, of all people, had no reason to lie. He made not a ha’penny on the game, and the whole mess threw rather too much light on his affairs. I often think it was part of what drove him to build his theater empire and get out of the game altogether.”

Quartermaine’s lips twitched. “Oh, I think we need not grieve for old Will,” he said a little sourly. “He has managed to scrape by. And in any case, it was Peveril who accused you of cheating. Then, as I understand it, he refused to settle his debt?”

“Well, he finally gave me a note of hand. Leeton insisted. Then Peveril stalked out, and the whispering began.”

“And the next morning,” Quartermaine went on, “Peveril was found dead in his rooms at the Albany, the knife still in his back—a knife belonging to you, as it happened. Then the porter, Mr. West—”

“East,” said Rance tightly. “The fellow’s name was Henry East.”

“Ah, I stand corrected.” Quartermaine lightly lifted his hands from the desktop. “In any case, East swore he had seen you, or someone who claimed to be you, going up to Peveril’s rooms round three in the morning.”

“And I was charged with murder on little more evidence than that,” said Rance. “Even though, as it later turned out, East was nearsighted as an old badger.”

Quartermaine smiled. “Not a quality one ordinarily looks for in an employee,” he said. “Particularly one who’s been hired to man the entrance of so rarified an establishment as the Albany.”

“But Peveril’s father was a duke,” said Anisha musingly. “I suppose he wanted someone to swing for his son’s murder?”

“Aye, he very nearly got it, too.” Rance’s hand went to his collar, as if it were second nature. “The knife could have been taken from my rooms by any number of people. But East’s testimony . . . that nearly drove the nails in my coffin.”

“And afterward,” said Quartermaine quietly, “matters merely worsened when Sir Arthur Colburne shot himself. Or so I heard.”

Anisha’s eyes widened. She was slowly coming to realize just how sordid Rance’s story was—and how little of it she actually knew.

Rance was staring blindly through the windows now. “Aye, Arthur blew his brains out two days later,” he acknowledged, his voice soft.

“But why?” Anisha whispered.

“He was ruined,” said Rance. “Had been ruined for some months. That girl—Elinor, I think—my God, her beauty was like money in the bank. But by the time everything fell apart, the Season had ended. London’s eligible bachelors had removed to their country estates, and Arthur’s creditors had turned testy. So he took the most expedient way out.”

Anisha leaned forward in her chair. “Could it be Sir Arthur killed Peveril?” she suggested. “Then himself out of remorse?”

Rance shook his head. “Kill the fatted calf? Sir Arthur needed the money.”

“But what if . . .” Anisha opened her hands plaintively. “Oh, I don’t know . . . what if Peveril wished to call it off? Perhaps he changed his mind? And Sir Arthur lost his temper?”

Quartermaine laughed softly. “Oh, I think we all know an English gentleman dares not dishonor a betrothal, ma’am,” he said. “Their so-called honor is all some of these chaps have to keep them warm at night—and they hold it dear indeed.”

“Aye, he’s right,” said Rance grimly. “And my knife . . . no, it speaks to cold premeditation. Someone wanted me hanged. Or needed a scapegoat.”

“
Cui bono?
” said Quartermaine softly. “Who owed you money?”

Rance lifted his gaze to meet Quartermaine’s. “Everyone,” he said, “eventually. I played every club in town. Even Brooks’s. But not a vast sum was owed me anywhere. Nothing worth killing over.”

Silence fell across the room for a time, broken only by the
tick-tick-tick
of the ormolu mantel clock. Finally, Quartermaine cleared his throat. “Well, in any case, your father eventually persuaded East to recant his testimony.”

“Yes.” Rance’s eyes were bleak. “Just before his death, East summoned his priest and his magistrate, and confessed to his near blindness.”

“And it is said, too, that the Marquess of Ruthveyn—your pardon, Lady Anisha—used his influence with the Government to cast doubt upon the knife,” Quartermaine added. “There was quite a nasty piece about it in the
Chronicle
after the Lord Chancellor’s decision not to retry you.”

“Aye, East claimed he’d been afraid his employers would realize he couldn’t see,” said Rance, his voice edged in bitterness. “Said he thought he’d lose his post, but he admitted the fellow who claimed to be me could as easily have been his aunt Agatha, and he’d have known little better.”

“The loss of employment sounds like a logical fear,” Quartermaine murmured. “Yet not, to be sure, an excuse for sending a man to the gallows.”

Rance’s gaze turned hot. “Aye, but the funny thing is, after the trial, East never worked another day in his life. How do you think he managed that?”

Quartermaine gave a sharp, bitter laugh. “Perhaps, he, too, had an uncommon gift at the tables?”

Rance snorted. “And perhaps he developed an uncommon gift for blackmail.”

“Yes,” said Quartermaine quietly, “perhaps that.”

“I suppose Mr. East did not wish to die with a guilty conscience,” said Anisha quietly. “What a pity, though, that he waited so long to speak out.”

“The old duke died a few months before,” said Rance. “That may have been the end of East’s income stream. Perhaps . . . perhaps he paid East a stipend out of gratitude? It is the most benign motivation I can think of.”

For a time, there was no reply. A dark cloud had settled over the room, and they felt it, all three of them. Even Ned Quartermaine, a decidedly hard case, looked dejected. Rance’s face had lost much of its color, all of its usual vivacity, and he now sat a little slumped in his chair, staring through the windows into the garden beyond, as if the key to all the incomprehensibility, all the ugliness, might lay hidden amidst Quartermaine’s tidy rows of shrubbery.

For the first time, Anisha began to grasp not just the horror of what Rance had suffered but the pall such a thing might cast over a man’s life. Two deaths, and a life ruined. And by whom? Why? For assuredly this had been deliberately done.

The reality of it chilled her. Had she somehow convinced herself this had been a mere miscarriage of justice? A spate of bad luck?

It had not been.

It had been evil, pure and simple. Evil directed at Rance. And suddenly, she wanted to take him away from all this. To whisk him back to Mayfair, pour him a stout whisky, and tell him it didn’t matter to her what he had been, or what so-called society thought.

But it mattered to Rance.

It was, just as Quartermaine had said, a matter of gentlemanly honor. Not just his, but his father’s. His entire family’s.

Quartermaine broke the somber mood by clearing his throat and glancing up. Overhead, a great deal of ominous bumping and scraping had commenced; the sound of chairs being moved, she thought. The gaming salons were being swept, or perhaps rearranged.

Quartermaine pushed his chair back from the desk, as if impatient to be gone. “Well, that is what little I know, Lazonby,” he said. “The rumors as they have been put to me. But beyond them, I have no specific knowledge, save what I have pieced together from the papers.”

“The
Chronicle,
mostly, you mean.”

“They do seem to have a marked dislike for you.”

“It is just one reporter in particular,” said Rance. “That red-haired chap who’s so often hanging off Pinkie-Ring’s coattails. Do you know who I’m speaking of?”

“I believe so,” said Quartermaine. “I had Pinkie have a long chat with the fellow early on—just to be sure it wasn’t club business he meant to meddle in.”

“Oh? And when he said it was
my
business, you had no problem with it?”

Quartermaine frowned. “He never claimed that,” he said. “And I never thought to enquire further.”

“Well, Coldwater has been
enquiring,
” Rance snapped. “Not many weeks past I caught him in St. Bride’s churchyard
enquiring
of my second footman—not, apparently, for the first time. The whelp’s been paying my own servants to spy on me. I sacked the chap on the spot, but there’s little to stop Coldwater from doing it again.”

“
Hmm,
” said Quartermaine. “Do you wish me to call Pinkie down here? All in the interest of neighborly cooperation, of course.”

“Aye,” said Rance, coming upright in his chair. “Aye, I would. I’ve asked him about Coldwater before, but perhaps your presence will loosen the chap’s tongue.”

Quartermaine’s gaze hardened almost warningly. “Now, I won’t have him dealt with sharply, mind, for he’s a good employee,” he said. “But you may ask him whatever you please. Pinkie has no cause to lie.”

But Quartermaine already looked as if he regretted his generosity, even as he strode to the bellpull.

The clerk with the key-fob returned and nodded, and, in due course, Mr. Ringgold appeared—apparently bestirred from taking his luncheon with the fellow who’d opened the door, for his waistcoat was dotted with mustard.

A stout man with brown hair that bristled atop his head like a hedgehog, Pinkie looked like a pugilist, for one ear was slightly cauliflowered and his nose had been broken in at least two places. He came into the room looking askance at them, as if sizing the situation up and deciding they were trouble.