To Mourn a Murder (28 page)

"Fair is fair. It was you who landed this job on me, my friend. Now quit stalling and eat your dinner."

"Yes, Nanny." He ate a few bites, nibbled a carrot or two and ate his potato. "Let us get on with it," he said, pushing his nearly full plate away. "No one could eat knowing he's about to commit a crime."

Luten laughed. "You're not as wicked as you would like folks to believe, Byron."

"Shhh!" Byron looked all around. "Don't tell, or my reputation will be ruined. My sales would plummet. I don't just sell bad poetry. I sell Lord Byron. Every foolish utterance is scribbled down and misquoted."

"I expect what you actually said in that well-known quotation making the rounds is that you awoke one morning and found yourself famous."

"I didn't say it, but I should have. And shall," he added laughing.

It occurred to Luten that Byron was really very young, despite his travels and air of cynicism. Only twenty-four, though he seemed older. He had noticed before that being born with a physical affliction often had that effect on people. After suffering with his own busted ankle, he could well understand how a lifetime of it would change a man. Even the simplest matters became difficult. And the pain left its mark too. Life became a tragedy to those who gave in to it, a satirical comedy to those who fought it.

Add to that Byron's unhappy home life, emotional instability on both branches of the family tree. His uncle, the fifth Lord Byron, had earned the title of "Wicked Lord" for carrying on at Newstead–womanizing, gambling, brawling. He had fought a duel and killed his neighbour, among other outrages. Byron's own father, Mad Jack, was no better. He had been only twenty-two when he ran off with a married woman, Lady Carmarthen, whose husband became the fifth Duke of Leeds. Wasn't she a baroness in her own right as well?

Byron's own mama was Mad Jack's second wife, a bad-tempered Scottish heiress. After Mad Jack ran through her fortune, he took off for the fleshpots of France, leaving his wife to raise Byron as best she could. All things considered, Byron hadn't turned out too badly.

Byron took one last sip of wine, rose and said, "I'll have to ask for his room at the desk. If I'm not back down in five minutes, join me."

"I thought you might want to come back down and watch for Danby's return. You could detain him while I did the job abovestairs."

"Think again. You promised me criminal activity, and now you want to keep all the fun for yourself. If Danby is out, he won't be back this early. You come up. It will save me the bother of limping down and up again. We cripples must think of these things."

Luten nodded and continued eating without tasting, keeping an eye on the head and shoulders clock on the mantle. Never had five minutes seemed so long. After four minutes he was convinced the clock wasn't keeping proper time. He beckoned for the waiter and paid the reckoning, then he went out into the corridor and up the stairs. Byron stood at the top of the landing, waiting in the shadows. He looked pale. As he reached the top of the stairs Luten said, "All clear? There was no one in?"

"Not a
living
soul," Byron replied in a hollow voice. "And I mean that quite literally," Luten noticed the excited glitter in his eyes and the tension around his lips.

"You don't mean—"

"He's dead. Poisoned, I think. The door wasn't locked. Come and have a look before we call Bow Street."

They hurried down the hall, around a corner. Byron opened a door on the right side and they went in. "The lamp was lit when I arrived," he said, "so he was still alive after dark. But not much after, I think. The oil has burned low."

Luten went to the body. It lay on its side, crumpled on the floor beside the chair, with the knees drawn up towards the chest. The face was contorted with the mouth open, giving the effect of a gargoyle. A glass of brandy had fallen from his hand. The liquid spread in a dark stain over the green carpet. Luten lifted the arm. Danby had been dead for some time, to judge by the stiffness of the joints. It was dark enough by four in the afternoon to need a lamp. It was now half past eight, so he might have lain here for over four hours. Where would the valet have been all that time? Did he have a valet? Have to find that out. An opened bottle of brandy sat on the desk. Luten put his finger in the dregs in the glass and smelled it.

"Cyanide, I think. I catch a whiff of almonds beneath the pungent brandy fumes. The strong taste of the brandy would mask it." He went to the bottle and sniffed it. "The whole bottle's been poisoned."

Where had he got the brandy? Had it been a gift? Or had someone called on him and slipped the cyanide into it? In that case it must have been a man. A lady wouldn't call on a gentleman in his bedroom. The bottle was nearly full. He stared at Danby's face for a moment, with an instinctive pang of grief for another young life stamped out. Perhaps he wasn't guilty after all. He certainly wasn't the only guilty one in any case.

Byron watched him uncertainly. "Do you want to look around before we call the police?"

"Just pull the bell cord for a footman. We'll send him off to Bow Street and still have time to search the room before he arrives. Tell him to ask for Townsend, he's the best, and discreet. See if you can find the money or Mrs. Huston's diamonds or anything that might have held the cyanide."

Byron did as Luten asked. Luten clenched his lips and did what had to be done. He felt like a ghoul as he slid his fingers into the dead man's pockets. Strange how cold flesh no longer felt human. The form beneath the jacket and waistcoat might have been a dummy. The pockets contained nothing of interest. Just a little money, a deck of cards, a comb, keys.

When the footman arrived Byron met him at the door and sent him off to Bow Street. Then he and Luten began a quick but thorough search of the rooms. Luten took the bedroom, Byron the sitting room attached, which served as a study and parlour.

In the pocket of a greatcoat at the back of the clothespress Luten felt something small, hard and cold. He drew it out–Mrs. Huston's diamond necklace. A note on the bedside table requested the servant who cleaned his room to have his buckskins cleaned. The note suggested that Danby didn't have a valet, but used a hotel servant, another sign of being short of money. Every gentleman of fashion had a valet.

Luten studied the note. It had been dashed off hastily but the formation of certain letters revealed that it was written in the same hand as the Bee's notes. The paper was also the same. So Danby was the Bee, but his death confirmed that he hadn't worked alone. There had been some falling out amongst thieves. Who was his partner–or partners?

Byron came in from the next room holding out a wad of unpaid bills. "If Danby was a nabob, I'm a virgin," he said, showing Luten the duns. "There were no business papers in the desk. A man of affairs would have a welter of them. I don't believe he had a penny, other than what he gouged from his victims or won at the card table."

"He's the Bee all right," Luten said, dangling the diamond necklace from one finger. Bursts of brilliance flashed as it turned in the lamplight.

"I'll return this to Mrs. Huston. No need for her to be involved in the investigation. Keep looking. Where would he have hidden the money, or his bankbook? Keep an eye out for anything else he may have planned to use for illegal gain as well–love letters, that sort of thing."

They searched under the carpet, in drawers and under the mattress, in every pocket and the toe of every boot, even the hems of the curtains. They found neither money, incriminating written matter nor a bottle that could have held the cyanide. Either the poison was in the bottle when it came into the room, or the murderer took it away with him.

Byron said, "You know, Luten, there's no need for you to be officially mixed up in this. It seems we still have another Bee to catch. Why let him–or her–know you were on to Danby? I'll say I merely called on him to invite him out and found the body. He's been dead long enough that I won't be suspected."

"I don't like to saddle you with it, but actually it's a good idea."

"You'd best go right away."

"Right. Try if you can find out where he got that brandy. Ask if he had any callers. Call on me when you're through with Townsend."

"At your place?"

"I'll be at Lady DeCoventry's."

"Lucky you."

Luten met a Bow Street officer rushing in at the front door as he entered the lobby. His red vest and staff announced his calling. He didn't know this officer and didn't stop. He called for his carriage and headed to Berkeley Square.

Luten held his finger to his lips to deter Black from announcing his arrival. He wanted to surprise Corinne. Through the open doorway he looked into her cozy, feminine drawing room with flames leaping in the grate, thankful to be there and not in the cold and stately grandeur of his own mansion. He planned to remove the furnishings of this room and create a replica of it in one of the smaller chambers of his house across the street when they married. It would be their private parlour. As he entered the room his gaze moved to her, before she realized he was there. He felt a surge of joy as he always did when he looked at her.

She sat staring at the cards on the table with a thoroughly bored expression on her pretty little face. Some lover's instinct must have told her he was there. Her head lifted suddenly and as she saw him, a smile that dazzled like the morning sun beamed from her face. She rose at once and flew, eagerly as a bird from its cage, to greet him. He seized her fingers and they returned hand-in-hand to the card table without exchanging a word, yet their mutual pleasure had been fully understood by the look that passed between them.

Mrs. Ballard scooped up her winnings and minced out with a smile and curtsey all around. Her late husband did not approve of playing cards for money, but pennies, she rationalized, hardly counted. Though they did add up when Coffen was such a very bad player. Of course every penny would go to charity.

"What's happened, Luten? You look pale," Corinne said when they were seated. "Is it bad news from France?"

"I wasn't at the House. I was working on the case. I had dinner with Byron at Stephen's Hotel."

"Prance won't like that," Coffen said. Corinne was curious to hear who had suggested this dinner, but before she could ask Coffen said, "So it's about Danby." He leaned forward, blue eyes gleaming. "What's he been up to?"

"Getting himself murdered. He's dead."

Coffen's loud "What?" overrode Corinne's soft gasp. She poured wine and Luten gave them an account of his evening.

"You don't figure it might have been suicide?" Coffen said.

"We couldn't find anything in his room that could have held the poison. The whole bottle had been doctored. My feeling is that someone sent him a poisoned bottle. For that matter, why would he commit suicide? He didn't know we suspected him."

"I was thinking of Mam'selle," Coffen replied. "If he was her fellow, her death might have plunged him into a bout of melancholia. But very likely 'twas murder. So, he wasn't the Bee then?"

"He was certainly a member of the hive," Luten said and explained about the note and Mrs. Huston's diamond necklace.

"I'm glad you took the necklace to return to her," Corinne said. That was like him, thoughtful. "I wonder if a lady killed him. Poison is a lady's method, especially useful when she couldn't go to a gentleman's room without exciting comment."

"Could have rigged herself out like a bit o' muslin," Coffen said.

"Byron is at the hotel now. He'll try to discover how the bottle got there," Luten said. "It seems Danby's being a millionaire is all a sham. His desk was full of unpaid bills. He didn't even have a valet."

They continued discussing it for some time. Prance, who had been watching from his drawing room window, was thoroughly incensed at being left out. Luten's going out and rushing back in as if pursued by the hounds of hell told him something interesting was going on and they hadn't notified him. And after all his work for them in Brighton! Typical of Luten's highhandedness.

When Petruchio came frisking about his feet it was all he could do not to kick him. He called his butler and asked him to please remove the animal. He was about to call for his carriage and go to his club when he recognized Byron's carriage rounding the corner. An expression that was more sneer than smile alit on his narrow face. Perfect! He would go out with Byron and enjoy an evening of civilized conversation.

He watched with disbelief verging on apoplexy when Byron's carriage passed his door and drew up in front of Corinne's. It was clear from the way he hurried up the stairs that some momentous event was in progress. Whatever it was, Byron was in on it! He would never dare to call on Corinne at this hour without Luten's knowledge. What could it be? Flaming with curiosity, he had to swallow his bile and go, cap in hand and uninvited, to find out.

And to make it worse, Byron hardly glanced at him when he was announced. A barely civil nod, if you could call that a greeting. Corinne recognized the flaring nostrils and strained lips of a severe snit and made him welcome more effusively.

"We were about to send for you, Reg," she lied. "There have been startling new developments in the case. You must give us your opinion." Luten, watching, smiled to consider what a wonderful political hostess she would make.

"First I must hear the details," Prance said, reining in his ire as he lifted his coattails and sat down on the arm of a chair.

"Danby's been murdered," Coffen announced in his usual blunt way.

Prance rolled his eyes. "It never ceases to amaze how you can ruin such a promising story," he scolded. "One does not begin with the climax, Pattle. You should build up to it, arousing curiosity by intriguing details, which have now lost their luster."

"It ain't a story. It's real," Coffen pointed out.

"But I'm sure there are fascinating details?" He turned to Byron for a more complete recital. He certainly would not oblige Luten by asking him.

Even Byron was not his usual eloquent self, but he gave a coherent and comprehensive account of the facts. Once Prance got over, or at least assimilated, the injustice of Luten's asking Byron to accompany him instead of himself, he said, "So it seems we've been wasting our time on the drone, when it is the Queen Bee we should have been concentrating on."