To Mourn a Murder (31 page)

"Run home and get your own, Reg," Corinne said. He darted out the door, coattails flying.

Byron and Corinne went out to meet him. A cold north wind stirred the branches, lifting her pelisse and pulling at her hair. She hadn't even stopped to put on a bonnet. At least there was no fog to impair their vision. A luminous white moon, nearly full, was clearly etched against the silver sky. It was one of those nights when the air was so clear you could see "the man in the moon."

"There's really no need for you to come," Byron said to Corinne. "Prance and I can–"

"Save your breath, Byron. I'm going."

A slow smile moved his lips as he gazed at her in an unsettlingly intimate way. "Somehow I felt you would say that," he said in a voice soft as a caress.

The darkness and the danger, the moon and especially his smile, lent a heightened emotion to the interlude. If he had taken her in his arms that moment, she wouldn't have objected. When she realized the direction her thoughts were veering, she stiffened up and said in a businesslike way, "I always accompany the gentlemen in such cases as this. Safety in numbers."

"Possibly, but I doubt safety has anything to do with it. I can't believe Luten would approve."

Of course Luten would be furious. It might set their nuptials back another month or so, but she would go. "Begin as you mean to go on," her mama used to say when counseling her daughters in the arts of marriage. "You may leave Luten to me, milord," she said.

"And vice versa, unfortunately," he replied with a wistful sigh.

"What do you mean?" she asked, and realized as she spoke the significance of his speech.

He gazed at her in the shadowed stillness. His voice was a husky whisper. "Just what you think, madam." A frisson shivered up her spine. For a long moment, their eyes met and held. Lady Caroline Lamb was right. This man was "Mad, bad and dangerous to know." It came as a troublesome revelation that she could be so strongly attracted to one man when she was in love with another.

Prance was back, returning her to her senses before danger escalated to indiscretion. He handed Byron one pistol and kept the other himself. He knew Corinne disliked handling firearms. When Prance made no objection to her presence, Byron raised no further objections.

Prance and Corinne darted ahead into the darkness, past the moonlit windows of Bruton Street, around the corner to New Bond, with Byron not far behind, cursing his handicap. As they stood scanning New Bond in both directions, Byron caught up to them. Two carriages were on the road, one heading in either direction. "Lord Elgin," Byron mentioned as the closer one rattled past.

"I thought I saw the passenger lifting a bottle to his lips," Prance sniffed. He considered it a duty to malign Mouldy and Company, though it was true the Lord Chancellor enjoyed the reputation of being immoderately fond of his port. "Between him and his brother, Lord Stowe, they've drunk more port than any other two gentlemen in England, though Pattle could run them a close second. Now where the devil are Pattle and Luten?"

Of Joey, Mrs. Webber, Luten or Coffen there was no sign.

"Let us walk along toward Old Bond," Corinne suggested. "Coffen said that's Joey's area."

They hurried along, huddled into their collars against the piercing wind, looking down Clifford Street as they came to the corner. They spotted the link-boy by the light on the end of his pole and all hastened towards him.

"Light your way, folks," the boy said eagerly. "Tuppence a block."

"Are you Joey?" Corinne asked.

"Nah, I'm Alf. Joey, he's gone on an errand. Won't be back tonight. I've got his stretch of road, along with me own. Light your way, mum?"

"What errand? Where has he gone?"

The link-boy passed his tattered wrist across his nostrils and sniffed. "He didn't say, mum."

"Was it a lady he was doing this errand for?"

"Might o' been." He gave her a cagey grin, rubbing the fingers of his left hand against his thumb. "I'm trying to remember."

Byron took the hint and handed him a coin. The urchin applied it to his teeth to test its authenticity. Satisfied that it was genuine, he said, "If you run you might catch him. She was to pick him up in her rig."

"Where?" Corinne demanded.

"Green Park."

"Whereabouts in Green Park?"

"He didn't say, mum. Light your way?"

Without further speech his three questioners headed back to Bond Street, down Bond towards Green Park. "She's going to kill him," Corinne said. "She's lured him into the park to kill him." They were panting by the time they reached Green Park. Byron had managed to keep pace with them. "It's huge. We'll never find him," she cried. Although the old king had reduced it by several acres to enlarge the gardens of Buckingham Palace, it was still a vast fifty-six acre wilderness.

"Let us think a moment," Byron said. "Where would she ask him to meet her? If she's planning murder, she'd leave her hackney and walk part way. She wouldn't go far into the park. It's too dark and forbidding. She would have met him on or near one of the corners. Probably the least public one, the south corner by Lower Grosvenor Place."

Corinne thought a moment, then said, "There's a bridge over a stream on Piccadilly just at the bottom of the hill near Half Moon Street. She might go in that way."

"Is that what you feel?" Prance asked eagerly. The countess, being Irish, was believed to have a sort of second sight.

"Yes. No–I don't know." She felt a paralyzing anxiety that blocked out everything else.

"The stream would be handy for drowning him," Byron said in a hard voice. "Make it look like an accident. After two murders, she'd want to keep the third quiet. You two go on. I'll find a hackney and catch up with you."

"Here's one coming now," Prance said, as he spotted the two moons of an advancing carriage. When it pulled alongside he saw it was empty and said, "We'll all drive as far as Clarges, then get out and walk the last block. That way, she won't hear us coming. Keep an eye out the window as we go. Look for a hackney. The old lady doesn't let her use the family carriage."

"I wonder if that's true," Corinne said. "I wager she doesn't want the coachman telling his mistress where she really goes."

They passed only one hackney, carrying close to a dozen drunk young bucks, three of them hanging from the windows bellowing
Green Grow the Rushes, Ho
at the top of their voices.

At Clarges Street they alit and asked the driver to wait for them. They would have him drive them all around the park if they didn't find Joey at the bridge. The bridge was of wooden slats, none too secure underfoot. Green Park was the poor relation of its neighbours, Hyde Park and St. James's Park. It was one of the oddities of London that this prime real estate in the heart of the city had been all but abandoned. Its main claim to attention was the small herd of cows that grazed there, bringing a rural touch to the city.

Beyond the bridge, the wilderness, spotted with scrub and trees, presented a daunting prospect. The stream gurgled below. It wasn't deep but it wouldn't take many inches to drown a boy. Once across the bridge they scanned the water for a small body, and were relieved to find none. "Shall we go farther into the park or go back to the hackney?" Prance asked.

"Let's go in a little farther," Byron said. "She'd hardly kill him this close to the street."

They advanced into the menacing darkness, with tall trees bucketing in the wind overhead. The wind tore a few remaining leaves from the branches and blew those on the ground up in gusts. Ahead of them a patch of wild thorn bushes grew in a semi-circle. The sudden rustling of bushes froze them to the spot. It wasn't the wind-rustle of stirring branches they heard all around them. This sound was different–a thrashing noise as of some creature struggling, yet there had been no death cry, that eerie, high-pitched, disturbing squeal or squeak that usually accompanied the sinking of an owl's talons into its prey. They stood still, listening. The sound came again, more loudly, accompanied by a distinctly human gasp.

"It's probably a couple of drunks, or a lower class prostitute plying her trade," Prance said in a low voice.

"Best to be certain," Byron said. He added aside to Corinne, "I suggest you go back to the street now." Then he spoke quietly to Prance. They both drew their pistols out and began to walk quietly towards the edge of thorn bushes, Byron to the left, Prance to the right.

Corinne had no intention of leaving at this interesting juncture. Having no gun, she searched the ground for a fallen limb. There was no scarcity of them. She chose a stout branch two inches in diameter and advanced towards the bushes, ready to strike a blow if Mrs. Webber came pouncing out. As her two escorts disappeared around the growth of bushes, she listened closely. Silence settled around her. Surely if that noise had come from drunken sots or even if they had interrupted some street woman plying her trade, someone would have spoken.

As she began edging around the bushes to have a peek, she heard a harsh, gulping, human sound. Then a trembling young voice said, "Gorblimey, don't let her kill me!" Joey!

Mrs. Webber spoke then, loud and clear. "One step and I shoot him."

Corinne peered around the bushes at a scene that froze the blood in her veins. Mrs. Webber had pulled Joey in front of her to use as a shield. Her hand, holding a pistol pointed at Joey's head, protruded above his shoulder. It seemed totally unreal, like an illustration from a lurid gothic novel–this black-gowned, pious widow in a round bonnet holding a gun, the frightened boy, the gibbous moon floating high overhead. But the cold sneer on her face left no doubt that she would use that gun.

Corinne quelled down the rising panic and tried to think. A moment's consideration told her the situation had reached a deadlock. If they tried to grab Mrs. Webber, she would shoot Joey, or perhaps one of them. The thorn bushes formed a half circle around the scene before her. If she could get behind Mrs. Webber, she could hit her on the back of the head. She would have to make a wide circle. There were enough trees and bushes nearby that she thought she could do it unseen. Mrs. Webber's attention was fully occupied. Corinne darted off to begin circling behind.

"It won't work, madam," Byron said in a voice that was almost gentle, to avoid frightening her into shooting Joey. "Come now, let the boy go. He's done you no harm. You can't kill all of us."

Prance was painfully aware that she could certainly kill one of them, not necessarily Joey. Should he shoot her? Was that why Byron was distracting her, to allow him a shot? But to be sure he didn't hit Joey in error he would have to aim for her head. And he was not a good shot. Then to shoot a lady in the face! Every atom of his fastidious nature was repelled at such barbarity. The resources of humanity were not exhausted yet. He would try common sense.

"Best to come along quietly, Mrs. Webber," he said. "We know the whole story."

"You know nothing," she scoffed. "You think I
wanted
to kill any of them? They drove me to it!
You
drove me to it, with your prying and questioning. And Danby was no help at all. Weak as water! When he found out you were looking into his past in Brighton he wanted us to bolt, which is as good as a confession. I told him I would take care of Mam'selle. She was the only one who could put the finger on him.

"She's no better than she should be. I don't suppose she told you she talked Danby into pilfering a valuable sapphire ring from the Goodman effects for her when you were with her, Sir Reginald? Sharing her favours with the uncle and nephew at the same time! Leading an innocent young man astray. Thought she could get money out of him when she wrote him about you calling on her. Harlot! She deserved to die."

Prance remembered the fine sapphire ring Mam'selle had been wearing. She had pulled the wool over his eyes, denying any knowledge of who had closed the Goodman shop for Jergen. She wouldn't want to discuss it since she had profited illegally from it, and apparently planned to get more money from Danby for keeping the secret.

Joey began squirming and whimpering again. "Stop it!" she cried, sticking the muzzle of the pistol against the back of his neck. He stopped crying but couldn't control the trembling and gulping as he stared with dark-eyed, mute appeal at Byron.

"All I wanted was a little money, that's all," Mrs. Webber continued. "They all had so much, and I had to grovel and truckle to that old lady for every sou. It's her I wanted to kill, but even with her dead, there was to be nothing in it for me. All for her grandson when he reached maturity, with her lawyers to oversee the spending of it in the meanwhile. I'd be ancient by the time Harold is a grown man. The two of us were to live on three hundred a year. It was spite, pure spite. She didn't want me marrying her son in the first place."

Prance thought, but of course didn't say, that more likely the mother-in-law had discovered the woman's true character and didn't want her plundering little Harold's estate.

"You've had a hard life, but killing this boy won't help," Byron said in a placating tone. Joey squirmed and began to emit stifled hiccups of fear.

"Then don't make me kill him. Let me take him with me as insurance that you won’t shoot me. I'll disappear. You'll never see me again."

"But where could you disappear to?" Prance asked.

"A quiet corner in Scotland, Ireland or the continent. A change of name. What difference does it make? I have enough money now to get away. They'll never miss the money. They have rich husbands and families. It's not stealing. It was just business. I gave them full value for what they bought."

Prance marveled at this piece of rationalization. That was how her twisted mind had justified her theft. That was why the documents were returned so scrupulously in every case. Not, as Luten thought, to encourage others to pay up, but to salve her somewhat rudimentary conscience.

From the corner of his eye, Byron spotted a movement behind Mrs. Webber. It didn't take him long to recognize Lady deCoventry, and carrying what looked like a good-sized branch. What a woman she was! If only he had met her before her engagement. He forced his gaze back to Mrs. Webber to give Corinne her chance. "I'm sure the judge will take all that into consideration," he said, to appease her. "It must have been hard to kill Danby. I imagine you loved him."