When the Devil Drives

DEATH AT DAWN

DEATH OF A DANCER

A CORPSE IN SHINING ARMOUR

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First world edition published 2011

in Great Britain and the USA by

Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2011 by Caro Peacock.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Peacock, Caro.

When the devil drives. – (A Liberty Lane mystery)

1. Lane, Liberty (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Women

private investigators–Fiction. 3. London (England)–

Social conditions–19th century–Fiction. 4. Detective

and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series III. Linscott, Gillian.

823.9′2-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-140-8 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-011-9 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-513-8 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

PROLOGUE

When my part in the story began, I didn't know about the attack on Jeanie. The rape of a servant girl, with an hysterical-sounding description of her attackers, was not unusual enough to make a paragraph in the newspapers. I did not know Jeanie or anybody connected with her. It was only weeks later, after everything else had happened, that I found her and heard her account at first hand. By that time, her story wasn't hysterical at all and made perfect sense – not that that was much help to poor Jeanie. Looking back, I can tell myself that I should have known. It was no more than a mile away across the park from where I live. But then, most of us worry about what's nearest to ourselves and at the time I had enough to concern me. Such as the fact that rent day was fast approaching. Such as that Mrs Martley, my more-or-less housekeeper, kept dropping hints about the rising price of meat and coal. Such as what to do about Tabby. Then there was a certain gentleman who, I feared, was dangerously close to asking me to marry him. Altogether, I was looking the wrong way that October but so was almost everybody else.

Most people's eyes were on another event, which also passed me by. The Court Circular in
The Times
is not my normal reading.

From the Court Circular, you'd have thought the arrival was all over in a matter of minutes. From the point of view of the two principals, it probably was. Two dark-haired young princes, one very dignified and upright with a Roman beak of a nose, the other with a softer and younger look, would have walked down the gangplank to be greeted by a line of top-hatted worthies, then been whisked away towards Windsor in the first of the carriages, the coachmen on the box in his blue Windsor uniform.

Even in the Court Circular, there's a hint of how far from immediate it was for everyone else involved. Those carriages waiting from an early hour in the morning; you can almost hear the horses shifting their hooves, smell the pipe-smoke of grooms and drivers who spend half their lives waiting. The second of the carriages would carry the more important members of the princes' small suite. There'd be no urgency about the servants' departure. They'd have had to wait on the quayside while the three German carriages were unloaded, along with trunks, crates, sword and gun cases, hat boxes and saddles. By the time this procession of servants and luggage set out to follow the princes to Windsor, it consisted of six vehicles. The three German carriages, plus a landau, a phaeton, and an indeterminate luggage cart bringing up the rear. At some point, I don't know when, a seventh vehicle fell in behind the luggage cart. It was a plain black gentleman's dress chariot, drawn by a pair of bay horses. Later, various people claimed they'd taken particular notice of it, but nobody commented at the time. All these details I found out later, at third or fourth hand. When they arrived, I had no interest in yet another party of European royals on the well-trodden trail to enjoy Little Vicky's hospitality at Windsor. I was a newly-fledged private investigator with a living to earn, and hadn't seen a serious client in a month or more.

ONE

‘
D
ora will be totally lost in London,' the young man said.

He was leaning forward in his seat from desire to convince me, long fingers clasping the edge of my table, fair hair flopping over his forehead. ‘She's only nineteen. She'll be an abandoned fawn on a prairie of prowling lions.'

The sound that came from the girl on the other side of the table might have been a suppressed sneeze. Since the poetical young man didn't react to it, I hoped that was what he took it for, but I knew better. I glared at Tabby, to remind her of strict orders to keep quiet. From childhood, Tabby had survived by her own resources on the prairie of prowling lions, so had precious little sympathy for the fawns of the world. This interview was her first official appearance as my assistant and the start of what would probably prove to be an apprenticeship that tried the patience of both of us. At least she looked reasonably tidy in her grey dress, with hair clean and tied back. I picked up my pencil.