Harley Street Read online

  Immediately I turned to the manservant. “Send for my husband at once. And no one is to come in here until he has seen this.”

  “What about a constable, my lady?”

  “Yes, a constable too but Lord Strang first. He should be at home in Piccadilly. You know the direction?”

  The estimable footman appeared completely unruffled. “Yes, my lady. I’ll send a runner, it’ll be quicker than a coach.”

  I left the room and closed the door firmly, leaning against it for support. The moulding was hard against my back. I watched the footman elbow his way through the goggling crowd and make for end of the corridor. His feet clattered down the uncarpeted stairs.

  I took a steadying breath. “No one is to mention this outside this house.” I looked around. “Does anyone know anything about this?” A babble of voices rewarded me. Lizzie stood at the other side of the group and she clapped her hands together noisily, not stopping until a near silence fell. Ruth stood to one side, wide-eyed and I knew from the expression on her face that she was fighting nausea.

  I waited until everyone had fallen silent, feeling like a schoolteacher with her class. Faces turned towards me. “What’s the girl’s name?”

  “Lucy,” came a reply from the back of the suddenly silent crowd. “Lucy Forder. I shared the room with her.”

  I beckoned the girl to come forward. “What do you know?”

  The neat, plump maid with the round face bobbed a curtsey. “She’s a widow and she came to London when her husband was killed in an accident. She’s fairly new and we’ve shared that room since she came.” She stopped suddenly but I got the feeling she had something else to say.

  “When did you see her last?” The faces behind were still, listening as I was.

  She hesitated before she replied. “Last night. It was her night off. She said she was going to Vauxhall Gardens with her young man.”

  Now I knew she was holding something back because she lowered her eyes and wouldn’t look at me. “So she wasn’t here when you got up this morning?”

  The girl shook her head. “No, my lady. But that wasn’t unusual. She sometimes came in and went straight to work without sleeping.”

  I began to understand but I didn’t want to push the girl too much at this stage, not while she was still in shock. It had been a jolt for us to see the dead girl; how much worse would it have been if we’d known her, shared her bed?

  I turned to the other servants. “Does anyone else know anything?”

  The babble rose and fell again. I pointed at a footman. “You.”

  “She used to go out every night she could and on her days off, too,” he ventured. The girl who shared the room looked daggers at him.

  “Does anyone know who her young man was?” Lizzie demanded. No one seemed to know.

  The upper corridor was crowded, more servants arriving from belowstairs, so I tried to put some order into the scene. “No one is to leave the house until someone has spoken to you; either my husband, myself, or the official from Bow Street. Everyone is to leave this floor until my husband and the constable arrive. I suggest you go down to the kitchens and wait there, we’ll call for you when we need you. Meanwhile, could someone bring more tea to the drawing room?” I was in need of the restorative and it would give the maids something to do.

  My sisters looked as worried as I was feeling, faces taut with concern. We waited until everyone had left the floor, then went back down the steep wooden stairs, leaving the footman guarding the room. I wondered what the neighbours would make of so many clattering feet on the bare wood.

  We went straight to the drawing room and I crossed to kneel at my aunt’s feet. She sat forlornly waiting for news. I was glad she hadn’t come upstairs because she was as squeamish as Ruth.

  I took one of her hands gently in mine. “I’m afraid one of your housemaids is dead. Lucy Forder?”

  Aunt Godolphin’s look of shock was as it should be. Trained by Richard and Carier, I now looked for abnormalities in everyone.

  “How?” Her voice came in an unaccustomed whisper.

  I took a deep breath. “She’s been stabbed, though whether by her own hand or someone else’s I can’t say.”

  “She never struck me as the kind of girl to do anything like that.” My aunt’s voice quavered a little but rose in volume as her confidence returned. She stood, clutching her hands convulsively in front of her. “How could such a thing happen?”

  Lizzie led her back to her seat, kneeling in the place I’d just vacated. She found Aunt Godolphin’s fan and plied it vigorously. The maid came in with a fresh pot of tea. She seemed to be in control of herself, this one. Not a tremor shook the pot as she put it down on the table and picked up the used one to take away with her.

  I stopped her before she left. “Did you see anything?”

  “No, my lady. I was about my business in the bedrooms when I heard the scream, then I went to see what the trouble was. Janet had just found her.” I nodded and let her go.

  Aunt Godolphin sniffed into her handkerchief. “How long has she been—lying there?”

  I shook my head. “It’s hard to say. She wasn’t there this morning when her roommate got up but more than that we can’t tell yet.”

  The sound of a carriage drawing up outside made me hurry to the window. Richard had arrived, driving himself in his phaeton. After throwing the reins and his gloves to the footman waiting outside, he hastened indoors.

  When he came into the room, the first person his gaze landed on was me. But then he took in the rest of the room at a glance and swept a bow, removing his hat as he did so and throwing it onto a vacant chair. I went to him, leaving Lizzie and Ruth to care for Aunt Godolphin. “There’s been a tragedy. They’ve found a maid dead.”

  I took him upstairs. The corridor was clear now, except for the footman. I opened the door to the little room under the rafters.

  Before the advent of its grisly occupant, it must have been as clean and neat as a maid’s room should be. Clothes hung from pegs and the small table held only a candlestick and a book.

  The serviceable rag rug was serviceable no more. Blood from the girl’s wound had saturated the edge, making it impossible to clean, turning rusty now instead of scarlet. On the woman’s gown, the blood nearest to the wound, where the knife still stuck upright like a mutant crucifix, was still red.

  Richard looked carefully around the room. “It couldn’t have been like this when her roommate got up.”

  I had thought of that. “The other girl got up at five and this one hadn’t come home then. Did she die here?”

  “Undoubtedly.” He didn’t examine the body immediately, preferring to study at the furnishings in the room. He opened the small clothes press, closed it again, looked under the rug and, finding nothing there, picked up the book on the side table. He opened it, studied a page, then slipped the small volume into his pocket.

  “Richard!” His cavalier treatment of the scene shocked me.

  He glanced at me. “It’s a journal. I’ll look at it in a more salubrious place, then I’ll hand it over to the authorities. Believe me, sometimes these people aren’t all they should be, as magistrates recruit thieves to catch thieves. This book might contain something that will discredit your aunt. Have the authorities been sent for, by the way?”

  “Yes. I sent someone for a constable.”

  He nodded. “Good. They’ll have farther to come. The chances are it’ll be one of Mr. Fielding’s people from Bow Street. He and his brother seem to have a finger in every pie these days. Except mine.”

  Only then did he look at the corpse. She was dressed for the evening in a pretty cherry-pink striped gown, which had been altered to suit the current fashion. Her hair fell loose over her face in a curled cascade and on the table reposed a cluster of black hairpins, indicating she had probably undone her coiffure herself.

  Richard stepped over the congealed blood and bent to examine the wound.

  “Did she kill herself, do you t
hink?” I wondered.

  He shook his head. “Not with the knife going in at that angle. From in front of her and above. If you tried to kill yourself in this dramatic fashion—cutting your throat is a surer way—you would hold the knife against your rib cage and push, or thrust it at yourself from a distance. You wouldn’t do it like this. It’s murder, Rose.”

  Footsteps approached from outside and a man entered the room. He wore a plain but serviceable suit of clothes with a red waistcoat and he looked confident, official. He bowed to us.

  Richard inclined his head in acknowledgement and greeting. “Are you the constable?”

  The man gave him a sharp look. “From Bow Street, sir. John Smith, at your service. Is this the victim?”

  “Who else?” Richard straightened up and moved away. The man threw him a glance of disdain before he strode to the bed, careful to avoid the gory puddle. He studied the wound and grunted, then lifted her legs so that she lay wholly on the bed, not sprawled half on, half off. “Did you touch anything?”

  Richard lifted an eyebrow. “I looked in the clothes press and at the body but I didn’t touch her.”

  “I see.” Mr. Smith stood and stared down at the corpse. “When was she found?”

  That was my territory. “About three-quarters of an hour ago. I sent all the servants down to the kitchen and told them not to leave the house. It seemed the practical thing to do. They were crowding around and getting in the way.”

  Richard’s smile was gentle in this sad place and was for me alone. “Beautifully practical. Is anyone else missing?”

  “I never thought to ask.” I said, crestfallen at my oversight.

  Richard reassured me. “They probably don’t know themselves yet.

  Mr. Smith stared at the body as if he took inspiration from it. “Just what I was going to ask myself.” He leaned forward to smooth the loose hair from the woman’s face. When he moved back, her face became visible for the first time.

  When he saw the woman, Richard gripped my hand tightly. I heard his sharp intake of breath. “Lucy.” His tone was soft but so penetrating that I could have heard it from the drawing room. It had such nuances of meaning in it that I couldn’t interpret it all at once. He knew this woman.

  I thought immediately of Thompson’s. Perhaps she came from there. But he’d used her first name, not her last one. He stared at the body as though he saw something else, his stare unnerving in its intensity.

  “Yes. Lucy Forder.”

  He shook his head slowly, his hand still gripping mine but at my words he released it. I stopped myself shaking it to get some of the feeling back and suffered the pins and needles in silence. “No. Lucy Gartside. How in God’s name did she come to be here?”

  Richard would have stayed there forever, staring at that body. I took his hand again and urged him to come downstairs but it took some time before I could persuade him and by then the Runner had realised that Richard had recognised her. Ignoring Smith’s speculative look, as he must have realized Richard’s reaction meant he knew the woman, I took him out of the room and stopped in the empty corridor outside.

  I put my hand on the back of his head and drew it down to rest on my shoulder to give him a moment to regain his composure. This incident had obviously shaken him a great deal and while I wondered and surmised, this was not the time or the place to ask him about it.

  Recovering, Richard put his arms around me and drew me close. When he released me, he had regained control. “Thank you. I swear I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  I nodded and we went back down to the drawing room. Richard sat in the nearest chair, moving his hat, which still reposed there, an indication of how much turmoil the household was in. I went to the table and poured some tea for us. Lizzie still sat next to Aunt Godolphin and Ruth stood by the fire.

  I had to be honest with them. It might be in the papers in the morning and best we tell them than they find it out that way. “We think it’s murder, not a suicide. We’ve left the official to come to his own conclusions.”

  Aunt Godolphin sank her face into her hands. “Murder.”

  “We might be able to help.” I glanced at Richard for confirmation.

  He nodded. “We try to find out what happened, if you want us to.”

  Aunt Godolphin looked up, hope in her eyes. “Can we stop it getting out?”

  Richard sounded regretful. “No but we can help limit the damage. It may be seen as a small private tragedy, especially if the world thinks it’s suicide.” Aunt Godolphin nodded, understanding. The curls of her elaborate hairstyle bobbed in agreement.

  I hated to see my aunt so vulnerable, as though ten years had been added to her tally. “Has anyone sent for your husband, ma’am?”

  “Yes.” She bit her lower lip, then burst out, “Oh, I’m so sorry this should happen while you’re here. You’ll probably never want to see this house again and I wouldn’t blame you. I did so want this visit to be a pleasant one.”

  Lizzie took Aunt Godolphin’s hand and patted it. “Of course we’ll come again, Aunt. None of this is your fault.” Aunt Godolphin smiled tremulously at Lizzie.

  Mr. Godolphin and Mr. Smith entered the room one after the other. While I was delighted to see my uncle again, the circumstances were too unhappy to make much of our greeting. We let Mr. Smith explain. The Bow Street man watched Richard as closely as he dared. Richard met his gaze without expression. After he completed his account, my uncle shook his head mournfully. “How do you think it occurred?”

  Smith’s face was impassive. “I’m keeping an open mind on the subject, sir. I have been down to the kitchens and there are two persons absent who should rightfully be here.”

  Richard sat up a little, his interest kindled. “And who would they be?”

  “Two servants, my lord. A manservant by the name of Greene and a young female housemaid, Jackson. They’re both missing.”

  “Did they have any connection to the dead woman other than sharing an employer?”

  Smith stared at Richard. “Greene was known to be sweet on Forder and she seemed to have taken the other girl under her wing in the time she was here but other than that, there seems to be nothing, my lord.”

  Richard raised his eyebrows. “That is a great deal. Was it Greene the girl was out with last night?”

  “That has yet to be determined, my lord.” Smith’s eyes narrowed. “She had a rich friend, though. You seemed to recognise her, my lord, or am I mistaken?”

  Richard’s voice was smooth, unconcerned. “You are mistaken. What do you mean, she had a rich friend?”

  The man stared at him steadily but he was not unaware of the other occupants of the room. He cast a sideways glance to where I stood with Ruth.

  “We found a quantity of guineas under the bed. The girl who shared her room denied having seen the bag they were contained in before we showed her the contents and I believe her. If they had belonged to her, it’s sure she would have claimed them.”

  If he wanted a response from my husband, he was disappointed. Richard met his stare with a mild look of displeasure. “She might have saved them.”

  “From the dates on the coins she wouldn’t have had time,” said Mr. Smith.

  Richard smiled. “You miss little, Mr. Smith.”

  The Bow Street man shrugged. “It’s my job, my lord.”

  “What else did you notice?”

  “That the girl didn’t kill herself, my lord. The knife went in at the wrong angle for that.”

  Richard’s control remained absolute but it would have been better if the officer had called it suicide. Less chance of scandal spreading. “I suggest you busy yourself finding the missing two servants. If they didn’t kill her, they may know something important about the murder.”

  The man regarded Richard with new respect and perhaps some suspicion. “I shall set my enquiries in train immediately, my lord.” He never took his gaze off Richard, who met his stare and then looked away to where I stood. They made an unusual
contrast, the plainly dressed, short, stout man and the taller, elegant peacock but they had the same aims and neither fully trusted the other.

  “Are you ready to leave, my lady?”

  I crossed the room to join him. “As soon as you wish, my lord.”

  He stood. “I brought the phaeton for speed, so if you don’t object to sitting beside me in a racing vehicle, we can go now. Or I can send your carriage for you.”

  I hadn’t had the opportunity of watching him drive yet “Do you drive well?”

  He grinned but only briefly. “Tolerably. I can undertake not to overset us.”

  “In that case, I’m ready.” I turned to address Aunt Godolphin. “I’m sorry we should visit you under such trying circumstances. I hope we can come again soon, though?”

  She shook her head. “It’s too much to hope for.”

  Kind-hearted Lizzie reassured her. “Oh, we wouldn’t dream of abandoning you at a time like this. When I tell Martha, I’m sure she’ll come to see you at once.”

  Aunt Godolphin smiled wanly but said no more until Richard executed a perfect bow over her hand and then her smile became stronger. She obviously enjoyed that and it served to make up for the sketchy one when he’d arrived.

  Richard bowed to Lizzie and Ruth, nodded to Mr. Smith and we left the room.

  Chapter Four

  PAUSING ONLY TO DON outdoor clothing, we went out to the phaeton. After he helped me up to the passenger seat and climbed up to his seat, Richard turned to me before he drove off. “I’m sorry to drag you away so precipitately but Smith strikes me as a shrewd man and I don’t think he’ll give up easily. We can expect another visit from him, that’s for sure.”

  I nodded in agreement but didn’t ask any questions. Not here in the street.

  The phaeton was in the latest style, high perched and well sprung, making it a fast and responsive vehicle with the right horses, and Richard drove a pair of greys I wished Tom was here to see. Tom always fancied himself a connoisseur of horseflesh and these were beautiful, high-stepping thoroughbreds, groomed to within an inch of their lives. Richard drove confidently and well, though not too fast. Every time he took a corner, we were pitched sideways and I only just stopped myself clutching the sides of my seat. When Richard looked at me, I managed a smile but he wasn’t fooled. He laughed. “It can take some time to get used to, my sweet. It is a little high but I promise you it’s completely safe.”