Page 10 of Ghost in the Garden (Murder in Moonlight #3)

S olomon went first to the office, to change into his more normal garb. He didn’t wish to shock his neighbors—or his servant—by being seen in these worn and ill-fitting clothes. But when he got there, he found the lights still on, and Janey in the waiting room, eating sandwiches and drinking tea with a ragged young man who looked vaguely familiar.

They both sprang up as Solomon entered with his key.

“There you are,” Janey exclaimed. “We was just about to give up on you. This is Mr. Knox. He wanted to wait.”

Solomon’s eyes dropped to the plate of sandwiches.

“I bought ’em meself, with me own bleeding money,” Janey said aggressively.

“Then you will be reimbursed,” Solomon said mildly. “You’re not required to stay so late, you know. It’s after midnight.”

Mollified, Janey said, “Knew you’d be back ’cause you said you would. Mr. Knox here came at six.”

Solomon held out his hand to Knox. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long.”

The man shrugged. He still looked white and ill, but his eyes had lost something of that terrible dullness Solomon recalled from St. Giles. “Not as if I had an appointment. I’d nowhere else I had to be, and Miss Janey said it was fine to wait.”

“Of course. Come through to the office. Perhaps you’d make some tea, Janey? And then take that waiting hackney back home.”

“Really?” She brightened. Reaching for the remains of her sandwich, she stuffed it in her mouth and went off to the kitchen, while Solomon led Knox into his office.

They sat in the comfortable chairs. Janey brought the remains of the sandwiches.

“Dr. Tizsa said I should come and talk to you. He thinks you’re investigating Lambert as well as Gregg.” Knox paused, rubbing his forehead. “First, though, I meant to thank you for sending him—Dr. Tizsa—to us. He’s worked wonders already for some of those poor… Well, he’s made a difference.”

“He’s a good man and a clever doctor.”

“He fought for people’s rights,” Knox said. “In Hungary. Not just protests. Actual war.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t like it to come to that here.”

“It’s a different situation,” Solomon said vaguely, trying not think of the atrocities and the slaughter of the slave revolt in Jamaica, which had been put down so mercilessly, only a few years before the law finally granted them freedom.

Knox stirred uncomfortably. “I say that because I don’t want you to think I’m just an agitator, a troublemaker. I’m not. I don’t want bloodshed. I just want a bit of fairness. I don’t want people to die in squalor, just for other people’s greed. That’s wrong.”

“Yes,” Solomon agreed. “You speak like an educated man, Mr. Knox.”

“I went to school. Apprenticed to a carpenter, found I was good at it. My master kept me on after, while I saved up to get married and start my own business. Got married first. We had a decent room, but I…I got involved in other people’s fights. People who couldn’t read and write, people who had nothing and no one to stand up for them. I wrote to their landlords for them, tried to get regulations enforced. Worked, too. Word got around, and I helped with some employment issues at a factory. Threat of strikes can work wonders in the right situation. We might not have achieved a fair wage, but it was better one.”

Janey brought tea and poured it, setting the cups and saucers before each of them. Then, rather to Solomon’s surprise, she poured one for herself and sat down on the hard chair, notebook in her lap.

Knox did not appear to mind her presence. Perhaps he had already told her.

“Good for you,” Solomon said.

“In one way. Not in another. I got the attention of Caleb Lambert, who owned the factory.”

“I see…”

“I lost my job. Suddenly, I wasn’t needed. And no one else would take me on, even though I’m a skilled carpenter. It was Lambert’s doing. I found out he’s a vindictive ba—er, man. Came out of Devil’s Acre with grubby money and big plans I’d interfered with. For his own reputation he had to ruin me, show I should be grateful not to get my legs broken or vanish in the Thames.

“We couldn’t pay the rent on our pleasant little room. Cathy couldn’t get work either. Plus, she was pregnant and didn’t keep well. We got a cheaper room, shared with a decent family, curtained off so at least we all had some privacy, but the money still dwindled too fast, especially with doctor’s fees for Cathy.”

Knox swallowed. “I’m sure you can guess the rest. I picked up casual work when I could, but it was never enough. We ended up in that hellhole that collapsed. I had nothing to lose, or so I thought. I couldn’t believe it when I saw Lambert there, conferring with that smug sod, Fraser.”

“Lambert owned the building?” Solomon said eagerly.

“Huxley Gregg owns it officially, but he’s in Lambert’s pocket.”

Not anymore, he isn’t. “Do you have proof of this?”

“Every rent day, Lambert’s at Gregg’s office. I’ve seen them—nothing else to do, have I? I wouldn’t like to say how they divide the spoils, but I’m sure the lion’s share goes to Lambert. It wasn’t just our building—it’s lots of them, including where they so generously put the survivors when ours fell in on us. They’ve even got some kind of public subscription going to rebuild it, and a fine place that’s going to be. On paper.”

Solomon leaned forward. “And Gregg was organizing this public funding?” His own charity must have contributed to it. Why had he not kept a closer eye on that?

“Lambert, though he has other people to speak for him. He’s even started ordering materials for the build, and they’re far inferior to those proposed on paper.”

“They could be for his other projects… But one way or another, he’s committing fraud.”

“If you can prove it.”

“I probably can.”

*

Goldie’s heart beat like a rabbit’s as she crept up the stairs with the master’s morning cup of tea. Normally, her father or one of the lads took it, but they were all arguing about Silver, the new girl, and Goldie took advantage of their distraction.

She knocked and went in, to find the master was already up and partially dressed. Her mouth went dry at the sight of his muscles rippling as he pulled the shirt over his head. Since he didn’t acknowledge her presence, she walked up to him, holding the cup and saucer in front of her like a sacred offering.

He noticed her at last, and an amused smile curved his lips.

“Thank you,” he said gravely, taking it from her.

She didn’t step back. “Are you well, sir?” she asked boldly.

As she had hoped, his attention lingered. It did in the mornings. Denise said it was because he didn’t sleep with Mrs. Lambert anymore, and men’s urges were always strongest when they woke. But Denise thought she knew everything, because of Robin. Goldie knew the master was better than that, more than that. And she longed to take Mrs. Lambert’s place in his heart and his bed.

“Very well, my dear. When did you grow so pretty?”

She tossed her head. “I’ve always been pretty, sir. And now I’m grown up.”

His eyes wandered over her like a caress she could almost feel on her hot skin.

“So you are,” he murmured.

She raised her face, very aware she stood too close to him, and that neither had moved back. His gaze lingered on her lips. Did she imagine the infinitesimal move toward her?

Please! Please…

A breath of laughter stroked her face. “Does your father know what a minx you are? Scarper before we both pay.”

Still, he didn’t step back, but he did begin to drink his tea, his eyes warm above it. And he had given her an order, so she smiled pertly and swaggered out, because she had got his attention and his dismissal had been reluctant.

One day…and soon. No mere footman for her. She would have the master.

*

“I want you to come with me this morning,” Angela said abruptly to Constance. She was drinking her morning tea in bed and clearly planning her day.

“Of course. Where are we going?”

Agela wrinkled her nose. “To the dressmaker. She’s far too snooty for my taste, but you might get better work out of her. You’ve certainly got better taste.”

“What are you looking for?”

“An evening gown for some charity event of Caleb’s. It means a lot to him that I go and we fit in. I suppose he reckons I can if I don’t open my mouth.”

“Oh, you can manage a polite good evening . And a yes, no, excuse me , or, when all else fails, indeed! Keep smiling and everyone will approve of your good manners and modesty.”

Angela laughed, a rare, pleasant sound that made Constance smile in return. “How do you know these things?”

Constance, who’d had little to do with respectable ladies and much to do with their husbands, said vaguely, “Several gentlemen have explained it to me.”

Constance had her own, discreet dressmaker, largely unfrequented by the rich and fashionable of Society, but any fears she harbored over accompanying Angela there were quickly laid to rest.

They traveled by coach, an old-fashioned but comfortable affair, with Bert clinging to the back. He waited outside the dressmaker’s, leaning against the vehicle, eyeing the passing shop girls and exchanging appreciative remarks with the coachman.

Angela’s dressmaker, no doubt chosen by Lambert, was a thoroughly fashionable shop run by a smart, middle-aged woman purporting to be from Paris and clearly used to catering to the rich and powerful women of London.

Lambert was indeed aiming high. And his wife’s discomfort in such an establishment was palpable. The assistants, and Madame Bouvier herself, were only too aware that Angela did not belong there.

“ Bonjour, madame ,” Madame Bouvier greeted her, smiling graciously. “May we help you?”

“Yes, I want an evening gown. Something like that one with—”

“When does madame require the gown?”

“Next Tuesday at the latest.”

Madame Bouvier shook her sleek head. “But no, madame, that is not possible!”

“It is, if you begin now.”

“We cannot possibly! The first appointment I have available is on Monday.”

“There are no other customers here now,” Angela pointed out.

“But I expect Lady Gilbert and her three daughters any moment, madame. I do not have time to attend you!”

Angela, who no doubt had faced down villains who would have caused madame to faint from terror, turned away chagrinned, but with no idea how to deal with one snobbish dressmaker.

Constance stepped forward. “What a pity,” she said. “You cannot truly believe that Lady Gilbert will attend at nine o’clock in the morning! If she has breakfasted by eleven, I shall be surprised. Never mind. Mrs. Lambert will go next door, as everyone advises.”

Madame’s eyebrows flew up.

Constance smiled and lowered her voice. “Perhaps you have forgotten that Mrs. Lambert pays promptly. Unlike your aristocratic clientele, who are—er…fashionably late. If they pay at all. Goodbye, madame.”

“Wait,” Madame Bouvier said, brushing past Constance to get at Angela. “It is true that Lady Gilbert is not the most punctual of my customers! I’m sure we have time to choose something suitable…”

Since Angela seemed to draw strength from Constance’s presence, she lingered in the shop, bored and anxious on her own account. She really needed to use this time at her own establishment. What she wanted to do was go to the Silver and Grey office and confront Solomon.

Talk to Solomon.

She should not have stormed off, shutting the door in his face. She could not believe he would end their partnership over such a silly quarrel, but he had always been one of the few men she could not read. She had hoped to be able to report any cellar discovery, or lack thereof, when next she saw him—it would at least have been an excuse to meet him before this evening. If he even intended to come this evening. But she had fallen asleep last night and not wakened until dawn. There had been no time and no opportunity to break into the cellar again. Angela was behaving as though last night had never been and that everything was fine between them.

In the meantime, Constance gave her advice on the new gown—fewer flounces and a softer-colored fabric. The dusky-pink silk was perfect, with modest yet exquisite lace trim around the neckline and hem.

“If madame is able to come for a fitting on Monday morning, we will try to finish all by Tuesday.”

“Thank you,” Angela said, and left the shop with incomparable dignity—an impression she spoiled by casting a wicked grin of triumph at Constance. “I wish I’d had you around last year.”

“Where now, ma’am?” Constance asked.

“You can go home,” Angela said. “I won’t need you. Bert, you come with me.”

Constance was disappointed. She had hoped to find out exactly where Angela went during her outings. But at least if she went back to the house, she could ask questions that might lead to the identity of the ghost.

Constance stood back submissively while Angela climbed into the carriage. Bert closed the door and suddenly, beyond him, Constance found herself looking straight at Janey.

She stood at the corner of Bond Street, dressed as a lady’s maid and looking bored, as though waiting for her mistress to emerge from one of the other shops.

On impulse, Constance stepped up to the carriage window, and Angela pulled it down.

“Would you mind if I went on some errands of my own before returning to the house?”

Angela, clearly understanding this was on her business, nodded at once. “Just be home before dinner.”

“Of course.”

“Blimey,” Bert said disgustedly. “You get more time off than you spend at work.”

“Perks of an upper servant,” Constance said grandly, and walked away.

Janey still lurked at the corner shop window. Constance pretended to pause to look in. But Janey’s attention seemed to be on a handsome if rather ragged young man leaning against a nearby lamppost. She nodded, and the man ambled off in the same direction as Angela’s carriage.

“Sorry, missus,” Janey said cheekily. “We’re following your missus. Mr. Grey’s orders. He wants to know where she goes.”

“Who is we ?” Constance managed faintly.

“Me and Lenny Knox,” Janey said, and skipped off.

Stunned as Constance was, she now had a reason to speak to Solomon. Instead, she walked westward along Oxford Street to her own establishment. It came as something of a shock to realize that Janey must have followed the carriage from Lambert’s house and Constance had not even noticed. So much for observation and detection. No wonder Solomon didn’t want her.

*

Solomon had thought of the task of following Angela Lambert last night, mostly from curiosity as to what the woman got up to all day, but partly to give Knox something to do that Solomon could pay him for, and provide distraction from the man’s unbearable loss. At the last minute this morning he had sent Janey with him, largely because of his early visitor.

His visitor was Juliet Silver.

She arrived at the Silver and Grey office a bare ten minutes after he did, and almost on Janey’s heels. Since Solomon himself opened the door to her, Juliet had no need to announce her name. She merely breezed past him into the hallway, saying appreciatively, “Very nice. Got a moment, duck?”

No one addressed Solomon as duck . He was sir , or Mr. Grey , or, very occasionally, some derogatory epithet he disdained hearing. Constance was the only person in years to call him by his Christian name. He should have resented duck for its lack of respect, the affront to his dignity. Bizarrely, he found he didn’t mind it. He might even have liked it.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting in here, ma’am?” He showed her into Constance’s office, where he had already lit the fire in determined hope that she would be back. Since Janey didn’t bat an eyelid when they passed her, he could tell they were not acquainted, and he felt obliged to keep it that way if it was what Constance wanted.

“I’ve taken your advice and moved out,” Juliet said abruptly. “Where’s this new shop of yours?”

Well, that will teach me to make promises I am not ready to keep immediately.

“One moment, if you please.”

He bade Janey take her a cup of tea and then come straight back to his office. He didn’t want her and Juliet chatting and discovering their mutual acquaintance. That was up to Constance. He knew the women she lived with were her friends, yet it was Solomon she had taken to her mother’s premises. That inspired both warmth and a sharp regret for last night’s behavior. He was threatening everything that had grown up between him and Constance.

Returning to his own office, where Knox had arrived, he came up with the plan to send Janey to watch the Lamberts’ house.

“She can go closer than you without the danger of being recognized,” he told Knox. “And when it comes to following Mrs. Lambert, you can take it in turns to be nearer her so she’s less likely to spot you. She’s usually with a bodyguard, remember, and he might well recognize you, too.”

He shook out a purse and gave a handful of coins to each of them. “For hackneys and lurking at food stands and tea shops. Don’t take chances.”

Knox nodded and rose to his feet. Since his clothes were on the ragged side and Solomon’s overcoat would have trailed on the ground, Solomon gave him his wool jacket to wear over his own for warmth. They looked an odd couple as they departed, but Solomon was glad to see a brightness about Knox’s eyes, a relief to be doing something, a need to go after the man he held responsible for the deaths of his wife and child and so many others.

A man needed a purpose. No one knew that better than Solomon. It was only recently he had discovered that making money, even improving the lot of his workforce, was not enough for him.

He took his tea through to the other office and sat down by the fire, opposite Juliet, who was looking around her with interest.

“She always had good taste, my Connie. No vulgar opulence for her. I bet her establishment looks more like a duchess’s drawing room.”

“Actually, it does, as far as I have seen. Where, Mrs. Silver, are your things?”

“The best of it’s at your back door,” she said brazenly. “I left more at a friend’s and sent some to Connie’s establishment. She’ll be fizzing mad, but she’ll keep it safe for me.”

Solomon stood up and went to haul the trunk through the back door and into the office.

“Thanks, duck. Now, you see I’ve taken you at your word and I’m trusting you, because Con does. You wouldn’t take advantage of me, would you? Charge me a fortune now you know I’m desperate?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.”

“I ain’t asking for favors, mind. I’ll pay a decent rent.”

“If you’re paying it to me, I don’t want you fencing.”

“Mr. Grey,” she said, shocked and offended, although her eyes were twinkling. “You already said. I never been respectable before, but I’ll try anything once.”

“Hmm. I shall need to pay a few calls, see what is available that might suit you.”

“You do that, duck. Finish your tea first, though. I ain’t in that much of a hurry. Where’s Connie?”

In Lambert’s house, where I left her. Deliberately, he quashed the resurgence of anxiety. If they found a way to make this work, he would have to learn to deal with such worries. “Working,” he said. “She may not be into the office, though I will try to speak to her later. Who’s the landlord of your old place?”

“Didn’t Connie tell you? It’s mine. I own it, legal like. Ain’t worth much, mind, all squashed up between its neighbors and all them stairs. But it’ll do.”

Solomon frowned, new ideas springing into his head. “No. No, she didn’t tell me that.”

“One of my regular gents left it to me when he turned up his toes, bless him. That’s when I gave up the old game and took to selling.”

“When you say gent,” Solomon said, “do you mean a gentleman as the world understands the term?”

“Lord no—common as muck, Charlie Roe, but he were decent.”

“Did Constance know him?”

“Met him once or twice, but she wouldn’t come with me when I moved there. I thought it might be fun, the two of us.”

There was hurt in her voice that she couldn’t quite hide, but no blame.

“Was he Constance’s father?” Solomon asked bluntly.

Juliet’s jaw dropped, her cup suspended just beneath her chin. “Is that what she thinks?”

“It might be.” It might be what she feared.

Juliet thought about it. “Nah. I didn’t know Charlie till later. Tell the truth, duck, I don’t know who he was and I don’t much care.”

“Constance cares.”

Her eyelashes, still long and luxurious like Constance’s, swept down over the slightly puffy skin beneath her eyes. “I was never enough for her. But I tried to tell her there’s no fairytales in real life. Does she hate me?”

“No. She just wants to belong somewhere, with people who make her comfortable.”

“In a nobs’ brothel?” Juliet said in disbelief.

“The women are her friends, her responsibility.”

“Her family,” Juliet said, and swallowed. “I never gave her that.”

Solomon’s breath caught. A tide of longing, warm and exciting and bright with sudden hope, crashed over him, knocking everything else aside.

“Why did you say what you did?” he blurted.

“What, duck?”

“That she would give up what she has, not for me but to be with me?”

Juliet stared at him, then gave a twisted smile. “’Cause I know my girl, son, whether she wants me to or not. She’s always had friends, even men friends who want to be more, but she never looked at any of ’em the way she looks at you. Up to you what you do about it, of course, but whatever the business we do here now, I won’t have…” She trailed off, as though scratching around for the right words to describe what she wouldn’t have.

“Neither will I,” he said hastily, trying to climb free of the glorious, terrifying dream that had overwhelmed him. What in hell had they been talking about? Her old premises. “Boggie,” he said with relief. “Does Boggie know you own the building?”

“Course he does.”

“He doesn’t want your selling business, legal or otherwise,” Solomon said with certainty. It was Boggie or his minion who had followed him and warned him off in Seven Dials. And now he knew why. “He wants your building to rent out the rooms. No wonder Lambert’s behind him.”