Page 51

When he arrived at Bow Street around midnight, the first person Marcus saw in the panelled vestibule was Sir Lionel Hall, and it was plain at a glance that he was a broken, bewildered man.

Marcus, who had always disliked the pompous old fool, took him by the hand and said, ‘I’m so sorry, sir.

I learned what had happened a short while ago, and came here as soon as I had told my mother. Is there anything I can do to help?’

The baronet, who seemed to have aged ten years in a couple of hours, said, ‘It’s very good of you, Thornfalcon.

Your brother… I have never been so shocked in my life.

This bumptious Runner fellow says he has all sorts of evidence, which he has laid before the magistrates, and they authorised him to arrest my poor daughter.

Arrest her, like a common criminal, and bring her here! ’

‘Will they release her on your recognisance, do you think?’

‘My lawyer fellow believes they will. A lady – a widow of a peer, and a mother of a young child, they surely cannot drag her off to some filthy gaol populated by the scum of the earth. He’s in there arranging matters now, and then I will be able to take her home where she belongs.

My poor wife, and the innocent child – we must keep it from the dear little thing at all costs.

But how? That’s what I ask myself, Thornfalcon: how?

It will be all anyone can talk of! It will be spread across the newspapers, every gutter rag, and we shall be disgraced! ’

Marcus could not fail to notice that Sir Lionel had made no great protestations of his daughter’s innocence; he seemed more horrified that someone of Lavinia’s rank should be arrested at all, rather than anxious to stress the fact that she couldn’t possibly have done any of the things she’d been accused of.

Perhaps it was just shock and it was wrong to refine too much upon it…

The man could hardly know what he was saying.

Sir Lionel’s eyes brightened suddenly and he said, reaching out and clutching Marcus’s arm in a fevered grip, ‘If you sit down with them and reason with them, it may help! You must tell them directly that you are positive your brother cannot have been murdered in this preposterous fashion they speak of, or if he was, they should look first at his servants and other such low persons rather than Lavinia! His own wife! Go in there, man, and tell them!’

‘I have no knowledge of what happened, sir, and they would doubtless tell me so directly,’ Marcus said a little stiffly, greatly disliking this assumption, however desperate the man was.

‘I was not even in the country at the time. I cannot believe they will pay any mind to a bare assertion of disbelief from me, if they do feel they have proof. And as you say, they must have evidence of some kind, or the magistrates would not have authorised Pennyfeather to arrest her. I am very sorry for it, but I cannot see that my intervention could do any good at all. I certainly shall not be slandering my own staff without a shred of evidence.’

‘Damn your staff! But you know the encroaching fellow responsible for this disaster?’ Sir Lionel cried, suspicion darkening his features.

‘Only because he was set on at Sir Humphrey Aubertin’s insistence to investigate the attack on my fiancée. He came to interview us about the matter, and I met him then. I have no further knowledge of the officer.’

That wasn’t quite true, of course, but Marcus had no intention at all of allowing this weak man’s ire to fall on his invalid mother.

It would be unconscionable if Sir Lionel thought to pressure her to set aside any hope of justice for her son’s killer for the sake of – what?

The avoidance of scandal? So that that killer could live an easier life, and escape the consequences of her actions?

It was not to be thought of, and he was sure his mother would agree.

She would tell the baronet no, but the scene would be painful for her, especially if Sir Lionel in his rage and grief began abusing her, and he must prevent it if he could.

‘I must go, I think, sir, if there is nothing else that can be done,’ he added.

‘I am glad for you, if you will soon be able to take her home where she will be comfortable.’ It seemed he couldn’t say her name, not here.

‘I am certain she would not like to encounter me in such circumstances and in such a place, and it would be best then if I am gone before she comes out, to spare her that embarrassment.’

Sir Lionel was perhaps about to agree, or to demur – Marcus would never know.

An inner door opened as he spoke, and Lavinia emerged on the arm of a spare, greying man who must be the baronet’s lawyer, and behind her, one of the magistrates, by his dress, and Pennyfeather, and trailing after them all, another younger officer, a burly man in a frieze coat.

The senior Runner seemed to wince when he saw Lord Thornfalcon, a sentiment which Marcus could only share, but if had meant to speak, even just a word of greeting, he had no chance.

Lavinia hurried into speech the moment she set eyes on her former lover.

‘Oh, Thornfalcon, you have come to save me, and to tell these foolish men that it is all a mistake!’ she said brightly.

‘I am so glad that you had the goodness to come on my behalf, and I thank you for it.’ The words were rational, extremely so, but there was something disturbing in her tone – it was not that she was agitated, which would have been understandable, but that she was not.

She might have been speaking about some mildly annoying error with an order in a shop – the wrong sort of muslin, perhaps, had been delivered, or a piece of china, not a very expensive one, had been discovered to be broken and must be replaced.

It was not the tone of a woman who fully understood that she had been accused of deliberate murder, still less the murder of the brother of the man she was smiling so graciously on.

Marcus had seen her icily furious in the recent past because a footman had spilled a drop or two of wine on her silken gown. And yet now she smiled.

Her father must have had the same reaction, for he said in a flustered voice, ‘Don’t worry, my dear, Lord Thornfalcon is here to see if he can help, as you say, but there is no need for him to trouble himself. I shall take you home directly now. It is late and I am sure you must be very tired.’

‘Not really, Papa,’ she replied with a smirk that seemed to imply that her father was making rather a fuss over nothing.

‘I was at a masquerade – but of course you can all see that by my domino; how silly of me – but I had no opportunity to dance tonight, I can’t recall why, and I do so love dancing.

Do you remember how we used to dance together, Marcus?

People used to say that we were the handsomest couple in the West Country, and I’m sure that was true. ’

‘Yes,’ he said in as level a tone as he could manage. ‘I do remember.’

‘Come, Lavinia, dear,’ her father insisted, taking her arm and tugging at it. ‘This is no time to stand talking. The carriage is waiting outside. The horses will take cold, and your mama will worry if we are late home.’

‘Very well,’ she said with a touch of impatience, her eyes still on Marcus.

‘I will come, but only if you agree to visit me tomorrow, Thornfalcon. Priscilla is longing to see her… her uncle. I was about to say father, but of course you are not that. But you could be, if you wished to. Yes, Papa, I do not know why you must be in such a rush, but I am coming.’ They passed outside without further discussion, and the burly young Runner followed them, as he must have been instructed to do.

‘You know my views on this travesty,’ the lawyer said in exasperated tones to the magistrate once they had gone, ignoring everyone else who was present.

‘You can’t put that woman in the dock. She’s not in her right mind.

She doesn’t fully understand what’s happening to her.

It makes my hair stand on end to hear her talking as though she were at a damn tea party and they’ve run out of her favourite cake. ’

‘Doesn’t want to understand, perhaps,’ the other man said shortly.

‘She was sufficiently agitated, as I understand it, when her crime was first put to her. Made all sorts of threats that showed she knew exactly how serious it was. But that’s enough for tonight.

Go home. All of you—’ he waved vaguely ‘—go home! Even you, Pennyfeather. I don’t know if you’ve done a good day’s work or a bad one, but it’s plenty for now.

Try not to arrest anyone of high rank for a few hours, if you can manage it.

Stay away from White’s and Brooks’s and Carlton House, I’m begging you. ’

Marcus and the Runner made their way slowly outside, neither of them wanting to encounter Lavinia and her father again. A light drizzle was beginning to fall and the streets were gleaming where lamplight struck them.

Pennyfeather shivered and said, ‘The lawyer’s right in a way; she is crazy. She thinks the whole world’s organised for her convenience, as if she were Marie Antoinette. But then a lot of aristocrats seem to think that, don’t they? Are they all mad, my lord?’

‘Maybe. But they’re not all killers, or I hope they aren’t. I wasn’t meant to be a lord, you know – that was my brother, and he was a good man, not some spoiled, conceited fop. I’m just a soldier, or I was.’

‘Yes, I expect you’ve seen a thing or two in Spain and Portugal. But I’ll wager you never saw anything like tonight.’

Marcus laughed mirthlessly. ‘No. And I don’t ever want to see it again.’

‘You don’t think she ought to be tried? A poor man, or a poor woman for that matter, could be crazy as a coot and would still hang for crimes much less serious than hers.’

‘I don’t know. It’s not my decision, and I’m glad it isn’t.

I believe my mother would want me to thank you, Pennyfeather.

If my brother really was killed, I suppose I too must be glad you got to the bottom of it.

I should not dwell on our long ignorance of the truth.

He didn’t deserve such an end; that’s one thing I am certain of. ’

‘I’m sure he didn’t. She drugged him with belladonna that she supposedly uses to make her eyes bright.

They are always very bright, aren’t they?

So perhaps she does. There was a little bottle in her chamber that was full, the chambermaid saw it there when she was cleaning, and then next day after your brother’s accident, it was almost empty.

She can’t have used it all herself in so short a time – it’s powerful stuff, one of the strongest poisons in nature.

The maid’s a sharp girl and suspected some manner of foul play, but was too canny to let her mistress know.

She very wisely kept her counsel, showed no sign of awareness, then gave up her job for some invented personal reason and moved away as soon as she was able.

Out of her reach. Your servants down in Somerset all have strong opinions about Her Ladyship, and no desire to cross her.

I talked to them, and after a bit of back and forth, I was given the maid’s direction, and she was persuaded to tell me what she saw.

She’ll make a good witness; she’s obviously telling the truth, or so it seems to me.

Whether it’s proof enough for a judge and jury – well, we’ll see. ’

‘I’ll have to tell my mother – she will want to know exactly what happened.’

The Runner shook his head. ‘I know it will be hard for her – for you all. It’s not what you need, when you’re about to be married. But dangerous people like Lady Lavinia need to be stopped.’

‘That’s what my mother said. She thinks very highly of you.’

‘It’s mutual, I assure you, my lord.’

Marcus smiled, somewhat against his will. He couldn’t help liking this eccentric man. ‘You won’t be dragging her to the guillotine, then?’

‘Not just yet. They keep me busy enough catching criminals, and there’s always more of those.’

They parted, and Marcus made his weary way home, though he did not expect to sleep, his brain so torn between happiness and distress. It had been a quite extraordinary day, and he could not imagine what tomorrow might bring.