Dinner Most Deadly Page 11

  “What, never?” Pickett asked, mildly surprised. “It would appear that you were one of the few men in London devoid of murderous instincts where Sir Reginald was concerned.”

  “Oh, I’m no saint; I hated and despised the man—not only for what he did to me, but for what, if rumor is to be believed, he has done to others, as well. But I am not the one who killed him.” Apparently fearing that Pickett was not convinced, the Irishman added hastily, “Look here, if I had shot the man, is it likely I would leave my pistol behind, knowing full well that it might identify me as the killer? It seems to me that someone else used my weapon and planted it there to divert suspicion from himself.”

  “You may be right.” Pickett made a notation in his occurrence book. “When did you notice the gun was missing?”

  “On my way home last night. I thought I was being followed—a false alarm, as it turned out—and reached into my pocket for my pistol. And damme if I didn’t find that thing there instead.” He nodded his head in the direction of a drunkenly leaning side table, on which was precariously perched a porcelain figurine of a shepherdess holding a crooked staff in one hand and cradling a lamb with the other. He gave a short bark of laughter. “A lot of use that would have been in a fight! I suppose I might have smashed the thing against an attacker’s skull, but if he’d had an accomplice, I would have been out of luck.”

  “There’s one mystery solved, at any rate,” Pickett said, crossing the room to examine the piece more closely. “Lady Dunnington noticed a Dresden shepherdess missing from her drawing room mantel this morning. In fact, I believe she gave her downstairs maid quite a bit of grief over it.”

  “Accused the girl of stealing it, did she?” asked Mr. Kenney with a knowing grin. “As I recall, that maid looked to be a dainty little armful. By all means, return the thing to her, Mr. Pickett, and be sure you claim a hero’s reward. One of us might as well benefit from the switch,” he added with a shrug.

  “Then you have no idea how the piece came to be in your pocket?”

  “None at all.”

  Pickett lifted the figurine and weighed it in his hands. “I assume it was placed there for the weight, so that you would not notice the absence of your pistol until the deed was done.”

  “I daresay you are right.”

  “I’m afraid this will have to be kept in evidence, at least for a while.” Pickett tucked the pistol back into his waistband and picked up the Dresden shepherdess. “I’ll see that it’s returned to you as soon as may be.”

  Mr. Kenney nodded his agreement, and Pickett took his leave. By the time he returned to Bow Street, the afternoon was far advanced.

  “What’s all this?” asked Mr. Colquhoun, seeing his most junior Runner enter the Bow Street Public Office with a porcelain figurine under his arm.

  “A curious thing, sir.” Pickett set the shepherdess on the magistrate’s bench. “I found out who the pistol belongs to—an Irishman named Martin Kenney. It seems the gun was taken from his pocket, and this thing placed there instead.”

  The magistrate picked up the figurine and examined it from all angles. “Curious, indeed. A counterweight, I suppose, to conceal the theft of the weapon.”

  “It would appear that way.”

  “Dare I inquire about that other little matter?”

  Pickett took a deep breath. “I told her ladyship, sir.”

  “And?” prompted the magistrate.

  “And she—”

  At that moment a freckle-faced urchin entered the premises, waving a folded piece of paper and bellowing, “Pickett! Message for Mr. John Pickett!”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Pickett said, then called to the pint-sized messenger. “I’m John Pickett. You say you have a message for me?”

  The boy held the note just out of Pickett’s reach. “What’s it worth to you?”

  Pickett, suspecting he knew from whom the message had come and what it would contain, thought he would pay a great deal more not to have to receive it at all. Still, he dug in his pocket and gave the lad a tuppence.

  The boy glared down at the copper coin in his hand, then back up at Pickett. “Is that all?” he grumbled.

  “Take it or leave it,” Pickett said with a shrug. “It makes no difference to me.”

  The boy wavered, apparently struggling with the question of whether to hold out for a less paltry recompense. The bleak expression on Pickett’s face, however, led him to conclude that he was unlikely to receive a greater reward for what was obviously bad news. He surrendered the note, then turned and left the Bow Street office, presumably in search of more lucrative commissions.

  Pickett, turning away from the magistrate’s bench, broke the seal and unfolded the single sheet.

  Mr. Pickett, it read, my solicitor, Mr. Walter Crumpton of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, has agreed to attend me on Thursday at ten o’clock to discuss the steps necessary for obtaining an annulment. Since the matter concerns you as nearly as it does me, I hope you will be free to call at that hour as well. If not, you have only to inform me, and I will request that Mr. Crumpton postpone his visit until a more convenient hour. It was signed, Julia Fieldhurst.

  Thursday. And today was Tuesday, so two days hence. His “marriage” had lasted less than forty-eight hours.

  “Well, what of it?” asked Mr. Colquhoun, discerning by his young protégé’s countenance that the news was not good.

  “It’s from Lady Fieldhurst, sir. She—she has arranged a meeting with her solicitor for the purpose of discussing an annulment.”

  “I see,” said the magistrate with unwonted gentleness. “I’m sorry, John.”

  Pickett, staring down at the note as if he could change its contents through sheer force of will, looked up and gave his mentor a brave little smile. “It’s all right, sir. I—I never really expected anything else.” He glanced once more at the note in his hand. “She asks me to call on Thursday at ten, and I have no idea how long such a meeting might last. May I have that morning free?”

  “Take the whole day, if you wish,” Mr. Colquhoun said, entertaining thoughts of Lady Fieldhurst that were far from loving.

  “Thank you, sir, but I—I think I would prefer to stay busy.”

  Mr. Colquhoun nodded absently. Since ordering John Pickett’s father transported to Botany Bay for thievery some ten years previously, he had felt a certain responsibility for the fourteen-year-old boy who had been left behind. Eventually he had found a place for the lad on the Bow Street force, first with the foot patrol and later among the Runners. As his affection for the young man had grown, so too had his conviction that John Pickett was destined for greater things. Precisely what those things were, he had no idea, but it should certainly prove interesting to see where his protégé would be ten or even twenty years hence. A self-made man himself, when Mr. Colquhoun had learned of Pickett’s dilemma in regards to Lady Fieldhurst it had occurred to him that a well-born wife, if she loved him, might do much to facilitate the young man’s rise. While in Scotland, he had hinted—no, he had more than hinted, he had practically accused her ladyship of toying with John Pickett’s affections to gratify her own vanity. So great had been her ladyship’s indignation on that occasion that he had begun to wonder . . .

  But he knew enough of Society to know that it would be a very rare viscountess indeed who would settle for marriage to an impecunious young man without birth or breeding to recommend him, whatever that young man’s personal charms. As tempting as it was to condemn Lady Fieldhurst for her haste in seeking an annulment, in all fairness he could hardly blame her for the ways of the world to which she belonged. And yet he had hoped that somehow the thing might be resolved in a manner that would not bring pain to one who had become as dear to him as his own son.

  Heaving a dissatisfied sigh, he dismissed Pickett and called for the next case to approach the bench.

  CHAPTER 11

  In Which John Pickett Plans a Journey

  The November days had grown short, and the lamplighters were making their
rounds when Pickett left the Bow Street office and set out on the short walk to his hired lodgings in Drury Lane. Along the way he stopped at a bookstore, where he caused the proprietor considerable annoyance by studying the latest edition of Debrett’s Correct Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland for fully ten minutes before leaving the shop without making a single purchase.

  Night had fallen by the time he reached his own residence. Not being inclined toward conversation, he offered a diffident greeting to his landlady, Mrs. Catchpole, and then climbed the stairs from the chandler’s shop on the ground floor to his own two rooms above. These were cold and dark when he entered, a situation he set out to remedy as quickly as possible. A single candle stood on a small table near the door and, having lit this so that he might move about the room without barking his shins against the furniture, he knelt before the grate and built a fire. Once the kindling had caught hold, he set a kettle of water to boil, then lit a lamp from the candle flame and took a long, hard look about the rooms he had called home for the last five years.

  Perhaps it was because he had spent most of the day traipsing about the wealthiest and most fashionable part of London, but tonight his lodgings appeared even smaller, older, and shabbier than usual. It occurred to him that even Mr. Kenney, who appeared to be no plumper in the pocket than Pickett was himself, had an estate in Ireland to offer a wealthy bride; he, John Pickett, had nothing. Small wonder Lady Fieldhurst could not contact her solicitor quickly enough! He tried to picture her living here as his wife—heating water over the fire for tea, perhaps, or setting the small table for dinner—and failed utterly.

  His gaze drifted to a door in the wall adjacent to the fireplace, and thence to the darkened bedroom beyond. While it was undoubtedly pleasant to imagine lying in the narrow bed with “Mrs. Pickett” at his side (or, better yet, underneath him), that scenario was the least likely of all; it would not have been that way, even had he accepted her invitation to become her lover. No, he thought bitterly, any such assignation (assuming Lord Rupert was mistaken, and her courage would not have failed her at the crucial moment) would have been conducted at her house in Curzon Street, on a thick, soft mattress with perfumed sheets, and as dawn approached he would have tiptoed down the stairs, carrying his shoes in his hand lest the servants hear him slinking away like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs.

  The wisps of steam beginning to rise off the kettle told him the water was hot, and so, shaking off a thoroughly unproductive train of thought, he set about preparing himself a cup of tea. While it steeped, he shrugged off his brown serge coat and hung it over the back of one of the two chairs beneath the table, then pulled the other chair close to the fire and took up a tattered copy of The Vicar of Wakefield from the mantel. He sat down, tugged off his boots, propped his stocking feet up on the hearth, and opened his book.

  Alas, his present mood was not conducive to reading. After skimming the same paragraph four times without yet comprehending it, he closed the book and set it aside, then padded in his stocking feet to fetch his occurrence book from the pocket of his discarded coat. Returning to the fire, he flipped back in his notes to the beginning of the case and began to review them.

  He had been at this task for perhaps twenty minutes when he saw something that made him sit up straighter in his chair and draw the lamp closer. He turned back five pages—no, six—and reread Dulcie’s account of the evening. It was just as he had thought. Captain Sir Charles Ormond had stated that it had taken him between thirty and forty-five minutes to return to the barracks from Audley Street. At the time, Pickett had found nothing amiss with this claim. But the captain had not walked; according to Dulcie, he had ridden. And a horse should have been able to cover the distance in substantially less time, especially at so late an hour, when there would have been little traffic in the streets. What would account for those extra minutes? Had the captain stopped somewhere along the way? Or had he, perhaps, lingered in the mews out of sight until the other guests had departed, then returned to the house and shot Sir Reginald?

  It appeared that Captain Sir Charles Ormond, whom Pickett had all but eliminated from his list of suspects, was now back on that list—and very near the top.

  “There is one thing about this case that puzzles me,” Pickett confided to Mr. Colquhoun the next morning, leaning against the wooden railing in front of the magistrate’s bench.

  Mr. Colquhoun looked up at him from beneath bushy white brows. “Only one?”

  “Well, several actually, but one thing in particular stands out.”

  “And what is that?” asked the magistrate.

  “Why would anyone choose to kill Sir Reginald now? As I see it, Lord Dernham and Captain Sir Charles Ormond had the most compelling reasons for wanting the man dead. But Lord Dernham’s wife has been dead for three years, and the disaster involving Captain Sir Charles’s regiment took place almost a decade ago. Why would either of them decide to kill him now, when they had managed to restrain themselves years ago, at a time when their losses were still fresh?”

  “Have you eliminated the other suspects, then?”

  “No, sir, not entirely. But Lord Rupert Latham appears to have no motive, while as for Lord Edwin Braunton, he makes no secret of his hatred for Sir Reginald, but the only connection between the two men that I can see is the fact that their daughters were at school together. Even Mr. Kenney’s banishment from his club, and his loss of a wealthy bride, would seem to pale in comparison to the deaths of innocent persons at Sir Reginald’s hands.”

  “And yet you and I have both known men to kill for less,” observed Mr. Colquhoun.

  Heaving a sigh, Pickett drummed his fingers on the railing. “Very true, sir. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter how compelling I might find the motive; the murderer’s reasoning is the only one that counts. I keep asking myself what in Sir Reginald’s recent history could recall someone’s mind to past grievances to such an extent that they would be moved to kill him. If I could just discover that, I can’t help thinking the rest would fall into place.”

  “Very well, and how do you intend to accomplish this?”

  “With your permission, sir, I should like to make a brief visit to Leicestershire.”

  The magistrate frowned. “Why Leicestershire, if I may be so bold as to inquire?”

  Pickett came up off the railing and began to pace, his hands clasped lightly behind his back. “I keep coming back to the same question: ‘Why now?’ And I keep getting the same answer.”

  “Which is?”

  “As far as I can see, the only thing in Sir Reginald’s life that has changed recently has to do with the marriage of his daughter.”

  “But Miss Montague is living in London, is she not?”

  “She is, sir, but I don’t think it would do me the slightest bit of good to question her in any case. To judge by Miss Montague’s behavior upon learning of her father’s death, she would seem to be very fond of him; apparently she has been shielded from any rumors regarding his unsavory reputation. I don’t think she could tell me anything of value—or that she would, even if she knew anything.”

  “And you believe there is someone in Leicestershire who could?”

  “Lord Edwin Braunton’s daughter Catherine. The two girls were at school together in Bath, and both were presented at Court this past spring. Being familiar with the family and yet some distance removed from it, she might have insights Sir Reginald’s own daughter would lack, or be unwilling to divulge.”

  “I gather this daughter lives in Leicestershire?”

  Pickett nodded. “Lord Edwin has an estate there. I looked him up in Debrett’s.” Seeing his mentor was not convinced, he added, “Call it playing a hunch, sir.”

  Mr. Colquhoun performed a few mental calculations. “Almost a hundred miles each way. At least two days on the road north and another two back, not to mention overnight accommodations and meals along the way. Damned expensive hunch, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,
sir, I suppose so,” Pickett conceded with a sigh, then brightened as a new thought occurred to him. “I could save a little by purchasing a seat on the roof of the coach, if that would help.”

  But this suggestion found no favor with the magistrate. “In this weather? Much use you’ll be around here if you catch your death of cold! Very well, Mr. Pickett, you have my permission to play your hunch. You may leave first thing in the morning.”

  “Thank you, sir. But—”

  “Yes? But what?”

  “The annulment, sir. I was to meet with Lady Fieldhurst and her solicitor tomorrow morning at ten.”

  “Her ladyship has survived being married to you for this long; I daresay another se’ennight won’t kill her.”

  “No, sir,” said Pickett, pleased out of all proportion at being able to keep his “wife” for another week.

  Mr. Colquhoun’s permission notwithstanding, there were several things Pickett needed to do before his departure the following morning. The first of these involved another visit to the Horse Guards; the second (and to his mind, by far the most important) concerned paying a call on Lady Fieldhurst in Curzon Street.

  Upon arriving at the Horse Guards in Whitehall, Pickett entered the stables, blinking as his eyes adjusted from the bright autumn sun to the relative darkness within. Once the spots had faded from his vision, he began questioning stable hands, and soon located the groom responsible for the care of the captain’s mount.

  “I understand Captain Sir Charles Ormond left the barracks two nights ago to go to a dinner party in Audley Street,” he began. “I wonder if you can tell me if he took out his horse that night, or if he went on foot.”

  To his surprise, the groom chuckled. “As a matter of fact, he did both. He rode to Mayfair right enough, but he came back on foot, leading poor Diablo by the reins.”

  “Why should he do such a thing?” asked Pickett, trying to see how this scenario might dovetail with murder, and failing to see any possible connection.