Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)
Secrets of a Lady: Chapter 31

Mélanie saw a tumult of feeling rush across her husband’s face. The slosh of ale and the clatter of cutlery drifted through the tavern. Someone was tossing dice. Someone else hummed a fragment of “Over the Hills and Far Away.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Charles said at last.

“I know.” Velasquez stood still and alert despite the weariness in his face. “I’d have sworn Kitty didn’t have any enemies. Of course, I’d also have sworn she didn’t have a lover.” He drew a breath, then glanced down at the table. “Her husband was away. You weren’t there. When I challenged you, I still half believed it was suicide because I couldn’t make sense of any other scenario. And because I wanted you to believe it. Because I wanted you to suffer. I thought you deserved to suffer.” He looked up at Charles again, his bloodshot eyes hard as a musket barrel. “You did deserve to suffer.”

“Granted.” Charles’s face was set with intensity. “You’re sure it isn’t just that you couldn’t face that she’d killed herself?”

“Every moment of that night is etched into my memory. I don’t see how she could have come by those marks or the damage to her gown without another person being involved.” Velasquez’s hand curled into a fist. “I’d give a great deal to know whom.”

“So would I,” Charles said.

The two men looked at each other for a moment, a whiff of understanding between them. “Thank you, Velasquez,” Charles said. “I appreciate your confidence.”

Velasquez inclined his head, a stiff, soldier’s nod. Then he frowned. “It’s odd, you know. He was there that night. The night Kitty died.”

“Who?”

“Lieutenant Jennings. But I daresay it’s just coincidence. He scarcely knew Kitty.”

“It’s still possible the ring is in the Constable house,” Charles said when he and Mélanie had left the smoky warmth of the tavern for the crisp bite of the street. “We could replace Roth and arrange a search of the house.”

“But by the time we explain the story and Mr. Constable is persuaded to go along with the search, it could take hours.”

“My thoughts exactly. And my instinct says the ring isn’t in the house.”

“Mine, too.” Mélanie fingered the silk braid that edged her cloak. “Charles, suppose she didn’t take it to Brighton with her at all?”

Two young men in coats with absurdly padded shoulders staggered out of the tavern, shouting for a hackney. Charles took Mélanie’s arm and began to walk along the pavement. “What makes you think she didn’t take the ring with her?”

“Her departure for Brighton seems to have been triggered by the arrival of Jennings’s letter and the ring. When she left she seemed to think she could be in danger if she stayed in London. As you pointed out, her refusal to give up the ring today implies that she feared grave consequences if she did so. The woman used to carry a pistol in her reticule. Perhaps she still did. We know she slept with a gun in her night table—either she had it there always or she put it there tonight because she feared we’d come after the ring. Whatever the truth of it, she was frightened, and she wasn’t a woman who frightened easily. It looks to me as though her fear was connected with the ring, though I can’t begin to think how. But if the ring was important yet potentially dangerous, I think I’d have hidden it rather than taking it to Brighton with me.”

“Well reasoned, Mel.” Charles swung round to look at her in the glow of a street lamp. His face was still drawn, but his eyes had the light of the chase. “She had little more than twenty-four hours between the arrival of Jennings’s letter and her own departure. She performed at the Drury Lane, she went to a tavern with Violet Goddard, she—”

“Sought out Jemmy Moore.”

“Who seems to have meant more to her than anyone.” Charles glanced up and down the street and flagged down a passing hackney before the inebriated young men by the tavern could commandeer it. “Jemmy Moore should be at Mannerling’s at this hour. We can collect Edgar from the Albany on the way. If we can’t learn anything from Moore, we’ll see what progress Roth has made at the Constable house.”

It was only when they were in the hackney that she said, “Velasquez was quite convincing when he claimed not to have been behind the attacks.”

“Quite.”

Without looking at him, she continued, “Raoul was convincing as well, but he’s a better actor.”

Charles turned his head toward her. “An admission. I’m impressed.”

“Raoul always said I’d make a better agent if I was quicker to admit I was wrong.” The threat of betraying tears pulled at her face. Raoul O’Roarke and their cause had been the center of her life. She had always known his greatest loyalty wasn’t to her and never would be. But she had trusted him far more than she would admit, even to herself. Yet another weakness. “I don’t trust my judgment of anyone anymore,” she said.

“I know the feeling.” To her surprise, Charles’s voice was more gentle than bitter. He was silent for a moment. “Oddly enough, after that last scene I’m less inclined to suspect O’Roarke.”

His words eased the knot of fear inside her. “Then you think Velasquez is lying about not being behind the attacks?”

“I’m not sure.”

She reached for the carriage strap as they rounded a corner. “The incident with the horse might have been an accident, but the rifle shot and the knife in my ribs certainly weren’t.”

“I know.”

“You don’t suppose someone else could be after the ring?”

She couldn’t see Charles’s face, but she could imagine him scowling in frustrated concentration. “It’s mad, but it’s the only alternative I can see to O’Roarke or Velasquez.”

“Charles.” She hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she should ask, but this would be their last chance to talk alone for God knew how long. “Can you think of anyone who might have killed Kitty?”

For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. “No.” His voice was rougher than it had been.

“What about the rest of her family? Suppose they’d found out about the pregnancy and couldn’t bear the scandal?”

“None of them were in Lisbon. Her mother had died a few years before. Her father was in the country. Both her brothers were off fighting.”

“A fellow officer of her husband’s who’d learned the truth?”

“Possibly, but I can’t imagine how anyone would have learned it. Velasquez only knew because Kitty told him.”

Mélanie pictured the winding paths in the embassy garden where Kitty Ashford had met her death, the curving footbridge, the rushing stream below. “Perhaps she stumbled across something in the garden that she wasn’t supposed to see?”

“You think someone killed her because she witnessed an amorous intrigue?”

“If the stakes were high enough, I suppose it’s possible. But there were a lot of intrigues in Lisbon that weren’t amorous.”

“Espionage?” Charles reached across the carriage and gripped her wrist. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing, darling, I swear it. I’m only speculating. I don’t know much about what was happening in Lisbon before I came there.”

He slackened his grip on her wrist. To her surprise, he laced his fingers through her own and let their clasped hands rest on the worn leather of the seat. “I admit I’d very much like to replace out. But it’s of little urgency beside the ring.”

“No. Unless—” The pieces of information sifted through her brain. “Unless it’s not coincidence that Jennings was at the embassy that night.”

“Jennings would have had no reason to kill Kitty. Velasquez was right, he scarcely knew her. Oh, I see.” She felt his sudden alertness. “The blackmail.”

“Suppose Jennings witnessed Kitty’s murder. Murder’s a secret a lot of people would pay to conceal.”

“And Jennings wrote to Helen Trevennen about it and she took up the blackmail. Possible, I suppose. I wonder—” His fingers tensed round her own, then relaxed. “Even if that were true, it still doesn’t take us to the ring. Which at present is all that matters.”

They had the hackney wait while they went into the Albany. They found Edgar pacing the carpet in Velasquez’s sitting room. On the drive to Mannerling’s, Charles gave the details of their talk with Velasquez and their conclusions about the ring. He made no mention of Velasquez’s revelations about Kitty’s death, and he glossed over the visit to Raoul. Edgar didn’t press him for details.

Mélanie could feel her brother-in-law trying to sort through the morass of new information. “It doesn’t make any sense that she’d be afraid of the ring,” he said.

“No sense at all,” Mélanie agreed. “Except that it’s the only theory that makes sense of her actions.”

Charles was sitting very still. “We can’t tell Jemmy Moore she’s dead.”

“Good God, Charles.” Edgar straightened up with a jerk. “Don’t you think he deserves to know?”

“Undoubtedly. I suspect the news will hit him as hard as it did Mr. Constable. But he’d want to run off and take his revenge. We wouldn’t get anything coherent out of him.” Charles paused a moment, glanced at Mélanie, then added, “Lying’s not pleasant, but at times it’s necessary.”

At Mannerling’s, the porter frowned at them through the eyehole, then slid the bolt back with a grudging scrape. “Mr. Morningham,” Charles said, handing over his cloak and hat. “Is he here tonight?”

The porter’s scowl deepened. He cast a pointed glance up the stairs at the broken section of balustrade. It had been closed off with a red velvet rope.

“We merely have a question to put to him,” Charles said. “We promise not to brawl.”

The porter moved to Mélanie and took her cloak from her shoulders. His hands were stiff. “Upstairs. Try the faro bank.”

Jemmy Moore spotted them as they came into the long room with the faro table. Instead of running away, he came toward them. “Did you replace her?” he asked as they met in the center of the room. He made no attempt to keep the eagerness from his voice.

“Not yet, I’m afraid.” When called upon to do so, Charles could lie with as much conviction as Mélanie herself could. “Could you spare us a moment? Perhaps we could go into the supper room?”

“Of course.” Moore squared his shoulders and offered his arm to Mélanie.

“Mr. Moore,” Mélanie said when they were clustered round one of the small tables near the supper buffet, “the last time you saw Miss Trevennen, did she give you anything to keep for her?”

“What?” Moore scratched his head. “Oh, you think she might have given me this ring you’re looking for? Sorry. I doubt Nelly had so much trust in me.”

“Did she say anything else about where she’d been that day?” Charles asked.

Moore frowned into his glass of champagne. “She’d obviously been to the theater—she still had some of her makeup on. We—ah—we didn’t actually do that much talking.”

“Of course.” Mélanie smiled at him. “How else does one say farewell to a lover?”

Moore returned the smile. It was, it seemed, a happy memory. She was glad he had some of them. “In the morning she told me she was leaving and I—Well, I told you about the conversation. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, I’m afraid, because it was so damned early. She said she had to get up so she could be at the Marshalsea to visit her uncle when the gates opened.”

Mélanie felt her shoulders jerk. “She was going to visit her uncle before she left?”

“Yes. Wanted to say good-bye, I suppose. More consideration than she usually gave the old boy.”

Edgar glanced from Mélanie to Charles. “Nothing so very odd in that.”

“Except that according to Trevennen she never actually did say good-bye. She asked Violet Goddard to tell him she’d left London.” Charles looked at Mélanie, eyes alight.

Moore frowned. “You mean Nelly didn’t visit him after all? She seemed quite set on it when she left my rooms.”

Charles tapped his fingers on the damask tablecloth. “I suspect she went to see him but didn’t tell him she was leaving London. Because she wanted the visit to appear perfectly ordinary.”

Edgar leaned forward. “I say, Charles.”

“What better hiding place than a debtor’s prison?” Charles said. “She knew there was little chance of her uncle leaving.” He pushed back his chair. “Mr. Moore, thank you. This may prove invaluable.”

“Oh, of course. Glad to help.” Moore seemed to have quite forgotten his earlier mistrust of them. But then this was a man who had been able to forgive and forget all too easily with Helen Trevennen.

“Is there anything else?” Mélanie asked, looking into his eyes. “Any other detail you can remember about the last time you saw her, even if it seems insignificant?”

Moore ran his fingers down the stem of his champagne glass. “No. I’m afraid not. Except…” He scratched his head. “I told you I didn’t ask if she was going off with another man. That’s not strictly true, though I don’t like to remember it. I did ask in the end. Couldn’t help myself. Nelly just laughed and said, ‘Not exactly. But I’ll be well taken care of, thanks to poor Tom.’”

“Tom? Do you know who that was?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea. Probably just one of Nelly’s jokes. I never knew when she was being serious or when she was funning.”

Mélanie pressed his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Moore. My husband is right. Your help has been invaluable.”

“We can’t get into the Marshalsea at this hour,” Edgar said as they descended the stairs. “The gates will be locked until morning.”

“The gates will be locked, but we’ll manage to get in.”

“Christ, Charles, you aren’t going to break into a prison?”

“Only as a last resort. I’m going to pull rank as I never have before.”

They had reached the street. “Should we travel separately?” Edgar asked as Charles hailed a hackney.

“Now?” Charles said. “Velasquez is in no fit state to follow us. I admit it’s possible there’s someone else after the ring, but I’m more concerned with not wasting time.”

The streets round the docks were relatively free of traffic at this hour, but the drive to Southwark still seemed to take far too long. The porter at the Marshalsea was disinclined to let anyone in or even listen to their story. It took a quarter hour to persuade him to show them into a small, airless sitting room and summon the jailer and another quarter hour for the jailer to appear. Charles, in his most biting tones, proceeded to invoke the names of his ducal grandfather, the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister, and the Leader of the Opposition. Mélanie contributed the most winning smile she could muster and a discreet display of the clocks embroidered on her silk-stockinged ankles.

At length, they were escorted down a passageway to another room, given a lantern, and set free to seek out Hugo Trevennen.

“I say,” the jailer exclaimed. “What’s become of the other gentleman?”

What indeed. Mélanie realized she hadn’t seen Edgar since they’d left the sitting room.

“I daresay we’ll replace him,” Charles said. “Very enterprising of Edgar,” he murmured to her as they started down the walkway. “He’s either learning from us or being corrupted by us, depending on one’s view.”

The walkways that had been full of activity yesterday afternoon were dark and still. Light shone behind a few windows and occasionally voices drifted through the glass, but for the most part the Marshalsea had settled down for the night.

Charles knocked once on Hugo Trevennen’s door, turned the knob, and walked in without waiting for a reply. “Trevennen? Edgar?”

The smell of tallow candles hung in the air. The wavering light made shadows out of the cracks in the wallpaper and bounced off the grimy glass that covered the theatrical prints. Trevennen stood in the center of the room, wrapped in a brocade dressing gown, eyes wide with amazement. Edgar was in front of the fireplace. He held one of the fireplace tiles in his left hand. With his right hand, he was reaching into a gap where the tile had stood.

Mélanie froze and felt Charles do the same. Trevennen started, turned round, gave a smile, and broke the wax-thick silence. “‘But soft, the fair Ophelia.’”

Edgar swung his head round.

“For God’s sake, Edgar.” Charles strode across the room. “What have you found?”

Edgar withdrew his hand from the aperture, clutching a handful of papers. Mélanie hurried after Charles. Edgar glanced up at them, then unwrapped the papers without speaking. The tallow light caught the glint of gold. Mélanie felt a film of sweat break out on her forehead.

Charles reached into the paper wrappings. He lifted out an oval pendant set with carnelians. No lion, no rubies, no ring. Disappointment rushed through her, leaving her dizzy.

Charles had gone completely still. For a moment, his gaze met Edgar’s. Some sort of silent communication passed between them that she could not begin to fathom.

Charles turned the pendant in his hand. Mélanie started to speak, then checked herself. Charles ran his fingers over the pendant and pressed two of the carnelians. The front of the pendant fell open, revealing a small pocket. Nestled within that pocket was the gleam of darker gold and a bloodred glow that could only be rubies.

Charles lifted it out. A circle of gold and a lion’s head with ruby eyes.