The Counterfeit Lady (11 page)

If he’d really been trying to catch me, I was certain I’d never have collided with Lady Bennett. And the whole affair was carried out so Phyllida was never in any danger of being injured.

Fortunately, by the time Lady Magda calmed her mother, Phyllida stopped rejoicing over everyone’s lack of injuries, and I stopped apologizing, the baron’s coach had arrived and he left with an aggravated Lady Bennett straightening her outfit and the dowager duchess snapping orders at the others. Everyone was scraping chocolate off their shoes.

Moments later, the duke’s coach arrived and we climbed inside. Once we were moving, I asked, “Was that Sumner?”

“Yes.”

“How did he know about the chocolate box?”

“He was watching them from inside the hall. Lady Bennett was given the box by a man he didn’t know. A man not in uniform or livery.”

“How could he have told you?”

“He came into our box in the second half. Didn’t you hear him?”

“No.”

“You must have been sleeping.”

“I would have been, if you hadn’t kept waking me.”

“I heard the whole thing. That’s why I knew to stop the count. Your friend needs to move faster next time if he wants to get away,” Phyllida told him. She was enjoying her role too much.

“If he’d moved any faster, he’d have called attention to himself in that crowd,” the duke replied. “Don’t go to the bookshop tomorrow, Georgia—er, Georgina. You need to get some rest.”

“I can’t, Your Grace.” I snapped the words at him. “I have to get everything ready for my absence. My several-day-long absence. Along with Emma’s and Jacob’s absences, I might add.”

He brushed the air, as if shoving away a pesky fly or my argument. “Sumner is filling in for Jacob admirably. I’m sure your Mrs. Atterby is doing well. Things are going splendidly. You need to get some sleep.”

“No, Your Grace.” Frances was doing well, and Sir Broderick was aiding her admirably. Still, it was my bookshop. My responsibility. And my livelihood.

“Lady Phyllida, can you reason with her?”

She smiled at him. “It hasn’t worked so far.”

He leaned back in his seat, his arms folded over his chest, and grumbled. “All right,” he said at last. “Do what you have to do tomorrow. The next day, whether you and your shop are ready or not, we will be leaving from the train station.”

“Including Emma?” I was hoping she could stay behind. She knew almost as much about the bookshop as I did.

“Of course Emma. Someone has to snoop around the servants’ quarters. And you and Phyllida can’t attend a house party without a lady’s maid.”

All I could do was pray my bookshop survived my absence.

“There’s something else I need to tell you, Your Grace. Sir Henry threatened me with exposure. He found out I really don’t have a fortune being managed for me in the city.”

He murmured something, then said, “What made him suspicious?”

“A maid saw me coming from his study after I searched it.”

“You were gone from the table too long,” Phyllida said. “Sir Henry said he was afraid you’d gotten sick and left the table. I think he got suspicious when I dragged him back into the dining room.”

“He wants me to find out from Gattenger, by five tomorrow afternoon, if the ship will float or sink. If I don’t—”

Blackford said, “We’ll see Gattenger tomorrow morning and find out. Do you want me to turn up at five minutes after five tomorrow?” If Sir Henry had been present at that moment, the duke’s expression said he’d run him through with a sword.

“No, Your Grace. I’ll deal with him better alone.”

When Blackford dropped us at the house after the concert, Emma was waiting in my room with one of the maids. The heat had dissipated in the night, enough that I wasn’t clammy with sweat. Despite my lack of sleep and a desire to collapse onto my bed, I let Emma talk as she undressed me.

“This is Mary,” she said, gesturing as she undid my hairdo. “She’s working here because the duke sent Gattenger’s help to his housekeeper to keep employed until either Gattenger is freed or the end of the quarter.”

“Mary.” I nodded my head and my loosened hairdo slipped, releasing a cascade of curls down my back. I’d spoken to Elsie the day I’d gone with the duke to see the site of the crime. I’d not seen Mary, and hopefully, she’d not seen me.

“Mrs. Monthalf. Emma said since you’re kin to Mrs. Gattenger, I should tell you what I know about her murder. Well, not her murder, but her life leading up to her murder.”

I studied Mary. She was small boned and thin, a few years younger than Emma, with lovely brown hair and eyes. I could picture her slipping into dark corners to stand undetected or dressing as a street lad to follow a suspect in an investigation. My imagination runs away with me sometimes. I had no idea if she had the intelligence or talent to carry out those roles.

I gave her a gentle smile and said, “I’d be interested in what you have to tell me, Mary.”

“Well, ma’am, I know Elsie always said the Gattengers got along well, but I didn’t see it that way. I had my day out on a different day than Elsie, so I was the one who heard the row they had a week before the mistress’s death.”

“Which day was this?”

“Tuesday, ma’am. My day out was on Thursday.”

“Tell me what you heard, please, Mary.” Would she echo the gossip Phyllida had heard?

“I was plaiting the mistress’s hair like Emma’s doing to you now, and the master came into her room. She said, ‘Get out, Kenny,’ and he said, ‘I love you, Clara.’ Then she said, ‘That’s twice now. I don’t think I can bear it a third time.’ Then she burst into tears.”

“Bear what?”

“I don’t know. I do know I’d had to get the doctor the Tuesday before.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The master sent me because the mistress was ill. Next day, we were having to bleach blood out of the sheets and all of their nightclothes.”

“Had that happened before?”

“No, ma’am, but we had to get the doctor for the mistress often enough. And she bruised easy. She was talking once, and not watching where she was going, and smacked into a door. The whole side of her face was bruised. She couldn’t leave the house for almost two weeks on account of how she looked.”

“Did you see her run into the door?”

“Not me. No. Just the master.”

I’d heard of men who took out their anger on their wives and children. I hoped Ken Gattenger wasn’t one of them, but what Mary said worried me. Now I had two reasons to talk to him again before we went to the country. I hoped I’d get to sleep on the train to Lord Harwin’s. There wouldn’t be time to get any rest before then.

I
’
D
barely gotten to sleep before Emma came in to get me up and bathed. “I need to get a message to Blackford before we go to the shop today,” I told her.

“We can have Mary take it. She knows where the house is, since she worked there a short time before being sent here.”

“You’ve gotten to know her in the few days we’ve been here.” I’d noticed how easily Emma made friends. Much quicker than I did.

She shrugged. “It’s my assignment, although I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve gotten to know all the servants. The same assignment I’ll have at the country house party. Tell me it’ll be cooler there.”

“It must be. It’s out in the country.” Truthfully, I had no more idea than Emma did. I was as much a city girl as she.

“This came for you, shoved in the letter slot before anyone rose this morning.”

I took the note from Emma, noting the same printing as on the first note. Inside, the message was just as brief.

Georgia Fenchurch, you’ve been warned. Stay in London and away from Lord Harwin’s.

Otherwise, you will die.

Passing the note to Emma, I said, “Someone knows who we are and what we’re doing.”

Emma handed the paper back by one corner, as if she found it contaminated. “Are you going to tell the duke?”

“No. If we tell Blackford or anyone else, Phyllida will eventually find out, and she’ll insist we stop. She wouldn’t want to chance us getting hurt.” I gave her a steady gaze. “And we promised her.”

Emma nodded. “We won’t say a word to anyone. Agreed.”

I wrote a note to Blackford over my tea and toast, sent Mary off with it, and left for the shop with Emma. When we arrived, Frances and Grace had the front door open to any errant breeze that might pass. Walking into the office, I found the window open, the papers filed, and the space free of boxes of unshelved books.

Grace and Emma were reorganizing the books as they dusted, and Frances was assisting a customer. Once Frances was free, I joined her at the counter and said, “You have this place running like a well-oiled machine.”

“It’s Sumner and Mrs. Hardwick who’ve made the difference.”

“Mrs. who?”

“Mrs. Hardwick. Sir Broderick’s assistant while Jacob is working on this investigation. She has Sir Broderick busy on cleaning and reorganizing his house. She even had him ride down in the elevator yesterday to work on the parlor, stripping the sheets off the furniture and bringing the room back to life.”

“Good heavens.” Sir Broderick had had the elevator installed when he was first recovering from his injuries. In the dozen years since then, I’d never known him to use the machine. Mrs. Hardwick had managed this miracle in a few days. “It sounds like the woman has been a tonic for him.”

Frances grinned. “She has. You’ll like her. Everyone does.”

“And Sumner?”

“He loves this place. Works hard shelving books and avoiding customers when he’s not running antiquarian books between here and Sir Broderick. He’s also our connection to Jacob. I can’t wait to hear what he has to report today. Jacob thought he might have figured out who the traitor is in the Admiralty.”

Two women came in at that moment. One headed to the latest novels and the other to natural science. With a smile, Frances and I headed to separate parts of the shop. I had just finished with the woman in the literature section when Blackford strode in.

His boots gleamed in the already stifling sunlight pouring heat through the front windows. The creases in his pants and the starch in his collar had not yet wilted. Come to think of it, I’d never seen the duke wilted. He must have ice water in his veins.

He nodded in the direction of Emma and Grace, then in the direction of Frances and her dithering customer, and then approached me. “You have another reason to question Gattenger again?”

“Yes. I need to know why Clara was seen frequently by her doctor, and what happened that caused her to lose a lot of blood only a week before her death.”

The duke’s eyebrows rose. I was glad to see I could surprise him. “All right. What has Jacob learned?”

“We’re waiting on Sumner.”

“Not any longer.” His gravelly voice came from behind me. Sumner, the ruined half of his face hidden by a bowler hat removed from his head but not yet lowered, headed toward Emma.

She smiled broadly. “Good morning, Mr. Sumner.”

“Miss Keyes. Miss Yates,” Sumner replied, bowing slightly to Emma and Grace.

“What’s the news from Jacob?” Emma asked as Blackford and I moved closer and Frances moved her customer farther away.

“The clerk he thought was the traitor has a well-to-do grandfather who sent the lad to school and got him the job in the Admiralty. He explained his ready cash to Jacob without realizing the point of a conversation on families. He also mentioned a fellow clerk who’s been secretive lately and suddenly moved to nicer lodgings. Jacob’s going to follow up on him today.” Sumner delivered what was for him a lengthy speech as he gazed only at Emma.

“I hope you told Jacob to be careful,” she responded directly to him.

“Is he your sweetheart?” Sumner asked with what could have passed for laughter rattling around in the rough edges of his voice.

“No. We come from the same neighborhood. Jacob could have been my brother.”

“Sumner. A word,” the duke said, and Sumner followed him to a corner of the shop. They kept their voices lowered so that I couldn’t overhear their conversation.

Then Blackford put on his white cotton gloves and strolled to the counter. “I’ll be by at eleven to take you to Newgate Prison. Now, let’s see if you have any antiquarian volumes that interest me.”

I showed him a beautifully bound and preserved quarto of the New Testament. I knew there was no point in giving him a sales pitch. If he liked it, he’d buy it on the spot.

One of our most annoying customers, Mrs. Rutherford, pranced in the open doorway, her maid holding a parasol over her mistress’s graying curls and massively flowered hat. The lady carried her yapping lapdog in a basket. Emma moved to wait on her and I turned back to the duke.

He examined the volume closely under the electric lights, shrugged, and handed it back. “Any Shakespeare? I’m more interested in sonnets than parables.”

I had an octavo, barely held together any longer, of
The Merchant of Venice
published at the time of the Restoration. Carefully taking it off the shelf, I held the volume out to him.

The duke stared at it for a moment and then took it, quickly becoming absorbed in his examination. “I’ll give you thirty pounds for it,” he said, not looking up.

“Fifty. It’s very rare.”

“It’s in horrible shape.”

The book had been eaten by book worms and attacked on one edge by mold. The ink had faded. I knew what he said was true. “Not as horrible as most copies that age. They no longer exist.”

Beyond him, I saw Frances whisper to Grace, and then both of them looked intently in Emma’s direction. At the same moment, I saw the stray cat we called Charles Dickens wander in the open door. He headed straight for Emma’s skirt.

Grace began to move toward him in one direction and I crossed the shop in another. Mrs. Rutherford’s maid had put away the parasol and was now carrying the basket with the dog.

Dickens marched up to the maid and meowed loudly, which set the flat-faced dog to barking madly, her tufts of hair shaking with every move as she hopped around. The maid looked down, saw the cat, and jumped, jostling the basket.

The dog must have seen that as a sign to jump down. She landed first on the maid’s dress, then bounced over to her mistress’s skirt, and finally back to the maid’s skirt above her shoes. Once on the floor, she lunged at Dickens, barking and hopping.

Dickens held his ground, staring at the dog. The dog yapped, her flat face coming within striking distance, the fur on her ears quivering. The cat hissed. Suddenly, a brown paw swung out, claws extended. The dog howled and dashed under Mrs. Rutherford’s skirts.

The woman shrieked, holding up her skirts in a shocking display while trying to locate the dog.

The maid rescued the dog, Grace grabbed Dickens, and I rushed in to make peace with Mrs. Rutherford.

“My dog has a bloodied nose,” she exclaimed, once again holding the dog basket and petting the shivering dog.

“I’m so sorry. You’re very wise to keep her in a basket where she’s free from unfortunate incidents.” Such as being stepped on or kicked. Dogs did not belong in bookshops. Neither did cats, but Dickens was a good mouser.

“You should keep animals from coming into your shop.”

I smiled. “Then I should have to ban your dog.”

“Saucy girl.”

“I’d have to ban Saucy Girl.” I’d love to. The racket the dog made when left alone in her basket was nearly as bad as when Dickens struck.

“No. You’re being a saucy girl. The dog’s name is Jane and she’s a well-mannered house dog. You’re keeping a feral cat.”

I restrained myself from throwing her bodily into the street for her insult. Instead I said, “Dickens isn’t feral. He’s a working cat, performing a valued service for the shopkeepers on this street. If we didn’t have Dickens, we’d be overrun with vermin.”

Seeing her face turn crimson, I added, “You’ll need to have Jane return at a time when we’re certain Dickens isn’t working in the immediate area.”

“How will we know?”

“I have no idea. I’ve not figured out his work schedule yet.” I was keeping both my temper and a straight face with difficulty.

“Well, I hope you teach that cat some manners.”

“I’m sure Grace is dealing with him most severely. Now, Emma, will you see what Mrs. Rutherford requires.”

I returned to waiting on the duke, certain Grace was in the office spoiling Dickens.

Blackford looked up from the ancient volume and continued our discussion as if it hadn’t been interrupted. “That’s why you keep old books behind the brass grille, so air will flow around them. That’s why you installed electric lights, to keep gas and oil smoke from damaging them. That’s why you keep them at torso height, so there won’t be as great a temperature change as at floor or ceiling level. You have a soft spot for the written word. You can’t stand to see old books dissolve into dust.”

He smiled then and reached for his wallet. “And I should never forget you know this business as well as you know how to step into character and run an investigation. Forty.”

“No. Fifty. It
is
a very rare edition.”

Carefully turning it over in his hands once more, he said, “Done.”

“I’ll wrap it for you.” I took a piece of brown paper and carefully began to cocoon the volume. “I think it matters to you, too. That old things don’t turn to dust.”

“My title’s older than that book. I feel comfortable with old things.” After he paid me and took his parcel, he gave me a slight bow, glanced at Mrs. Rutherford, and then turned back to give me a wink. “Everything all right now, Miss Keyes?”

Emma dropped into a curtsy and said, “It is, Your Grace. Mrs. Rutherford, may I present the Duke of Blackford?”

Mrs. Rutherford smiled, simpered, and fussed with her hat as the duke nodded to her. Then she gave a deep curtsy, nearly dropping the dog out of its basket again. “Pleased to meet you, Your Grace.”

“Good day, Mrs. Rutherford.” Then he walked out of the bookshop, Sumner on his heels.

The duke knew the power of his title. Mrs. Rutherford fussed the rest of her visit, but she also was heard to giggle.

Blackford had been gone less than five minutes before Sir Jonah Denby arrived, swinging his cane as he walked up to me. “How is the investigation coming, Miss Fenchurch?”

I motioned him to join me in my office away from customers. Once we were in the privacy of the crowded space, I asked, “Have you been sending me threatening notes?”

His green eyes widened. “Good heavens, no. I’m on your side.”

“The Duke of Blackford is working with Whitehall, and he swears he’s never met you, much less told you what I’m doing.” I’d found a few mentions of Denby working for Her Majesty’s government. He had to be legitimate, and yet—

“Our government is a large organization. I doubt even someone as comprehensively involved as the duke has met everyone. And I’m only a minor functionary. Now, tell me, what has happened?”

“Someone is threatening me in an effort to stop us from finding the blueprints.”

“I would never do such a thing, I assure you. All I want is for the blueprints to be found and returned to the Admiralty. Now, do you have any news to report?”

I now knew from my reference books that Sir Jonah Denby worked in Whitehall, lived in London, and belonged to respectable clubs. Not someone likely to steal warship blueprints, but I would also say that of Sir Henry Stanford. I’d also not been able to find a connection between Denby and von Steubfeld or Gattenger. But why did Denby say Blackford had told him about me one day and then as much as admit Blackford didn’t know him on another? “We think we’ve identified the thief and hope to follow him to the person who hired him.”

“You’ve identified the thief? Wonderful,” Sir Jonah said. “Who?”