The Glass House

The Glass House

by Ashley Gardner

Book 3 of the Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries

The Glass House

Copyright 2005 and 2011 by Jennifer Ashley (Ashley
Gardner)

All rights reserved.

Excerpt from
The Sudbury School Murders
copyright 2011 Jennifer Ashley

Published 2011 by Jennifer Ashley (Ashley
Gardner)

www.gardnermysteries.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's
imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be
construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead,
actual events, locales or organizations is entirely
coincidental.

* * * * *

Chapter One

The affair of The Glass House began quietly
enough one evening in late January, 1817. I passed the afternoon
drinking ale at The Rearing Pony, a tavern in Maiden Lane near
Covent Garden, in a common room that was noisy, crowded, and
overheated. Sweating men swapped stories and laughter, and a
barmaid called Anne Tolliver filled glasses and winked at me as she
passed.

I first learned of anything amiss when I left
the tavern to make my way home. It was eight o'clock, the winter
night outside was black and brutally cold, and rain came down. A
hackney waited at a stand, white vapor streaming from the horse's
nostrils while the coachman warmed himself with a nip from a
flask.

I walked as quickly as I could on the slick
cobbles, trying to retain the warmth of ale and fire I’d left
behind in the public house. My rooms in Grimpen Lane would be dark
and lonely, and Bartholomew would not be there.

Since Christmas, Bartholomew, the tall,
blond, Teutonic-looking footman to Lucius Grenville, had become my
makeshift manservant, but tonight he had returned to Grenville's
house to help prepare for a soiree. That soiree would be one of the
finest of the Season, and everyone who was anyone would be
there.

I too had an invitation, and I would attend,
though I much preferred to visit Grenville when he was not playing
host. Grenville was the most sought-after gentleman in society,
being the foremost authority on art, music, horses, ladies, and
every other entertainment embraced by the London
ton
. He was
also vastly wealthy and well-connected, having plenty of peers of
the realm in his ancestry. His manners, his dress, his tastes were
carefully copied. In public, he played his role of man-about-town
to the hilt, employing cool sangfroid and a quizzing glass, one
glance through which could humble the most impudent aristocrat.

I had come to know the man behind the façade,
a gentleman of intelligence and good sense, who was well read and
well traveled and possessed a lively curiosity that matched my own.
People wondered why Grenville had shown interest in me, a half-pay
cavalry officer who had passed his fortieth year. Though I had good
lineage, I had no wealth, no connections, no prospects.

I knew Grenville was kind to me because I
interested him, and I relieved the ennui into which he, one of the
most wealthy men in England often lapsed. He enjoyed hearing tales
of my adventures, and he'd helped me investigate several murders
and mysterious events in the past year.

I could not fault Grenville his generosity,
but I could not repay it either. His charity often grated on my
pride, but in the last year, I had come to regard him as a friend.
If he wished me to attend the crush at his home, I would oblige him
and go, though I would have to endure a night of rude stares at me
and my fading regimentals.

Hence, I enjoyed myself sitting in the
friendly, noisy tavern before I had to venture to Mayfair and face
London's elite.

At least my lodgings had become something
less than dismal since Bartholomew's arrival. Grenville had lent
him to me and paid for his keep, because the lad wanted to train to
be a valet, the pinnacle of the servant class. Therefore, I now had
someone to mix my shaving soap, brush my suits, keep my boots
polished, and talk to me while we chewed through the beefsteak and
boiled potatoes he fetched from the nearby public house.

I suspected Grenville's purpose in sending
Bartholomew to me was twofold--first, because Grenville felt sorry
for me, and second, because he wanted to keep an eye on me. With
Bartholomew reporting to him, Grenville would be certain not to
miss any intriguing situation into which I might land myself.

Bad fortune for him that Grenville had chosen
to call Bartholomew home to help him tonight.

My rooms lay above a bakeshop in the tiny
cul-de-sac of Grimpen Lane, which ran behind Bow Street. The
bakeshop was a jovial place of warm, yeasty breads, coffee, and
banter when it was open. Mrs. Beltan let the rooms above it cheap,
and I'd found her to be a fair landlady. The shop was closed now,
Mrs. Beltan home with her sister, the windows dark and empty.

As I reached to unlock the outer door that
led to the stairs, a voice boomed at me out of the darkness.

"Happily met, Captain."

I recognized the strident tones of Milton
Pomeroy, once my sergeant, now one of the famous Bow Street
Runners. The light from windows in the house opposite shone on his
pale blond hair and battered hat, the dark suit on his broad
shoulders, and his round and healthy face.

In the Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons during the
Peninsular War, Pomeroy had been my sergeant. In civilian life,
he'd retained his booming sergeant's voice, his brisk sergeant's
attitude, and his utter ruthlessness in pursuit of the enemy. The
enemy now were not the French, but the pickpockets, housebreakers,
murderers, prostitutes, and other denizens of London.

"A piss of an evening," he said jovially.
"Not like the Peninsula, eh?"

Weather in Iberia had been both hot and cold,
but usually dry, and the summers could be fine. Tonight especially,
I longed for those summer days under the sweltering sun. "Indeed,
Sergeant," I said.

"Well, I've not come to jaw about the
weather. I've come to ask you about that little actress what lives
upstairs from you."

I regarded him in surprise. "Miss
Simmons?"

"Aye, that's the one. Seen her about?"

"Not for a week or so."

Marianne Simmons, a blond young woman with a
deceptively childlike face and large blue eyes, eked out a living
playing small parts at Drury Lane theatre. She lived in the rooms
above mine and stretched her meager income by helping herself to my
candles, coal, snuff, and other commodities. I let her, knowing she
might go without otherwise.

Marianne often disappeared for long stretches
at a time. I had once tried to inquire where she went on her
sojourns, but she only fixed me with a cold stare and told me it
was none of my business. I assumed Marianne found a protector
during these absences, temporarily at least. In the past, she'd
always returned within a month, proclaiming her general disgust at
men and asking whether she could share my supper.

"Well, then, sir," Pomeroy went on. "Can you
come along with me and look at a corpse from the river? It might
very well be hers."

I stopped in shock. "What? Good God."

"Pulled out of the Thames not half hour ago
by a waterman," Pomeroy said. "She looked like your actress, so I
thought I'd fetch you to make sure."

My blood went cold. Marianne and I had our
differences, but I certainly didn’t wish so terrible a death on
her. "There's nothing to tell you who she is?"

"Not a thing, so the Thames River gent says.
She's not been dead long. A few hours or more, I should say.
Officer of the Thames River patrol sent for the magistrate, who
sent for me."

So explaining, Pomeroy led me out of Grimpen
Lane and Russel Street and down to the Strand. My walking stick
rang on the cobbles as I strove to match Pomeroy's long stride and
tried to stem my rising worry.

I doubted Marianne would try to do away with
herself; she had a brisk attitude toward life, no matter that it
had not dealt her very high cards. She was not a brilliant actress,
but the gentlemen of her audience liked her bright hair, pointed
face, and round blue eyes.

But accidents happened, and people fell into
the river and drowned all too often. I wondered, if the dead woman
proved to be Marianne, how on earth I would break the news to
Grenville.

We walked east on the Strand and entered
Fleet Street through one of the pedestrian arches of Temple Bar.
The road curved with the river that flowed a few streets away,
though the high buildings hid any aspect of it.

Fleet Street was the haunt of barristers and
journalists, the latter of which were never my favorite sort of
people. We fortunately saw none of them tonight. I supposed they
had retreated to pubs like the one I'd just left, their day's work
finished. Still I kept a wary eye out for one starved-looking
journalist called Billings, who last summer had taken to roasting
me in the newspapers for my involvement in the affair of Colonel
Westin.

We walked all the way down the Fleet to New
Bridge Street, then to Blackfriar's Bridge and a slippery staircase
that led to the shore of the Thames. As we descended away from the
stone houses, the wind took on a new chill.

The river lay cold and vast at the bottom of
the steps, lapping softly at its banks and smelling of rotting
cabbage. Lights roved the middle of the river, barges and small
craft strolling upriver or back down to the ships moored at the
Isle of Dogs or farther east in Blackwall and Gravesend.

A circle of lanterns huddled about ten yards
from the staircase. "Saw her bobbing there," a thin voice was
saying. "Told young John to help me fish her out. Dead as a toad
and all bloated up."

As Pomeroy and I crunched over the shingle
toward them, a man on the gravel bank turned. "Pomeroy."

"Thompson," Pomeroy boomed. "This is Captain
Lacey, the chap I told you about. Captain, Peter Thompson of the
Thames River patrol."

I shook hands with a tall man who had graying
hair and a sunken face, long nose, and thin mouth. He was muffled
in a greatcoat that hung on his bony frame, and his gloves were
frayed. But though his features were cadaverous, his eyes were
strong and clear.

The Thames River patrol skimmed up and down
the river from the City to Greenwich, watching over the great
merchant ships that docked along the waterway. Their watermen
picked up flotsam from the river, either turning it in for reward
or selling it. When they found bodies, they sent for the Thames
River officers, although I suspected that some of the less
scrupulous sold the poor drowned victims to resurrectionists,
unsavory gentlemen who collected bodies to sell to surgeons and
anatomists for dissection.

Thompson asked me, "Pomeroy said the woman
might be an acquaintance of yours."

"Perhaps." I steeled myself for the
possibility. "May I see her?"

"Over here." Thompson pointed a finger in his
shabby glove to the thin gathering of men and lanterns.

I stepped past the waterman who smelled of
mud and unwashed clothes into the circle of light. They had laid
the woman out on a strip of canvas. Her gown, a light pink muslin,
was pasted to her limbs, the sodden cloth outlining her thighs and
curve of waist, her round breasts. Her face was gray, bloated with
water. A wet fall of golden hair, coated with mud, covered the
stones beside her.

She had been small and slim, with a girlish
prettiness. Her hands were tiny in shredded gloves, and her feet
were still laced into beaded slippers. Although her coloring and
build were similar, she was not Marianne Simmons.

I exhaled in some relief. "I do not know her.
She isn’t Miss Simmons."

"Hmph," Pomeroy said. "Thought it was her. Ah
well."

Thompson said nothing, looking neither
disappointed nor elated.

I went down on one knee, supporting my weight
on my walking stick. "She had no reticule, or other bag?"

"Not a thing, Captain," Thompson replied.
"Although a reticule might have been washed down river. No cards,
nothing on her clothes. I imagine she was a courtesan."

I lifted the hem of her skirt and examined
the fabric. "Fine work. This is a lady's dress."

"Might have stolen it," Pomeroy
suggested.

"It fits her too well." I dropped the skirt
and ran my gaze over the gown. "It was made for her."

"Or her lover sent her to a dressmaker,"
Thompson said.

I looked at the young woman’s neck and
wrists, which were bare. "No jewels. If she had a protector, she
would wear the jewels he bought her."