The Glass House (3 page)

I sipped champagne as I opened the door to
Grenville's sitting room. I looked forward to perusing Grenville's
collections or dipping into one of his many fine books.

On the threshold, I stopped. A slim lady in
an ivory silk gown and a feathered headdress stood on the other
side of the sitting room, her back to me. Her attention was fixed
on a row of tiny figurines from the Orient that rested on a shelf
near the window. As I watched, she lifted one and held it up to the
light, turning it this way and that to admire the cleverness of
it.

If she had been any other lady, I might have
believed that Grenville had given her leave to examine his
collection, perhaps to wait to be private with him later. With this
particular lady, however, I knew he bloody well had not.

I cleared my throat. Lady Breckenridge
snapped her gaze to me but she didn’t put down the figurine, nor
did she look in the least bit ashamed of being caught.

"Ah, Captain Lacey. Good evening."

The dowager Lady Breckenridge was near to
thirty, with a sharp face, dark brown hair, and blue eyes like
summer skies at dusk. I had met her the previous summer, in Kent,
while I was investigating the affair of Colonel Westin. She'd
played billiards with me, blown cigarillo smoke in my face, and
told me that I was a fool. What irritated me most was that she'd
been right.

"Good evening, my lady," I returned.

She looked at me a moment longer then
shrugged at the figurine in her hand. "I could not resist. I hear
that Mr. Grenville's collections are the best in England, but he
shows them to so very few.
Netsuke
, I believe they are
called. They’re very exotic, aren't they?"

The ivory figure in her hand was a
ferocious-looking little beast; only three inches long, it had two
rows of teeth and a curving tail. Lady Breckenridge reached to
return it to its place, but the sleek ivory slipped from her hands
and dropped to the floor. Fortunately, the figurine landed easily
on the thick carpet and did not shatter.

Lady Breckenridge began to bend to retrieve
it, but I crossed the room, bent down for her, and came up with the
little creature in my hand.

"Always the gentleman," she said. She smiled
at me, and I was surprised and a bit pleased to see that it was
without rancor.

I set the figurine back on its shelf. Last
year Lady Breckenridge had, by letting me go through her husband's
papers, helped me discover who had committed several murders. She’d
never betrayed sorrow for her now-deceased husband, and having met
him, I could hardly blame her.

With any other lady, I would have had a stock
of polite conversation ready to hand, and she would have a stock of
polite responses. With Lady Breckenridge, such convention was
useless. She would bat away any polite phrase with stinging wit and
wait for more.

"Well, Captain," she said, breaking the
silence. "I believe that you still owe me five guineas."

I had lost a wager with her at that fateful
billiards game, but I had dutifully enclosed the note with a letter
to her when I'd received my autumn pay packet. I'd made certain to
pay that debt, not only for honor’s sake, but because I definitely
did not want to be beholden to Lady Breckenridge.

She knew this. The glitter in her eyes told
me so.

I bowed. "I beg your pardon. I will rectify
the omission immediately."

Her smile deepened, as though she'd wagered
with herself whether I would go along with her pretense or tell her
to go to the devil.

We watched each other for a few minutes more,
then, losing interest in our non-conversation, Lady Breckenridge
abruptly inclined her head and said, "Good evening, Captain," and
sashayed her way to the door.

The musky scent of her perfume lingered after
she'd gone. I straightened the figurines on the shelf, wondering
again what to make of Lady Breckenridge. Her blunt observations
were every bit as pointed as those of Lady Aline Carrington, but
Lady Breckenridge's eyes often held a spark of malice, while Lady
Aline was kindness itself.

I had learned through Lady Aline that Lady
Breckenridge came from a very wealthy and powerful family; likely
she'd married Viscount Breckenridge at her family's behest. There
had certainly been no love lost between Lord and Lady Breckenridge;
in the brief time I'd observed them, they’d never even exchanged
words.

I sank down with some relief to the Turkish
sofa to wait for Grenville, and amused myself with a volume of his
Description de L'Egypte.
Grenville was the proud owner of
these large folios of magnificent engravings put together by
Napoleon’s scientific expedition to Egypt nearly eighteen years
before. The emperor had been mad for Egypt, and so had dragged
artists, scientists, draftsmen, and architects with him to the Nile
to measure and record every antiquity in the country. We'd heard
intriguing stories of artists drawing while bullets rained down
around them and of them using soldiers' backs as drafting
boards.

The
Description
was immense, and few
could afford it, but Grenville, of course, had procured the first
volumes immediately on publication. He kept them in a cabinet that
had been specially built for it, with shelves ready to receive the
forthcoming volumes.

I flipped through the pages, admiring the
artist's skills and letting myself be astonished by the exotic
temples, pyramids, and statuary. Grenville had a passion for Egypt,
and had been there more than once. I wondered when he would
disappear from foggy London to travel there again.

I was engrossed in drawings of colossal
statues depicting seated men with hands on knees when Grenville
finally entered.

I looked up in surprise. I had been sitting
only an hour or so, and the soiree still raged below. I had not
expected him until very late.

Grenville closed the door with an air of
relief. "Quite a crush."

I returned the folio to its shelf while he
moved to a side table and a decanter. "Claret? I've set aside the
best."

Grenville seemed in no hurry to tell me why
he'd wanted to speak to me. He poured us both a glass of warm, red
claret, seated himself on his favorite chair, and drank deeply.

I supposed him working up his way to confide
in me, but I was too impatient with my own task to wait. I removed
the silver ring from my pocket and passed it to him.

Startled, Grenville took it. "What is
this?"

"Would you be able to tell me who it belonged
to?"

He set aside his claret, brought out his
quizzing glass, and squinted through it at the ring. "A pretty
bauble. Exquisitely made." He looked up. "If one of my guests had
dropped this, Lacey, you would not make a point of showing it to
me. Out with it. What is the story?"

I sat back and took an unhurried sip of the
claret. "It was found on the finger of a dead woman earlier this
evening," I said. "On the bank of the Thames."

* * * * *

Chapter Three

If I’d wanted to created a sensation, I’d
succeeded admirably. Grenville's mouth opened, closed, opened
again, and he looked at the ring again. "Good lord."

I told him the tale. Grenville studied the
ring as I spoke, turning it around in his hands, much as Thompson
had done.

"Interesting," he murmured when I finished,
then he pocketed the quizzing glass, and his voice became brisk.
"If she wore the ring under the glove so it would not fall off her
finger, that means she did not want to lose the ring, which
indicates that she probably cared for the paramour, whoever he
is."

I rubbed my upper lip. "We are rather
presuming that the woman received this ring from a lover. She might
have stolen it herself. Although, in that case, she likely would
have tried to sell it or given it to a lover of her own."

Grenville peered at the band again.
"Possibly, but it's common for a gentleman to give his ring to his
ladybird. Pity there is no inscription."

Indeed, a line reading "To my beloved Miss
Smith from Mr. Worth," or some such would have been most
helpful.

"However." Grenville squinted. "There is a
jeweler's mark. Excellent. If it belongs to a jeweler in England,
we will easily know for whom this ring was made."

"As easily as that? Pomeroy winced at the
thought of looking in at every jeweler in the West End and Mayfair.
I supposed we will have to."

Grenville's nose twitched. He was well and
truly interested. "Nonsense. All I need do is ask my man Gautier.
He knows every jeweler, boot maker, glove maker, hat maker, and
tailor in London, not to mention the history of each business and
the family who owns it. I wager he can tell us what this jeweler's
mark is in a trice."

He rose and tugged the bellpull then sent the
answering footman for Gautier. Grenville liked to move quickly when
something took his interest, which, in this case, was amenable to
me. The sooner we could discover who the lady was, the more
speedily I could lay my hands on her murderer. The sight of the
pathetic and bloated body in pretty clothes had done something to
me.

Gautier, a fine-boned Frenchman who had, last
summer, efficiently bandaged my hands after an impromptu boxing
match, responded to Grenville's summons with perfect equanimity. He
studied the ring and the jeweler's mark inside for a time, before
he handed back the ring and announced it was the work of Mr.
Neumann of Grafton Street.

"Excellent, Gautier, thank you," Grenville
said. He flipped the ring in the air, caught it. "Tell Matthias to
run and fetch Mr. Neumann here."

Gautier bowed, took this instruction in
stride, and glided from the room.

"It's a bit late, is it not?" I asked.

Grenville closed the ring in his fist. "I am
certain your Mr. Thompson of the Thames Patrol wishes you to be
quick. Besides, the owner of this ring might be under my very roof
right now. Best to find him and discover how much he knows right
away, is it not?"

*** *** ***

Grenville's surmise proved to be the case.
While I knew his Grenville's real motive was his curiosity, I was
happy that he had enough power to drag a respectable jeweler out of
his bed in the middle of a rainy night and bring him here to be
quizzed.

The man, middle-aged, with a handsome face
running to fat, acquiesced to Grenville's request without protest.
He was a businessman, after all. Any connection with Grenville, no
matter how small, could boost his custom. The quantity of brandy
Grenville gave him, along with a large tip, did not hurt
either.

Mr. Neumann looked at the ring, gave us the
name Lord Barbury, and departed home in the luxury of Grenville's
carriage.

Grenville's eyes sparkled black fire. Lord
Barbury, he said, a baron, had indeed answered the invitation to
the soiree, and was likely still in the house. He departed in
search of the man, nearly bouncing in his polished leather
shoes.

He returned not long after with Lord Barbury
in tow. Lord Barbury was a tall man with deep brown eyes, in his
thirties, past his first blush of youth but not yet at middle age.
Waves of thick dark hair dressed in the romantic style touched his
shoulders and made his long face look still longer. His chin was
shadowed with beard, as though his whiskers sprouted as quickly as
his valet scraped them off.

Barbury wore a black suit much like
Grenville's, with an ivory-and-white striped waistcoat. Heavy gold
rings encircled his fingers, and his cravat pin sported a large
emerald. A man about town, I assessed, living to go to his clubs,
ride horses, gamble, and take a pretty mistress.

He frowned at me as Grenville introduced us,
a frown that froze when Grenville opened his hand and displayed the
silver ring.

"Where the devil did you get that?" Barbury
demanded.

I said quietly, "A woman was pulled from the
Thames earlier this evening. She was wearing it."

All the color drained from his face. "What do
you mean? Tell me at once."

"Is this your ring?" Grenville asked.

"Yes, that is my be-damned ring. I do not
understand why you have it."

"Lacey?" Grenville said.

"The woman was small and pretty," I said.
"She had blond hair and wore a gown of light pink and beaded
slippers. She was wearing this ring under her glove. She had been
murdered, her head struck, before she was pushed into the
river."

Lord Barbury gasped for breath, his eyes
becoming pinpoints of black in his stark white face. Grenville
caught him as he sagged and got him into a chair. I poured the man
a glass of claret and handed it to him. Lord Barbury drank.

His hauteur and rage faded as he swallowed.
He gave Grenville a dazed look. "Please, gentlemen, tell me you are
mistaken. That this is some disgusting joke . . ."

"I wish I could," I said. "The young lady
died at about half-past four this afternoon, according to the men
who found her. Did you see her today?"

"No. I was to meet her later. Tonight."
Barbury pressed his hand to his face. "I cannot believe this. This
cannot be."

"Where were you, my lord," I asked, "at
half-past four?"

He raised his head, eyes filling with rage,
but I held my ground. If he’d killed the young woman, I didn’t care
whether he were a baron or a boatman.

"I was at my club," he snapped. "How dare you
think that I could do this, that I could harm my Peaches." His
voice broke.

"I believe I saw you with her once,"
Grenville said. "A pretty young woman."

"Lovely and sweet as a peach," he said.
"Which is why I call her . . ." Barbury looked up at me, brown eyes
filled with tears, an anguished man unused to grappling with this
sort of pain. "Who did this to her?"

"That we do not know," Grenville said. "An
officer of the Thames River patrol and one of Bow Street are
looking into it."