Death and the Courtesan (7 page)

“Wedge! You villain! If I catch you sniffing around Miss Beaumont’s skirts again, I shall call you out, sir! Leave this place at once!”

The editor turned on his heel, without acknowledging Arabella, and the vicar followed him up, to make sure that he left.

Here was a mystery! Why should Wedge so readily obey Kendrick’s commands? Evidently, something had once passed between these two that accounted for this odd behavior. Arabella would have to inquire about it later.

“I was just leaving, Mr. Kendrick,” she said upon his return. “There is nothing here of any interest to me. The removers were most thorough.”

But as the group regathered in the passage, a door opened on the opposite side and a head in a torn cap was thrust out from it.

“Psssst! Missus! I ’eard you say you was investigatin’ the murder.”

“I am.”

“Well, I can show you summat, but it’ll cost ya.”

“Come along, Miss Beaumont,” urged Kendrick. “This person can have nothing to say to us.”

“Not
you,
” said the head. “It’s only ’er I want.”

“I wonder, Mr. Kendrick,” said Arabella, “whether you would be good enough to question the landlady for me? I should like to know whom Euphemia was in the habit of entertaining here, and to get an account of her movements on the last night she was seen alive. Could you do that, whilst I speak to this individual?”

“I don’t think . . .”

“Please, Mr. Kendrick?”

“I don’t like to leave you alone in this place.”

“I shan’t be alone, with two of London’s finest dogging my footsteps. Go and ask about it, do. I should be
ever
so grateful.”

She smiled at him again, and Kendrick went, her obedient servant. Arabella turned once more toward the head.

“How much are you asking?”

“Twenty pounds!”

“Oh, bugger off!” growled Tom.

“No, no,” said Arabella hastily as the head was withdrawn. “The officer did not mean that. I shall be happy to pay what you ask, provided you truly have something I can use.”

“You can come in then. But mind, just you. I’m not havin’ no coppers inside my room.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Dysart,” said Arabella as Frank seemed about to force his way in. “One of you can stand here, just beside the door, and the other can wait outside the house, in case I try to ‘escape.’ I won’t be a moment.”

For the second time that day, Arabella was moved by the squalor in which she found herself. Euphemia’s apartment had been cleared of all usable items, so the state of the room was perhaps semi-excusable. But this chamber was occupied by a living, breathing human being. Yet it resembled nothing so much as a compost pile, moved to the city and maintained indoors. Dear God. The stench in here was nearly overpowering! A wave of nausea swept over Arabella, and she thought for a moment that she was going to be sick. But the feeling passed when the woman handed her a book. Arabella immediately bore this to the window and examined it under the thin light that struggled through the grime-coated pane. It was some sort of ledger, clothbound, with most of its pages torn out. The few that remained appeared to be a record of various personal details pertaining to Euphemia’s former clients: what they had liked, what they had paid her to do, and what she had thought of them.

“Where did you get this?” Arabella asked. And for the first time, she really looked at the woman. Skeletal, with loose, yellowish skin, the creature stood up in a filthy, sleeveless nightgown, scratching her arms. Corkscrews of brittle hair, which protruded from a ruffled mobcap, were pasted with sweat to her neck and forehead.

“She give it t’me afore she died. Said t’ keep it away from the Runners.”

The woman’s breath stank. When she opened her mouth to speak, Arabella could see that she’d lost most of her teeth. Laudanum addict, Arabella thought. There could be no doubt. The pinpoint pupils of the eyes confirmed it.

“She did? Then why have you torn out most of the pages?”

“ ’Twas like ’at when she give it t’me.”

“You know where they are, though.”

“No! I never seen ’un!”

“Well,” said Arabella, handing back the book, “this is useless to me in its current condition. You find those missing pages, and then we can talk about price. Otherwise, I shall turn you in to the magistrate for obstructing this investigation.”

As she turned to leave the room, the wretched woman gave an agonized cry.

“I don’
have
the pages, missus! I don’t
know
where they be! I . . . I lied to you. She never give me this. I went in, didn’t I? Went into her room as they was takin’ the last of ’er stuff down to the square. This was lyin’ there, on the floor, under a pile of rags and broken dishes. They didn’ want it for the sale. Because it was tore. That’s the God’s truth, I swear it! But, if you could give me a few bob for this, just a few bob, missus. I’ve had nothin’ to eat for three days!”

She wasn’t crying, but the hopeless look in those eyes was infinitely sadder, like that of a half-throttled cat, waiting with resignation for the other half.

Arabella considered the ledger in the woman’s hand. It was much stained and disgustingly smudged with food and wine and no telling what.

“All right,” Arabella said, reaching into her reticule and pulling out a coin, “I’ll give you half a crown for it.”

Half a crown was a lot of money. Probably more money than this person had seen together in quite some time. Yet there was no reaction. She held out one apathetic claw for the coin, and Arabella pulled the ledger from the other one.

Dear God, she thought. Kill me when I’m young, if you must, on the gallows, even, but don’t let me end like this!

 

“Are you all right, Miss Beaumont?”

She had come outside again, into the blessed sunshine.

“Of course I am, Mr. Kendrick. And you?”

“Yes, as you see—Did you get anything useful from . . . the neighbor?”

She showed him the violated ledger. Kendrick took it from her, opened the book to the first entry, and hurriedly shut it again.

“Where is the rest of it? Does she plan to charge you by the page?”

“No. She found it in this state. The removers left it behind, probably owing to its being damaged.”

“Or,” mused Kendrick, “the murderer might have nipped inside whilst the removers were busy, and torn out the pages pertaining to himself! Perhaps he pretended to
be
a remover.”

Arabella stopped and looked at him. “You don’t suppose that Euphemia was killed over something in this book?”

“Quite possibly. She may have known too much about someone who . . . someone of great political importance.”

“I very much doubt it, Mr. Kendrick. This was a private business ledger, after all. No one would have known about the contents. Or, if they did, they would surely have destroyed the entire book, rather than remove some of the pages and leave the rest to be discovered later.”

Kendrick shrugged. “There is no telling what some hypothetical person may or may not have done with the hypothetical missing pages,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, the landlady was not much use, either. According to her, Miss Ramsey never had any visitors. Her clientele had abandoned her, you see; that was why she moved here in the first place.”

“Well, but that is
something!
”

“Not really. The landlady has no way of knowing who comes in or goes out after dark, as her own apartments are in the rear of the building.”

“Oh. Well, thank you for asking her, all the same. May I offer you a lift home, Mr. Kendrick?”

“That is very good of you, Miss Beaumont, but regrettably, I shall have to decline. It might be taken amiss if anyone should see you riding with me, unchaperoned.”

Arabella smiled. “I appreciate your tact, but you and I both know that the lack of a chaperone is not what would shock people, unless, perhaps, it was
your
virtue they feared for. If any of your parishioners happened to see the rector of Effing riding in Arabella Beaumont’s carriage, it might well cost you your career.”

“Oh! But, I didn’t mean . . . I . . .”

“That is all right, Mr. Kendrick, I am not offended,” she said. “If my clients were threatening to take their business elsewhere because I sometimes kept company with a clergyman, you may be sure that you and I would be meeting with far less frequency.”

F
rom Easter to the middle of June, Arabella was accustomed to host intellectual gatherings at Lustings, where she entertained some of the finest male minds in Britain, twice weekly. No conversational topic was forbidden the guests—provided it was interesting—and ideas that would elsewhere have been condemned as heretical, treasonable, or coldly scientific were frequently aired in the Lustings drawing and dining rooms. Thus Arabella’s salons had been condemned from pulpits as far away as Aberdeen, whilst George Canning claimed that at no other house in London could one hear so vast a collection of remarkably good sense spoken at one go.

“Bunny, dear,” said Arabella. “Would you write to any members of my salon who may still be in town? Explain the situation—although I imagine everyone knows already what it is—and say that, until further notice, we shall have to cancel the Tuesday and Saturday night dinners. I am going up to my desk, and shan’t be down to supper. Please ask Cook to send up a tray at half past ten.”

The boudoir at Lustings was a pleasant little dove-colored nook off her bedroom, where Arabella did her best writing and thinking. In addition to the desk, there were two comfortable chairs, a small sofa, and a charming little French stove of pink porcelain. This was the place she had earmarked for her murder investigation headquarters: Here she was resolved to plot and ponder and map out strategies until the battle was resolved, in one way or another.

For her opening sortie, Arabella sat down and read the victim’s ledger, right through. Euphemia was formerly very methodical when sober; each left-hand page featured a first and last name, the named person’s address, and columns headed “Date,” “Services rendered to,” “Amounts paid,” and “Client of.”

“Client of”? These weren’t just Euphemia’s customers, then. (Odd!) On the right-hand page, the author had scribbled anecdotes about the client, along with personal remarks about his habits. Her grammar was poor, her spelling atrocious, and it was a pity that so many pages were missing, because the few that remained were quite interesting.

Miss Ramsey had once commanded a magnificent household in Mayfair, staffed by an army of servants. That had been some years ago, of course, before she’d lost her looks and her money.

There was a paragraph on the previous Duke of Glen
deen,
Puddles’ father, who had liked to do it standing up. The word “DISEASED” was written across the bottom.

Hmm, thought Arabella, I wonder whether he transmitted his disease to Lady Ribbonhat? That might explain a lot; perhaps her brain has gone all syphilitic.

Other entries had notations like “dull” or “obskyer” scrawled across the pages.

Arabella noted with delight that Euphemia had mentioned stockings four times for this client, without ever once having spelled it the same way. One entry, which caught Arabella’s attention particularly, pertained to Julia van Diggle. The duke’s fiancée! Well, well. Miss van Diggle always passed herself off as a woman of irreproachable virtue, yet she had evidently participated in some highly imaginative group encounters with Euphemia and the French ambassador. This information might almost certainly find a practical use if Arabella were acquitted.

Eventually she came to an entry of several pages pertaining to herself. She had been half-expecting this, for Euphemia had been ever wont to hold a grudge. Still, the entry was slanderous in the extreme, and Arabella smiled to think that Euphemia was dead and couldn’t show it to anybody.

That only strengthens the case against me, though, she thought, and the smile faded. Well. There was no sense in keeping
this
information lying about. She grasped the cover firmly with her left hand, tore out the three pages devoted to her own misdeeds with her right, and ripped them to bits. Then she wadded the bits into a ball and poked them into her pink porcelain stove.

There! Arabella straightened and stretched. Her body was
so
tired, yet her mind was as sharp as Euphemia’s pen. She scanned the bookshelves above her desk, which held a phalanx of notebooks made expressly for her and used mostly for diaries. They were lovely things, with marbleized endpapers and gilt-edged pages of thick, creamy rag paper. She had had them bound in calfskin dyed all sorts of delicate colors: gray, lavender, pink, butter, sage green.

Arabella selected a pale-blue one for her notes and wrote “Crime Investigation” at the top of the first page. Then she checked her current diary on the date of her last party for a list of attendees. But this wasn’t particularly helpful, as there had been simply heaps of guests and many had, as she’d said, brought large numbers of strangers with them. These people often arrived late and were never introduced to her. Arabella liked running a harum-scarum household for the most part. But this was one of the drawbacks.

There was only one name on her guest list that also appeared in Euphemia’s ledger, that of Arabella’s brother, Charles Beaumont.

Could Charles be the murderer? The possibility was almost too horrible to consider, and yet, if she were dead, he would come into a small annuity. Not much, but something. And he is always so desperate for money, she thought. But as desperate as
that?
Well, it did seem peculiar that he hadn’t been round to see her, when he knew what straits she was in. In fact, Arabella had not seen or heard from Charles since her party, in fact.

Well, all right, it could be Charles.

She returned to her new crime investigation notebook. I’ll have to shorten the name, she thought, and promptly came up with “CIN.” The free associations for this acronym pleased her immensely, and she wrote up all the details she knew or could guess about the case so far:

She scratched away for several hours, with a goose quill pen and violet ink. The notebooks were far too nice for the pencil stub, unless she needed to write whilst away from home.

At half past ten o’clock, a supper tray was brought in, not by Doyle or Mrs. Janks, but by Belinda herself, clad in her nightcap and dressing gown and dressed for bed.

“Listen to this, Bunny,” said Arabella, without looking up from Euphemia’s ledger:

They both roared at this for some time, and Belinda, wiping her eyes at last, said, “It’s good to hear you laugh again, Bell.” She took the ledger from her sister, in order to appreciate Euphemia’s inventive spellings.

“Well,” said Arabella, “one cannot be grim
all
the time. On the other hand, laughing is not going to solve this case. Chances are, the murderer has already removed the page which bore his name.”

“But why should he tear out so many?” asked Belinda, studying the book. “There are more stubs than pages, and they aren’t even all together. Look, here’s a clump of stubs, then there are three pages, two more stubs, another few pages, and then nothing but stubs to the end! Do you suppose his name was listed that many times?”

“I don’t know. It’s certainly strange. Well, as I cannot question people who are not listed, I shall have to see what can be done with the ones who are left. I have them written here, in my case notebook,” she said, holding it up. “Do you like it?”

Belinda was enchanted. “It’s lovely, Bell! May I carry it for you sometimes? It just exactly matches my new frock.”

At the words “new frock,” Arabella recollected herself.

“Forgive me, dearest! I was so wrapped up in my own affairs I never thought to ask how your shopping went! Did you get lots of nice things?”

“Not so many as Constance. She quite frightens me sometimes. Everyone knows the wench hasn’t a penny, and she is always whining about how poor she is, yet she continues to rack up more debt every day.”

“Yes, but not you.”

“No, well, I remember what you told me, and I am always careful to stay within my budget.”

“Good. Because, at the moment,
you
haven’t got a penny, either.”

“Bell,” said Belinda, suddenly serious, “what will happen to us? Now that the duke has withdrawn his patronage? How shall we live?”

“On credit, for the moment. But don’t worry; I am in no doubt of finding another rich lover in the fall, when the
ton
come flocking back like the geese they so resemble.”

“But what shall we do years from now? When you are old and debt ridden?”

(Belinda was only a few years younger than her sister, yet her mind was so constructed that it could not imagine a time when she might cease to be dependent upon Arabella, nor could she believe that her
own
face would ever lose its current appearance of fresh, dewy innocence.)

“You must not trouble yourself about such things,” said Arabella indulgently. “For you will waste your youth if you do. Well, go on, then . . . tell me what you bought today.”

“The blue frock, and a new bonnet for Sundays—”

“For Sundays?”

“In case I ever go to church.”

“Why should you want to do that?”

“Well, in case I ever marry, you know.”

Arabella smiled. “What, will you be married in a bonnet? In my day, brides used to wear orange blossoms and a veil.”

“Oh! You’re right, Bell! I never thought . . . but it’s a nice bonnet all the same, and I daresay I shall find other occasions to wear it.”

“Yes, I daresay you will,” said Arabella. “Was that all you bought? A frock and a bonnet?”

“And this!” cried Belinda. She opened her dressing gown to reveal herself in a new nightdress, which was all over pink satin ribbons and lace, with little, embroidered roses.

“Oh, very pretty! You see? Shopping helps when you’re feeling unhappy.”

Belinda had recently lost her lover, a dashing young captain in the Grenadier Guards, who’d gone off and married an heiress. The poor child had been distraught at the time, and Arabella, seeking to console her, had said, “Marriage is an occupational hazard in this business. We courtesans cannot afford to become too much attached to our clients.”

“Yes. That is, no, I know that,” sniffled Belinda, with streaming eyes, “but I had been so
sure,
I mean I had hoped that he was going to ask
me
to marry him.”

Arabella, who had been patting her sister’s back and rocking her gently, now held her out at arm’s length and looked her in the face.

“Belinda, darling, no man of property is just going to suddenly propose to you. You’re not some virtuous little maiden with fifty thousand a year: You are a courtesan, and you have no money, other than what I can scrape together and whatever you are able to earn for yourself.

“If you wish to be married, and lead a dull, respectable life—although it’s too late for us, you know, to ever be entirely respectable—we will need to plan it out first, very deliberately. I say ‘we’ because you will certainly need my help. But you must be very sure that that is something you actually
want,
dear. I don’t believe that it is. I think you would be bored. And you would not be able to know
me
anymore, once you were married.”