Authors: Caro Peacock

A Corpse in Shining Armour (4 page)

‘If such a test existed, the whole of
Debrett’s
would probably have to be re-written,’ I said.

I was doing some hard thinking. There was no doubt that he’d succeeded in piquing my curiosity. At that point, I’d met none
of the people involved and it presented itself as an interesting puzzle.

‘If I were to investigate, who would be my client? The elder son?’

‘Not directly. I’ve been approached by a lawyer of excellent reputation who was the elder son’s trustee, up to his twenty-first
birthday, and is still trustee for the younger son for another few months. He’s a family friend as well as their legal adviser.
He’s very concerned that the thing should be halted in its tracks before it becomes public knowledge.’

‘But if it’s gossip already…’

‘Gossip is one thing. Lawsuits are another.’

‘So the lawyer would be paying my fee?’

‘Yes, and I don’t think there’d be argument about anything you considered reasonable.’

‘What exactly would he expect me to do?’

‘He hoped you might make the acquaintance of the lady in question and encourage her to talk to you.’

‘To a complete stranger, about the most intimate things in her life?’

‘People usually seem willing to talk to you. You have a gift.’

‘And having gained her confidence–goodness knows how–I’m supposed to report to you and the lawyer on whether she’s mad
or scheming?’

‘That’s a reasonable summary. I’ll admit, we haven’t given much thought to the details. I simply promised my friend to see
if I could persuade you to take an interest.’

I stood up.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, not knowing that I’d be saying the same thing to another unorthodox invitation two days later.

That was when he told me, in confidence, the family name. I left him sitting under the picture, alone for once, looking like
a man who thought he’d done a good evening’s work.

I walked home that evening to Abel Yard, my dear but rackety home in Mayfair at the back of Park Lane. The front of Park Lane
is one of the most desirable addresses in London, facing directly on to the eastern side of Hyde Park, with dukes by the dozen,
peers ten-a-penny and the whole of society coming and going in carriages with liveried footmen on the back. But spin those
mansions round, like a child with a doll’s house, and the scene at the back is altogether more domestic, with narrow slices
of workshops, sheds and dwellings crammed with carriage-makers, carpenters, glaziers, bonnet trimmers, pastry cooks, cows,
chickens–all the things that the great houses need for their comfort but don’t want to know about. A stone’s throw from
Park Lane, in between grand Grosvenor Square and the parish workhouse, is Adam’s Mews. Carriage horses are stabled all along
the cobbled street. Grooms and drivers live overhead, some in rooms so low-ceilinged that even jockey-sized people can’t stand
upright in them, with hay stores in between and pulleys for drawing up hay bales from the carts that are so often blocking
the narrow mews. There was one standing there that afternoon. I managed to squeeze past it without snagging my dress and went
through the gateway into Abel Yard.

The carriage-mender at the entrance to the yard had the forge roaring and was hammering at something on his anvil. Chickens
scratched around the door at the bottom of our staircase. The door was locked, which meant Mrs Martley was out. Good. Mrs
Martley might, I suppose, be described as my housekeeper, except I’m not grand enough to have a housekeeper and she’s far
too opinionated to be one. A more accurate description might be that she’s my resident respectability. A woman can’t live
on her own and keep up any reputation, especially if, like me, she sometimes has gentleman callers. Mrs Martley, a retired
midwife in her forties, cooked and cleaned and nagged me about everything from forgetting to hang up my bonnet to still being
single at twenty-three years old. As I was fumbling in my reticule for my key, something jogged my elbow.

‘Enerunds?’

The girl Tabby had appeared from nowhere, standing there in her old stableman’s cap, her assortment of shawls that never varied,
winter or summer, her stockingless feet in shapeless boots too large for her. She was, I guessed, around fourteen or fifteen
years old and slept in a shed next to the cows at the end of the yard on piles of sacks and old blankets. As far as she made
a living, it was doing small jobs for dwellers in the yard. She’d just asked me if I had any errands for her. I thought quickly.

‘Would you run along to the baker’s and see if there are any loaves left. Here’s sixpence. Keep the change for yourself.’

Her eyes glinted. She took the coin and ran off, boots flopping, before I could change my mind.

I found my key, unlocked the door and walked upstairs to our parlour. There was a note from Mrs Martley on the table:
Have gone round to Mr Suter’s. Your supper is in the meat safe.
Better still. My best friend, Daniel Suter, had married a dancer named Jenny the year before. Mrs Martley had expected me
to marry him and was furious. With me, not with him. Then Jenny had done the only thing that could redeem her in Mrs Martley’s
eyes and become pregnant. All Mrs Martley’s professional instincts, as well as her kindness, had been aroused. She now spent
as much time at their rooms in Bloomsbury as she did at Abel Yard. I hoped Daniel and Jenny were grateful. I knew I was.

I went on, up a narrower flight of stairs, into a room that was one of the delights of my life. The afternoon sun gleamed
on the white walls, scattered here and there with rainbows, from the light filtering through a glass mermaid that I’d hung
in the window. My second-hand couch, newly upholstered in blue to match the curtains, stood by the window. I knelt on it as
I took off my bonnet, enjoying the view over waves of gleaming roof tiles with pigeons basking in the sun, to the tops of
the trees in Hyde Park. Besides the couch, I had a trunk and a row of pegs for my clothes, a set of shelves overflowing with
my books, a cheval mirror, a table to write on. There were still a few strawberries left in the chip punnet on my table, an
extravagance from yesterday. I took off my gloves and ate them, then rummaged under the bookcase for the box where I kept
my accounts. It took only a few minutes to establish what I was nearly sure of in any case–that if I wanted to keep my precarious
comforts, I couldn’t afford to turn down a case as profitable as this one might be. That was true enough, but only an excuse.
I’d known before I’d left Mr Disraeli that his appeal to my curiosity had been successful, and he knew it too.

The events at the jousting practice two days later only increased my curiosity. As it happened, I had another social engagement
that evening after I came back from the Eyre Arms. Often weeks might pass when I didn’t go to functions except on business,
but this was June, with the season at its height. An embossed invitation card had come from a former pianoforte pupil of mine,
an aristocratic young married woman whom I didn’t care for greatly, who had decided that my efforts weren’t on a par with
her genius. I’d heard she’d found herself a professor instead. She now intended to delight the world with a soirée of Chopin
and Miss Liberty Lane was cordially invited. I didn’t much look forward to it, but my career as an investigator was not so
secure that I could ignore an event which might provide rich pupils.

When I got home after returning Rancie to the stables I warmed a pan of water for a good all-over wash, then dressed in my
new ribbed silk, the colour of bluebells. It had two rows of lace down the bodice and wonderful sleeves that puffed out from
shoulder to elbow, then came tight to the wrist with a row of three silk-covered buttons. It was a struggle doing up the buttons
on the right sleeve with my left hand, even with the help of a button-hook, but when I looked in the mirror I knew it had
been worth it. The event was in Knightsbridge and I’d decided to walk there across the park to save a cab fare, so I tucked
a cloth into my reticule to give my shoes a surreptitious wipe before I faced the front door and footman.

My former pupil hadn’t improved greatly as a pianist, only added a layer of affectation to her modest competence. I sat there
in her over-decorated drawing room on an uncomfortable gilt chair, wishing I hadn’t come. Then, in a pause between nocturnes,
a woman’s voice hissed from the row behind.

‘Elizabeth.’

It seemed to be directed at me, even though it wasn’t my name. I ignored it. It came again, more urgently, actually in a note’s
rest in the music. I turned round and saw a face I’d never expected to see again. A lovely face, framed in red-gold hair dressed
with a rope of creamy pearls, a little fuller than when I’d last seen it two years ago, cheeks soft as peaches. Celia. When
she saw she had my attention, she beckoned and flicked her eyes towards the room next door. She thought we should get up there
and then, in mid-nocturne, and go and talk. She always had been impatient. I put a finger to my lips, tried to sign wait and
turned round, but I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck, hear the silk hiss of her dress as she fidgeted.

I sat oblivious of the music, hurled back suddenly to a time I revisited as seldom as possible. Celia and I belonged in different
worlds. She had a rich husband who adored her, a London house and a country estate. She was as good natured as a child and
just as self-centred, without a thought in her lovely head about society, art, politics or anything outside her own circle.
In spite of that, and even after a gap of two years, there was something that bound us as closely as sisters. I’d met her
at the lowest point in my life, a few hours after I learned my father had been murdered, and she’d been kind. The events of
the weeks that followed had deprived her, too, of people she’d loved. I’d played a part in that. I knew I wasn’t to blame.
Or if there had been any blame at all, I’d cancelled the debt by helping her elope to a marriage that even London gossip admitted
had become a by-word for happiness. I’d been pleased when I heard that. If I’d wanted to meet her again, it could have been
arranged easily enough, but I was scared of the feelings that meeting her might bring back. There was no help for it now,
though. When the music finished at last, she was waiting at the end of my row.

‘Elizabeth! I don’t believe it.’

She’d first known me under an assumed name, and although I’d told her my real one she’d never managed to remember it. The
soft lisp was still there in her voice, the grace in the way she moved. She was wearing pale apricot silk with a wide sash
in a darker tone. A triple necklace of pearls and diamonds gleamed against her skin. She put her hand on my arm, laughing
at the wonder of it.

‘Where have you been? What have you been doing? I’ve been thinking about you so much since…since that night.’

The night I’d helped her elope. The night I’d seen her brother die. Her brother had killed my father. Celia would never know
that. If she’d tried, she could have found me over the last two years, but Celia lived by impulse and didn’t look far under
the surface of things. There was nothing but pleasure at seeing me again in her voice and face, no tension in the hand on
my arm.

A slow tide of people was carrying us towards the next room where refreshments were laid out. She kept her hand where it was,
talking all the way.

‘It really is a miracle. We’ve been in town so little this season, just a couple of appearances at court and so forth. Have
you been presented to Queen Victoria yet? Isn’t she quite charming, and she talks so amusingly. But it’s such a labour to
get Philip to leave the estate for more than a week at a time. He’s totally devoted to agricultural improvement, especially
pigs. How many other women do you know whose chief rival for their husband’s attention weighs thirty stone and grunts?’

People were beginning to turn towards us. She was laughing about her husband, but her voice was full of love for him and she
was clearly happy. My dread began to melt away. Celia might claim to have been thinking of me, but she lived almost entirely
in the present and after that first reference she didn’t want to talk or think about the past. She brought her face close
to mine.

‘And I must tell you, I’m breeding.’

It took me a while to jump from pigs to people and offer her my sincere congratulations.

‘Yes, it will soon be showing, so there won’t be many more parties this season. It’s due in November–isn’t that convenient,
such a dull time of year with no parties.’

We’d reached the doorway. Our hostess was standing at the other side of it so before we were allowed to reach the refreshments
we had to pay tribute to her performance. Celia told her the mazurka thing was so cheerful you wanted to dance to it, meaning
it as a compliment, and got a sour look. I said the performance was charming, meaning it as an insult, and received a thin
smile. We progressed to the buffet and a gentleman who knew Celia fussed round us with plates and glasses. Skilfully, she
managed to keep the food and wine but lose the gentleman, and found us two chairs on our own. She forked up poached salmon
with eager appetite.

‘And you, my dear, are you…?’

She glanced at my ring finger. I shook my head. She gave a disappointed pout.

‘I was sure you would be by now. I hope you have friends looking out for you.’

I laughed.

‘My friends know all too well what I’d say if they did any such thing.’

‘Is there somebody?’

I shook my head and forked up salmon. She looked into my face.

‘Was there nearly somebody?’

‘Well, yes, perhaps nearly.’

‘And did he marry somebody else?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, my dear, I’m sorry.’