His wife nodded.
"There was no question of her returning to Somerset?" Grenville asked.
"Why should she return to Somerset?" Beauchamp demanded. "This is her home now."
"She might have taken a whim to go there, visit her old friends," Grenville said.
"I tell you, she would have told us, not walked away," Beauchamp said. "Why do you question her character? Someone took her from us and that is that."
Grenville lifted his hands. "I beg your pardon. I did not mean to upset you. I am trying to establish possibilities. If you assure me that Charlotte would not have left of her own accord, I will believe you."
I was not as sanguine, but I said nothing.
Mrs. Beauchamp looked pensive. "There was something odd."
Her husband scowled. "Odd? What do you mean? I know of nothing odd."
"A week or two before, she--well, she seemed to fade a little. I cannot be more forthcoming than that, because I did not notice it at the time. But several times she started to tell me something, something she was worried about, but she would stop herself and change the subject."
"It probably had nothing to do with her disappearance," Beauchamp said. "Nothing at all." His face was red, his eyes glittering.
"She missed Somerset, though," Mrs. Beauchamp said. "She loved it. Her letters to us before she came here were filled with the delights of it."
"She would not have gone there without telling us."
His wife subsided. "No."
Grenville broke in. "We do need to prepare you. The other girl we are looking for was abducted, we believe, by a man called Horne."
"Or Denis," I put in.
Grenville shot me a warning look.
Both Beauchamps remained blank. "I have not heard either name," Beauchamp said. "But we are not much in London. Who are these gentlemen?"
"Mr. Horne lived in Hanover Square," Grenville said. "He had our young lady in his keeping for a time, and we are trying to discover what became of her. Miss Morrison's fate might be similar."
Mrs. Beauchamp bowed her head. "I thought of that--that she might be ruined. But I only want her back. I only want her safe."
Beauchamp regarded his wife a moment, his face unreadable. "My wife and I were never blessed with children. We quite looked upon Charlotte as our daughter. No man could be prouder of his own offspring."
"Or woman."
Tears stood in Mrs. Beauchamp's eyes. I felt like a fraud. I had no help to give.
"The letters she wrote," I said. "Would you permit me to read them?"
Mrs. Beauchamp looked up, hope lighting her face. "Indeed, yes, Captain. She wrote beautiful letters. She was a dear, sweet girl."
Beauchamp wasn't as happy. "What good will it do to read her letters? She made no indication in them that she wanted to leave us."
"She might have met someone that she wrote about, might have known someone in Somerset, someone she might have gone away with."
"I tell you, there was no one."
Mrs. Beauchamp rose. "No, I want him to read the letters. So he'll understand what she was like. And he might see something we missed. We don't know that."
She passed me in a swish of skirts and a waft of old-fashioned soap as Grenville and I got politely to our feet. Mr. Beauchamp also rose, but he crossed to the window and stood with his back to us. Beyond him, the rain dripped down the gray windows.
I said, "I will do everything in my power to discover what happened to Miss Morrison."
Beauchamp turned, his stance dejected. "I will not lie to you, Captain. Writing to you was my wife's idea. She holds out too much hope. She will not even voice the possibility that Charlotte is lost to us forever, as I believe her to be."
"Dead, do you mean?" I asked gently.
"Yes. Because she would have written to us, otherwise. We are her only family. Why would she go away? She would have explained."
Tears hovered in his eyes. I wondered very much what he had truly felt for Charlotte--the love of a father? Or something else? And did he even realize it himself?
Mrs. Beauchamp fluttered into the room and thrust a lacquered wooden box at me. "I've kept all the letters she'd written me in the year before she came to us. She also copied out a few that she sent to a friend in Somerset since then. Read them, Captain. You will come to know her through them."
I took the box. "I will return them to you as soon as I can."
"Take all the time you like. I ask only that you do not lose them. They are dear to me."
"I will take very good care of them," I promised.
They hovered, but I knew that the interview was over. "Thank you for seeing us," I said, then Grenville and I bowed and took our leave.
As we rode away in Grenville's carriage, the box tucked beside me, I looked back. Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp stood at the wide ground-floor window, watching us depart.
*** *** ***
We spent the night in Hampstead. While we'd talked with the Beauchamps, the rain had increased, until black water fell around us and cold rose from the Heath. It was Grenville's idea to find a public house to stay the rest of the evening and drive leisurely back to London the next day.
I'd thought the public house would be too rustic for the wealthy Lucius Grenville, but he laughed and said that he'd slept in some places in the wilds of Canada that made Hampstead positively palatial.
He obtained private rooms at the top of the public house that proved snug. A sitting room in the middle opened to a bedroom at either side, luxurious accommodations by my standards. The publican's wife, a cheerful, thin woman, trundled us a supper of roasted chicken, thick soup, greens, cream, and bread. After the penetrating damp outside, we both fell upon it heartily.
The publican's wife lingered, inclined to talk. "I'm afraid it's only the leavings and the soup from yesterday's beef and vegetables, but it will fill the stomach. I know gentlemen are used to much finer, but you won't get better in Hampstead."
"Madam, it is admirable," Grenville said around a mouthful of chicken.
She gave him a modest look. "You'll have fresh eggs in the morning. I suppose you gentlemen are from London, then?"
We replied in the affirmative.
"Journalists, are you?" she asked. "Have you come about our murder?"
* * * * *
Chapter Eleven
I nearly choked on my soup. I coughed and pressed my handkerchief to my mouth then hastily seized my glass of stout.
Grenville finished chewing and swallowing without expression. "We know nothing of a murder. It happened here?"
"Oh, aye, they found her off in the woods, torn to bits, poor lamb."
"When did this happen?" Grenville asked.
The woman leaned on the table, her eyes bright in her bone-thin face. "A week or more, now. Maybe two weeks. I don't remember. That's when they found her. One of the blacksmith's lads, he had gone to do a spot of fishing. Didn't half give him a turn."
"Who was she?"
"That was the funny thing, sir. They didn't know at first. Turns out she's kitchen maid up at Lord Sommerville's big house. She'd gone missing sometime back. Near two months."
"They were certain she was the kitchen maid?" I asked.
She looked at me in surprise. "Oh, yes, sir. Her brother came from London and said it was her."
I sat back, wondering if we'd just discovered the whereabouts of Charlotte Morrison, even in spite of the brother's identification. If she'd been torn to bits, he might not have been able to recognize her.
The publican's wife chattered on, leaning on her hands until white ridges appeared on the sides of her palms. "She'd been dead a long time, they said. I didn't go to the inquest, but my husband, he's always one for gossip. He went out of interest. Whole village did. Poor thing had lain there nigh on two months. Not much left of her."
"Why did they think it was murder then?" Grenville asked. "She might have taken ill, or fallen, or some such thing."
The woman pointed at the nape of her own neck. "The back of
her head was bashed in. They said she died of that, then was torn up and dragged out there to the woods. I don't know how they know these things meself."
"Lack of blood where they found her," I said woodenly.
"Truly, sir? It's a bit gruesome, I say. But we had a few journalists come. Not very many." She sounded disappointed.
"Did they discover who did the murder?" Grenville asked.
She shook her head. "And it does give one a shiver of nights, knowing that went on not two miles from your own house. No, the girl's young man was in London when she ran away, and he can prove it. She'd probably run off with some other man what promised her money or jewels or such nonsense. Lured her away and killed her. We've been on the lookout for strange young men since then, but we've not seen a one."
Grenville oozed sympathy. "It must have been a frightening thing to happen."
"It does make one think. Not much wrong with the poor girl but silliness. She didn't deserve to be killed. Now then, gentleman, I've kept you long enough with my talk. You enjoy your supper, as little as it is. I or Matthew will bring breakfast in the morning. We keep country hours here, so you gentlemen will want to be early to bed."
Finished with her gossip, the publican's wife clattered a few dirty plates onto a tray and departed with a rustle and a bang of the door.
Grenville raised his brows. "I was half afraid for a moment that our errand was for naught."
I picked up my spoon. "I wonder if the girl was another victim of Mr. Denis."
"It is possible, of course. This soup, Lacey, is almost excellent. Remind me to tell our lively-tongued hostess. But remember, girls run away or are lured away all the time, though not all of them come to such a tragic fate. Either their families can give them nothing, or they're told they can't have a luxurious life, and they can't resist seeing whether there is something more in the world for them. James Denis cannot be responsible for them all."
I didn't answer as I sopped up my soup with the heel of the loaf. Perhaps Grenville was right--the girl had gone away with a predator who had murdered her. The back of her head had been crushed, the publican's wife had said. I hoped she had not known death was coming.
My heart burned for her, as it did for Jane Thornton. I wondered savagely why civilized England was so much more dangerous for a young girl than the battlefields of the Peninsula had been for soldiers like me.
*** *** ***
I took Charlotte Morrison's letters to my bedchamber with me, and lay under the cozy quilt with bricks to warm my feet, and read them. I laid them out chronologically, and read through the last two years of Charlotte's life.
It seemed she'd been happy in Somerset, content with domestic life and her small circle of friends. She described her journeys to the moorlands and to Wales in poetic terms, painting a picture of the wild lands that was both beautiful and stark. She had been worried for her ill parents and anxious to give them every comfort. She expressed concern for what would happen to her once they died, but without complaining. The curate, she said, had taken some interest in her, but a subsequent letter explained it had come to naught. The curate felt himself too poor to take a wife.
Charlotte wrote with sorrow of her parents' death, then with anticipation of moving to her new home in Hampstead. She spoke of closing up the house, selling the livestock, and preparing for her journey.
The letters ended in the April of the previous year. After that were copies of a half dozen letters to a Miss Geraldine Frazier in Somerset. Charlotte described her arrival in Hampstead, her gratitude to the Beauchamps. She seemed to like Hampstead, though she missed the remoteness of Somerset. "It is never possible to be truly alone, here. Always there are carriages and horses in the streets, and families from London who come to picnic on the Heath of a Sunday. But the woods and hills are pretty, and my cousins and I take many walks. They are kind people."
Two letters, one from November and one from January, interested me. In them, Charlotte said something curious:
"Pray disregard the incident I wrote to you of before, and please do not write me of it! It may be all my fancy, and I do not wish to slander. They say that looking into the eyes bares the soul, but when I do so, I am only confused. I cannot tell what is what, or the difference between what I imagine and what is real."
I searched the previous letters again for any mention of a curious or sinister incident, but if she had described such a thing, she had not copied out the letter that contained it.
The next letter, dated January of that year, reintroduced the theme:
"I wake in the night, afraid. Perhaps some step jars my sleep, or perhaps it is fancy, but my heart beats hard, and it is a long time before I drift off again. No, please do not worry, and do not write of it; my cousin would think it odd if I did not share your letters."
She said nothing more on the subject. The January letter was the last.
I read them through again, wondering whether I'd missed something, but I found nothing else. I folded the letters into the lacquer box and laid them on the bedside table.
I wondered what had frightened Charlotte and if it had anything to do with Jane Thornton. Had Charlotte met someone she suspected had sinister designs on her? Or was she only unused to living so near London?
I wanted to speak to the friend she'd written the letters to. I'd write to her, though I did not like the prospect of a journey to Somerset. It would be long and expensive and my leg already ached from the short excursion to Hampstead. It would also take time from my searching for Jane Thornton, and I feared that every day might be her last.
I put out my candles, lay back, and tried to sleep. But the pain in my leg kept me awake, as did my thoughts. I went over the publican's wife's tale of the murder of the girl in the woods. Why had she been killed? A quarrel with a lover? Or had she seen something--the abduction of Charlotte Morrison perhaps?
Sleep would not come. I tried to still my thoughts by thinking of Janet and loving her. She had turned up exactly when I'd needed her, and I greatly looked forward to seeing her again.
But visions of her face flitted from me and I could only remember Horne in the pool of dried blood and Aimee locked inside the cupboard with dark bruises on her face.
The quiet of the room irritated me. I was used to city dwelling now, and even in the depths of Portugal and Spain, I had lived with the army, in noise and chaos and without privacy. I tossed for a time under the blankets, then I gave in to my restlessness.
I rose, took up my candle, and padded to the sitting room. The door to Grenville's bedchamber stood open. I crossed to close it, not wanting to wake him with my restlessness.
I stopped. Grenville's bed was empty. The sheets lay smooth and undisturbed, turned down for the night by the chambermaid who had scuttled in as we finished our repast. Grenville had not slept there, and he was nowhere in sight.
*** *** ***
I returned to bed, and despite my disquiet about where Grenville had disappeared to and why, I slept again.
In the morning, he turned up for breakfast as though he had been there all along. I nearly asked him where he had gone, but decided I would not pry. I would pretend, as he did, that he had gone nowhere until he chose to tell me otherwise.
We decided that I would return the letters to the Beauchamps myself, and Grenville would ride to visit with Lord Sommerville before we departed for London. Grenville was acquainted with the elderly viscount and said he would drop a few questions about Sommerville's kitchen maid the publican's wife had reported to us was found dead in the woods.
After breakfast the hostler's boy hoisted me onto a mare Grenville had hired. I could still ride a horse, if it were an even-tempered beast and someone boosted me onto the bloody thing. She was about seventeen hands, a bit larger than the horses I'd charged about on in the cavalry. For a country nag, her conformation was surprisingly fine, her gaits smooth. Her hocks bent and lifted with precision, and her eye was alert, her going, sound.
I had ridden fine horses
in Portugal and Spain, but I'd forced in myself a certain detachment to them. Horses died at three or four times the rate of men, and though I took care, I lost more than my heart cared to. I'd seen cavalry officers weep as their horses, wounded, thrashed furrows into the bloody ground, the stench of death and fear covering them. More than once, I'd shot the poor beasts for them, as the officers stood, helpless, rocking in grief and sorrow. Dead horses, mounded with crows, had littered the battlefields. Detachment, I'd found, was best.
I turned the mare to the road that led to Beauchamp's modest house. The clouds lowered and threatened rain again. I nudged my horse into a faster trot, and pulled my hat down over my forehead as the first drops touched me. My route led me through an open field, and the road dipped.
A young man rose up from the low hedge beside the road and grabbed my horse's bridle. The horse snorted and danced, and I slid halfway from the saddle.
"What the devil-- ?"
The youth abandoned the bridle, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me from the saddle. My stiff knee protested, and I landed hard on the packed earth.
My assailant came at me, arms wide. I struggled upright and waited. He lunged. I tucked my body together, ducked to one side, and caught his outflung arm.
He was strong, heavy, young muscles determined, but he was inexperienced. I jerked with my weight and flipped him neatly over onto his back.
He made a "ha!" noise as the air whooshed from his lungs, and he lay still a moment, like an insect on its back. I sprinted the distance to the horse. I knew I'd never mount without assistance, so I snatched my walking stick from the saddle.
I yanked the sword from my cane just as two huge arms closed around me from behind and the lad half lifted me from my feet. I swung my sword behind me in an arc and slapped him hard on the leg.
He yelped. I slapped again. His hold loosened. I pulled my elbow close to my body and slammed it backward.
"Oop--" he gasped.
I slid from his slack grip, whirled, and faced him, my sword level with his heart.
"Odd place for a robbery, here on an open green in the middle of the day."
He did not answer. His mouth opened and closed a few times, his face red with his returning breath. His eyes held no belligerence, only surprise, as though he had not counted on a victim who would fight back.
The youth stared at my sword a moment then whirled and fled, straight for the horse.