We arrived at Grenville’s punctually at seven. Mr. Bennett must have been very eager to meet the famous Lucius Grenville, because he was already there.
Matthias shot me a long look as he led us up the stairs to Grenville’s front sitting room—the one Grenville used for the unwashed masses, not his very private sanctum higher up in the house.
Matthias drew himself up to his full height as he opened the door to the sitting room. He became the haughtiest of haughty footmen as he announced:
“Captain and Mrs. Gabriel Lacey.”
Grenville, dressed in his most severe black frock coat and trousers, and his most achingly white waistcoat and cravat, came forward to greet us.
“Lady Donata, how lovely you are.” He took her hands and kissed her cheek. “And Lacey. Well met.” He formally shook my hand.
A far cry from the Grenville in a dressing gown over shirtsleeves at the breakfast table. I concluded from his crisp suit and precise formality that he sincerely disliked Mr. Andrew Bennett.
That gentleman came forward, an eager smile on his face.
He was not what I expected. Devorah Hartman and Captain Woolwich had painted a picture of a groveling, crafty young rake who won the hearts of ladies and killed them for their money. I’d imagined handsomeness in a too-fulsome way, perhaps with the dark eyes and knowing look of a stage villain.
What I found was a young man heading for middle age, a little bit portly but still straight-backed and tall, with a soft, innocuous face and friendly brown eyes. He looked less the wily villain and more the hero’s best friend. He’d be Horatio, not Hamlet.
He bowed to Donata, suitably awed by her lofty status, then to me. “Well met, Captain,” he said, holding out his hand. “My father-in-law told me you had some news for me.”
Mr. Bennett’s handshake was firm, but not too much so, and not too soft either. I wondered if he practiced it.
Mr. Bennett withdrew, retaining the look of an interested puppy. “Mr. Grenville would not impart it,” he said. “He insisted you tell me yourself.”
“I thought it best,” Grenville said smoothly.
I understood. Though Grenville would be curious to know Mr. Bennett’s reaction, he did not want to be alone with him when the reaction occurred.
Grenville motioned for us to take a seat. With careful politeness, he led Donata to a chair and settled her, then sat in the one next to her. I preferred to remain standing, so Bennett did as well.
“What is it, Captain?” Bennett asked. “You are alarming me.”
“I am afraid,” I began, “that I have discovered what happened to your first wife, Judith Hartman.”
Bennett stopped. The soft-eyed look deserted him for a second, his face losing color. “What?” he asked. “Tell me the worst.”
I wondered a moment if the worst would mean her being found alive.
“She was discovered in the River Thames,” I said. “Had been killed and discarded there perhaps fifteen years gone now. What is left of her was fished out ten years ago and stored in a cellar. Mr. Grenville, once we discovered her identity, arranged to have her sent back to her father, for burial.”
As I spoke, Bennett had grown more and more pale. At last, his face resembled nothing less than the white of ghostly fog, his cheeks taking on a sheen of perspiration.
Bennett drew a quick, short breath as my speech ended, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he dropped to a heap on the floor.
Chapter Twenty
Grenville was on his feet. “Good Lord.”
I reached down to heave Bennett to the nearest sofa. He was heavy for his size, and my leg hurt me. Grenville, after a stunned second, leapt to help.
Together, we got him stretched across a scroll-backed, silk-upholstered divan. I patted his cold cheek.
“Bennett.”
“Did you kill him?” Donata leaned in. “No, I see his chest moving.” She swung away, her skirts brushing my leg, and snatched up her reticule. She removed a small silver box, opened it on its hinge, and thrust it under Bennett’s nose.
The acrid odor of vinegar came to me. Bennett’s face screwed up, his eyes popped open, and he coughed.
Donata, satisfied, snapped the case shut.
Grenville returned with brandy. His absolute best was kept upstairs in reserve for him and very special guests. Even so, what was in the cup he offered Bennett now I considered much too good for the wretch.
Bennett drank, then coughed up most of the liquid, which Grenville caught on a handkerchief.
Bennett grabbed the linen cloth and applied it to his lips. “What … happened?” he asked around it.
Grenville gave his shoulder a pat. “You took a tumble to my sitting room floor. Are you hurt?”
“No.” Bennett blinked as he thought about it. “I do not believe so.” His gaze went to me. “Sir, did you say …”
“That Judith Hartman is dead, yes.” I had stepped back from the tableau and folded my arms. “Shall I go through it again for you?”
“No … no.” Bennett held up his hand. “Oh, my poor Judith. This is terrible. I assumed she had met an unfortunate end, but I did not dream …”
I watched him carefully. The flick of his eyes told me he lied.
“You knew,” I said, already tired of him. “That is why you married again so quickly, how you convinced the magistrates you should be allowed to wed. You knew she was dead.”
“No.” The word was sharp, full of shock, bordering on anger. “No, Captain, you misunderstand. I perjured myself, it is true. I never believed she was dead at all.”
It was Donata who interrupted the amazed silence that followed. She fixed Bennett with cold hauteur. “If you believed her alive, then why were you in such a hurry to marry the next lady?”
Bennett flushed. “I must confess to you. I am a warmhearted man.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “When Judith walked away and did not return, I was hurt, unhappy, grieved. I put it about that she must have died so no one would know she deserted me. Her father, you see, was very unhappy about her marrying me, and she began to feel that she wronged him. She wished to reconcile. I believed, when she did not come home that day, that she had returned to her family.”
“You would have soon learned otherwise,” I said sternly.
“I did. I missed her so much.” Bennett dabbed his cheeks with the brandy-stained handkerchief. “I finally went to the heart of the Hebrew area, and demanded to speak to Judith. Her father told me he hadn’t seen her. I did not believe him, of course.”
“So you went to court to have her declared dead?” He was not winning my respect with this story.
“I asked her neighbors, those who would speak to me. Her father did not allow her mother and sister to come down and listen to me—they might have told me the truth. But the Hebrews, they band together, and I was an outsider, the Englishman who’d stolen one of their own. The entire street more or less shoved me out and slammed the door, so to speak.”
“Her father told you the truth. She hadn’t come home.”
“I concluded that after a time,” Bennett admitted. “Judith was a sweet thing. She would have found some way to talk to me if she could, would have written at least. What I believed, gentlemen, your ladyship, was that her father had spirited her off somewhere—back to the Continent, out to the countryside to some other enclave of Hebrews, and she would never come back.”
He sighed. “When I met my Seraphina, we came to love each other deeply, and it broke my heart that I could not marry her. Hartman had metaphorically buried Judith—it hurt me to imagine what life she had—and so I hired a solicitor to help me declare Judith dead so that I could marry Seraphina. I wish you could have met her, Captain. You’d understand. A finer woman did not walk the world.”
“You were living with her,” I pointed out. “For a few years, I understand. Why the sudden need to have the banns read?”
Bennett blushed like a schoolboy. “We believed she was increasing. I did not want a
child of mine to be born on the wrong side of the blanket. And so, I obtained a declaration that Judith was dead, and I married Seraphina. The banns were posted. It was in the newspapers. Hartman could have come forward, told the truth, stopped the marriage. He did not. I concluded he wanted nothing more to do with me—with me married again, Judith would be safe.” His face fell. “Only now you tell me …”
Tears trickled from his eyes, and he sniffled into the handkerchief.
“Mr. Bennett.”
At my tone, Bennett looked up, eyes puffy and red. “Sir?”
“I do not understand you. You loved Judith, and yet you quickly married another. And since have married a third woman.”
Bennett nodded. “Yes. My Maggie. The best woman in the world. You met her, Captain.”
“So why this outpouring of grief for Judith?” I asked him severely. “You had finished with her years ago. Fifteen years, to be precise.”
The handkerchief came up again. “Because all this time, I thought she was still alive. I had a notion that perhaps someday, we would meet once more. Spend our dotage together. Foolish, perhaps, but she was still in my heart.”
“What of your current wife? Your dear Maggie?”
Bennett went redder still. “You can scarce understand, Captain. I loved Judith. I love Maggie. My heart does not shirk from both.” He shook his head, eyes screwing up. “That scarce matters now. You’ve revealed that my poor, my dearest, sweetest Judith is …”
Grenville and I exchanged a glance. He expressed in one flick of his brows that he had no idea what to make of the man.
Bennett’s tears seemed real enough. He did everything to put forth a picture of a hapless gentleman caught in his own deeper feelings. Loved too much, grieved too hard. Pity me.
And yet, I understood why Woolwich did not like him. There was something wrong with the way Bennett spoke, begged us to understand him.
I felt as though I watched a play. The description of Bennett wandering into a Hebrew neighborhood and having every single one of them driving him, the Gentile, away, protecting their own, had the ring of the theatre to it. I knew that Londoners as a whole put the Hebrews into a box, and many men, as Brewster did, considered them “other” and disdained them collectively. Even so, I felt that Shakespeare or Sheridan could have written the scene.
I thought of Margaret Woolwich, good-natured but, as her father had claimed, not very intelligent. She’d have seen Bennett’s surface and been satisfied with it. I wondered if Judith had been satisfied, or come to her senses—too late.
Donata, Grenville, and I were too worldly, had known too many, to take Bennett’s character as absolute.
Donata, in particular, regarded him with blatant cynicism. “You see, Mr. Bennett,” she said, leaning down a little to pin him with her sharp stare. “We were of the mind that you had killed Judith. Struck her down with a poker or some such, so that you could marry your dear Seraphina.”
Bennett came off the sofa. I was in his way, but his bulk shoved me aside.
“I?” Again the drama, his hand pressed to his heart, his eyes wide with horror. “Dear lady, Judith was to me as the most precious jewel in all the world. I would never hurt her. Not one hair on her head.”
“Her hair was not in jeopardy,” Donata said in her acerbic way. “Her head was bashed in, rather, and she was pushed into the river.”
The slight widening of his eyes in shock was not feigned, I thought. “Please. How horrible. I cannot bear to think of it.”
Donata was remorseless. “It was a bit worse for Judith.”
“Please.” The handkerchief went to Bennett’s mouth again, and he shuddered.
I broke in. “If not you—can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Judith?”
Bennett lowered his hand. He was white about the mouth. “No, indeed. Everyone loved her.”
“Apparently not everyone,” I said dryly. “If her death distresses you so, please help us find her killer.”
“Oh. Ah, I see what you mean.” Bennett’s brows lowered as he thought. “She truly was well liked.”
“Yet, she angered her family and her friends by becoming a converso and marrying you.”
“That is true.” Bennett pondered again, the very image of a concerned gentleman trying to help. “Very true. I do hate to speak ill of any lady, but her sister, Devorah—she is a bitter woman.”
I gave him a neutral nod, not wanting to convey my own opinion of her. Devorah was indeed bitter.
“Her father and mother were quite angry as well,” Bennett said. “And of course, the young man who had hopes of becoming her husband.”
I hid my start. Neither Hartman nor Devorah had mentioned another suitor. “His name?” I asked.
“Let me think. I scarce remember. He was a Hebrew, of course, with one of their outlandish names. No, I have it—Stein. Yes. Itzak was his given name. I remember, because I told Judith I thought it a damned odd way to say Isaac.”
Bennett regarded us as though we should be amused with him, but we remained stone-faced.
“Anyone else?” I asked.
Bennett shrugged. “I have little idea, Captain. I am not good at this sort of thing. Her father would know.”
I would get her father to speak to me somehow. “If you happen to remember any more,” I said, “you will send word, won’t you?”
“Of course. Of course.” Bennett flashed me an appealing look. “Please discover who killed my Judith. I beg of you, Captain, bring this man to justice. If I can be of further help, I will, I assure you.”
Sincerity oozed from him. Grenville, who’d silently let Donata and me get on with interrogating him, finally spoke. “We shall do our best. Perhaps you should go home, Mr. Bennett. You have had a shock.”
“Yes, indeed,” Bennett said breathily. “I will return to my Margaret.” Another glance at us, another flush. “I assure you, gentlemen, your ladyship, that Margaret knows about Judith. And Seraphina. I keep nothing from her. She knows all of my unhappy past.”
During this speech, Grenville had moved for the bell, and Matthias opened the door after he’d let enough time lapse. No need to confirm that he’d indeed been listening.
Bennett, touching his breastbone again, prepared to make his exit.
“Seraphina,” I said.
Bennett stopped short, turning in confusion. “Pardon?”
I leaned on my walking stick. “You told us that you married Seraphina because you believed she was increasing. Is that how she passed away, if I might inquire? In childbed?”
Anger flashed in Bennett’s eyes—anger at me. “No, indeed. She was not increasing at all. It was a cancer.” He shrugged helplessly. “Nothing we could do.”
“I see.” I felt a pang of pity for Seraphina. “I am sorry.”
“Thank you.” Bennett took my sorrow to be for him, when in fact, I was only sorry for his wife. All of his wives. “Good evening, your ladyship. Mr. Grenville. Captain.”
Bennett’s tone when he said Captain betrayed his irritation with me. Robbed of his exit as the forlorn hero, he simply walked out of the room.
Matthias, retaining his icy hauteur, said, “This way, sir,” and led him down the stairs.
I moved to the window to watch Bennett emerge. A hackney waited, the driver lounging apathetically on the box.
Bennett snapped something to him, the driver gave him a weary look, then started the horses before Bennett was all the way inside the coach. Bennett fell the rest of the way to his seat, his curse audible, then Matthias’s gloved hand caught the door and slammed it shut.
I turned away to find my wife collapsed on another sofa, a goblet of brandy to her lips. She downed it in a practiced way and clicked the glass to the table.
“That was distasteful,” she said, and I knew she did not mean the drink.
“Indeed,” Grenville answered. He doctored himself with brandy as well, and poured a goblet for me. “Not a man who endears himself to other gentlemen.”
&nbs
p; “Only to ladies, it seems,” Donata observed.
She sent a glance at me, knowing my own propensity for preferring the company of the fairer sex. I prayed I was not so horrible about it as Andrew Bennett.
“Do you think he killed her?” Grenville asked me.
I took the brandy he offered, poured it down my throat, and answered once the liquid had warmed me. “I know this—if my beloved wife had left the house one afternoon and did not return, I would shift heaven and earth to discover what had become of her.”
Donata’s wry expression faded. I’d begun to do just that the other night, when my dread that I’d lost her had overwhelmed me.
I held Donata’s gaze with mine as I continued. “Even if she did not wish to come home with me again, I would not rest until I determined that she was safe and well.”
“Yes,” Donata said. “You would do just that.”
Grenville sat down heavily next to Donata. “As would I,” he said. “As would most gentlemen who love and esteem their wives. Not be quick to dismiss her so I could marry another.”
“And yet.” I sank to a chair, cradling my empty glass. “People do go missing, meet with an accident, are never seen again. He assumed she’d been taken in by her family, locked away from him. He could not fight her entire clan to wrest her out again.”
“By law, he could,” Donata pointed out, with another glance at me. “A wife belongs to the husband entirely. She ceases to be.”
“Exactly,” Grenville said. “So why did he not use the full force of the law to march to her father’s house and drag her away? They married legally … we assume. I will check into that. But if all were aboveboard, and Bennett had the law on his side, why not use that?”
“Because Judith had no money,” I suggested. “Her father made clear she’d get nothing from him, no help, nothing in a will or trust. Dear Seraphina brought him several thousand pounds.”
“The question remains,” Donata said. “Did he kill her?”
Chapter Twenty-One