The Whitehall Conspiracy, page 6
"This wasn't to do with protesters. At least not directly."
"But you're investigating it?"
"Malcolm and I and some of our friends are assisting Bow Street as we can. The victim seems to have been killed by an assassin who was targeting him in particular. The man who was killed was trying to take information to the PM, but we're not quite sure what information."
George's hands curled round his tankard. "Mélanie, I may not have William's brains, but it's starting to sound like you're interrogating me. I can't figure out why else you'd want to talk to me just now, with the country on edge and a man murdered outside the House of Lords. But I also don't see what I could have to do with this. I didn't even know anyone had been killed until I heard gossip in here after the Lords rose."
Mélanie met George's gaze. The guilt of moments when she hadn't taken George seriously washed over her. He was the fourth son in a brilliant family and the one most on the fringe of the politics that was the core of his family's existence. "The murdered man was George Chase."
George Lamb's fingers froze on the tankard. "Good god. What was he doing back in London?"
"That's one of the pertinent questions."
"One?"
"As I said, he claimed to have evidence of interest in the trial. He was trying to offer it to Liverpool."
"Evidence about what?"
"We don't know."
A waiter stopped by the table, a confused look on his face. Mélanie ordered a pint of stout. The waiter blinked, then inclined his head. Really, once one stopped worrying about blending in and the possible impact on one's husband—who couldn't care less about blending in—it was much easier to make one's way in London. George's sister Emily would be horrified. And perhaps envious. No doubt she would question Mélanie about it later. And not be best pleased with Mélanie's interrogation of George. "We do know George Chase had been in London for a matter of weeks and had taken rooms in Wardour Street. He'd struck up an acquaintance with a young woman named Abigail Clifton, who is an opera dancer."
George's ruddy skin flushed deeper. He stared into his tankard. "Mélanie—"
"Oh, for god's sake, George. At this point you should be used to my being about the theatre. This is no time for missishness. In any case, Miss Clifton is employed at the Haymarket. She'd met you or at least seen you. And she says she saw you outside George Chase's lodging house in Wardour Street."
"What?" George's gaze shot to Mélanie's face. He sounded genuinely shocked. "I didn't know George Chase was in London. And even if I had done, I had no reason to seek him out. We were never what you'd call mates. I thought the whole business with Lady Cordelia was dashed ungentlemanly. Both to George's wife and to Cordelia."
"You have a point." Mélanie kept her gaze steady on George's face. "Have you been in Wardour Street?"
The floorboards creaked as though George had dragged his boot toe over them. "I don't see what that's to say to anything if—"
He broke off as the waiter returned and set a pint of stout down in front of Mélanie. Mélanie lifted the tankard and took a deliberate drink. It was a rich, smooth brew, with a tang of sharpness underneath. "Go on."
George picked up his own tankard and gulped down a swallow. "I don't see what I have to say to anything if I didn't see Chase. Even if it was the same house."
"Was it?"
"How the devil should I know?"
Mélanie curled her hands round her tankard. "So you were there."
"Damn it, Mélanie. You're just like Malcolm. He has the most detestable way of running rings sound a fellow." George's gaze shot to the side, then back to her. His eyes were bleary and shot with red. It occurred to Mélanie that she'd rarely seen him when he wasn't dipping deep, in ballrooms, green rooms, boxes, or drawing rooms. "I didn't go there because of anything to do with George Chase. I had no notion George Chase was anywhere near London."
"So why did you go to Wardour Street? Miss Clifton said you seemed to be watching the house."
George huffed in and released his breath. "You probably don't understand, Mélanie. Married to Malcolm. Probably never have a moment you wonder about your life. Oh, I know people say you and Malcolm aren't affectionate, that he's not affectionate, but it's fairly obvious how he feels about you. What a thing it must be not to have doubts."
Mélanie took another drink of stout to cover a desperate urge to laugh. She could see Malcolm's gaze, raw with torment, when he'd confronted her in the Tavistock Theatre about her betrayal. "I think we all have doubts about the people we love. How could we not? One can never know what another person is thinking and feeling. Not completely." Particularly not if one was an enemy agent under deep cover, married to a man one had married to spy on. For a moment it was eight years ago and she was saying wedding vows to an enemy agent, believing she could walk away once the mission was over. Or a few years later, in love with her husband but convinced their marriage would be over if he learned the truth.
"Yes, well, it's a damned sight harder when your wife runs off to bloody Italy with bloody Henry Brougham. And then she comes back and after she does you scarcely even talk about it. You scarcely talk about anything. Polite conversation over the breakfast dishes. Over the dinner dishes. In the carriage on the way to or from a rout or a musicale or a deadly family dinner. In the box before a play. During a dance, on the occasions you still manage to dance together. And every time she goes out, you can't but wonder. Can't but tote up how long she's gone, can't but look for clues when she comes back to if she's actually been where she said. Did she really order something new from her modiste? Was she really at Gunter's with her cousins or a china warehouse with one of her other friends?"
"Of course she might have been wondering the same about you," Mélanie said. She had heard the gossip, both in the green room and in Mayfair ballrooms, about George's affairs and the fact that even though he and Caro were childless, he had more than one illegitimate child.
George folded his hands round his tankard. "That doesn't stop one from asking questions."
"No, I suppose not." Certainly her own betrayals, though not romantic, had not stopped her from asking questions about Malcolm.
George took a deep swallow from his tankard. "So it was probably inevitable that at some point I followed her."
"To Wardour Street."
George gave a curt nod. "Couldn't imagine what she was doing there. Not a place any of her friends live. Aside from the fact that she'd told me she was going to her dressmaker's, which is nowhere near. She was wearing a veil, but I had no doubt it was her. And then he appeared."
"He?" Mélanie asked, though she was quite sure she knew.
George met her gaze. "Brougham. Caro met him outside that house in Wardour Street. I could scarcely believe they'd be so brazen. Then they went into the building together." George glanced away, his jaw tightening. "You can imagine my thoughts. I trusted her—or no, I didn't, or I wouldn't have been following her. But I didn't believe she would go so far. Not openly, blatantly. In the middle of the afternoon."
George's wife, Caroline, had run off to the Continent with Henry Brougham, Queen Caroline's attorney general, four years ago. Mélanie had been in Paris with Malcolm and had scarcely known the Lambs and their set at the time. But since she and Malcolm had moved to Britain, she'd heard the story from George's sister Emily, who had gone to Italy to convince her sister-in-law Caro to come home. "Do you know what actually transpired between Caro and Brougham the day you saw them in Wardour Street?" she asked.
"God, Mélanie. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crude with a lady, but what do you think, considering what they'd been to each other?"
"It seems an odd place for them to have met if that was their intention."
"An anonymous lodging house makes a fair amount of sense."
"Where there would be other lodgers and probably a landlady or landlord or porter?"
George blinked. "What on earth else would they have been doing there?"
"Calling on someone?"
George blinked again. "This is to do with your investigation."
"George Chase lodged in that house."
"Surely you don't think Caro and Brougham were calling on George Chase."
"I have no reason to suspect so. But it is a coincidence. George Chase claimed to have information about the trial. Brougham is certainly at the heart of the trial."
"I thought you said Chase wanted to talk to Liverpool. That hardly makes him a likely ally of Brougham's." George frowned. "Do you think that's it? Chase was trying to blackmail Brougham over Caroline?"
"I don't think that sort of blackmail would hold much weight with Brougham."
"No, I suppose not. Fellow's damned brazen."
Mélanie liked Henry Brougham, who had become a good friend of Malcolm's and of her own as well. She had no doubt of Brougham's ambition, but also no doubt that he genuinely wanted to achieve change. He saw supporting the queen as a way to bring about that change. But having dined with him and spent late evenings strategizing speeches and editing them with him, she also was quite sure he cared about the queen as a person and wanted to do his best for her. "George Chase was a shrewd judge of situations. I can give him that, if nothing else. I doubt he'd have thought anything to do with Caro and Brougham would be enough to get Liverpool's attention."
George flushed. "You mean everyone knows the scandal and it's old news."
"I wouldn't say that. But it's not enough to overset plans."
George took a drink from his tankard. "This must be hell for Cordelia and Davenport." He set the tankard down and wiped a trail of moisture from the side. "Odd. You'd have thought their marriage had been smashed far more than ours. I mean, it's not as though Brougham had been the love of Caro's life from childhood. But now Cordy and Harry are smelling of April and May, and Caro and I can barely put together half a dozen sentences that aren't colorless. What the hell does that mean? I know we weren't love's young dream when we married, but then neither were Cordelia and Davenport."
"No." She wasn't betraying Cordy and Harry to say this much, as both of them would admit it. "They weren't then."
"But they fell in love later? What is that even supposed to mean?" George scraped a hand over his hair. "I write about love. You write about it. It makes sense on paper. The characters say the right things, the story ends tied up in a neat bow. But I'm damned if I see what it has to do with life."
"Has Caro talked to you about Mr. Brougham?"
"Good god, no." George stared at Mélanie across the scarred tabletop. "What would she say? But I know she still follows his activities. I know she's aware of the trial. How could anyone in London not be? I didn't know she was sneaking off to meet him."
"Do you know now that she was sneaking off to meet him?"
"They went into the building together, Mélanie. Even if they had happened to bump into each other on the street—which is a coincidence both of us would know better than to use in our plays—I can't come up with circumstances where they would have decided to go into a lodging house together."
"But you haven't asked her about it?"
"Good god, no. A fellow can't—As I said, Caro and I haven't talked about much of anything of substance since she came back. I'm certainly not going to ask her about Brougham." George stared into his tankard. "It could upend everything. And I'm just not ready for that."
"I can understand that."
His gaze shot to her face. "Can you, honestly?"
God, the conversations she had put off having with Malcolm because she feared what they might reveal or where they might lead. "I think there's always ground in a marriage the partners hesitate to tread on at times. So you don't think Caro and Brougham could have been calling on George Chase?"
"Why on earth would they? I mean, I have no idea if Brougham knew him well, but Caro didn't. We were all more or less in the same circles, had been all our lives, but she certainly wasn't well acquainted with him. That is—" George's hands tightened round his tankard. "I suppose I can't claim to know Caro that well. I certainly had no idea she'd run off or that she'd go off with Brougham again after she came back. So I suppose she might have been concealing a closer relationship with George Chase for some reason." His brows drew together. "Or I suppose I might just not have been paying attention. But I don't see why she'd go see him with Brougham."
"George Chase claimed to have information that could impact the trial. He was trying to present it to Liverpool."
"Then I don't see why he'd have been talking with Brougham."
"Unless he'd been making a deal with Brougham and Brougham turned on him."
"And Brougham brought Caro with him while he was making this deal?" George stared at her. "If Brougham had a falling out with Chase, or if Chase in some other way got information on the trial he was taking to Liverpool, that makes Brougham a suspect, doesn't it?"
Mélanie's throat tightened. You'd think at this point she'd be used to her friends being suspects. "It gives him a motive. Almost certainly not the only one we'll find."
"Damnable time for it. You'd think I'd be happier to see Brougham in trouble." George sat back in his chair, fingers rigid round his tankard. "You're going to have to talk to Caro, aren't you?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Damnation."
Mélanie subdued an impulse to touch his hand, as though he were one of her children. "Are you afraid of what our talking to her may reveal?"
"No. Yes." George downed another swallow from his tankard. "I'm afraid it will provoke her into leaving me again."
CHAPTER 7
"Oh god." Cordelia stared at the group left in the sitting room in the Palace of Westminster with stricken eyes. Edmund Blayney had escorted Abigail Clifton back to her lodgings after Mélanie left in search of George Lamb, but Kitty, Julien, Laura, and Roth were still there. Kitty recognized the symptoms of shock settling in Cordelia's gaze. "Annabel." Cordelia looked at Roth. "George's wife. She's been living in Derbyshire with the children. At least, that's the last I heard. I wonder if she knows George is back in England. She almost certainly doesn't know he's dead. I've—always felt guilty about Annabel. More later than I did when George and I ran off, which isn't at all logical of me."
"Does he have other family?" Roth asked.
"His parents are dead now," Cordelia said. "His sister Violet is in London. She's married to John Ashton."
"Ashton?" Roth asked. "Is—"
"Yes, Johnny was married to my sister Julia. He and Violet married after Waterloo. They're raising his and Julia's son and they have two more children of their own now. They don't know that George killed Julia. But they're careful not to talk about George in front of me. George and Violet's brother Tony died at Waterloo. But Tony's wife Jane is in London with their children. She's married again to Captain Will Flemming."
"Was Chase close to any of them?"
Cordelia hesitated. "We all grew up together. So Jane's known George since we were children. I don't think she has a very high opinion of him, though she doesn't know the full truth about his actions. But—those ties endure."
The door opened on her words and Raoul slipped back into the sitting room. Kitty, who was itching for something to do, saw the light of a successful mission in his eyes. Lucky. She'd give a great deal even to be able to interrogate someone just now.
"Were you able to see Liverpool?" Roth asked.
Raoul nodded. "He says he hadn't heard anything from George Chase, and I'm inclined to believe him. He's always been very straightforwards in his dealings with me, and while he's certainly capable of lying to me in the right circumstances, I don't see why he would about this." He glanced round the room. "We seem to have lost a number of our party."
"I'll update you," Laura said.
Roth looked at Julien, as Raoul and Laura moved to the side and Cordelia went to sit with the children, who were playing cat's cradle with a length of twine Julien had produced. "Who else?"
"Who else what?" Julien's voice was light and easy, but Kitty caught the sharpness in it. He guessed what Roth was getting at even before she quite did herself.
Roth's gaze stayed steady on Julien's own. "Who else in London, besides you, could have done this? There can't be that many assassins with that level of skill in the city."
"No, I wouldn't think so," Julien said. He was leaning against the sitting room wall, legs crossed at the ankle.
"So surely you can locate some of them."
Julien raised an ironic brow. It was, Kitty knew, one of his best defenses. "We aren't a club. We don't discuss the finer details over port or write percentages down in a betting book. And we aren't a guild that organizes in a town hall."
"No." Roth's gaze remained level. Not judging, but not giving way. "But you must know names of others. An agent of your calibre."
Julien pushed himself away from the wall. "I've been out of that business for a long time. At least it feels like a long time. But you're right. There are inquiries I can make."
"Do you want me to come with you?" Kitty asked. Even as she said it, she realized how unhelpful it was, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was like Leporello watching Don Giovanni pulled down into hell.
Julien gave a twisted smile. "I always do. But I think a loving wife, however ruthless an agent, might not be the best asset if I'm trying to appear a hardened agent myself. Also"—he cast a glance towards the children—"I'd rather one of us was with Leo. And perhaps I'd rather not have you see me step into my past. Which is probably folly, considering how well you know it."
Kitty reached up to kiss him, heedless of the others. "This is probably folly to say to you, especially in these circumstances. But be careful."
Julien gripped her shoulders for a moment and returned the kiss. "If I wasn't careful, I'd have been dead before I turned sixteen. But I appreciate the concern, my love."
Mélanie slipped between a stout man in a frock coat and an equally stout woman in a poke bonnet, sober citizens by the look of their clothes, shouting vigorously in support of the queen. At another time she'd have been interested to observe the crowd and learn more, but now she was bent on getting back to Cordelia and the others as quickly as possible. She inched through the crowd of protesters towards the Palace of Westminster and had almost broken free when a hand closed on her arm.
