“D’Entraigues?” Skroggs gave the name a passable pronunciation, as tho’ he had heard it before. “Old Royalist fled from the Revolution? White periwig, brocade waistcoats? Fond of walking in Hyde Park of an afternoon, ogling the females?”
“The very same.”
Bill Skroggs whistled faintly, and jerked his head at Clem Black. The junior Runner thrust himself away from the drawing-room door. Skroggs gestured with a blunt hand towards Eliza’s delicate Louis XV chairs and said, with surprising restraint, “May we?”
“But of course,” Eliza returned disdainfully. She had left off hiding her face in her handkerchief, and was meeting the Runner’s gaze with furious dark eyes. “But if you dare to suggest that my husband is capable of slitting any woman’s throat—”
“I don’t say as I believe you, mind,” Skroggs offered judiciously, “but I’m willing to listen to the whole story, even if it is a Banbury tale. How did the Countess come to give you these jewels?”
Eliza told him the sordid history: how the aging singer had seen her power wane over the Comte d’Entraigues; how she had feared for her future, and confronted the demand for divorce; how she had turned to a friend from her salad days, Eliza Hancock Austen, Comtesse de Feuillide, because of the memories the two ladies shared of glittering nights at Versailles. Eliza threatened to veer off at this point into a side-lane of reminiscence, regarding a prince of the blood royal and a musical evening in the Hall of Mirrors; but a delicate kick from my foot returned her to the thread of her tale. She explained how she had considered of her husband’s reputation— the probity of his banking concern — the ubiquity of rumour — and urged her sister Jane to pretend to ownership of the Frenchwoman’s jewels.
“We know no more than you, sir,” I added when Eliza had paused for breath. “It would seem incredible that Anne de St.-Huberti is in ignorance of the gems’ origin, for she certainly cannot pretend to have held them for years. But perhaps she thought to profit by the sale, did the pieces go unrecognised— and avoid all connexion, if their owner should be divined.”
“But, Jane,” Eliza protested, “that cannot explain how Anne came by the Princess’s jewels. You cannot believe her cognizant of … of … ”
“ … Murder?” I supplied. “Any woman who has survived the Terror with her neck intact, must have grown inured to bloodshed. But it is possible, my dear, that she knew nothing of the jewels’ origin— but was given them to sell by her husband, and enacted a Cheltenham tragedy for your benefit, replete with Barques of Frailty and threats of divorce. It is all a farrago of lies, naturally.”
“I shall never receive her,” Eliza declared mutinously. “I shall offer her the cut direct, when next we meet!”
“Begging your pardon, Comtesse,” Bill Skroggs broke in, “but I’m afraid it will not do.”
I stared at him. “Will it not? Whatever can you mean? It must be evident that we speak nothing but the truth! Indeed, sir, we are as much victims of this rapacious scoundrel as the Princess Tscholikova!”
“But you have no proof.” He looked from Eliza to me. “One mort’s story is very much like another’s: part Devil’s own malice, part fear of the nubbing cheat. If I was to take any of it as gospel, I’d be the laughingstock of Bow Street.”
“Nubbing cheat?”
Skroggs lifted his hand close to his ear, head lolling in a horrible caricature of a broken neck. “Hangman’s rope. You’d say anything to escape it, I reckon.”
He rose regretfully. “I’ll have to lay charges. This tale’s all very well, but there’s an old saying about the bird in hand being worth two in a bush — and I’ve got you both to hand, so to speak. Come along, now.”
“Mr. Skroggs,” I said firmly — Eliza had gone white, her handkerchief pressed once more against her mouth — “what if you were to grant us a measure of liberty, so that we might obtain certain … proofs?”
He laughed brusquely. “As a sort of side-show to your flight to the Continent, ma’am? I do not believe there is any proof you could discover that would interest William Skroggs.”
“—Not even if we were to learn how the Princess ended on Lord Castlereagh’s doorstep? And who, exactly, put her there?”
The Bow Street Runner went still, and shot me a rapier look through narrowed eyes.
“Come, come, Mr. Skroggs,” I said smoothly. “You cannot be interested merely in the recovery of the stones — for those you have. If it were only prize money you held in view, your end should be satisfied, thanks to Mr. Rundell. Something else draws your interest. You were hired, I collect, not by the Princess’s connexions — but by Lord Castlereagh himself, were you not?”
Eliza hiccupped with suppressed excitement.
Skroggs cast a venomous glance at his colleague, Clem Black, as tho’ accusing that unfortunate man of betraying him.
“It seems quite obvious,” I continued, “from the few words you have let slip, that Princess Tscholikova did not die by her own hand.”
The Runner smiled thinly. “Forgive me, ma’am — but you cannot possibly know that.”
I shrugged. “No murder weapon has been mentioned in the newspapers. I collect that none was found by the lady. Do you think it was a knife, Mr. Skroggs, or a gentleman’s razor that slit the wretched Princess’s throat?”
“Either would serve,” Skroggs replied with ruthless precision, “but I will not be led into an admission I am enjoined not to make prior to the convening of the coroner’s panel. I cannot allow you to spread rumours in this way, Miss Austen. — Being but a suspect criminal, prattling for her life.”
“If indeed the poor creature was deliberately and coldly taken,” I continued, oblivious to his scruples, “then her killer chose to place her directly on Lord Castlereagh’s doorstep. The scandal that has followed is everything an enemy of his lordship could desire. I do not for a moment entertain the notion that Castlereagh was himself responsible for striking the Princess down, and leaving her where she fell; such careless disregard for convention is not in his character. Therefore, he was the object of a plot. I have an idea that Castlereagh would wish to know who was the party that set out to destroy his reputation and career.”
“Naturally!” Eliza cried, “So that he might challenge the fellow to a duel, and put a ball through his heart!”
“Mr. Skroggs refuses to say yea or nay,” I mused. “And in his very silence we may read a fatal admission. He is in Lord Castlereagh’s hire, and the Princess’s jewels are merely a foothold on the greater slope he must climb. But how, indeed, shall such a man as a Bow Street Runner penetrate the holy of holies — the inner sanctum of the British ton — where, without doubt, Lord Castlereagh’s enemy hides?”
I paused for effect. The countenance of William Skroggs was slowly flushing scarlet.
“I hold myself as good as any of them,” he said hoarsely.
“No doubt you do.” I ran my eyes the length of his figure. “But I fear, my good sir, you will never come within an inch of your killer. You do not possess the air or address — or forgive me, the birth — that distinguish a Bond Street lounger. His native ground will be barred to you. Whereas my sister — that jumped-up countess … is everywhere received.”
Clem Black snorted derisively. I observed Bill Skroggs’s hands to clench.
“You require our help as much as we require your mercy,” I declared. “Come, Mr. Skroggs — shall we strike a bargain?”
Chapter 11
Lord Castlereagh Condescends
Friday, 26 April 1811
THE MORNING OF THE PRINCESS’S INQUEST DAWNED fair and bright, more May than April, with a frivolous breeze that set the horse chestnut leaves to fluttering. I had no share in the innocence of the day, however; I was wrapped around in deceit, the chief object of it my brother.