“At least the discovery of the dagger’s origins tells you the murderer must have been someone close to the Prince.”
“Not necessarily. Those cases aren’t kept locked. Hundreds of people could have had access to that room.”
“Perhaps. But I can’t see someone like Bevan Ellsworth prowling around Carlton House.”
“No. But his good friend Fabian Fitzfrederick could certainly have taken it.”
Gibson frowned. “Is he good friends with Fabian Fitzfrederick?”
“It would appear so.”
“But…why would a son of the Duke of York want to bring down the Hanovers?”
Sebastian leaned forward. “Prinny has created a lot of discontent. Perhaps there are two different forces at work here—one aimed at bringing down the Hanovers, and another simply interested in replacing the Regent with his brother, York.”
Gibson paused with his pint raised halfway to his lips. “Princess Charlotte stands next in line before York.”
“Yes. But Princess Charlotte’s own father regularly calls her mother a whore. Charlotte might well be put aside. It’s happened before.”
Gibson took a long, thoughtful swallow of his ale. “Have you considered the possibility that the person who killed Guinevere Anglessey might not be the same person or persons as set up that nasty little charade in the Pavilion?”
“Yes.” Sebastian shifted his weight to thrust his legs out straight. “I keep thinking that if I could just understand why she went to the Norfolk Arms in Smithfield, then it would all begin to make sense.”
“It does seem an unlikely place for a lover’s assignation,” said Gibson.
Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t think it was a lover’s assignation.”
The tramp of marching feet filled the air as part of the garrison from the Tower paraded past. His face solemn, Gibson turned his head to watch the men filling the street, the sun gleaming on their musket barrels. “I’ve been hearing a lot of grumbling about this fete the Prince has set for Thursday. Not just about the cost—which I gather is considerable. But it is rather unseemly, is it not, for a prince to celebrate his accession to the Regency when that elevation was necessitated by his father’s madness? I hear his mother and sisters are refusing to go.”
Sebastian, too, watched the soldiers. They looked so young, some little more than boys. “I doubt they’ll be missed. It’s been announced that no woman lower in rank than an Earl’s daughter will be allowed to attend, which has naturally set every excluded but ambitious lady in London scrambling to be made an exception. They’ll never keep the guest list down to two thousand.”
“When does the Prince return to Brighton?”
“The day after the fete.” Sebastian stared thoughtfully at the passing ranks of red-coated soldiers. “Think about this: if you were to organize a coup, when would you plan to stage it?”
Gibson’s gaze met Sebastian’s. “For a time when the Prince was out of London.”
“Exactly,” said Sebastian, and drained his ale.
Chapter 40
“Lady Addison Peebles?” said Devlin, staring at Kat. They were in the drawing room of her house on Harwich Street. He could hear the distant shouts of children playing a counting game on the footpath outside, their laughter mingling with the birds’ evening song as the shadows lengthened. “What the devil could Lady Addled and Feeble possibly have to do with any of this?”
Kat gave a soft laugh. “Nothing. It seems the modiste tried to talk her out of this particular shade of green satin, but she was so taken with it that in the end the woman could only let her have her way. I understand she was excessively pleased with it—until her mama-in-law, the Duchess, told her it made her look like a sick frog.”
Devlin walked over to pour out two glasses of wine. “So what did she do?”
“She gave the gown to her abigail, who sold it to a secondhand clothes dealer. The woman claims she can’t remember which one, probably because she actually sold it to her regular fence out of force of habit.”
Devlin looked up, one eyebrow raised in incredulity. “The gown came from a secondhand dealer?”
Kat came to lift her glass from his outstretched hand. “Evidently.”
He took a long, thoughtful sip of his own wine. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. Someone kills Guinevere Anglessey by poisoning her with cyanide. The death is violent. So violent that the murderer finds it necessary to bathe the body and dress it in a fresh gown—a gown he buys from a secondhand dealer in someplace like Rosemary Lane. Only, our killer is so unfamiliar with his victim that he buys the wrong size so that it won’t close properly around her. Nor does he bother to assemble the underclothing, shoes, or stockings a lady would normally have been wearing. He loads her body in a—what? A cart or a carriage, we’ve no way of knowing which—and hauls her down to Brighton, where he somehow manages to sneak her body into the Pavilion. He sends his accomplice—wearing a similar green gown and a veil—into the Prince’s music room, where she hands a note to the Home Secretary, Lord Portland, and disappears. A note which for unspecified reasons no one wants me to see. Oh yes, and did I mention that after he has carefully arranged Guinevere’s body in the Yellow Cabinet, our killer stabs her with a Highland dirk which once belonged to James the Second, but now forms part of a collection owned by the Prince Regent himself that is normally kept in London?”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve got it all figured out.”
He went to stand at the windows overlooking the street below. The children had gone. “All except for the who and the why part.”
She came up behind him, her eyes on his face. “What is it? You keep going to the window.”
“I’m worried about Tom. I left instructions with Morey to send the boy here as soon as he gets back.”
“It’s not even dusk yet.”
“I told Tom I wanted him out of Smithfield before nightfall.”
Kat slipped her arms around Sebastian’s waist and held him close, her breasts pressing against his back. “Tom’s a street lad. He knows how to take care of himself.”
Sebastian shook his head. “These people are dangerous.”
He was aware of Kat’s silence. After a moment, she said, “He’s a servant.”
“He’s still only a boy.”
“And he loves tending your horses and poking around, asking questions for you. It makes him feel important and useful. He would be both disappointed and insulted if you didn’t let him contribute what he can.”
Sebastian turned in her arms to draw her close to his chest. “I know.” He rested his chin on the top of her head. “But I have a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter 41
Tom didn’t like Smithfield. It wasn’t just the inescapable smell of spilled blood and raw meat and hides that got to him. It was as if an invisible but oppressive pall of death had sucked away the very air here, stealing his breath and pressing heavy on his chest.
He’d spent a frustrating day not really knowing what he was looking for and not finding anything. It was with relief that he watched the shadows lengthen with the coming of evening, and turned toward home.
He was passing the narrow alley that curved around to the back of the Norfolk Arms when he glanced sideways and saw a cart drawn up at the slanted double doors of the inn’s cellars. Three men worked in silence, unloading the cart. There was none of the bantering one might have expected, the man on the cart simply handing small kegs one at a time to those laboring up and down the cellar steps. Another man, of slim build in a gentleman’s greatcoat, stood nearby, his back to the mouth of the alley.
Ducking behind a nearby pile of crates, Tom watched them for a moment. At first he thought it was just a delivery of French wine smuggled in from somewhere over on the coast. Except that these barrels didn’t look like wine kegs. They looked more like powder kegs.