“You knew I couldn’t resist an adventure.” Hannah squeezed me back, then helped me stuff the map into my small handbag. “Off you go then, Katie, love.”
We’d put the rooms to rights when we’d finished searching, and it appeared as though no one had disturbed them. I left Hannah fastening the cushion together again and restoring the blankets to the wheeled chair.
I pattered down the staircase as quietly as I could, my heart pounding, the map feeling like a stone in my bag. At any moment, I expected Fagan to jump out at me, seize me, and find the purloined map. What he’d do then, I shuddered to think.
The staircase and ground floor hall remained empty, however, the servants seemingly obeying Hannah’s stricture to not awaken Lady Fontaine. They were no doubt happy to leave the fussy woman in Hannah’s capable hands.
I didn’t breathe easily until I sped out the front door and carefully closed it behind me.
Belgrave Square appeared refreshingly normal, with a pair of ladies strolling arm in arm toward the park in its middle, maids hastening after them with blankets and baskets. Carts and delivery wagons rolled along the main streets, the business of London continuing.
A carriage pulled up in front of the house next door, disgorging a small man with a bushy beard and sharp face beneath a tall hat. He didn’t glance at me as I lingered by the railings to stare, but an unremarkable working-class woman in an unremarkable gown was unlikely to draw his attention.
He growled something at the footman who’d opened the carriage door for him, then clumped past him and into the house.
I recognized the groom who’d appeared to take hold of the horses while the man descended. The coachman drove the carriage on and around the corner toward the mews, with the groom ambling behind it.
I fell into step with the groom. “Is that Lord Downes?” I asked him.
The groom blinked at me in recognition, then back at the house as we rounded the corner. “Aye, that’s ’im.”
I said nothing more until the carriage was rattling into the mews. I stopped the groom following it with the touch of my hand.
“The night Lord Peyton died,” I asked him. “Did anything happen outside in the mews that Lord Peyton might have seen? That might have frightened him?”
The groom looked surprised. “Can’t think of anything. It were an ordinary night—we were looking after the horses and cleaning harness. Lord Downes likes every buckle to shine. At least, head groom says that. I think Lord Downes just likes to squeeze as much work out of us as he can.” He grimaced.
“Shouldn’t be much longer,” I told him. Once the police were finished and Lady Fontaine moved on to whatever house she’d stay in next, the groom could go home.
He shrugged. “I don’t mind. I like the beasts.”
“Lady Fontaine seems a bit smitten with Lord Downes,” I remarked.
The groom’s lips twitched. “She is that. Buttonholes him anytime she sees him coming out of his house. Morning, evening, and night.”
“Is he as taken with her?” If Lord Downes felt enough for Lady Fontaine to marry her, she’d not have to worry about whether her brother’s heir would support her.
“Not certain he is, no. But he’s kind, I suppose, to listen to her natter on. She can certainly talk, can Lady Fontaine. Delays him for long stretches, but he don’t run her off.”
“Very gentlemanly of him,” I said.
“Aye, Downes ain’t a bad sort. Apart from being a stickler about his harness.” The groom went thoughtful. “Lord Downeswasmarching about with his shotgun the night Lord Peytondied. Might have put the wind up Lord Peyton, though I don’t know why it would.”
“Shotgun?” I repeated in alarm.
“Aye, the old duffer likes to walk about with it draped over his arm. Lord Downes is a great one for shooting in the country, or so he tells us. Over and over again, about how much game he’s shot. Never goes to the country—stays in London most of the time. He don’t load the gun neither. Just wanders about with it. Reliving the old days, most like.”
I recalled the painting of the country house in the reception room, with the man firing off his shotgun in the background, the two children in the meadow in front. Lady Fontaine had said admiringly how fit Lord Downes had been in his youth, implying they’d all been acquaintances then, as well.
I wondered if the painting had depicted Lord Downes, though the figure could simply have been the Peyton family’s steward, not an old friend. I had no way of knowing which without quizzing Lady Fontaine again.
“Does Lord Downes wander about with the shotgun most nights?” I asked.
The groom nodded. “Lord Peyton would have seen him many a time. So I can’t think why that frightened him.”
I agreed. Butsomethinghad…
I might suspect the affable groom himself if Mr.Fielding hadn’t vouched for him. Mr.Fielding was careful, more than most people would be, so he likely was trustworthy.
