Beth hastened out, her hands pressed to her skirts to keep them from rustling. The staircase and hall blazed with light, Beth having firmly told Mrs. Barrington’s servants that she wanted to be able to see when she went up and down the stairs. The old butler had chuckled, then wheezed, but saw that it was done.
Inspector Fellows turned when she entered the drawing room. Beth thought of how she’d first met him in Isabella’s drawing room in Paris, her agitation and amazement as Fellows had told her all about Ian Mackenzie. She determined to conduct this interview with a little more composure. Fellows looked much the same as he had in their first encounter. His suit was made of cheap dark material but well-kept, his thick hair brushed back from his forehead, his mustache trimmed. Hazel eyes regarded Beth with an intensity comparable to Hart’s.
“Mrs. Ackerley.”
“My marriage is legal,” Beth said crisply, pulling the doors shut. “So I am no longer Mrs. Ackerley. Lady Ian Mackenzie sounds strange to me, but you can address me as ‘your ladyship,’ if you wish.”
Fellows gave her a wry smile. “Still the ferocious guardian. Why did you send for me?”
Beth raised her brows. “I might have grown up in the gutter, but I apparently learned better manners than you, Mr. Fellows. Shall we sit down?”
Fellows made a show of waiting for her to sit before he lowered himself, ill at ease, to the edge of a Belter armchair. Mrs. Barrington’s horsehair furniture was hideously uncomfortable, and Beth felt a moment’s glee watching Fellows shift against the chair’s unyielding surface. “Give up, Inspector; the chairs are impossible. If you don’t want me to ring for tea, then I shall simply begin.” She leaned forward. “I want you to tell me everything you know about the murder at the High Holborn house five years ago. Start at the beginning and leave nothing out.” Fellows looked surprised. “You are supposed to be telling me what happened.”
“Well, I don’t know, do I? If you explain it to me, perhaps I can share what I’ve learned. But you must go first.” He stared at her a moment, and then one side of his mouth turned up. “You are a harsh negotiator, Mrs. Ackerley—forgive me—Lady Ian. Do the decadent Mackenzies know what has descended among them?”
“I find the decadent Mackenzies quite gentlemanly. They care deeply about one another, have been kind to me, and love their dogs.”
Fellows looked unimpressed. “Are you certain you wish to hear the story? Some bits are gruesome.” “Be remorseless, Inspector.”
He had remorseless eyes, did Inspector Fellows. “Very well. Five years ago, almost to the day, 1 was called to investigate a crime in a private house in High Holborn. A young woman, Sally Tate, had been stabbed five times through the heart with a knife, according to the coroner. She bled some, and her blood had been smeared on the walls around her.”
I tried to wipe it off on the walls, on the bedding. . . . Beth shut her eyes, trying to forget the harsh sound of Ian’s voice as the words tumbled out.
Fellows continued “It took some time to pry out of Mrs. Palmer, the owner of the house, the names of the gentlemen who’d visited there the night before. You do know that the place was once owned by Hart Mackenzie? He bought it to keep Mrs. Palmer, a famous courtesan he’d taken as his mistress. He sold her the house when his political career began to rise.”
“I presume you did discover who was there?”
“Oh, yes. Five gentlemen attended Mrs. Palmer’s salon the night before. Hart Mackenzie and Ian. A gentleman called Mr. Stephenson—Hart had brought him to win him to his side in some financial game. A Colonel Harrison, who was a regular guest of Mrs. Palmer and her young ladies, and his friend Major Thompkins. They apparently all managed to leave well before the murder occurred, very convenient for them. I was able to interview each man the next morning, but not Ian Mackenzie, who had been bundled off to Scotland by his brother Hart.”
Beth smoothed her skirt. “You speak of them familiarly, Inspector. You say Ian and Hart, instead of ‘his lordship’ and ‘His Grace.’”
Fellows gave her a deprecating look. “I think about the Mackenzies more often than I do my own family.” “Why, I wonder?”
His color rose. “Because they are blights on society, that’s why. Rich men who spend money on women, clothes, and horses and don’t do an honest day’s work. They’re useless. I’m surprised you take to them, you who know all about an honest day’s work. They’re nothing.”
Bitterness rang in his words. Beth stared at him, and Fellows flushed and tried to compose himself.
“Very well,” she said. “You interviewed all the gentlemen but Ian. Why don’t you suspect them?”
“They were respectable,” Fellows said.
“Visiting a brothel is respectable, the vicar’s widow asks with her brows raised?”
“They were all bachelors. No wives breaking their hearts at home. Mr. Stephenson and the two military officers were astonished by the news of the murder and were able to account satisfactorily for their movements. None of them had gone near Sally Tate, and they’d departed the house just after midnight. Sally Tate was killed near five in-the morning, according to the doctor. They left Hart and Ian Mackenzie behind. Ah, I mean, His Grace and his lordship.” “And Ian’s servants swear Ian had returned home by two,” Beth said, remembering what Fellows had told her before.
“But they’re lying.” Fellows sat forward. “What I’ve pieced together from their stories is this: Hart Mackenzie brings his friend Stephenson and his brother Ian to enjoy an evening with high-class courtesans. At about ten, in the parlor, the four men—Hart, Stephenson, Thompkins, and Harrison—begin a game of whist. Ian declines the invitation to play cards and reads a newspaper. According to Major Thompkins, Sally Tate sat down near Ian and started talking to him. They had a good chin-wag for about a quarter of an hour, and then she convinced him to go upstairs with her.”
“Ian talked for a quarter of an hour?”
Fellows smiled faintly. “I imagine Sally did most of the talking.”
Beth fell silent. She burned up inside, thinking of Ian leading a woman to bed, though she reminded herself that she hadn’t known Ian then. He’d had no obligation to her at the time. Jealousy wasn’t rational, however. She forced herself to think over what Fellows had told her. Sally had talked to Ian for a quarter of an hour, but she couldn’t have been trying to entice him upstairs all that rime. Beth knew from experience that persuading Ian Mackenzie to do anything he didn’t want to was an impossible task. He would have made up his mind at the start whether he wanted to bed Sally, and either gone upstairs with the woman right away or never. So, if Sally hadn’t been trying to persuade him, what had they talked about?