books had been given over to the solicitors, but everything else was still packed into those five drawers. I went through them all, sorting the detritus to be burned and the few small tokens worth keeping. It was painful and sad to reduce a man to a handful of things—among them a pen with a nub broken to his hand. I should have thrown that away; it never wrote properly for me, skipping and stuttering ink across the page. There was a thin volume of poetry I did not remember him owning, a small sketch he had made of a ruined courtyard long forgotten, a broken watch chain, a molting black feather. A few bits and bobs, and nothing of importance, I realized sadly. The rest was tipped into a basket for rubbish to be hauled away by one of the footmen. The drawers fresh and empty, I prepared to replace them back onto their runners. I had never cared for the desk itself—it was a very large piece, thick with Jacobean carving, but it would likely fetch a good price at auction.
I had just slotted the last drawer into place when I realized that it would not shut. I pushed at it again, but it was caught on something and I pulled it out. My fingers touched a tightly wedged twist of paper, far at the back, hidden in shadow. I worked at it a moment with my fingers and a paper knife before I wrested it loose. A program from the opera, like a dozen others, scribbled over with the names of likely horses. I turned it over, and from inside its leaves fell a small piece of paper, violently creased, as though it had been thrust into the progam in a tremendous hurry and stuffed at the back of the drawer. I smoothed it out, thinking that it was very probably a scrap of a poem that Edward wanted to remember or a note to try a particular wine.
But I was very wrong. It was plain paper, inexpensive, with a bit of verse cut from a book pasted onto it.
“Let me not be ashamed, O Lord; for I have called upon Thee; let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave.”
Below it was a rough drawing in pen and ink, only a few lines, but its shape was unmistakable. It was a coffin. And on the stone sketched at its head was a tiny inscription.
Edward Grey. 1854-1886. Now he is silent.
I stared at the page, wishing fervently that I had never found it. Although Mr. Brisbane had never described the notes to me, I felt certain that I had found one. And having seen one, I was also certain that Portia was wrong—this was no jest. Malice fairly emanated from the paper.
I held on to it for a long time, fighting the temptation to throw it into the wastepaper basket and let the footman cart it away to be burned. I could not simply crumple it back into the depths of the desk, pretending I had not found it at all. It would linger there, like a canker, and I knew that my fingers would go to it again and again. No, if I were going to be rid of it, it must be destroyed entirely. I could do it myself, I realized with a glance at the brisk fire crackling away on the grate. No one would ever know—it was a small thing; it would be consumed in a matter of seconds.
But no amount of burning would change what I had seen. And having seen it, I could not forget what it meant. Someone had wished Edward dead, enough to terrorize him with vicious notes, making his last days fearful ones. At the very least, the sender of these notes had harmed his peace of mind.
But what else might this malicious hand have done? Had it done murder? I would never have credited such a thought had Nicholas Brisbane not put it into my mind, but there it was. Edward was a perfect victim in so many ways. He was very nearly the last member of a family famed for its ill health. Neither his father nor grandfather had lived to see thirty-five. Edward was almost thirty-two. He had never been robust, even as a child. And in the year before his death, his health had grown dramatically worse, manifesting the same symptoms that had taken his grandfather and father before him. It would be a small matter to introduce some poison to such a delicate constitution; perhaps it would even work more quickly on one so weakened by poor health. How simple it would have been for some unknown villain to send along a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine laced with something unspeakable.
But why the notes, then? Would they not serve as a warning to Edward? He would have been on his guard, surely, against such an attack. Or would he have been naive enough to believe that his murderer would strike openly, that he would have a chance to defend himself? I knew nothing of his thoughts, his fears during those days. Edward kept no diary, no written record of his days. And he had clearly felt incapable of confiding in me, I thought bitterly.
I looked at my hands and realized that I must have already decided upon a course of action whether I realized it or not. I had folded the note carefully and placed it in a plain envelope. There was only one person to whom I could turn now.
THE SEVENTH CHAPTER
Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables.
—William Shakespeare
Hamlet
It does me no credit to admit that I had difficulty in deciding what to wear to call upon Nicholas Brisbane. I had thought myself cool and composed, but I kept hearing Portia’s voice, reminding me that he would not think of me beyond that first call at Grey House. I also kept thinking of Mariah Pilkington’s assessment of him as a lover, but that does me no credit, either.
Portia had been ruthless in her attack upon my wardrobe. Scarcely a garment remained after her onslaught. She began the devastation by throwing out anything she deemed “busy,” discarding everything with ruffles, tassels or fringe.
“And above all, no ruching, unless you want to look like some poor misguided woman’s parlor drapes,” she cautioned.
I gazed mournfully at the heap of clothes I had acquired upon Edward’s death. There was several hundred pounds’ worth of bombazine and velvet and lace tumbled together on the bed, and not a single garment truly flattered me. “Then what shall I wear?”
She cocked her head to the side, considering my figure carefully.
“Simplicity, my darling. Things that are beautifully draped and excellently cut need no embellishment. I shall take you to my dressmakers. They are brothers, trained in Paris as tailors, and no one in London cuts a better line. They are frightfully expensive and rather rude, but they are just the ones to take you in hand. Besides, these frowsy things will not fit you when I’ve had done with you.”
“What do you mean they won’t fit? What do you mean to do with me?”
“I mean,” she said, propelling me toward the cheval glass, “to fatten you up. Look at yourself, Julia. Really look. There’s beauty there, but you are a sack of bones. An extra stone will round out your face and arms, give you curves where you have none. You will be lush and healthy-looking, like Demeter.”
I grimaced at her in the looking glass. “Edward always liked me thin.”
She swung me around to face her. “Edward is gone now. And it is quite time to find out what you like.”
I smiled at her. “Then why am I letting you boss me about?”
“Because I know what is best,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She dropped a quick kiss on my cheek. “Now, pastries for you at teatime, extra gravy on your joints, and as much cream as you like. When you’ve put on a few pounds, we shall take you off to the brothers Riche and my hairdresser and see what they will make of you.”
I agreed because it was simpler and because it seemed to make Portia so happy. Besides, Morag had already spied the discarded clothes and scooped them up to be sold at the stalls in Petticoat Lane. I strongly suspected she would do me some sort of bodily injury if I tried to infringe upon her rights as a lady’s maid to sell my cast-offs.
In the end, I quite liked Portia’s changes. My hair was cropped, baring the length of my neck and the smallness of my ears. It was an immediate success—Morag’s hairdressing skills being fairly nonexistent. Now, rather than struggling to frizz several pounds of stubbornly straight hair, she had only to fluff the little halo of curls that had sprung to life when the length was scissored off.
In