Death at Brighton Pavilion (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries Book 14) Read online

  Bartholomew shoved a goblet under my nose and told me to drink. The last thing I wanted was brandy, but I obeyed, conceding that the burning liquid eased my stomach a trifle.

  Only a trifle. I was still queasy when Bartholomew settled the blankets over me, but also exhausted. I dropped off quickly, and dreamed of the dead Colonel Isherwood pursuing me through garish rooms of the Pavilion with a bloody sword.

  I had no idea how long I slept. I drifted in and out, my dreams troubling.

  I fancied I saw faces above me after Isherwood’s faded—Bartholomew mostly, but then Grenville, Brewster, and Donata.

  Beautiful Donata. I reached for her, reasoning I’d feel better against her softness. She wore a large cap, very unlike her usual affairs, but it looked fetching on her. Before I could touch her, however, her hair changed to long locks of lush gold, her smile wide and unreal. That face became the one of the actress Marianne Simmons, who’d once lived upstairs from me, her sharp eyes holding disapproval.

  You’re a lazy lie-abed, you know, she informed me. What are you going to do about this, Lacey?

  When I at last swam to my senses, the light in the windows was weak, but my head had cleared somewhat. I sat up.

  At once, Bartholomew swiftly entered the chamber. “Feeling better, are we, Captain?” he asked in overly bright tones.

  I rubbed my chin, finding it rough with whiskers. “I am, thank you. Restless night, but I might as well rise. What does my wife have scheduled for me to do this morning?”

  Bartholomew gave me a startled glance but moved to the basin and began clinking shaving things onto a tray. The sound was loud to my addled brain—I must have imbibed far too much the night before.

  “It’s long past morning, sir,” Bartholomew announced. “Well into afternoon.”

  “I’ve slept all day?” I glanced at the window in disbelief, but I saw only gray skies and had no idea where the sun lay. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Why not indeed, sir?” Bartholomew finished piling his tray and waited for me to climb from bed and don my dressing gown. “You couldn’t be waked, is why, though we all tried. Mr. Grenville wanted to send for a physician, but her ladyship don’t trust them. Her ladyship is back in bed, as she was spent from looking in on you all day. When you started snoring hard, she said you would be all right and retired to her chamber. She convinced Mr. Grenville to go home and sleep too.”

  I remembered the changing faces from my dreams—my friends and family must have been hovering over me to see whether I lived or not. Rather embarrassing.

  “Do not disturb her then,” I said, hiding my discomfiture. “I appear to be right as rain.” I swayed, giving the words a lie, but I’d been hungover before. The only thing to do was wait it out. I dropped into the chair before the fire and tilted my head back, ready to be shaved.

  “Mayhap.” Bartholomew looked dubious but lathered my face with warm soap and poised the razor over my throat. “After you arrived home at dawn looking like demons were chasing you I agree with Mr. Grenville that perhaps you need a dose of something.”

  I blinked at him. “What are you talking about? I slept soundly in my bed all night, after apparently drinking far too much at dinner at that blasted Pavilion. I hope I didn’t mortify my wife and Grenville.”

  The razor hesitated. “You don’t remember coming home with a posy on your coat saying you’d been back to the Pavilion but don’t remember why? And that a colonel had been killed.”

  I started, and Bartholomew quickly lifted the razor away. “What colonel?”

  My first thought was of Colonel Brandon, with whom I’d had an uneasy friendship since we’d returned from the Peninsular War. Brandon, dead? An icy pain struck my heart, the intensity of which surprised me.

  “No, sir. Chap with a funny name. Isher. Something like that.”

  Amid relief that Brandon was well and whole, memories slammed into me, not nice ones. “Isherwood? Good God.”

  Colonel Hamilton Isherwood of the Forty-Seventh Light Dragoons, the cavalry regiment who’d served alongside the Thirty-Fifth—my regiment—at Salamanca. He’d had the rank of major then, and I hadn’t seen him again until he’d walked into the supper room at the Pavilion last night.

  “He’s been killed, you say?” I asked in amazement.

  Bartholomew gave me an odd look. “You told us, sir. When you returned early this morning.”

  In a chill, I sank back, searching the haze of my memory, but I found nothing but a blank.

  After the tedious supper with the Regent and his aristocratic acquaintances, from which the Regent had excused himself fairly early, Donata had gone on to another outing with friends, and Marianne had departed to visit some theatrical acquaintances. I vaguely remembered Grenville and I strolling together after that in the dark in the Steine—the park near the Pavilion—and the taste of a cheroot. But I had no recollection of returning to the Pavilion, or wandering about Brighton after that in the small hours.

  “You must be mistaken,” I said uneasily.

  “No, sir.” Bartholomew came at me with the razor again, and I made myself subside so he could work. “You said and did all I have related.”

  He shaved me swiftly and competently, and when he finished, I snatched up the towel he handed to me and dried off my face. “I must have been far deeper in my cups than I thought, but Brewster will know what happened. He follows me about like a damned hound.”

  Bartholomew moved off to clean up the shaving things. “He was as confounded as me, sir. It appears you eluded him in the dark.”

  I emerged from the towel. “Send word to him, will you, Bartholomew? I’ll need to speak to him.”

  “He’s downstairs, sir. Wouldn’t move, even when his wife came to fetch him home. She’s worried about you too.”

  Mrs. Brewster, a minuscule woman, had a strength about her that could unnerve the strongest man. She certainly had the brutish Brewster under her thumb.

  “I’d better be dressed then,” I said.

  Not long later, I indeed found Brewster waiting for me in the lower hall, seated on a bench near the front door. I forestalled his growled questions by bidding him to follow me into the dining room.

  Brewster never liked entering the main rooms of the house, feeling uncomfortable in luxury. He took a few steps into the chamber and halted, standing like a stone. Bartholomew discreetly vanished, closing the door behind him.

  “Before you shout your disapprobation at me,” I said as he drew a breath, “tell me exactly what happened last night. My memory is vague.”

  Nonexistent, in fact, as though I’d been drunker than I’d let myself become in a while, but I wanted to hear Brewster’s version of the tale.

  “Huh.” Brewster wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “If I’ve caught a chill chasing you about … After you come out of the Pavilion once your supper was done, you and Mr. Grenville decided a walk in the dark under the trees would be entertaining. The pair of you wandered about that Steine place, then Mr. Grenville said he’d been invited to a soiree in one of the fine houses on the Grand Parade. You decline to go and headed past the Regent’s stables once you parted from him. It was dark as a tomb back there, and all of a mist too. You took a turn I missed and vanished like smoke. I searched up and down, but never saw you again until I caught sight of you coming out of the market down by the sea, sweet as you please, the church clocks striking five.” He finished, scowl firmly in place.

  “Ah.” I moved to the sideboard, hoping to find breakfast, but it was empty, and I remembered it was evening, the morning meal long since finished. “Well, it appears I am unharmed,” I said, trying to speak lightly. “No need to report to Mr. Denis.”

  Brewster sent me an aggrieved look. “He’ll want to know anything odd. You turning up out of nowhere bleating about this Isherwood bloke being dead is right odd.”

  Memories of the Peninsula rose again, of Salamanca, with the domes of its cathedral golden in the sunlight, the roar of men converg
ing on the battlefield, the high heat of July, the screams of the dying. The aftermath, the exhaustion, giddy victory, the celebrations, the warm sun in a high room inside the city’s walls.

  Isherwood had turned up at supper last night, resplendent in his uniform. I’d regarded him in surprise and dismay, and he’d done the same to me. Not a happy reunion.

  I shut out the thoughts. “I should begin with Isherwood, then. To discover whether he is alive and well. If he was killed, surely there’d be a mention in the newspapers?” Several had been left for me on the table, but a quick glance at the first pages showed no report of a murder at the Regent’s Pavilion.

  “Wasn’t in any papers I read as I was awaiting for you to wake, and her ladyship or Mr. Grenville didn’t know nothing about it. Would be all over town, wouldn’t it? If a dead body turned up at His Royal Highness’s house?”

  He had a point. It would be too much of a sensation, and Brighton, and soon the rest of the country, would be abuzz.

  “I might have dreamed his death,” I said uncertainly. “My mind is in such confusion I can’t be certain. So let us find out whether he is alive or dead.”

  “How do you intend to do that?” Brewster demanded. “Walk about the town and shout his name?”

  “Go to the Pavilion and find out what I can.” I spoke as though this would be a simple matter, cleared up in an hour.

  Brewster continued to glower. “My advice? Which I know you will not take.” He hardened his glare. “Leave it.”

  “Pardon?” My mind had drifted again. Meeting Isherwood last night after seven years almost to the day had been rattling.

  Isherwood had remembered me well—I’d seen it in his eyes. He’d chosen to ignore that fact and pretend we’d never met. He’d kept up the pretense until after supper when we’d shared port … Not so much shared it as drunk it while he snarled invective at me in a heated whisper.

  “I said leave it,” Brewster repeated. “Go with your wife and wee ones to the sea and forget you went strolling about Brighton in the middle of the night bleating about dead colonels. Let that be the end of it.”

  “Do not stir things up, you mean?” I considered this. “Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps I only dreamed it.”

  “That’s right, guv. Ye were restless and wandered about to clear your head. Came home and fell asleep so hard you don’t remember none of it.”

  What he said was possible. Also untrue.

  I knew that if I consulted with Donata and my friends before I departed to look for Isherwood, they, like Brewster, would try to stop me. Brewster had a point—I’d come to Brighton as Grenville’s guest, to celebrate his happiness in his new marriage. My two daughters and my stepson were with me, and I wanted this time to embrace my family.

  I equally knew the missing hours would haunt me until the end of my days and that I wouldn’t be able to rest until I pieced together what had happened.

  I left the dining room, still hungry, fetched my hat and coat, and stepped out the front door. Brewster, heaving an aggrieved sigh, followed.

  It was an easy walk from our hired house along Bedford Row that skirted the sea, even for me with my injured leg. The mist of the previous night had gone. Daylight lingered for quite some time in midsummer, and Brewster and I moved through a golden evening toward the avenue that would take us into the main part of Brighton.

  I had decided to begin at the Pavilion, to discover if anyone had reported a death, before I moved on to Isherwood’s house if I found no news. I knew where Isherwood lived, because he’d boasted of it at supper, but I was in no hurry to encounter the man again if he were still alive.

  Had I not been so uneasy, I would have noted what a lovely hour it was. The sea, a hue of gray-blue, stretched away at our right hand, and a brisk wind cooled what heat the day had brought. Out on the water were fishing boats, and among them, twisting and turning in the wind, glided the pleasure sailing craft of gentlemen.

  Walkers had emerged to take advantage of the fine weather, husbands strolling with wives and daughters, gentlemen wandering in search of entertainment, and women walking together, followed closely by a servant or two. Plenty of taverns fronted the sea, along with restaurants for families—many such places has sprung up now that the Prince Regent had made Brighton fashionable for a seaside holiday.

  I decided to head north up Ship Street instead of continuing along the sea walk. There were plenty of crowds along the waterfront—easier to cut through the town than follow the shore, or so I told myself. However, when I reached the small brick cottage that housed the Quaker meetings, I paused, something nagging at me.

  I had learned since our arrival in Brighton that this cottage had been built fifteen years previously when the Regent had decided to tear down houses and close off streets to expand his Pavilion. One of those houses destroyed had been the meeting place of the Society of Friends. They’d been given no choice but to move, and they’d built this new cottage on grounds owned by one of the Quakers.

  “I was here,” I said to Brewster after some moments of indecisiveness. “I think.”

  Brewster scowled. “Turned Dissenter, have ye?”

  “No.” I was too impatient to banter with him. “I do not mean I attended a meeting, but I was here.” I tapped the pavement. We stood outside a gate that led to a garden laid out in neat rows, the green tops of vegetables bright against the soil. “I spoke to someone.”

  The Meeting House was quiet now, its small windows unlighted, but I saw movement in the open doorway. As I peered through the garden, a man emerged and paused on the doorstep to regard me. He was small in stature, wore a plain gray coat and knee breeches, and held a wide-brimmed hat.

  As though making up his mind, he set the hat on his head and walked briskly out of the house and down the path to me, bathing me in a kind smile.

  “I am pleased to see thee well again, Gabriel,” he announced. “We won’t have a meeting this evening, but thou art welcome to sit quietly in the lecture room and reflect.”

  Chapter 3

  Again?” Brewster gazed at me incredulously as the Quaker man nodded at us. “Give me strength. You have been here, guv.”

  The man turned to Brewster with no less deference than he had shown me. “Indeed, Gabriel Lacey and I spoke last night. He was quite disturbed about something but looks much better this evening.”

  I gazed hard at the man, nonplussed. “I spoke to you?”

  “We spoke together.” He addressed me gently, as though not wishing to startle me. “I met thee in the Steine as I took a moonlight stroll, and thou walked here with me. Thou had much agitation.”

  I chewed my lip, my stomach knotting. “I have no memory of this.”

  The man nodded. “I thought thou wert inebriated and looked regretful for it.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Thou gave it to me. And I gave thee mine. Clive Bickley.”

  The fact came to me that Quakers never used titles, preferring to address each other by first names. I had probably told him I was Captain Gabriel Lacey. Any other Englishman would refer to me as Captain, or Lacey if we were friends. It felt odd to hear my Christian name from the lips of a man I didn’t remember meeting.

  Odder still was the way the man looked at me, as though he knew everything that was in my heart when I did not.

  “This question may sound strange to you, sir,” I said. “But why did I come here with you? Did you ask me to walk you home?” It was safe enough in these parts, but perhaps I’d worried that a soft man, alone at night, might come to harm.

  “Thou wert quite troubled, as I say,” Mr. Bickley answered, his expression serious. “Thou told me of a momentous decision before thee and that though had much confusion about it. I begged thee to come to this place and rest until thou wert calm—we keep the cottage open for any friends who need a place to sit quietly. Thou came inside with me but stayed only a few minutes before rushing off again.”

  I was no stranger to losing hours or a night t
o drink, though I had not done so in a long time. In the army, after victorious battle—or after a disastrous one—I had joined fellow officers in becoming insensibly drunk, rising in the morning with an aching head and very little memory or what had happened the night before.

  The problem was, I could not recall drinking much at all last night, save the wine I’d taken at supper at the Pavilion and the port afterward, which I’d not finished.

  “I beg pardon if I was rude to you,” I said.

  “Not at all.” Mr. Bickley gave me a warm smile. “If thou cannot find an answer to your worries, Gabriel, thou art always free to seek a quiet space here.” He turned his gaze to Brewster. “Thou as well, Friend Thomas.”

  I came alert at the same time Brewster said, “’Ere. ’Ow’d ye know my name?”

  Mr. Bickley reddened. Brewster began to close in on Bickley with his pugilist belligerence, but I held up my hand.

  “Tell us,” I said. “He was not with me last night, he says.”

  Mr. Bickley looked abashed. “He was not. We were curious about thee, Gabriel. We have seen thee walking through Brighton with thy wife and children. We sought gossip and learned thy names.” The thorough shame with which he said the words would have been amusing any other time.

  “In that case,” I said, “I would be foolish not to take advantage of your knowledge. Did you see me speaking to anyone last night?”

  “I do not believe so. Thou walked away into the darkness when thou left us, and we did not follow thee.”

  “You say we.” I glanced at the house. “Do you mean other, er, friends?” I was not certain what Quakers called members of their congregation.

  As though she’d been awaiting a cue, a woman left the house and approached us. Though her gown had a fashionably high waist and flowing skirt, the fabric was gray worsted, and the frock bore no ribbons, lace, or any other adornment. She wore a bonnet of plain linen, and beneath its shade I saw that her brown hair held threads of gray, but her face, surprisingly pretty, was unwrinkled except for a few lines about her eyes.