“Miss Butterworth and I have come to an understanding,” I said coolly.
“Indeed?”
“Yes, we have shaken hands upon the matter and I trust her.”
Her mouth curled. “A gentlemen’s agreement?”
“No,” I told her. “Better than that. It is a ladies’ agreement.”
CHAPTER
25
The other order of business at Bishop’s Folly was not nearly so pleasant. It transpired that, during his interview with Sir Hugo, Mornaday had omitted one significant detail—the murder of Madame Aurore.
“Why on earth would you fail to tell him about that?” J. J. demanded.
Mornaday looked frankly mulish. “I couldn’t very well tell my superior that I had been haring about London with a corpse in tow, now, could I? There are laws about such things.”
“Why not?” she asked disdainfully. “You were covering up a crime, something Sir Hugo seems entirely comfortable with.”
“I was never supposed to be working in the Club de L’Étoile in the first place,” he reminded her stiffly. “Archibond was my superior. If Sir Hugo discovered I had spied upon him and trailed him on the strength of nothing more than a suspicion, he would drum me out of the Yard, and my new promotion would go hang on a washing line. Besides, Sir Hugo did what he did out of necessity for the good of the nation—nay, for the good of the Empire.”
She snorted. “You mean for the good of his own arse. If anyone knew an anarchist had carried out an abduction of a senior royal under the very nose of the people tasked with their protection, he would be out of a post before you could snap your fingers,” she said, clicking her fingers for emphasis.
Mornaday flushed hotly. “Sir Hugo Montgomerie would never put himself first in such a situation, and if you think he would, you are the most cynical—”
I held up a hand. “Pax, children. Now, regardless of why we have a corpse on our hands, the point is that we do. And she must be dealt with.”
In a late-night whispered council of war in the night nursery—now Stoker’s recovery ward—we decided amongst ourselves that she ought to be laid to rest quietly. She had no family to mourn her, no close friends, we discovered. Mornaday went to make discreet inquiries at the club, but it was shuttered, the staff dispersed, and her solicitor could offer no further information. Madame Aurore had built a career on secrets and she took them to her grave.
Following Stoker’s careful instructions, Mornaday and J. J. and I disposed of Madame Aurore. We returned to Bishop’s Folly late one night to finish the sordid task. We tied strips of cloth soaked in camphor over our mouths and noses to counter the stench, but J. J. was sick again when Mornaday removed the lid of the sarcophagus. I retrieved the Templeton-Vane tiara, cleaning it carefully before wrapping it in a piece of velvet and putting it with the armillae into a rusted biscuit box for safekeeping. Only Stoker would look there, I reflected, and so long as there were no biscuits to be found, the tiara would remain undisturbed.
“Best dispose of this while we’re about it,” Mornaday said, tugging an armful of pink taffeta from a bundle near the corpse’s feet.
“That is the gown the prince was wearing,” I said at once. I retrieved the bundle, only a little soiled from its proximity to decomposition. “How did you come to find this?” I demanded.
He pulled himself up, puffing a little with pride. “I was following you that night. Not near enough to stop them snatching you off the curb,” he said, clearly irritated with his own failures. “But I managed to recover that. I still had it when I went to collect madame’s body,” he added with a jerk of the chin towards his former employer. “I stuffed it into the box with her so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Between that and that bloody awful tiara, I did nothing but clear up after the pair of you all evening,” he added with a grin.
Together, the three of us removed Madame Aurore from the sarcophagus, carefully covering her with a linen shroud. Mornaday retrieved the crate he had used to transport her, a simple box of suitable dimensions, and we placed her within it, cushioning her with reams of linen. A lavish application of quicklime drove back the worst of the odor, and Mornaday nailed the lid into place. He pasted a label on the top with the direction of the nearest mortuary.
“I have a doctor who will sign a death certificate of natural causes for a few pounds,” he said, sighing heavily. “She will be buried as a Jane Doe.”
“A wretched end for such a glamorous creature,” J. J. put in.
“At least it is a Christian burial.” Mornaday bristled. “We have discovered that she met Archibond some months ago and he brought her into the plot with de Clare. Archibond was surveilling the prince in order to find some snippet of scandal to use against him. When he realized the prince was frequenting the Club de l’Étoile, he made a point of cultivating her, of discovering her vulnerability.”
“Which was?” I asked.
“Money,” was J. J.’s succinct response. “She lived lavishly, and she was generous to her friends and servants, more generous than she could afford. She had exhausted her credit in this country and was beginning to feel the press of her debts. Archibond promised her a fresh start in the Argentine if she helped him. She was not a bad woman,” she said, her expression wistful. “I like to think that she might have refused to hand Eddy over to them in the end.”
Mornaday’s lips tightened. “She ended a pawn in Archibond’s schemes, but let us not forget, she conspired to overthrow the monarchy. It is no worse than she deserves.”
J. J. and I exchanged glances. How like a man not to understand.
Before we left, I collected the post that had come in our absence. Amidst the bills and circulars and begging letters, there was one envelope, larger than the rest. It was stiff and crested, with my name on the front but no address. It had been delivered by hand. There was no note, only a photograph. It was His Royal Highness, Prince Albert Victor, resplendent in the uniform of the Tenth Hussars, moustaches waxed and curled, gaze steady as he looked to the middle distance. Our future king, I mused. I turned it over to find an inscription.
To Veronica Speedwell, the bravest woman of my acquaintance. If you have need of me, you have only to ask. Eddy
On a whim, I went to the bookshelves in the snuggery, dusty and sagging with the weight of the volumes stacked there. It took only a moment to find the one I wanted. It was a guide to the royal and imperial families of Europe, complete with subsidiary titles. I flicked through the pages until I came to His Royal Highness, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. I traced the lesser titles with a fingertip. Duke of Cornwall. Duke of Rothesay.