The Mask of Night

I won’t waste ink and paper trying to talk you out of leaving my employ. But while it’s one thing to leave the diplomatic service for Parliament, no one ever really retires from the intelligence game. I believe I made that clear when you went to work for me.

Lord Carfax to Charles Fraser,

15 January 1817

Lord Carfax pushed the door of his son-in-law’s study shut. The click of the latch echoed through the oak-paneled room. ‘Might I inquire what the devil you were thinking sending to Bow Street?’

Charles met his former employer’s gaze. Mélanie’s words about the dead man still echoed through his head. What in God’s name were they in the midst of? ‘It seemed the obvious course of action with a dead body in the garden,” he said.

‘Since when have you been one to take the obvious course of action? I expect better of you, Charles.’

‘But it’s hardly the first time I’ve failed to meet your expectations, is it, sir?’

‘Don’t remind me,’ Carfax said.

Lord Castlereagh strode across the room, a cloud of powder billowing from his wig. ‘Did you know he was in England, Carfax?’

Carfax turned his gaze from Charles to the Foreign Secretary. ‘Of course not. I’d have told you.’

‘Would you?’ Castlereagh said.

Carfax and Castlereagh regarded each other, the uneasy balance of their relationship pulling between them. Spheres of control between the official world of the diplomatic corps and the unofficial world of intelligence operations frequently became blurry. Charles, who had served under both men as an agent and diplomat, had more than once been witness to the tension that could result.

‘When,’ Carfax said, ‘have you ever known me to withhold—’

‘Count Nesselrode’s dispatches.” Castlereagh took up a position beside a wing-back chair, one thin hand gripping its high back. ‘The naval treaty. The incident with the frigate off Lisbon. The unfortunate business at the Russian Embassy—’

‘As I recall I told you everything you needed —’

‘You blindsided me.” Castlereagh’s usually well-modulated voice cut like the crack of a musket. ‘More than once.’

Carfax leaned against the desk, hands braced behind him. ‘Until I saw the body in the garden just now I had no notion the man in question was in England. I assume you’ll take my word for it, Robert?’

‘When have I ever declined to take your word, Hubert?” Castlereagh’s cool gaze remained steady on Carfax’s face. ‘Which leaves the matter of what he was doing here.’

‘I hate to ask troublesome questions,’ Charles said, ‘but who was he?’

Carfax raised a brow at Castlereagh. ‘Would you prefer to explain or shall I?’

Castlereagh inclined his head. ‘Go ahead by all means. You know—knew—him better than I did, after all.’

Carfax folded his arms over his furred velvet robe. ‘Does the name Julien St. Juste mean anything to you, Charles?’

‘St. Juste?” Charles scanned his memory of everything Mélanie had told him about her past. ‘No.’

‘It’s not surprising. He went by a different alias for each mission and managed to remain safely anonymous. Even to fellow agents like you. Our first record of him is in Paris in the years of the Directoire. He was still in his teens. He worked as an assassin for Fouché in the French Ministry of Police. Later he sold information to our side. After that he began to work for the highest bidder—us, the French, the Russians. We also suspect he was the Empress Josephine’s lover. Before she was the Empress. Before she married Bonaparte and through the early years of their marriage.’

‘You had Josephine Bonaparte under surveillance all those years ago?” Charles said.

‘She was Barras’s mistress, and he was the most powerful of the Directors,” Carfax said. “Then she married Bonaparte. I suspected her husband was likely to prove a force to be reckoned with. One of the best ways to acquire a hold on a man can be knowing his wife’s indiscretions.’

Charles thought of his own wife, who was also connected to Julien St. Juste, and willed his face to remain blank. ‘Did Bonaparte know about the affair?’

‘Apparently not. At least not at that time.” Carfax walked to a glass-fronted cabinet and touched the silver-framed miniature of Oliver and Isobel’s three children that stood atop it. ‘St. Juste continued to work for various sides during the Peninsular War. The last I heard of him, he was working for the French again at the time of Waterloo. I lost track of him after that. Until tonight.”

‘But you’re sure the dead man is St. Juste?’

‘When have you ever known me to forget a face?’

‘I met him a handful of times as well. He wasn’t a man one easily forgets.” Castlereagh put up a hand to straighten his elaborate cravat, a rare gesture of discomposure. ‘What in God’s name was he doing here?’

‘Precisely.” Carfax turned to face Charles. ‘We need to know why St. Juste met his death tonight. More important, we need to know what he’s been doing for the past four and a half years and what brought him to England now.’

Charles rested his shoulders against the bookshelf behind him. ‘It’s an interesting problem.’

‘So it is. And you’re going to solve it for us. ‘

‘No.’

‘I wasn’t asking.

‘I want you on this as well, Charles,’ Castlereagh said. ‘I need someone I can trust.’

‘Thank you,’ Carfax murmured.

‘I don’t work for you anymore.” Charles’s gaze flickered between the two men. ‘Either of you.’

‘You’re still an Englishman,’ Castlereagh said.

‘Scots.’

‘British. You know what’s due to your country, whatever Radical nonsense you spout off in the Commons.’

‘The war’s over.’

‘One can scarcely turn round without stumbling over a former Bonapartist,’ Castlereagh said.

‘Oh, come, sir.” Charles shifted his shoulders against the cold glass at his back. ‘You’re starting to sound like the Comte d’Artois and the French Ultra Royalists, seeing Bonapartists round every corner. Which is hardly likely considering how many are in prison. Or executed.’

Castlereagh tugged at the braided cuff of his frock coat. ‘I presume you noticed the Comte de Flahaut in the ballroom this evening?’

‘I don’t imagine the ladies Flahaut flirts with are much concerned with which side he fought on.’

‘Surely I needn’t remind you that flirtation can be a mask for other matters?” Carfax, who had fallen to staring at the miniatures, snapped his gaze back to Charles’s face. ‘Don’t pretend to be simple-minded, Charles. We’ve been sitting on a tinderbox since Waterloo. The French king’s hold on the throne is tenuous, the Russians aren’t happy about the Polish situation, Spain is threatening to revolt. And the Prince Regent couldn’t even open Parliament without a mob shooting at his carriage.’

‘Are you saying you think St. Juste was hired by English Radicals?’

‘We don’t know whom he was hired by. That’s the problem. But he wasn’t the sort of man to take a pleasure trip.’

Castlereagh spread his elegant fingers over the tufted leather of the chairback. ‘Whatever our differences, Charles, I can’t believe you wish to see the country of your birth disintegrate into the bloody mess we saw in France.’

‘Don’t waste your breath, Robert. The appeal to God and country has never been much good with Charles.” Carfax fixed Charles with the steel-eyed look he wore when outlining a tactical mission. ‘Despite your tiresome tendency to think for yourself, you’re one of the best agents I’ve ever trained. You have a knack for investigations. Your work resolving Princess Tatiana’s murder in Vienna was brilliant, as was your handling of that business with Julia Ashton at Waterloo. Not to mention—” Carfax’s swallowed. ‘You performed ably in the business of my niece’s death two years ago.”

Charles’s fingers tightened on the cut velvet of his sleeves. He did not want to talk about Honoria Talbot and her murder and its aftermath any more than he wanted to talk about Tatiana Kirsanova. “I’m taking my family to Scotland in the morning.”

“Since when?” Carfax demanded.

Since my wife told me she knew the dead spy floating the fountain. “Sir, it’s been barely two months since my son was abducted. We’re lucky he hasn’t suffered more, but he still has nightmares. He needs his parents—“

“We’re not asking you to leave your family. Keep them in London with you. January is no time to take children to Scotland in any case.” Something shifted in the hard set of Carfax’s features, so that Charles was looking not at his former spymaster but at the school friend’s father at whose home he had spent boyhood holidays. “I’m not insensible of what you all went through, Charles. But you’ve got Colin safely back, and the villains have been apprehended. Mélanie will understand.”

Of course Mélanie would understand. Mélanie would never admit that any strain might be too much for her. For them. He couldn’t say to Carfax and Castlereagh, My marriage almost ended two months ago. My wife and I are still learning to know and trust each other again. And most certainly not, My wife is a former spy who knew the dead man herself. I want her as far away from this as possible.

“You’re not a boy any more,” Carfax said. “You won’t fall apart. Not now.”

Charles forced himself to meet Carfax’s gaze. Twelve years fell away, and Charles was a young man of twenty, shirt cuffs buttoned low over wrists still raw and bandaged from his own inexpert attempt to slash them. Carfax was right. Whatever happened, he would never seek that way out again. He had responsibilities, people dependent on him. But at a time when there had seemed nothing to tie him to life, Carfax had come to his rescue. He owed the older man a good share of his sanity and quite possibly his life.

‘I know you, Charles. You want to investigate this. You never could resist a challenge, even as a boy.’

Truth, always the keenest dart. “What I want and what’s best for my family aren’t the same thing.”

“I’m asking you as a favor, Charles,’ Carfax said. ‘I don’t ask for favors unless the need is great.”

“Jeremy Roth is on his way here. He may be outside even now.” Charles pictured Roth joining Mélanie in the garden and mentally called himself seven kinds of fool. He’d told Oliver to ask for Roth because Roth was an honest man with a keen understanding, which God knew could not be said of all Bow Street Runners. But he’d have thought twice if he’d known he and Mélanie were going to be drawn into the matter.

On the other hand, knowing Roth, the investigation would proceed whether he and Mélanie were in Scotland or London or Timbuktu. Though his first instinct had been to escape, it was already too late for escape. If he helped investigate, he might have some hope of controlling the information.

‘We can keep Bow Street out of it,’ Castlereagh said. ‘The Chief Magistrate answers to the Home Secretary. I’ll have a word with the Lord Sidmouth.’

‘That won’t stop the talk,” Charles said. “Word’s going to get out that a man was killed here tonight. If Bow Street aren’t seen to be investigating, it will draw the wrong sort of attention to the matter. We’ll do better to involve them.”

Carfax and Castlereagh exchanged a look. Whatever their differences, Charles realized, the two men had played him brilliantly. “We’ll do better?” Carfax echoed.

Charles swallowed. Regret, anger, and alarm sat bitter on his tongue. Along with the seductive tang of danger. ‘I’ll work with Roth.”

‘You’ll bring us what you learn?’ Carfax asked in the same level, reasonable tone Charles had heard him use to order the assassination of a double agent.

‘We’ll bring you what we learn,’ Charles said.

As cold as the garden had been, it was only now that he felt chilled to the bone.

Mélanie straightened up from St. Juste’s body. She’d have to wait for Charles or Jeremy Roth to lift him out of the water, but at least she’d established there were no papers hidden inside his bloodstained tunic. She didn’t know whether to be sorry or relieved.

A rustle of silk sounded in the shadows. Slippers pattered against the flagstones, followed by a shocked gasp. ‘Sacrebleu,” Hortense said, her voice rough with shock. “Is he—?”

Mélanie whirled round and caught her friend’s wrist. ‘Did you know Julien St. Juste was at the ball?’

‘Of course not.” Hortense jerked away from her grip.

‘There’s no ‘of course’ about any of this, chérie. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but you have to tell me the truth.’

Hortense stared at St. Juste’s body and gave a raw laugh, one step short of hysteria. ‘You always used to say there are as many versions of the truth as there are people telling it.’

‘I need your version. Without embellishment. We haven’t time for games.’

‘Oh, Mélanie. You know what a woeful game-player I am.” In her pale, shocked face, Hortense’s eyes were free of guile. ‘I had no notion Julien St. Juste was anywhere near England. I swear to you. On the heads of my children. If I had known, I’d have never—” She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God, Mélanie, it’s all going to come out now. Everything I’ve tried so hard to conceal—’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I’m being punished—’

‘That’s absurd.” Mélanie gripped Hortense’s shoulders. ‘You have to keep your wits about you, chérie. For both our sakes. For your children’s sakes.’

Hortense swallowed, hands pressed over her jeweled stomacher. ‘Mélanie. Did you know St. Juste was here tonight?

‘Good God no. I didn’t even know he was in England.’

‘But he could have been here to see you. You used to work with him—’

‘So did a number of other people, several of whom were no doubt at the ball tonight. To Julien St. Juste I was always the girl he outwitted on her first mission.” The wind sent dry leaves scuttering across the water. Mélanie pulled Hortense into the concealing shadows of the elm tree. ‘What’s happening in the ballroom?’

‘The host—Mr. Lydgate, isn’t it?—made a speech explaining there’d been an accident. He’s asking everyone to remain calm but not leave the premises.’

‘A Bow Street Runner’s on his way here. They’ll be questioning the guests and taking statements.” Mélanie scanned the garden, the hedges and shrubs and bits of statuary, the high walls, the single vine-covered gate. ‘Go through the back gate. The mews opens onto St. James’s Street. You can find a hackney there or in Piccadilly.’

‘But—’

‘You have money? Here.” Mélanie snatched her reticule from the wrought iron table and fished out her coin purse.

Hortense searched her face. ‘Where will I find you?’

‘The Grosvenor Gate in Hyde Park. Tomorrow at three.” Mélanie closed Hortense’s fingers round the purse and drew her friend along the hedged path to the gate.

‘But—’

‘There’s no time, chérie.” Mélanie unlatched the gate. The vines rustled beneath her fingers. She could smell saddle soap and harness oil and horse dung. The moonlight gleamed blue-black on the cracked cobblestones. A horse whickered from one of the stalls, but she could hear no human sound. ‘Turn left at St. James’s Street. There’ll be carriages waiting for the ball guests and hackneys looking for customers.’

Hortense turned back to her, eyes dark with concern behind her pasteboard mask. ‘What will you tell your husband?’

‘I don’t know yet.” Mélanie pushed the Empress’s daughter through the gate. ‘I’m making it up as I go along.’

Charles stepped back onto the terrace. Someone had put a blue enamel lamp on the wrought iron table near the fountain. It cast a wash of warm light over two figures kneeling on the flagstones beside the corpse. One was Jeremy Roth. The other, black velvet skirts spread about her, white shoulders emerging from beaded black silk, was his wife.

‘Fraser.” Roth helped Mélanie up and walked toward Charles, hand extended, greatcoat flapping in the wind. “When I said on Tuesday last that I hoped to see you again soon I was thinking more of a reciprocal dinner invitation than the scene of a crime.”

Roth’s thin face was alight with friendship despite the circumstances. When they had met two months ago, due to the abduction of Charles and Mélanie’s son, Roth had treated them with the wariness of one who came from a different world and had no desire to bridge the gap. The investigation into Colin’s disappearance had changed all of them in a number of ways. And yet beneath the burgeoning friendship lurked the fact that Roth had the power to destroy him and Mélanie and all three of them knew it. Two months ago, at the conclusion of the investigation of Colin’s abduction, Roth had come into possession of a letter that revealed Mélanie’s past. He had returned the letter to Mélanie with the seal unbroken, but closer investigation had revealed that the seal had been steamed open.

Charles shook Roth’s hand. “This isn’t exactly how any of us expected to spend the evening. What have you learned?”

Roth moved to the table and picked up his notebook. Charles crossed the flagstones and took Mélanie’s hand. Her fingers closed hard about his own. He raised his brows. She shook her head slightly, a quick code for I’ll tell you later.

‘He’s been dead two to three hours, I’d judge,” Roth said, flipping through the pages of his notebook, ‘which means half an hour to an hour and a half before Lady Lucinda discovered him. Mrs. Fraser found a couple of threads of red fabric on his shoes that look as though they come from the carpet in the entrance hall. I’m quite sure he came into the house through the front door and I suspect the killer did as well. Mrs. Fraser and I couldn’t find any hint of the victim’s identity.’

“His name is Julien St. Juste,” Charles said and proceeded to recount what he had learned from the Foreign Secretary and Lord Carfax.

Mélanie’s expression remained beautifully neutral, as though she had never heard of Julien St. Juste.

Roth let out a low whistle. “I’m surprised I wasn’t packed back to Bow Street. They want you to investigate?”

‘Yes, though that was almost the only thing they were able to agree on. One of these days those two are going to come to blows.’

“I’d put my money on Carfax if it comes to that,’ Mélanie said. ‘People in intelligence are always more willing to bend the rules. I’m glad you agreed to investigate, darling. I’m far too curious to leave such an intriguing crime alone.” She gave a smile designed to deflect more than illuminate.

Roth’s gaze skimmed between them. Charles had known from the first that the runner was a master at picking up on undercurrents. He had learned that Roth was also adept at pretending to turn a blind eye to them when he deemed it appropriate. Which made him all the more dangerous.

Mélanie moved to the table. “We did make one discovery, though I’m not sure what it has to do with Julien St. Juste.” She held up a narrow graceful earring of diamonds set in antique gold.

Charles studied the rich gleam of the gold and the depth of the fire in diamonds. Like her, he could recognize craftsmanship and expense. Though given the pedigree of the guests at the ball that did not limit the field very much. “Where did you find it?”

“By the far side of the fountain. It’s possible whoever lost it saw something. It’s even possible the earring belonged to the killer.’

“The knife he was killed with is definitely designed to be a weapon,” Roth said. “So either the killer is in the habit of going about armed or he—or she—brought it to the ball with the intention of killing St. Juste.”

“Or to protect him or herself against St. Juste,” Charles said.

“It could have been the dead man—St. Juste’s—weapon.” Mélanie blew on her hands against the cold. “They could have grappled for it or the killer could have got it away from him by deceit. The killer got within a handsbreadth of St. Juste with no sign of a struggle. It almost has to be someone he knew.”

‘Which could apply to any number of people present tonight, given St. Juste’s history and the sort of guests at the ball.” Charles looked at Roth. ‘The guests are departing?’

Roth nodded. ‘The Regent left with his party as soon as word got out that something had happened. The other guests are leaving now. Mr. Lydgate made a brief speech explaining there’d been an accident. Dawkins, the patrol I brought with me, is taking down their names and directions as they leave, with the assistance of Mr. Lydgate’s secretary. Lady Isobel is supplying me with a guest list.’

‘Sensible,’ Charles said.

Roth grimaced. ‘Mrs. Fraser tells me there are two royal dukes inside as well as a handful of Cabinet ministers and God knows how many MPs and ambassadors. A number of them would have refused to remain and we couldn’t have stopped them from leaving. Better to acquiesce gracefully than to be over-ruled.’

Charles nodded. ‘There’s little more to see here tonight and it’s damned cold. I suggest we go inside and discover what’s to be learned of the guests.”

They moved to the terrace. ‘I must say,’ Roth added in a lighter voice as they climbed the steps, between the glittering flambeaux and beneath the crimson Japanese lanterns, ‘I never thought I’d find myself investigating a murder with Romeo and Juliet.’

Mélanie smoothed her full skirt. “Please, Mr. Roth, Charles and I are far too experienced to succumb to tragic twists of fate like the star-crossed lovers. We’re supposed to be Beatrice and Benedick. After they’re pretending that Hero has died.”

Roth opened the nearest French window. “Of course. I should have known not to assume the obvious with either of you.”

‘So you should.” Charles stepped aside to allow his wife and Roth to precede him into the ballroom, wondering how long it would be before he could speak with Mélanie in private. And if there was the remotest chance he could get her to tell him the whole truth.