The Mask of Night

Do come and dine with us next week, Mr. Roth. Though I warn you, Colin is bound to pester you with questions about Bow Street and ‘how many thieves you’ve taken.’

Mélanie Fraser to Jeremy Roth,

27 December 1819

Mélanie glanced round the empty ballroom. It had the feel of a stage after the players have taken their last bow and gone off to drink in a Covent Garden coffee house. Red and gold medieval draperies sagged against the walls, one torn at the hem. Ferns and ruinously expensive red hothouse roses drooped in their vases. A beaded mask hung drunkenly from the corner of a pedestal, a silk fan lay abandoned on a damask settee, a stray kid glove was draped over a gilded chair arm.

She and Charles and Roth crossed the empty expanse of tiled marble, scuffed by dancing shoes and sticky with spilled champagne and rataffia and lemonade. A footman in a red and gold tunic, loading empty champagne glasses onto a silver tray, told them that Lady Isobel and Mr. Lydgate were in the library. She and Charles led the way down a carpeted corridor lined with family portraits and a couple of Renaissance oils to a pair of ornately carved doors topped by a classical frieze.

She felt Roth hesitate as Charles flung open the doors. This room was far more casual than the ballroom, but it bore the unmistakable stamp of privilege: jewel-toned Turkey carpets spread over a polished wood floor with a careless grace that concealed precise geometry, tufted leather furniture, gleaming oak wainscoting, an Italian marble fireplace flanked by Grecian pillars. When she first came to England as Charles’s wife, she too would have felt like an outsider stepping over the threshold. Now she counted the Lydgates among her closest friends. But even that friendship was dependent on keeping the truth from them.

She touched Roth’s arm. “Bel and Oliver don’t bite nearly as hard as Charles and I,” she whispered. “And you’ve quite got used to us.”

Roth gave a reluctant grin and followed her into the room.

The smell of Islay malt filled the air. Oliver, still wearing his toga and imperial purple cloak, was pouring drinks from a cut-glass decanter. Isobel sat on a leather sofa on the opposite side of the room beside her brother David. Lord Carfax’s son and daughter. David had dark hair and eyes and Isobel was a blue-eyed blonde, but looking across the room at them Mélanie was struck by how they resembled each other. Both wore blue velvet cavalier costumes, but more than that they carried themselves with the same contained self-command. They knew very clearly what they had been born to, though neither would be so ill bred as to allude to it.

Simon Tanner was leaning against the bookshelves behind the sofa. Officially, he and David shared rooms in the Albany. Unofficially, they had been lovers since they met at Oxford. She saw Roth’s gaze flicker between them. He had met David and Simon at a dinner party she and Charles gave. She suspected he might guess the truth of the relationship.

Oliver turned toward the door as the new arrivals stepped into the room. “We’re drinking,” he said, lifting the decanter with a flourish, “because there doesn’t seem to be any other possible response to finding a corpse in one’s garden in the midst—” The decanter shook, flashing in the candlelight. He clunked it down, spattering whisky on the satinwood tabletop. ‘Oh, Christ.’

Charles clapped him on the shoulder. ‘The guests have all gone?’

‘With surprising speed. I never thought so many carriages could assemble so bloody quickly.” Oliver drew a breath and handed Mélanie a whisky with a smile of careless warmth. Even at a time like this, his smile dazzled brighter than the candlelit crystal. He handed a second whisky to Charles. His gaze moved past Charles and lingered on Roth for a moment. His eyes narrowed. ‘Whisky, Roth?’

Roth inclined his head. ‘Thank you, Mr. Lydgate. Just a small one.’

Mélanie perched on the arm of the sofa and put her arm round Isobel. Isobel leaned against her. “I still can’t believe it happened. It’s just so—”

“Bloody awaful,” Mélanie said.

Isobel looked up at her. ‘I could scarcely think what to do or say. And there you were, asking all the right questions, knowing just what to do—’

‘I’ve seen dead bodies before. It’s one of the hazards of war.’

Isobel shivered.

“How’s Lucinda?” Mélanie asked.

“Remarkably resilient.” Isobel pushed a strand of hair back from her face. She had removed her hat, and her thick straight hair, usually swept into a smooth chignon, fell about her shoulders with uncharacteristic abandon. “She didn’t want to leave, but I persuaded her she had to look after Mama.”

“And your father?” Charles said.

“He left with Lord Castlereagh.” Oliver replaced the stopper in the decanter. “Do you know what the devil the Foreign Secretary has to do with this?”

“Yes, actually.” Charles dropped into a straight-backed chair. Mélanie sipped her whisky, letting her husband take the lead on how much to say. Charles had grown up with David and Isobel and had known Simon and Oliver since university. He and David and Oliver were all MPs now. She and Charles and David and Simon and the Lydgates had spent countless fortnights at one another’s country houses, shared picnics and rides and rambles, played games of chess and whist and battledore-and-shuttlecock, debated plays and operas at after-theatre suppers, argued political strategies round one another’s dining tables. Even Lord Carfax had left it up to Charles to decide how much to reveal to his son and daughter and son-in-law about Julien St. Juste. Perhaps he too recognized that Charles knew them better than he did himself.

Charles was silent for a long moment. The past weeks, Mélanie knew, had taught him the risks of trust. But they had also taught him that one had to take help where one could find it. To learn who had committed the murder and why they would have to unlock the secrets of those who had been at the ball this evening. Who better to help than the entertainment’s hosts?

Charles took a sip of whisky, glanced round the room at his friends, and told them what Carfax and Castlereagh had told him about Julien St. Juste.

David closed his eyes in recognition of what this meant for his sister and her husband. Isobel sat absolutely still. Simon frowned into his whisky.

“God in heaven,” Oliver said. He had moved to a high-backed armchair with carved lions on the arms. He looked like a young Roman Emperor, receiving the news of a rebellion by the Praetorian Guard. “Are you saying this St. Juste was at our ball because of some sort of international conspiracy?”

‘We don’t know what he was doing at the ball.’

‘But it’s a fair guess he wasn’t just looking for a diverting evening. Whom was he working for?’

‘The possibilities are endless,’ Charles said. ‘French Ultra-Royalists. Bonapartists. Russians. Spanish monarchists or liberals. Austrians, Prussians—’

‘English Radicals,’ David said in a flat voice. ‘That’s Father’s theory, isn’t it?’

‘He did mention it.’

‘What a surprise,’ Simon murmured.

David shot him a look of concern. Simon shrugged. Then he met Mélanie’s gaze for a moment. No matter how close the six of them were, he and Mélanie would always share the fellow feeling of outsiders.

‘You think St. Juste came here to meet someone and that person killed him?’ Oliver asked.

‘Possibly,’ Charles said. ‘Or someone from his past could have recognized him.’

Isobel lifted two sheets of embossed writing paper from an ebony-inlaid table and handed them to Mélanie. “The first is the list Officer Dawkins and Oliver’s secretary compiled of the guests as they left. The second is a list of the invited guests.”

Mélanie scanned the papers. She had helped Isobel with the cards for the ball, but seeing all the names written out brought home just how powerful a group they were dealing with. Powerful and therefore dangerous. These were the sort of people who might well kill to conceal secrets.

She carried the papers over to Charles and Roth. ‘An impressive array,’ Roth said. ‘Admirably organized, Lady Isobel.’

Isobel gave a strained smile. ‘I’m a politician’s wife. Organization is my stock in trade.’

“How many of those present at the ball tonight weren’t actually invited?”

‘More than I could have wished. It’s the hazard of a masquerade.’

‘Card sharps and half-pay officers and toadies hoping to ingratiate themselves,’ Oliver said.

Isobel flashed her husband a look that said one did not speak so freely before a stranger. ‘But there’s no one I can point to as particularly suspicious,’ she added.

“Surely it’s possible the killer gave a false name and direction,” David said.

“It is.” Charles raised his gaze from the papers. “We’ll only know for a certainty by tracking everyone on the list to verify their presence here this evening.”

“It’s also possible the killer left between the murder and the discovery of the body,” Mélanie said.

Isobel nodded. ‘The footmen remember a half-dozen or so guests leaving but they couldn’t put names to them or even describe their costumes in any detail.”

Mélanie pulled the earring from a pocket in her skirt. “Do any of you recognize this? We found it in the garden.”

Isobel took the earring and held it up to a brace of candles. “No. I don’t think so. Though any number of ladies were wearing diamonds tonight.”

Oliver and David examined the earring and shook their heads.

“Pity we didn’t know sooner,” Simon murmured. “We could have checked all the ladies for missing earrings on their way out.”

“Did any of you see anyone go onto the terrace during the evening?” Charles asked. “Or go outside yourselves?”

All four shook their heads.

Simon frowned at the earring he still held. “The lady who lost this was most likely outside for a rendezvous that had nothing to do with St. Juste’s death. You start poking into this, and her reputation could be ruined.”

“That can be an unfortunate side effect of murder investigations, Mr. Tanner,” Roth said. “I’ll do my best be discreet.”

Oliver crossed back to his chair and picked up his whisky. “For a fire-breathing Radical, Simon, you’re very well-versed in the nuances of life among the beau monde.”

“My dear Oliver, any general would tell you one has to know the enemy. Anyway, Charles is a Radical too. So are you, according to some of the papers.”

“Not me.” Oliver took a sip of whisky. “I’m a devoted member of the Whig party. Who wants to push reform along.”

“And you’d better remain that way,” Charles said. “One of us has to have a prayer of a Cabinet seat if the Whigs ever get back in power.”

“At the rate things are going, David’s likely to be in the House of Lords by the time the Whigs get anywhere near Downing Street,” Oliver said. “Then Simon can write diatribes against him.”

‘For God’s sake,’ David said. ‘Are you forgetting a man was killed tonight?’

‘I don’t see how I could forget it, much as I might like to.” Oliver flung himself into his chair. “I must say I’m a bit surprised my Tory father-in-law and the Foreign Secretary took you into their confidence on this, Charles.”

“So am I,” Charles said. “But they need to find out who killed St. Juste and what St. Juste was doing in England.”

David’s gaze shot from Charles to Mélanie. “My God, you’re in no state to—“

“I’m advising Roth, that’s all.”

“Not, I imagine, if my father-in-law has anything to say about it,” Oliver said.

“Mélanie—“ Isobel turned to her.

“It’s all right, Bel. Charles and I are remarkably sturdy.”

David leaned toward Charles. “Depending on what you learn, Father may feel he has no choice but to hush the whole thing up. Don’t underestimate him, Charles.”

Charles folded the list of guests. The paper crackled in his fingers. “I’ve been in Parliament for three years, David. I know better than to underestimate the opposition.”

Charles had suspected there was something Mélanie wasn’t telling him from the moment he stepped back onto the terrace after his interview with Carfax and Castlereagh. But even when they left the Lydgates, he was not immediately able to ask her about it for they had Roth and Officer Dawkins with them, as well as David and Simon whom they had driven to the ball in their carriage. It was a silent journey. Most of what could be said had been said in Oliver and Isobel’s library. David frowned into the shadows. So, uncharacteristically, did Simon. Roth stared out the dark window, as though the flashes of lamplight in the gloom beyond held answers. Dawkins, a tow-headed young man of little more than twenty, shifted nervously on the watered silk seat.

As he swung down from the carriage in front of the Bow Street Public Office, Roth murmured that he’d call on Charles and Mélanie the next day. David said something similar when they reached the Albany. He paused at the base of the carriage steps and stared at Charles for a moment, his gaze night-black, as it had been since their school days when he was trying to warn Charles of danger. Simon touched his arm, and he turned and strode across the forecourt, his cavalier cloak billowing about his shoulders. Simon walked beside him, an incongruous match in his Francois Villon tunic and boots.

Charles squeezed Mélanie’s hand, but he didn’t attempt to discuss the events of the night and neither did she. There was too much to say and not enough time before they reached their own house in Berkeley Square.

They lit candles in the entrance hall, nodded to Michael, the footman, and climbed the stairs. A cream-colored note card stood on the demi-lune table on the second floor landing. Mélanie snatched it up and held it to the light of her candle.

Colin fell asleep while I was reading Robinson Crusoe to him. No nightmares.

L.D.

Since Colin’s abduction last autumn, Laura Dudley, the children’s governess, had taken to leaving word for them when they were out for the evening. They eased open the door of their son’s room and heard the soft, even sound of his breathing. He was sprawled beneath the quilt, not curled into a tight ball as he’d been wont to do just after the abduction. Charles stared at his son’s tousled dark hair, cursing Julien St. Juste and Carfax and Castlereagh and whoever had wielded the knife in the Lydgates’ garden.

Jessica, their three-year-old daughter, was sound asleep as well in her room next door, with Berowne, the family cat, on the foot of her bed. Charles closed the door softly, and he and Mélanie retreated to their own bedchamber. At last they had leisure and privacy to speak, but he wasn’t sure how to begin. Despite all they’d been through together they were stepping onto unfamiliar territory, without a map or even a compass to guide them.

Mélanie turned up the Argand lamp and struck a flint to light the branch of tapers on the Pembroke table by the fireplace. Her jet-beaded mask, which she had set on the polished wood of the table, caught the flare of light.

“Carfax can be difficult,” Charles said, “but I owe him a great deal. He got me the post in Lisbon when I desperately needed to be out of Britain.”

“And without that we’d never have met.” Mélanie scraped some wax from the wick of a candle that had guttered out. “You couldn’t have refused, Charles.”

“I did refuse. Several times. Like most politicians, Carfax isn’t above trading on old debts.”

Mélanie set down the tinderbox and dropped into a chair. The black velvet folds of her gown pooled about her, gleaming like the jet of the mask. “This is nothing we haven’t done in the past.”

The candlelight hollowed out her cheeks and deepened her eyes. Her brows were sooty smudges against her pale skin. A trace of lip rouge was smeared at the corner of her mouth. She looked more fragile to him since the revelations of two months ago. Or perhaps it was simply that he was more aware of the fragility of everything in life, even the bonds between two people. Especially the bonds between two people.

He crossed to her side and perched on the arm of her chair. “No, it isn’t the first time.” He brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. “But—“

“But it’s the first time since you learned I was a French spy.”

He forced himself to smile. “That’s my Mel. Never afraid to put things into words.”

She echoed the smile, but her eyes remained serious. “I’ve spent far too much time not telling the truth as it is, darling.”

Charles smoothed away the rouge smear and stroked his thumb over her lips. “We should have gone to Scotland when we left Aunt Frances’s after Christmas.”

“We couldn’t have stayed forever.” Mélanie caught his hand in her own. “We can’t run away from things. We agreed on that. We’d neither of us forgive the other if we started making compromises.”

“No.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to her pearl-dressed hair. “Tell me.“

She pulled back and twisted her neck to look up at him. “Tell you what?”

“Whatever it is you discovered while I was talking with Carfax.” Charles looked into his wife’s sea-green eyes. Like water that is glassy calm on the surface while God knows what turbulence lurks beneath.

She drew a long, uneven breath. “I’m afraid the investigation’s going to be more complicated than you think.”

The last time she’d had that note in her voice, his world had come tumbling down about his ears. ”You recognized St. Juste. You were going to tell me when Carfax and Castlereagh interrupted us.”

Mélanie swallowed. The stiff lace of her ruff stirred at her throat. ‘I recognized his face when I took his mask. But if I’d had any doubts, they were stilled when Roth and I examined the body. We removed all his clothing in case there was any clue to identify him. He had a scar on his chest and a birthmark on the inside of his right thigh. St. Juste had identical markings on his body.’

Charles stared at his wife, lover, best friend, partner in adventure. The woman he understood better than anyone else on earth and yet sometimes felt he was still coming to know.

Once again, Mélanie said it for him. Her voice was as inexorable as a rapier blade and at the same time stretched like frayed silk; her gaze at once bruised and steady. “I saw both the night I went to bed with him.”