The frantic hammering on the door brought Jared wide awake into a faint dawn light. He flung back the blankets and met Dover half way across the living room. The young man was jamming the tails of his nightshirt into his breeches. ‘I’ll get it, sir.’

‘Key.’ Jared tossed it to him and followed him down, bare chested, bare footed, hair loose around his shoulders, picking up a rapier as he went.

Dover slammed back the bolts and unlocked the door. He opened it a crack but was knocked back by the liveried footman who virtually fell through the gap.

‘Hoskins?’ Jared recognised him as the Northam’s footman, the one with the burly brothers. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Oh, Mr Hunt, sir. You’re to come at once, Mr Twite says. It’s dreadful, sir, the worst thing!’

‘What has happened now?’ Jared resisted the urge to slap the man. He pulled him right into the room and closed the door.

‘Oh, dead, sir, dead in the night and stone cold this morning!’

‘Who?’ His guts seemed suddenly hollow, his lungs empty of air. ‘Your mistress? Pull yourself together, man.’

‘The master, sir. Lord Northam.’

Thank God. He almost said it out loud. ‘How? Heart attack?’

‘No, sir. Mr Twite says it looks like poisoning, sir.’

‘Is your mistress safe? Has the doctor been sent for? And the Coroner?’

‘I don’t know about them, Mr Hunt. It was the mistress who said to get you and Mr Twite said to run, not that there’s anything to be done for the master now, poor gentleman. The mistress is not ill, if that’s what you mean, sir, just very upset. But she’s taking charge of things.’ The man was regaining his own composure now that he had his breath back and he was unloading the problem onto someone else.

‘Go back. Tell them I said nothing is to be touched where Lord Northam was found, nothing is to be cleared up or cleaned. Ask Mr Twite to send for the doctor and the Coroner immediately and inform Lady Northam that I will be with her directly.’

He closed the door and made for the stairs. ‘Dover, is the stove still hot? Yes? Then make coffee at once. Then get dressed. I need you to deliver a note to the Duchess of Calderbrook, then have some breakfast and get on with things here.’

He scribbled, Lord N. dead. G. will need you. Jared, sanded and folded it, slapped on a wafer to seal it.

Dover handed him a cup of coffee and gulped his own, wincing at the heat. ‘Yes, sir. I’ll be out right behind you. Do you need hot water now?’

Jared scrubbed a hand over his chin. He’d had a shave before the ball, so the morning beard was not as bad as it might be. Speed was more important than appearances. ‘No. That can wait.’ He tied his hair back, not taking the time to braid it tightly, and pulled on clothes, fastened his sword belt.

He ran. It was quicker than trying to find a hackney at that hour and it cleared his head of the fumes of last night’s wine and the fug of too little sleep. The door of the house swung open as he came up the steps. It was Hoskins the footman again. ‘Where?’ Jared snapped.

‘Upstairs, sir. Doctor Felbrigg is here already, the mistress sent for him while I was going to you, sir.’

Jared made himself walk up the stairs. There would be enough of an air of panic in the house without him adding to it by charging about. A door at the end of the first landing stood open and he went in without knocking. A tall man he recognised as Doctor Felbrigg bent over a sprawled figure on the bed, Twite and a footman stood helpless to one side and, at the sound of his footsteps, Guinevere turned from where she had been standing in the middle of the room.

‘Oh!’ She started towards him, her tear-streaked face breaking into a tremulous smile of relief. ‘You came, Ja–’ She broke off at the abrupt movement of his hand and the smile froze, to be replaced with a stony dignity, as though he had snubbed her.

 

Of course, the last thing Jared wanted was a weeping female throwing herself at him, and in front of witnesses. Witnesses. Yes, of course, this was about rumour and appearances. Formality was sensible, there was no call to feel as though he had slapped her. Guin drew herself up and inclined her head. ‘Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr Hunt. As you can see, Doctor Felbrigg is here. But he says there is nothing – ’ She swallowed. ‘There is nothing that can be done for Augustus.’

‘Lady Northam, why do you not go and lie down and have your woman attend you? The Duchess of Calderbrook will be here just as soon as she can.’

‘So kind of her, thank you. But I will stay in this room until she comes.’

‘At least sit down.’ Jared pulled out an easy chair and arranged the leather-covered dressing-screen so that it was shielded from the bed. ‘Here. You will not be abandoning your post then.’

She let him lead her to the chair and sat and then, his back to the room, he finally smiled. ‘Courage, Guinevere.’ It was a murmur, but she heard it, nodded. He turned away to the dressing table, returned to hand her one of Augustus’s big white linen handkerchiefs and then went back to the doctor, leaving her privacy to mop up the worst of the tears.

It had been shock and pity, she realised. Poor Augustus had looked so very old in death, so lumpen and ungainly. How he would have hated the indignity of being seen like that, in those rumpled, stained bedclothes, in the midst of the stink of sickness and worse. Guin blew her nose and made herself listen to what the men were saying.

‘Did his lordship have anything to eat when he got home, Twite? Or to drink?’ The doctor’s voice was muffled as though he was bending over the bed.

‘Nothing, doctor. It was not his habit to take refreshment when he came home so late. There was a carafe of water by his bedside as usual, but that seems untouched.’ There was a pause. ‘The glass is dry.’

‘Well, something has made him very sick indeed.’

‘Is there any reason we may not open the window and refresh the air in here?’

‘No, Mr Hunt. None now. I have been unable to detect any odours which might have helped my diagnosis.’ He said something, low-voiced, to Jared about stomach contents and Guin pressed the handkerchief to her mouth until the desire to vomit had passed.

‘Twite.’ That was Jared again. ‘Do you have a tactful, discreet footman, one who can go round to Lady Fulborne’s house and discover if there have been reports of anyone else taking sick? Someone who can manage it without revealing what has occurred here? If there has been an outbreak of food poisoning this death would have a straightforward, if tragic, explanation.’

‘At once, sir.’ Twite hurried out.

‘Mr Hunt,’ Guin said, from behind the screen. ‘I do not think my husband ate anything that I did not, last night at the ball. You ate at the buffet also. We are both perfectly well.’

‘Shellfish are notoriously dangerous, Lady Northam,’ the doctor interjected. ‘It could take just one bad oyster, crab or lobster.’

‘Augustus did not eat shellfish of any kind,’ she objected.

‘What are those on the floor? Be careful, Doctor, you almost crushed them with your foot. See? Here, let me gather them up.’ A moment later Jared came around the screen, his hands cupped around something that glittered. ‘Lady Northam, do you know what these are? There are five of them.’

She picked one up, a crumpled little silver-paper square about three inches across. ‘It is a sweet wrapper. But it should not be in here, Augustus was not supposed to eat sweetmeats. You forbade it yourself, Doctor.’

‘I did indeed, and without much effect by the look of it. There is an uneaten one here beside the bed. Marchpane I would guess.’

‘Marchpane? Peter, find Faith and bring her here please.’ Jared came round the screen and looked at her, one eyebrow raised enquiringly. ‘I sent her away, it did not seem fair to inflict this – ’ she waved a hand to encompass the room ‘ – on her. She will not have gone far.’ The maid came and hesitated in the doorway. ‘Faith, where did you put that box of sweetmeats that came from Parmentier’s yesterday?’

‘Oh, my lady, you said to hide it away from his lordship and I did, I am certain I did. I put it in the cupboard in your sitting room, I can recall as clear as day. But the box is back on the table again. I am sorry, my lady, if it was my error, and I did get held up with that that fuss over heating the smoothing irons on the kitchen range. I got to arguing with – ’

‘Never mind that now. Did you, or did you not, put the box in the cupboard?’

‘I would have sworn that I did, my lady. But it is on the table again now, so perhaps I didn’t.’ Faith looked ready to cry. ‘Is that what caused it?’

She was normally very reliable, conscientious to a fault. Guin kept her voice gentle. ‘We do not know. If you did forget, then it was a genuine mistake. Just go and fetch it for the doctor, Faith.’

‘No. Show me,’ Jared said. ‘Do not touch it.’

‘I will come too. Follow us out and stand outside the door, let no-one in until I return,’ Doctor Felbrigg instructed the footman.

They all trooped along the corridor to Guin’s sitting room and stood around the table where the box sat in the middle.

‘When we left it the top was back on properly, my lady, not like this,’ Faith offered. ‘I had set it back nice and square and tied the ribbon and then you said to put it away so that his lordship wasn’t tempted to take one. I said to myself that I’d do it when I had ordered your bath water and I’d swear that I did.’

‘But you were all in a bustle and there was a lot to do,’ Guin suggested. ‘You told yourself you would do it, so perhaps, in your mind, you thought you had.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ Faith said miserably. ‘Perhaps.’

Jared reached over and lifted the lid, turning back the silver paper that lay over the contents with his fingertips. ‘Six, no, eight are missing.’

‘When I came home from the dressmaker it had been delivered and I had a fondant and Faith had one of the crystallised fruits, I think.’

‘Orange it was, my lady.’

‘And you were expecting to receive these sweetmeats? Or were they a surprise present?’

‘Aug… My husband had placed a regular order for a box each week from Parmentier’s. But they should know not to include marchpane which I do not like and which Augustus adores… adored. I was surprised when I opened this box to see them.’

‘So you would not have been tempted to even nibble at one?’ When she shook her head the doctor strode out and came back a few minutes later with a small box that had once held soap in his hands. ‘I have put the remaining marchpane and the wrappers in here. They must be tested by a chemist. The Coroner may well decide to have the entire box tested.’

Guin sat down on the nearest chair. It felt as though the tendons in her legs had been cut. ‘Poison? You suspect that Augustus was deliberately poisoned? By eating the sweetmeats in my box?’

‘We cannot rule it out, Lady Northam. We have to check everything, you know.’ Doctor Felbrigg’s bedside manner seemed unshakeable, but his face betrayed him. That was exactly what he thought.

Not an accident, not a heart attack. Time seemed to have slowed to a sticky, slow-moving trickle. Guin turned to look up at Jared, still and dark and grim-faced like an angel of death in the room. ‘You said they were not trying to kill. You said they were an inept assassin,’ she said. ‘Now look! They have murdered Augustus and what have you done to prevent it?’

‘Who, exactly, has murdered your husband, Lady Northam?’ It was a new voice, elderly, precise, dry as old bones.

They turned as one to face the door and Twite hurried into the room on the very coat-tails of the stranger. ‘I am sorry, Lady Northam, but Mr Runcorn insisted… Mr Runcorn the Coroner, my lady.’

‘Mr Runcorn.’ There had to be some etiquette for this, something in the rules of manners for Receiving the Coroner as your husband lies poisoned just along the corridor. Guin felt the wild bubble of laughter rising inside her and closed her eyes against the longing to simply give way.

‘Be assured, sir, that if we did know that we would have informed the nearest magistrate by now,’ Jared said coolly.

It gave her the moment’s grace she needed to quell the hysteria. Guin opened her eyes and stood up. ‘Someone has been harassing me with attacks. This is Mr Hunt, employed by my husband to investigate. He had concluded that the attacks were too random and too ineffectual to be actual attempts on my life and both my husband and I agreed with him. It appears we were all wrong.’ And she had been wrong to turn on Jared like that. He could not have prevented this.

‘My condolences, Lady Northam. Mr Hunt, did you make the discovery?’

‘No. I was at my home in Great Ryder Street. A footman was sent to rouse me with the news. Doctor Felbrigg was already here when I arrived.’

‘Who did discover his lordship?’

‘His valet, Tonkin,’ Guin said. ‘He sent word to me and I went immediately to my husband’s room. I saw at once that he was dead. Mr Runcorn, will you not take a chair?

‘Thank you no, my lady. I will go into the bedchamber now and view the deceased. Has anything been disturbed in the room?’

‘I believe Tonkin threw back the bed covers in his efforts to discover what was wrong. The doctor may have moved my husband’s… my husband. Nothing else has been touched except a window being opened just now and a chair and screen moved so I could sit down.’

‘I found the silver paper squares that had held marchpane sweetmeats on the floor by the bed. It appears Lord Northam had eaten them last night. I picked them up. Doctor Felbrigg assisted me and he then placed them, and the remaining sweetmeat, in a box which he now has in his possession,’ Jared said. ‘They came from this box here. We were just discussing securing it to await your arrival.’ He looked across at Guin. ‘May her ladyship retire with her maid to her room? She has sustained an appalling shock and should be lying down.’

‘I have no objection to Lady Northam retiring to a drawing room, but I have questions – ’

‘Her Grace the Duchess of Calderbrook, my lady,’ Twite pronounced.

Sophie swept in past the men without looking to left or right, flung her arms around Guin and hugged her tight. ‘Oh, Guinevere, my dear. I am so very sorry! Tell me what I can do – if you want to come back with me, or I can stay, or if you wish me to go to the devil because you want to be alone, I will take myself off.’

‘You are so kind.’ Guin bit her lower lip until the pressing urge to simply flee with Sophie subsided a little. ‘Being alone is unlikely to be possible, just at the moment. Doctor Felbrigg is here, and Mr Hunt, as you can see, and this gentlemen is Mr Runcorn the Coroner.’

Sophie gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze and turned. ‘Doctor Felbrigg, I am sorry to see you on such a melancholy occasion when only a week past you were dining with us. And Jared, I came as soon as I heard from you.’ Guin realised what she was doing, establishing the credentials of the two men to the Coroner as intimates of a duke and duchess. In the case of the doctor it was probably unnecessary, but it could only help where Jared was concerned.

‘Mr Runcorn.’ Sophie held out her hand and shook his briskly. ‘I can see you are a man of experience and intelligence, which is a huge relief under the circumstances.’

‘You are aware of the circumstances, Your Grace?’ Mr Runcorn, who looked to be at least sixty years old and unaccustomed to being spoken to with decision by young duchesses, let alone being shaken by the hand, regarded her solemnly over his spectacles.

‘But of course. Lady Northam is dear to us and Mr Hunt is my husband’s closest friend. Doctor Felbrigg is our doctor, but much more than that, to all my family. The distressing persecution Lady Northam has been suffering is of great concern to us.’

 

Sophie is overdoing it, Jared thought. Runcorn is nobody’s fool and such a display of big guns is going to make him wonder what there is to necessitate it. And Guinevere looks ready to drop where she stands. Quite what was keeping her on her feet he was not certain, but he could not place much reliance on it lasting for long.

‘Perhaps Her Grace could accompany Lady Northam to the drawing room so she may rest while you inspect the bedchamber, Mr Runcorn?’ he suggested.

The Coroner murmured, ‘Certainly, certainly.’ Guinevere, Sophie and the maid went out. The three men looked at each with what Jared suspected was a mutual male relief at having the threat of feminine emotion removed, then the Coroner said, ‘Let us proceed,’ and Doctor Felbrigg led the way into the bedchamber.