"Now, as to that, I do not know. I told you, I saw her, but I did not see her after she came up to her room, and she was quite alone then. And I have no idea when she departed. You may, of course, ask the footman who opens the door."
I certainly would ask him.
"Now, gentlemen." Kensington rubbed his hands. "I have been very good natured, letting you rummage through my rooms and ask about my friends. But this is a house of business."
Grenville gave him a look of undisguised disgust. He opened his mouth to denounce him, to tell him we would not stay another moment, but I forestalled him with a look. Another woman of the house might have seen Peaches that day, might know who she had met. Peaches had died here, or very soon after leaving here, and I wanted to speak to anyone who had seen her.
"Please," I said to Kensington. "Choose a room for us."
Kensington smiled. It was not a nice smile. "I have just the thing, Captain. Allow me to prepare." He gave me a little bow and glided away, leaving the door open behind him.
Once we heard him close the door at the bottom of the stairs Grenville turned to me. "Why on earth did you tell him that? I'd have thought you'd want nothing more to do with this place."
I explained, but he looked skeptical. "Such a lady may know nothing or be paid to know nothing."
"Perhaps, but it is worth a try. Now, while we have the chance, shall we see what else this room can tell us?"
"Kensington would not have left us alone if it could," Grenville pointed out, but he turned his hand to the task.
We went over the room again, looking under the bed covers, through the dressing table, behind curtains, under the bed. I examined the tools at the fireplace, studied the heavy brass grating. I finished my search, finding nothing. The room was neat, well-dusted, impersonal.
Grenville found nothing either, but I knew that Peaches could very likely have been killed in this room.
We found no evidence that she had been, of course. Her killer would have had time to tidy up behind themselves or he had paid Kensington to do it. Or perhaps Peaches had left with her killer and met her death somewhere between here and the Temple Gardens.
Kensington was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs when we came down. He told me that he'd chosen Room Five for me and that he wanted three hundred guineas for the pleasure.
Chapter Seven
I nearly told Mr. Kensington exactly what I thought of his three hundred guineas. Grenville, on the other hand, coolly handed it over. "I will wait for you," he said.
He returned to the front room, while Kensington bade me follow him. I wondered what vice Kensington had decided a man like me would want.
We did not return to the main room but entered the front staircase hall. Kensington produced another key from his pocket and took me to a small door a little way along the gallery that encircled the stairwell. He opened the door, gestured me inside, and closed and locked the door behind him.
We stood in a narrow corridor lined with doors on our left. I realized that this hall ran behind the main room and the small rooms that encircled it. I wondered briefly what the builders brought in to alter the house had thought about the bizarre floor plan.
Kensington led took me to a door in the middle of this hall and produced another key. He had put the key in the lock and turned it, when I heard a cry. A child's cry.
It did not come from the room Kensington was opening for me but from the one next door. I turned to Kensington, my countenance frozen. "Let me in there." I pointed to the blank door to the right.
His pleased smile sealed his fate. "That room is taken."
"Nonetheless."
"The bid for that room was considerably higher than yours," he said, giving me a patient look. "It has already been spoken for."
Every spark of rage that had been building inside me since I'd seen pretty Peaches dead on the riverbank surged and focused on the small man with the oily smile.
I had Kensington against the wall in a trice, the handle of Grenville's walking stick pressed against his throat. My leg ached and throbbed, berating me for the punishment I'd given it that afternoon. It was likely that Peaches had either met her death in this house or met her killer here, and Kensington knew that too. He might be the murderer himself.
Kensington eyes held fear but also a deep glint of confidence. "You do not know what you are doing, Captain."
"On the contrary, I believe I do."
He had mistaken me for a weak man. I was not. I pressed the handle of the walking stick harder into Kensington's throat, cutting off his air. I could kill him. I saw him realize that.
"If you insist," he said. His voice was still icy, if hoarse.
I eased the walking stick away. Kensington gave me a long look as he cleared his throat, reassessing me. Straightening the cravat I'd put askew, he unlocked and opened the door of the second room.
What I saw within made my previous anger at Kensington seem as nothing.
A girl who could have been no more than twelve stood against the wall on the other side of the room. Her cheeks and lips were red with rouge, and her hair had been died a dull yellow. She resembled the girls that prowled the environs of Covent Garden, the younger ones in the shadows of their older colleagues. I always grew angry when I saw them, and angry at the gentlemen who exploited them, thereby teaching them that they could earn money at so early an age. This girl was locked in, unable to leave, lacking even the feeble protection the street girls gave one another.
The infantryman I had seen in the outer room was with her, now in shirtsleeves and trousers, his coat tossed over a chair. He looked up in surprise when I banged in, and opened his mouth to protest, but closed it and rapidly backed away when I came at him.
The drapes to this room stood open. Two gentlemen peered in through the window, enraging me further. I lifted a chair and threw it at them. The glass in the window broke with a satisfying shatter, and the casement splintered.
The infantryman swore. The girl watched silently. Kensington merely looked on, as though resigned to my tantrum. His lack of worry puzzled me, or would have puzzled me had I not been so furious. This place was vile, and knowing that it had played a part in Peaches' death made me angrier still.
I grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her out of there. She came silently, her eyes round with fear, but she did not fight me. Neither did Kensington. He simply watched me with that knowing look and stood aside to let me pass.
I took the girl to the main staircase, down, and out of the house. The doorman tried to stop me, but I slammed the walking stick into his midriff, and he fell away with a grunt, arm across his belly.
The night outside had turned bitterly cold and was still wet. Matthias blinked when he saw me charging at him with the wretched girl in tow, but he opened the carriage door and quickly helped us in.
Grenville ran from the house and sprang into the carriage, shouting at his coachman to go. We moved out into the street, and Matthias slammed the door and jumped onto his perch behind.
"Good lord, Lacey," Grenville said, breathless, then he chortled. "You ought to have seen their faces when that chair came flying through the window. It was most gratifying." He switched his gaze to the girl.
She stared back at him, her kohl-rimmed eyes wide.
I wondered what to do with her now that I'd rescued her. I had taken a Covent Garden girl to Louisa Brandon last spring, though Black Nancy had been a few years older than this mite in grown-up clothes. I did not like to continue inflicting Louisa with my rescued strays, though I certainly could not take the girl home with me, nor could Grenville.
Then I remembered that I knew a family who would be both sympathetic to the girl's plight and able and eager to help her. Sir Gideon Derwent was a philanthropist and a reformer, and though I hesitated to impose upon him, I could think of no other solution. I asked Grenville to take us to Grosvenor Square, and he gave his coachman the direction.