Page 13 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

“Tuesday afternoon,” she signed.

“Did he come closer?”

She shook her head.

My pulse beat hard in my ears.

Lydia had not stepped blindly into the street. She had been thrust into the path of that carriage.

I drew Linnet close, pressing my cheek to her hair. I wanted to tell her she was safe, that there was nothing to fear. But I knew safety had become a fragile thing. Whoever killed Lydia would somehow gain entry into her lodgings so he could search through her belongings for what she had written. Whatever they found would not be enough. I had what they were looking for.

After Linnet returned to her room, I glanced once more at the notebook. Lydia Gray had placed her life’s work into my keeping. They may have silenced her. But they had not silenced what she knew.

I turned the page and began to read.

Chapter

Seven

The Inquest

The inquest into Lydia Gray’s death was held above the King’s Arms, in a narrow, ill-ventilated room that smelled of damp wood, ink, and too many bodies. A coal fire that gave no warmth hissed in the grate.

The benches were crammed with curiosity-seekers—the kind of people who attended inquests as others attended the theatre, eager for a spectacle they could recount over supper. Most were clerks, tradesmen, and shopgirls drawn by morbid curiosity. A few, to my disgust, bore the unmistakable polish of Mayfair. Ladies veiled in mourning black, gentlemen pretending indifference, all come to gawk at a dead woman they had never met.

I had no business being here. Yet here I stood, shoulder pressed against the back wall, watching the farce unfold with the grim fascination of a man observing his own trial.

I’d positioned myself near the door, half-hidden by a pillar. Old habits from the war died hard—always keep your back covered, always know your exits. The skills that once kept me alive in the Crimea seemed absurdly unnecessary in a London public house, but one never knew. Danger had a talent for wearing new faces.

A few glances lingered on me, questions in them. A man with a scar carved ear to jaw could mean trouble. But the cut of my coat said otherwise—too fine for a bruiser, too sober for a peacock—and the signet on my hand settled the matter for anyone who knew to look. The Everthorne crest. Passed from father to elder son and, when both had obliged the family by dying, to me. The least suitable Ashcombe to wear it. The only one left.

The coroner made his entrance with pomp enough for Parliament—a round-bellied man with side-whiskers like a pair of overfed ferrets. He thumped the table for silence and began reading the particulars in a voice that suggested he relished the sound of his own authority.

“Miss Lydia Gray, spinster, late of Gower Street, struck down by a horse and carriage on the morning of the fourteenth, at the junction of Gower Street and Montague Place. Conveyed by bystanders to University College Hospital, where she expired of her injuries within the hour. No driver has come forward.”

I clenched my jaw. A woman’s life reduced to the dry facts of a police report.

I remembered Lydia Gray well enough. She had served as companion to my grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Everthorne, for twenty years. A quiet woman, self-contained but keen-eyed. I had been a restless younger son when she first arrived, not yet the Devil society would later make of me. I had felt the weight of her regard whenever we met.

And now she was dead.

Two days earlier, I had received a note.

Miss Lydia Gray is dead. They will call it an accident. You know it is not. The truth she guarded concerns your house. Will you let her be silenced?

At first, I’d assumed it was another of those letters—the sort that arrived occasionally, promising ruin or redemption for the right price. But something in the phrasing stopped me. Your house.

There were too many secrets buried under the name Everthorne, too many ghosts waiting to be exhumed. My father’s temper, my brother’s nature, my own scandal—each a stone on the same cursed foundation. Whatever Miss Gray had known, I suspected it was not trivial.

So here I was, standing in a room that reeked of damp wool and hypocrisy, watching a parody of justice unfold.

The coroner called the first witness—a costermonger named Briggs, a thick-necked man who turned his cap in his hands as though wringing a chicken’s neck. He had been selling chestnuts on the corner when it happened.

“I seen the lady crossing the street, sir. She were walking brisk, carrying something under her arm. Papers, like. A carriage come round the corner fast—too fast, I thought. Black carriage. No markings I could see.”

“And the driver?” the coroner asked.

“Couldn’t say, sir. Did not have a proper view. He didn’t stop, didn’t slow. Hit her square and kept on.”