Luc snorted.
‘Don’t be jealous,’ I murmured, intending to provoke. ‘I couldn’t cope with a man who was so much prettier than I am.’
It wasn’t as much a snort as a choked growl that time. ‘He’s spoiled rotten, I’d say.’ Luc was clearly having a sense of humour failure. He turned towards the door. ‘Jas? Are you coming?’
‘Yes. If you’ll drop me off, I’d be grateful.’ He grimaced. ‘I can’t find the enthusiasm for making a night of it and Cassie won’t even let me admire the scenery.’
We waited until Garrick brought the carriage round before we discussed anything. ‘Tension between the two Under Secretaries,’ Luc summarised as we finally set off towards Piccadilly. ‘Coates definitely had no promotion or additional work pressures but was well thought of. The ladies, young and old, had nothing worse to say about Talbot than that he was condescending, and that sounds like pique. None of James’s friends have any clue, but are uneasy. Sir Thomas’s nephew is a brat, but a pretty brat. Have I missed anything?’
James shook his head. ‘Nothing that I can see. We must sleep on it, I suppose, and see what the inquests reveal.’
Luc, it appeared when we got back to Albany and Garrick had been sent off to his well-earned rest, was not inclined to sleep on anything, let alone a mattress, until he had comprehensively taken our minds off anything except what Sophie described as applied biology.
Which would have been easier to deal with, I think, if it had simply been biology in action. Our lovemaking was intense and focused and fast and we fell apart panting in the candlelight. I should have curled up and gone to sleep, holding on to as much gorgeous naked man as I could get my arms around. Instead I found I was awake and a bit shaky and I wanted to cuddle, not to sleep.
Luc was silent, but I didn’t know him well enough in bed yet to tell whether something was wrong or whether this was normal, so I curled round, put my cheek against his chest so I could hear his heartbeat and waited. After a moment he tugged the covers up over us and pulled me in tight. ‘I was impatient with your hesitation about us,’ he said so abruptly that I jumped. ‘But you were right to be uncertain.’
I took a heartbeat to get my voice under control. ‘Really?’ And you couldn’t say that before we made love?
‘You saw we would be forging links that are different from anything either of us has experienced before, although you did not say so in quite that way. I have not felt like this for another woman.’
I spoke without considering what I was asking. ‘Not for your wife?’ Then I had several seconds to kick myself for being a tactless idiot who was probably going to hear a great deal she’d rather not.
‘No. We liked each other of course,’ he said slowly, as though putting his marriage into words for the first time. ‘It was a very suitable match. I believe there was mutual respect, shared interests for many things. No problems in the bedchamber. I truly mourned her death. But I went on. With sadness, of course, with regret. But I went on. If I lose you, Cassie, I am not certain how I go on from that. Not as the same man.’
‘Then we don’t lose each other,’ I said, more briskly than I felt because I was suddenly very close to tears. ‘Quite simple. I come back.’ Was he telling me he l
oved me? Did I love him?
Don’t ask, I thought. Don’t ask him, don’t ask yourself.
‘It is that easy?’ There was laughter back in his voice now, rumbling under my ear.
‘Of course. It is for us.’ And that was probably hubris and if some bored god was lounging around on a cloud over London looking for a complacent idiot to give a good shaking to, then he now knew where to send his thunderbolts. ‘Go to sleep, Luc. I’ll be here in the morning.’
The inquest on George Coates was held the next morning at the Coachman and Four public house just around the corner from his lodging house. The room was used by the local glee singers, the pigeon fanciers and just about every other local group and society, as far as I could tell from the paraphernalia stacked away in corners, but it did have a lot of chairs and benches.
Not that the audience was vast, not for the suicide of an unknown young man without, so far as the public were aware, any particularly scandalous circumstances attached. At least half the seating was unoccupied.
I wore a plain gown and a veil and slid a notebook and pencil onto my lap as I sat to one side next to Garrick. There was evidence from two work colleagues and Mr Salmond testifying to George’s good character and stating there had been signs of strain and anxiety but no work-related causes they could think of.
Mrs Kentish sniffed into her handkerchief throughout but her evidence left the court with the impression of a pleasant, straightforward young man who had seemed depressed recently. Dora backed her up with sensible, clear testimony.
Then came the other lodgers, which was interesting because only James had previously met them. The three upstairs in the attic rooms struck me as fairly bright, probably perfectly reliable employees and absolutely typical of any fun-loving, normal males in their mid-twenties. Put them in the right gear, give them smart phones and a few drinks and they’d fit right into the twenty-first century Friday night scene anywhere.
‘Were you aware of anything causing Mr Coates anxiety?’ the Coroner asked each of them and got a negative every time. ‘Any money worries?’ No, they agreed. He had sufficient for his needs it had always seemed and had been neither tight nor reckless with his cash. Had they seen any visitors to Coates’s rooms?
Yes, they all agreed they had seen Mr Salmond on one or two occasions and had exchanged greetings on the stairs with him. They had known who he was. But no-one else, they said.
That left Heinrich Dettmer, the German lodger. The Coroner asked if he had he been long in London.
‘No, Your Worship. I come from Dresden last year. I study the making of the pianoforte, the best methods you understand? England has many pianoforte makers. I travel and spend a little time here, a little time there and I visit and learn.’
Something was niggling at the back of my mind, a name I could not get hold of and a suspicion that seemed odd combined with the trade of piano-making. I made a note, iron-smelting??, and went back to listening.
Dettmer had seen Mr Salmond. He bowed punctiliously across the room when the Coroner pointed him out. He did not know him by name, he said, because he hardly knew Coates, either. He knew nothing of George’s habits, his finances or his visitors, other than he had seen Mr Salmond twice. ‘Aber…’
‘Yes?’