Grainger hurried past with a rapid bow to us and opened the door. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Jerald.’
The young man on the doorstep greeted him cheerfully and stepped in. ‘Is my – Ah, Adrien! And Lord Radcliffe.’ He blinked at us. ‘Ma’am, my apologies, I had just dropped in on the off-chance of finding Cousin Henry at home.’ He looked hopefully at Adrien.
Which one was this? He was younger than Adrien, hardly into his twenties, so he must be one of the sons of Horace Prescott. But why didn’t he know what had happened?
I looked at Adrien and saw a look of dawning horror on his face.
‘Why doesn’t he know?’ I whispered.
‘Oh hell,’ he muttered, then found a social smile from somewhere. ‘Miss Lawrence, this is my cousin Jerald Prescott. Jerald, Miss Lawrence, a guest of Lady Radcliffe. You cannot see Cousin Henry,’ he added, over Jerald bidding me a good afternoon.
‘He is out? That’s a pity. Look, be a good fellow and let me have a few sovs, will you? He promised me he’d lend me ten when I saw him on Saturday. You know how short the old man keeps me.’
‘Your Cousin Henry is dead,’ Luc said brutally.
Jerald laughed, then did an almost perfect double-take when he saw our faces. ‘Dead? How? Oh, the devil – a stroke like Uncle Clarence? They say they run in families…’ His voice trailed off and he sat down abruptly on one of the hard hall chairs. ‘When?’
‘Last night or early this morning,’ Adrien said. ‘We are not certain. There must be a post mortem examination.’
‘At what time did you see him yesterday?’ Luc asked.
‘What?’ Jerald blinked up at us, then seemed to realise that he was sitting whilst a lady stood, and got to his feet. ‘To speak to? Middle of the morning in St James’s Street. I came out of that coffee house just down from Boodle’s and bumped into him as he was turning into Ryder Street.’ He gave a rather sickly smile. ‘Thought I’d touch him for a few sovs, you know how it is.’
‘No,’ Adrien said. ‘I don’t.’
His cousin flushed. ‘I think he had a soft spot for me because I’m the youngest.’
‘Rather, I suspect he did not want the family name connected with unpaid gambling debts.’ Adrien sounded about fifty and thoroughly judgmental.
‘Da – I mean, it isn’t so bad
. But I lost a bit on that horse of his at Newmarket at the second Spring meeting.’
‘Yes, he did rather puff the beast off, didn’t he?’ Adrien said, with slightly more sympathy. ‘But I can’t give you anything: it is Cousin Frederick’s money now and besides, the study’s locked.’
‘Whatever for?’ Jerald seemed to have recovered from his shock a little.
‘Because your cousin was murdered there,’ Luc said.
‘Mur– Who?’
‘We do not know,’ I said, taking pity on him. He was pale and trembling now. ‘Luc, Mr Prescott has had an awful shock. Shouldn’t we find him a hackney carriage and send him home?’
‘No.’ Jerald Prescott sat down again. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment. It is just that I never imagined that she would do it. You know what she’s like…’
‘We have no idea who you are talking about,’ I said sharply. Surely he didn’t mean Arabella Jordan, the only woman in the case that I was aware of?
‘Martine. Madame Vaillant, his mistress.’
‘She was his mistress, but he parted from her two weeks ago,’ Adrien explained. ‘Cousin Henry disapproved of married men maintaining paramours and so he was making the break well in advance of the wedding.’ He grimaced. ‘She did not take her dismissal well.’
‘Did she come here making threats?’ Luc asked.
‘Not exactly,’ Adrien said. ‘It was here – they were having breakfast – that he told her. She attacked him with a fruit knife. Grainger, er, disarmed her before any damage was done.’
‘Then what happened?’ I was frankly agog. Honestly, the rich emotional lives some people did live…
‘She flounced off home and Cousin Henry sent me that afternoon to return the items she had left here. She threw a pot of face cream at my head and I took myself off rapidly.’ He managed a faint smile. ‘I stank of attar of roses for several days; I couldn’t get the stuff out of my hair.’