Tenfold More Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page B

discomfited. She’d never met Mrs. Reeve. Hadn’t wondered whether one existed. As usual, Lafayette was dangerously well informed. But it made her speculate. Could the murder motive be jealousy? A rival slighted, a woman scorned . . .
    By the door, the manic clockwork servant jerked like a pecking chicken. A saturnine fellow in livery—Lady Fleet’s footman, presumably—stoically ignored it, glaring in poorly veiled disgust at the butler, who was bailed up in the archway by an eagerly springing Hippocrates. Perhaps the clockwork servant’s problem was catching.
    â€œMr. Brigham, are you and this fellow here the only human servants?” asked Eliza.
    Brigham bowed. “Plus Lady Fleet’s maid and the cook, madam. The rest are clockworks.”
    â€œOdd, isn’t it, for a household to rely so heavily on machines?”
    â€œCouldn’t say, madam.” Brigham ignored Hipp, who scrabbled at his trouser leg.
    Eliza hid a grin. “This party last night. Who attended?”
    A twitch of besieged knee. “The usual. Sir Dalziel’s students and, um, other friends. We finished around two, and I went to bed.”
    â€œAnd his ‘um other friends’ would be . . . ?”
    Brigham handed Lafayette a scrap of paper. “Thought you’d want a list, sir.”
    â€œGood man.” Lafayette scanned it rapidly. “A bright bunch, I see . . . Why do they all invite her . . . ? Cartwright, M.P., eh? Of the new Reform Bill? Who’d have thought Sir Dalziel would rub shoulders with a radical?”
    â€œYou’d be surprised, sir.”
    â€œWould I?” Lafayette frowned at the list. “Zanotti. You don’t mean Carmine Zanotti? His Eve and the Serpent is on show at the Academy.”
    â€œIndeed,” murmured Eliza. “Who knew you were a fan of art?”
    â€œI’m a fan of prodigious talent,” said Lafayette with a quick smile. “It so often goes with malfeasance. Your own, for instance.”
    She ignored him. “You said no visitors after the party broke up?”
    Brigham shrugged. “Didn’t hear a bell.”
    â€œBell!” Hipp head-butted Brigham’s knee and bounced off, falling in a heap. “Bell-bell-bell . . .”
    â€œSir Dalziel might have expected someone,” suggested Lafayette. “Then they wouldn’t need to ring.”
    A baffled blink. “But weren’t it just a ruckus? I mean, was the villain not some vile burglar?”
    Eliza smiled. “The police certainly think so. Certain you heard nothing?”
    â€œNo, I . . .” Brigham toed Hipp away. “Come to think of it, I did, but I didn’t come up. I thought . . .”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI heard breaking glass.”
    â€œThe window? Why would you not come up?”
    Stiffly, Brigham raised his bruised chin. “I thought it was Sir Dalziel throwing crystal. He was worse for drink. They’d been arguing politics. When he’s in a temper, it’s best not to be seen. He’s not so patient.” The lad licked his reddened lip. “With the crystal.”
    â€œCrystal,” agreed Hipp, making another attempt to climb Brigham’s leg.
    Old tyrant had it coming, muttered Lizzie. Bat his servants around as he pleased, did he? Arsehole.
    â€œI see. Can you estimate the time you heard the glass break?”
    â€œTen minutes to four, give or take.”
    Lafayette cocked one eyebrow. “So precise?”
    â€œChecked my watch, sir. I sleep poorly, and I’d only just gone off when the noise woke me.”
    â€œKeeps proper time, does it?”
    â€œThe best, sir. It’s my job to wind the clocks, and keep the monsters in good repair.”
    â€œMonsters?”
    â€œThe mechanical servants, madam.”
    â€œI see . . . Oh, pet him, Mr. Brigham, he won’t relent until you do.”
    Cautiously, the butler offered his hand. Hipp bunted it, whirring happily.