Suzanne Robinson Read Online Free

door shut. Mutton had a way of vanishing before he could be told to do something he didn’t want to do, and dealing with Scotland Yard was something he never wanted to do. Sighing, Cheyne took a last look at his frock coat, adjusted his cuffs, and went downstairs.
    Stuart Balfour waited for him by the fire in the drawing room. He was looking askance at a Regency daybed across the room. The piece was upholstered in pale blue to match the walls, while the pattern of the brocade echoed that in the Robert Adam ceiling of blue, white, and gilded plaster. Cheyne paused by the harpsichord and smiled.
    “It’s an heirloom. There’s a rumor that Empress Josephine wrote letters to Napoleon while reclining on it.”
    Balfour cleared his throat, “Quite. Now, see here, Tennant. This stubborn refusal to help out in this case won’t do.”
    “I’m not going back into Society just to find some blackguard who’s purloined the indiscreet letters of some foolish and spoiled debutante.”
    Balfour chewed his mustache, then pulled a photograph from his coat pocket and handed it to Cheyne. “I believe you know the young lady.”
    A girl of nineteen looked back at him from beneath golden hair pulled up and puffed out in the new style. She wore an enormous hat festoonedwith ostrich feathers, lace, bows, and a stuffed sparrow. She had the face of a porcelain doll, a small, prim mouth and little hands. She held herself erect in that impossible stance created by corset and padding, and somehow managed to look like a shepherd’s daughter dressed in borrowed finery.
    Cheyne shook his head in pity. English girls were kept ignorant of the world, cosseted and cloistered with nannies and governesses until they reached marriageable age. Then they were thrust into Society, paraded around London, Biarritz, and the Riviera until they caught the eye of an eligible young man. Their parents sent them, ignorant and full of rosy hopes, tripping blindly into marriage. This was the Honorable Miss Juliet Warrender, daughter of his father’s old friend Lord Hubert Warrender.
    “Tell Lord Hubert to pay what’s demanded. You fellows at the Yard are quite capable of lying in wait when Warrender meets the blackmailer.”
    “A lovely idea, Tennant, but Lord Hubert’s a bit busy at the moment, making arrangements for his daughter’s funeral. She took laudanum last night.”
    It was like being rammed in the chest by a motorcar. Cheyne laid the photograph on the harpsichord and walked to the windows that looked out on Great Chartwell Road. Hansom cabs, coaches, victorias, a milk wagon, and an omnibus clattered in the street, while vendors added their clamor to the general din. He remembered Juliet as a schoolgirl, all teeth and legs. She’d been a shy thing, fond of flowers, toads and climbing trees. Her one claim to charm hadbeen her voice. A soprano of operatic quality, she made a splash her first Season and captured the attention of the Earl of Hartfield’s son.
    Cheyne moved the sheers aside and contemplated the progress of a nanny and her three charges as they marched along the opposite sidewalk. Juliet hadn’t been long away from such outings when she died.
    “All right,” he said, turning and indicating that Balfour should take a chair. “Tell the whole of it again.” He joined his guest.
    “The first we heard of this man was when Sir Thomas Folkestone vanished from his home in Shropshire. His wife and sons came to us for help, and we found the chap had absconded to Australia, of all places. Someone had gotten hold of the bills he paid for his mistress’s house in Cheapside here in the city.”
    “Ah, yes, I remember.”
    “That was almost eighteen months ago,” Balfour said. “Since then we’ve been keeping an eye out for further incidents. It’s hard to know when someone of rank and position becomes a victim of blackmail unless something goes wrong. We suspect that old General Sir Michael Kent was being bled.”
    Cheyne’s gaze