Read Online Murder's Sad Tale by Joan Smith - Free Book Online Page B

rouging her cheeks, although they did seem a little pinker after he joined. She may very well have had some other reason for calling Miss Fenwick a bit forward. I wouldn’t like to speak ill of the lady.”
    “I see,” said Corinne, who saw very well that Miss Barker had been trotting after Russell as fast as her legs would carry her, and was jealous as a green cow of the interloper. She didn’t think, however, that she would have taken her revenge against Russell. Surely it would have been Miss Fenwick who had been shot. But really she couldn’t even imagine any of Mrs. Ballard’s crones sinking to murder.
    When Coffen returned with a neat bandage on his hand, she told him the results of her conversation with Mrs. Ballard.
    “Definitely not Russell’s hat, then. And Mrs. Ballard doesn’t think it was Cooper’s and none of the other fellows than Cooper was after Fenwick. Well, it looks like we’ve come across our first red herring. But Cooper must have put the hat there for a reason, and I’m going to see if I can find out why. You haven’t heard back from Luten?”
    “Not yet.”
    Black, listening at the door as usual, stepped into the room and handed her ladyship a note, folded, not sealed. “It’ll be from himself,” he informed her, knowing full well not only who it was from, but that a curled beaver had accompanied Russell’s corpse to the morgue. She read it and handed it to Coffen.
    “Right,” he said, after glancing at it and handing it to Reg. “Do you mind if I take the hat with me? I’ll take care not to lose it.”
    “We would be charmed to be rid of it,” Prance assured him. “I trust you’re not harboring any notion of adding it to your own sparse wardrobe.”
    “It don’t fit,” Coffen said. “I already tried. It’s too big.”
    “Thank goodness for small mercies, and small heads.”
    “You mean big heads. I said it’s too big for me.”
    “Which means your head is small.”
    “No, it isn’t. It’s as big as yours.”
    They left, squabbling over this irrelevancy.
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Until Sir Reginald learned whether Byron had been invited to Lady Dunn’s rout, he was only annoyed that the morning’s post brought him no card. His pique wouldn’t reach a climax unless Byron was attending. He didn’t really want to attend the do as he had not been particularly impressed by the dame. Lord Grafton was a rich earl and a force in the Cabinet to be sure but he was an older man, not at all interested in the arts, or even fashionable. Still, being left out bothered him so that he could not devote his best effort to rescuing Lady Lorraine from the villainous faux Lord Malvain, usurper of St. Justin’s Abbey, who was menacing her. He was in reality the evil nephew of Lord Malvain, whose name and title he had usurped after murdering his uncle in France.
    Until Corinne and Luten decided when and where their much-delayed wedding was to take place, he could not amuse himself by arranging that do.
    Naturally Ireland demanded a much different gown and scenario than London, or Southcote Abbey, Luten’s estate near Sherwood Forest, which had also been mentioned. Luten was becoming so impatient he wouldn’t put it a pace past him to decide on an elopement to Gretna Green to be married over the anvil like a pair of young runaways. Wouldn’t that shock London! He almost wished they would do it.
    He decided to call on Coffen to see what he planned to do with that abominable hat he had taken home. February was really an impossible month, when one came down to it. One was utterly bored with winter, which, like a poor relation, hung about long after one’s charitable impulse had expired. The shortest month of the year, yet seemingly the longest. And still the wretched March winds to look forward to before any hope of a warm breeze or flowers or shedding one’s winter wardrobe.
    Coffen would very likely be chasing after the link-boy called Mickey, and Green Park in February held no charms