Ashley Gardner - The Necklace Affair

On an evening in late March 1817, I climbed to the third floor of Lucius Grenville's Grosvenor Street house in search of peace, and found a lady, weeping, instead.

In the rooms below me, Grenville's latest revelry tinkled and grated, Grenville celebrating recovery from a near-fatal injury. The entire haut ton had turned up tonight, Lucius Grenville being the darling of society, the dandy all other dandies aspired to be. The famous Brummell had fled to the Continent, Alvanley grew stout, but Grenville reigned supreme. He was an epicure who knew how to avoid excess, a sensualist who could resist the temptations of sloth and lechery.

I'd enjoyed speaking to a few of my friends below, but the transparent way Grenville's sycophants tried to exploit my acquaintance with him soon grated on my patience. I decided to sit in Grenville's private room and read until the festivities died down.

I used my walking stick and the banister, hand-carved by an Italian cabinetmaker, to leverage myself up the stairs. My leg injury, given to me by French soldiers during the Peninsular War, did not affect me so much tonight as did the near gallon of port I had drunk. I could never afford what Grenville had in his cellars, so when he invited me to partake, I took enough to last.

Therefore, I was well past foxed when I at last emerged onto the third floor and sought the peace of Grenville's sitting room.

I found the lady in it, weeping.

She sat squarely under the scarlet tent that hung in the corner of the room, a souvenir from Grenville's travels in the east. The entire room was a monument to his journeys-ivory animals from the Indies reposed next to golden masks from Egypt, rocks bearing the imprint of ancient American animals held pride of place near hieroglyphic tablets from Persia.

The lady might have been pretty once, but too many years of rich food, late mornings, and childbirth had etched their memories onto her face and body. Her large bosom, stuffed into a satin bodice and reinforced with bands of lace, quivered with her misery.

I took two steps into the room, checked myself, and turned to go.

"Captain Lacey?"

I halted, bowed, and admitted to be he. I had no memory of who she was.

The woman swiped at her wet cheeks with a handkerchief so tiny she might as well not have bothered. "May I make so bold as to speak to you? Mr. Grenville said you might assist me."

Had he, indeed? Grenville was apt to volunteer my services, as I'd been of some use in solving problems that ran from innocuous misunderstandings all the way to violent murders.

I ought to have walked away then and there and not let myself be drawn into the whole sordid business. I was tired and quite drunk and had no reason to believe that I could help this sorrowful lady.

But her red-rimmed eyes were so pleading, her wretchedness so true, that I found myself giving her another bow and telling her to proceed.

"It is my maid, you see."

I braced myself for an outpouring of domestic troubles. My head started to pound, and I sank into the nearest comfortable chair.

"She is going to be hanged," the lady announced.

Her blunt statement swept the fog from my brain. I sat up straight as several facts clicked into place.

"You are Lady Clifford," I said.

She nodded, dejected.

"I read of it in the newspaper this morning," I said. "Your maid has been accused of stealing a diamond necklace worth several thousand pounds." The maid was even now awaiting examination by the Bow Street magistrate.

Lady Clifford sat forward and clasped her doughy hands. "She did not take it, Captain. That horrible Bow Street Runner said so, but I know Waters would never have done such a thing. She's been with me for years. Why should she?"

I could think of a number of reasons why Waters should. Perhaps she saw the necklace as her means of escaping a life of servitude. Perhaps she had a lover who'd convinced her to steal the necklace for him. Perhaps she bore a secret hatred for her employer and had at last found a way to exact revenge.

I said none of these things to Lady Clifford.

"You see, Captain, I know quite well who stole my diamonds." Lady Clifford applied the tiny handkerchief once more. "It was that viper I nursed at my bosom. She took them."

I knew from gossip which viper she meant. Annabelle Dale, a gently born widow, had once been Lady Clifford's companion and dearest friend. Now the woman was Earl Clifford's mistress. Mrs. Dale still lived in the Clifford home and, from all accounts, continued to refer to Lady Clifford as her "adored Marguerite."

But all of London knew that Lord Clifford spent nights in Mrs. Dale's bed. They formed a curious menage, with Mrs. Dale professing fierce attachment to her old friend Lady Clifford, and Lord Clifford paying duty to both mistress and wife.

"Do you have evidence that Mrs. Dale took it?" I asked.

"The Runner asked just the same. He could produce no evidence that Waters stole the necklace, yet he arrested her."

The arresting Runner had been my former sergeant, Milton Pomeroy, who had returned from Waterloo and managed to work his way into the elite body of investigators who answered to the Bow Street magistrate.

Pomeroy was far more interested in arresting a culprit than in slow investigation. He was reasonably careful, because he'd not reap a reward for the arrest if he obtained no conviction. But getting someone to trial could be enough. Juries tended to believe that the person in the dock was guilty, and a maid stealing from an employer would make the gentlemen of the jury righteously angry.

However, I conceded that Lady Clifford would know a maid she'd lived with for years better than would Milton Pomeroy. Interest stirred beneath my port-laden state.

"As I understand the story," I said, "your maid was upstairs in your rooms the afternoon the necklace disappeared. Before you and your husband and Mrs. Dale went out for the day, the necklace was in place. Gone when you, Lady Clifford, returned home."

Her lip curled. "Likely Mrs. Dale was nowhere near Egyptian House as she claims. She could have come back and stolen it."

My injured leg gave a throb. I rose and paced toward the windows to loosen it, stopping in front of one of Grenville's curio shelves. According to the newspaper, the other Clifford servants had sworn that Mrs. Dale and Lord Clifford hadn't returned to the house all afternoon. "You want very much for Mrs. Dale to have stolen your necklace."

"Perhaps I do. What of it?"

I touched a piece of jade carved into the shape of a baboon. "You must know that however much you want Mrs. Dale to have taken it, someone else entirely might be guilty."

"Well, Waters is not."

I studied the jade. Thousands of years old, Grenville had told me. The carving was intricate and detailed, done with remarkable workmanship. I rested the delicate thing on my palm. "You might be wrong," I said. "Are you prepared to be?"

"Mr. Grenville promised you would help me," Lady Clifford said, tears in her voice. "Waters is a good girl. She doesn't deserve to be in a gaol cell with common criminals. Oh, I cannot bear to think what she is suffering."

She broke into another flood of weeping. Some ladies could cry daintily, even prettily, but not Lady Clifford. Her large body heaved, her sobs choked her, and she blew her nose with a snorting sound.

I set the miniature beast back on its shelf. Lady Clifford might be wrong that the solution was simple, but she was in genuine distress. The fact that some of this distress was pity for her poor maid made up my mind.

Lady Clifford sniffled again into the abused handkerchief. "Mr. Grenville said I could rely on you utterly."