you.”
“You could say that.” Trevennen sank into an armchair, flicking back the skirts of his coat as if it was a sweeping cloak. “My Hamlet was considered quite good. In the provinces, you know. Of course, by the time I came to London, I played supporting roles. Quite a collection of Shakespearean dukes, and Hazlitt was pleased to comment on my Jaques. ‘And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,/And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,/And thereby hangs a tale.’” He frowned, as though this cut a bit too close to the bone. “Oh, you wanted to talk about Helen, didn’t you? What’s she been up to, then?”
Charles recited the story about Jennings and the legacy left to Helen Trevennen.
Trevennen listened with the detached interest of an actor hearing the plot of an amusing new play. Perhaps after so many years in the Marshalsea, everything in the outside world seemed like theatrical illusion. “Nelly. Such a pretty little girl. A wheedler from the first, mind, but even then ‘custom could not stale her infinite variety.’”
“When did you see her last?” Charles asked.
Trevennen stared out the window. The iron spikes on the outer wall of the prison were visible through the mildew-filmed glass. “Must be seven or eight years ago. She was never one for regular visits, but she used to appear every so often, usually when she wanted some sort of advice about the theater or racing. She was almost as fond of the horses as I am, though a bit less prodigal. I helped her get her position at the Drury Lane. She made a charmingly innocent Hero and I heard she did a very fetching Constance Neville in her last season. I wasn’t able to attend the performances by that time, of course. Still, I quite looked forward to her carrying on the family name. Then one day this friend of hers—charming young lady—called to say Helen had been obliged to leave London. Do you know where she took herself off to, then?”
“No,” Charles said. “We were hoping you would know, or at least have some idea.”
Trevennen blinked. “Sorry, dear boy. Always fancied myself a fair judge of women, but never could predict what Nelly would do from one moment to the next. She drove my poor brother to distraction.”
“Is your brother still living, Mr. Trevennen?” Melanie asked.
“No, Theodore went to his maker some ten years since. He was a parson with a living in Cornwall, near Truro. Lost his wife early and hadn’t the least idea how to bring up the girls, poor fellow. He was a dreadful puritan, which only served to make them more wild, if you ask me, but of course he never did.”
Charles seized hold of the new information in this speech. “Girls?” he said.
“Nelly and Susy. You haven’t met Susan? No, no reason you should, I suppose.” Trevennen smoothed his gray-brown hair back from his high forehead, less Prospero now than Falstaff, looking back with rueful regret. “She’s two years younger than Helen. Looks quite like her, though Nelly’s a blonde and Susy got her mother’s red hair. Nelly ran off to London when she was seventeen. Susy followed a year later. My brother washed his hands of the pair of them. Never saw them again as far as I know. But he’d stopped speaking to me to all intents and purposes when I took to the stage. It was quite a surprise when Helen appeared on my doorstep and said she wanted to tread the boards herself. Tried to do what was best for her.”
“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Trevennen.” Melanie smiled at him. “Were the girls close?”
Trevennen snorted. “Close as Hermia and Helena.”
“I see. Sewing on the same sampler one minute, ready to tear each other’s eyes out the next?”
“Exactly. Do you have sisters, Mrs. Fraser?”
“One younger sister. It can be a complicated relationship.” One would swear Melanie was telling the truth. Perhaps, Charles realized, she actually
“Susy hasn’t mentioned Nelly at all for longer than that. They had some sort of falling-out, though neither of them saw fit to explain it to me, and I thought it best to keep well clear. They shared rooms when Susy first came to London. Nelly was at the Drury Lane and Susy was an opera dancer at the Covent Garden. Then they must have quarreled about something or other. Nelly moved to finer rooms and Susy moved to Clerkenwell and neither of them mentioned the other when they came to visit me.”
“Is Miss Susan Trevennen still in Clerkenwell?” Charles asked.
“No.” Trevennen shifted his position in the chair as though he was trying to inch away from something. Falstaff gave way to Desdemona’s deceived father. “I know nothing of Nelly’s life in recent years. What I know of Susan’s I fear has been…unfortunate. A true daughter of the game.”
Charles felt Melanie go still at this echo of the words she had quoted about herself, but her face betrayed nothing.
Trevennen’s shoulders sank deeper into the chair. “Susan is now employed at the Gilded Lily. In Villiers Street, off the Strand.”
He seemed to think the name would not mean anything to Melanie. Charles was fairly certain that it did, but he didn’t disabuse Trevennen.
Melanie got to her feet with a gentle swish of her skirts. Before the men could rise, she dropped down beside Trevennen’s chair and pressed his hand. “Mr. Trevennen. Do you have any idea where Helen went?”
Trevennen looked at her with the air of a man longing to transform himself back into Hotspur or Prince Hal. His pale blue eyes filled with regret at having to disappoint her. For an instant, Charles had a sheer craftsman’s admiration for his wife’s technique. “I’m afraid not,” Trevennen said. “Knowing Nelly, she hasn’t immured herself in some backwater.”
“Did she ever mention any friends, in London or outside of it?”
“Nelly was never one to volunteer information, unless she thought it could get her something, and then the odds were it wouldn’t be truthful.”
Melanie sat back on her heels. “Did she ever seem afraid of anything? Or anyone?”
“Nelly?” Trevennen threw back his head and gave a rich laugh that echoed off the low ceiling as though it were the rafters of the Drury Lane. “‘Of all base passions, fear is most accurs’d.’ Or so Nelly would have claimed. We Trevennens may be a foolish lot, Mrs. Fraser, but we don’t frighten easily, and Nelly had more courage than my brother and I put together.”
Charles got to his feet. “One last question, Trevennen. Has anyone else asked you about your niece recently?”
“About Nelly?” Trevennen shook his head. “Good God, no. I don’t get many visitors and I doubt most of the people here even remember I have two nieces.”
Charles nodded. “A dark-haired man with a Spanish accent was asking questions about her at the theater. I’d advise you not to talk to him. We have reason to think he doesn’t wish Miss Trevennen well.”
Trevennen squared his shoulders with the dignity of King Lear. “Don’t worry, Fraser. I don’t volunteer information to anyone I don’t care for.”
A light rain was falling when Charles and Melanie stepped back out onto the gallery. The wind slapped against the stone, bringing a sour smell from the ground below and warning of a more violent storm to come. The gallery was crowded with visitors hurrying home and Marshalsea residents hurrying back to their rooms before the storm hit.
“I take it the Gilded Lily is a brothel,” Melanie said. The press of the crowd forced her to walk close to Charles, but she hadn’t taken his arm.
“It is.”
“I won’t ask how you know,” she said, as they reached the head of the stairs. “Shall we try it first or—”
She got no farther. Charles, his gaze focused inward, didn’t see what actually happened. One moment Melanie was speaking. The next, she gave an abrupt cry and fell headlong down the steps to the hard stone below.
“Mel.” Her husband’s voice, low and urgent. She opened her eyes and looked into his own. His brows were drawn, his mouth set. He released his breath in a harsh sigh. “Can you sit up?”
“I think so.” She reached back against the rain-slick stone, then winced as a burning pain tore through her side. Charles’s arm came round her or she would have fallen backwards. She felt him stiffen, heard his quick intake
