The most direct route took them by Digby Nettles’ house once more. As before, there was a generally busy air around the usually-quiet parades and avenues of the exclusive areas of Mayfair, as people were now leaving their dinner parties and getting into their carriages to head home – or, perhaps, to go on to other late-evening entertainments and salons.
“Good heavens, whatever is happening over there?” said Robert.
Theodore looked, wondering if Robert’s slight tipsiness was affecting him, but his son-in-law was right. There was a commotion outside Nettles’ house.
“That’s a police vehicle,” Theodore said. “The large black cab with the horses that look as if they are trained to bite on command.”
Instinctively, both men picked up their pace and joined the crowd of general gawpers that were amassing in a semi-circle, held back by a number of uniformed policemen. One waved a truncheon and shouted for everyone to go home, but of course no one moved an inch.
“What has happened? What’s going on?” Theodore demanded of the mix of people. Some were well-dressed partygoers and others were the more humble denizens of the streets at night, with rather a few prettily-dressed ladies of unspeakable career choice mingled in too. Very little could unite a disparate group of people but it certainly helped to have a common foe; in this case, the foe was the presence of the authorities who were preventing them from getting too close and witnessing the body that was being brought out on a stretcher. The face was covered with a blanket. The onlookers gasped and a few rude souls cheered and surged forwards, crying, “Who is it?”
“It’s Digby Nettles’ house so that has to be the man himself!” someone said.
“Or a servant, or a visitor,” said Theodore, shaking his head at the undignified way everyone wanted to get a better look – as if he himself were not part of the same inglorious crowd.
Then another man appeared in the brightly lit doorway of the house, supported by a policeman. This other man was lurching forwards, clutching at his stomach, crying and sobbing in pain. In between his moans, he was saying something that Theodore and Robert could not hear.
But those closer to the portico could catch his words, and they relayed them across the crowd like a cheer at a sporting event. “He is dead! Digby Nettles is dead!”
The man tumbled down the steps as the policeman at his side tried to catch him, and then both were out of view as a knot of policemen gathered around them to assist. People were roughly shoving themselves in front of Theodore and he took an elbow to the stomach which made him gasp. More people streamed around, jostling and pushing to get the best view.
“I think we need to leave,” he croaked out to Robert. “I am too old to be part of a riot.”
“You’re right.”
“That I’m too old?”
“That we ought not to get swept up in this. Neither Lottie nor your good lady wife would pay the bail to have us let out of jail. You know that they would leave us to spend the night in the cells as a lesson to us.”
“Painfully true.”
The two men retreated, fighting their way backwards out of the growing crowd, and headed for home.
“Well,” Theodore remarked as they went. “I suppose if it is true and Digby Nettles is really dead, that solves all of your problems, does it not? He has no more hold over you.”
“Indeed,” said Robert, somewhat flatly.
Theodore was surprised. He had thought Robert might sound a bit more enthusiastic than that.
Then he reminded himself that an enthusiastic response was not entirely respectful, and he didn’t press the matter any further.
Six
The early morning newspapers had no mention of the death, but the second editions were rushed out overnight and Robert sent out for them all so that they could spread them out on the dinner table and examine them. Grace, the Dowager Countess, called. She had her own well-staffed townhouse but it was only a short walk from Robert and Charlotte’s London home, and she brought with her plenty of gossip and knowledge too.
It was confirmed, first of all, that Digby Nettles was dead. Adelia shook her head in amazement. She had not believed Theodore when he told her what he’d seen the previous night. She had reminded him of the cold, the dark and the drink, and suggested that he might have been mistaken. But now he was proven correct.
“Who was the other man?” she asked, scanning the close, dense print of the newspapers. “Did you recognise him? Didn’t you say he looked injured? Perhaps they came to blows.”
Charlotte, whose eyesight was still young and clear, was examining the fine print of a broadsheet newspaper closely. “It says here that Mr Nettles had been dining with Mr William Wiseman, but that makes no sense at all.”
“Why ever not?”
Charlotte looked up and stared at her mother as if Adelia had been living under a rock for a decade. She said, “They are long-standing rivals, mama!”
“How was I to know that?”
Even Grace tutted. “It is respectful to the members of polite society to keep oneself aware of who is who, and what they are doing, and to whom one might need to show deference or perhaps in some cases a certain coldness.”
That sparked a recollection in Adelia’s mind and she said, “Well, you had better enlighten me as to why Mrs Manning has suddenly fallen from favour.”
“Has she?” Grace asked, leaning forward. Charlotte appeared to be reading the paper again but she was listening too.
“She was not at Lady Purfleet’s dinner though I knew she was supposed to be. When I asked Lady Purfleet, she replied that Mrs Manning was better welcomed elsewhere or something like that. But Mrs Manning is married to an influential man in the art world, is she not? I wonder what she’s done.”
“She might have done nothing at all yet you have allowed Lady Purfleet to sway you
