To Mourn a Murder by Joan Smith Page A

Neither one slowed down or stopped.
    The magical hour of midnight came and went while she waited, eyes and ears strained for another carriage, and still nothing happened. The hackney did not arrive. Mrs. Webber did not come. What had gone wrong? It was ten minutes past twelve when a footman dressed in what looked, in the shadows, like grey livery came pelting down the street. He stood a moment, held a lantern aloft, looked all around, then called softly, "Lord Byron. Are you here?"
    After another moment, Lord Byron stepped forth from the shadows. The footman spoke to him in a voice pitched too low for Corinne to hear. But when Byron waved his arm and Prance and Coffen came forward, she knew events had not proceeded as expected. The three gentlemen followed the footman off as he led them toward Montague Street.
    "I wonder if Mrs. Webber is ill," Corinne whispered.
    "Nay, the Bee would have been here if that's what happened," Lord Blackwell informed her. "There's been some hitch in the plan. I'd best take you home, madam. His lordship will come around to tell us all about it. We don't want him to get there before us."
    "Let's just wait a little longer."
    After five minutes she was cold and bored enough to leave. They returned to the waiting hackney and thence to Berkeley Square.
    "I'll send you in a nice hot cup of cocoa," Black said as he led his mistress to the sofa before the grate. Lord Blackwell's night was over. It was in his less desirable role as butler that he scolded, "I told Jackie to keep this fire up," and threw a couple of logs on it before leaving.
    Both the cocoa and the blazing fire were welcome after her long wait in the cold. She didn't bother to change her gown. She picked up a magazine and was innocently thumbing through it when a scowling Luten came limping in.
----
Chapter 10
    Corinne set aside her magazine and asked eagerly, "What happened?"
    "We were stung by the Bee," Luten replied curtly, and headed to the chair nearest the fire. The heat would ease the pain in his ankle. He hooked his cane around a footstool and drew it forward.
    "But what happened, Luten? If he didn't come, then at least Mrs. Webber still has her money. He'll write to her again."
    "Oh no, he got the money. He was waiting half a block from her house. Knocked her on the head as she hurried down the street, grabbed the money and ran off. After she recovered, she sent a footman to let  Byron and the others know."
    Corinne gasped. "Was she badly hurt? Is she all right?"
    "She had recovered enough to have a hurried, whispered word with us at the front door, so the mother-in-law wouldn't know."
    "What a wretched way to live, the poor lady."
    "She was even afraid to call the doctor, though she had a wicked bump on the back of her head."
    "And after all that, he still has her letters."
    "No, that's the strangest part. The letters were in her hand when she came to, including the crucial one in which her lover was, apparently, indiscreet enough to put in writing things that cast doubt on her son's paternity. She didn't actually show us the letters. In fact, she planned to read them one last time and throw them into the fire. You could see it cost her to do it. She was very distraught."
    "At least she got them back. That's something."
    "Yes, I've been thinking about that. I don't like the implication."
    "What do you mean?" she asked in confusion. "Surely that suggests he doesn't intend to try to get more money from her."
    "She doesn't have any more, and I wager he knows it. What it suggests is that if his victims pay up, he won't harass them again. It's a sort of insurance to future victims. Pay up, and it's all over. Why would he be at pains to give that impression if he didn't plan to strike again?"
    "Then we haven't heard the last of him."
    "I hope not."
    "Luten!"
    "How the deuce are we to catch him if he stops now? Mrs. Webber couldn't give much of a description of him. A small man, she thought. I daresay it could even have been a woman in