Death at St. James's Palace Read Free

absolutely certain. So what can it be?” He grinned round jovially, the perpetual innocent, as ingenuous and lovely as an overgrown schoolboy.
    “I am with child,” said Emilia. “At least so my husband tells me.”
    Samuel swallowed noisily. “Well, he should know,” he said, and looked wonderingly when the other three members of the party burst out laughing.

    In view of the various delays encountered that morning, it was noon by the time Sir Gabriel’s coach clattered down Church Lane, turned left down Kensington High Street, continued down the length of Hyde Park Wall, passing Mr. Mitchell’s house and the Brompton Park nursery gardens on their right, then turned into the tree-lined lane that joined Kensington and the hamlet of Brompton together. At the junction of this lane with another, smaller, track, and surrounded by its own large garden, stood Grove House. Not as tall as Mr. Fielding’s Bow Street residence, it was for all that wider and more generously supplied with windows, presenting a gracious facade to the coach which pulled up outside its front door. Carrying no postillion that day, it was the coachman’s task to descend from his box and pull down the step for Sir Gabriel to alight. This, with much use of his great stick, John’s father did, refusing all help from the younger members of the party.
    A manservant who worked for Mr. Fielding at his Bow Street residence and who had obviously travelled to the country to be with his master at this time of celebration, answered the door.
    He bowed. “Sir Gabriel Kent, is it not?”
    “Indeed, it is, my good fellow. Is Mr. Fielding within?”
    “No, Sir. Miss Chudleigh called in her coach and insisted « that the family accompany her to her house for an informal levee. She had, of course, read the announcement in the newspapers. She did also say, Sir, that anyone who presented their card at Mr. Fielding’s door, provided they were a person of bon ton, should make their way to her home to join the festivities.”
    “Good gracious!” said Sir Gabriel, clearly both surprised and delighted, for Miss Chudleigh was a woman of vast reputation and someone to whom he had been particularly anxious to be introduced.
    From the coach came a shout of laughter, an interruption greeted by John’s father with a severe look and a raised eyebrow.
    “We shall be delighted to join Miss Chudleigh,” he said crisply.
    The servant bowed. “Very good, Sir. You know where the lady lives?”
    “I have passed her house many times, a fine place indeed.”
    “Indeed, Sir.” And with that the man bowed again and closed the front door.
    “Well,” said John as his father rejoined the company, “we’ve been invited into the hornet’s nest, it seems.”
    “I would hardly have described Miss Chudleigh in those terms.”
    Samuel rolled his eyes. “She is much spoken of, Sir, you must admit.”
    “I feel nervous,” said Emilia. “She is the sort of woman that makes other females totally terrified.”
    “Why?” asked her father-in-law. “She is unconventional, it’s true, cares nothing for what the world says about her, has used her beauty to lure and entrap men, but I do not believe her to be actually cruel.”
    “Is it a fact,” asked Samuel, “that she once appeared at a ball at Somerset House stark naked but for three fig leaves?”
    “So they say.”
    “I wonder what she will be wearing today,” John said, laughing.
    “I wonder too,” Emilia echoed nervously.

    With that heady mix of high spirits and apprehension which sets pulses racing, the coach party went off once more, turning back towards Kensington and proceeding up Brompton Park Lane, then bearing right to Miss Chudleigh’s house, presently quite modest but clearly still under construction. Yet for all its moderate size, it stood in extensive grounds and was obviously one day destined to be a mansion, the home of a woman who had made her way in the world - by whatever means. Greeted at the door by