A Broken Vessel (36 page)

“How she ended up at the refuge is anyone’s guess. Perhaps she simply ran away from her captors and sought shelter there. Imagine Rawdon’s consternation, if he’d found out by then who she really was! He’d connived at the kidnapping—the rape, very likely—of Lady Lucinda Braxton, the daughter of one of the wealthiest peers in England, with half Parliament in his pocket, and the devil’s own temper besides. If she told her father what had happened to her, he’d hunt Rawdon and his cohorts down like dogs. But she didn’t tell him—not at once. She was so shocked and ashamed, she hid at the refuge, telling no one who she was. That gave Rawdon a respite, and he’s clever and ruthless enough to have made the most of it.

“But how would he have found out she was at the refuge? From her letter, perhaps? Suppose someone—Wideawake Peg, for instance—intercepted the letter and passed it on to him. That would fit the timing: Lady Lucinda wrote it on Saturday evening, it had come into the hands of one of those three men by Monday, and Lady Lucinda died the next night. Which would mean Mr. Rawdon acted with his usual efficiency.

“I think we can absolve Avondale of any role in the murder. Whoever his Rosemary is—or was—she’s not the young lady who was killed at the refuge. Fiske’s role is more troubling. If he’s innocent, then he’s ringed by some very improbable coincidences. Of all the places where Lady Lucinda might have sought asylum— churches, workhouses, charitable institutions—she ended up at the refuge where Fiske’s wife works, and where he himself serves as apothecary. It was he who prescribed the cordial for her. By all accounts, he was one of the few people at the refuge she trusted, and might have told about the letter. And yet Sally is convinced he was telling the truth when he said she didn’t steal it from him. It doesn’t make sense—unless—Good God! Is it possible?”

“Sir?”

Julian said slowly, “Dipper, what do you know about thimblerig?”

“It’s a game played at fairs, sir, with three cups and a pea. Them as plays it tries to guess which cup the pea’s under.”

“But they never win, do they?”

“No, sir. ’Coz the sharper—him as moves the cups around— palms the pea, so it turns up under a different cup from the one the player chose.”

“Exactly! And I was thinking—What’s that?”

Dipper followed his gaze to the mantelpiece and saw a note propped there. Julian went over and picked it up. He ran his eyes over it, and his face changed. He thrust it at Dipper, who read it, then looked up in consternation.

Julian caught up his hat and gloves. “Fetch my pistols. We’ll load them on the way.”

CHAPTER
26

T
o Sally’s relief, Avondale drew his right hand out of his greatcoat pocket, without the pistol. “I’m back where I started,” he said wretchedly. “You were my last hope. When I read your note, I didn’t know who you were or anything about you, but I naturally assumed the letter you spoke of was the one I wanted—the one I’ve been trying to lay hands on for years.”

“No wonder you was surprised to see me,” she grinned. “You couldn’t think how I knowed a thing about your letter.”

Fiske tapped her timidly on the shoulder. “Now may I speak to you? I was thinking we might go to one of the rooms upstairs—to talk,” he added hastily.

“Oh, no! I ain’t shifting me bob from this spot. We can talk right here.”

“It’s too public. I really must speak to you alone.”

“Kiss me arse! Last time you said we’d talk alone, you tipped me the Dublin packet.”

“I’m sorry about that. It seemed the best thing to do at the time.” He sank his voice to a whisper. “You’ll be paid for the letter, and paid well, only you must come upstairs where we can talk privately. Please believe me! Why would I have come at all, if I hadn’t meant to have it out with you about the letter?”

“So it was you I pinched it from?”

He hesitated. “I’ll tell you about that upstairs. Please come with me now!”

She considered. Then she rose and turned from him to Avondale. “You’ll have to morris off now, Blue Eyes. I got business with this gentleman.”

Avondale came to his feet heavily. Sally slipped an arm around his neck. “Cheer up. A dimber cove like you shouldn’t hang his gib so.” She smoothed his brow playfully. “It’ll all come right, you’ll see.”

“Look here,” he said impulsively, “I’m sorry I frightened you. I didn’t know what sort of people I might run into in a place like this—what sort of rogues you might be in league with—”

“Now don’t get in a pucker,” she soothed. “It’s all over, and no harm done.” She came up on her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Push off now.”

He took his hat from its peg, bowed slightly to Fiske, and departed. Sally looked after him, grinning. Then she turned to Fiske. “All right. Let’s go upstairs.”

They went up to the bar. In some embarrassment, Fiske asked Toby if he had a room free. “Second floor back,” Toby grunted. Fiske paid his shilling, and Toby plunked the key down on the counter. Fiske reached for it, but Sally was too quick for him. She scooped it up, lit a tallow candle, and led the way out of the taproom.

They entered the back passage, with its peeling paint and tapestry of cobwebs. The back door, leading to the alley behind the Cockerel, was barred as always. They climbed the stairs, Sally reminding Fiske not to lean on the rotting banisters. When they got to the room—the same bleak little bedroom
they had used a few weeks before—Sally put her candle on the washstand and turned to Fiske. “Well? What’ve you got to say to me?”

“We can’t talk yet. I have to leave you for a moment. I’ll be back directly.”

“Here now, what kind of take-in is this? Where you going?”

“There’s someone else who wants to see you. We’re prepared to pay you a great deal for the letter, but you must wait here a moment while I fetch him. You won’t go away, will you?”

“No.” She leaned back against the wall opposite the door, her hands thrust into the pockets of her cloak. “I’ll wait right here, Bristles. I want to have a look at this friend of yours.”

He slipped away, closing the door behind him. Sally waited tensely, her eyes trained on the door. At last it opened. Fiske came in, rubbing his hands nervously. Behind him, silent and deliberate, came Joseph Rawdon. He closed the door behind him and looked across at Sally. His lips curved into the predatory smile she remembered all too well. He lifted his arm, and the candlelight glinted on the long, sharp knife in his hand.

“No!” cried Fiske. “You promised we wouldn’t hurt her!”

Rawdon sprang toward Sally. The next moment, he halted and jumped back, choking with baffled rage. Sally stood silently pointing the little double-barrelled pistol that she had stolen from Avondale’s pocket when she kissed him goodbye.

Rawdon started backing toward the door. “What’s your hurry, Blinkers?” she said. “You ain’t going no place. Put that down.” She jerked her head at the knife.

Teeth clenched, he started to obey. Suddenly the door swung open behind him, and a woman rushed in. She had a gaunt face and long, unkempt red hair, and wore a shabby black cloak and a plaid shawl.

Rawdon seized her with a cry of triumph and held the knife tight to her throat. “I’m leaving,” he told Sally, “and I’m taking this woman with me. If you try to stop me, or send anyone after me, I’ll slit her throat from ear to ear.”

The woman gasped for breath. Her staring eyes fixed on
Sally. “I saw ye with him,” she panted, “with Avondale! I followed him here. Tell me, tell me! Ye must ken! Where is Rosemary?”

“You’re Megan MacGowan!” Sally started toward her.

“Stay back!” Rawdon warned.

“Tell me!” Megan’s voice rose to a hoarse scream. “Where is—”

“Hold your tongue!” Rawdon pressed the blade harder against her throat. A trickle of blood ran down into her collar.

“I dunno where she is,” said Sally, anxious to quiet Megan for her own sake. “I swear, I dunno nothing about her at all. Leave her alone, you bastard! She ain’t done nothing to you!”

Fiske stood hunched in a corner, wringing his hands. “You promised we wouldn’t hurt anyone,” he whimpered.

“And you believed him?” Sally cried scornfully. “You poor old spoony, he’s as curst a cove as the hemp ever growed for!” She rounded on Rawdon. “It was you as croaked Mary!”

“No, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t,” he purred. “Mr. Matthew Fiske had the honour of sending that plaguesome bitch to her final reward.”

“You?” Sally gaped at Fiske. He covered his face with his hands.

“Look at him!” said Rawdon. “What a nuisance he’s been, with his fears and his megrims, and his damned ill-convenient conscience. You’d hardly credit what I’ve been through to keep him up to the mark. Well, I’m finished with you now, old man. I’ll leave you to swing for the murder of—we’ll just keep calling her Mary, shall we?”

“How can you?” Fiske pleaded brokenly. “Everything I’ve done—every sin I’ve committed, God have mercy on my soul!— was for you, only for you! And to have you turn on me—I can’t bear it! You were all I ever loved in the world!”

“Was I?” Rawdon sneered. “What a pity. Because I never had anything but contempt for
you
, my dear, dear father!”

Fiske let out a groan and collapsed, racked with sobs.

“He’s your
father
?” exclaimed Sally. “But—but you ain’t Caleb—”

“Not anymore. I sloughed Caleb like a snake’s skin, back in the village where this blubbering wreck and my hell-hag of a mother brought me up.”

But I seen Caleb, Sally thought dazedly. That Tom o’ Bedlam I talked to at the refuge,
he
told me he was Caleb—

Or had he? She ransacked her memory. No, he had never said anything of the kind. She had asked,
Can I call you Caleb?
and the terrified boy had said,
If you want to
. And looked bewildered, as well he might!

“Well, even if your pa done the murder,” she said, “it was you as put him up to it.”

“Of course it was,” said Rawdon. “Do you suppose he’d have had the pluck to carry it out on his own? He can’t even stand up to that great bitch, my mother—he never could. He left me at her mercy till I was old enough to look after myself. But now it’s
I
who calls the tune!”

“And him as pays the piper!” she retorted. “He took all the risks when you hushed Mary. It must’ve been him as hocussed the cordial—him as put the laudanum bottle in her room—”

“You
have
figured out a bloody great deal, haven’t you? How do you know all that?”

“I’ve got me ways.” Get him talking, that’s the ticket, she thought. He thinks he’s so frigging clever. Maybe he’ll forget to hang on so tight to Megan, and she can cut and run.

“It was a good plan,” Rawdon was saying, “It would have gone off like clockwork, if it hadn’t been for you. Though I had the devil’s own time screwing up Pa’s courage to do it. I never could tell him the real reason the little bitch had to be put down. Even he might have bucked if he’d known that.”

“What was the real reason?” asked Sally.

“Suffice to say, she might have interfered with my business. I never told my beloved father precisely what that was. Importing—that was all I said.”

“Well, I’m flash to it. You’re trepanners—you and your dolly pals.” She had gathered that much from the note Mr. Kestrel sent Dipper after he rescued Emily.

“There’s nothing you don’t know, is there?—damn your eyes! Well, my little business would have gone all to hell if the girl known as Mary had been allowed to cackle to her big-wig papa, and he started asking questions and clamouring for revenge.”

“Who is he?” asked Sally eagerly.

“Oh, no! You won’t tease that out of me. We’ll keep that just between us, won’t we, Pa?”

Fiske did not answer. He sat back against the wall, his eyes closed, his face puffy and blotched with weeping.

Rawdon went on, “I had to give Pa another reason for putting her out of the way. So I made up a story about her—I let on she wasn’t the injured innocent she seemed to be—she was vicious, she’d run away from her fine family and gone on the town out of sheer depravity. I said I’d fallen in with her, succumbed to her charms, and told her all about who I really was, and how I’d been accused of murder in my old village.”

“I s’pose you done it, too—killed that half-wit gal.”

“Of course. It was a clumsy killing. I was younger then. I thought I could make it look as if she’d drowned, but they found bruises where I’d held her down in the water, and someone saw me with her earlier, headed toward the stream. I’ve never been so careless again. It’s exciting—nothing more so!—blowing out a life like a candle, like that, but usually it’s not worth the risk. There are ways and means of taking one’s pleasure, short of murder.”

Sally was sickened. But she wanted to know the rest of the story, and she had to keep him talking. Megan looked too white and faint to break away from him, but she might yet rally. Above all, Rawdon must be detained, to keep him from getting away. “Did he know you croaked that gal in your village?” she asked, glancing at Fiske.

“I told him some of the truth. I said I’d had her, down by the stream—that was true enough, she was too stupid to put up much of a fight. I said she’d had hysterics afterward, and I was trying to quiet her, and killed her by mistake. Pretty much all that was true, except that I knew from the beginning I’d have to
kill her. What else could I do—let her tell everyone what I did to her? Let her tell my mother?” He flushed painfully.