A Dangerous Madness (20 page)

It was clear of all papers, polished to a gleaming shine, and she could not think he would have left anything of use to Wittaker here. When he left to flee the country, surely he would have taken everything with him that would incriminate him.

“Oh, my lady. I’m sorry. I didn’t realized anyone was here.”

Phoebe turned and saw a scullery maid already well into the room, eyes wide, coal bucket in hand.

“It’s all right. I’m just waiting for Mr. Jackson to come back. Please go about your business.”

The maid looked as if she would like to leave, but was already too far in the room to turn and flee.

She couldn’t seem to keep her gaze off Phoebe, and in turn, Phoebe watched her.

She was a young girl of around eighteen years old, with long, dark hair pulled back off her face into a loose bun under her white cap. She was quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and long lashes. She had eyes the color of chocolate.

Footsteps sounded across the hallway, and the girl gasped, jerking her gaze from Phoebe to the door.

“Margie?” Jackson frowned as he looked between them. “Everything all right?”

“Yes, Mr. Jackson.” The girl ducked her head and turned to the fireplace.

Jackson’s look was hard as he watched her kneel before the grate. This girl had done something to displease him. He seemed a fair man, and Lewis liked him, so she wondered what Margie could have done that would provoke such anger.

“We’re ready, my lady.” Lewis stood by the door, not even coming into the room.

“Thank you.” Phoebe nodded to Jackson, and he bowed low to her.

“It is I who thanks you, my lady. Your generosity will make a big difference to everyone in this house.” He flicked a look at the maid, who had turned at his words, and was staring at Phoebe again.

Phoebe murmured her goodbyes, and let Lewis lead the way.

Wittaker’s men were both by the carriage when they stepped out, and they were on the road, smooth and without a single wasted moment, before Lewis had even closed the carriage door.

She looked out of the window as they drew away from Sheldrake’s house, and felt a deep satisfaction that she would never have to go there again.

Chapter Twenty-eight

“S
o, you are in disguise?” Georges Bisset eyed James curiously.

“Something like that.” James fiddled with the scratchy wool of his borrowed jacket sleeve, careful not to move his injured arm too much. His valet had redressed the wound, and aside from being stiff, he had gotten off remarkably easy. “If someone is watching the house, I need a way to get out without being noticed.”

Georges shrugged. “You can come with me to the market, and then Thierry can leave a little bit later, and meet up with me. Carry what I buy at the market as he usually does.” He handed James two large baskets. “Take those.”

James grinned and took them, and followed Georges out of the kitchen door and into the dark of the morning. He had already been given hot, strong coffee and a croissant straight out of the oven, and he felt curiously at peace, even though this was the earliest he’d arisen for as long as he could remember.

When he’d listed the tasks he had to accomplish to Miss Hillier last night, he had left this one out.

On purpose.

Vincent Dowling may be a political reporter for the
Day
, but he was still a journalist, and any hint of Phoebe’s involvement would stir his curiosity. James wanted to keep her from him completely.

And he wanted to talk to the man away from listening ears and watching eyes. For Dowling’s sake as much as his own. He didn’t want to compromise the informer’s identity.

“So, you ’ave not said anything about the Prince Regent’s dinner. So unremarkable?” Georges could not help the satisfaction in his voice.

“Apparently the Prince Regent only decided to hold the dinner earlier the same day, so I’m sure his chef did the best he could, in the circumstance.” James said.

“’Ow many people?” Georges’s voice turned from satisfaction to outrage.

“Thirty, perhaps, or a few less.”

“
Incroyable
. If I was working for ’im, ’e would ’ave my resignation already.”

“Fortunately for me, you don’t work for him.” James said.

“Yes. For you, and for me, also, it seems.” The one thing Georges didn’t lack was confidence. “Still, I’m interested in what was served.”

“There was white soup to start, nothing like yours, Georges, and sorbet between courses, trout
almandine
, roast quail, some rather good beef, and to tell the truth, I can’t remember what we had for dessert.”

“Ah. Perhaps not dissimilar to what I would have done under such circumstances. Nothing too complicated. Although, if it were me, you would ’ave remembered the dessert.”

James made a grunt of assent and walked beside Georges in companionable silence until they came within sight and sound of the market. The lights and the hum of energy gave the scene a strange air of tension and excitement.

He could see Georges’s face sharpen, like a hunter on the scent.

“I’ll leave you here,” he said, holding the baskets out.

The big chef took them with a slight sniff of disdain, as if carrying the baskets was beneath him. “
Bon chance
.”

James nodded in acknowledgement and walked away into the darkness. The address Dervish had given him for Dowling was close to where the tailor from the day before had his shop. He found a cab around the corner from the market, the driver on his own way home after working around the clubs in St. James until dawn.

He refused to let James pay a fare as he dropped him at the end of the narrow lane where Dowling lived.

“Going home anyways, sir. You keep your money. I made enough out o’ the nobs tonight. Forget how much they’ve given me most o’ the time, they’re that drunk.” He grinned down at James and then lifted his cap before riding away.

James smiled after him. At least his disguise in one of his footmen’s clothes was working.

He pocketed the shilling he’d taken out as he walked down a street too narrow for anything but a cart, and climbed the rickety wooden stairs on the outside of Dowling’s building, up to a narrow door flush against the wall. There was no knocker, so James rapped hard with his knuckles.

He heard movement within, and then silence, and James knocked again, a little louder.

Eventually he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock, and the door was opened cautiously. The man peering out was in his early thirties, with dark hair receding a little from a high brow, a jacket thrown over a white nightshirt.

His eyes were heavy, as if he’d been wrenched from sleep, but they looked worried, too.

“Yes?” He peered at James a moment, and then his eyes narrowed. As if trying to place where he knew him from.

Another political journalist who recognized him, James realized. “Let me in, Dowling. You don’t want this conversation on your doorstep, believe me.”

“You alone?” Dowling squinted past him, looking into the gloom, although there was already more light now than five minutes ago, as the sun began to inch over the horizon.

“I’m alone.” James found the question curious, but he waited for Dowling to nod, and step back.

James entered a tiny sitting room, with a fireplace to one side, a kettle sitting on the mantlepiece above it. Through a door on the far side of the room he caught a glimpse of an even smaller room with a tousled bed against one wall.

“I know you, don’t I?”

“We’ve never been introduced,” James said, hoping he would leave it there.

“And what’s this about?” Dowling hesitated a moment, and then waved a hand to the two chairs on either side of the fireplace, which, along with a writing desk and stool against the wall near the front door, comprised the sole furniture in the room.

James sat and after a brief hesitation, Dowling did as well.

“It’s early, and I apologise for waking you, but I wanted to speak to you in strict privacy, and thought this was the best way to do it.” James watched Dowling as he hunched over himself in his chair, as if still trying to wake up.

The journalist grunted.

“I know you’re a Home Office informant, and I know you were present when Spencer Perceval was killed, and I want to know what connection there may be between those two facts.”

It was as if he’d applied a hot poker to a sensitive part of Dowling’s anatomy. The man visibly flinched in his chair, and stared at James with his mouth open.

“How the devil…?” Dowling stood suddenly. “It doesn’t matter. Out. Get out.” He pointed to the door.

“I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Dowling. Sit down and answer the question. I don’t mean any trouble for you.” James leaned back in his chair and watched as Dowling tried to get himself under control.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” He lowered himself carefully back into his seat.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve seen your reports on the radicals and their plans that you submitted to the Home Office. And I know you helped subdue Bellingham on Monday afternoon. Now, what can you tell me?”

“I’ve been half-expecting someone, truth to tell.” Dowling rubbed a shaking hand down his face. “Thought there’d be more of you, though, come to haul me off.”

“Why would that happen?”

“Looking for a scapegoat.” The journalist shrugged. “I hoped not, but I’ve been nervous.”

“Why would someone use you as a scapegoat?” James watched as Dowling lifted a candle from the floor, and then fiddled with a tinderbox to get it lit.

“I told the Home Office about Bellingham. In a report. Three weeks ago, I told them someone was asking people in the gallery to point out the prime minister and some of his colleagues.
I
pointed them out to him at least twice. The third time I saw him there, I drew him into conversation, and got his name and where he was from, just in case there was something more than simple curiosity going on. He seemed very calm and certainly not deranged or angry. But now it might look like I didn’t attach enough significance to his requests. He was obviously watching his intended victim, identifying Perceval to make sure when he shot him, he would be shooting the right man.” With a curse, Dowling spilled the contents of the tinderbox onto the floor, and then stared down at the mess.

“Who did that report go to?” James felt that kick of adrenalin again, that quickening of the heart beat.

“The Home Office Under-secretary, most likely. And then on to the Home Secretary, if he thought it warranted it.”

In the gloomy half-light, James and Dowling exchanged a glance.

The incompetence of the Home Secretary was so well-known, neither even remarked on it. Perceval had appointed Richard Ryder to the post because he was a loyal friend, not because he was capable of doing the job. The prime minister wanted someone who would comply with his plans, and as a result, it was widely known that Perceval himself attended to most of Ryder’s duties, because the man himself was incapable of doing it.

It had made Perceval Chancellor of the Exchequer, Prime Minister and also the de facto Home Secretary. It had given him full control of government.

“Wouldn’t it be ironic if Perceval had received that report himself,” James mused. “And ignored it.”

Dowling gave a half-laugh, although there was no humour in it. “I’ve thought the same thing too many times to count in the last few days, but the most likely answer is it is lying in a tottering pile of reports on Ryder’s desk.”

The scent of the hunt had dulled since Dowling mentioned the Home Secretary. The odds were overwhelming that it had been incompetence, rather than design, that Dowling’s report had gone unnoticed.

“What can you tell me about the incident itself?” With the candle still unlit, the only light came from the haphazardly drawn curtains, but even in the slowly lifting gloom, James saw Dowling wince.

“It was a mess.” He drew in a deep breath. “I was in the gallery, watching the hearings, and I heard the shot, but really as a background sound, something far away. Then the shouting started and we ran out to see what was happening. Gascoyne was upstairs as well, in another room, and he and I ran down the stairs together. Bellingham had already been identified as the shooter, and we ran up to him, to make sure he couldn’t run or shoot again.”

“Did that look likely?” James asked.

Dowling shook his head. “He was sitting there, white as chalk, shaking, sweating, not moving at all. The pistol was next to him on the bench. He wasn’t a danger to anyone.”

“His clothes are torn enough it looked as if he was roughly handled.” James said and watched Dowling’s reaction.

He pursed his lips. “Emotions were high. People were angry, and Bellingham was right there, unresisting. Gascoyne grabbed his hand so hard, he cried out.”

“I see in the hearing transcript Gascoyne says he took the gun from Bellingham to prevent him shooting the prime minister again.”

Dowling frowned. “No. The prime minister wasn’t there when we got there, he’d been taken into another room and laid on someone’s desk while they called a doctor.”

James steepled his fingers, tapped them to his lips. “Jerdan told me the same thing.”