A Disappearance in Drury Lane (21 page)

Spendlove had threatened her with something, that was certain. Whatever he’d said he’d do to her, I would stop him.

“I know you did not kill that man, Captain,” Miss Winston said. “I will be prepared to say so if I must.”

“You are kind,” I said. “If you can persuade Mrs. Carfax to change her mind . . .”

“I will endeavor. Good night.” Miss Winston nodded to me then went back inside the house and closed the door.

I was left alone with my basket of baked goods and the winter cold.

I turned and walked across the lane again to the bakeshop, borrowed keys from Mrs. Beltan, because I’d left all mine behind in Bath, and opened the door to the stairwell that led to my rooms.

The smell met me. The cold cut it a little, and the wind coming in behind me helped, but the stench of death lingered.

I went slowly up the stairs and unlocked my front room. I stood in the doorway, the chill of the stairwell embracing me, and studied what was before me. John Perry’s body had been removed, but no one had bothered to clean the blood from the wooden floor. The blood had dried, the large brown stain a reminder of the violence that had occurred here.

I held my breath against the smell as I crossed the room, avoiding the stains, and opened the front windows. Cleansing winter air poured in, bitterly cold.

I searched my rooms, hoping to find something the Runners had missed. I was not optimistic—Pomeroy was thorough. I found no blood in the bedchamber; all in that room was as I’d left it. The struggle hadn’t come this far.

I locked the door to my flat again when I departed, but I let the windows stand open. I wanted the stink gone, and I had nothing to steal.

A large man waited for me at the street door. He had a deep scar on each cheek, his nose had been broken, and his eyes were watchful. He stood in front of me so I could not move around him, but he said nothing at all as I stopped on my doorstep.

“Where is Mr. Brewster?” I asked. “I thought he was my minder.”

This man was apparently not as talkative as Brewster. He stared at me, popped open his mouth, said, “Watching South Audley Street,” and popped his mouth closed again.

“Was he here the night Mr. Perry was killed?”

Again the stare then the little noise as he opened his mouth. “No one were here. Mr. Denis said to watch you and your family, not your rooms.”

“Hmm.” I contemplated the darkening street. “And now you are watching me?”

A nod. Very well. The man could watch me find a hackney to take me home. I was tempted to hand him the basket to carry for me, but I did not think he had a sense of humor.

He still did not move. “His nibs wants to see that old biddy across from you.”

I was not surprised to hear Denis had learned that Mrs. Carfax was Spendlove’s witness, because Denis had eyes everywhere. But I did not like Denis’s interest. “If you mean Mrs. Carfax, tell his nibs to leave her alone.”

The man only stared at me. I finally stepped around him, laid the keys back on Mrs. Beltan’s counter, and made my way out of Grimpen Lane. Denis’s man followed close on my heels.

As I made to climb into the hackney coach at the stand in Russel Street, I had a bad thought. If Denis wanted Mrs. Carfax so adamantly, this man might take it upon himself to go to her the moment I rode away and drag her to Denis any way he could.

“Get in,” I said to him. “Take
me
to see Mr. Denis.”

The large man did not like this idea. I saw him think about it, his mean-looking eyes never leaving me. At last, he gave an abrupt nod, turned from me, and climbed onto the back of the coach.

I pulled myself inside the best I could, and the carriage sprang forward. I hadn’t managed to close the door, and it swung on its hinges, banging against the latch but not catching. I reached for it, but a helpful citizen outside grabbed the door and slammed it shut as we rolled on into Covent Garden.

Chapter Fifteen

It was dark by the time I descended in Curzon Street. Denis’s man climbed down and disappeared inside the house, and the emotionless butler came out to help me from the hackney and inside. Again I had no appointment, but this time the butler put me into the elegant but unfriendly downstairs reception room while he went to tell Denis I’d arrived. I paced without sitting down.

I waited about half an hour before the butler returned and ushered me to Denis’s private study. His desk this evening held a few large sheets of paper, which he perused without animation. One page I saw before he carefully turned it facedown contained the detailed drawing of a sculpture, a very old and rare sculpture I recognized from books. At present, the sculpture was in Rome. I wondered where it would end up. Because Denis would have had plenty of time to clear his desk before I entered, I knew he’d wanted me to see the page.

Denis motioned me to a chair, which his butler had arranged in front of the desk. When I sat, the butler set a goblet of brandy on the small table next to the chair, the brandy positioned in the exact center of the table. The butler had done this before when I’d visited—I wondered how often he practiced the move.

I did not wait for Denis to initiate the conversation or ask why I’d come. “Leave Mrs. Carfax alone,” I said.

The flicker in Denis’s eyes might have been humor. “I have no wish to beat upon small elderly widows. I seek merely to ask her why Mr. Spendlove convinced her to tell a lie to the magistrate. If we know more about her, we can intervene and remove Spendlove’s influence.”

“You mean you will render her more afraid of you than of him,” I said. “You seem confident you can thwart Mr. Spendlove. He made it clear his life’s work is to see you hanged.”

Another glint of almost-humor. “I am familiar with crusades against me. You have commenced one for a few years now.”

“I have not necessarily given it up. You murder people, or cause to have them murdered. I am surprised you haven’t murdered me.”

“I believe I have explained.” Denis folded his hands on the desk. “Though you are a thorn in my side, I find you a very useful thorn. I have no wish to see Mr. Spendlove drag you in for this crime, which I know you did not do. I would not be surprised to learn that Spendlove himself killed Mr. Perry to throw suspicion on you in order to get you into court. There he can put you under oath and ask all sorts of questions about me, or perhaps bargain with you—details about me and my life for your freedom. Such a course would take him nowhere, but he would try.”

The thought that Spendlove had pursued Perry and killed him in order to pin the blame on me had occurred to me. I was not certain Spendlove would go that far, but I did not know the man well enough to judge. A person obsessed with what he believed could go to any lengths to prove his point. He might even murder to show his disapproval of murder.

“What do you propose to do?” I asked.

“About Spendlove? We shall see. About you being accused of murder, I have already taken steps. Consider letting me speak to Mrs. Carfax. It would help.”

I did not want poor, wretched Mrs. Carfax brought here to him. “She is a timid woman with a weak heart, who has difficulty speaking to anyone but her companion, and certainly not to a man like you. However annoyed I am with her, I will not let you make her ill. Her companion, on the other hand, is a bit more forthcoming. I will persuade Miss Winston to discover what Spendlove threatened Mrs. Carfax with and to tell me. But no hurting either of them.”

Denis gave me a cold look, this one without any amusement at all. “It is not in my nature to bully the weak for no reason. If I am hard on a man, it is because he deserves it.”

Admittedly, the murders I had known Denis to commit were of men who’d done terrible things. One had tried robustly to kill Denis and me, and another had helped procure innocent young women for a man of perverse appetites. I’d looked the other way on both. But I’d also seen Denis’s hold over otherwise respectable gentlemen, including me. Denis had located my estranged wife and daughter when I’d been unable to, and then seen to it that my first marriage ended cleanly. I might have found the means, via Grenville and other friends, for the divorce, but I was forever in Denis’s debt for bringing Gabriella back to me, and he knew it. For that service, I now cooperated with him, however reluctantly.

“You will let
me
speak to Miss Winston,” I said sternly.

Denis made a faint gesture with his fingers. “Very well, but I advise you to do it soon. Mr. Spendlove will not wait long to try another way to convince the magistrate to send you to Newgate.”

I knew he wouldn’t. I was certain Spendlove had someone following me even now.

I took a sip of the brandy I knew would be very good and stood up. “Stay away from Mrs. Carfax and Miss Winston. I will tell you what I discover.”

He did not look impressed. “Tell me exactly what you discover, and it will not be necessary.”

“What about the incendiary device?” I asked. “Have you found out anything in that direction?”

Denis’s coolness increased, as though I’d committed a social gaffe by asking. “My inquiries proceed. I will send you a message when the person is found. Good evening, Captain.”

I made him a curt bow. I did not bother to thank him for his time, he made a dismissing motion, and I left him.

I walked up South Audley Street to my new home, moving slowly now. Because her ladyship was still away, no doorknocker hung on the black-painted panels and no footman waited expectantly in his place outside. My key was still in Bath, and I had to rap with my knuckles on the door of the house in which I now lived to gain admission.

*** *** ***

Barnstable had remained in residence while we’d journeyed to Bath. When he found me cold and damp on the doorstep, he had me inside and upstairs in a trice, a hot bath prepared before I was out of my clothes.

Barnstable had learned of my arrest and was aghast. “Taking a gentleman in the street with no provocation,” he said as he shook out and folded my coat and shirt. “What is the world coming to? If a man gets himself murdered in your rooms while you are far away, why is that your fault? I am certain her ladyship will give the magistrates an earful.”

I was certain as well. “I was not far away when the murder occurred, unfortunately.” I lowered myself into the hot water and let out a sigh. Barnstable knew how to draw a bath. “I was here, in this house, in her ladyship’s chamber. You might have to swear to that in court, Barnstable. It will not be pleasant. I apologize.”

“Of course I would swear, sir. We all will.”

“No lying. That will not help.”

Barnstable looked offended. “Of course not, sir.”

He left me to soak. I was happy to let the dust of the road, the stink of Bow Street, and the sweat from my worries float away. Barnstable had learned I was not a man who liked being ministered to in the bath—I preferred to scrub myself—and let me alone.

Today I did no scrubbing. I lay back in the hot water and let its warmth and that from the fire settle over me. I knew Sir Montague’s presence at my hearing had been the only thing that had kept me from residing in Newgate this night instead of in this comfortable dressing room. I felt a wash of gratitude for the man. I also knew that if I thanked him he’d look surprised, modest, and then wise, telling me he’d only done his duty.

Melancholia hovered again, but I’d learned in the last few years that activity helped me stave it off. When I was walking about being frustrated by people, my leg hurting, the darkness stayed away. I had no time for it.

When the water began to cool, I hauled myself out of the bath, wrapped myself in the dressing gown Barnstable had left, and let him shave my face.

After that, Barnstable wanted me to eat. I humored him by devouring some of the bread Mrs. Beltan had given me, which Donata’s cook toasted and buttered for me, then I left again, clean and warm, out into the cold.

I took a hackney back toward Covent Garden. Now that Perry’s demise had made her old lodgings safe, Felicity might have returned to them. I could easily see her killing Perry, battering him to death in fear as she fought him. If she had killed him, accidentally or not, I’d send her away, out of Spendlove’s reach. I had no wish to see Felicity hang for someone like Perry.

I had the hackney drop me where Great Wild Street, Drury Lane, and Great Queen Street more or less came together in a triangle. From there I picked my way north to the passage I remembered had emerged onto Drury Lane. Or thought I remembered—I had been hurt and insensible when Felicity had dragged me out of it, my vision a bit blurred.

After trial and error, I found the right lane, with the house that had lodged Felicity at its end. A landlady was home in her rooms in the bottom floor and opened the door to me. She was half drunk and said she hadn’t seen Felicity for days.

I asked to be let up to Felicity’s rooms regardless. I thought the landlady would refuse me, but she must have liked my bearing, not to mention the few shillings I dropped into her palm. She wanted only to return to her gin bottle, so she handed me a large key and waved me away.

Felicity lived in two rooms, a sitting room in front of the house, and a bedroom in the rear. I had to light a stump of candle that I’d brought with me in order to see anything, but I recognized the low bed as the one I’d been tethered to. I’d been tied with scraps of linen, which still lay on the floor. The rooms were cold and smelled of damp. Felicity had not been back here.

I went through them anyway, looking for some clue as to where she’d gone. A few frocks hung on pegs behind a curtain in the bedroom, and a cupboard in the corner held her linens and stockings. One slipper, the beading torn off, the satin soiled, rested forlornly in the bottom of the cupboard.

The top of the night table next to the bed was empty, but the single drawer revealed a small book bound in leather. I opened it to find a New Testament, printed in small text.

The book was not new—few but Grenville and those of like wealth could afford new books. Most people bought them secondhand and kept them carefully. This testament was well-worn and much read. Pages had been marked with old ribbons, a few passages underlined with drawing pencil.
Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto me,
was one. Another was
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.