Die I Will Not (26 page)

Still awaiting an answer, Victor Kirby seemed frozen as Chase lifted his gaze from the wall and said casually, “It was Ralph Hewitt, wasn't it?”

***

Three weeks earlier

A sunless place, forbidding and strange. Tunnels, an intricate weaving of stone, a warren of passages in which they could have wandered for hours. As they passed down a corridor, hemmed in by the curving brick walls, a ragged form in its foul nest of straw flung out a bare foot. When Mary started in fear, Ralph Hewitt laughed softly.

“Surely we've gone far enough,” he said, his voice amused, and they hesitated at a fork where the passage branched in two directions. When she turned to look at him, he was still smiling, relaxed, his broad face wearing an interested expression, as if he wanted to be friendly. They might have been strolling in the park, exchanging pleasantries.

“Not quite.” She pointed to the left, shielding her candle from a sudden draft. In truth, Mary wasn't sure which way to go. Leach had sometimes met his more disreputable contacts down here in the Arches, but she didn't know where. The warehouses and wine cellars would be locked at this hour, but what choice did she have? When Hewitt's letter had come earlier that day, she had known she couldn't confront him in the open street, or get in a coach with him, so she had chosen the Arches for their meeting. To reassure herself of the wisdom of this decision, she felt for the pistol in her pocket.

They descended some steps to find more vaultings, stretching as far as she could see. She had not realized the size, the extent, of this place. Ahead, through a hole at the end of what seemed a long cavern, she glimpsed a heavier darkness—the river. Suddenly, she could hear a faint lowing and smell the pitiful cows housed underground here, living out their lives in squalid misery. Her hands shaking, she tried a few doors until one, aged and frail, yielded to her touch.

“In here?” Hewitt's nose wrinkled.

“We can speak privately.”

Once inside, she crossed the space to set the candle atop an overturned crate, wanting to have her hands free. Lifting the veil of her bonnet, she faced him. The pistol was in her hand, and she prayed she could hold it steady.

“Oh, like that, is it? Put that away. I need to talk to you, Mary. Why don't you tell me what's happened to your husband? He had some important information for me.”

“He's dead.”

“Leach found out who Collatinus is, didn't he? Who is it, Mary? You've been helping the villain, is that it?”

“You killed Nell.”

“Nell?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “She's twenty years dead. What can she matter to you? If you know so much about her, why didn't you denounce me?”

“How could I when you held my father's fate in your hands? Later you convinced the Countess I should marry Leach, a safe man, your puppet. What choice did I ever have?”

“My poor darling. Who is Collatinus?” Hewitt took a step closer, smiling into her eyes in a grotesque parody of intimacy.

“Do you really think I would tell you? You are going to die, Ralph Hewitt.”

“Why? Because I rid the world of a troublesome whore? I suppose you gave Nell's memoirs to Collatinus. Clever little girl, aren't you?”

She raised the pistol. “You crept into her room and raped her. You stabbed her to the heart and left her to bleed to death.”

“I had made Nell what she was, but she turned on me to take up with Jacobin rubbish. Never mind that. I need that information. You may as well tell me. You can't save Collatinus, so you may as well save yourself. It suits me to find him before my friends in the Home Office do. Put the gun down, Mary. You don't want to hurt anyone.”

“
I
am Collatinus.” Mary raised her arm to fire her pistol, but Hewitt grabbed her wrist, wrenching it. The pistol clattered to the ground. His arm dragged her closer, and, staring into his eyes, she could see twin pools of candlelight pulsing in their depths. He ground his face closer, thrust his tongue in her mouth, and a river of hatred poured out to drown her, choking her with its vileness. He pulled back to shake her.

“You didn't work alone. You must tell me who he was.”

Mary was thinking furiously. Better he should think her a doll, a silly toy to dangle at his whim. “Just a boy. He knows nothing about you. I used him to deliver the letters, but I never told him your name.”

The other hand drew back. “I don't believe you. Who is Collatinus?”

She could only shake her head.

A fist smashed into her cheek, and the pain was so intense she went momentarily blind. She raised her arms in a futile gesture of protection and shrank away as another blow struck her nose. Blood began to pour down her cheeks. Another blow, and a hand was ripping at the front of her gown. Then Hewitt tore the bonnet from her head, and Mary tumbled to the ground. Her hair, coming loose, swept down in the dust in a black tide as she wrapped her arms over her head. The cows were quiet. Stealing a glance up at Hewitt's countenance, set like stone in the flickering light, she felt a surge of terror.

Hewitt pulled a water trough to the center of the floor. Roughly, systematically, he thrust her into the foul water, down and then up and then down again. Each time he pulled her up, he asked the same questions, again and again. When she was down, she could do nothing but reach back and clutch at his coat, trying to get free and lift her head to take a breath. One of his buttons came loose in her hand, and she dropped it. Mary's awareness began to fade.

It seemed to her that Nell was with her. Nell, not as Mary had last seen her, a frightened woman begging protection for her child; instead, Mary saw her revolving in a man's arms on the dance floor, her head thrown back as she laughed: a little moth turning round and round a candle, never stopping until its wings were ablaze. Mary's heart twisted with love and longing and grief. In the instant before unconsciousness overtook her, she acknowledged that she had been a fool to come here, a fool to think she could stop this evil. The Prince's Man had won.
I'm sorry, Nell
, she thought, and was gone.

Chapter XXV

“You are restless tonight, sir,” said Sybil Fakenham, as he went to the window and looked out for the third time.

It was after eleven o'clock, and the seamstress was sitting in one of his easy chairs by the fire as she put her tiny stitches in the bodice of a silk gown. Tonight, her flyaway hair was scraped back in a tight knot that made the bones of her thin face poke out.

“I am expecting someone,” Chase told her.

“We'll hear his knock below.” She glanced at the open door. They were always careful to leave this door ajar during their late-night encounters in case Mrs. Beeks should come upon them unexpectedly. They both knew the landlady would have Miss Fakenham packing her boxes on the spot if she were to suspect any immorality under her roof.

“My friend is not one to knock. Besides, I don't want to rouse the household.”

Miss Fakenham absorbed this without comment, merely snipping off a thread and lifting the dress to examine it in the light of the candles arranged for her convenience. Chase had never met someone (other than himself perhaps) who worked with such joyless determination, such utter disregard of her own comfort. Several times, when sleep eluded him, he had sat, watching her droop with fatigue over a task so that she had to rise and bathe her eyes or take several rapid turns around the room in order to continue. But the next morning there she'd be, garbed in the same ugly gown, ready to deliver another commission.

“I'll go as soon as your visitor arrives,” she said, still not looking at him, careful to mask her curiosity.

Perversely, this made Chase more expansive. “What would you do if you discovered the existence of a brother whose existence you had never suspected?”

“That would depend on the brother. If he were an honorable man, I might be glad of him. If not…” She shrugged.

“Yet they say blood is thicker than water.”

“Not to everyone. You have a son, don't you? What would you do if he were called a rogue?”

“Stop the mouth of any man who said so.” Chase heard the weariness in his voice. To have a son he had never met who lived on the other side of the world. To have loved only one woman, this boy's mother, so that after she refused him, he had been forced to satisfy his needs in occasional fumbling encounters Sybil Fakenham couldn't begin to imagine. But the fault had been in Chase; he could have tried to make a real life for himself.

She was watching him closely. “You've known about your son all along, but you never thought of making a push to meet him?”

“At least I don't spurn all human sympathy.”

Glaring at him, she did not at first respond, and Chase realized how little he knew of Miss Fakenham, just that her father had died and she was destitute. He wondered why she seemed to have no one to care what became of her, no friends, no family, no connections. One day he would ask her.

She returned to her task. “I'll answer your question. Whether I would come to a brother's aid must depend on circumstances. Whether I believed in him and had the power to act on that belief.”

“No, you're wrong. In the end, you'd stand by him if he were in need.”

Sybil gave her enigmatic smile, hardly a smile at all, merely a quirk of the lips that managed to express both self-mockery and acknowledgment of his point.

Chase got to his feet to wander the room. “Tomorrow a foolish boy goes on trial for his life while the real villain, a murderer who has killed two women, watches and laughs and feels secure in his triumph. But I know him, this man with the cruel heart. He will not escape me.”

“This friend you wait for—he can help?”

“Let us hope he can, Miss Fakenham.”

She lifted her eyes from her lap, and he was astonished to glimpse the sheen of tears. “Cut down the heartless man, Mr. Chase. I quite rely on you to do so.”

He was about to address her further when he heard the rattle of pebbles at the window and, peering out, saw a diminutive form separate itself from the surrounding blackness. Chase checked the street, up and down, but could see nothing to worry him.

Miss Fakenham had already gathered her belongings in preparation for departure. “Your visitor has arrived? Take the light with you, sir.”

“I'll see you to your room first.”

Opening the door to her own chamber, she said softly, “Good luck, Mr. Chase.” Before he could reply, the door had closed.

Downstairs, Chase turned the bolt and put out his head to beckon Packet inside. Packet stared and seemed worried. “You want I should come into your ken?”

“Be quiet. Follow me.”

They went upstairs together, Packet stepping lightly to keep the old floorboards from creaking and Chase leading the way. When the thief had taken the easy chair vacated by Miss Fakenham and been fortified with brandy, he leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction, his eyes darting around the room. “Nice crib you got here.”

“What word of Malone?”

“There's a costermonger called Angel, a man what's married to Malone's sister. This Angel was a greengrocer but took to a barrow and goes his rounds, selling fish. He's the one hiding your quarry.”

“How do I find them?”

“Won't be easy—folk like that. Aye, Malone's a downy one. Fooled us, didn't he, when all the time he's been under our noses? That's why we got no word of him on the roads.”

Chase blew out a breath of irritation. “Damn it, Packet.”

“Done my best, eh?” he said philosophically.

“What's this fish-seller look like?'

“Plump fellow about thirty years old. Round face. Pale hair and skin. You try Billingsgate, Chase. You find him there, and if you're lucky he'll give you word of Malone. I got a score to settle with him. Here's a touch for luck.” He reached over to poke one grimy finger at Chase's wrist.

“I'm sure that'll accomplish the business.” But Packet was right. Given that he didn't know Angel's usual route, his only hope was that the costermonger would show up tomorrow at Billingsgate Market, where the fishmongers congregated to purchase their stock for the day. Packet sat back in his chair, daintily sipping his brandy and drying his muddy boots at the fire, while Chase, lost in thought, frowned at the dirt his guest had tracked onto the hearthrug.

Packet's gaze continued to flit. He seemed fascinated by the thick curtains that kept out the draft, the stack of books that beckoned invitingly on the nightstand, the polished furniture, and the shaving gear lined up on the bureau. Finally, he said, “Ain't you going to ask my advice?”

“What?” Chase was startled out of a daze. It had been a long day, his knee hurt, and he would be rising at five to depart for the market.

Packet displayed his rotting teeth in a grin. “Mark me, Malone won't be easy to turn to account. He'll run again, Chase.”

***

In the hour before dawn, John Chase emerged into darkness, the empty pavement stretching before him. Near at hand, the coaches rumbled by on their way to Covent Garden; a few early birds chirped; the black sky awaited sunlight; the windows of the houses gazed down, empty, no stirrings yet. Alert to the possibility of watchers, Chase set off through the streets, his breath visible in the cold, hands thrust in the pockets of his overcoat. Once or twice he caught the echo of footsteps at his back, but when he cut off down an alley to peer back through the tenebrous air, he saw nothing. To be certain, he took several quick turns and detours along the way, moving by gradual degrees toward his goal.

It was still dark when he arrived at Billingsgate to find a tumultuous crowd swelling the market square. Along with a seaweedy odor wafting from the Thames, the smell of the fish that had been delivered overnight to the nearby wharf was overpowering. Large, flickering oil lamps gave the scene an unearthly glow, though the babble was purely human: raucous, unceasing, and salted with loud calls of “What price?” Chase headed toward a man in a jaunty cloth cap who was perched on a salmon box, conducting auctions to sell his lots of fish. A mass of fishmongers and costermongers with their barrows, carts, and baskets surrounded the auctioneer as they bid for the lots in quick transactions, punctuated by his hands clapping to conclude each sale.

Chase stepped around a little girl selling baskets and moved through the mass of people, his eyes darting from face to face, trying to find a man who fit Packet's description. As he went, he bellowed the question at each clump of market-goers: “Know a fish-seller called Angel?” Most of them ignored him, their attention fixed on the sales that would determine their livelihood for the day. A few glanced at him, shaking their heads. One man swore, elbowing him aside rudely. Chase stiffened but forced himself to swallow his spleen and keep going.

The hour grew later as he circled the square, and the fishmongers had begun to take down their stalls when a young woman turned in response to his query. Dressed in a brown stuff gown tucked up at her waist so that her muscular calves were visible, she tilted her head, flashed her crackling blue eyes at him, and unleashed an unintelligible stream of words.

“I beg your pardon?”

Grinning, the woman abandoned the lingo of her trade to answer him somewhat more comprehensibly. “What yer want with Angel?”

“Something to his advantage. He here today?”

“'E's 'ere right enough, guv. I saw 'im.” Lowering the basket she carried on her head, she raised her other hand to plump the purple ostrich plume on her bonnet.

Chase slipped a coin in her hand. “Where?”

In response, she jerked a thumb over her shoulder and, with one more flirtatious grin, hoisted her heavy basket again to disappear into the crowd.

When he looked in the direction she'd indicated, he saw a man wheeling his barrow along the edge of the square, apparently having completed his transactions. He had a sweet, round face and closely cropped fair hair under a dirty cap. He smiled frequently as he deftly maneuvered his barrow around the people in his path.

“A word with you, Angel,” said Chase when he was close enough to be heard.

The street-seller set down the barrow, regarding him courteously. “Sir? How do yer know me name?”

“I need to speak to you about Peter Malone.”

Angel's face closed, his friendly smile fading. “Yer a constable, guv?”

“I'm here on a private matter. My name is John Chase. It will be to Malone's advantage if I speak to him.”

“Malone, yer say? Sorry, don't know 'im.”

“A friend of mine says you do.” Observing the man, Chase saw that Angel was tugging at the red kerchief around his neck and shuffling his boots, clearly anxious to get away.

“Don't know yer friend neither,” said Angel after a short silence.

“You don't have a brother-in-law staying with you and your family? In a spot of trouble perhaps? Tell me, and you'll be glad you obliged me.”

“I don't know nuffink. Good day ter yer, sir.” Touching his cap, Angel lifted the handles of his barrow.

Chase sighed. He would have to follow the costermonger to a less congested spot and give him a little encouragement to tell his story. He debated whether he should simply step in his path, grab him by his kerchief, and hope the other costermongers would not immediately rally around their own.

“Wait, Angel,” he called in carrying tones that made one or two of the nearby patrons glance at him curiously. Angel stopped and turned, gazing back with a sullen look that seemed ill-suited to his frank countenance.

Chase approached him to lay a hand on the sleeve of the costermonger's old brown surtout. Caked with the slime and scales of fish, it was stiff and slippery under his fingers. “I met Malone when he was employed at the
London Daily Intelligencer
. I must find him—to warn him. You would do me and him a great service.”

“Say yer gives me word for this fellow. If 'appen 'e come me way, I can tell 'im about yer. 'Ow 'bout that?” So saying, Angel pulled free.

“No time. A man is on trial for his life today, and Malone has information that could help him.”

“Don't rightly know where 'e is, now do I? See, nuffink to do.”

“Don't lie to me.”

The costermonger drew back. “Begging yer pardon, sir, but 'e ain't never mentioned yer ter me.” Suddenly his attention shifted, and he went rigid, plump cheeks puffing out in distress as he directed his eyes somewhere over Chase's shoulder.

Chase spun around to see Peter Malone. Malone was pushing his barrow of fish, smiling and relaxed among the barrow-men. The same long face and awkward air, the same hunger Chase remembered, but Malone had exchanged his suit for a pair of dun trousers and a shapeless coat left open to reveal his knobby frame. A neckerchief of a sickly yellow hue dangled loosely over a corduroy waistcoat fastened to the throat with pearly buttons. Malone didn't seem to have observed Chase standing there, or possibly didn't recognize him. A touch of Packet's luck was with him, after all.

But as soon as this thought crossed his mind, Chase's luck fled. Two men converged on Malone, each seizing one of his arms and beginning to drag him away. Chase took in the brown felt hat that one of the men wore, which he had last seen on the street outside the
Daily Intelligencer
, bobbing along behind him and Penelope as they walked down the Strand. “Damn and blast,” he swore and pushed into the crowd after them.

Angel huffed at his side. “Who are they?”

“Officers. Don't do anything stupid. They'll be armed.”

Chase and Angel caught up with the men at the edge of the square as they were attempting to thrust Malone into a hackney coach. While several bystanders gaped, one man was pushing on the porter's torso while the other leaned down from above to yank on his shoulders. Malone was kicking his long legs and shouting at the top of his voice. The jarvey looked on, bemused.

With a quick apology to a passing fishwife, Chase lifted the basket from her gray-haired head.