Honor's Kingdom (26 page)

“Keep driving!” I whispered. A hissing cat myself I was. “Tell the driver to go on, for God’s sake!”

Wilkie gave the fellow a tap and said, “Go on, Michaels. Go on.”

“As you like, Inspector,” the fellow said.

“Have him turn the corner,” I told Wilkie. “Out of sight.”

“What’s this, what’s this?” the inspector asked.

“Did you see the fellow coming out the door? Did you see him?”

“The proper gent with the face like pink roast beef?”

“Yes. Him.”

“And who would he be, now? What ’as got us in alarms and rushing around corners?”

“That was Mr. Pomeroy. The father.”

WELL, THERE WAS FOOD for thought, it seemed to me. When a father who is not to know of a daughter-in-law’s existence exits her lodgings at the start of the afternoon. And in my glimpse of him, he had not looked riled. You might have thought he had just enjoyed a meal.

I wondered what those letters had to say, and if it was at all what I expected.

And then, as we pulled up at the curb, a frightful thought coursed through me: What if we found Mrs. Sarah Pomeroy murdered? Killed by a father-in-law who would not tolerate her? Had the elder Pomeroy truly looked as calm as I had thought him?

“Well, you’re anxious as a trotter waiting to run,” Wilkie said. And he was right.

We stepped up to the door and I gave it a tap with my cane.

After a moment, footsteps padded within, followed by a woman’s voice deep in the alto. Dusk and damask and languor, that was the sound of her.

“Are you coming back already, my lover?” the foreign voice asked the door. “Are you coming back again, you are so naughty!”

By then, she had the bolt undone. The light of day shone in, and she said no more.

We stood there, waiting for time to put itself right. If the woman’s voice was dusk, her hair was midnight, and her green eyes promised depths forbidden the weak. Handsome she was, and vivid. Not least because she stood there in her unmentionables, chemise no more than half buttoned and her shoulders free of even a dressing gown.

“Betty Green!” Inspector Wilkie fair cried. “Why, Betty, I ain’t seen you in I don’t know ’ow long!”

She shut the door upon us.

Allowing her an interval to robe herself to a decency, I turned my perplexed face to the inspector.

“Call ’erself ’owever she likes,” he told me, “but that’s little Betty Green, what was the great beauty of Camden Town ten year ago. She wasn’t fifteen before we all ’ad our eyes on ’er. Although there weren’t nothing improper, I mean to say,” he added hastily. “At least, not from the gentlemen amongst us.”

“Perhaps she shares her lodging with Mrs. Pomeroy?” I said.

“Well, maybe she do, and maybe she don’t, but that’s our Betty Green, what went bad and found ’erself in a fix in Lisle Street, when a ’andsome young viscount took poison on account of ’er. Crawling around on the floor like a dog, ’e was, and barking, too. We ’ad to take ’im to the charity ’ospital, which was nearest to the establishment in which our Betty was positioned in her shame, and the doctors finished killing ’im soon as we got there. We ’ad to close Mrs. ’Opkins down for a month, which was an inconvenience to a great many ’igh gentle-men, although I don’t say the old girl didn’t deserve it. Betty come off with a promise to be good and a rash of new customers from the Inns of Court.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I allus thought there was money must of changed ’ands, for a viscount’s death would get most girls transported.”

“But is she Jewish?” I asked.

Wilkie guffawed. “Jewish? Betty Green? Ain’t that a larf? I used to see ’er from out the parlor window, as the old girl what got ’er the indecent way and then reformed all righteous went drudging Betty off to the Methodist chapel. Every Sunday that was, for morning prayers and evening preaching both.” He shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “Jewish? That’s a good one, our little Betty.” He looked at me. “She could of ’ad any man in Camden, but she aimed at ’igher things, that one.” Then he corrected himself. “Any man but meself, I mean, for I was ’appily set up with the late Mrs. Wilkie.”

I thought sufficient time had passed to try the door again. The truth is I was dazzled by my bafflement, and baffled to a
dazzling. Nothing at all made sense in London town. But just as I was about to knock, a boy come whistling by in an old Dutch cap. He turned to enter the door of the house next by.

“You, lad,” I called. “Who lives in this house?” I gestured toward Mrs. Pomeroy’s door with my cane. I hoped to clarify matters somewhat, see. “Would you know, then?”

“Oh, that’s the Jew girl,” the boy explained. “Me mum says I ain’t to speak with ’er, for she’s a bad one.”

“But do you? Speak to her?”

The boy glanced about himself. Seeing no one else, he said, “I said good morning to ’er once, but she told me to go pee off. The bloke what comes round to see ’er give me a penny, though. To fetch ’im a cab, though ’e mostly comes in a carriage.”

“The man who comes to see her, how old is he, do you think?”

“Old as the bleedin’ ’ills, guv’nor. ’E don’t look like ’e could make it from ’ere to the gin shop.”

And so the elder Mr. Pomeroy must look to a boy that age, although he seemed in his prime to developed eyes.

The lad glanced at Wilkie, then back to me, and asked, “Is that one there a peeler, sir? Is the Jew-girl come into trouble?”

“Never you mind,” the inspector told him. “Or I’ll tell your mother what you’re up to.”

“I ain’t up to nothing, Bobby Peeler,” the boy said almost ferociously. “And me mum would eat you up like ’er morning sausage.”

He stuck out his tongue, and went in.

I knocked upon Mrs. Pomeroy’s door again. With a certain firmness.

She opened, but only part-way. Covered up she was, but her flimsy gown was unsuited to greeting company. For a lady’s dress is as regulated as a battalion of grenadiers. The mistress of that house would have failed inspection.

“You are not gone away?” she asked in that husky, foreign voice. “Why do such people come to me?”

“Oh, go on, Betty,” the inspector said. “I’ve known you since you was short and stumpy as the major ’ere. You can’t play none of your confidence tricks on Wilkie.”

She flashed her green eyes round to me, but spoke calmly. “Who is this man? Is he a crazy one, from the asylum?”

“Begging your pardon,” I said, “but would you be Mrs. Sarah Pomeroy?”

She graced me with those endless eyes for but a second longer, then considered Wilkie again. When she spoke, she looked between us and across the street.

“Who else am I to be, please? Now, you are going.”

The door shut with the finality of a vault.

“I’LL ’AVE ’ER PUT UNDER arrest, and that’ll be the end of it,” Inspector Wilkie said. For he was miffed at what he thought was her insolence. Convinced he was that she was Betty Green, the belle of Camden Town, and late of a fancy house set up in Lisle Street. “It’s clear as day, it is. I’ll tell you just what kind of blackmailing she’s up to. She’s got something on old Pomeroy, and it’s something ’e don’t want told.”

Not, indeed, if he was his son’s wife’s lover. If you will forgive me that awful supposition. But I did not see another explanation. I only wondered why the boy who lived next door had mentioned only an old man and not a young one, as well, if she was married to young Pomeroy.

If the woman was married at all.

I had more doubts than Thomas with his poking fingers. And far less likelihood of finding proof.

What was in those letters? Why had young Pomeroy told me about them? Were they truly his own, written to his wife? Or were they his own, but written to a woman
not
his wife, to his father’s mistress? Or was his father’s mistress the son’s wife, after all? And what on earth had Mr. Disraeli to do with it? Was he an acquaintance of Mrs. Sarah Pomeroy? Or of Miss Betty Green? And how far had I strayed afield from the corpse of the Reverend Mr. Campbell?

Did any of this have to do with ships of war and Rebels and Richmond’s schemes? If anyone in England had sought to divert my attention—and I suspected more than one Englishman of such designs—they had done a pretty job of it. For here I was in a swamp with no bottom, splashed by immoralities that were none of my business, while our murdered agents went forgotten and conspiracies plunged ahead.

I was unsettled.

The police rig took us back over Waterloo Bridge, where a handsome young man with anthracite whiskers darted between the carts and carriages, turning about to cry to a girl, “Julie, will you meet us at sunset, then? Just where you’re standing now?” And the girl nodded and called, “At sunset, Terry, but not before, for I’ve got to see Davies off.” Ash-blond she was, and radiant of complexion under her hat, with a lower lip born to pout. But here is the thing of it, why the trivial incident struck me so: Other lives go on, despite murders and betrayals and even wars. The bright boldness of this Terry and his Julie seemed to capture the spirit of our age, the turbulent sixties, with their progress, hope, immodesty and danger. But let that bide, for there is more to tell.

Wilkie pointed across my chest to the ramshackle buildings lining the northern bank. Motley they were, with their sagging roofs and worn advertisements lettered on their walls.

“All to be knocked down,” he told me, “to make way for the great embankment. And a good thing, if you arsk me. For there’s nothing along the river but crime and sin, from ’ere to Parliament.”

Indeed, the Parliament buildings rose nobly in the direction of the new, unfinished bridge, but I was of a mind to correct the inspector. For I had begun to wonder if crime and sin did not extend into the Houses of Parliament themselves. But I said nothing.

“I wants to be there when they knock them down,” the inspector told me. “Just to watch the rats with two legs outracing the rats with four.”

He offered to take me wherever I wished to go, but I had consumed too much of his day already. He wished to part, twas clear. And I needed to think a bit. So I had him set me down along the Strand, with its restaurants and shops and human thickness.

Perhaps I only wanted people by me. To have a little taste of simpler cares. But this was no day for the soul’s rest, for I always seemed to be looking past the smiles of the ladies and their beaux to the ravaged faces weaving along the pavement, ignored by those who would go home to cherished families and money in the bank. There was a great hurry of delivery boys bobbing under loads of packages, and the windows of the shops held such abundance it would have tempted a hermit into luxury. Sleek of waist above eminent skirts, ladies of fashion pretended to listen to each other as they went, and young men on the way up did not look down at the hard world at their feet. But I saw only the faces lashed by life and the broken hearts, the ragged girls and the cripples who could but envy my slight degree of lameness. A bit of rain come flirting, and the ladies crushed their starched muslins through shop doorways, while swains or squires—men of town and country—laughed to see them fearful of the elements. The gentlemen made a great to-do of tipping hats and holding doors and laughing. Always laughing they were, with a legion and more of beggars at their boots.

Dear God, I wished to see the last of England. And to return to my America forever.

“I WANT YOU TO GO TO GLASGOW,” Mr. Adams said quietly, before I could offer a word of my own conclusions, “on urgent business. How soon can you leave?”

He had spoken hardly a word as we walked, bidding me hold my peace until we reached the breadth of Regent’s Park, where only the grass might hear us. I had steered him away from the spot where the boy was found, since I was as haunted by the business as Wilkie and have my superstitions, I will admit.
No sooner were we seated on a bench, with governesses leading their troops past in review, than Mr. Adams raised this matter of Glasgow, all on his own and without a bit of prodding.

“There is a morning express,” I told him. “I can go tomorrow, but—”

“Then go. I’ve had a curious message from our consul in Liverpool. Everything appears in order on the Number 290 matter, the lawyers have filed and the courts are at work, so that appears to be that. But now he claims a rumor’s circulating in the Birkenhead yards about a secret warship under construction along the Clyde, not far from Glasgow. I can’t see how they would know of such a thing in Liverpool, but a Scottish yard is said to have built an enormous wooden tent over a vessel destined for the Confederacy. To hide their labors, you understand. The ship is reported to have a metaled hull that would render it formidable—perhaps, even unsinkable.”

Our minister sat upright, with posture so perfect he might have taught comportment in a boys’ school, and he spoke without emotion, stating facts. He turned his chin toward me, with that slow, iced-over dignity of his. “There it is, Major Jones. Glasgow. Where the first agent met his misfortune. It’s Glasgow, after all, it seems.”

I was relieved, for he had made a better argument for my going than I could. And yet, there was much left for me to tell him. And I was ready to tell him and waiting to tell him, but Mr. Adams had still more to say. Twas queer. For he seemed to me a close man, whose speech was measured and lean, yet that afternoon found him in a confidential mood. Perhaps he felt that I must be informed on every matter, or maybe he just felt a need to talk. Being a high diplomat must be a bit like leading men into battle, see. You must be strong for all, and hold yourself in, never showing fear or doubt or weakness. But all men need to speak from time to time. Our hearts demand it, though why I cannot say. And after we have talked, we do feel better.

“I had the oddest few days,” he began. “Lord Parch invited me down to Fawes, which the English seem to think a signal
honor. Frankly,” he said, with his palms atop the ball of his cane and his eyes on the children playing across the sward, “it was a worse bore than dinner with Stanton and Chase at the same table. And I suppose I felt guilty, off in the country, watching the titled glories of England shotgun every living thing in a pair of counties while you were in town doing my work for me.”