Scandal's Reward (15 page)

The newspaper was already several days old. Rapidly throwing his coat back on, and thrusting into its pockets his small pistol, Dagonet swallowed the rest of the coffee, took up his sword cane, and ran from the house.

Several hours earlier that same day Catherine was rattling toward the stews of Whitechapel in a hired cab. The note had come when she sat alone in the drawing room. Amelia was out, visiting more distant relatives of the previous Lord Brooke. David was still down in Somerset. Little Annie was due to arrive from Exmoor any day.

Perfectly content in the beautiful room, Catherine had read a little, then played through most of her favorite pieces, when the footman knocked, carrying a slightly scruffy note on a silver salver. Her hands shook as she sat down at the piano to read it. Almost faint with excitement she sprang up, only to knock several sheets of music to the floor. Hurriedly, she gathered them together, set them on the bench, and thrust the note beneath the pile. Penning a quick note to Amy, in case she should return early from her duty visit, she scrupulously followed the directions she had been given.

These involved a considerable walk from the gracious square to a fountain in a public thoroughfare. There she had met a silent man in a black coat and round hat, who had offered to escort her to where she might meet with the object of her curiosity: John Catchpole. She heard Lower Hobb Lane mentioned, but she was too unfamiliar with London to recognize the name. They were now swaying together in the cab behind the uneven trot of a run-down horse. Without speaking a word, her companion rapped on the roof of the vehicle with his stout cane. The horse stopped. Taking her elbow, the man propelled her from the cab.

“We walk from here, miss. Stay close. No one’ll bother you if you’re with me.”

With those words, the fellow dived into the crowd. Catherine looked about with dismay. The streets were alive with human activity, but the conditions in which these activities were being carried out were those of the utmost squalor and misery. An open sewer ran down the middle of the narrow lane into which she followed her guide, while dogs and half-naked children rooted around without concern in the filth. Her ears were assailed with a cacophony of raucous shouts and bellows, as the inhabitants of the foul closes yelled their comments to each other.

Coming from the clean air of Exmoor, Catherine had never seen anything so appalling. As a vicar’s daughter, she had witnessed poverty up close before, but poverty tempered by the country environment and the mercy of her father’s ministrations, nothing like this. Even in her simple dress and pelisse, she stood out dramatically from the crowd, most of whom were dressed either in rags or various styles of tawdry finery that proclaimed to the world their unsavory profession. What on earth had she risked by coming here with this total stranger? Bravely squaring her shoulders and ignoring the hostile glances she was getting, Catherine followed the round hat into a bewildering maze of ramshackle dwellings.

Finally the man disappeared into a narrow doorway, through a passage, and up a flight of stairs. At the top stood an ancient wooden door that appeared to have been beaten with chains, where he gave an elaborate knock and bent to whisper in the keyhole. The door opened a crack. The man turned and brushed past Catherine without a word, then disappeared into the teeming alleyway they had just left. With her heart pounding, Catherine went on up the stairs and pushed at the door. It gave way before her and she looked inside.

A large woman with a mop of greasy hair bundled up into a gray cap was waiting. She beckoned Catherine inside, then slammed the door behind her. The woman was clutching a copy of the newspaper where Catherine had inserted the advertisement, but since she held it upside-down, it was immediately apparent that she could neither read nor write, and was thus not the author of the note.

“Are you this Miss Hunter?” she asked. At Catherine’s nod she continued. “What is John Catchpole to you, then? I don’t know as he ever had any truck with fancy ladies this last five year or more. Here, that’s an awful pretty little bag.”

With a single movement, she seized Catherine’s reticule and emptied the contents onto a dirty table. There was not much there: handkerchief, comb, a handful of coins, all of which the woman scooped into her apron pocket.

“Here, follow me!”

The greasy mob cap led the way up another flight of stairs that led off the room to the very top of the house, where Catherine was directed into a tiny attic. She was immediately left there alone and to her horror heard a key turned in the lock. None of the chairs looked particularly inviting, so she stood steadily by the window and composed herself to wait.

Her heart was beating heavily, but she willed herself to stay calm. There was no reason at all why these people should harm her. She had deliberately not brought much money with her, so that she could promise a reward on her safe return to Grosvenor Square. Surely the expectation of receiving a decent sum would ensure her safety? She would not be afraid! She was perhaps within minutes of achieving her goal: the truth of what had really happened at Lion Court all those years before, when Millicent Trumble had been found drowned and Dagonet disinherited. Would John Catchpole’s tale clear Dagonet or condemn him? She swallowed nervously. Why should the answer matter so much?

The minutes passed, however, with no further development, and soon coalesced into hours. Using the hem of her dress, Catherine cleaned off one of the filthy chairs as best she could and sat down. The light was beginning to fade outside the window, and since the glass was broken it was getting extremely cold in the little room. There was no lamp or candle to be seen, and before long Catherine lost all track of time. She tried the door handle to no avail. As she had suspected it had been securely locked. The window was stiff with rust, but she was at last able to open it. It looked out over a sheer drop of five or six stories into a black-shadowed courtyard. There was certainly no escape that way. Yet somehow it made her feel less of a prisoner to have it open, so in spite of the cold she left it ajar.

She had perhaps nodded off, when a sudden thud of booted feet on the stair brought her instantly upright. There was a glow of light around the frame, then the door was thrown open and a man’s shape blocked it. The light of his candle threw his coarse features into sharp relief. Catherine leapt to her feet and forced herself to speak calmly.

“Mr. Catchpole, I presume? I have been kept waiting here in the dark for an unconscionable length of time, sir, but I appreciate your having the goodness to see me.”

“What is John Catchpole to you, miss?” The man’s voice was slurred with drink and a thinly veiled menace. “What the hell is John Catchpole to you that you should print his name in a public newspaper for anybody’s eyes to see? Perhaps you didn’t think that John Catchpole might be a very private man?”

“Not so private that you didn’t respond to my advertisement, sir. You were under no compunction to do so.”

“Nor do I have to be here now. But any cove might have a simple curiosity about a person that would bandy his private name about in the public newspaper.”

Catherine decided to take the bull by the horns. “My name is Catherine Hunter, I am sister to Lady Brooke, but I am from Fernbridge in Exmoor. My father is vicar there. I believe you once were familiar with the locale?”

“And if I was?”

“Then I think that perhaps you were unjustly dismissed from the service of Sir Henry Montagu after the drowning of Milly Trumble. Perhaps it’s not too late to set things straight if wrong was done to you.”

To her amazement he threw back his huge head and laughed aloud. “Much wrong! Much wrong!” Then he lowered at her like a wounded bull and grasped her by the wrist. “You’re poking your pretty little nose in where you’ve got no business, ain’t you? That’s a good way to get it bitten right off. What do you know about the matter?”

“I know nothing, sir, but I hoped you might enlighten me. There is no reason why you should not tell me about Millicent’s death, and I am not in the least cowed by your threats. The reward that I promised awaits you in Grosvenor Square, but you won’t get it unless I am returned there tonight unharmed.”

“You’re a cool miss, aren’t you, my pretty? You know nothing, know nothing? Is that true now? Why I believe that it is!” The grip was unrelenting on her arm. She could feel her flesh beginning to bruise under his fingers. When he at last released her, she fell back against the chair where she had been sitting. “There’s just one aspect that you didn’t cover though, ain’t there? Supposing it were a hanging matter, eh? Just suppose that! Suppose it were a matter of a certain cove swinging at the Old Bailey? That might change the way that cove thought about someone that would bandy his private name about.”

For the first time, Catherine was truly afraid. Fools do indeed rush in where angels fear to tread, she thought suddenly, and I have been a consummate fool. Why on earth did I think he would just tell me about it, or about anything? She had not had any way of knowing, of course, when she had placed the advertisement, that Catchpole had sunk in the world and was now obviously engaged in criminal activity. She had naively thought that he would still be employed somewhere as a decent groom or stableman, and would freely explain to her the mysteries that remained about Devil Dagonet.

Instead, she was in mortal danger. No one knew where she was, except the silent man who had led her here, and he must be in the employ of John Catchpole. She could expect no help there. The woman downstairs had taken all of her money, so that even if she were to escape from this dangerous house, she could not pay for a cab to take her home. Besides, between here and any respectable cab rank lay those noisome streets and their inhabitants. Alone, she would never get through them alive. Her pelisse or dress would be worth a year’s living to such poor wretches.

“I see no need at all to talk of hanging, Mr. Catchpole. I came for some simple information. If you won’t give it, then there’s no more to be said and I would appreciate an escort home. You will be rewarded. Should I not return soon, Lord Brooke will be scouring the streets for me.”

“Ah,” her captor said with a wink. “But Lord Brooke ain’t home, is he? And I can think of a certain lady as would give me more for you than any pin money you have set aside. You’re a nice little piece, and maids are worth plenty to certain members of the gentry, who’ll ask no questions either before or after. Meanwhile, since it seems you don’t know nothing, John Catchpole’s going to make himself scarce.”

With that he thrust her back into the chair and left the room. She felt sick with fear. Her only consolation was that the candle still guttered on the table, so that she was not left entirely in the dark.

* * * *

Dagonet went straight to Brooke House, where he demanded from the imperious butler the honor of seeing Miss Hunter or Lady Brooke without delay.

“The ladies are not at home, sir.”

“Did they go out together?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.”

The butler had been inherited with the house from the old Lord Brooke. It was well beneath his dignity to give information to any handsome gentleman who might happen to knock. He began to close the door, when a pistol was thrust into his starched chest. The handsome gentleman’s eyes blazed with a dangerous fire.

“I have no time to waste on social niceties, my man. I’m an old friend of Lord Brooke, Charles de Dagonet, at your service. You will tell me when and how Miss Hunter left the house.”

The butler sputtered. “I will ask the footman, sir.”

It was fortunate that the footman had been brought up from Stagshead and recognized the determined visitor immediately.

“She left about three o’clock, sir. Right after I took up the note.”

“A note from whom?”

“I don’t know, sir. A boy brought it, a street lad, but it was correctly addressed to Miss Hunter. She met me at the door to the drawing room, took the note, then dismissed me right away. So after that, I don’t know.”

Dagonet pushed past the men and dashed up the stairs. Now where? Pray God that she hadn’t taken it with her! His keen gaze swept over the room. There was a conventional note to Amy on the mantelpiece. Without compunction, Dagonet read it. Kate didn’t say where or why she had gone, or when she would be back. She had simply told Amy that she had gone out and not to worry.

Some books lay scattered beside the sofa. An embroidery frame stood near the fire. Perhaps Kate had been reading or sewing when the footman interrupted her? Dagonet sifted through the basket of silks and felt beneath the cushions of the chair and then the sofa. There was nothing there. The pages of the books were thoroughly shaken. One of them, he noted grimly, was Walter Scott’s long poem, Marmion. The tragic tale of poor Constance hid nothing.

Perhaps Kate had burned the note, after all? A fire danced merrily in the grate. There was absolutely no way of knowing. Dagonet ran his hand through his hair. Could she have simply gone out on a social call? Was all his alarm for nothing?

His eye lit upon the untidy pile of music at the piano. Someone had been playing and had left in a hurry without bothering to put the sheets away. Who else but Kate? In a stride he was at the instrument. His long fingers quickly sorted through the pages until they came across the scruffy little note that Catherine had received that afternoon.

“In regards to meeting the gentleman you advertised for,” it read. “Please meet a man in a black coat and hat at the following place who will take you to him . . .”

So she had indeed gone after Catchpole, and had met someone at the cab rank. Would Kate have been taken to the spot that Dagonet, after all his long search, had already discovered? It was the only lead he had.

Scrawling a quick addition to the note that Catherine had left Amelia, Dagonet ran downstairs, had a quick word with the footman, and strode out past the scandalized butler. In minutes, he was at the cab rank and following, had he known it, in the very footsteps of the driver who had earlier conveyed a young woman and a man in a black coat to the outskirts of Whitechapel.