The Stuart Sapphire (13 page)

Now he had another reason for concern. On constant lookout for Jem, he feared that if they came face to face, and Jem was forced to recognise him, some kind of explanation would be exceedingly difficult, especially as Tam did not doubt from seeing Townsend’s threatening
attitude towards reluctant and doubtless innocent shopkeepers, that he would cling to any incriminating theory against Tam with the tenacity of a terrier with a rat.

In the Old Ship he was relieved that the landlord was absent and Townsend’s order was taken by a slatternly wench, who nevertheless attracted a lascivious leer and a passing slap at her backside. This was taken in good part, presumably acceptable behaviour from a good customer who also happened to be a law officer.

Meanwhile, in less sinister circumstances, Tam would have relished his enforced stay and the return each evening to the Pavilion’s exceedingly comfortable guest house. Overlooking the gardens, with a handsome room of his own next door to Townsend, with servants to look after their comfort, they were provided with a splendid supper.

The reason for Tam’s change of venue was that the prince was eager to begin refurbishment of the royal bedroom – understandably, in Tam’s opinion. He also saw that this arrangement admirably suited the prince’s plan to keep him in a comfortable prison under Townsend’s sharp eye until a final decision concerning his fate was reached.

If, after supper, he decided to take a walk in the fresh air, Townsend insisted on accompanying him and Tam was beginning to know the meaning of “being in a cleft stick”. Allowed little time alone, he once heard a noise outside his bedroom door during the night, and on looking outside it was to confront an armed guard sitting in the corridor.

Mentioning this casually to Townsend, he received a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘Why, sir, we are important guests and HRH is most considerate in seeing that we are well protected and taken care of.’

Still a penniless guest of the prince, Tam observed Townsend dig into his own purse for any expenses needed
during their investigations into the seamier side of Brighton life, which necessitated frequent sojourns for food and drink, accompanied by further bizarre speculations from Townsend on the probable fate of the Stuart Sapphire.

For some reason, it evidently pleased the prince to keep his shipwrecked survivor alive. Aware of his danger in being the one person, apart from Lords Henry and Percy, who knew too much about the circumstances regarding the murdered marchioness, Tam was fairly certain that he had not been intended to survive the carriage accident, and that the convenient joint disposal of her body and his would have admirably suited the prince’s earnest desires.

Daily Tam was in no doubt that his survival was but a temporary measure, since it was obvious that Townsend was now managing the investigation himself. It seemed likely that unless Tam was able to produce some special ability to track down the Stuart Sapphire by means of his alleged profession, he would be speedily eliminated.

He was certain one attempt had already been made and only a swift leap on to the path had saved him from a horseman galloping haphazardly down the lane.

Passers-by had screamed but, as he reached safety, Townsend seemed completely unmoved.

‘You saw that!’ said Tam. ‘The man deliberately tried to run me down.’

Townsend shook his head and smiled wryly. ‘Mr Eildor, you are imagining things again. Anyone can see how easily accidents can happen. The thoroughfares are so narrow and crowded – and I am afraid these young blades with their fast horses are extremely indifferent to pedestrians.’

Tam realised there was as little point in arguing about the murderous horseman as there had been about the
stalker whom Townsend dismissed as a figment of his imagination. And this attempt first failed, should he meet with another accident, Tam was sure Townsend would not be involved.

The role of assassin would lie with the stalker and Tam had a feeling that he was going to need all his wits about him to stay alive and some ingenuity to escape from Brighton. Escape into yet another hazard. How to find his way back to the convict hulk anchored somewhere along the south-east coast and back to his own time.

Tam would have felt considerably more ill at ease had he known that after he was presumed to be safely asleep and under guard, the prince, when sober enough, summoned Townsend to give a report on the progress of his
investigations
.

Not only was the Stuart Sapphire under investigation but so too was Tam Eildor. Townsend had to confess that he was baffled. Eildor was a man of mystery and he was having him ‘looked into’ by some law officers in Edinburgh.

‘This may take a little time, Highness, and in case he turns out to be an impostor and a spy, in league with assassins against the prince’s person—’

He left the words unsaid. A pause for dark thoughts regarding the scheming Princess of Wales in Carlton House. ‘In Your Royal Highness’s best interests, it would be advisable to keep Mr Eildor here. Keep a sharp eye upon him.’

Ever since the intrusion of gruesome murder into his life, the Prince Regent’s nights at Mrs Fitzherbert’s side had been filled with gnawing terror. Unable to understand why the dead marchioness had not yet been discovered, Henry’s attempts at consolation, by pointing out that the embankment was off the main road, failed to soothe him.

His thoughts were morbid in the extreme. He dreamt once that he was King of England. Years had passed, her skeleton discovered, the dreadful truth and the shocking scandal revealed and made public.

He had almost given up all hope of an early resolution of that arranged carriage accident, which was meant to remove all association with her death from the Pavilion and, guilt from himself. He was unable to concentrate on the urgent details of refurbishment of the royal bedroom, preferring to put the place out of his mind, even though he knew that to continue sleeping at Steine House would soon invite curiosity and unwelcome comment.

Then, almost a week after the marchioness’s murder, Henry rushed in flourishing the
Brighton Herald.
There
was rarely anything more exciting than local news concerning the trials of the fishing trade, or some foreign official arriving at the Pavilion. Today however the sensational headline leapt out at them as Henry read:

The prince held up his hand. ‘Ah, a truly gruesome discovery,’ he said sadly. His accompanying sigh was not of outrage but of blessed relief. It had all turned out exactly as he had hoped it would. Laying the newspaper aside he smiled at Henry. ‘And now we must continue with the business in hand.’

If Henry was taken aback by his father’s reaction, he kept it to himself. There were many questions to which he would have liked answers, but as far as the prince was concerned, this was now an unfortunate incident which had befallen some unknown woman, the circumstances of which would be explained in due course to everyone’s satisfaction. Once the body in the town mortuary was identified as the missing marchioness, and laid to rest in the family vault at Creeve, the danger would be over, the case closed.

Although there was nothing to link the ‘gruesome discovery’ with the Pavilion, the unsavoury details of the carriage accident, in which he had been an unwilling participant, Henry would not readily forget, nor could he share the prince’s dismissal of the unpleasant details. There were still hazards ahead which his father chose to ignore, thought Henry, whose nerves were not of the same royal steel nor his conscience so easily placated.

When Tam read the newspaper later that day, his first reaction was also curiosity, as to how the prince would react to this gruesome discovery and, looking further afield to the senstional news when her identity inevitably became known, how he would avoid connecting this fearful incident to the woman who had been his mistress and had been murdered in his bed.

Tam was particularly interested in the fact that she had
been found stripped naked. Any mention of a fur cloak and a string of pearls – the murder weapon – had been omitted from the newspaper article and one could only conclude that in this instance ‘finders were keepers’ and the unnamed man out shooting rabbits who had made the gruesome discovery, had recognised that the pearls and fur cloak were valuable and their disappearance could be listed alongside the missing horses and blamed on the highwaymen.

The mention of highwaymen interested Tam. Had the law officers thought of that themselves or had someone put the words into their mouths? And as it was unlikely the cloak and pearls would be claimed, had the man with the dog considered this a just reward for the shock to his nervous system? Doubtless he would console himself that the sale of the pearls would keep himself and his family, if he possessed one, in comfort for the rest of their days.

Tam sighed, awaiting the next stage in the drama. How long before Creeve House was alerted and the absence of the marchioness, whose lifestyle was eccentric to say the least, was noted, questioned by her husband and found significant?

Of more urgency for Tam was planning his own disappearance from the year 1811 before someone did it for him permanently, such as the sinister stalker whom Townsend pretended not to notice. In such circumstances the missing pearls and fur cloak ceased to be of importance, one mystery that he would not be obliged to solve. At the moment he had more than enough with a murderer to track down as well as being on hand to assist Townsend’s daily attempts to locate the Stuart Sapphire.

And the intentions of the stalker that only he could see were the least of Tam’s worries. He was also being stalked
by the very visible and determined presences of Beau Brummell and Princess Charlotte.

On every occasion when he managed to give Townsend the slip, if the Bow Street officer was commanded to attend the Prince Regent, and for a brief half-hour he was relishing the freedom of walking in the warm sunny gardens, it seemed that either Brummell or the Princess had been lying in wait and was hastening towards him.

‘Ah, Mr Eildor,’ Brummell waved an airy hand in his direction. ‘That promised luncheon. If you would have the goodness to spare me an hour of your precious time, I am most interested in hearing more of your life in Edinburgh. Are you by any chance acquainted with Sir Walter Scott, or the painter Allan Ramsay? He has begged me to sit for a portrait. Unfortunately I have had to refuse the honour, since the journey to Scotland is so fatiguing and their weather is dreadful – quite dreadful. As for their roads,’ he added, rolling his eyes heavenward. ‘And regrettably Mr Ramsay has been quite unable to see me in London—’

And so it went on while Tam realised that he was being quizzed and interrogated. It did not take much imagination to realise that beyond the bonhomie he had made a dangerous enemy in Beau Brummell.

A happier encounter was with Mrs Fitzherbert. Tam had returned exhausted from another wearisome day with Townsend roaring at suspicious persons in the seamier lanes of Brighton in his totally ineffectual pursuit of the missing sapphire. By now Tam realised that everyone, including the thief if he had not already left for London, would be on the alert.

Pleading a headache, hoping Townsend, who suffered from sore feet at the end of the day, would not insist on accompanying him, he escaped to the promenade, and was
enjoying a brisk walk with a welcome sea breeze cooling a particularly hot, late afternoon.

He was hailed by a carriage. Mrs Fitzherbert leaned out. ‘Mr Eildor, how fast you do walk, sir. Ah, that is youth for you! I thought we should never catch up with you,’ and indicating the seat opposite beside her maid, ‘Would you care to join us?’

Her radiant smile was irresistible. After conventional greetings regarding his well-being, she said: ‘I wonder, did you receive my note, an invitation to a picnic on Friday, if you are free.’

Tam shook his head, he had never received any communication from Mrs Fitzherbert or anyone else.

She sighed. ‘Mr Brummell was on his way to the Pavilion to visit George and he promised to deliver it.’

Tam gave a non-committal nod and again she glanced at him wryly. ‘I am afraid it must have slipped Mr Brummell’s mind or, more to the point, Mr Eildor, I fear that anyone who is favoured in any degree by the prince is a creature to be envied, despised and brought down by Mr Brummell.’

Remembering a conversation she had had with Brummell on the day she had first met Tam Eildor, she said sadly: ‘He believes quite wrongfully and not, I fear, very intelligently that this bringing down the ladder of some favoured person will enable him to climb a rung higher and reinstate himself in George’s regard.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘It is quite pointless. He should be aware of that by now, after all these years. He must have seen many who held favour come and go. And once they go, alas, it is forever,’ she added, thinking in particular of the trail of royal mistresses and the miracle by which she herself had survived.

They reached the Steine, and as they parted, Mrs
Fitzherbert felt sure that Brummell had been wrong, his speculations about the young man were based on spite and jealousy. She had an instinctive feeling that Tam Eildor was honest, unusual rather than sinister and very different from the men of his age she encountered in court society.

Slightly foreign somehow but quite unlike any young men she had met during her travels in Europe, she felt that he was to be trusted, that his word, once given, would not be broken. Certainly he did not seem at all like the dangerous Jacobite spy, the informer from the Princess of Wales’ household, that Brummell suspected.

If only she could be sure, could rely on her instincts. And if only dear George was not involved or at risk.

Townsend could not deny Tam the invitation from Mrs Fitzherbert, but he had hastened to tell the prince, who merely smiled and said: ‘Mrs Fitzherbert is on our side. She is my wife, after all, and knows where her devotion and loyalty lie. Besides which, Townsend, she is no fool. I trust her judgement. Have always done so and always will.’

The prince was remembering that Maria was puzzled by Tam Eildor and although she could see no ill in him, she too had confessed when closely questioned that he might not be all he pretended to be. But she was sure this had an innocent explanation.

The prince decided not to share these confidences with Townsend. He had enough to do without wasting time investigating Tam Eildor, who would soon be leaving them, one way or another, he decided grimly. Just as soon as the marchioness’s body was safely laid to rest.

Most difficult of all Tam’s problems was Princess Charlotte and how to evade her, especially as the warm weather continued unbroken and, eager to be free of the
claustrophobic interior of the Pavilion, she seemed to frequent the gardens each day with a yearning for fresh air equal to his own.

Observing him from a distance, she would shriek and wave in a most unroyal unladylike way and, lifting her skirts, rush panting to his side.

Tam stood transfixed at this onslaught. He could hardly pretend not to see her, turn his back and take to his heels, quickly launching himself in the opposite direction. Instead, he must stand his ground, wait, bow, and smile.

The princess’s conversation did not vary, nor her lingering grasp of his hand. ‘It is so good to see you,’ and with a sigh, ‘I think of you already as my dear and devoted friend, Mr Eildor.’

(Where had she got that idea, Tam wondered.)

‘You are so understanding and it grieves me deeply to know that your time with us is so short, fleeting every day, and we have still so much unsaid between us. So much to learn about one another.’

One morning, skimming through the largely local gossip in the
Brighton Herald
, he came across one item of personal interest:

‘As mentioned in an earlier edition, Mr Tam Eildor, an Edinburgh lawyer and passenger on the
Royal Stuart
, has been identified as the sole survivor of the wreck which took all other lives.’

The princess mentioned that she had seen it. ‘The newspaper is of course circulated each day in the library. Many visitors have read it and the Master of Ceremonies is very keen that you should come and honour us with an account of your ordeal on the
Royal Stuart
.’

Not if I can avoid it, thought Tam, still smiling bravely as on each occasion she presumed a little more, brazenly
clinging to his arm and smiling closely into his face, her head touching his own.

Out of the corner of his eye, trying not to wince at her warm breath on his cheek, Tam observed the scandalised countenance of Lady de Clifford and prayed that this behaviour would not reach the ears or the eyes of her father.

That, he realised, would give the Prince Regent an excellent excuse to dispose of Tam Eildor legitimately, on a treasonable charge that he had tried to seduce a royal princess, the next Queen of England.