Simpkin stole a glance at the banknotes, of which there was an awesome pile, as he helped his master to disrobe. Perhaps his master had come to a belated appreciation of his invaluable services and meant to render a reward.
Lord Warwick lowered himself into the bath. “That will be all, Simpkin,” he said.
“Very good, your grace.” Correct as ever, the valet left the room. He did not, however, then set about the many tasks with which he normally filled his time, such as washing the glass and silver used at luncheon or attending the sitting room fire. Instead he shut himself in the pantry, there to count the banknotes that he’d palmed from the stack on his master’s desk. Simpkin had his own ways of dealing with ingratitude.
Lord Warwick sank into his steaming bath with a deep sigh. He had no complaint of his hotel, which made every concession to his comfort, including a goose-feather bed large enough to contain two or three people, as well as a half dozen wide towels. Indeed, the only fly in Lord Warwick’s domestic ointment was his moronic valet. No matter. After this next interview he would repair to his club, there to mingle with congenial souls and celebrate his cleverness by winning a few rubbers at whist. So lost was Lord Warwick in reverie that when the door suddenly opened he jumped and splashed water all about the floor. Surely the wretched fellow hadn’t come so soon!
Not Lord Warwick’s anticipated caller stepped into the room, nor his valet, but a black-clad woman, heavily veiled. Her ugly bonnet afforded only a glimpse of white hair.
Embarrassed, he sank down to his chin in soapsuds. “ You! Why the deuce have you returned?”
This invasion had not gone unnoticed in the butler’s pantry. Simpkin scurried to the door of his master’s room and put his eye once again to the keyhole. The sight of Lord Warwick interrupted ignobly in his ablutions made Simpkin nearly swoon. His master would have his head on a platter for this intrusion. A knocking on the outer door called him away.
Simpkin was incorrect; Lord Warwick was not considering beheading his valet, but boiling him in hot oil. “Answer me!” he demanded of the female, whose shoulders were shaking with what appeared to be silent mirth. “How dare you burst in here?”
“I’d dare a lot for this,” she said, moving closer. Lord Warwick had no time to do more than stare at the pistol that she held.
The shot, heard throughout the hotel, was loud as thunder in Lord Warwick’s vestibule. Simpkin, who had just opened the front door to admit another caller, gasped and turned pale with alarm. As one, the men hurried down the hallway. The valet threw open the door. There was no one in the room save Lord Warwick, in his bloody tub. “My lord!” gasped the valet and stumbled against the desk.
Lord Barrymore looked somewhat pale himself. “This is no time for hysterics. Fetch a doctor, man.”
Simpkin tore his gaze away from the grisly contents of the bath, which was shaped somewhat unfortunately like a metal coffin. He looked down at Lord Warwick’s desk, bare now of banknotes, and then at the open window. “Oh, sir!” he moaned. “I very much fear that the master has been robbed.”
“Yes,” said Lord Barrymore. “I rather suspect he has.”
Chapter 6
Crump, having fortified himself with a bobstick of rum slim, moved cautiously among the crowds who bustled along Fleet Street. Once this had been a sanctuary for debtors and duelists, thieves and murderers, as well as imprudent poets anxious to escape the pillory. Nor had the situation greatly changed. Those who cast slurs upon the King’s majesty were still in need of refuge. Crump gazed at the timber-fronted shops with swinging signs above their entrances. His wistful eye alighted upon one of the ancient taverns that were so common here. He would need more than a shilling’s worth of punch to fortify him for this task.
He bypassed the tavern. There was no time to waste, though Crump more than half suspected that his pigeon had already flown. He touched the paper in his pocket, a writ granted by Sir John for the apprehension of a murderer. The papers were full of the astonishing details of Lord Warwick’s death, and the London Apocalypse had gone so far as to poke fun at what it termed the plodding efforts of Bow Street. The Chief Magistrate heartily rued the day that the great Fielding had broken with tradition and admitted journalists into his court, thereby setting a precedent that many of his predecessors had ample cause to regret.
Even allowing for Sir John’s natural disgust with the backhanded blow Fate had dealt him—for Lord Warwick’s murderer could be none other than a woman whom the Chief Magistrate had personally escorted from Newgate only days before, a fact that was recalled with grave displeasure by Sir John’s superior, the Home Secretary—Crump felt that his own treatment had been grossly unfair. After hearing Simpkin’s tale of a violent quarrel between his master and Leda Langtry, and the valet’s further assertions that Leda herself had shot Warwick, Sir John had delivered himself of a scathing denunciation of Crump’s intelligence and demanded that the Runner make an immediate arrest.
The thief taker reached his destination, the shop that housed the Apocalypse, above which Leda had her home. It was not a bad neighborhood. These coffeehouses were far different from those Crump frequented, catering not to unwashed criminals and their whores but to wits and scholars, journalists and writers, who exchanged information no more damning than a clever bon mot. Adjusting his waistcoat, today buff satin with an open pattern in black velvet, Crump stepped into the shop.
The scene that greeted him was one of considerable chaos. Bustling about the small front room were at least five people, all of them talking at the same time. Leda sat on the dirty floor, sorting busily through a pile of wrapped newspapers, while a dark young man, his clothes an appalling mishmash of styles, bent over a large, odd-looking piece of machinery.
“High time!” he cried and swooped down upon the startled Runner. “You’ve come at last! As I’ve told Koenig, his steam press is of little use to us without an understanding of how the wretched thing works.” Crump’s arm was seized and he was dragged across the room. “Proceed!” cried the dark stranger, whose eyes were so pale they were almost colorless. “We shall watch in wide-eyed wonder as you perform a miracle.”
Crump stared at the monstrous chunk of machinery and thought he was more likely to pull a rabbit from his hat. Indeed, this strange young man with his narrow twitching nose and watery eyes rather looked like that small beast. Crump held up his hand. “You’ve made a mistake, my lad.”
“A mistake!” shrieked the young man, thereby attracting the attention of everyone in the room. “A mistake, you say! We have a paper to get out—four full pages with advertising, local news, political comment and vigorous leaders written by the editors and then embellished by the sapient observations of that brilliant commentator upon human folly, the Bystander!”
“Cut line, Willie,” said Leda calmly, from her spot upon the floor.
“Cut line, Leda?” cried Willie, eyebrows dancing frantically up and down. “Koenig swore his steam press could print eleven hundred copies of a single four-page sheet in one hour. Now this fellow says we have been taken in. Bubbled, in fact!”
Crump felt as if he’d stepped into a madhouse. It was obvious that someone must make a move to silence this extremely vocal young man. He did so with reluctance, aware that every person in that tiny chamber would regard him as the enemy. “Lord love you,” he said genially, touching the brace of pistols resting round his plump waist. “I don’t know anything about your steam presses, being here on an entirely different matter.” He pulled forth his identity card. “The name is Crump, and the address is Bow Street.”
“A Runner!” Willie clasped his hands to his chest. “You brave, brave man! Leda, why didn’t you tell me you’d seen fit to notify Bow Street?”
With an ink-stained hand, Leda pushed straggling white hair off her forehead. “Because I didn’t. Be off with the lot of you!” The others filed into the printing room, where a man and a boy were busy at the press, but Willie remained behind. A sudden silence descended. The ill-fit
ting windows rattled with the beat of passing horses’ hooves, the cries of peddlers, the shouts of the newsvendors.
“Notify Bow Street of what?” asked Crump. Now that Leda was safely in his grasp, he could afford to take his time. There was much in the present situation that aroused his curiosity.
“Of robbery!” said Willie, almost hopping up and down. “We have been violated, Mr. Crump! Yesterday afternoon I returned to the office to find our priceless prose scattered about the floor, trampled on, our most stunning bursts of rhetoric burnt to ashes in the grate!”
Crump peered around the cluttered room and wondered how anyone could detect, amid such muddle, that robbery had taken place. “Was anything stolen?” he asked, though with little interest. The Runner had more than sufficient experience to smell a red herring when one was dangled under his nose.
“Nothing to signify.” Leda rose to her feet and wiped her hands against her skirt. “Some personal papers, my pistol, a pair of my shoes.”
“Ah, now, you’ll be pulling my leg.” Though he appeared bland, the Runner’s senses had come to attention at mention of that pistol. Well they might claim it was stolen, since that item had caused a man’s death.
“Mr. Crump!” tittered Willie, as he sidled closer to the Runner. “We wouldn’t think of doing such a thing. Highly improper it would be, though a delightful way to pass one’s time.”
“Behave yourself, Willie!” interjected Leda, before Crump could verbalize his indignation. Her brown eyes rested on the Runner, and in them was perplexity. “I didn’t call in Bow Street, considering our little burglary much too inconsequential to engage such great minds. Why are you here? I hope you will not take it personally, Mr. Crump, if I tell you your presence inspires me with a somewhat unpleasant presentiment.”
Well it should, thought Crump, for the weapon found by Warwick’s body had been identified as Leda’s pistol, and she was furthermore known to be a crack shot, as attested by a miserable wretch who, intent on breaking and entering her shop, had had an unfortunate confrontation with the business end of her gun.
Crump looked at Willie, who was capering about the room like a performing monkey. Why did Willie strike a chord of recognition when Crump had never set eyes on him before? “Just who is he?” the Runner asked Leda, with a jerk of his head.
Willie had heard. “I,” he announced, drawing himself up, “am the one and only William Fitzwilliam, my dear Mr. Crump.” When the Runner looked unappreciative, he held up one slender and somewhat ink-stained finger. “Ah, I see you do not recognize the name. Very well, I shall elucidate.” He took a deep breath. “ ‘Through the galleries of Windsor rambles the old mad king, wild of hair and eye, in his violet dressing gown, here playing a harpsichord for a heavenly chorus that only he can hear, there lecturing an equally invisible senate!’ “
“Willie writes a column for my newspaper,” explained Leda. “He calls himself the Bystander.”
Willie bowed. “I am entirely at your service, Mr. Crump. Only tell me how I may be of assistance.”
Crump was fast reaching the end of his patience. “You might cease pitching me gammon. Else I’ll see you in gaol.”
“Gaol!” shrieked Willie. “Witness me atremble with the palpitations in my heart! Alas, it is the curse of the journalist to suffer punishment for the expression of his views. Consider the great John Walter who founded the Times. He went to Newgate for criticizing the Duke of York and while there had his sentence increased because, while incarcerated, he further censored the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Clarence, and the Duke of York again. I shall bear my punishment manfully if only I may write my column behind bars.”
“Devil take you, make an end!” snapped Leda, and Willie paused mid-spate. She turned to Crump. “Out with it. Why are you here?”
“Leda, Leda!” Willie crooked an admonishing forefinger. “This is Mr. Crump’s opportunity to learn more of the newspaper world. Would you deny him? Think what benefit a knowledge of journalism might be to him in the fulfillment of his duties.” His eyes gleamed. “And think what benefit Mr. Crump might prove to us, being as it were on the inside! We might, with his assistance, publish detailed accounts of atrocious crimes before our competitors even knew they had occurred.”
“An excellent notion,” mused Leda. “What say you, Crump?”
The Runner reached into his coat pocket. “I say that I hold a warrant for your apprehension, Leda Langtry, on the charge of murdering Lord Warwick. You must consider yourself in custody.”
Willie screwed a tarnished monocle into one eye socket and regarded Crump. “I thought, old fellow, that you looked damned familiar! Now I remember that it was you who took Leda into custody before. I had on that occasion prudently taken refuge in the printing room but glimpsed you nonetheless. We will soon consider you quite one of the family.”
“Warwick’s murder?” Leda looked stunned. “You must be mad.”
“Tell that to the Chief Magistrate.” Crump drew forth a pair of handcuffs, which closed with a snap and a spring. “The evidence against you is so overwhelming that the jury probably won’t even retire.”
“This is beyond infamous!” Willie stared at the cuffs. “Do you mean to lead poor Leda shackled through the streets? For shame, Mr. Crump!”
Crump fastened the cuffs around Leda’s wrists. “Interfering with the law is a serious offense, and I’m not unaware that you’ve been treating me to a rare mare’s nest. To what purpose, I might ask myself? Can it be you’re in this thing up to your own neck?”
Willie clutched his throat, the picture of dismay. “And to think I had thought I liked you, Mr. Crump!”
Leda gazed upon her shackled wrists. “So the jury won’t go out? You seem very sure of yourself.”
Crump was not to be goaded into mention of Lord Warwick’s valet, who professed himself willing to swear to Leda’s guilt in the witness box. “That I am.”
“Despair not, Leda!” Willie darted about the room. “We shall make it a cause célèbre. The world will rise up in arms to protest that Leda Langtry has been confined to Newgate, there to mingle with thieves and murderers and the like, and will clamor for your release. Meanwhile you’ll take notes as the scoundrels practice their dying speeches and smuggle those notes to me. We’ll have their last words in print before the wretches ever mount the scaffold.”
“It’s more likely you’ll be there yourself, my lad,” growled Crump, as he guided Leda toward the door. “Because I mean to look most particularly into your activities!”
“Mine!” Willie looked like a startled hare. “You are quite mistaken in me, Mr. Crump, but it is a very amiable fault for you to overvalue me so.” He glanced at Leda. “Have no fear! I’ll see you don’t hang, dear one, even if you did dispatch Warwick to his final rest, which I doubt. Your innocence must be apparent to any right-thinking man.”
“Right-thinking!” sputtered Crump, who with the reluctant Leda in tow had barely reached the doorway. “You think it right that you should interfere with the apprehension of a murderer?” Willie’s smile, a gesture of singular sweetness, only intensified the Runner’s wrath.
Having reduced the Runner to near-apoplectic silence, Willie turned to Leda. “I’ll notify our solicitor of this development. He’ll know what to do. Do you wish me to send word to anyone else?” His voice was a wicked, sly whisper. “The Viscount, perhaps?”
Leda roused abruptly from her introspection. “Yes, tell Ivor. And you may also tell him to inform Lady Bligh.” She jingled her handcuffs and scowled at Crump. “Why are you dawdling, man? If I must go to Newgate, then let us proceed.”
“The poor Viscount,” Willie murmured, “will be quite enraged. I fear, Mr. Crump, that this day’s proceedings will earn you a number of enemies.”
Crump clapped his hat upon his head, not trusting himself to reply. Even the thought of the substantial reward offered by the government for capture of a murderer could not reconcile him to thought of another set-to with Lady Bligh.
“You are positive, Culpepper?” asked Dulcie. “Although I don’t know why I should doubt you when I anticipated as much.”
“Nor do I, my lady.” Culpepper’s expression was as severe as her mistress’s. “You’ll be dragged off to Newgate next, and then think what the Baron will say.”
“Culpepper, Culpepper!” The Baroness adjusted her cashmere shawl, embroidered in gold and silks of all colors, ten ells long and worth a thousand pounds. “You will give Mignon the impression that you are a stick-in-the-mud! And all because I insisted that you treat yourself to beefsteak and oyster sauce and a rendezvous with your adoring night watchman.”
The abigail vouchsafed no reply, but shuddered eloquently. It seemed odd to Mignon that Dulcie’s gaunt and sour-faced dresser should have a beau but love was said to be blind, and in this instance must also be both undiscriminating and fearless.
“Is there anything else?” asked Culpepper, for Lady Bligh had fallen into a reverie. Culpepper was a confirmed spinster, but such was her devotion to her mistress that she would even encourage the watchman who was besotted with her, to serve Dulcie’s ends.
Culpepper only hoped that she wouldn’t be requested to marry the whiskey-swilling fool.
The Baroness sneezed and, handkerchief in hand, waved her abigail away. Culpepper hovered in the doorway, concerned. Dulcie regarded her, and then smiled. “Thank you, she said gently. “You are a great comfort to me.” Culpepper snorted and took her leave.
Mignon, watching from a comfortable plump chair, puzzled over the exchange. She studied Dulcie, whose hair was now lime green. The Baroness wore a cream muslin gown with elbow sleeves and an open center over an exquisite slip and countless strands of pearls. She looked as fetching, if not as innocent, as a mere girl.
Maggie MacKeever Page 5