A Covent Garden Mystery

by Jennifer Ashley

  I ascended the stairs and entered my front room.

  A young woman sat on my wing chair next to a small table with a lit candle and a half-drunk glass of ale. She had a fat braid of very black hair draped over her shoulder, and her eyes sparkled as she gave me a wide smile.

  "Now then, Captain," Black Nancy said. "You look that surprised to see me."

  * * * * *

  Chapter Five

  She was the same Black Nancy, and she wasn't. The huge smile and cocky manner would never change, and she still had her fall of inky black hair. But the young woman in my chair was a far cry from the girl I had known last year in shabby castoff clothing, desperate for coin to take back to her father so he would not beat her.

  Nancy wore a neat cotton gown as plain and modest as any servant's, and she was clean. Her air of wary desperation had gone, but as she rose to greet me, I saw that her lewd good humor was still in place.

  "Ain't I glad to see you." She threw her arms around my neck and planted a noisy kiss on my cheek. "Let's look at you now." Nancy stepped back, holding my hands. "As handsome as ever. And such a fine coat. Have a tailor now, do you, just like a nob?"

  "Borrowed from Grenville," I answered. "The tailor, not the coat."

  "Grenville, now he's a true and rich gent, but I like you better."

  "You flatter me."

  "You're much more interesting, ain't you? I read about you in the newspaper all the time. Captain Lacey, up to his neck in the Berkeley Square murder, Captain Lacey in thick with Bow Street. You do have a nose for trouble."

  "And how are you, Nance?" I asked dryly. I broke from her grasp, closed the door, removed my hat and gloves, took up a spill from the shelf near the door, and lit more candles. "Now that you're a slavey at an inn in Islington."

  "Aye, that I am." Nance flicked her braid behind her back and held a candle steady while I lit it. "I make up beds, plump pillows, carry trays of tea, and smile at the guests so they'll leave behind more coin."

  "And you like this?"

  "Oh, aye. I have a soft bed all me own, food when I want it, a bit of coin, and I don't have to lay on me back for a gent unless I want to." She lowered her right eyelid in a wink. "Don't mean I don't sometimes want to."

  "You're incorrigible, Nance."

  "Does that mean the same as a bawd? 'Cause I know I am." She glanced at the closed door of the next room. "I'm thinking your bed is nice and soft. Strong, too, I'll warrant."

  I wanted to laugh. I'd rather missed her blatant attempts at seduction, and I was pleased to see that she was no longer so needy of kindness. She seemed to have found some contentment.

  "I have a lady," I said.

  "I know that. Mrs. Brandon told me. She told me everything about you. She's a good one for a gab, is Mrs. Brandon."

  "How unnerving." I blew out the spill and tossed it to the cold grate.

  "That we had a chinwag about you? Naw, it were all flattering. I have a gent of me own, you know. He's hostler at the inn. Knows all about horses, just like you. He ain't much handsome, but he's young and very strong and likes to laugh."

  This was the first I'd heard of a paramour. "Is he kind to you?" I had a more fatherly demeanor toward Nancy than she'd like, but I did worry about her. She was apt to imprudence when it came to men.

  "Aye, he's kindhearted. He knows he's got a good girl in his Nance." She gave me a sly smile. "Thought I'd ask you, though, on the off chance."

  She'd known I'd say no. Nancy had always loved to tease me.

  "Did Mrs. Brandon tell you why I wanted to see you?" I asked. "I need your help."

  Nance nodded, suddenly all business. She resumed her seat with a thump. "She said something about missing game girls, but not much else. Want me to have a trot about Covent Garden, do you?"

  "I hoped you might know the girls who'd gone missing, or at least know someone who knows them. I want to be certain the girls haven't simply moved on and don't want to be found. Perhaps they encountered happiness the same as you've found in Islington."

  "That was you yanking me off the street and telling Mrs. Brandon to take care of me. I was that furious at you for doing it. I'd wanted you to take care of me, you see."

  "I know you did." I remembered the way Nancy had pursued me with relentlessness, puzzled because I had no intention of taking her to be my ladybird. The fact that I had very little money and was more than twice her age had not deterred her. I suppose that, compared to living with her father, the prospect of staying in two rooms with a gentleman who didn't beat her had seemed luxurious.

  "I still think we could have chirped along quite nice in this nest, you and me, but I ain't sorry I went to Islington. Now, who were these girls?"

  I sat down and told Nancy what Thompson and Pomeroy had told me about the two girls. As I talked, Nancy lifted her pint of ale and slurped it noisily. She gave me a nod when I finished. "Could be they found someone new. But I'll dig up some of me old pals and have a gab. Can I listen in when you talk to this sailor chap? I'll know how he treated her if I hear what he has to say--whether she scarpered or really is in trouble."

  "Tomorrow afternoon at the Rearing Pony. I do not know what hour yet."

  "You send your slavey around to Mrs. Brandon's to fetch me. That's where I'm sleeping of nights for now." She looked thoughtful. "Mrs. Brandon seems a bit low. I'm cheering her up."

  I blenched, wondering what Nancy thought would cheer Louisa. "She went through much when her husband was in Newgate."

  "Aye, I know so. She's that pleased with you for sorting it all out."

  I wondered. That episode had revealed many of Colonel Brandon's sins, and I'd left Louisa uncertain whether she could forgive him. Brandon had walked firmly into the mess himself, but my poking and prying had revealed much that both he and Louisa would have preferred to remain hidden.

  Nancy drained the last of her ale and wiped her mouth. "I'll be taking my leave then, if you're not offering me a bed."

  I gave her an admonishing look. "I will find you a hackney."

  She cackled with laughter. "A hackney? Ain't we fine ladies and gents. I can go on me own. I'll look up me pals on the way. Course, some of them won't speak to me, like as not, since I've landed on me feet."

  "Not when girls have been vanishing from the dark of Covent Garden. Look up your pals during the day."

  "They're asleep during the day. Deserve to rest, don't they? I've been tramping these streets since I was a tyke, Captain. I know me way about."

  "You're not a tyke any longer, nor are you a game girl. Respectable maids do not wander about dark London byways at night. I will fetch you a coach."

  She flashed a grin and peeped at me from under her lashes. "Sure you don't want a bed warmer, Captain?"

  "You flatter me, Nance, but you are still the same age as my daughter." Thinking of Gabriella made me falter. I had once worried that she'd become like Nancy, selling her body in order to buy bread. That she'd grown into a fine young woman as innocent and well cared for as any English lady made me shaky with relief. Whatever her mother had done to me, she'd not punished Gabriella.

  Nancy lost her smile, came close to me, and put her hand on my shoulder. "Aw, Captain, I know you're worried about her."

  "It is not that. I have discovered that she is well."

  A look of genuine pleasure entered her eyes. "I'm that glad, Captain. Truly I am."

  As was I. I held on to that thought as I saw Nancy down the stairs and to a hackney waiting at a stand in Bow Street. The coachman leered at me as I gave him coin, no doubt believing I was sending my bit of muslin home. Nancy did not help matters by flinging her arms around me and kissing my cheek as I lifted her up into the coach.

  "You're a fine gentleman, Captain." The coachman cracked his whip and the carriage sprang forward. Nancy stuck her head out of the window. "Always said so, didn't I?"

  The horse's hooves threw sparks in the darkness as the coach skidded around the corner. Black Nancy's laughter floated back at me, more
merriment than I'd heard on this street in a long time.

  *** *** ***

  I awoke early next morning after a bad night. Bartholomew drew a bath for me and shaved me while I lay in the cooling water and reviewed my dreams. I'd dreamed of small Gabriella running about camp, her golden hair tangled and her little feet filthy with mud. I'd carried her about on my shoulders, proudly displaying her to all and sundry, until my men had started calling me Lieutenant Nursemaid. I never minded.

  Speaking with Gabriella yesterday had proved one thing: I still loved her desperately.

  My morning correspondence included a note from Thompson, who fixed the appointment with the sailor he wanted me to interview for one o'clock. No doubt the man would expect me to buy him dinner.

  James Denis's coach called for me at nine. The carriage, with its parquetry and velvet cushions, was as opulent as anything Grenville owned, except that no coat of arms reposed on its polished black door.

  I sat in the splendor alone, in my regimentals, which had been brushed and carefully cleaned by Bartholomew. I could have chosen to wear my best frock coat, but for some reason, I'd wanted to remind Carlotta exactly who I was and what I had been most of my life.

  London traffic, always thick, seemed particularly difficult this morning. We traveled slowly through Pall Mall to St. James's and waited for a long time while a broken coach in St. James's Street was hauled out of the way, the horses cut from their tangled traces.

  The tall houses on this street were the abodes of bachelor gentlemen, all likely snoring hard in their bedchambers above. They would not rise until late morning and then saunter to their clubs in early afternoon. The traffic at this moment consisted of servants and workmen and all the people who earned their living catering to the wealthy of St. James's and Mayfair.

  Once we started again, we rolled past White's, its bow window empty this early, and turned to Piccadilly. The coach rattled past Burlington House and its columned entrance, near which the young man that Brandon had supposedly killed had taken rooms. We turned up Half Moon Street, then to Curzon Street, and traversed its length to number 45.

  My throat tightened as Denis's footman helped me from the carriage. Denis's house was plain on the outside, its facade betraying nothing of the vast wealth within. The hall inside was like the carriage, unadorned, but obviously costly. He'd left the house in the airy Adams style--white paneling, black accents, marble tile, straight-legged satinwood furniture, the walls hung with expensive and masterful paintings.

  I followed the footman, a former pugilist by the bulk of him, up the stairs and to Denis's study.

  I'd entered this room many times in the last year and a half since I'd had my first appointment with James Denis. As with the floor below, he'd furnished it sparsely, but with elegant furniture--a mahogany desk, bare but for a few sheets of carefully placed paper, a bookcase between the windows, a half-round table holding brandy and cups, two Louis XV chairs in front of the desk for visitors.

  Today, he'd brought in a Turkish sofa as extra seating. As usual, another former pugilist stood near the window.

  My wife was seated on the sofa, dressed in a well-tailored dress, holding a cup of tea and a saucer. Major Auberge sat next to her, minus the teacup. He'd chosen civilian dress, a plain frock coat and trousers and shoes, nothing of the army about him at all.

  Denis rose from behind his desk. He was nearly as tall as I was, dark-haired and long-faced. Denis was barely in his thirties, but the chill in his blue eyes was that of a much older man. I wondered, not for the first time, what his life had been before this, and what had made him into the ruler of the underworld that he was. He had most of the London magistrates in his pocket with few exceptions. Any criminal who tried to cross him found himself quickly and mercilessly dealt with.

  Denis and I had an uneasy truce, forged after he'd had me trussed up and beaten as a warning not to interfere with him. Since then he'd helped me solve murders, but with the understanding that he wanted me beholden to him for his help. He'd decided to tame me not with violence but with obligation. For this reason, he'd hunted up my wife in France and had her brought over to face me.

  "Captain," he greeted me with a neutral expression. I bowed just as neutrally.

  My daughter was nowhere in evidence. "Where is Gabriella?" I asked Carlotta.

  She gave me a shocked look. "We left her behind. We certainly would not bring her here, to discuss this."

  "You left her in a boardinghouse in King Street, alone?"

  Carlotta shifted. Auberge said in English, his accent thick, "She is being looked after. Madame Seaton, the landlady, said she would look."

  I shot a glance at Denis. He gave me an almost imperceptible nod. "One of my men is watching the house."

  I exhaled, somewhat more relieved. I knew he had a man who watched me and reported my activities, and I knew that his pugilists could keep Gabriella as safe as could be. With girls going missing from Covent Garden, I disliked my daughter being near the place alone. "Why could you not find them better accommodation?" I asked Denis.

  "I did offer to put them in a hotel in Mayfair. They declined, preferring to pay their own way."

  "It is better, I think," Auberge put in.

  Carlotta said nothing. She bent her head to drink tea, then halted with the cup at her lips, as though she could not make herself swallow. She ran her tongue across her lower lip and set the teacup aside.

  Denis gestured me to sit. "Shall we begin?" He took his chair behind the desk and shifted the papers in front of him.

  I sat down and rested my hands on my walking stick. I noticed Carlotta glance at the stick and then the leg on which I limped. She had been gone long before I received my injury, which was a souvenir of my feud with Aloysius Brandon.

  "I have consulted with a solicitor at length on this matter," Denis began without preamble. "Separation--divorce a mensa et thoro--is possible, given that there has been, in this case, abandonment and adultery on the part of Mrs. Lacey. But a mensa et thoro is not a dissolving of the marriage. Neither of you could marry again legally with only this sort of separation. And I take it that marrying again is what all parties have in mind?"

  "It is," Auberge replied stiffly. I said nothing. What I chose to do afterward was not Carlotta's business.

  "Annulment is the easiest route," Denis went on, directing his words at me. "But unless you can prove that either of you has insanity or that you are too closely related or were married to other parties when you contracted your marriage, there are no grounds. Impotence, another cause for annulment, is also out of the question?"

  He looked at me without embarrassment, waiting for me to answer, as though I should not be uncomfortable discussing whether I could perform a man's function.

  I suppose I could make a pretense that Carlotta had left me because I'd become impotent after we'd produced Gabriella, but the fact of impotence would have to be proved. I scarcely wanted to know how I'd produce such proofs, or how I could make certain parts of my anatomy behave, or not behave, in front of a witness.

  I shook my head. "Out of the question."

  "That leaves a Parliamentary divorce," Denis said on. "You, Lacey, would go through the process of the a mensa et thoro separation, then sue for adultery--bringing to court a case of criminal conversation between your wife and Major Auberge--and then you would request a private Act of Parliament for the complete divorce. This would allow both of you to marry elsewhere." He folded his hands. "A long and, needless to say, expensive process."

  "How expensive?" Auberge asked worriedly.

  "Several thousand pounds."

  Auberge waited while he translated to French francs, then his ruddy complexion paled. "I think I have not this money."

  Denis minutely straightened a paper. "I will be happy to furnish the cost of the procedures."

  Auberge looked surprised. "Why would you?"

  Denis did not answer. "Are you agreed?"

  Auberge glanced at me. It seemed unreal,
after so many years, to have Carlotta in the same room with me, and for me to at last be able to take my vengeance on her. But the vengeance was flat and stale, like bread left too many days, tasteless and unpalatable.

  "What must we do?" I asked Denis.

  "We go to the Court of Doctors' Commons and begin with the separation. Then we go to the Common Law court with the trial for adultery."

  I saw Carlotta wince. A naturally shy woman, the thought of standing in open court while a charge of adultery was read out would be a horrifying experience for her. I could not imagine that Auberge would be any happier with it.

  "No," I said.

  Denis glanced at me. If he felt surprise, nothing showed on his damnably blank face. "She has had children with this man while still being married to you, so there will be no question of her guilt."

  Carlotta's gaze became fixed to the floor.

  "There must be another way," I said. "Annulment. I will claim to be insane; half of London thinks it anyway."

  Denis did not smile. "You must be proved to be legally insane, in any case. You have said that you are not impotent, nor have you ever been. Perhaps you could find a way to prove that you and she are too closely related?"

  "No." Carlotta looked up, her face white. "I know we are not. My father tried to prove that when he discovered I'd married Gabriel. He failed."

  I hadn't known that. So, her father had tried to have our marriage annulled? Carlotta had never mentioned this interesting fact. My annoyance stirred, but I made a "there you have it" gesture.

  "Annulment also would mean that any children of your marriage would be declared illegitimate," Denis said.

  "That is out of the question," I said quickly.

  "Another alternative," Denis continued in his monotone, "is to send Mrs. Lacey and Major Auberge back to France, and declare Mrs. Lacey missing and presumed dead. She will live out her life as Madame Auberge and no one will be the wiser."