A Covent Garden Mystery

by Jennifer Ashley

  Brandon stopped as Louisa and I came off the last stair, and he directed his words at me. "What are you doing here?"

  I inclined my head. "I am well, thank you."

  He transferred his blue glare to his wife. "I thought you said you were not allowing him the house."

  "I pummeled my way past your butler," I said, not really in the mood to spar with Brandon. "But I am leaving."

  I took my hat and gloves from the footman, noting that Matthews had made himself scarce. Black Nancy came from the back of the house just then.

  "Ee, Captain, don't you look fine, all in your blue and silver." She took my arm. "Me pals will be pea green when they see me with you."

  Brandon scowled at her. Despite his own indiscretions, he did not approve of Louisa's strays, especially not game girls. He said nothing, only turned his back on us all and ascended the stairs.

  *** *** ***

  Louisa insisted that her own coach take us back to Covent Garden. Nancy rode in it like a queen, staring regally out the window, pretending to be a lady of fashion. She looked down her snub nose at me and drawled nonsense in a ridiculous parody of an upper-class accent. At least her antics made me laugh, and I felt a little better.

  I decided to think over my choices concerning Carlotta and come to a decision about what best to do. I would consult Grenville--a true neutral party. He could put his fingertips together and narrow his eyes and examine the problem objectively. He also had solicitors at his beck and call who might find another solution than a public divorce. I did not necessarily have to use James Denis entirely in this matter.

  I bade the coachman put us down in Maiden Lane, in front of the Rearing Pony. We'd arrived a little before time, and I saw no sailing man awaiting us. I recognized the regulars, who nodded at me. The rest of the room was filled with reedy clerks or drovers stopping for a nourishing pint of ale.

  They all rather stared when I led Nancy to an inglenook and slid into its more private benches. The landlord's wife, Anne Tolliver, brought us overflowing glasses of ale, cast a curious look at Nancy, flashed a smile at me, and departed.

  "She fancies yer," Nancy said. She took a deep, satisfying pull of ale and licked the foam from her lips.

  "She fancies every gentleman who gives her a an extra coin."

  "Naw. She don't give a smile like that to the others." Nancy grinned at my discomfiture and took another drink of ale. "What's your lady like?"

  "Very posh," I said. "She's a viscountess."

  "Oo-er," Nancy said, exaggerating the exclamation. "I know that. Mrs. Brandon told me. A widow, very handsome, very la-di-da, and quite taken with you. But I mean, what is she like? Is she all smiles and laughs and a good heart, or is she cold and snobby?"

  "Neither. She speaks her mind, but she is kind, in her way."

  Nancy looked doubtful. "Sounds peachy. What will she think of you sitting here slurping ale with a game girl?"

  "Oh, I am certain she will have plenty to say about it. But she knows that you are helping me with an investigation. She wants to help as well."

  Nancy grinned. "Well, then, perhaps I'll look her up, and we'll talk all about it."

  I imagined an encounter between Lady Breckenridge and Black Nancy. "Perhaps you will not."

  "Maybe not. But I like to tease yer." She glanced up. "I think that's your sailor, Captain."

  A short, rather square man had come into the tavern and stood looking around uncertainly. I rose and beckoned, and he, seeing me, made his way to the inglenook. He was bowlegged and walked like a man expecting a ship to roll under him at any moment.

  I realized when he neared us that he was not very old, perhaps in his midtwenties, although his weather-beaten face made him look older. His blue eyes held an air of worry, and he greeted me with an awkward bow.

  "Mr. Thompson tol' me I should speak to yer, sir."

  I signaled Anne to bring another ale. I bade the man sit down, then Nancy and I took the bench across from him. He watched us with a blank expression until Anne set a tankard in front of him. He lifted the tankard, set the rim to his lips, and poured at least a third of its contents down his throat.

  "Thank ye," he said, wiping his mouth. "'Twas a thirsty journey from Wapping Stairs."

  "I thank you for making it," I began. "Mr. Thompson said you were very worried about your young lady. Tell me why you should be so."

  "Because it ain't like her." He shot me a belligerent look, as though daring me to disbelieve him. "She wouldn't walk out and not tell me or me landlady. She'd 'uv sent some word to me."

  "When did anyone last see her?" I asked.

  "Week ago come tomorrow. She were there when I woke up in the morning. Went out at four. Never seen her since."

  "She came to Covent Garden, to meet someone, Thompson tells me," I said.

  The man nodded. "Said she had something special. Said she'd make a few guineas from it. Said she'd bring them back to me." He swallowed. "But she ain't come back."

  Nancy leaned forward, her bosom resting on the table. "What do you do with the money she usually brings you?"

  The sailor glanced at me, blue eyes troubled. He had a blue-black tattoo on the inside of his arm, an intricate pattern that looked oriental. I nodded at him to answer the question.

  "Goes to housekeeping, don't it? Me wages and hers, we buy the bread and our bed. Our landlady ain't much, but she leaves us be."

  "But she's a game girl, you know that," Nancy went on. "Means she goes with blokes what fancy her for an hour."

  "Only thing my Mary knows how to do," the sailor said reasonably. "But she always comes home to me."

  Nancy nodded as though satisfied. "I don't think he did her in, Captain. And maybe she liked him well enough."

  Chester scowled at her. "'Course she did. My Mary, she's always waiting for me when I sail in, and there to send me off again."

  I held up my hand. "We believe you, sir. What is her name? Mary--"

  "Chester, sir. I'm Sam Chester."

  "She is married to you?"

  "In a manner of speaking. That's the name we give the landlady, and I don't know no other. She were with another sailor when I came home three year ago, and she didn't like him. But he wouldn't let her go. So I said, if I win at dice, she's mine. And I won. She been with me since. I only ever knew her as Mary."

  "Very well. What does she look like?"

  Hope sparkled in his eyes. "You'll look for her?"

  I nodded. "I will try. She is not the only girl who's gone missing."

  "That's what Mr. Thompson said. Magistrate didn't believe there were anything wrong in Mary's going, but Mr. Thompson said he knew a chap what could find her if anyone could."

  I pushed my ale glass aside. "I am pleased he has such faith in me."

  "Mary's a bit of a thing, on the plump side," Sam said. "Has yellow hair, but she dyes it and it don't look very good. I like it brown, like natural, but she says it has to be yellow." He thought a moment. "Brown eyes, big smile." He stopped, his voice faltering. "Such a pretty thing."

  I glanced at Nancy to let the man recover himself. She shook her head. "I don't know her, but I never get to Wapping. But one of the girls at Covent Garden might 'a seen her. I can ask."

  "Why should you want to help?" Chester looked at me in sudden worry. "You ain't the Watch, are you? Wanting to haul Mary off for trying to make a bit o' coin?"

  "I am not the Watch, Mr. Chester. I simply don't like to see girls hurt."

  Nancy ran her hand up my blue-coated biceps. "He looks after us."

  I slanted her a look, and she grinned back at me. Chester obviously didn't know what to make of this teasing, and he sagged against the bench. "Thank ye, sir. I've been so worried."

  I asked for another ale for Chester, which he drank gratefully. I pressed him with questions, but he did not have much more to tell us. Mary Chester's habit was to leave the house at five or six in the evening, prowl around Wapping getting what customers she could, and return home around midnight
to share a meal and a bed with Sam.

  The only thing Mary had done differently the day she'd disappeared was to leave earlier than usual to make her way to Covent Garden. Sam did not know the name of the man she'd gone there to meet, or what he looked like, or when she'd met him. Sam had questioned her friends in Wapping but found no answers. The girls had not known; Mary had not told them much except that she'd met a gentleman who could give her a pile of money.

  I asked Sam where I could send word to him, and he gave me a direction of a boardinghouse near Wapping Stairs, not far from the magistrate's house where Thompson did his work. Sam said he would be staying in London for now, though he might be shipping out on a merchantman in two weeks' time. I told him I hoped I would know something by then.

  The three of us left the tavern together. I sent Sam off a good deal more hopeful than when he'd come, though I was not sanguine myself. Finding a lost girl in London was like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. I did have several ideas about where to start looking, however, and having Black Nancy here would be a help, as well.

  "Poor gent," Nancy said as we watched him weave his way along Maiden Lane toward Southampton Street, which would take him to the Strand. "I did meet up with a girl last night who might can help us. The hackney driver didn't want to stop, but I made him. You take your time walking home, and I'll run fetch her."

  Before I could object, Nancy ran away down Maiden Lane toward Bedford Street, the opposite direction from Chester. I saw her black head bobbing along through the crowd, and then she was gone.

  I made my way after her slowly, turning north when I reached Bedford Street and then walked the length of Henrietta Street back toward Covent Garden. I was very much aware that on the other side of the church lay the house in King Street where Gabriella stayed. I made my feet continue to Covent Garden to find Black Nancy.

  When I reached the square, it was at the height of its activity. A mass of humanity thronged the market stalls to buy fruit or flowers, hens or milk, gewgaws or whatever else the vendors were selling. The shops ringing the square were likewise full: middleclass young ladies and their mothers shopping shoulder-to-shoulder with unwashed working-class women with coarse hands and weathered faces. Young male servants swarmed about trying to purchase their masters' dinners, hucksters sidled to passersby trying to entice coins from them, and vendors called out, desperately trying to pitch their voices above those of their rivals.

  The sun shone hot and sweat dripped freely from faces young and old, thin and round, ruddy and pale. A water seller did a fair business letting passersby refresh themselves with a dipper of well water from his bucket. A man selling cool ale in the shade of a brick building also plied a good trade.

  I searched the crowd for Nancy, wishing she'd waited for me. She was nimble and young and I had no wish to tramp all over Covent Garden searching for her. I smiled a gentle refusal at an orange seller, then made my way across the south side of the square, heading for Russel Street.

  I spied Nancy in the shadows of the back of a stall halfway along the square. She waved when I saw her, and I made my way to her, dodging a maid carrying two squawking ducks by their feet.

  Another girl stood with Nancy. Her skin was the color of cream-laden coffee, and her hair, shiny black, cascaded from under a broad-brimmed hat in a riot of fantastic curls. She'd dressed herself in an emerald green, high-waisted gown, and wore a hat with a long green feather.

  As I neared, both of them grinned at me, the black-skinned girl with a gap in her teeth that was very fetching. She had chocolate-colored eyes that skimmed up and down my body, a narrow face, high cheekbones, and arched brows. Her smile widened when I bowed to her, and she dropped into the perfect imitation of a fashionable lady's curtsy.

  "This is Felicity," Nancy said. "A fine lady and a fair friend. This is him, Felicity."

  Felicity looked me up and down, again with a bold gaze that made me want to blush. "I've seen him about," she said. "You are right, Nance. He is a fine one."

  I was used to the game girls and their teasing banter, but Felicity's gaze seemed to burn. She was a little older than Nancy, perhaps twenty, and her greater experience showed in her eyes. She knew about men's desires and how to stir them.

  Black-skinned girls were common in London. Some came to England from Jamaica as slaves, freed when they arrives; or they worked their way over as free women; or they were the daughters of former Jamaican slaves. They became servants if they were lucky, and if they were unlucky, they plied Felicity's trade. Black mistresses were quite sought after, and a clever girl could become a rich man's paramour.

  Grenville had once had such a mistress--Cleopatra, she was called--whose origins had been obscure. I'd never met her, she and Grenville having parted ways before he'd befriended me, but apparently, she'd taken London by storm. She'd gone from Grenville to the Prince Regent and then married a country squire with whom she'd fallen in love. Grenville apparently had assisted in pulling off that wedding, and he claimed she now lived in wedded bliss surrounded by fat children.

  Felicity, on the other hand, would likely remain on the streets unless she happened to catch a wealthy man's eye. That is, if she were not unfortunate enough to be abducted and transported to the West Indies. It happened from time to time that a person wanting to make quick money kidnapped free black women and boys to sell to plantation holders in Jamaica and Antigua. This was highly illegal, but it still went on. My reforming friend, Sir Gideon Derwent, wanted to stop this deplorable practice, and it had slowed, but they still had much to fight.

  "At your service, madam," I said to Felicity.

  "Don't I wish," Felicity answered, her smile brash.

  "Felicity never saw the yellow-haired wench," Nancy said. "But she might a' seen the other one. Name of Black Bess."

  Felicity folded her hands across the sash that hugged her bosom, a fair imitation of a debutante at her first ball. "Black Bess is rather a friend of mine. Haven't seen her in a while, and her lad's been around looking for her. I thought maybe she'd taken up with a protector, but Nance says maybe not."

  Felicity spoke with a more cultured accent than Nancy's, as though someone had taught her middleclass English, or she'd carefully learned it herself. There was nothing to say, however, that Felicity was not a middleclass girl in truth. White fathers bore children with their black servants, sometimes raising the sons and daughters alongside their legitimate children. Felicity's father could have come from any background from small farmer to royalty.

  "No," I said. "Pomeroy thinks she might have been kidnapped."

  "Pomeroy the Runner?" Felicity asked, suddenly alert. "That's interesting, Captain. Last time I saw Black Bess, she was in the company of Pomeroy of Bow Street. And they weren't simply having a chat, if you know what I mean."

  * * * * *

  Chapter Seven

  "Well," Nancy said, eyes bright. "Ain't that a turn up?"

  It was indeed. Pomeroy had neglected to mention this fact. "How long ago was this?"

  Felicity shrugged. "Week and a half, I'd say. Bess liked to turn Mr. Pomeroy up sweet, so that he wouldn't take her in. She let him kiss her if he liked, no coins changing hands. Last time I saw her, in fact, she was there." Felicity pointed to a small gap between stalls in the middle of the square. "It was late and dark, and she was with him, laughing in her way. Couple of days later, Bess's man comes through Covent Garden, looking worried. But I hadn't seen her since then."

  I would definitely have to speak again to my former sergeant. "Are you certain the man with her was Pomeroy?"

  "No mistaking the Runner, Captain. Tall and big man, bright yellow hair, laughs like 'haw haw haw.'"

  Her mimicry of Pomeroy's bellowing laugh was so exact that I couldn't help smiling. "Where does Black Bess live? With her lover?"

  "She and her Tom have rooms in a passage between Drury Lane and Great Wild Street. Not much, but clean, and their landlady doesn't cheat them."

  "Is he still there?" I a
sked.

  "Likely. I'll take you if you wish."

  "I do wish," I said. I wondered why the devil Pomeroy hadn't mentioned that he'd known Bess, although he might not have wanted to admit such knowledge in front of Thompson.

  "Tom won't be there now," Felicity said. "He labors for a builder, moving bricks and such. Tonight, you come here, and me and Nance will take you down."

  Nancy grinned her compliance. I was not certain Louisa would be pleased at Nancy lingering in Covent Garden until dark, but I did need her help.

  "I'll see you home, then," I said to Felicity, "and meet you later."

  Felicity's grin widened. "I can take care of myself, Captain. Have done so for ten years."

  "If young women are disappearing from Covent Garden, I do not want to risk you disappearing yourself, especially now that you've offered to help me."

  "Told you he were a gentleman," Nancy said, giving me a wink.

  They laughed at me, but my concern was genuine. No one cared much for prostitutes who plied for trade in the streets. Rich men's courtesans and women like Marianne fared better, but even so, when gentlemen no longer had interest in them, they had nowhere to go, unless they'd been prudent with the money their protectors had given them. Even the much-celebrated Lady Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson, had lived in near poverty after Nelson died, waiting for the pension Nelson had asked be given her, which never came.

  I pondered where to take them. Mrs. Beltan would never forgive me for bringing game girls to my rooms. Likewise, having them sit in her shop, with its respectable clientele, would also be out of the question.

  "Well," I began, but Nancy was staring in a puzzled way at some commotion behind me, and I turned to see what she looked at.

  A young woman hurried through the crowd, pushing people this way and that, blindly running, earning curses from men and women alike. One matron caught her arm, shouting at her to watch her manners, but the girl twisted away and continued her journey.