by Eva Devon
“My dear Caledonia. I am not red-handed because I haven’t got— Oh, bloody never mind.” And because Toby was still a professional, he disappeared himself out onto the balcony and up the iron railing and onto the roof before the constabulary had even gained the top of the stairs.
He lay flat, invisible against the gray slate of the roof tiles and the soot-covered chimney piece, and listened as a breathless male voice asked, “Where is he?”
“The thief? Gone before I woke,” the viscountess asserted. “Be a lamb, Cally, and fetch my dresser, and my smelling salts. And take those men out of here so I might make myself presentable enough to deal with them.”
Below, a door swiftly closed. And a soft female voice swore, “Bloody hell. Mama, you’ll never make a convincing liar—the book you’re pretending to read is upside down.”
Toby laid low for the next few days—with the constabulary and the Runners searching everywhere from Mayfair to Scotland for him, and Mrs. Caledonia Bowmont no longer quite so acutely fascinated by him, he kept quietly to himself, returning to Isleworth to live invisibly out of his own boathouse on the river, hiding in plain sight by fishing every day.
But his nights were taken by constant vigilance—during which he discovered several things. And several enemies.
One of whom was not Arthur Balfour, who came quietly to Isleworth to confirm a few things Toby was pleased to know. “The viscountess has been steadfast that it wasn’t you. Swore out a formal complaint in which she most particularly insisted that the thief was not Tobias McTavish.”
“How kind.” Arthur did not offer what the viscountess’s daughter’s formal complaint might have been, nor did Toby ask. “You can tell your lovely step-mama privately that she is quite right. And I’m going to prove it.”
“How?”
“I’ve been watching the Meecham mansion—and so has someone else. I’ve felt their presence in the night—heard them moving on the adjacent rooftops, trying to get closer, but not coming any closer because they know that I’m there.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“They are going to rob it anyway—preferably over my dead body.”
“What?”
“They know I’m there, so are going to have to go through me to do so—the easiest way is to try to kill me.”
“How are you going to stop them? You are going to stop them, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’ll try—I’ve gone to too much trouble to stay alive to roll over like a good dog now. But I need help—I need you to inform both the Runners and the constabulary to be on watch at the Meechams' town house tonight. The thief”—although he had a growing theory that this wasn’t simply a lone thief—“is angry. So he is going to make a mistake. But he is definitely going to make his move. I can feel it in my bones.”
Chapter 16
The Meecham mansion was one of London’s older, grander houses, and one of the few that still sat apart from the street, surrounded by its own paling and small parkland. It was a grand 17th century beauty, filled with beautiful paintings and portraiture that Toby would have loved to see, but he no longer allowed himself the dark pleasure of sliding unseen along people’s galleries on his way to and from their boudoirs.
This evening he stayed off the roof, preferring to find a good vantage point in the shrubbery, where he made himself only a little conspicuous—conspicuous enough for the thief to know where he was, but not so conspicuous that the authorities might find him before he could find the thief.
It was a delicate balance he attempted while trying to keep his neck out of a noose.
He sat quietly, resting comfortably against the wall of the house with his back in the crook of the chimney, and closed his eyes to better sort out the sounds of the night. Sounds of harness brass jangling in the street beyond the high stone wall. The clap of closing doors and footsteps on stairs within the house. The low moan of the wind across the chimney tops. The quiet, shuffling movement of the animals stabled in the nearby mews.
He opened his eyes, now adjusted to the biting dark of the cold, moonless night, and mentally went through his plan, sorting out where he would have entered the grounds, where he would have chosen to make his ascent of the drainpipes, or balconies, or whatever means the house presented.
He heard them before he saw them—muted crunches as they came across the gravel drive. Too many footfalls to be only one person.
And there they were—two large hulking shapes making low toward him. Two men too large to be successful rooftop thieves. Two men with knives already drawn.
It was going to be a brutal business.
Toby drew his own knife in readiness.
They came at him fast, with purpose—no hesitation, no shifting preliminaries. Their faces were blackened with burnt cork, but he could tell they knew him just as well as he knew them—his old shipmates, Bolter and Mott, come to give vent to their jealousies.
The more agile one—Mott—struck first, going for Toby’s hair, fisting it up to stretch his neck back—the better to silently slice his throat open.
Toby slashed upward with his own blade, slicing into the soft underside of the fellow’s arm—the hand in his hair immediately gave up the grip. He then used the only other weapon he had—his skull—smashing it hard into the bastard’s forehead, momentarily stunning him.
Bolter was the bigger, heavier one. But he was also slower, though he had strong, strangling hands that felt as if they could choke a bullock, let alone a man. Hands that wrapped hard around Toby’s neck.
Toby had to drop his knife to try to pry Bolter’s fingers off, to pull some air down his throat and into his lungs, but the fellow was relentless, holding on with the strength of a butcher, steadily throttling the life from him.
Out of the corner of his eye Toby saw Mott stagger to his feet and raise up his cosh or pipe, or whatever the persistent bastard had armed himself with.
Toby did the only thing he could—he pushed himself into the hands around his neck with just enough force that Bolter reversed his effort to hold Toby at bay, and pulled him closer. Just in time for Mott’s strike to land with deadly force.
Toby heard the sick crack of bone, but miraculously it wasn’t his bone—the pain he expected never came. Instead, the beefy hands around his neck went slack. Bolter sagged down on top of Toby with dead, crushing weight.
Toby managed to slide out from under him, letting the body down in a scattering of gravel, and turned to meet the stunned Mott still holding the pipe.
In his horror, Mott turned and fled at the first shrill screech of a constable’s whistle. A barrage of footfalls sounded on the gravel from every direction, while lights flared from the house, as if they had been in waiting to spill out into the yard, cutting off potential paths, blocking Toby from following his would-be attacker.
But he knew a better escape. Always three ways in and five ways out.
Toby retreated into the dark of the shrubbery at the base of the chimney, and immediately made use of the irregular stonework as footholds. He was up and flattened into the crook of the chimney top in a trice, well out of sight of the constabulary below who clustered like flies around the body of the dead man. As if that poor fellow were the answer to their search.
As if there weren’t another still loose in the night.
Cally did not miss him in the least. She had not spent most of her waking hours thinking about him, worrying about him, heartsick over her mistake.
And what a dreadful mistake it was.
Because the headline blaring across the frontispiece of the Tattler being hawked by a lad on the street corner proclaimed that the Mayfair jewel thief was dead.
Cally felt an awful moment of stunned numbness before the pain set in, as if something within her chest had torn in two, and was spreading hot poison inside her.
She had to grasp her mama’s arm to steady herself.
“Cally?”
It could not be. She wouldn’t allow it.
“Call
y? Where are you going?”
She forced herself to walk the three paces to the corner and dig the necessary coins out of her purse to buy the broadsheet, but she could barely steady her hands enough to read the lines that proclaimed the plague of jewelry thefts that had beset society was not the work of the renowned Scottish thief, but another, who had met his just end, his skull crushed after falling from a Mayfair rooftop.
Now it was mama who clutched Cally’s arm. “Who is it? Is he dead?”
No need to ask who ‘he’ was.
“No.” Cally was too sick with relief to say more for a long moment. She could feel the awful emotion wash out of her, as if someone had pulled the plug on all her fears. She had to take a deep, fortifying breath before she could continue. “It says his name was Bolter, and that he worked at the wine merchant’s warehouse on the Strand. It says that he was a career criminal of long repute.”
Mama clasped a hand to her chest. “Thank goodness.”
Yes, Cally agreed. She would thank goodness, or badness, or wrongness—however it was that Tobias McTavish had not been involved, she was glad of it.
Glad she had been wrong about him.
“You’re going to have to apologize to him.”
“I know.” Although knowing it only made Cally dread it more. She was particularly bad at apologies—she had too much experience of being right.
“You were wrong about him.”
“I know,” Cally repeated with a little more heat. She was also very bad at taking criticism—especially of the I-told-you-so variety.
“Hugh had the measure of him—he said McTavish was an honest man.”
“I know,” Cally repeated for what she hoped was the last time. “He was right, and I was wrong, and I will make my apology, just as I ought. You needn’t tease any further. I’ll make it the handsomest apology ever.”
“You do that, lamb. And while you’re at it—do figure out how you managed to fall in love with such an inappropriate man.”
Chapter 17
After the debacle of the previous night—a debacle that had left a man dead—Toby decided it was past time for him to beard the lion in his den, and speak to the resident magistrate of the Bow Street Court.
“What a comfortably cozy group.” Toby said amiably as he let himself into the office where Arthur Balfour, two Runners, the editor of the Tattler, and the magistrate himself sat in conference.
“McTavish.” Arthur Balfour rose in some confusion. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“So I surmise—you’re far too easy to follow, young Arthur. You’ll need to work on that. But I came to congratulate the magistrate’s office on their triumph—they have caught their thief. And to ask, now that my name has been cleared, if I may return unmolested to Isleworth and my farm? My profession—my land and my crops—have suffered in my absence. I wish to know if I may at last go back to making an honest living?”
There was pronounced quiet in the room that told him no answer was yet forthcoming.
Instead, poor young Arthur Balfour stepped into the breach. “I told them that you were the one to tip me off, McTavish—that it was you who helped to capture this Bolter fellow in the act.”
“Yes, I thank you. Quite surprised me, that—Bolter being the thief. I didn’t think he had it in him, what with his injuries.”
“Injuries?” the heavy-set magistrate bestirred himself to ask.
“Yes, quite cut up in the war, poor bastard. Lost his leg at Trafalgar. Never quite as nimble on his peg after that.” He enjoyed their astonished looks. “Oh, didn’t you know that? He had a wooden leg. But I imagine that fact was carefully kept out of the newspaper accounts. But it’s hard to imagine him silently crossing London’s rooftops when he couldn’t even cross the floor at Grindle & Company without making a racket.”
“Good Lord,” Arthur Balfour was aghast. “Do you mean—”
“Of course I do. This headline is only a sop to Bow Street’s pride—a convenient lie to sell both newspapers and their services to a wary public.” Toby looked askance at the newspaper man. “And they know it.”
“We also know we shall be keeping a wary eye on you, McTavish—don’t think we won’t.” The magistrate’s sour tone matched his prune-faced look.
“Thank you.” Toby bowed in their direction. “That is what I came here to find out.” He replaced his hat atop his head and stood to take his leave. “I’ll make it easier for you. You know where to find me—in Isleworth, where you can keep an eye on me. But first, I have a funeral to attend, where I’m going to get a good look at the real thief.”
The service was held nearby, in the sober, newly-restored St. Paul’s in Covent Garden. Only a few years ago, the barn-like church had been nothing but a roofless burned-out hulk, raising the empty arms of its walls heavenward in entreaty. The churchyard was still blanketed with the fall of ash—a fitting enough metaphor for the devastation this particular crime spree was taking on people’s lives.
Toby knew most of the assembly—men from the warehouse who had all been former shipmates when they had risked life and limb together as Jack Tars for His Majesty, George the Third’s behalf. But the brotherhood of shipboard life had given way to jealousy and suspicion in the current circumstance. His friends might have laughed and joked about his prowess as a renowned burglar back then, but they weren’t laughing now.
No, they were staring him down, or avoiding his gaze altogether with narrow, downcast eyes. But Toby wasn’t about to look down. No, he was going to search each and every face for evidence. These were hard men, accustomed to hurt and deprivation. Many of them had actually preferred the hardships of the navy—at least they had been clothed and fed regularly—before they had banded together to pool their monies and form their company. Toby had given the lion’s share of that prize money—for he had been elevated to an officer, and had a greater share—but had accepted only a working share of the company in deference to the others’ wishes.
Perhaps it was the memory of that deference that brought Grindle to his side. “It is good that you’ve come to pay your respects,” he said with a low sigh. “A sad end for a brave man.”
“Indeed,” was all Toby allowed, while he noted that Mott was conspicuously absent. “What will become of his daughter?”
“We will take care of her, of course—her father’s share has gone to her.”
“Good.” Toby kept his voice low and even. “It will be of some comfort to know she will not starve.”
“No, indeed.” Grindle was all whispered paternal sympathy. “We look after our own.”
Toby wasn’t sure if that sounded like a promise or a threat—in the present circumstance, he reckoned it was wise to take it as both.
“But the lads owe you their thanks—you risked the gaol to help capture the real thief.”
If Grindle believed that, Toby had some swampy acreage upriver to sell him.
“But you’ve your compensation for the risk,” Grindle offered with a faint twist of a smile.
“Do I?”
“Your estate up the river where you live in quiet and comfort. And perhaps the girl from the other morning—I’m told she’s quite beautiful.”
Grindle was fishing—as if Betty, or the boys he had set to follow Toby, hadn’t made Grindle a full and colorful report.
Toby decided to help Grindle along—what better way to play out this particular chess game than to offer up a pawn. “Ah, yes,” he murmured appreciatively. “Mrs. Bowmont. Caledonia McAlden Bowmont. You’ll recognize the name and remember her older brother, Lieutenant—now Captain Sir Hugh—McAlden, from our days aboard the Vanguard.”
Grindle’s face showed his surprise—his spies were perhaps not everywhere. “I see.”
“Do you? Her family are old friends to me—steadfast and loyal. Of course you know her mother is Viscountess Balfour, for whom you will be providing wine for her masquerade ball.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Yes.” It was al
most like watching a waterwheel turn—Grindle’s thoughts were so transparent, Toby was learning valuable information of his own. “Perhaps I’ll see you there?”
“Are you such great friends that they have invited you?” Grindle was genuinely surprised, but quickly masked his expression in bland interest. “What costume will you wear?”
Toby allowed himself the pleasure of a very small smile. “I’ll surprise you.”
“What are ye saying?” The shrill question burst from the lips of Betty Bolter, interrupting the vicar’s solemn service. “What must ye talk of like idlers while me father’s not yet cold in his grave?”
Hands came to console her but she shrugged them off, spitting fire and ire. “It’s on account’a ye ’e’s dead,” she accused Toby, venting her grief at him. “We all know that,” she sobbed. “Get out of here. Get out, ye damn thief. Ye bloody murderer!”
There was nothing for Toby to do but to honor at least this small request, even though she was only partially right—it had not been his hand that had crushed her father’s skull, but he was the reason Bolter had been at the mansion that night.
But his former shipmates had begun to close in, crowding round, their thick arms and broad working-men’s chests barring his way. If they wanted to beat him to death on the spot as simple-minded revenge for one of their own killing Bolter instead of Toby, there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
Before he could even register the cold heat of fear in his gut, the vicar spoke. “There will be no further blood shed on this hallowed ground, do you hear me? This is not the time.”
The wall of men fell back, leaving a gap he was still obliged to push through. But they let him go. This time.
Toby was not such a fool as to think the cold hand of retribution wasn’t still coming his way.
Chapter 18
Cally was waiting for him outside the churchyard in her mother’s sleek unmarked carriage. The newspaper had a notice of the funeral, and it had taken no great deduction to surmise that McTavish would be there. “McTavish!” she called, leaning out the open window of the carriage. “Toby.”