by Joan Smith
“And this could be the box a lady kept her gew-gaws in,” Black suggested, picking up another piece encrusted with some hardened earth and rust. “A pretty thing when it was cleaned up,” he said, scraping at the encrustation. “Looks like flowers and an angel on top.”
“Cupid—that might be for billy dooz. Prance will know what it is. Anything inside?”
“It’s rusted shut, but I hear something rattling. Could be coins.”
“Let’s take it back to show Prance. Well Black, it’d take a week to sort through all this rubbish. We’ve found out what we wanted to know. Prance’s studio is sitting on a big old Roman house of some sort. There wouldn’t be hand mirrors and jewelry boxes in a temple.”
“No, nor in a government building either.”
They rooted around their findings for another five minutes, but hardly knew what they were looking at, and decided to go and tell Prance and Luten. As Black had warned, finding a hackney on Ironmonger Lane was not easy. They had to walk for three blocks before meeting one.
“If they’re home, they’ll be having dinner,” Coffen pointed out, as they climbed in.
“Let us do the same, Mr. Pattle,” said Black. “Cook is making us one of your favourites, a pork roast, with all the trimmings. Luten mentioned meeting up at half past eight.” Coffen could usually be diverted by food. They went home to dinner.
Since Black had taken over the running of Mr. Pattle’s establishment they dressed for dinner in clean shirts, jackets that had been brushed and pressed and shoes that had been cleaned and polished. This was a far cry from the pre-Black days, when Coffen’s unkempt condition was a by-word. Were it not for the fact that the butler sat down to dinner with his master, it might have been any polite household. They enjoyed a leisurely dinner and at half past eight they took up the purloined box from the cellar and went across the street to Luten’s house.
In the usual way Prance was not the first to arrive for these meetings. He liked to make an entrance, but on this occasion he was there before them. He had spoken to Binwell, who was every bit as thrilled as he had hoped. He would send letters out notifying the members of Sir Reginald’s discovery that very evening.
Prance had even remembered to ask him about Burnes. Binwell had never heard of him. Luten informed them that the machinery of the government had been set in motion. Lord Elgin, the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer and a powerful man at Whitehall, had an interest in antiquities and agreed to exert every effort on their behalf.
Luten knew but was too discreet to mention that Elgin wanted the Whigs behind him in his quest for reimbursement for the awful expense of bringing the marbles from the Parthenon to London. With luck there might be guards in place by morning.
Corinne greeted the new arrivals, then said to Luten, “Are any important Members of Parliament coming to Prance’s party?”
“Oh certainly. I spoke to Elgin and Brougham. Not many of them were at the House. I’ll see about that tomorrow. Once word gets about the difficulty will be keeping them away.”
She noticed that Coffen was carrying something and asked him what it was. “We don’t know for sure,” he said, handing the box from the cellar to her. “We thought it might be some sort of trinket box for ladies. There’s something in it.”
“Where did you get it?” she asked, handing it back as it was still in its original encrusted condition.
“In the cellar of the other house,” he said.
Prance reached out and took the box. “The other house? You went there? Was anyone there?”
“No, it was quiet as a louse.”
“Mouse,” Prance said automatically.
“Louse are quiet,” Coffen said. “Gnaw a little, but don’t make any noise.”
“Lice – the plural is lice.”
“Anyhow it was quiet as a lice.”
Prance just shook his head. “You mean you found this in the cellar? Then there must have been digging going on.”
“There was,” Coffen said, “but not today or yesterday. Might have been a week ago, to judge by the sour milk and mouse droppings.”
“Tell me all about it,” Prance cried, so excited he overlooked the mention of mouse droppings.
“Well, the bread was hard as a rock, and the milk stank like—well, you know how sour milk smells.”
“Not the sour milk, Coffen. The cellar—what was it like?”
“Ah, the cellar. I hardly know where to start. All the lumber’s been dragged out to the yard and they’ve dug up most of the floor. There’s more of that tiled floor, but the body that goes with that head wasn’t there, unless it’s buried under the piles of earth. There were no people and no birds. Just flowers and vines. At least no bodies we could see for the pile of rubbish in the middle of the hole. Plenty of busted bits of statues—arms and legs, and household things as well. You’ll want to get your committee in there rooting about, Prance.”
Prance was breathless with excitement. “This is incredible,” he gasped. “Surely the major discovery of the century.” He thought, but did not say aloud, that he would be famous. Of course he was already famous, but this would add a serious, scientific lustre to his artistic aura. He looked down and saw he was holding the box, which he had completely forgotten in his excitement. “There’s something in this,” he said, shaking it.
“There is,” Coffen agreed. “We couldn’t get it open. It’s rusted shut, and we knew we shouldn’t trifle with it. We left it in sitoo, like you said.”
For once, Prance ignored his friend’s misunderstanding of any language other than basic English. He also ignored the mention of not trifling with relics and asked Luten if he could get something to pry the box open. Luten was not such a martinet as Prance in keeping things in their found condition. He borrowed Coffen’s hasp knife, wedged it around the rim where the lid met the box and soon had it open. Inside was a small, plain necklace of gold beads the size of peas strung on wire. It was in good condition.
“Oh, it’s lovely!” Corinne said, reaching for it.
“A lady’s jewelry box,” Prance said, examining the box anew. “Quite a handsome little piece. It will have to be cleaned up to see the details of the carving, of course. This suggests, does it not, that what we have discovered beneath my atelier is a private home of some very important person. The size alone, extending under at least three more recent houses, tells us that. Commoners, of course, did not have gold jewelry.”
“And there was the pillars,” Black added. “You don’t see pillars in a small house.” In fact he couldn’t recall ever seeing a pillar inside a house.
“I had best inform Binwell,” Prance said. “I’ll take along the box and necklace to show him.” Corinne reluctantly handed over the necklace.
Luten hesitated a moment, then said, “If you want a look at the second cellar before anyone else gets there, this is your chance, Prance. I certainly intend to go tonight.”
“Yes, of course. I can speak to Binwell tomorrow morning,” Prance replied without a second’s hesitation. He set the trinket box on a table and said, “I’ll pick this up when we return.”
“I’m going with you,” Corinne announced. And before her beloved husband could invent some reason for her to stay home, she added firmly, “I mean to see those cellars, Luten, and if you don’t take me, I’ll find someone who will, or go alone. I prefer to go with you tonight, and not get trampled tomorrow by members of the Society. I am not tired. I do not feel ill. I feel fine, other than being bored to flinders after sitting about all day. Now, let us go.”
“Certainly, my dear. I was going to suggest this was your opportunity,” he said, forcing a smile. He knew his wife well enough to know she would carry out her threat.
Black breathed a sigh of relief. That let him off the hook.
Chapter Eleven
Coffen feared the others would want to make a night of it amidst the rubble in the cellar. As he had already seen it, he ordered his own carriage so that he and Black could leave early. Prance
had some notion of stopping off for a word with Binwell after, so he took his own rig as well.
Luten was happy to have Corinne to himself in an uncrowded carriage. Once Black had pried open the back door of the house on Ironmonger Lane with his magic wire, lit the lamps and led them down to the pile of rubbish and the ladder to reach it, he and Coffen soon left.
Prance, Corinne and Luten spent the better part of an hour sorting through the debris, with Prance shouting excitedly that this little carved head was so beautiful it rivaled Praxiteles. As the objects were no longer in situ but had been piled in a heap, he did not hesitate to pocket a few small and not very valuable items when no one was looking. He could not resist a tiny box which would make an excellent snuffbox if he used snuff, which he didn’t—it made a mess of one’s jacket—although he sometimes carried a box of it with him as an excuse to use a coloured handkerchief.
The lid of the box was encrusted with stones whose nature and even colour were hidden by the dirt of centuries. Lord Petersham, who had a different box for every day of the year, would be green with envy. He had nothing to match this. It would make a divine box for headache powders once Petersham had seen it.
Corinne found the cellar dark, dank and dreary, and its contents not nearly as interesting as she had imagined. She did not object when Luten suggested they leave. Prance could happily have stayed all night, but not alone. They left together, Prance taking his findings home to clean up, and Corinne to discuss party preparations with the servants.
When they left the cellar, Coffen and Black continued their own investigations. “Seems to me everyone’s forgotten there was a murder,” Coffen grumbled. “A man’s life is more important than a pile of old rubbish in a cellar. We have to look into who killed Burnes, Black. Now where do we start?”
“We know Thomson and Ruffin are mixed up in it. Where we heard about them before was at that tavern. We know Thomson meets the bearded fellow there, and the bearded man’s likely Ruffin. What do you say we start there?”
“As good a place as any. I could do with a wet after that miserable cellar.”
“Better than a raree show to see Sir Reg rooting about in that filthy rubble though, wasn’t it?” Black said, grinning.
“It’ll take Villier an age to get him clean. This new passion won’t last long. It’ll be like his Japanese teahouse, where you had to sit on the floor and drink tea with weeds floating in it. Speaking of drinking ...”
They didn’t get their wet. Coffen had his coachman drive past the tavern, where he was to park a block down the street and wait for them. As he and Black approached the place on foot, two men came out. They recognized Thomson immediately. The other man was tall and wore a black beard.
“Denny said the lad with the beard pays when they drink,” Coffen said.
“Aye, and that makes him top dog. The man that pays the piper calls the tune. It could be Ruffin. What do you think?”
“Hard to tell.”
“If it ain’t Ruffin I’d like to know who it is,” Black said. “What do you say we follow him?”
As he spoke, a dark, unmarked carriage drawn by a matched pair of bays drove forward at a fast clip. A small white face appeared at the window of the carriage. It seemed to be bouncing in excitement. The bearded man hopped into the rig and it drove off. Thomson walked off in the opposite direction.
“After him,” Black said, pointing to the carriage. He looked down the street where Fitz was to park, but there was no sign of the carriage. “Where the deuce has Fitz got to?”
“Gone,” Coffen said, with neither surprise nor much disappointment. “Thomson’s leaving. We’ll follow him instead.” They kept half a black behind him. He didn’t go far, but turned in at the rooming house where Burnes had lived. “It seems Blackbeard don’t live there,” Coffen said.
“No, but Thomson does. We’ll watch the windows and see where a light goes on. That’ll be his rooms. We can’t go in and search while he’s there. It’s early yet. With luck he’ll go out.”
As they watched, a light went on in a corner window on the second story. “There, that’s Thomson’s place,” Black said triumphantly.
“It’s a caution how you’re on to all these tricks, Black.”
“Experience, Mr. Pattle. Experience. There’s no trick to it.”
“I wonder where Fitz got to. It’d be more comfortable waiting in the carriage.”
“There’s no saying where that carriage is by now. I’ll nip back to where we told him to park and look for it. You can stay here and see which way Thomson goes if he comes out.”
“Good thinking. I wish we could have followed the bearded man. I wager he’s the brains behind the whole thing.”
“His rig don’t tell us much. There’s dozens—hundreds like it about town,” Black said.
“There are, but it was a decent rig. A poor man don’t drive a rattler and prads like that. He’s the man behind all this digging. Wouldn’t you think he could find something better to do with his blunt?”
“Aye, he’s got to be making a tidy bundle on them old statues to make it worth his while.”
Black left and Coffen took up his vigil in the shadows across the road from the rooming house. The light in Thomson’s room didn’t go out, nor did he exit from the doorway. Ten minutes passed, fifteen, and still no action, nor any sign of Black either. Coffen was just beginning to worry that something had happened to him when his bulk emerged, grumbling, from the shadows.
“Not a sign of Fitz or the carriage,” he said. “I like the fellow, but really, Mr. Pattle, I fear it’s time to replace him. How could he get lost, when he was just supposed to stand still? Here—did you see that?”
“What?” Coffen asked, peering into the darkened street, till he noticed Black was pointing across the street, to the rooming house. “Thomson’s light just went out. He’ll be leaving.”
“Or going to bed.”
“Nay, it’s early yet. The only question is do we follow him, or search his place?” He went on to answer his own question. “Now that we know where he lives, we can come back any time. I say we follow him.”
Coffen usually found Black’s advice sound, and agreed. When Thomson emerged, he didn’t go far, just back to the tavern. Sensing that he would be there for the night, Coffen and Black returned to search the flat.
It was such a small, depressing place that Coffen felt sorry for him. Dirty dishes in the sink, and nothing in the way of edibles but tea and bread. It offered few clues, except that Mr. Thomson had no money to spare. Neither the statues nor books removed from Burnes’s flat were there. Whatever his connection with the digging in the cellars, there was no evidence of it found in his rooms. No evidence that Thomson was an art dealer either.
They did find one surprising piece of art, and were in a quandary what to do about it. Tacked on the wall beside the cot in the bedroom was the purloined sketch of Corinne that had disappeared from Prance’s atelier.
“I wager he snapped that up when he was setting the fire,” Coffen said.
Black snorted. “If that don’t beat all. The old goat’s got a colt’s tooth in his head. He’s sweet on her ladyship.” Like Luten, he was deeply offended.
“It looks like it,” Coffen agreed. “We shouldn’t take it. He’ll know we’ve been here.” He looked to Black for counsel. “Do we tell him, Black?”
Black knew he meant Luten, but for once he was without an answer. “That’s a poser,” he said, frowning.
“Thing to do, we’ll ask Reg. He knows all sorts of things, and if he tells us to do the wrong thing he’ll talk us out of it when Luten hears of it. He could talk his way out of robbing a blind man.”
“Share the blame,” Black nodded, finding it sound advice.
The other discovery that night came from the most unlikely of sources. Of Fitz there was no sign when they left the building, so they walked till they found a hackney and went home to call on Prance. Black let loose a volley of curses when he saw Fitz sitting on t
he perch of Coffen’s carriage in front of his house.
“Having a nice rest, Fitz?” he asked, in a voice that made servants tremble.
Fitz climbed down with his head low and his shoulders hunched in abject apology. “It was this way, Black,” he began, knowing which of the men would give him grief. “A gang of rough-looking fellows were sizing up the rig from across the street where I was to park. Thinking you and Mr. Pattle would be in the tavern a good while, I decided to drive around the block to get away from them. Just as I was leaving I caught a glimpse of two men, one of them wearing a beard, coming out of the tavern. The one with the beard nipped into a carriage. It struck me I’d heard you and Mr. Pattle talking about him being involved in your case. And since I could see by then that you and Mr. Pattle were following the other lad, I took into my head to follow that carriage when it passed my way.”
When he received no words of abuse but saw two very interested expressions, he was encouraged to continue. “There was a woman in it, and a dog, leaping up at the window.”
“Well, where did it go?” Black demanded, hoping Fitz had not lost it. He was a great one for getting lost, but was usually able to follow another carriage, if it did not set too fast a pace.
“It stopped at a little house on Capper street and the woman and dog got out, then it went back to Tottenham Court Road and the man got out and went into a small shop there. I couldn’t read the sign on the shop but I could find it again. It was second from the corner. Then the rig went on, likely to a stable, and I loitered a bit to see if the bearded man came back out, but he didn’t, so I come on home. It took a little while since I ended up at Covent Garden—you know how the team likes taking Mr. Pattle to the theatre.”
He essayed a weak laugh. Coffen was known to be a frequent visitor to the Green Room to meet the actresses. “Anyhow, I soon figured out how to get home from there, and here I am.”