‘Now,’ she was saying in a businesslike voice, ‘since the method of communication between Madame Du Barry and you has for the immediate future been decided, I would be glad for your advice as to the safest means of conveying information to and from Paris.’
‘Do not tell me you must return so quickly!’ he exclaimed in exaggerated dismay.
‘I shall be here several days yet, but that we should not meet more often than is absolutely necessary must appear obvious to you.’
He was standing close to her now, bending his fixed stare upon her, a sickeningly musty odour emanating from him, so that she was conscious of the increased beat of her heart and she had to clench her gloved hands tightly to save herself from rushing out of the room. ‘We may meet here as often as we choose. I live alone except for a drab who comes in to clean for me. When she remembers.’ His gaze shifted from her, briefly to survey their surroundings, his face twitching with disgust. ‘We may frame our schemes over supper and a bottle of wine and be in no danger at all. No danger, that is,’ his face drawing closer to hers, ‘except to me.’
‘To you?’
‘The danger,’ he answered, showing his blackened teeth in a lascivious grin, ‘that lies in your own fascinating person.’
She pushed back her chair to face him, quivering with furious indignation. ‘You do forget yourself, Monsieur Morande,’ and he could not mistake the underlining of the prefix.
‘So Comtesse?’ he snapped with a retaliatory sneer, ‘I remember only that you and I are no longer designated by rank, save that of spy, each compelled by our trade to cheat and deceive, each, if caught, liable to the same penalty.’ He drew a dirty finger significantly across his neck. ‘So why not enjoy life — and love — while we may? Who knows what fatal dawn a night of pleasure may precede?’
‘Cochon!’
She twisted away from his grasp only to find he now stood between her and the door. She turned swiftly, placing herself on the other side of the table, backing before his watchful approach, calculating how she might dash for the door and wrench it open before he caught her. With a sudden snarl of fury, he hurled the table aside, sending the papers, books and candlestick to the floor. The candle-flame sputtered a second and then went out. In the sudden darkness Morande’s harsh breathing, as he came at her, seemed to fill the room.
13.
Midday following his dramatic Blackheath meeting with Chagrin, Nick Rathburn sat before the sitting room fire of his St. Martin’s Lane lodgings over a pipe of tobacco. His first fear as he had stared at Chagrin in the lightning flash was she would recognize him, and he by virtue of the secret nature of his employment not free to offer her the true interpretation of his circumstances. But she gave no sign she had penetrated his disguise, her face merely showing fearless scorn. ‘Do you keep your hands from me.’
Then the thunder had crashed and the black swollen sky split repeatedly in ragged flashes of lightning, and the cloud-burst descended upon them. Impulsively leaning from his saddle, he pulled the head of her cloak over Chagrin’s head, and, shielding her as best he could from the storm’s onslaught, urged her back to the coach. Coupled with the shock of his encounter with Chagrin was the puzzling absence of Boehemer among the passengers. There being no further object in detaining them, the storm served as an admirable excuse to disentangle himself from the situation. Ordering the coachman, striving to calm his four-in-hand plunging and whinnying with terror, to drive on, he watched the Flying Hope disappear into darkness. Then seeking a short cut which would fetch him out upon the Dover Road ahead of the coach he headed his horse across the heath.
Some time later, mud-bespattered and drenched to the skin, he was back at Bow Street facing the Blind Beak, a warming glass before him. Mr. Fielding listened to what had transpired at Blackheath. With a philosophic shrug he expressed the view that Boehemer had, for reasons best known to himself or the Du Barry, delayed his journey, or decided against it altogether. The only other alternative was that the information received concerning the jeweller had been incorrect. ‘Though,’ the justice observed, ‘the item reached me direct from a source in Paris close to Lord Stormont himself.’
Now Nick picked up and folded the newspaper he had let slide to the floor, wherein was reported the hold-up of the Flying Hope. No mention of Captain Lash’s apprehension. It had been the Blind Beak’s intention to give out the news of the arrest with the object of preserving the fiction it was the notorious hightobyman and not his secret agent who had waylaid the coach. Nick, however, had persuaded Mr. Fielding that the news be withheld for the time being. ‘What may withholding the news of the rascal’s capture gain you?’ the Blind Beak had asked him.
‘I knew her before,’ Nick had admitted, having described the Comtesse de l’Isle’s presence in the coach. ‘I want to see her again.’
‘You fancy you may be able to ascertain from her some indication of the reason for Boehemer’s absence?’
Nick, seizing upon this excuse, readily agreed they should wait upon the result of his next meeting with Chagrin before deciding when the newspapers might publish that Captain Lash was already languishing in his cell. Nick expelled the curl of tobacco smoke and watched it obscure the sky-blue patch of window and then disappear. His mind still revolving round Chagrin’s image he rose to his feet, his expression suddenly expectant, as a strange-sounding footstep halted outside.
His visitor, smirking, and shifty-eyed, stumped into the room to perch, grunting and wheezing, on the edge of the table, his wooden leg sticking out before him and which served as a peg for a foul, lice-infested old hat. Ex-blackmailer, sneak-thief and thoroughly reprehensible rascal, Ted Shadow had formed an attachment for Nick, convinced he was an elegant criminal preying upon the beau monde, from which fond belief it was suitable not to dissuade him. ‘She is staying at Beaumont’s in Jermyn Street,’ Shadow was saying. ‘I kept an eye peeled for when she should take the morning’s air and follow her. That way I might learn what her business was in the town.’ Ted Shadow’s shrivelled gums showed in a grimace of mortification. ‘Presently I saw her come out to get into a sedan-chair, then just as I was off after it, pox me if a passing carriage did not splash into a stinking puddle to fill me peepers with muck. When I gets them open again she had disappeared.’ Nick, realizing his informant’s clothes were indeed filthier-looking than usual, relit his pipe in an effort to combat the street-puddle stench permeating the warm room. ‘A servant at the hotel,’ Shadow continued, ‘give me the news Lord Tregarth had called earlier and she is going with him and a party of friends to the Pantheon this evening.’ Nick wondered idly if the party would include a certain Sir Guy Somersham, whose wife had lived in France as a child and knew the De l’lsle family. Chagrin’s companion at Bow Street on that nightmare occasion had been, as he had subsequently discovered, Somersham. It seemed apparent her visit to London would be concerned with meeting her old friends again as he queried: ‘And no one else other than Lord Tregarth inquired for her, so you might have discovered if they were the object of her venturing forth?’
‘I began my watch when the clocks were striking the hour of seven. Between that hour and when she went out no sight did I get of any caller for her, except him I mentioned. No messages nor nothing I would not have had a way of knowing about, for a certainty. But,’ winking and smirking, ‘I chanced it as how them chair-men had took her Piccadilly way. I were not far out neither, for if I did not run into the very chairmen, what I recognized as carried her, coming back empty.’ His next words brought Nick’s teeth clenching hard on his pipe-stem, almost snapping it in two. ‘They tells me she orders them to set her down at Half Moon Alley in Half Moon Street.’
Pocketing his remuneration for the intelligence he had so perseveringly acquired, Ted Shadow took himself off several minutes later, leaving Nick in his chair staring at the fire.
Presently Nick was holding a perfumed handkerchief to his nose against the stench from a vast puddle resulting from last nig
ht’s storm and fouling half the length of St. Martin’s Lane. He engaged a hackney and leaned back in a corner, taking a pinch of snuff, to ponder deeply Ted Shadow’s news as the carriage sped across Leicester Fields towards Piccadilly. He was in Piccadilly now, busy with traffic: great lumbering mail-coaches signalled by the sound of their post-horns, around which darted flying chaises; horse-riders making their way to and from Rotten Row; the dawdling throngs of beggars and beaux, country wenches and women of fashion enjoying the sights of the town in the crisp autumn morning. Now the hackney turned into Half Moon Street and halted. Waiting until the driver was headed back the way he had come, Nick, casually taking a pinch of snuff, gazed round him the while to note if he was under any particular surveillance. He proceeded up the street, the sounds of Piccadilly receding. As he neared Half Moon Alley, what seemed to be an animated bundle of filth and rags lunged out from the shadow of a doorway to screech at him for alms. Whether a man or a woman it was difficult to tell, as moving out of the creature’s path he threw it a coin.
‘God bless you, sir,’ the croaking voice followed him. ‘This will bring you a day of good fortune.’
At the entrance to the alley, Nick paused and, once again masking his watchfulness with a casual air, glanced about him to make sure he was not being observed. He turned into the alley and, contriving to tread quietly, neared Morande’s house. The air was cold and musty with damp, and from the walls and doors of the houses around him the plaster had fallen away, the paint peeled. The windows were dark and lifeless, giving him the blank stare of sightless eyes. The door at which he stopped sagged heavily on its hinges. He swung round at a sudden movement behind him. The curtain of a window on the first floor of the house directly opposite was still moving, as if someone had been watching him and quickly dodged out of sight. His attention on the window, he waited. Several moments passed before he saw the ragged curtain move again and then suddenly the bright, darting eyes of a tiny monkey fixed on him with human-like concentration. A woman’s hand appeared and grasped the animal, then the woman herself was gazing sleepily across at him, her other hand holding a robe casually about her naked shoulders. Her lazy coquettish smile changed into a pout as he turned away towards the street. He came back in a few minutes, noting that now the curtains opposite were closed. He tried Morande’s door. The handle turned and he went in.
He grimaced to himself at the pungent, sour smell of the house. Becoming accustomed to the dark he moved cautiously towards the edge of light round a closed door at the end of the passage. Drawing nearer, he made out a man’s voice and a woman’s — Chagrin’s, both speaking in French. He cursed himself for having such little knowledge of the language. All he could gather as he stood listening was the sneer in the voice he took to be Morande’s and Chagrin’s cool, imperious tones. A sudden movement, the scraping of a chair followed by the man’s thick, rising tones and the crash of falling furniture, then the glimmer of light round the door-edge went out. At Chagrin’s cry of horror, a desperate growl in the man’s throat, and the girl’s cry again, Nick flung the door open.
In the dim light from the curtained window and the dying embers of the fire the two faces turned to him were pale and ghostly. The man still held the girl to him, one arm round her waist, and Nick took in her disarranged clothes and terrified expression. The girl’s look changed to one of amazed thankfulness, the man’s eyes greeted him with implacable hatred. Nick recognized the cadaverous features and lank hair: Morande had been pointed out to him on several occasions. Suddenly the Frenchman became galvanized into action and he bent swiftly and a wine bottle smashed against the door-post a few inches from Nick’s head.
In a flash Nick’s hat was skimming across the room and he was out of his encumbering overcoat. The other, who had flung the girl aside, dived for another wine bottle. Nick sprang at him and they grappled, Morande uttering a flow of curses, then tearing himself out of his dressing-gown he eluded Nick’s grasp and twisted across the room to where a knife gleamed beside the dirty plate on the bedside table. Chagrin gasped with horror; then Nick, catching Morande’s wrist, wrenched it round so the other gave an agonized scream, pushed the knife up and away from him, his other arm clasped round the small of Morande’s back. With a sudden movement Nick brought his head with terrific force under the Frenchman’s chin. Morande groaned, and Nick applied more pressure on his wrist, and he heard the knife clatter to the floor. They sprawled together across the bed, and out of the corner of his eye Nick saw Chagrin dash forward and pick up the knife.
‘Do you leave him to me.’ Chagrin relaxed and watched wide-eyed. Morande brought his knee up into Nick’s stomach, forcing him to release his grip and stagger back. Grunting with triumph, Morande swept up the small table, hurling it at Nick, who dodged aside so it merely grazed his shoulder. The Frenchman flung himself at him, but Nick managed to push off his adversary, who was kicking and struggling, with his left hand round his throat. He brought over his right fist with a terrific blow upon Morande’s nose, and there was a crunch of breaking bone. In a last desperate effort Morande, blood streaming down his face, leapt towards the fireplace and grasped a heavy poker. Nick side-stepped the murderous rush, caught Morande by the waist, lifted him bodily off his feet and, with a tremendous effort, flung him against the curtained windows. The rotted window-frame gave way and with a ghastly shriek Morande disappeared, dragging a curtain after him amidst the crash and splinter of broken glass and woodwork.
Chest heaving and his face streaming with perspiration, Nick stared down from the shattered window at the crumpled figure some dozen feet below. The distorted shape made no stir but lay there, head twisted at an angle so that Nick knew Morande’s neck was broken.
14.
The struggle apparently attracted no attention from the neighbours, and Nick, reassuring himself Chagrin was recovered, hurried her away from the squalor of Half Moon Alley. A short distance down Half Moon Street they got into a passing hackney. As they drove off he observed: ‘We seem destined briefly to meet, drive together, then bid one another adieu.’
She did not answer his bleak smile and he saw she was white faced and trembling. Gently he slipped an arm round her slim shoulders, experiencing that same leap of the blood reminiscent of the night of their first encounter.
‘What will happen about him? I mean the — the body?’
Did he detect an undercurrent, not so much of horror in her question, but as if something she had recalled was arousing her fear? Fear of what? He speculated while he answered her: ‘He may lie there till someone finds him or he rots. What is it to you or me?’
The shadow in her eyes faded, he thought, though answering him she gave a shiver. ‘Rien, rien. It was only the thought of him lying there.’
‘He will not catch his death of cold,’ he answered her grimly.
She met his sardonic expression squarely enough and covered his hand with hers. ‘And he could have done the same to you, he would,’ she said.
‘It is a point of view towards which the vagaries of my profession incline me,’ was his response as he adjusted the set of his overcoat.
As they turned into Piccadilly, Nick was considering the results of his visit to the house in Half Moon Alley. He had gone there with the object of confirming Ted Shadow’s news Chagrin was keeping a rendezvous with Morande. Beyond this his purpose had been half formed: as he could not be sure what her meeting with the individual, who was the Du Barry’s spy, implied. That she was acting as a courier between Paris and London appeared evident enough, though the possibility remained she might be an innocent dupe. Yet it seemed to him even if the Du Barry herself had not let fall some hint of the nature of the mission upon which Chagrin was being sent, her first glimpse of Morande, the circumstances in which he lived, would have awakened her suspicion that her errand was concerned with some business not altogether innocent.
It was unfortunate that in order to save her from Morande’s attentions he had been forced to reveal himself
. It behoved him to endeavour to give her a convincing explanation for his presence upon the scene if he was to have any hope of success in discovering exactly the truth about her visit to London. He congratulated himself she had not penetrated his Captain Lash disguise. Under the circumstances his appearance in Half Moon Alley might now strike her as a suspicious coincidence, and then she turned to him, her manner somewhat more animated.
‘No doubt you are pondering,’ she said lightly, ‘why, when I could be more comfortable with my friends, I choose to stay at an hotel.’
‘Sir Guy and Lady Somersham?’ She nodded and he went on. ‘It was from their house I took you to Lady Harrington’s,’ and while her eyes widened, he explained: ‘You see I discovered quite a little about you.’
An enigmatic expression flickered across her face. ‘I can well believe you to be quite expert in such matters. How else could you have learned so quickly I was staying at Beaumont’s?’
It occurred to him that, intuitively realizing she had come under his suspicions, she was boldly taking the initiative, to satisfy his speculations. ‘How come you to be aware I acquired that information?’
‘Else,’ she replied, ‘how came you to have sent me your message?’ He frowned at her questioningly. ‘That you required to meet me,’ she told him, ‘at the house we have but lately left?’ He raised a craggy eyebrow at her. ‘Your messenger very discreetly omitted to mention who had sent him, but after last night...’
The Blind Beak Page 10