Waiting Game

by Sheri Cobb South

  She cast the letter aside and rose to her feet, her mind made up. Her reply to her mother would just have to wait. She would spend the afternoon taking stock of her wardrobe, and tomorrow she would go to the linen-draper’s to purchase fabrics for a few new gowns. Not a whole new wardrobe, of course, at least not all at once; the terms of the marriage contract had left her quite comfortably situated, but she hadn’t the income at her disposal that she’d once had. Then again, neither did she have the need any longer for the elaborate costumes which had been de rigueur for the state dinners and levees she’d been obliged to attend with Frederick. She could well afford a new gown for evening, as well as one or two for day wear.

  And as for exactly whom she hoped to impress with this display of finery, well, that was a question best not examined too closely.

  * * *

  Boxing Day might still be a holiday for the leisured classes, but at the magistrate’s court in Bow Street, the term had an entirely different meaning, as those merrymakers who had imbibed too freely the previous evening had been hauled in by the night patrol on charges of brawling, assault, disturbing the peace, or some combination of the three.

  “So much for peace on earth and goodwill toward men,” Mr. Colquhoun grumbled to Pickett, having dismissed the last of these with a stern warning and a hefty fine. “A pity it never lasts beyond the fourth cup of wassail. That’s why my Janet has always imposed a two-cup limit.”

  Pickett merely smiled at this. It had been clear that at least one of the gentlemen present had found a way around this restriction, for Fanny’s husband, Robert, had been just a bit well-to-live by the time the party had broken up.

  “Aye, we’re a worthless, good-for-nothing lot,” the magistrate said, apparently reading Pickett’s thoughts. “Still, I hope Christmas with the Colquhouns was better than spending the holiday alone.”

  “It was, sir, very much.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it, for my family will take it very ill if you are not included next year. My granddaughter Janet, Mary’s girl, has made up her mind to marry you, just so you can keep her supplied with raisins. I felt it only fair to warn her that by next Christmas your affections might be engaged elsewhere, and that you might even be in a position to celebrate with a family of your own.” Seeing the doubtful expression on his protégé’s face, the magistrate added bracingly, “Come, John, you’re young, and for some reason females seem to find your face appealing. No knowing what the coming year may bring.”

  Pickett knew very well what the coming year would bring for him: abject humiliation, as a result of which he would have become such a laughingstock that no decent woman would allow him to court her. Not that he would wish to do so in any case, having irrevocably lost his heart to the very lady for whose sake he was prepared to abase himself.

  Thankfully, the magistrate did not give him time to dwell on the matter. “But in the meantime, crime never takes a holiday. Sir Archibald Maddox claims his wife’s pearls were snatched right off her neck as her ladyship was leaving divine services at St. George’s yesterday morning, and requests a Runner to investigate.”

  Pickett frowned thoughtfully. “They were stolen yesterday, and the theft is only being reported today? Why the delay?”

  “I daresay it has something to do with the fact that yesterday was Christmas Day. But perhaps you’d like to put that question to the lady herself.” As further incentive, he added, “The pearls belonged to her mother, so they have a sentimental value far in addition to their monetary worth. Lady Maddox is offering a reward of twenty pounds for their safe return. You could find a use for twenty pounds, could you not?”

  Pickett opened his mouth to agree, and then hesitated as a new and unwelcome thought occurred to him. “St. George’s? The one in Hanover Square?”

  Mr. Colquhoun nodded. “Not in the square proper, but very near it—hence the name.”

  “And St. George’s, Hanover Square is the parish church for Mayfair, is it not?”

  “Aye, it is,” the magistrate affirmed with lowering brow, having a very fair idea of Pickett’s thought processes.

  “Then—then I thank you for the opportunity, sir, but I think you would do better to send one of the others. Mr. Foote has already solved one such case, so perhaps he would be the best man for this one.”

  The bushy white eyebrows descended in earnest. “Recovering stolen property hardly constitutes solving a case, Mr. Pickett, and you would do well to remember it! Paying out finders’ fees is a far cry from bringing a criminal to justice. I’m sure I need not tell you which one I would prefer.”

  “No, sir, but you said—you promised me you wouldn’t send me to Mayfair, at least not for a while.”

  “I did, although God only knows what possessed me to do so,” Mr. Colquhoun grudgingly agreed. “It’s unlikely you would see the woman at all. And even if you did, well, you can’t go on avoiding her forever.”

  Perhaps not, but Pickett intended to try. In fact, it was worse than his mentor knew. If it were only a matter of seeing her again, he would gladly run all the way to Mayfair on the slightest chance of catching a glimpse of her. But the last time they had been together he, not content with nursing a hopeless love in secret, had recklessly declared himself, pouring out his pent-up feelings in a flood of words that, once given vent, refused to be held back. And her response had been . . . nothing. She’d stood there staring at him, mouth open in shock and dismay, not saying a word. No, he could not face her again. Not after that.

  The magistrate’s face became slowly suffused with red, a transformation which experience had taught Pickett did not bode well for his cause. Thankfully, before Mr. Colquhoun could favor his protégé with an opinion of that young man’s cowardice, stubbornness, and general recalcitrance, the door opened and a red-cheeked lad blew into the magistrate’s court along with the winter wind.

  “Yes, what do you want?” snapped Mr. Colquhoun with uncharacteristic surliness.

  The boy snatched off his frayed knitted cap and tugged at his forelock. “Begging your pardon, your worship, but my master sent me—Mr. Robinson, that is, in Piccadilly. Someone broke into the safe and took all the money.”

  “Your master is a shopkeeper?” the magistrate asked, moderating his tone.

  “Aye, your worship, a linen-draper,” the lad said, twisting his cap in his hands.

  “Very well, Mr. Pickett here will go with you.”

  Piccadilly was still a bit closer to Mayfair than Pickett would have liked, as it bordered that aristocratic neighborhood to the south, but he knew better than to argue. As he set out with the boy, he consoled himself with the knowledge that since this crime concerned a merchant rather than the aristocratic class to which Lady Fieldhurst belonged, he was unlikely to encounter her over the course of the investigation.

  Fifteen minutes’ walk brought them to the establishment of Geo. Robinson, Linen-draper to the Quality since 1668, according to the sign over the door; Pickett could only assume that either the proprietor was extraordinarily long-lived, or else the current Geo. Robinson was only the latest in a long line of linen-drapers to bear the name. The large pane-glass window framed a display of artfully arranged fabrics, all attractively draped to entice the buyer inside. Interestingly, these were not the heavy velvets and wools one might expect to see in late December, but a pastel-hued variety of light muslins better suited to Easter than Christmas. Pickett supposed the Quality (who, if the sign were to be believed, comprised Mr. Robinson’s clientele) must already be thinking of their wardrobes for the coming social Season. He wondered if Lady Fieldhurst would be having new clothes made up in preparation for putting off her blacks. He wondered if there would ever come a time when he would not be constantly reminded of the lady who was, at least so far as the law was concerned, his wife.

  Shaking off the unproductive train of thought, he turned his attention to the matter at hand. Nothing about the building’s exterior suggested a recent burglary: all the window panes were still intact, a
nd although the lock would require a closer examination, the door did not at first glance appear to have been forced. Even as Pickett formed this first impression, the lad announced, “Here we are,” and flung open the door, setting the bell above it jangling. Pickett glanced up at it, making a mental note that anyone entering that way would find it difficult to do so without attracting the watch. Filing this information away for future consideration, he stepped inside, glanced about the dim interior, and caught his breath.

  As the shop faced north, it received no direct sunlight, and the sun at this early hour on a mid-winter morning was as yet too low in the sky to provide much illumination in any case. Thus, its interior was cast into shadows, dependent on the fireplace set into the opposite wall for lighting as well as warmth. A young woman stood before the fire, the light behind her limning her hair like a halo and turning her gown to burnished gold. A dark formless shape lay at her feet, indistinguishable in the shadows. For one split second, Pickett was reminded so forcibly of his first glimpse of Lady Fieldhurst, standing before the fire in her bedchamber in just such a way with her husband’s dead body at her feet, that he felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He stood gawking at her for a long moment, gasping for breath, until the lad, apparently judging him too stupid to speak for himself, explained, “This here’s the Bow Street Runner Mr. Robinson sent for.”

  The young woman stepped forward away from the fire, and any resemblance to Lady Fieldhurst vanished at once. Her hair, no longer backlit by the fire, was not blonde at all, but a light brown touched with copper, and her gown was a pale yellow hue rather than white, as her ladyship’s had been. Even the “body” at her feet resolved itself into an enormous dog of dubious parentage, who indicated his displeasure with this apparently mute visitor by releasing a low, rumbling growl.

  “Hush, Brutus,” the young woman scolded the animal, then extended her hand to Pickett. “Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr.—?”

  “Pickett,” he said quickly, taking her hand. “John Pickett. And you must be Mrs. Robinson?”

  “Miss,” she corrected him. “But Mama has been dead these seven years, so I have been the mistress of this establishment since I was twelve.” She gestured toward a door in the back wall where, presumably, the despoiled safe lay. “I thought I had coped with every sort of crisis in that time, but I confess this is quite outside my experience.”

  Painfully aware that he was hardly presenting an image likely to fill anyone with confidence, Pickett fumbled in the pocket of his coat for his occurrence book. “If you’ll direct me to your father, I should like to ask him a few questions.”

  “Papa is—gone.”

  She offered no explanation for the linen-draper’s absence, and some instinct warned Pickett not to ask for one, at least not just yet. “Perhaps you would tell me what happened, then, and show me the safe.”

  She nodded. “Of course. The shop was closed yesterday, since it was Sunday as well as Christmas Day, so no one has been here since Saturday. That day had been especially busy, though, since it was the last day before Christmas.”

  “I suppose there was plenty of money in the safe by the time the shop closed, then,” Pickett observed, jotting down this information.

  “Yes. In fact, it was worse than you know. Papa is expecting a new shipment from Brundy and Son this morning, and he’d made a withdrawal from the bank on Saturday in order to have sufficient funds on hand to pay for it.”

  Pickett looked up from his note-taking. “I should have thought it would be simpler, and safer, to pay with a bank draft.”

  “And so it should,” she agreed. “But Mr. Brundy—the senior, that is—is rather set in his ways, and nothing will suit him but good old-fashioned pounds, shillings, and pence.”

  “And all this money was in the safe at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much, would you say?”

  “One hundred pounds to pay for the new shipment of cloth, in addition to everything we’d taken in that day—almost two hundred pounds in all.”

  Pickett almost dropped his pencil. “Two hundred pounds? Begging your pardon, Miss Robinson, but surely your father must have known the risk he was running by keeping such a sum on hand.”

  She sighed. “Oh, yes, he knew. But Brundy and Son is one of our best suppliers, and their cottons are some of our most popular offerings.” She glanced toward the window where, presumably, Brundy and Son fabrics were prominently displayed. “Papa hopes that when Mr. Brundy’s foster son takes over the business someday, he will be open to more modern methods, but in the meantime, we dare not lose their business over what would ordinarily be a mere quibble. Now, if you’ll follow me, Mr. Pickett, I’ll show you the safe.”

  Pickett agreed, and followed her through a narrow door at the back of the shop into a second, smaller room that was clearly not open to the public. An ancient desk had been pushed against one wall, and a squat metal safe stood beside it, showing, at least at first glance, no sign of its recent violation. Still more fabrics took up what remained of the available space, not attractively displayed as the ones in the outer room were, but rolled onto bolts and stacked on shelves covering the other three walls. A young man wearing a leather apron was busily engaged in rearranging the heavy bolts, apparently making room for the new shipment.

  “Leave us for now, Andrew,” Miss Robinson addressed the young man, who was clearly her father’s apprentice. “You can finish that later.”

  It had been five years since Pickett had served as apprentice to a merchant with a marriageable daughter, but he could not help feeling a certain kinship with the aproned lad who gazed at Miss Robinson with adoring eyes even as he tugged his forelock respectfully and mumbled, “Yes, miss.”

  Miss Robinson waited until the door closed behind him, then turned to the safe and dropped to her knees before it. She withdrew a large key from her bodice, unlocked the door of the safe, and pulled it open, then rose to her feet and stepped back to allow Pickett to examine the interior. At the back of the safe, a few short stacks of currency had been arranged according to denomination, while closer to the front coins had been similarly sorted and stacked in columns which were then arranged in rows, although a few of these had fallen, apparently knocked over during the theft.

  “There appears to be quite a bit of money still here,” Pickett noted in some surprise.

  “Yes. We’re well aware that it might have been a great deal worse.”

  “But why?”

  She blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why go to the trouble of breaking into a safe, only to leave a substantial sum inside? Why not take it all?”

  “Really, Mr. Pickett!” Bright spots of angry color burned in her cheeks. “You sound almost as if you wish he had!”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Robinson. I meant no such thing, of course, but sometimes it helps to imagine what the criminal must have been thinking.”

  “Oh. Oh yes, I see. I confess, Papa and I were too grateful to see he hadn’t taken it all to wonder at the reason for it.” A hint of a smile lit her blue eyes. “I suppose it’s unlikely he was inspired by the holiday season —you know, ‘peace on earth and goodwill toward men.’ ”

  “If that were the case, it’s a pity his fit of benevolence didn’t extend to abandoning the plan altogether,” Pickett said, answering her smile with one of his own before raising the question that could not be postponed any longer. “But where is your Papa? I’d like to talk to him, if I may.”

  She let out a sigh, abandoning whimsy for the grim realities of burglary and the loss of almost two hundred pounds sterling. “Papa has gone in search of funds. The bank is closed today, so he must beg friends to lend him sufficient money to pay for the shipment when it arrives, which ought to be—” The shrill jangling of the bell over the door interrupted her prediction—or, rather, fulfilled it. “Dear God!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide with fright. “They’re here! Mr. Pickett, you must go!”

  “G
o? But I haven’t even got started yet!” he protested.

  “Oh, dear!” Wringing her hands in agitation, she cast a wild glance about the storage room. “You’re too tall for us to hide you somewhere. I suppose you must come with me. Follow my lead!”

  Without waiting for an answer, she squared her shoulders and sailed through the door into the showroom with her head held high and Pickett at her heels.

  “Why, Mr. Brundy, we did not expect you so early!” she exclaimed with exaggerated brightness, addressing herself to a black-haired youth standing just inside the door. Beyond him, Pickett could see a tarpaulin-covered wagon standing in the street. Three or four men stood guard over it, their breath visible as wispy puffs of white, their hands shoved in pockets or tucked into their armpits for protection against the cold.

  “ ’Tis nigh on eight o’clock,” young Brundy pointed out in accents more commonly heard in London’s East End than in this fashionable shopping district. “Not ’ardly what I’d call early.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would,” replied Miss Robinson in just such a haughty tone as a woman of Lady Fieldhurst’s class might have used to dampen the pretensions of some upstart. “But the people who patronize this establishment are Quality, and they rarely rise from their beds before noon.”

  Pickett, listening to this exchange, was struck by the realization that Miss Robinson did not like young Mr. Brundy. He was not quite certain why this should be so—the lad seemed perhaps a bit cocky, but otherwise unobjectionable.