The party broke up soon after that. Jenings arrived with his lamp and the two musicians hurried away with him, with a lightness of step rarely seen in prisoners returning to their cells. Acton kicked Mack awake and the two of them staggered off to the Crown, singing tunelessly up into the night air. Grace followed them like a wraith. Mary was still in a sulk, glaring petulantly into the fire, even when Mrs Wilson arrived with a sleeping Henry on her shoulder. The evening had not gone as our dear governess had planned and she made sure we all understood that and shared the blame between us. Her parents, who seemed used to this, kissed their grandchild, bid their daughter goodbye and ordered a carriage to take them back into town.
‘It’s a long ride back,’ Mary’s mother said wearily. ‘But Mr Wilson won’t stay the night, will you, my dear?’
Mr Wilson winced at some long-buried memory. He touched my arm as they left. ‘God spare you, sir.’
Which left Gilbourne and me. ‘Well done, Mr Hawkins,’ he murmured as the door closed behind us. ‘You’re still alive.’
I collapsed weakly against Acton’s tree. ‘Am I?’
Gilbourne chuckled. ‘Near enough.’ His smile faded. ‘I’m not sure Mr Buckley understands the danger he’s put you in. I’m sure he meant kindly, but . . .’
‘. . . But if I accuse the warden of Roberts’ murder I’ll be signing my own death warrant. Yes, I see. Do you think Acton knows?’
‘Mr Hawkins.’ He touched my shoulder lightly. ‘If Acton even suspected you were conducting a murder investigation in his Castle, he’d have you whipped and tossed in the Strong Room. If you were lucky. But for now, you have some value. You’re a friend of Charles Buckley, and Buckley has Sir Philip’s ear. Acton’s a clever man, don’t let him fool you. One doesn’t become warden of the Marshalsea through brute force alone. He was a butcher for twenty years; he knows when to bludgeon and when to fillet.’
I rubbed my jaw. The night had left me tired and uneasy – and I was afraid of where my suspicions were leading me. I had no doubt that William Acton was capable of murder. I’d seen the look in his eyes when I was dancing with Mary. He had made it into a joke, but the menace was still there, just beneath the surface. Perhaps Roberts had owed him money, or insulted him or beaten him at cards. Perhaps he’d tried to escape like poor Jack Carter. Acton could easily have beaten Captain Roberts to death in a fit of anger. But Roberts was a gentleman, he had friends, a wife. They might have asked questions, insisted on an investigation. So Acton hanged Roberts in the Strong Room and bribed the coroner to call it suicide. How simple it would be, a murder in his own Castle. The Marshalsea was not a place for justice, for honest dealing. The only question was why Acton allowed Mrs Roberts to stay in the gaol, causing trouble. Surely if he had murdered Roberts he would want to keep her as far from the prison as possible. But then, Acton was an arrogant man. This was his Castle. He wouldn’t be threatened by a woman, not even one as clever and determined as Mrs Roberts. Perhaps it amused him to take her money, knowing all the time that she would never discover the truth. If Catherine was prepared to pay a high rent on her room in the Oak, Acton was prepared to take it from her.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ Gilbourne said quietly. ‘If you could find enough proof to hang him I’d pay your debt myself. The man’s a monster. Worse than that – an unpredictable monster. Lets his feelings run away with him. It’s bad for the gaol, bad for profits. Things are much smoother at the Fleet prison, you know. Bambridge was a stockbroker; earned a fortune from the Bubble. That’s what the Marshalsea needs.’ Gilbourne nodded to himself. ‘A man of business.’
‘If I could prove it was suicide,’ I pondered, not really following Gilbourne’s thrust. ‘If I said Acton beat him for some perfectly sound reason, but then Roberts killed himself . . . perhaps that’s the safest path through all this.’
‘Who’s there? Who is that?’
The voice was muffled but I recognised the clear, commanding tone at once. Catherine Roberts. Had she heard me? Shame burned in my chest. A verdict of suicide might save me, but it would also keep Catherine and her son apart for ever.
‘Is someone there?’ she called. ‘Mr Jenings?’
I breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t heard us. ‘Catherine,’ I said. ‘I’m here.’
Her small, dark figure glided towards us. Candles still flickered up in Acton’s lodgings, throwing just enough light for her to find us. I could see her face now as she emerged from the mist. The damp air had left a light dew upon her skin and her cheeks were tinged pink from the cold. She looked softer and more beautiful than anything I had ever seen in my life – and too perfect for such a place as this.
‘Catherine,’ I said again, and reached out my hand.
For one sweet, heart-thrilling moment her eyes lit up with pleasure and recognition. But then her expression collapsed into grief and terror. ‘Oh!’ she cried, flinging a hand up to her chest. ‘Oh! What is this?’ She stepped back, overcome, tripping over her skirts and half-falling, half-sinking to her knees.
Before I could move, Gilbourne had stepped forward and kneeled before her. ‘Madam, pray don’t be startled.’ ‘You are quite safe.’
She looked up into his face, dazed and fearful. ‘Mr . . . Mr Gilbourne?’ Her shoulders sagged with relief as she recognised him. She let him lift her to her feet, leaning heavily against him. ‘Oh, Mr Gilbourne, what is that creature?’ she whispered, staring at me in horror. ‘Do you see it?’
Gilbourne laughed in confusion. ‘Why, there’s nothing to fear,’ he said, gently. ‘It’s only Thomas Hawkins. See?’
She stared at me for a long moment as I stood like a statue, afraid to move in case I startled her again. I supposed in the fog she must have mistaken me for her dead husband, returned to haunt the yard – just as Jenings and Ben Carter had said. And yet, did I truly look like Captain Roberts, so much that his own widow could be fooled? From the portrait she had shown me it had seemed a passing resemblance at best.
‘Why . . . why is he dressed like that?’ she asked, her voice high and trembling with shock. ‘Some cruel trick?’
I looked to Gilbourne but he just shook his head, astonished. I reached out and touched her hand. ‘Catherine . . .’
‘Oh! Don’t touch me!’ she shuddered, backing away as if her skin were scorched. And now, in a moment, the fear and surprise turned to a cold, bitter anger. She glared at me, eyes burning with contempt. ‘You scoundrel! How dare you wear my husband’s clothes! The clothes he wore when he was murdered! I thought . . . Oh, God!’ Her voice wavered, and a single tear slid down her cheek. ‘It’s so cruel. I thought he had come back. I thought he’d come back to me.’ She turned away.
Gilbourne glowered at me, furious, all his earlier warmth and friendship vanished in a moment. ‘What devilish foolery is this, sir?’ he hissed under his breath. ‘Did you hope to trick us all with this wicked nonsense?’ He flicked his hand at my borrowed clothes, disgusted.
I held up my hands in dismay. ‘Mr Gilbourne, please, I beg you . . . I had no idea. I swear upon my life.’
He gazed at me, cold and distant. ‘This is a dangerous place to play games, Hawkins,’ he said. ‘I thought better of you.’ He gave Catherine his arm and led her away. For a brief moment she turned back and gave me a look that left me in no doubt of her feelings. And then they disappeared into the mist, leaving me alone.
I’d lost them both. The two people in this rotten, stinking place I had truly admired. And the two people best able to help me escape it. Gilbourne would have been a powerful friend and ally. And Catherine . . . a lump formed in my throat. It would be difficult to learn the truth about Roberts’ death without the help of his widow, but in my heart I knew I had lost something much more important than that. After we had spoken in the coffeehouse that afternoon I had dared to wonder about Catherine Roberts; dared to hope. She was not a woman I could ever deserve and yet . . . I could imagine a life with her – one where I became a better man. And a richer one, for that m
atter. Now, in one moment, that hope had been extinguished and I knew precisely who to blame.
‘Samuel Fleet,’ I whispered to the night. ‘I swear to God. You will pay for this.’ And with that, the clock struck midnight.
Chapter Eleven
I had an appointment with a ghost. It seemed impolite not to attend.
And why not, I thought bitterly, as I edged my way through the fog towards the Palace Court. What more could this night do to me? The only other choice was to return to my lodgings and murder my roommate. I stared down at my clothes; clothes that must have been stripped from Roberts’ cold and bloody corpse. Fleet had sent me to Acton’s lodgings dressed in a dead man’s clothes and I had been stupid enough to think he was being kind.
‘I’ll wring his neck,’ I muttered, then stubbed my toe against a wall. I cursed hard, then reached out into the darkness and found a broad brick column. I must have reached the porch that ran beneath the Court. The dark and the mist were impenetrable here; if someone or something were waiting for me, they had discovered the perfect hiding place. I felt a shiver down my spine; a powerful sense of being watched. Studied. I backed away softly.
There was a moment’s silence. And then, from the darkest corner of the porch, a light flickered deep in the fog.
I gasped in shock. ‘Who’s there?’
The light came closer.
‘I have a knife!’ I lied.
A moment’s pause. And then a face loomed out of the shadows, grey as the mist, and streaked with dirt. A pale hand held the lantern higher and I saw . . .
Impossible!
‘Roberts.’ I stared at him in horror. It was the captain; there was no doubting it, he looked exactly the same as his portrait. But how could that be? I touched my mother’s cross and whispered a hurried prayer.
The phantom shuffled closer, groaning softly. I began to shake, terrified by this apparition standing so close in the dark, almost near enough to touch. There was a rope still hanging about its neck, dark bruises on its face and blood stains upon its shirt. ‘Murder . . .’ it shuddered. ‘Murder . . .’
And a waistcoat. A mustard waistcoat.
Samuel Fleet, I thought. Damn you. You’re a genius.
The ghost gave a wild shriek. ‘Avenge me . . . !’
‘As you wish.’ I folded my arms. ‘Tell me. Who was it murdered you?’
The ghost paused, thought for a moment. ‘Avenge me . . .’ it said again, more hesitantly.
‘Come now, Captain Roberts.’ I leaned up against the porch column. ‘Who killed you? You must remember, surely?’
The ghost cleared its throat. ‘It was dark . . .’
‘Indeed.’ I remembered Gilbert Hand’s request. ‘And what happened to the money?’
‘Money? There was no money. Was there . . . ?’ The ghost looked hopeful.
I lost patience. Springing forward I grabbed hold of his perfectly corporeal body and swung him hard against the porch column. He gave a soft ‘oof’ as the wind was knocked from his lungs. The lantern crashed to the ground.
‘Who are you? Who sent you?’
‘Let me go!’ he cried. ‘Help! Help!’
I raised my fist to punch him but somehow he tore himself free, running blindly out into the fog. At the same moment another light appeared and I saw Jenings hurrying towards me with his lantern. ‘Who goes there?’ he called. ‘Mr Hawkins?’
I grabbed his lantern and swung it out into the mists. ‘I just saw the ghost.’
He staggered back on his spindle legs. ‘Heaven spare us!’
‘He’s just a man, Jenings; he won’t harm you. He must still be in the yard, we can catch him.’
We spent a good half hour searching for him through the mist. Jenings was terrified, despite my assurances that there was nothing spectral about our visitor. We brought another lantern out from the Lodge and even persuaded the turnkey on duty to hunt with us but Roberts – or whoever it truly was – had vanished into thin air. That much, at least, was a mystery.
‘It must have escaped through the walls,’ Jenings whispered. The turnkey gazed up at them with wide, terrified eyes.
‘Through the walls,’ he agreed, wonderingly.
‘Nonsense,’ I snapped. ‘He must have a key to the Lodge.’
‘We would have heard it go through the gate,’ Jenings insisted.
‘What about the Common Side? Could he have climbed over somehow?’
‘Climbed into the Common Side?’ Jenings frowned at the turnkey, who shook his head.
They were right; that made no sense. He’d been too well-fed to come from that side of the wall. And who would want to break into the Common Side? He must have slipped out another way, but I was damned if I could puzzle it out. And how was it he looked so much like the real Captain Roberts? I needed a sharper brain than mine to understand it all.
I swore quietly to myself. I needed Fleet.
Chapter Twelve
‘Get up, damn you!’
I grabbed the collars of Fleet’s robe and pulled him from the bed, pamphlets slipping and sliding to the floor. He grinned back at me, eyes blazing with excitement.
‘Something has happened!’
I took a swing at him and he danced away, robe flapping and flashing parts of him I had no wish to see. ‘Tie your banyan, man, for God’s sake.’
He smirked. ‘Do I distract you, sir? Here, let us fight like the Greeks!’ And with that he shrugged off his robe and presented himself ready, fists high.
I turned my back, infuriated. I should have thumped him; he deserved a good beating after the trick he’d played on me. But I would not wrestle a naked Samuel Fleet, not for all the world, and he knew it. I tore off my wig and threw it in a corner. No – not mine, that was precisely the point. These were Captain Roberts’ clothes – the very ones he was wearing when he was murdered. I shuddered in revulsion and tore the waistcoat from my back as if it were infested.
I stood in front of the mirror to untie the cravat and glimpsed Fleet in the reflection, slipping his robe back around his shoulders and tying it tight. Thank God. I snapped the strip of muslin between my hands. I could throttle him with it now. Half the prison thought he killed Roberts; if I called it self-defence who would doubt it? I could name him the murderer and be free by morning. My stomach lurched at the thought. Could I really kill a man without provocation, just to save myself? The cravat slipped through my fingers to the floor.
‘A wise choice,’ Fleet said, watching me through the mirror. He was holding a dagger in his hand.
I spun on my heels to face him, heart thudding in alarm. He stepped closer, blade high. His expression was calm – almost bored – but his eyes never left mine. ‘Are you a fool, sir?’
I swallowed, staring at the tip of the blade, just a short step from my heart. ‘No. I don’t believe that I am.’
‘Or lunatic?’
I shrank back. ‘No, sir.’
Fleet considered this for a moment. ‘Then why would you think of killing the man who can save you from the Common Side? No, no,’ he snapped, as I started to protest. ‘Do not deny it. I know when a man is contemplating murder, Mr Hawkins. I’ve seen it enough times in the mirror.’ He frowned. ‘And do stop ogling that boot over there. I removed the pistol from it hours ago. Tell me,’ he persisted, his voice hard. ‘Has someone approached you? Offered you money? I have plenty of enemies . . .’
‘No. I swear—’
With a growl of annoyance he sprang forward, faster than a heartbeat, pushing me back against the wall with surprising force. Loose plaster crumbled from the wall, making me splutter and choke as the dust caught my lungs. By the time I was recovered, Fleet’s dagger was hard at my throat. ‘Tell me,’ he hissed again. ‘What do you have to gain from my death, Mr Hawkins?’ I struggled to push the blade away but he was much stronger than he appeared. He pressed the blade closer. ‘Well, sir?’
I took a breath, about to tell him of Charles’ letter and the investigation, when I remembered Edward G
ilbourne’s warning. If I told Fleet the truth, there was every chance he would betray me to Acton in the morning, for money or for sport. I forced myself to match his gaze and reminded myself of what I was, at heart. A gambler. I knew how to read a man’s intent from the lightest expressions – even a man as strange and guarded as Samuel Fleet. And now I looked closer, I was surprised to see that there was no real anger or threat in those dark eyes of his. Just . . . anticipation. And curiosity.
He was testing me. And the trick, I realised, was not in telling him the truth. It was in keeping his interest.
I took a breath, the knife catching my skin. ‘Did you kill Captain Roberts?’
He blinked. Then smiled. ‘Deflection. Very good.’
I pushed the blade away. He would not kill me. Not here, not in this way. ‘Did you murder him?’ I asked again.
‘No,’ he replied simply.
No. And with that one word, I was sure of it. When one makes a living at the tables one learns to read a man’s face as if it were the London Gazette. One glance in Fleet’s eyes – and more than one glance was ill-advised – convinced me that he was either the greatest actor on earth or that he was telling the truth. More than that, I had the strangest feeling that if he had indeed killed Roberts, he would have replied, just as simply, ‘Yes’.
What he would have done with me after that, I prefer not to contemplate.
I stepped away from the wall, brushing the plaster and dust from my shirt. ‘But you must have seen or heard something.’ I gestured to our respective beds. ‘You were scarce six feet away. And don’t tell me you slept through it all.’
A pained expression crossed Fleet’s face. He turned the dagger in his hand, dancing it between his fingers as he considered his next move. ‘Very well,’ he muttered at last. ‘I will share my secret. But let me warn you, sir.’ He shot me an evil look. ‘If you breathe a word of this to another soul . . .’
The Devil in the Marshalsea Page 16