The first man’s face hardened. “If that’s what you want.” He jerked his chin at his partners. “Put him down.”
At his signal, the man behind me rushed my back. Though he had to move up several steps, he came fast. I moved my weight to my good leg, brought my substantial cane up and whacked him in the middle.
The man doubled over. I hit him again, getting around him and down a few steps, but he was strong. He came to his feet, roaring, his fists already moving.
I had retreated far enough from him to draw the sword from my walking stick. The repaired sword was firmer than ever, and I had just enough room in the stairwell to bring it to bear on the man who swung to fight me.
Swords were old-fashioned nowadays, but I’d been trained to use one—several different bladed weapons in fact. I was also good at firearms. I took from my left pocket the other pistol from Grenville’s carriage and pointed it into the man’s face.
My attacker backpedaled away from the sword and the pistol. “Bleedin’ ’ell,” he said before scrambling up the stairs past the others and into my front room.
“You can only get one of us with that,” the lead man said. He sounded unworried that it would be him. “But I brought my own.” I found myself facing the round opening of a black-powder pistol that looked as though it had seen plenty of use. “Say your prayers, guv. Last words you’ll ever speak, I’m thinking.”
Withdrawal was prudent, but I stood my ground. “I’m a dead shot, at any distance.” I aimed my pistol to hit him between the eyes.
A few weeks ago, I’d stood in a similar position, facing another opponent, waiting for him to shoot me. But the duel I’d fought with Stubbins had been like a play—exact lines and rehearsed moves, a formal dance. That had been a staged battle; this was a real one, deadly, final. There, I’d been in the fresh green of the park, surrounded by cool mist. Here, the sour odor of sweat filled the close air of the stairwell.
The man’s eyes widened slightly, and his finger moved on the trigger. I dropped to the stairs just as the pistol blasted. The ball whizzed over my head. It struck the wall with a crash of plaster, passing clean through the neck of a wallpaper shepherd.
I brought up my pistol and fired. The man above me bellowed in pain and fell toward me. I caught him, his shoulder bleeding fiercely, his eyes full of hatred as he tried to get his hands around my throat.
We stumbled and slammed into the wall, me fighting his giant hands. He was slow, the wound weakening him. He could have chided me about my boasting of being a dead shot, though I’d hit him exactly where I’d meant to. I wasn’t a murderer.
He was one, unfortunately, and fought me with silent ruthlessness. This was the man, I knew, who’d struck Gareth his fatal blow.
The two other men clattered down to help their friend. I fought, losing my footing, but I used the momentum to carry us both down the stairs. I needed to get them out into the open, where others would see, and help would come.
It did come, in the form of Brewster, who yanked open the door at the bottom of the stairs. He shouted as he charged upward, and I heard the roar of another pistol.
Brewster’s shout changed to one of pain, but he kept coming. If he’d been hit by a bullet, he did not let it slow him. He had the lead man off me, wrestling him down the stairs. The lead man smacked into the door frame and stumbled outside, straight into the arms of Milton Pomeroy.
“Jared Draper, as I live and breathe,” Pomeroy said cheerfully. “Been looking for you a long time. How about I arrest you now?”
“Fuck you,” Draper said, and he tried to run.
I could have told him it would make no difference. Pomeroy was on him in two strides. I made it out the door to the street, panting, to see Pomeroy grab Draper by the injured shoulder and swing him, face-first, into the nearest wall.
Draper yelled in pain and rage, and Pomeroy had shackles on him with speed. Two other patrollers, large lads, jogged in to help me. Brewster had already grabbed a second man, and the patrollers swarmed up the stairs for the third.
Grenville hurried back toward the bakeshop, with Marianne behind him. I leaned against the wall of the shop as Mrs. Beltan popped out to see what was happening, her eyes wide.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Beltan,” I said struggling to catch my breath. “Just another evening in the life of your tenants.”
*
By the time I had conveyed to Pomeroy that I believed Draper to be the killer of Gareth and Mackay, and asked a boon of him—one which would catch Draper’s employer—the street around my door had emptied. The curious followed Pomeroy and his patrollers with the three villains out of Grimpen Lane, and I returned upstairs.
My front room was a mess. Draper and his fellows had knocked over my writing table with its meager contents, and strewn my books across the room. As I started to pick them up, I glimpsed movement in my bedchamber, and looked in through the half-open door.
Grenville and Marianne stood in the middle of the room, on the new rug Donata had bought for the chamber. Grenville touched Marianne’s face with gentle fingers, then he made a raw sound and pulled her into his arms. He held Marianne close, tumbling her hair.
Neither saw me. Marianne laid her head on Grenville’s shoulder, eyes closing, her fingers curling on his back.
I closed the door silently and left them to it.
*
Brewster lumbered up the stairs not long after that. He had blood on his sleeve, but it was a small patch, already drying, and he did not behave as though he were hurt. “Your Mr. Pomeroy dragged everyone off to Bow Street,” he said. “But you took a chance, guv. I might not have got here on time.”
“I knew you would,” I said. “Denis enjoys looking after me, and I he has as much curiosity in him as I do, in his own way.” I straightened up from putting my bookshelves to rights, and faced him. “Did you bring it?”
Brewster flushed dark red. This was the first time I’d seen the man truly disconcerted.
“How’d you know?” he asked.
“I did not, until today. Once I ran through all possibilities, I realized there could be only one solution.”
“Huh,” Brewster said. “No worry. I brought it.”
I wondered what Denis’s reaction had been when he’d read the note I’d directed Bartholomew to deliver. Anger? Amusement? Indifference?
I’d written, imitating Denis’s abrupt style, only two lines.
Send the book Brewster took from my rooms back to me. I need it to catch a killer. Lacey.
“You stood here,” I said, indicating the spot in front of my small bookcase, “going through my books, even sitting down to read one. When we left, you held up a book—I couldn’t see which one, but I assumed the one you’d been perusing—and asked to borrow it. I told you to take it, paying no attention. But you switched it, didn’t you? While I was seeing Marianne off, you switched it for the other book you’d found on my shelf, the one Mackay had left.”
Brewster nodded, looking embarrassed to be caught but not ashamed he had done the theft. I remembered him standing in the ruined kitchen of my Norfolk house, holding up stolen silver he’d found there, and offering to split the take with me when he sold them. That had been one of the images that had poured through my head when I’d stood with Grenville in Donata’s reception room.
“I saw what it was,” Brewster said. “And I knew his nibs would be interested in it. He likes that sort of thing—art and old books, especially old books what have pictures.”
“And he pays you a percentage when he sells it?”
“He does. Or gives me a fee just for bringing him the bloody things. I’ve learned over the years what he wants.”
“You’re a thief, Brewster.”
Brewster shrugged. “Never pretended to be anything else, have I? Anyway, you didn’t know nothing about the book. I found it shoved with the others, which ain’t worth nothing, I have to tell you. Knew you didn’t know a thing about it, or you’d never have let me get near it.”
>
I gave him an impatient frown. “How the devil did you suppose the thing had gotten into my bookshelf in the first place?”
Another shrug. “Not my job to reason how a thing gets to where it is. I sees it, and if it’s worth something, I take it to Mr. Denis. Your Mr. Grenville comes here all the time—I thought maybe he’d left it behind. He has so many, he’d never miss it.”
I pointed a rigid finger at him. “That book is the key to the brutal death of one of my friends.”
“Well, I wasn’t to know, was I? You didn’t know either, or you’d have kept it safe.”
To be fair to Brewster, none of us had known about the damned thing until too late to save Gareth and Mackay. Even though Brewster had been with me when Freddie had started to talk of books, neither I nor he had realized its significance. Freddie had talked about erotica, but I now knew that the book was something quite different.
“Let me see it.”
Brewster heaved an aggrieved sigh. “Hang about.”
He walked past me without explanation, out the door, and down the stairs. I did not hurry to follow or doubt he’d be back. If Denis had told him to bring the book to me, Brewster would do so.
I tapped on the door of my bedchamber and went in when Grenville’s baritone rumbled that I should. I found Marianne and Grenville sitting together on the edge of my bed—simply sitting, thighs touching.
“Are you all right?” I asked Marianne. “If Draper hurt you, I can tell Pomeroy to put his boot pretty hard up his backside.”
Marianne dragged her loose hair from her face, and I saw that her cheek was dark with bruises. “No, I am fine,” she said, her look daring me to contradict her. “He didn’t let his men do anything too permanent. He truly only wanted that blasted book, whatever it was.”
Grenville gestured to the small leather-bound book on my night table, the one we’d brought from Donata’s library. “Pomeroy took it off Draper and gave it to me for you. Kind of him. But it doesn’t matter. It did the trick, which was the point.”
“Tell your wife I thank her,” Marianne said.
“I will, if she ever speaks to me again for stealing a book from her house and running off to fight three villains,” I said dryly. “How fortunate that I still have these rooms at my disposal.”
“She will scold but forgive you in time,” Marianne assured me. “I understand ladies of her character.”
I hoped Marianne was right, but first I needed to find the instigator who had employed Draper in the first place.
“Both of you might want to remove yourselves,” I said. “The danger is not yet past, and Marianne has been tangled in this enough.”
“Agreed,” Grenville said, his voice taking on a stern note.
Marianne gave him an almost fearful look. “Please do not take me back to that bloody house in Clarges Street.”
Grenville gentled his tone. “You may stay wherever you like,” he said. “But for right now, Lacey is right. It’s not safe here.”
Marianne’s eyes narrowed. “What about for you? You’re going to stay, aren’t you?”
Grenville gave her a nod. “I want to see this thing through.”
Marianne flashed an irritated glance at me then one at Grenville. “Well, if you’re staying, then I am too. I’m not one to sit wringing my hands, wondering if her man will return alive.”
“That is indisputably obvious,” Grenville said. “A compromise. You retreat upstairs to your rooms and lock yourself in. Then we’ll leave together once Lacey and I see this thing to its conclusion.”
“You know that Pomeroy can simply beat the name of the person out of Mr. Draper,” Marianne pointed out. “I imagine he’s already doing so.”
“By the time Mr. Draper grows tired of holding out and gives him a name—providing it’s the right one—that person can have fled London,” I answered. “I do not wish to wait.”
Marianne sighed, disentangled herself from Grenville, and rose. “Upstairs it is.” She swayed on her feet, and Grenville was beside her in an instant, steadying her. “I don’t want you up there,” she said swiftly to him.
“That is unfortunate,” Grenville said. “Because I am going.”
He steered her past me and out of my rooms. It said much about Marianne’s emotions of the moment that she argued with him only halfway up the stairs.
*
Brewster returned in a quarter of an hour. He had the book with him, but he’d also brought James Denis.
It was fully dark now in Grimpen Lane, but I recognized Denis’s tall silhouette in front of the bulk of Brewster as they turned in at my doorway. Two other of Denis’s bullies blended into the shadows of the cul-de-sac.
Brewster opened the door of my rooms without bothering to knock and led Denis inside. Grenville, hearing them, came down from Marianne’s chamber and in behind Denis, shutting the door.
“This was too valuable not to accompany,” Denis said without greeting. He handed me a paper-wrapped, rectangular object. “I should not like to hunt it down again after a murderer takes it from your dead body.”
I took the parcel to my writing table and unwrapped it. Grenville joined me, and as the paper fell away, he dragged in a breath.
“Good God,” he whispered.
Grenville put out a hand and carefully opened the book’s dark leather cover, worn bits of gold leaf clinging to it here and there. But if the cover was somewhat plain, the inside of the book was a different matter.
The first page Grenville turned over had a stylized capital P on one side, on the other an illustration of Christ on the cross. The sky above the scene was vivid blue, bringing out the deeper blues of the garb worn by the women surrounding the cross, which were just as bright as the reds, yellows, pinks, and whites of the tunics and robes of others in the background. The soldiers were in glorious red cloaks over plate armor, one holding his spear to Christ’s side.
“Prayer book, Reverend Travers called it?” Grenville asked, awed. “Not a prayer book, a Book of Hours. Centuries old. Ones I’ve seen with illustrations this rich were done only for royalty.” He touched the page with light fingers, and looked up at me, eyes shining. “Lacey, this is a treasure. Worth thousands and thousands. A man could live well on the price of this for decades.”
Chapter Thirty
Denis knew its exact worth, I’d wager, down to the penny. Grenville caressed the thing as he would a lover.
“No wonder Mackay was anxious to have this back,” Grenville said in a near whisper.
Denis remained still, not as enraptured as Grenville, but I knew he’d have the book in the end.
“Did you know Gareth Travers had this?” I asked Denis. “Did you tell Mackay to acquire it for you?”
“I did not.” Denis frowned. “I had no idea he had come across it. As I say, Mr. Mackay did not only work for me.” And he looked—for Denis—quite put out that Mackay hadn’t come to him immediately upon discovering such a book was for sale.
Grenville was turning the pages, handling them with his fingertips. Some of the pages had only words on them, but as he leafed through, more and more beautiful illustrations revealed themselves to us. They depicted not only scenes from the New Testament, but from everyday life in fourteen-hundred something.
“You say poverty-stricken Reverend Travers had this, and simply handed it over to Gareth?” Grenville asked me in amazement.
“That is what I understand.”
“Think he stole it?” Brewster asked as he looked over our shoulders at the book. “The vicar, I mean?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Reverend Travers said it belonged to his family. I doubt he’d have the energy to steal the thing himself.”
“Nah, someone stole it,” Brewster said, confident. “If you say it were made for royalty ages ago, then someone nicked it from them. It’s what happens.”
“However the Travers family came into possession, it is exquisite,” Grenville said reverently. “I can see a man killing for it.”
“Stupid, when he can just steal it,” Brewster said.
“Or purchase it,” Denis said. “The killing was not necessary.”
Denis, ever efficient, and Brewster, ever focused on what was important to him.
“Now it will catch a killer.” I looked at Denis. “I was wondering how to put out word that I had it, but perhaps you can … ?”
“I could,” Denis said, his dark blue eyes glinting. “As a favor.”
Another mark in Captain Lacey’s debit column, he was saying. Saving Denis’s life, helping him track down a man who’d betrayed him, and preventing him from being blown up apparently had not cleared me.
“I will have to accept,” I said. “I want to be able to tell Leland that his friend’s murderer was brought to justice.”
Denis did not much care about my reasons. He gave me a nod, signaled to Brewster, and walked out into the chilly stairwell with him.
Grenville remained at the writing table, transfixed by the book. “This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The Limoges brothers made it, I am positive, though I’d get it authenticated. I wonder if Reverend Travers would consent to sell it to me.”
“Only if Denis will release his hold on it.” I watched Grenville as he continued to gaze at the book as though he could not have enough of it. “You were prepared to hand over this book to procure Marianne’s release when you did not know what it was,” I said. “Would you have handed it over now that you do?”
Grenville drew a breath, still taking in the book, then he looked up at me sharply. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”
I believed him.
*
Denis had a network that rivaled any secret police’s in any country on the Continent. Within an hour, one of his men trundled up the stairs, spoke to him on the landing, and departed.
Denis reentered my front room where Grenville had returned to admiring the book, while I paced moodily.
“We have a bite, gentleman,” Denis announced. “I will retire here.” He indicated the open door to my bedchamber. “I doubt your murderer will come in if he sees me waiting.”
Murder in Grosvenor Square (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries Book 9) Page 24