Too Hot to Handel

by Sheri Cobb South

  “Oh, must you?” Julia protested, remembering his blood-drenched coat. “He has lost so very much blood already.”

  Mr. Gilroy looked speculatively at his patient. “It is true that in some cases the body successfully fends off the infection on its own, while in others—” He shook his head, and Julia had no difficulty in interpreting what happened in those other cases. “Still, he is young and, I assume, otherwise healthy. We might wait a few more days and see what happens, if you would prefer it.”

  Julia nodded uncertainly. “Yes, thank you, Mr. Gilroy.”

  He reached into his bag and withdrew a small pouch. “Willow bark,” he explained, spreading the pouch open to show her its contents of splintered and dried plant material. “Some physicians have reported success in reducing fever by having the patient drink a tea brewed with it. Unfortunately,” he added, glancing at the unconscious Pickett, “the patient must be awake to ingest it. Still, if he has awakened before, he may well do so again. Should that be the case, I suggest that you brew some and try persuading him to drink it. Other than that, you appear to have done exactly as you ought, keeping him as warm and comfortable as possible.”

  “Thank you, doctor, but is there nothing else I might do?” asked Julia with a hint of desperation in her voice.

  The doctor sighed. “Pray, Mrs. Pickett,” he said. “Just pray.”

  CHAPTER 12

  IN WHICH AN ADVERTISEMENT YIELDS UNEXPECTED RESULTS

  The smell of smoke still hung heavily in the air when Mr. Colquhoun reached Bow Street on Monday morning. He’d had no word from Lady Fieldhurst since he’d left John Pickett in her care the previous evening. He told himself that this must be a good sign; surely she would have sent word to him if—well, if anything untoward had happened after he’d gone.

  He had scarcely seated himself at the magistrate’s bench before he was approached by Mr. Dixon, at fifty years of age the eldest of the Runners.

  “Mr. Colquhoun,” said this worthy, nodding his grizzled head. “Have you any news on Mr. Pickett?”

  “I have at that,” said the magistrate. “He has awakened several times, but only briefly. He appears to have no memory of the events of that night, and is in no condition to speak of them even if he did. Still, I am cautiously optimistic.”

  “That is good news, sir,” said Mr. Dixon. “But as I recall, Mr. Pickett has no family. Surely he is not alone?”

  “No, he has—someone—staying with him.”

  Something in the magistrate’s expression must have given him away. “Someone? But who? If I may be so bold,” added Mr. Dixon hastily.

  Mr. Colquhoun was reluctant to betray the young couple who, he suspected, would not be getting an annulment anytime soon. And yet, he reasoned, anyone who called to inquire after Mr. Pickett would discover the truth quickly enough.

  “In fact, her ladyship, the Viscountess Fieldhurst, has taken it upon herself to nurse him—not the wife of the present holder of the title, but the widow of the previous one.”

  “Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch!” exclaimed Mr. Dixon, chuckling. “Leave it to our Mr. Pickett to land on his feet. I wonder, if I were to get myself coshed on the head, could I get a ladyship to look after me?”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Dixon,” said Mr. Foote, joining them at the bench, “but youth has its advantages, you know. You’re neither as young nor as pretty as Mr. Pickett.” A smattering of uncomfortable laughter greeted this sally, as all the men present recognized it as more of a gibe at the absent Pickett than at its apparent target.

  “Too true, alas,” noted Dixon with an exaggerated sigh. “But Mr. Colquhoun was just relaying good news about young Mr. Pickett. It seems he’s waking up at last.”

  Mr. Foote looked to the magistrate for confirmation.

  “Aye, although he’s still a bit rattled in the head. Seems to have little or no memory of what befell him on the night of the fire.”

  “Good news, indeed,” agreed Mr. Foote. “And I hope I may soon have more good news to report. In the meantime, I have something here that I think you’ll find pleasing.”

  He reached inside his coat and withdrew a necklace of emeralds, the green stones winking in the morning sunlight streaming through the windows. Mr. Colquhoun’s bushy white eyebrows rose.

  “Lady Oversley’s, I gather? Pleasing indeed! Well done, Mr. Foote. Where did you find them?”

  “In a pawnshop in Feathers Court,” he said.

  Mr. Colquhoun frowned. “Feathers Court? Seems a rather unsavory address to be trading in jewels of this quality.”

  “I daresay it was chosen for just that reason,” said Mr. Foote. “I suspect our thief already had a buyer waiting, and Mr. Baumgarten’s shop was selected because it would be the last place we might be expected to look.”

  “Sounds like a reasonable conjecture. Tell me, Mr. Foote, what tipped you off?”

  Mr. Foote shook his head. “Nothing in particular, but since the thefts all seemed to be taking place around the Drury Lane Theatre, it seemed wise to check the pawnshops in that area.”

  “But still no leads as to our thief’s identity?”

  Foote shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir. In between protesting his innocence of any wrongdoing, Mr. Baumgarten refuses to name his supplier. I don’t know, perhaps he doesn’t know the man’s name.”

  “ ‘Man’?” Mr. Colquhoun echoed sharply, bushy white brows drawing together over his nose. “You are sure the seller is a man?”

  Mr. Foote looked rather nonplussed. “He didn’t say, sir, but I assumed it must be so.”

  “Assumptions are dangerous in this business, Mr. Foote,” the magistrate said. “I should have thought you had been around long enough to know that.”

  “Yes, sir,” muttered Foote, flushing.

  “Begging your pardon, sir.” Mr. Maxwell, a man of almost forty who had recently joined the Bow Street force after a French ball put paid to his military career, came rushing up to the bench waving a newspaper. “I wondered what you made of this tidbit in the Times.”

  “The part about an anonymous hero who hustled the royal party out of their box just before the fire broke out?” asked the magistrate, scowling. “Yes, I saw that. I would give a lot to know who the fellow was.”

  “So would the Russians, sir. They’re offering a considerable reward for information.”

  Mr. Colquhoun jerked a thumb in the direction of his most senior Runner. “If they are looking to pay out a reward, perhaps they should talk to Mr. Foote,” he suggested with tongue in cheek. “It appears he’s just about to pocket a tidy sum for the recovery of the Oversley emeralds.”

  “Congratulations, Mr. Foote,” said Dixon, then added jovially, “Couldn’t you share the wealth with those of us who are looking toward retirement?”

  Mr. Maxwell’s mind, however, was on other things. “Congratulations, Mr. Foote,” he said distractedly, then turned back to the magistrate. “But that wasn’t what I meant. Have you seen this, sir? Or are you perhaps the one responsible for it?”

  He handed the newspaper over the bench, pointing toward an advertisement not quite halfway down the page. Reward offered for Information concerning Attack on Unarmed Man in Russell Street on the Night of the Drury Lane Theatre Fire. Call in person, Number 84 Drury Lane. Inquire of Mrs. P.

  The magistrate sat up abruptly. “What the devil—?”

  “So you didn’t place the advertisement, sir?” asked Mr. Maxwell. “Then who did?”

  “I detect the fine Italian hand of her well-meaning but meddlesome ladyship,” grumbled Mr. Colquhoun.

  “Who is Mrs. P?” asked Dixon, receiving the newspaper from the magistrate and scanning the cryptic lines. “Mr. Pickett is not married, and I thought his mother had been dead this age.”

  “Aye, dead or deserted,” confirmed Mr. Colquhoun. “I doubt the boy knows himself. No, I believe our mysterious Mrs. P. is none other than Lady Fieldhurst herself.”

  Mr. Maxwell goggled at the very
idea. “A viscountess is pretending to be Mr. Pickett’s wife?”

  In fact, there was no pretense about it, but that was no one else’s business. Quite aside from keeping the young couple’s secret, Mr. Colquhoun found himself reluctant to give Mr. Foote any more ammunition with which to torment Mr. Pickett upon his return to Bow Street, or any more fodder with which to nurture the grudge the elder Runner had held against the younger for more than a decade.

  “I suppose I shall have to call on ‘Mrs. P.’ myself and see what’s toward,” said the magistrate with a sigh. “Mr. Foote, I’ll see about getting you that finder’s fee as soon as I return.”

  The group about the magistrate’s bench dispersed, all except Maxwell, who hung back.

  “Yes, Mr. Maxwell? What is it?”

  “It may well be none of my business, sir, but exactly what gives between Mr. Foote and Mr. Pickett?”

  Mr. Colquhoun made a dismissive gesture. “Professional jealousy, no more and no less. You may be aware that Mr. Pickett first came to our attention as a juvenile pickpocket.”

  Maxwell nodded. “I had heard something to that effect, yes. But surely his work here has more than made up for any youthful crimes he may have committed.”

  “Aye, and committed at his father’s instigation at that, for a more shiftless—but that is neither here nor there. In fact, Mr. Foote’s resentment stems from an incident ten years ago, when he was still on the foot patrol. He arrested young John Pickett, who was scarcely fourteen years old at the time, for petty thievery. I dismissed the charges and sent the boy off with a flea in his ear. Mr. Foote took my leniency in the matter as a personal affront, and insisted I had made a mistake. In fact, he predicted the lad would be back to his thieving ways within a fortnight. And he was quite right; after all, what are the direst threats of a magistrate compared to the demands of a supposedly loving father?”

  “It must have been quite a blow to Mr. Foote to find himself obliged to work side by side with the same man he’d once arrested,” observed Mr. Maxwell, glancing over his shoulder toward the other side of the room, where Foote regaled the foot patrol with an account of his recovery of the Oversley emeralds.

  “Aye, especially when young Mr. Pickett solved a case that had stymied Mr. Foote for weeks. He wasn’t even with Bow Street at the time,” added the magistrate with a reminiscent gleam in his eye. “After I sentenced his father to be transported to Botany Bay, I realized that the boy Mr. Foote had brought in was the man’s son. I thought I could prevent him from following in his father’s footsteps by offering him an opportunity to earn an honest living, so I arranged for him to be apprenticed to a coal merchant. Faugh! Coal merchant!” he echoed contemptuously, berating himself, not for the first time, for his lack of foresight. “I should have seen to the lad’s education instead. I doubt Eton or Harrow would have taken a boy of his background, but Westminster might have, especially if I’d called in a few favors. But I had no idea of the boy’s intelligence at that time, and so for the next five years, John Pickett delivered coal to the magistrate’s court. On one such occasion, he was obliged to wait for payment until I’d finished hearing a case. By the time I brought him a bank draft, he’d picked up a copy of the Hue and Cry left lying about, and simply by reading about the case, picked up on the one clue that Mr. Foote had overlooked. To make a long story short, I bought out the remaining years of his apprenticeship from my own pocket and brought him to Bow Street as a member of the foot patrol. He was all of nineteen years old at the time, to Mr. Foote’s thirty.”

  Mr. Maxwell chuckled, for in spite of his competence, Mr. Foote was not particularly well liked. “I’ll wager that did not sit well with Mr. Foote.”

  “No, indeed! And while I can understand his sentiments on that occasion, perhaps even sympathize with them to some extent, I did not expect him to nurse a grudge for fully a decade after the fact. Ah well,” he added with a shrug, “Mr. Foote is pocketing a tidy sum for himself in finders’ fees these days, so perhaps it will soon be Mr. Pickett’s turn to envy him.”

  But even as he said the words, Mr. Colquhoun knew he did not believe them. He suspected Pickett was incapable of the sort of festering resentment that Mr. Foote had harbored toward him for ten long years, largely because Pickett considered himself undeserving of his good fortune, while Foote felt himself entitled to more. Mr. Colquhoun wished he could grant Pickett just a bit of Foote’s arrogance, while giving Foote a rather larger share of Pickett’s humility.

  Mr. Maxwell, recognizing that the confidential interview was at an end, thanked the magistrate for enlightening his ignorance, and returned to his work. As for Mr. Colquhoun, he had more important things to do than coddle the wounded vanity of a grown man—and the most pressing of these involved a visit to Drury Lane and “Mrs. P.”

  After seeing the doctor on his way and receiving the day’s supplies of coal and water from Mrs. Catchpole, Lady Fieldhurst spent the rest of the morning fussing about Pickett’s flat, folding his linen and putting his bureau drawers in some semblance of order, washing and drying his meager collection of plates and cups, and even arranging his small library in alphabetical order—a frenzy of housewifely activity that served to distract her from trekking back and forth to Pickett’s bedside to feel his forehead in the desperate hope that his fever might have abated.

  At last, having run out of things to set straight, she fetched The Vicar of Wakefield from its place on the mantel (under “G” for Goldsmith, between Fielding’s notorious Tom Jones and Matthew Lewis’s popular gothic novel, The Monk) and settled down beside Pickett’s bed to read aloud in the hopes that he might hear and find her voice soothing.

  “ ‘Chapter Two: Family Misfortunes—The loss of fortune only serves to increase the pride of the worthy. The temporal concerns of our family were chiefly committed to my wife’s management; as to the spiritual, I took them entirely under my own—’ ”

  She had not finished the first paragraph when a knock sounded on the door; Thomas, no doubt, come with her daily supplies and, she hoped, some news of the recalcitrant Lucy. She cast the book aside, the unfortunate vicar and his family’s woes forgotten.

  But it was not Thomas, much less Lucy, who stood leaning against the door frame. Instead, Julia found herself confronting a man she’d never seen before in her life, a tall, lean man in a shabby frock coat and frayed knitted cap pulled low on his head. His eyes were beady and black, and his face was pockmarked.

  “Mrs. P.?” he asked, revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth.

  “Yes,” she said uncertainly.

  “I’m ’ere about the bit in the newspaper.”

  “Oh! Oh yes, my advertisement. Won’t you come in Mr.—?”

  He tugged at the hank of greasy dark hair sticking out below his cap. “Bartlesby, ma’am. Jem Bartlesby, at your service,” he said, and although he bowed low, she could not think his grin anything but insolent.

  He stepped into the room, and for the first time Julia began to question the wisdom of placing such an advertisement. Somehow she had expected any respondents to be of the aristocracy or perhaps the gentry, other theatre-goers who had escaped the conflagration ahead of herself and Mr. Pickett. She had not anticipated the possibility of being obliged to entertain such persons as Mr. Bartlesby, and the knowledge that she could not count on Mr. Pickett’s coming to her rescue, should she stand in need of him, made her feel frighteningly vulnerable. She wished Mr. Colquhoun were here. Even Lucy’s company would have been welcome; given that damsel’s profession, Julia suspected Lucy would know how to deal with the likes of Mr. Bartlesby should the situation warrant it. She glanced toward Pickett’s room, and was thankful she’d closed his bedroom door to contain the heat; at least Mr. Bartlesby need not know how very unprotected she was. Of course, two of the three chairs were in that room as well, but this presented no particular difficulty, as she was not inclined to encourage Mr. Bartlesby to linger.

  “Am I to understand, Mr. Bartlesby, that you have information fo
r me?”

  “I might ’ave,” he said. “What’s it worth to you?”

  This was another issue she had not anticipated. What price did one put on such information? No cost was too great to make Mr. Pickett’s attacker pay for his crime, but surely it would be unwise to tip her hand too soon.

  “I shall give you a shilling to hear what you have to say,” she answered, hoping she was being neither too generous nor too parsimonious. “More afterward, if I deem the information worth it.”

  Mr. Bartlesby was silent for such a long moment that Julia feared he refused to answer. As she debated the wisdom of increasing her offer, he finally spoke.

  “In the street outside the theatre, it were. I seen a stout fellow with a cudgel. Black as a burnt stump, ’e were, from all the smoke, but ’e ’ad a ’ead full o’ black ’air, and a thick beard to match.”

  Julia’s eyes widened at this account. In the back row of the royal box, seated beside the incognito princess, had been a man who matched Mr. Bartlesby’s description exactly. Her heart sank as well, for it would be a very delicate matter to prefer charges against a member of the Russian royal court.

  “And you saw him strike Mr.—you saw him strike a man with this cudgel?”

  “Oh, aye, ’e coshed this ’ere unarmed fellow, then took ’imself off.”

  “Where did he go?” Julia asked urgently.

  “Now, that I can’t tell you. I didn’t know it would be important,” he added apologetically.

  Julia could not but wonder at a philosophy that would deem the attack of an unarmed man unimportant, and determined to remove Mr. Pickett to her own residence in a less unsavory part of Town as soon as he could be safely transported. “Thank you, Mr. Bartlesby, you’ve been most helpful. I believe you have earned your shilling and another besides.” She picked up her reticule from the table and withdrew the two coins. “Will you furnish me with your direction, in case I should need to contact you again?”