The Spider's Touch

by Patricia Wynn

  Hester smiled at him weakly. “I do not know, but I think we should try.”

  He seemed more sensible than usual, so she thought she might get some better information from him today.

  “It would help if we would all try to remember that evening. Any one of us might have seen something that in retrospect might be significant.

  “When you were standing with Colonel Potter,” she continued, “did he say anything about Sir Humphrey? Or did he behave strangely in any way?”

  With a look of helplessness, Dudley shook his head. “I don’t know the fellow, of course. But he seemed very genial to me. Wanted to buy me a glass of French Claret. Very amiable of him, I thought.”

  “It did not seem odd that he should be so friendly?”

  Her question ruffled Dudley’s feathers, and he frowned at her with disgust. “If that’s your notion of friendship, then it’s no wonder you haven’t had any offers yet. I tell you, Hester, it’s different with men. Gentlemen are much more generous than ladies. He would have bought me another glass, if I had not had to leave.”

  She did not bother to argue. But it had struck her as suspicious that the Colonel would go out of his way to be cordial to Dudley when he had just been turned down by his brother-in-law. It was more than suspicious. It might have been mischievous, for encouraging Dudley to drink had only drawn suspicion to him later.

  “Why were you late returning to the box? Did you not see Sir Humphrey on your way back?”

  His scowl made it clear that he did not want to tell her where he was. “I was detained,” he said, frostily. “And I didn’t see him, no. Came up the other set of stairs.”

  “When was your glass of wine spilled.”

  “I’ve already told you. I was in something of hurry when I left the Colonel, and my glass was full. I was pushing my way through the crowd, when someone caught my elbow and tossed the whole thing onto my clothes.” He spoke regretfully. “I doubt I had above three glasses of the Claret, which was too bad, because it was devilish good!”

  It was the kind of accident that happened so frequently that Hester had no reason to assign it any particular significance. But, if Dudley was telling the truth, it had certainly been convenient for the murderer that Dudley returned reeking so strongly of wine.

  * * * *

  Hester’s aunt had given her a list of purchases to make that day. Normally, Mrs. Mayfield would have wanted the pleasure of shopping for herself, but she had not exaggerated the treatment of the gossips. So, for the moment, she was avoiding as much contact with them as she could.

  This, coupled with her aunt’s visit to Madame Schulenberg, was the circumstance which had made this afternoon’s assignation with St. Mars even possible. Hester completed her list of errands—for everything from a powder for cleaning the teeth to a smelling-bottle, which claimed to be the most volatile in the world—in Fleet Street, before moving on to their meeting, as if it were only the next stop on her list. At every shop, she had told Will, the footman, to wait outside for her, and had brought him another parcel to carry, so he had no reason to be surprised when she left him outside the door of the warehouse where she was planning to meet St. Mars.

  XXX warehouse was a vast building with row upon row of goods imported from the East. To Hester, its vacant corners had suggested the kind of seclusion where a serious conversation could take place.

  She was a little taken aback by a group of rakish women who were giggling and picking through pieces of silk on a counter near the door. But she made her way past them and thought no more about them, until arriving in the western-most corner, Hester discovered that she was not the first young lady to choose this site for a tête-a-tête. A couple, who appeared to be secret lovers, started apart when she emerged from behind the last aisle of shelves. She halted, feeling more embarrassed by the encounter than they did, perhaps, and was not comforted by the resentment they threw her way. Or by the knowledge that she had, once again, invited St. Mars to a site that was used for lovers’ trysts.

  She had no choice but to pretend the most minute interest in the bolts of chintzes, Geneva velvets, and brocades on the shelves behind her, until the couple ceded their corner to her. Her heart had started beating in an agony of chagrin, and it took considerable courage for her not to run away.

  She was most disconcerted, when a strange gentleman came from behind the next row and walked directly towards her. She had expected to see St. Mars in his Quakerish costume and his short, brown wig, but this gentleman was fashionably dressed. His long, blond peruke was clearly foppish. His face was painted white with two spots of bright colour on his cheeks. And he wore so many patches that she could hardly make out a single one of his features.

  Hester’s pulse began to pound in alarm. The last thing she had prepared herself for was the unsolicited attentions of a stranger, but the gentleman was aiming his footsteps purposely towards her. She could imagine what sort of female he thought she was, alone in a place like this.

  She started to flee in the opposite direction, when he heard a loud hiss behind her.

  “Mrs. Hester! Don’t leave. It’s me!”

  She whirled around, and a gurgle of laughter burst from her mouth. In the middle of that painted and patched face, two vivid blue eyes were grinning at her.

  St. Mars sauntered the rest of the distance between them, clearly gratified by the success of his deception. “You do not care for my disguise,” he said. “And here I had dressed to please you.”

  “I strongly suspect that you dressed to frighten me, my lord,” she said, unable to hide her relief.

  “That’s not true at all. I was simply tired of having to hobble, and I thought you might appreciate a different suit of clothing.”

  She paused to admire his coat, which was a startling garment of scarlet and gold, then said, “You are remarkably well-supplied for a fugitive, my lord. These are very fine clothes, indeed.”

  He took her teasing in such good part that she might have paid him the greatest of compliments. “I will not deny that I have become remarkably resourceful.”

  He told her about the house he had leased, about Katy and the clothes she had made, and his new direction for receiving messages.

  Hester tried to conceal the dismay she felt on hearing that he had taken a woman for his valet. Some, she knew, were offended by the concept of any female domestic servant outside the usual laundrywomen and dairymaids. She had never considered herself to be as prudish as that, but the idea of his having a female to dress him was so disquieting that she hastened to change the subject.

  “Have you discovered anything yet?” she asked. “I hate to admit it, but I have very little to tell.”

  “Let’s walk,” St. Mars said, offering her his arm. He gave a look back over his shoulder before answering, “I questioned Colonel Potter last night.”

  Hester had fallen into step with him, but she froze before saying incredulously, “You spoke to him?”

  St. Mars raised a startled brow. “Wasn’t that what you wished me to do? I fail to see how else I could have got any information from him.”

  Hester tried to resume her normal breathing, but the effort was a strain. “I was expecting something about him rather than from him, but however you decided to get the information, I’m certain you went about it with perfect correctness, my lord.” Hiding an absurd need to smile, she gravely apologized for the interruption.

  In his narrative, which followed, she was certain he omitted many interesting parts, such as how he had managed to stop and question a trained military officer in a dark street. But, since knowing how he had accomplished the task was not likely to make her feel any better about his safety, she refrained from inquiring about his methods.

  As they talked, they strolled up and down the last two aisles, stopping to examine a piece of cloth whenever they encountered a person coming towards them. They kept their voices barely above a whisper, and, despite the occasional echo of a distant laugh or the bang of something falli
ng, the room with all its goods seemed to enclose them in privacy.

  “So, Colonel Potter admitted that he encouraged Dudley to drink in the hope that he would attack Sir Humphrey again,” Hester said, once he had finished. “I had wondered why he was so friendly to Dudley, when it was plain to see that he harboured a grudge against our family.”

  “He insisted that he did not mean for Sir Humphrey to be killed—merely punished. He said, he thought it would be amusing. And he claimed that he had no way of knowing that your cousin had a knife.”

  “It sounds as if he was pleased to throw on the blame on Dudley. It has occurred to me that he might have encouraged Dudley to drink not so much to induce him to attack, but to make him drunk, so that the suspicion would fall on him.”

  St. Mars halted in mid-stride. Even beneath all the paint and patches he wore, she could see that his expression was rueful. “I confess, I never thought of that.”

  In a wry tone, Hester said, “I imagine you had other things on your mind—such as how to get anything from him. Once this mystery is resolved, my lord, I might get up the courage to ask you how you managed it. But for my part, I’ve had nothing to do but think.”

  A group of ladies, who might actually have been there to shop, were about to overtake them, so they started strolling again. St. Mars called Hester’s attention to a particularly fine piece of Mantua silk, and she gravely thanked him for giving her something new to covet.

  As soon as the ladies drew out of earshot, she added, “I cannot remember all that I told you, but someone jostled Dudley before he went down the stairs and made him spill a full glass of Claret on his coat. At least, that’s what he said occurred to make him smell so strongly of wine when he came back.”

  “He didn’t see who did it?”

  “No. And I know that a spill is too common an accident to be sure. But it does seem as if someone wanted to use Dudley’s attack on Sir Humphrey against him.”

  He agreed, but also that they were never likely to know the truth of that event.

  “I just wish he would be more honest and tell me where he went when he left Colonel Potter,” Hester said.

  She sensed a faltering in St. Mars’s pace. The colour of his face was curiously red, when he said, “Colonel Potter gave me a likely explanation for that. He said that a woman of dubious virtue caught your cousin’s eye, and he followed her down the stairs.”

  “Well, he must have stood talking to her an unconscionable length of time, because he was very late in coming back.”

  Beside her, St. Mars choked. “My dear Mrs. Kean, I doubt very much that they were talking.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  So drives Self-love, through just and through unjust,

  To one Man’s power, ambition, lucre, lust:

  The same Self-love, in all, becomes the cause

  Of what restrains him, Government and Laws.

  For, what one likes if others like as well,

  What serves one will, when many wills rebel?

  How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake,

  A weaker may surprise, a stronger take?

  His safety must his liberty restrain:

  All join to guard what each desires to gain.

  Forced into virtue thus by Self-Defence,

  Even Kings learned justice and benevolence.

  III. vi.

  Astonished by his possible meaning, Hester stopped and stared up into his eyes, but in spite of the laughter in his gaze, he seemed most convinced of Dudley’s activity. Her doubt that anyone could be so lacking in—in plain fastidiousness, if nothing else—must have shown on her face, for he appeared to be extremely amused by what he saw. She turned forwards then, with her chin in the air, refusing to let him see how shocked she was.

  It was not long, however, before disgust of her cousin overcame her, and she said, “What a perfectly awful specimen Dudley is! I wish my aunt had never summoned him to London. He almost deserves to be hanged.”

  Her remark quickly sobered St. Mars. He brought the subject back to Colonel Potter’s revelations, and in a careful voice, told her that both the Colonel and Lord Lovett were Jacobites and that their plan had been to turn Harrowby in James’s favour.

  “James needs money,” he went on. “It’s not that he needs Harrowby for himself, but for the funds he might supply. I suppose they thought that, if my father was a Jacobite, then his nephew might be more easily persuaded to the cause.”

  “That explains why—” Hester caught herself and stopped. She had been about to say that it explained why Lord Lovett’s pursuit of Isabella had always seemed a bit insincere, but she was always reluctant to mention her cousin’s name to St. Mars, particularly with regard to another gentleman. Lord Lovett must have reckoned that the way to Isabella’s favour was through seduction. Hester would have been mortified by her cousin’s weakness, if she had not already been forced to face it. And, if so many ladies they knew were not just as corruptible.

  What was the difference between Lord Lovett, who was using Isabella to get Harrowby’s money, and the people who bribed the King’s mistresses to win appointments from the King? In both cases, sex was exchanged for money, and money was won through sex. Assuming that Dudley had paid for the services he’d received, she saw little difference between the harlotry he indulged in and the Court’s, except that Dudley’s was more honest.

  She became aware that St. Mars was waiting for her to finish.

  “I have been wondering why Lord Lovett is so attentive,” she said. “He has never struck me as the sort of gentleman who would choose either your cousin or mine for his constant companions, which they have been for weeks, without a more compelling reason than pleasure in their company.”

  “Could he have killed Sir Humphrey out of fear that he might give away his allegiance to James? From what the Colonel and Lady Oglethorpe have told me, Sir Humphrey was always indiscreet. You said so yourself.”

  Hester found that she did not want to think of Lord Lovett as a murder suspect. Of all the men involved, he was the only one that she had any respect for, even if he had been using Isabella for his political purposes. Even she were his lover, Hester knew that Isabella’s heart was not very likely to be involved.

  “I don’t believe he would have killed him for that reason. After Sir Humphrey was killed, Lord Lovett practically admitted to me that he, Sir Humphrey, and Colonel Potter were all Jacobites.”

  St. Mars looked startled. “He told you that he was a Jacobite?” The furrow in his brow demanded to know why a gentleman like Lord Lovett should have confided anything so dangerous.

  She felt a little glow of satisfaction when she replied, “Not in those very words. But he told me they had all met Mr. Blackwell at Lady Oglethorpe’s house, and that Mr. Blackwell often traveled to France. And I can assure you that he knew exactly what I made of that piece of information.”

  To say that St. Mars was annoyed would have been an exaggeration, but he was definitely uneasy. “I still don’t see any reason for Lovett to have been so open.”

  “I asked him if he knew Mr. Blackwell, and he seemed to believe that I would hear the truth soon enough, even if he did not tell me himself. And I believe that he thought he could trust me.”

  Which was more than St. Mars was prepared to do, she thought. Hester knew that he had some involvement with the Jacobites, at least, or he would not have asked the questions he had asked. And he would not have found it so easy to visit Lady Oglethorpe. She knew she had no right to question his activities, but if another gentleman chose to confide her, as he once had himself, then he had no business to be surprised.

  “What else did he say about Blackwell?”

  “Nothing. That was all.”

  His brow was still drawn, when he told her that Blackwell’s real name was Menzies and that he was a spy who carried cash from English Jacobites to James’s army in France.

  With a chill, Hester whispered intently, “If Sir Humphrey revealed Menzies’s identity or if he
knew what Menzies’s mission was, he could have got him hanged and quartered. That seems a much stronger motive to me.”

  St. Mars could not argue with her. He told her about Tom’s story of the gentleman named Menzies, who had stopped at the Fox and Goose, and of his subsequent discovery that this Menzies and Blackwell were the same.

  “I have the name of a printer who might know where he is. And Tom can recognize him. Tomorrow, we’ll begin our search.”

  A warning for him to be careful sprang to Hester’s lips, but she refrained from giving it again. As much as she did not like it, St. Mars would decide what risks to take.

  She remembered one last thing that she could tell him before they parted. “Sir Humphrey’s sister, Mrs. Jamison, who was acting as go-between for Dudley, told me one thing, which might be pertinent. She said that her brother seemed troubled the last few days of his life. I asked her if she questioned him about it, but she said that she did not.

  “She wasn’t sure, but she thought that his worry might have resolved itself by the evening of the opera. Either that, or he was simply so enthused with the pleasure of treating his friends that he put it out of his mind.”

  St. Mars gave a grimace. “Whatever Sir Humphrey had on his mind is another thing that we are never likely to know.”

  He promised to send her news as soon as he found Menzies, and between the two of them, they concocted a plan for delivering messages. St. Mars would send Katy to Hawkhurst House with strawberries to sell to the ladies for their complexions. In a matter such as that, Hester was certain to be the person sent down to see her.

  * * * *

  That morning Gideon had asked Tom to discover the location of a printing shop owned by a man named Blackwell. If he found it, he was to return and, together, that evening they would watch Blackwell’s shop with the hope of sighting Menzies.

  Tom did discover it, almost in the shadow of Stationers’ Hall, but on his way back to the house, he stopped by the King’s Head and picked up a letter which had been forwarded for Mr. Brown from the inn at Smithfield.