He studied me gravely, his hands still tightly gripped together. “I never dreamt Julia might be capable of doing such a thing. Until recently, I’d thought it was all Drury’s doing.”
“He just follows his appetites.”
He shook his head but not in disagreement. “How could I have been so blind? How miserable I would have been if I’d married her!” He looked away from me then, staring down at the pattern on the rug before the fire. “That she can do that and think it normal explains a lot about her relationship with her husband. I never knew Julia had a sensual bone in her body and I still don’t think so. It’s the control she enjoys, moving puppets around a stage.” He sounded weary now.
“Yes, you’re right. She’s shown her hand. But she’s arrogant. She thinks you are as easily manipulated as her husband. That’s our strength, Richard, that’s what we have to work with.”
He glanced up at me and his face cleared. “You’re right. She thinks that because of my behaviour in the past, I’ll condone all this. But I never forced a woman against her will, Rose.”
“I didn’t think you had to.” My grip on the gown eased a little.
His smile was bleak but there. “I don’t think either of them know that I’m her father. This is a simple case of seduction. I still think Julia’s ultimate aim is to make me her lover. Susan is just a pawn.”
I didn’t argue; it was best that he continued to think that.
That night we lay together like children and I held him while he slept.
Chapter Twenty-Four
AS FAR AS BRANGWYN was concerned, the next day I went shopping, Richard went to White’s and Carier went about his own business. But we all met at Thompson’s at noon. I invited Nichols to join us, since she had some expertise with the demi-monde. We had a lot of information to exchange, so the meeting took some time. Together, we’d found out a great deal about Lucy’s murder and the Drurys’ activities, so the files were stacking up satisfactorily. The Drurys had expanded to their second file.
I gave an account of my encounter with Julia, then the subsequent visit that Richard and I made. Alicia was appalled when I described how Susan tried to use her charms on him but I didn’t venture an opinion, not yet. Richard added the name of the man chosen for the defloration, then Alicia told us what she had discovered.
She opened one of the files but as usual referred to it hardly at all while she spoke. “That Susan is your daughter is beyond question. Since the twins were born in France, I haven’t been able to find the registration of their birth but that wouldn’t tell us much in any case. I’ve traced their whereabouts until now for Susan and until three years ago for the boy.”
“What did she name him?” Richard asked.
“John,” Alicia told him with no emotion in her voice, as though it were a normal business matter. “He went to work in the north, for a merchant there but he left suddenly and I’ve not been able to trace him since. He was thirteen when he left. I don’t despair, though, I haven’t had replies from everyone yet. He may have gone farther north, or abroad. Perhaps his sister knows what happened to him.” She stopped to have a drink of tea, watching Richard. He was tense today, lines of strain around his mouth and eyes, but back in control.
Alicia turned over a sheet of paper. “Lucy Forder was a busy woman but I can find no reason why she would have been murdered by any one of her clients.” This time she kept her eyes firmly on the paper before her but I didn’t think she needed to. “The main suspects are Greene and Drury, Greene because he found out what she was doing, despite her protestations of love to him and Drury because of his vicious nature.” Alicia turned over another sheet and glanced up at me. “Steven Drury. You were lucky to get away from him.” Her expression was sympathetic.
“I know it,” I said.
She nodded. “I’ve made enquiries in the Covent Garden area. We even have staff there, you know—the best whores want the best maids. Some of them won’t see him and the ones that welcome him have specialities that he seems to need. They are of a violent nature. If you need details, it’s written down here but basically he prefers a helpless woman at his mercy.” She paused and looked around at us and the tension in the room grew a little. Alicia kept her tones businesslike; it was the only way we were going to get through this. “Drury’s violence and preference for helpless women are the only parts that seem to be relevant to our enquiries. The women who accept him have enough protection to prevent serious injury.” She frowned, then went on, “But Lucy was stabbed.”
“Once, in the chest,” Carier confirmed. He, too, kept his voice cool and low.
“That isn’t his modus operandi,” she commented. “Knives don’t feature at all in his reported repertoire. Hands and whips are his preference.”
“Have you still got Greene?” I heard the tension in Richard’s voice but I wasn’t afraid of him snapping. He’d had time to put his self-control back in place.
Alicia tapped her pen on the paper in front of her. “Yes. He doesn’t seem to want to escape, he’s lost all his will, and any spirit he might have had in the beginning is gone. He sleeps, he eats, he sits.”
Richard shrugged. “Drury could have killed her because of what she knew and what she could tell. He may not have done it in passion but if he prefers violence, it would have helped him.”
“Do you think he minds if his…predilections become public? He doesn’t seem to be concealing it at all.” The thought of what I had escaped was creeping through me now. I wondered if it had taken Julia to bring this trait out in him but remembering incidents in the past, I thought that he would have found his own way to it without her.
“He won’t want society in general knowing.” Richard bit his lower lip in thought. “These things are done in private, with discretion. The moment they become generally known, the participant is regarded with disfavour—gossiped about, in conversations and in letters and avoided by mothers of pretty girls. The letters can ruin a person and nothing that can be done about them, because they’re private but they can be circulated. If anything is suspected, then people will give him the benefit of the doubt and gossip wildly about him but if it’s known, then steps will be taken to exclude him.”
“Them,” I reminded him.
He looked at me then. “Yes. Them.” He turned back to Alicia. “If Rose was lucky to escape Steven Drury, then I was lucky to get away from Julia.”
“There is this. It’s from Drury to his wife.” Alicia picked up a smaller sheet of paper, from its size and the folds obviously a letter and she read it out to us.
“Sweeting,
Received your last, for which many thanks. I carry it next to my heart.
I have had some luck recently, looking for our requirements. One or two have let me try them and—”
She broke off. “There follows a particularly lurid and disgraceful description, which I have no desire to read aloud—” She looked up, then back to the letter, turning the sheet sideways where he had crossed his words.
“I hope the thought will keep you warm at night. Your descriptions of the arrangements for our Society are fine and will bring us more influence. We will be the only people who know their identities and then we can bring our influence to bear. You told me that was what you wanted and I have done my best to give it to you. I hope you’ll agree I deserve my reward.
Our other friends have just arrived at their family home in London. I suggest we try to reconcile ourselves with them, keep them guessing. I know how you feel but there are other ways of getting your revenge, dearest bedfellow, and our first plan would be over too quickly for me.”
They wanted influence but not the regular way, did they? To what end? I listened while Alicia read the end of the letter, my hands carefully disposed in my lap, my eyes lowered so that no one saw my distress.
“I will still have her stretched over that altar and when I do, she will lose her mask and he will see it. So will everyone else. She balked me of what was my right and I will get th
at before we do anything else. You can console him, or do what you will.
There are two girls I want. The maid, Lucy, is tired and her body droops. She doesn’t learn her lines well, so I suggest we let her go and concentrate on the daughter.
Believe me, etc, etc.”
Alicia looked up. The letter dropped from her fingers as though she couldn’t bear to touch it any more.
Carier filled the appalled silence. “We knew most of that.”
“We didn’t know they were letting Lucy go,” I said. “Perhaps she threatened to expose them.”
“Where did you find it?” Richard’s voice was cold, no emotion at all reflected there. He had shut it all out, letting his brain do the work.
She met his eyes. “Sewn into Greene’s coat. He knows we have it but I don’t know how much of it he understands.”
“It leaves us no wiser than before,” Richard said. “It could be Steven Drury, or it could be Greene. And if it’s neither of them, then it might have been one of the women. Julia or…Susan.” The pause before he said her name was brief but painful to hear.
Alicia leaned forward, her elbows supported on the large, paper-strewn desk. “We must face that and decide what to do in that case. In all the cases. Then we must find out who did it.” She drew a fresh sheet of paper toward her and found a pencil. “Greene. If he did it, what do we do with him?”
“Kill him,” suggested Carier briefly.
I demurred. “No. At least, we don’t have to do it. He knows the Drurys’ secrets but not ours. We could safely give him up to Bow Street and satisfy the authorities. They know we’re interested.”
Richard looked at me and I warmed to see his expression. “You’re right. We can send him to the Fieldings and they can deal with him. If it was done in a hot-blooded moment, he might get transportation, which is better than he could expect from us.”
That was agreed on by all.
Alicia threw her pencil down. “I suggest we leave the rest until we have discovered the truth. Shall we move on to the subject of Susan Jackson?”
We agreed. Alicia picked up another piece of paper. “If she stays where she is, she’ll be corrupted, probably poxed, by the end of next week. If we take her, she might escape. I say we abduct her and talk to her. Tell her what is to happen and what we can do to help her.”
“And that is…?” Richard asked, his tones as icy as his eyes.
“We can train her to be a lady’s maid, or, if she should wish it, set her up in her own establishment. She could make a good living with her body but on her own terms, not on someone else’s whim.”
“If you weren’t an old friend,” Richard said slowly, “I would leave now.” His dispassion had turned to dislike and a spark of anger dawned in his eyes.
But I saw the sense of Alicia’s proposal. “If that’s what she’s been bred for, then it might be the only way of preventing her from returning to the Drurys. And it’s a way for a young woman to earn a great deal of money. We can’t acknowledge her as your daughter, you know that.”
Richard was looking at his hands, which lay in his lap, completely steady, like a still life of beautiful repose, except he was deliberately keeping them that way by an effort of will. He stayed like that for a long time, while letting his brain work. “We take her before next Tuesday. Then we talk to her. If what you say is true, then any fate away from the Drurys has to be an improvement. I can give her an income, enough to keep her.” He looked up but he didn’t look at any of us. “Bring her to Brook Street. We can keep her there.”
“It won’t be secure enough,” Alicia said quietly. “No one must know of your connection with her.”
“Julia Drury knows,” I said.
Alicia turned her clear gaze to me. “How can she know? We may be able to persuade her that she was mistaken. As long as Richard plays his part and refuses to acknowledge her.”
“Easily,” said Richard. “I want this cleared up soon, because I won’t have Rose disturbed much longer.”
They all gazed at me and I blushed, because I knew what he meant. He reached out, took my hand and smiled to reassure me, so I was glad I had blushed. I smiled back.
Alicia cleared her throat and we looked back at her but he kept his hand lightly in mine. I took comfort from the connection.
“Do you want to bring her here?” Alicia asked. “It would make sense. I can tell her you have paid us to provide accommodation. There’s no reason she should know where she is, unless she’s clever. The upper floor here is, as you know, furnished comfortably. She can’t escape from the window, so a guard on the door will suffice.”
“Agreed,” said Carier before we could speak. I added my voice to the consensus.
We set about devising a scheme to take Susan. It would mean separating her from Julia and the rest would be easy.
To my surprise, Alicia had a copy of Julia’s schedule for the next few days. “She’s not the only one with a spy in the camp. The housemaid obliged for me.” The usual round of shopping, theatre, dinners and dances was there, so we could be where she was.
We formed the plan rapidly and after Richard had extracted a promise that I wouldn’t be in any danger he gave his consent. I found his concern touching but a little overwhelming, as I explained to him on the way home but he wouldn’t let me finish. “You’re the one thing on which I won’t compromise. I’ll hear no more on it.” I had to leave it there, I didn’t want him to feel harassed on all fronts but I was disturbed by his insistence. It was his fear again, that I was carrying twins, I would be damaged or even killed in childbirth. The fear he didn’t talk about to me and I didn’t share with him.
WE KNEW WHICH SHOPS Julia Drury tended to patronise and the next day we had a watch put on them all. I lingered at a mercer’s, taking my time choosing the materials for the new, looser gowns I would need before too long. Eventually, a man blocked the door of the shop temporarily and nodded twice, the prearranged signal that Julia Drury was out and about, accompanied by Susan. I finished my business with the merchant much more quickly than he was expecting but I still got a good price for the silks. Martha hadn’t taught me good housekeeping for nothing.
When Nichols and I left the shop, the man waited outside. The knot in my stomach tensed. Without a glance at us, he led us in the direction of the Royal Exchange, then to the second floor, where he glanced down at the floor below.
We saw Julia Drury, her maid and Susan. They’d stopped so that Julia could exchange a few words with someone we couldn’t see.
“Why, Lady Strang. I haven’t seen you since I heard your excellent news.”
I turned to face Lady Cavendish, whose ball I’d been unable to attend the other night. I managed it well. “We’re both delighted.”
“Your mother-in-law is in alt. I saw her the other evening and she told me all your news. How proud she was.”
“Thank you.” I glanced at Nichols, who shook her head, then back at Lady Cavendish, herself the mother of a considerable brood. “We’ll stay in London and engage an accoucheur.”
“How right you are. They are all the rage at present. I really don’t know how I managed my first two without them.” Lady Cavendish launched into a description of her first pregnancy and I listened with half my attention, nodding occasionally, while keeping the other half fixed on what was happening on the floor below.
Eventually, to my relief, the lady completed her narrative, then meretriciously added, “But I mustn’t keep you. You’ll be at the Bath’s ball next week?”
“Oh yes, I should think so.” I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. With a pleasant smile and a nod, my torturer moved on and I was free again.
“She’s in a shop on the floor below,” Nichols told me. “She’s left her maid and the girl outside, my lady. If I draw the maid away, can you take the girl?”
“I’m sure I can.” We didn’t want the Drurys to find out who had taken Susan. They could guess but they weren’t to know. Their lack of knowledge would give us more t
ime. We’d chosen the Exchange because the office wasn’t far off and it would be easier to take her there.
Accordingly Nichols and I took separate routes to the floor below and, acting as swiftly as we could, approached from different directions. Nichols played the part of a lady carrying parcels, provided from a stack carried by a footman for that purpose. She staggered up to the maids and dropped the parcels at the elder’s feet, carefully keeping away from the window of the shop, where Julia was ensconced. It was a toyshop, I noticed, with all manner of delectable trinkets in the window. She might be some time choosing her patch box, or whatever she had gone in for. I hoped so, anyway.
At first, it looked as though Julia’s maid wasn’t going to take the bait. Nichols would never have done so but this lady wasn’t Thompson’s trained and after a sigh and a shrug, she knelt to help Nichols pick them up. A parcel of ribbons had inexplicably come undone, tangling around the other parcels in colourful confusion. It would take some time to retrieve them all.
While the two women were busy, I approached Susan and tapped her on the shoulder. Her blue-grey eyes widened in surprise and while I had the advantage, I took her elbow and drew her aside. It was just as well she was sixteen years old, because anyone older would have immediately suspected something was wrong. Perhaps she did but assumed this was a subterfuge for a few quiet words alone, because she followed me round the corner willingly enough.
“I have a note for you,” I told her. “I left it in the carriage. I’ll bring you back afterward.”
“Who’s it from?”
“My husband. He wants an immediate answer.” That interested her. This was the task she had been set, so she came with me to the carriage. There were two footmen behind us but this was a busy street and we had to be as discreet as possible.
Harley Street Page 25