“He is,” said Noah. “And we got the villains who took him. Captain Ellis is still there, but it’s just the clearing up now.”
“We got ’em!” Nick said. “Didn’t we, Mr Foster? We got ’em!”
In his excitement he skipped up to Dan and Caroline, put out a hand to touch the baby, make himself part of their circle. Angrily Caroline pushed his arm away. The boy looked up at Dan, expecting a kind word to smooth over the rebuff, an acknowledgement of his part in the rescue, his place in Dan’s affection. Dan only had eyes for his son. Nick recoiled, his lips pressed together, his eyes narrowed. Dan did not see the expression in his eye as he looked at Alex.
Chapter Thirty-One
“How is she?” asked Dan when Caroline came back into the kitchen.
He shifted Alex’s weight on his lap so that he could turn over a page of Louise Parmeter’s memoirs. He had stacked the breakfast plates at the end of the table to make space for them. Nick sat opposite him, unconsciously mirroring his reading attitude while puzzling over an alphabet.
“She’s asleep,” Caroline answered. “I gave her some of the drops the doctor left.”
She shut the door and carried the tray with the glass and spoon to the sink. Mrs Harper, who blamed herself for what had happened to Alex, had worried herself into a fever and taken to her bed.
“She needn’t take on so,” Dan said. “It wasn’t her fault.”
“She needs to hear it from you.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
Alex whimpered and Dan gently bounced the boy up and down. “Here’s another one who won’t stop grizzling.”
Alex’s drugged sleep had done him no permanent harm, but had made him teary and fractious. The doctor had said the effects would wear off in a day or so.
“What’s that you’re reading?” asked Caroline.
“Something for work.”
She sat down at the table next to him, slid the pages he had finished towards her. Nick frowned; she had disturbed the companionable silence between himself and Dan. Dan, rocking the baby, went back to his reading. He looked up when Caroline burst out laughing.
“This is really funny. What is it?”
“It’s Louise Parmeter’s unpublished memoirs. And it’s meant to be secret.” He reached for the sheets, but she snatched them away.
“Don’t get in a fret. I won’t tell anyone. I wish I’d met her. What’s her house like? Did you see any of her clothes? I’d love to see them.”
“I don’t know what you find to admire in her. When it comes down to it, she was no different from the girls on the Piazza.”
“Those dirty things? There’s a world of difference. Louise Parmeter was beautiful, accomplished and clever. She played the men at their own game, and won.”
“If you call ending up murdered winning.”
“Are you saying she deserved it?”
“I said nothing of the kind. I just think there’s no need to lionise her.”
“But it’s all right for you to lionise men who smash one another up in the boxing ring?”
“It’s not smashing up,” Nick said. “It’s science, isn’t it, Mr Foster?”
She gave the boy a cold look. “You men and your science. Seems to me science is whatever you like, while whatever we like is just silly nonsense.”
Dan rolled his eyes. “How is it the same thing?”
But she had flounced away from him to concentrate on Louise Parmeter’s book. Dan and Nick exchanged glances. Women!
Dan did not find the book as entertaining as Caroline did. The heroine bored him with her incessant self-justification and inability to give a thing its proper name. Sordid transactions were cloaked in the language of romance. Money was never paid for sex, her threats to publish her lovers’ letters were never blackmail, and the lovers themselves were a succession of aliases. No doubt the Prince of Wales and his circle would recognise the originals of Mr Pinchbeck, Sir Matthew Mite, Admiral Flogemall, or Judge Scragging – scragging being a cant word for hanging – but Dan had no idea who they were.
It was not until he was near the end of the manuscript that he came upon two men he did know: Lord Hawkhurst as the rakish Lord Eagleton and the Honourable Charles Bredon as his lanky friend Lord Beanpole.
Beanpole, a man of good birth and outward gentlemanly appearance – Dan read – is a pander, a pimp, a procurer, a blaster of innocence, a ruiner of youth.
This Lord Corruption attached himself to Lord Eagleton when both were young. Lord Eagleton was a fine youth, destined to shine in the world, but Lord Beanpole led him into a pit of vice and turned him away from that lustrous promise. There are still glimpses of the man Lord Eagleton once was, but as long as Lord Beanpole clings to him, that man can never reveal himself.
This reptile, this Lord Beanpole, hates to be refused, and my refusal of his passionate advances stung him. He vowed vengeance and took it by coming between me and His Lordship, spreading lies and falsehoods until he had convinced Lord Eagleton, whose mind he had long prepared to believe any evil of his most disinterested friends, that my love was mercenary. That proud dignity and delicacy of woman’s nature which will not stoop to ally itself with undeserved calumny and reproach dictated that I could no longer remain in Lord Eagleton’s company and with my own lips I pronounced the fatal doom that rent my heart in twain.
That was a new way of seeing Hawkhurst, Dan thought. Had he been such a promising youth? Was Bredon to blame for his dissipation? Or did Louise seek to justify her affair with a notorious libertine by presenting it as an attempt to redeem him? If that had been her aim, she had failed miserably. The funerary gifts he had sent her were proof enough of his lasting ill-nature.
Dan was not sure what to make of the suggestion that Bredon had been in love with her. If her book was to be believed, a man had only to look at her to fall at her feet. If it were true, it did not seem to have affected the two men’s friendship, unless Hawkhurst did not know what part Bredon had played in the end of his affair. Her lady’s maid, Sarah Dean, had been in Louise’s confidence, and she had not mentioned that Bredon bore any malice towards her mistress. Malice enough to murder her? It might be worth speaking to Sarah again.
He finished the last few pages and pushed them over to Caroline. Absorbed in her reading, she reached for them without lifting her eyes from the page. She smiled as she read; sometimes laughed out loud. It suited her, brought back all the bright beauty she had possessed when they were younger, when he first started courting her. He realised that at some point he had stopped noticing how lovely she was.
Even as he enjoyed rediscovering her beauty, part of his mind was working on the case. The memoirs hadn’t opened up much in the way of new leads, or added a great deal to what he already knew of Cruft and Hawkhurst. John Townsend was still wrapped up in Pickering, but the coachman would be safe enough now he knew he was being followed. He had the sense to stay away from the Martins and avoid any more attempted break-ins for a while. No one expected Dan back in the office yet, not after what had happened. That gave him a couple of days free to pursue his investigations without worrying about Townsend’s interference.
As soon as he could get away, he would call at the Crufts’ mansion. If Randolph Cruft was not there, Dan had made up his mind to travel to Hertfordshire tomorrow. He should be able to get there and back in a day if he was lucky with the coaches. All being well, he would be in London on Thursday to meet Jones when the wagon got back from Tewkesbury and ask him about the man who had been waiting outside the Feathers. If he was the man who had taken Alex, and Jones knew anything about it – but there was no use Dan thinking about what he might do now. He would ask Noah and Paul to keep watch at his house while he was gone. His family would not be left unprotected again.
He pulled his watch out of his pocket: nearly midday. Punctual to the arrangement made last night, a knock sounded on the fr
ont door. Eleanor had promised to return in the morning to help Caroline look after their mother and Alex. Sam had listened with pursed lips when the offer was made. He did not much like the idea of his wife coming back to run his sister-in-law’s house for her. Like everyone else, though, he had to accept that Caroline would not cope on her own.
Dan passed Alex to Caroline and let in their visitors. He stayed behind in the passageway to put on his hat and coat, watching the bustle of kisses and greetings through the open kitchen door. Sam put a heavy basket on the table. The smell of stew and fresh bread rose from it. Eleanor started to clear away the dirty dishes. Caroline sat down by the fire, Alex on her lap. Dan went back into the room, gathered up the memoirs and put them in a drawer in the dresser.
“You’re not going out?” Caroline exclaimed.
“There are a couple of calls I need to make,” Dan answered.
“Today?”
“Sam and Eleanor are here. I’ll be back soon.”
“I thought you’d stay with us today at least.”
“Sitting around here isn’t going to lead me to the man who took Alex. Sam, if you have to go before I get back, send for Dad.”
Sam hesitated. Eleanor gave her husband a warning look. He forced a smile.
“We’ll be here.”
“Thanks.”
Dan stooped to kiss Caroline, pat Alex’s head. She pulled away from him.
“Make sure you shut the door on your way out.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Randolph Cruft wafted the handkerchief he held between thumb and forefinger in front of his eyes. “I will never love another.”
The young man was sprawled in a chair by the fire in his bedroom. He wore a silk dressing gown over fawn breeches, billowing shirt, embroidered waistcoat, white stockings and Turkish slippers. With a loud sigh, he sank his head on to his hand and curled his fingers against his right temple to show the polished nails to best advantage. After a few seconds he sighed again, flung back his head and pressed the handkerchief to his left cheek.
Dan, standing in front of him, looked out through the window at the lawn and shrubberies which ran down to meadows and woodland. He glimpsed the loop of a river in the distance. Thinking longingly of cold water and chill air, he edged as far away from the fire as he could.
“When did you last see Miss Parmeter, Mr—” It was on the tip of Dan’s tongue to call him Mr Namby Pamby, one of the names Louise Parmeter had given him in her memoirs. “—Cruft?”
Cruft struck himself on the forehead. Not too hard, Dan noticed. “Oh, Louise, Louise! Parted from me by a cruel, remorseless parent, slain by a ruthless assassin’s hand! Ah, Mr Foster, it is a poniard to the heart!” Cruft placed his hand over that organ and fetched another sigh.
Dan glanced around the opulent bedchamber. He didn’t think Mr Cruft senior such a cruel parent; his son had been provided with every luxury. And if he didn’t buck up the young man, he’d be here all day watching him strike poses in it.
“Now look here, Mr Minimy—” Hastily Dan corrected himself. Not Mr Minimy Piminy. “Mr Cruft, this is a murder investigation and I need you to concentrate. When you last saw Miss Parmeter, did you part on good terms?”
“We were one and indivisible.”
“Did you know she was one and indivisible with other men? That she had other lovers?”
Cruft waved his hand like a sultan pardoning a slave. “The purity of our love expunged whatever she had been.”
“I don’t think it did. And from what I’ve gathered, she wasn’t in love with you at all. Thought you something of a nuisance in fact.” Mr Mincey Wincey. “As I recall, the kindest thing she had to say about you was that you were a kind of neuter, a creature somewhere between male and female.”
“You must be mistaken. I offered to lay my fortune at her feet. She would have been my Cleopatra, my Helen, my—”
“She turned you down, though, didn’t she?”
Cruft pressed his hand to his head. “Really, Mr Foster, I must ask you to desist. I feel quite faint.”
“Made a bit of a fool of you, all in all.” Dan didn’t think Cruft needed much help with that. “And then she got you sent into the country like a naughty schoolboy.”
“To wander in solitary, melancholy groves in a rapture of devotion.”
“While she was treating your attempt to throw your life away for love of her as a subject for gossip and humour. At the sight of half a dozen tiny drops of blood, he squealed like a stuck pig, a creature which he very much resembled.”
“What?”
“That’s what she wrote about you.”
“The damned jade!”
“You might very well think that. Might very well decide to do something about it. While everyone thinks you’re wandering in solitary groves, you sneak back to London, go to Louise’s house, confront her, lose your temper, and strike her. Dead.”
“Yes, yes!” cried Cruft, clasping his hands. “Driven by a cruel, imperious mistress to a crime of passion, to spend the rest of his days in bitter solitude, far from the empty, shallow world, his noble soul consumed by a love so pure that even the worthlessness of its object cannot destroy it.”
“Or hanging from a rope at Newgate.”
“What?”
“Mr Cruft, you do realise I’m asking if you murdered Louise Parmeter?”
Cruft sat bolt upright. “Murder her? Me? But – but – I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I didn’t.”
“So you were here at Childwick Hall all the time?”
The colour rushed back into Cruft’s white face. “Oh, yes, that’s it. I was, wasn’t I?” He tittered. “I’d forgotten.”
Dan had known men bluster and lie through their alibis, or repeat them by rote, or produce scores of dubious witnesses, but he had never come across a man who forgot his. It hardly mattered. Cruft was not the killer. Dan left him to enjoy weaving epic tragedies with himself as hero.
The steward was waiting for Dan outside the room. He led him down to the kitchen, where Dan was given bread, meat and cheese. The meal was welcome. He had caught the 5 a.m. coach from the Bell and Crown in Holborn that morning and had eaten nothing since breakfast. His appetite had been further sharpened by walking the couple of miles from Watford.
While he ate, he asked the steward about his master’s movements during his stay. There had not been many of them. Cruft spent very little time wandering in solitary groves, passed most of the day in his room, often only emerging at dinner time. Sometimes he had guests, pallid young ladies and gentlemen, to share languid evenings of music and conversation.
There could not have been much to alarm Cruft senior when he received the steward’s reports of his son’s activities. Nor did Dan have any reason to doubt the man’s account. It was clear that the young master was no favourite of his. He spoke in incredulous tones of Cruft’s preference for poetry and a roaring fire when there was such a fine sporting estate to enjoy. With a disbelieving shake of the head, he mentioned that Master Cruft had always preferred the library to the gun room.
When Dan had finished his meal, he took his leave and walked back to Watford. Several coaches to London passed through the town daily; with luck, he would soon be on his way home. From questions put to other servants and grooms on his way out, Dan left Childwick convinced that Cruft had not made a mad dash to London to commit murder in a fit of passion.
It was nearly eight when he got back to London. There was still time to call on Sarah Dean and ask her what she knew about Bredon’s relationship with Louise Parmeter. He preferred not to wait; the house would soon be closed, the servants gone, all signs that a murder had been committed swept and scrubbed away. But when he reached Berkeley Square, he was already too late. The house was shuttered and silent, a dark gap amidst the brilliantly lit buildings.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dan tu
rned away from the front door of the Berkeley Square house and went round to the lane. He scanned the track, listened to the watery bustle from the laundry, the lowing of cattle in the dairy, muffled hammering from one of the workshops. It could have been a street in some obscure village or country town were it not for the sense of the city pressing in on every side. The traffic on the main streets kept up a continual low roar, and the sky above the myriad rooftops was smudged with light and plumed with chimney smoke.
He spotted the shadowy bulk of a man leaning under the branches by the garden gate. The man straightened up and turned to face him.
“You drew the short straw again,” Dan said.
“Mr Foster!” cried Patrolman Grimes, who had been keeping watch on Pickering last time Dan was here. “How do things go with you? Is the little fellow well?” Grimes had done his share during the search for Alex.
“He is safe and well, thank you,” Dan answered.
“If anyone did such a thing to one of my little ones, I’d rip his liver out.”
“And so I will, when I find the villain.” Dan jerked his head towards the large stable gate, which had been fastened for the night. “Anything doing?”
“Not much. Pickering seems to be lying low mostly. I did follow him to a drinking den near Monmouth Street last night. Mr Townsend thinks that’s where he’s going to fence the diamonds, if he hasn’t already. He thinks it might be worth raiding the place.”
He would, Dan thought. “I need to ask Pickering some questions.”
“Right you are, Mr Foster.”
Dan tried the wicket gate, found it was still open and went inside. Jacko, the stable boy, was filling a bucket at the pump in the yard. He beckoned Dan to follow him into the stables where Pickering was giving one of the horses his last grooming by the light of a lamp hung on the wall, before settling him down for the night. The boy unlatched the stall next door and went inside with the pail, clucking softly at its occupant.
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