by Joan Smith
Chapter 15
Luten had returned and been brought up to date by his wife when Coffen went to report on his visit to Prance. “I’ll let him know we’re meeting here tonight at eight,” Luten said. “He might be able to help us, if he can get over the indignity of our suspecting his actor.”
“He jumped at the notion of suspecting Miss Lipman,” Coffen said.
“Then he’ll be happy to know she’s being watched. If she goes out tonight, she’ll be followed. You’ll tell Black about the meeting?”
“You couldn’t keep him away. We’ll both be here.”
He scooted across the road to tell Black about his visit to Prance, and about the meeting that night.
“Good,” Black said. “We’ve got to act fast, Mr. Pattle. Just two days till the ball and the auction. We’ve got to find the goods, get them back to Berkeley Square, and get them taken to Elgin Hall, and do it without anyone knowing. Her ladyship’s most particular about that.”
“Aye, we’ll be busier than a bee’s bonnet,” Coffen said, in his usual way of mangling the King’s English.
* * *
The group met in Luten’s study at eight. Prance had not notified them whether he would attend, but when at ten after eight he had still not arrived Luten said rather grimly, “We’ll have to go on without him. Now about this rented wagon, Black.”
There was a tap at the door and Prance came in, hiding his uncertainty under a veneer of disinterest. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, but gave no excuse as he slid onto the empty chair. “Have I missed anything?”
“Glad you could make it, Reg. We’re just about to begin,” Luten said and turned to Black. “I’ve been thinking about that rented wagon we think was used to haul away the donations. If it was returned at dawn, the goods must be stored closeby, or not far away in any case.”
“Aye, unless they were just put on to another wagon to fool us, and taken out of town.”
“That’s possible,” Luten agreed, but they’d only have to be hauled back to town. London is the obvious market for them.”
“Now if it was Father heading up the job, I’d think that,” Black agreed, “but with Mother in charge, I hardly know what she might do.”
All this was new to Prance, and had to be explained. He was happy to hear some gang was suspected, “That clears Vance, does it not?” he said, looking around for agreement.
“Well, except that the gang needed someone inside the house to learn the details,” Luten said. “They knew the goods were in the library, they knew about the guards, they knew the library door into the garden gave easy access without alarming the rest of the house, and they knew there was a gate to the street, where they had the wagon parked. Miss Lipman certainly knew all that, but as she and Vance were close, we have to include him in our suspicions.”
“I daresay that makes sense,” Prance allowed. Luten didn’t mention Vance’s keen interest in valuable objects. He didn’t have to, they all knew it.
“Coffen suggested the other two actors might be involved. Now Sean would know nothing of the setup here beyond the gold salon, but Chloe made a great friend of Mrs. Ballard. She visited her upstairs and said more than once that she would love to have a tour of the house.”
“I didn’t know she was actually in Mrs. Ballard’s sitting room,” Corinne said, frowning. “She would have an excellent view of the back garden from there — the gate, the bushes. Yes, and from Mrs. Ballard’s bedroom she could see the glass doors of the library.”
“Why don’t you have a word with Mrs. Ballard before she retires,” Luten said. “Try not to upset her, but just find out if Chloe showed any particular interest in the view from the windows.”
“I’ll do it this minute,” Corinne said, and ran upstairs. Mrs. Ballard was in her sitting room, stitching nightshirts for a boys’ orphanage her church supported. She jumped up. “Oh milady, did you want something?”
“I just came to see how your headache is doing,” Corinne said, motioning Mrs. Ballard back to her seat, taking up the other chair and tidying her skirts, while considering how to broach the important subject.
“You needn’t have done that. I took a powder and feel much better.”
“I don’t like to think of you spending so much time up here alone. I daresay you miss Chloe, now that the rehearsals are not taking place here,” she said.
“I do miss her. A lovely little girl, really sweet and shy. Not what I imagined an actress would be like at all. She used to come up here and sit with me when she wasn’t needed for a scene now and then. I was teaching her to knit. She is certainly a fast learner. She couldn’t believe I lived in such grandeur,” she said, casting an eye around at the fine carpet, the window hangings, the pair of bergere chairs, the table and desk. “Just like a lady, she said. And even a canopied bed in my bedroom. She made me realize how fortunate I am.”
So she had got into the bedroom as well! “We are fortunate to have you,” Corinne said. To get to the point without wasting time, she rose and went to the window, where the curtains were not yet drawn. “The view from here is pleasant in the day time, the little back garden.”
“Yes, Chloe loved it. She used to stand there and gaze out. She asked me what the bushes were, with the pink flowers. Imagine, milady, she had never seen a rose actually growing! She thought the flowers came up each on its own stock, like lilies. I explained to her what all the flowers and bushes are. You can see the forsythia by the gate from my bedroom, though they were no longer in bloom. She wanted to go down and pick a rose, but I had to tell her she couldn’t at this time. Of course she knew why and understood. I said that perhaps she would be allowed to go a little later on. She didn’t push at all. She’s not that sort.”
Corinne could hardly control the urge to rush downstairs with the news. “So she was very interested in the little garden,” she said, wondering if there was more to learn before leaving.
“Oh very much. She said she wished Mr. Corbett could see it, for he has great ambitions, you must know. He always asked her what she had seen when she returned below, so he’d know what to do when he bought a mansion. She said he is very ambitious. I thought him rather a proud fellow, but then I hardly spoke to him, so I shouldn’t judge.”
Corinne didn’t resume her seat. She said, “Can I get you anything, Mrs. Ballard, some tea perhaps?”
“Kind of you, but I usually go down to the kitchen and have a cup of tea with the housekeeper about this time. I’ll just finish hemming this little nightshirt before I go.”
Corinne darted back down to Luten’s study to report what she had learned.
“There you are then,” Prance crowed. “Chloe is your insider.”
“She said Vance always asked her what she had seen when she went back to the rehearsal. And you remember, Reg, Vance was the only one who was actually in the library. And he was poking about the door leading to the garden.”
“And plus he had marked them valuables of Lord Luten’s in his book,” Black reminded him.
“He explained all that. Are you having him watched?” Prance asked.
“Nossir,” Black answered. “A waste of time and manpower, for if he was the inside man, and I’m not saying he was, but if he was and knowing he’s suspected, he’ll not go next or nigh the gang till it’s time to get his share. Mother Maccles ain’t as fly as Father, but she’d know that much, not to let him lead us to her gang.”
“But you mentioned you’re having Miss Lipman watched, Luten,” Prance said. After an uncomfortable pause, he added, “I see. You think Miss Lipman was Vance’s unknowing tool. You want to see if she goes to meet him.”
“No, we figure that leading role in your play is enough to hold him. Considering Miss Lipman’s friendship with Fell and her recently coming into money, we’re watching her as the person working inside,” Luten explained, “So what is our next move?”
He drew out a map of London and area. “If they didn’t transfer the goods to another wagon, then they are stash
ed somewhere within a fairly small area. They left here before three a.m., and the empty cart was returned to the stable at dawn. This gives them about three hours to get to the destination, unload the wagon and return it. A wagon loaded with fragile valuables would have be moved slowly, so they can’t have taken the load far. I make it within this radius,” he said, sketching out a circle of a few miles on the map. They all examined the map. “They didn’t go south unless they had a barge waiting,” he continued.
“At the harbour,” Coffen said, with some vague memory of someone having mentioned a harbour.
“It’s a possibility, I suppose,” Luten said.
“I doubt Mother would think of anything that ambitious,” Black said.
“They wouldn’t have stored it in the polite part of town either,” Luten continued. “What do you think, Black?’
After examining the map, Black said, “If it was me, I’d head north. Nobody would look twice at a loaded wagon there. They’d have covered the load with blankets. There’s dozens of warehouses, and a little farther north there’s barns as well.”
Luten nodded. “Hundreds of them. Too many to hope to search within a couple of days.”
“And there’s still the possibility they transferred the goods to another wagon,” Black reminded him.
“Oh it’s hopeless! We’ll never find them,” Corinne said, close to tears. “I shall just have to repay the committee from the money deCoventry left me. I’ll be penniless, Luten.”
Black’s withers were wrung to see his beloved in such distress. “You’ll still have the house deCoventry left you, and that little country property,” he said, in an effort to console her.
“I doubt Luten will let you starve, or go in rags,” Prance added.
“This is foolishness,” Luten said angrily. “We may not be able to find the stash, but we should be able to figure out who stole it, or was involved. Perhaps innocently,” he added to keep Prance in curl. “Now, Corbett, Miss Lipman and Chloe, not necessarily in that order. Those are the three we must do some checking up on.”
“And Sean, for good measure,” Black added. “Him and Chloe are close as ticks on a dog. What she found out he’d soon know. He might have put her up to cozening Mrs. Ballard for that matter.”
“We’ve searched Vance’s house. Why not Chloe’s and Sean’s flats?” Prance suggested.
Coffen leapt on it. “Why not indeed? Are you game, Black?”
“Ready when you are, Mr. Pattle. Would you happen to know if they’re home tonight, Sir Reginald?”
“They’re never home at night,” he replied. “To judge by Sean’s condition most mornings he doesn’t spend much time in bed. And Chloe’s not much better. She’s only eighteen, and is beginning to look hagged already. I have their address in my notebook.”
“I already have it,” Coffen said.
“I wonder how you got it,” he said with an arch smile. Not much doubt of that. He had been rifling the blue notebook that time he was left alone a moment in the drawing room. He knew he hadn’t torn that page out himself.
“I came across it. Is there anything else, Luten?”
“Not at the moment. If you’re back before midnight, drop in. I’ll be in my office. I have a report to write.”
Prance, eager to prove Vance innocent, decided to go along with Black and Coffen. They didn’t object as it saved calling a hackney. Fitz wasn’t to be trusted with the ribbons at night in a strange place, and Prance had a deep dislike of cabs.
* * *
Chapter 16
Chloe and Sean had given their address as a rooming house on Stukeley Street. Even Pelkey, Prance’s efficient groom, had difficulty finding the short, undistinguished street in an unfamiliar part of town. When discovered, the house proved to be one of a row of tall, narrow, red brick houses a hundred or so years old. They were not derelict but the signs in the windows offering rooms to let suggested the neighbourhood was entering the steep downward path to dereliction. No gin mills had opened here yet, and no drunkards roamed the streets. Dim lights were visible through some of the dusty windows.
“They might be home,” Black said, peering in the lighted windows at the address they sought.
“They live on the top floor,” Prance said. “Chloe has complained more than once about all the stairs. There are no lights up there.”
“Let us go then,” Black said, taking up the dark lantern and leading the way.
Prance ordered Pelkey to drive the carriage down the street two or three houses and park in the shadows. Sean and Chloe might recognize his carriage if they happened to come home early.
They slunk like thieves through the concealing shadows of night. They met no one, yet the wind whispering between the tall houses held a note of menace that caused them to look over their shoulders. Prance was glad he wasn’t there alone.
The front door was not locked. It opened silently. They entered softly and crept up the steep staircase, lit only by the dim ray from the dark lantern. Their nostrils were accosted not by the expected odour of boiling cabbage and the reek of unwashed humanity, but by a dusty, dead smell, as if the house was untenanted. No crying babies, no arguing spouses, but only the dim lights issuing from under the doors and the occasional muted sound of voices from behind the doors told them the place was occupied.
Only Black recognized these clues to a house tenanted by men engaged in various illegal enterprises. People didn’t so much live here as use it as their headquarters for meeting their colleagues and hiding or sharing out their loot. They would have little or nothing to do with each other. Didn’t old Jacques, who ran a ring of dippers, used to work out of here?
By the time they reached the top floor, they felt some sympathy with Chloe for her complaints. The staircase opened into a narrow, uncarpeted hall with a door on either side. By the light of Black’s lantern they saw one door bore a homemade sign bearing Sean’s name, the other Chloe’s.
“At least they ain’t living together without being married,” Coffen said with approval.
“We’ll see about that,” Black, the cynic said, and handed Coffen the lamp while he applied his bit of twisted metal to Chloe’s lock. Once inside, Black took the lantern back, raised it and swung it around. His practised eye told him the rooms came furnished. It would cost more than the lumber was worth to have this lot moved. The mismatched chair and sofa, the bedraggled window hangings, the strip of threadbare carpet on the floor — all struck him as dreadfully familiar from his past life. Prance and Coffen lit lamps and they began to look around.
“Chloe ain’t the kind of girl to leave a mess behind,” was Coffen’s remark. No dirty tea cups or glasses on the sofa table, no magazines or shawls or slippers lying about. Neat as a ball of wax, barring the squalor of the curtains and furniture.
He wandered into the kitchen, and found a similar lack of mess. No dishes in the sink, no food left out to attract mice. In fact, no food, no nothing, not even a pot or pan to be seem. Black, at his shoulder, said, “She don’t spend much time here. Let’s try the bedroom.”
Here they found enough mess to convince them that Chloe did actually live here. The bed was unmade. Clothes, bonnets and shoes were scattered about, along with a copy of the script for Shadows on the Wall with her lines marked. A quick search of the dresser drawers revealed a clutter of cheap costume jewelry, ribbons and bows — nothing that suggested guilt. No other personal items were found at all.
“They must share their meals in Sean’s flat, and Chloe just sleeps here,” Prance suggested.
“Very likely that’s it,” Coffen agreed. “If there’s anything to find, it’ll be at his place. Let’s go.”
Black re-locked the door, they went across the narrow hall and Black repeated his work with the homemade passe-partout. The layout of the flat was a mirror image of Chloe’s. Here they found all the signs of occupancy that were missing in hers. Prance, fastidious to a fault, wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t know Sean smoke cheroots,” he said. “He doesn�
�t do it at rehearsals at least.”
The mess told them that neither Chloe nor Sean was much of a housekeeper. Dirty dishes, remains of food and drink, including several empty wine bottles were scattered all about.
“Looks like they had a party here,” Black said, his sharp eyes making a tour of the room. “Half a dozen glasses, you see, and the remains of three cheroots.”
“Either that or they haven’t cleaned the place up in a week,” Prance said.
“Nay, the wine in the bottom of the glasses ain’t dried up yet, and the cheroots are of three different types.”
“Well, I know they do enjoy a party,” Prance said. “Despite the squalor here, they both turn out in style when they come to Berkeley Square.”
“Now what have we here?” Black said, lifting a knitting basket from the end of the sofa. It opened to reveal a pair of slippers. One was finished, the other still on the needles. It was of an intricate stitch, beautifully done.
“There must’ve been some ladies at that party,” Black said. “This can’t be Chloe’s work. Mrs. Ballard was just teaching her to knit.”
“What’s a party without women?” Prance said with a shrug.
Coffen took up the finished slipper and admired it. Was it a clue? He had attended more than a few actors’ parties, and they weren’t the kind of party where the women sat around, knitting. He took up his lamp and wandered into the bedroom. It was tidier than Chloe’s. Sean’s jackets were on hangers in the clothespress and his used linens in a basket on the floor. The room didn’t boast a desk, but the bedside table had a drawer. Coffen pulled it open and found a pistol resting on a little pile of handkerchiefs. Now that was odd. He picked it up and examined it. It looked brand new, didn’t smell as if it had been fired, but there were bullets in it. A thorough search of the room discovered nothing connecting him to either the robbery or the Maccles family, or whatever gang had stolen the auction donations.
He returned to the front room and reported on the gun. “Nothing suspicious in that,” Black decreed, considering the other occupants of the house. “He might very well need it if he went walking within a street or two of here, as he would have to do to get anywhere. Odd he didn’t take it with him, though.”