Harriet lowered herself carefully into the chair James had vacated and glanced at the book he had been puzzling over. It was a child’s book of simple rhymes and stories. On one of the blank pages she saw that someone had tried to write a word, then, troubled by it, had fiercely scrubbed it out and filled the page instead with angry black lines. It took her a moment to recognize the hand as James’s.
He and Stephen were now examining the model of the Splendor. Stephen was explaining how part of the side planking came away to expose the gun decks. Each battery was in position with its crew. Stephen introduced each of the tiny figures and James nodded slowly over them.
“There is one missing,” he said suddenly, with a frown.
Stephen sat back on his heels. “Who, Papa?”
“The Frenchman,” said James slowly.
Stephen put his head on one side and bit his fingertip. “I have no other figures, Papa.” Then, with sudden cheerfulness: “Might we use the cook?” He pushed his fingers into the boat and pulled out a tiny being hardly bigger than his fingernail. He looked up at his father’s frowning face. “Will it do, sir?” James nodded slowly. “Where does he go, Papa?”
James reached in a finger through the planking and tapped a spot Harriet could not see.
“In the sick bay, sir?” His father nodded and Stephen placed the little figure on its back. James picked up the figures on the quarterdeck one by one, examining each till he found the one with epaulettes. He lifted it level with his eyes and looked into its tiny features.
“Ha!” he said, with apparent joy, and placed his model self next to the Frenchman. Stephen watched him.
“What are you talking about with the Frenchman, Papa?”
James bit his thumb. “He was crying. I made him cry more.” He began to sing some tune Harriet did not recognize. Stephen looked confused, but curious. James suddenly turned toward his son.
“Are you a spy?”
“No, sir!” Stephen said smartly, and lifted his chin. “Death to traitors, sir!” James laughed very heartily and clapped him on the back, then leaning close to the little boy and looking up at Harriet, he whispered: “Is she a spy?”
Stephen laughed. “No, sir! That is Mama. She is very clever.”
James met Harriet’s eye for a moment. “Pretty, too!” Harriet looked away.
Stephen pushed one of the gun carriages to and fro on its tiny wheels.
“I do not think baby Anne is a spy either, sir. I can’t answer for her character, but she is very little.”
A slow delighted smile spread over James’s face.
“I have a daughter too.” He turned to Stephen and took his shoulders. “You must look after them, Stephen. Do not let the spies get them!” Stephen looked a little afraid, but nodded bravely. “Good lad, good lad,” James said, rather distracted, then turned away, singing the same tune again. He brought his palm suddenly to his forehead with a slap that made Harriet jump. “I cannot get that song out of my head. Hate it. Smells bad.”
Stephen took the tiny figure of his father from the sick bay and placed it on the quarterdeck with the other officers and fitted the side planking back in place. James turned to watch him and put out a hand to touch the rigging. His fingers drifted down the main topgallant, and skimmed the mizzen staysail.
Stephen looked up at him and said quietly, “What are your orders, Captain?”
“Are we provisioned and watered, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where stands the wind?”
“North by northwest, sir.”
“Very good.” James traced the stern with a fingertip. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft Harriet had to strain to hear it. “You may set topsails, Mr. Westerman.”
5
Molloy they found in the Pear and Oats wreathed in his usual pipe smoke—though this time when he looked up at them he gave them a leering smile that made it look as if his face would spill and fall then and there.
“Come to make your thanks, Mrs. Bligh?”
“I have.”
“Any profit yet?”
“Nothing but extra trouble and questions.”
Molloy pulled his pipe out from between his teeth, spat on the floor and lost his good humor.
“I should never have let you bounce me about with your cards, Mrs. Bligh. Now I suppose I am to get my share of those troubles instead of coin.”
Jocasta met his eye steadily enough. “If you’ll take it.”
“Bah! Woman!” He looked about the place. A couple of men in worn coats nursed their beer at the far end of the long bar, and a young woman with nothing but a holed and dirty shawl over her stays pushed a filthy rag across one of the tabletops in the middle of the room. She was ghostly pale, and nothing in her figure or movement suggested she was much taken with the world around her. Molloy selected his places of business with care. There would be some warmth and some liquor to sit over, and not too far from the more populated places; but he needed rooms with corners enough for private conversation and where the few regulars would crawl in quiet and mind their own business, and the bright, noisy, curious or prosperous would stick their noses in only to hurry by again quick. “Still too early in the day for my usual trade. Send that lad out for food so at least I won’t starve listening to you, and listen I will.”
Jocasta took a handful of coins from her pocket and laid them on the table by her side. Sam hesitated a moment then snatched them up.
Jocasta spoke without looking at him. “Two doors down. Samson’s pie shop.” He nodded and was gone without a word. Molloy leaned back against the settle and drew a little circle in the air with the bitten end of his pipe.
“Begin, Mrs. Bligh.”
Jocasta hissed between her teeth, and Molloy smiled at it. Then she looked down at the table, wet her lips and opened them. “This girl came to see me on Friday gone, name of Kate Mitchell . . .”
Stephen was quiet when they climbed back into the coach, but seemed content.
After they had gone a little way Harriet asked: “Are you glad to have seen your papa, my pet?”
He nodded and touched the rigging of his model with one hand. “He is still very strong, isn’t he, Mama?”
“Yes. He is.”
“And he liked the ship?”
“Very much, I think.”
“Then I shall bring it again, next time we come.” With that he looked out of the window at the passing hedgerow, and seemed to have no further need for conversation.
Harriet thought of her discussion with Trevelyan in the hallway and tried to will patience and quiet into her blood, then picked up the last of the letters from Isabella to Fitzraven. It was only now she noticed that this one had been franked in London, and the date was only some two weeks ago. What, she wondered, would Isabella need to communicate in a letter, given she must at this time have been seeing Fitzraven almost every day at His Majesty’s? It was short and its tone was so unlike the last that Harriet’s heart squeezed a little with the echo of Isabella’s disappointment in the man who had sired her. Then her pulse skipped forward, and she found she was holding the paper hard enough to crease it.
“Oh, Isabella! Why did you not think to tell us, child?”
“What is it, Mama?”
Harriet looked up a little guiltily. “Sorry, Stephen. I did not intend to speak aloud. Something in this letter has upset me.”
He frowned. “It is not about spies, is it, Mama?”
“I fear it might be, Stephen. It might be a little bit about spies . . .”
Fitzraven,
I had hoped that we might become friends, but I see no natural affection for me in your manner or actions. I hold Mr. Bywater in great esteem, but I feel no necessity on commenting further on my friendship with that gentleman to you. I do not believe you have earned any right to be consulted as you suggest about who I should consider as a husband. I would not trifle with his affections by encouraging other men. And even if my heart were completely free I would
not use my “charms,” as you refer to them, to extract gossip or rumor military or civilian. You mistake my profession.
I see the people you are with and I urge you with my last duty as a daughter to cease any contact with them. Until you can assure me the activities you hinted at have ceased entirely, or were no more than figments of your imagination, your strange need to demand respect through pretended or surreptitiously gathered knowledge, rather than earn it by the manners and behavior of a gentleman, I would ask we meet as mere acquaintances. Morgan has orders not to admit you to my presence.
Isabella
“Why did she not say?” Harriet murmured.
Stephen was looking at his mother with concern. “Mama! Are there spies coming? I am to protect you from spies!”
She smiled at him and folded the letter. “And you do a very fine job of it, sir. Continue to patrol Berkeley Square Gardens with Lord Sussex and I think we shall all do very well.” Then she added, as she looked out of the window, “My mind is playing tricks on me. I noticed some smell as we left Dr. Trevelyan’s . . .”
Her son sat up looking very pleased. “Paint, Mama. The nice maid Clara was telling me about it while you were talking so long to the doctor. There was a man in painting and plastering, and now Clara must keep the windows open even though the weather is cold to drive off the smell. Even though it has been two weeks since he came.”
Harriet thought back some weeks to a visit to James. Dr. Trevelyan had been apologizing about the works in his house, though Harriet herself had been hardly fit to notice.
“You are a very fine young man, Stephen.”
The little boy shrugged and turned to look out of the window, but Harriet could see the happy flush in his cheeks. She thought about the strange tang in the air her mind had gathered and puzzled on even before she had consciously noticed it. It was not just paint, it was the fresh plaster and wood varnish too. She thought for a long moment before the picture of a room, recently seen and sharing some fragment of that odd combination of odors appeared before her eyes. The picture was of the study of Lord Carmichael. The window open in November she had noticed was to release the hanging taint in the air.
6
Jocasta came to a stop and Molloy continued chewing down on his scrag end of boiled meat for so long, she thought he was never going to come to speaking at all. Sam sat close to Jocasta.
“You know there was murder done at His Majesty’s last night?” Molloy said at last, gave a loud belch and fitted his pipe back into his mouth.
She nodded. “A lass, and her lover slashed his wrists is what I’ve heard.”
Molloy folded his arms together and looked mean at her.
“So it is said—and Christ, how London loves it! I saw three women out on their morning ride with yellow roses in their hair, and two fellas all lace and lavender with red ribbons on their wrists. Stupid fuckers. If they knew how a body felt they’d be less likely to make a romance of it.”
Jocasta shrugged. “Let them do as they will. You’re just fractious you aren’t the man selling flowers this morning. You say it’s all bound up?”
“This little troop of loveliness you’ve thrown a rock at, Mrs. Bligh, have killed two lads and a woman. Why should killing more trouble them?”
“Maybe.”
Molloy paid some attention to his pipe till he was hidden in billows and dances of smoke. “You are a singular woman, Mrs. Bligh, and noted for walking alone. Given I know that, and you know that, will you be guided by me?”
She put her elbows on the table. “That’s dependent which way you are shoving, Molloy.”
“Good enough. Ripley’s right. You need a navy man, but one that’s worth trusting. There’s a few on the river that used to serve. We’ll go and have a chat. And we’re going to let news of the killings spread. No one takes a liking to men that pick off kiddies for sport. Maybe it’ll all come apart easy. But it’s good to have some angry friends at hand if the knot tightens the other way.” He switched his attention to Sam and pointed his pipe at him. “And you, fella, are going up to those kilns.”
Sam found reason to pick up Boyo and hold him. The dog licked his face. “Why so, Mr. Molloy?” He threw a nervous glance Jocasta’s way, and she caught and held it.
“Because, boy,” Molloy continued, “I reckon if you spend some time up there you’re going to find someone that saw something on Sunday when Blondie got herself killed. If your mistress weren’t so used to looking to cards or her own wise self for answers, she’d have thought of that before now.”
Sam opened his mouth, then shut it up.
“The lad can come with us, Molloy,” Jocasta said.
“You scared?” Molloy kept his eyes on Sam.
“Course he’s afraid. He had two of his mates picked off.”
Molloy ignored Jocasta and leaned toward Sam across the table. “When does Tonton Macoute hunt, boy?”
“Night, sir.”
“And what is it now, boy?”
“Day, sir.”
Molloy looked impressed and gave a slow nod, then reached into his waistcoat. There was a flick of his wrist and Sam found himself looking at a folded blade that spun across the table toward him. It had a bone handle, yellow with age and handling. He set down Boyo, but made no move to pick it up.
“You can take that from me, and the dog from Mrs. Bligh. Go. Come back before it gets dark and meet me or her here. Tell Sarah at the bar you’ve got Molloy’s word to pay with, and then stay and wait if you must.”
“Shall I, Mrs. Bligh?”
“If you’re willing, lad.” Sam nodded and took up the knife. He tucked it in his waistband, whistled to Boyo and left the room. Jocasta watched them go. “Ten years I’ve fed that dog. He never even looks back.”
“Ha! He goes where he’s needed.”
“What you give him the knife for? He’s no notion of the use of it.”
“Bit of steel in the pocket, bit of steel in his spine.”
Jocasta turned back to Molloy and watched his dry, cracked face.
“What’s this to you, Molloy? Why you being so helpful when there’s no profit in it?”
He let the smoke slip out of the side of his mouth, till it wavered thin like a last breath. “Maybe there will be. I’ve learned to take a long view in these days. But as much . . . I’ve got two boys and a little girl. Eldest wants to get on a boat, younger one is fool enough to like a red coat. The girl I’ll marry to a shopkeeper and get her to tend me in my glorious age. As for the lads, bombs and bullets they’ll have to deal with themselves for their foolishness in choosing so unprofitable a career. But I’ll not have their throats cut by an ink-stained murderous clerk and his bitch mother, nor any fucker who goes round slicing up little kids to feed the Frenchies our news.”
He stood and pulled his cloak around him. Jocasta sat where she was and looked at him with her head on one side.
“Molloy, you tight thieving squeezing crack-faced dog. You’re a patriot!”
“I used to mark you as a woman of few words, and liked you for it. Now you’re running on like a wife. You going to sit there yapping or follow me to where there’s business to be done?”
Jocasta heaved herself upright.
As soon as Harriet reached Berkeley Square she summoned Mrs. Martin to her room.
“Yes, madam?”
“Mrs. Martin, I wanted to thank you for your tact and help when I returned here last night.”
The housekeeper folded her hands in front of her and gave a quiet nod.
Harriet had wanted nothing more on returning home than to kiss her children and her sister at once, when this woman, waiting half the night in the hallway to do her any service she required, had gently drawn her attention to the blood all over her gown and hands. She had guided Mrs. Westerman to her room, undressed her and wiped the last traces of it from her palms while Mrs. Westerman stared into the candlelight and wept. Then, red-eyed but calm, Harriet had visited her sister and children and seen them safe more
like a woman than some devil escaping hell.
“It must have been horrid, madam.”
Harriet thought of Isabella’s body lying across Morgan’s knees. “Yes. It was. The stomach wound had bled a great deal.”
After a short silence Mrs. Martin spoke again. “May I ask how the captain is, madam?”
Harriet put her hand to her neck, and pushed some thread of hair away from her cheek. She had spoken at length to Dr. Trevelyan about the little scene with James and the model boat. The doctor had been encouraging, and thought it interesting that the model boat seemed to have shaken loose some memory, but was cautious as always about James’s prospects of recovery. Telling Trevelyan the history of Mr. Leacroft, Bywater and Isabella had been more difficult. The horror and cost of it had reared up again before her in the shock written on Trevelyan’s usually calm face. She allowed herself to remember the pressure of her husband’s embrace for a moment, the warmth of the breath on her neck as he said her name, and she touched her throat with her fingertips.
“Much the same, Mrs. Martin. Now I have a favor to ask you.”
“Anything, madam.” The housekeeper straightened up and smiled willingly at her. She seemed to be one of those people with the good sense to put down an unpleasant thought and move away from it, treating it as one would a dog of suspicious temper. “Since you came it’s been made clear to us that a word from you is as good as one from Mrs. Service or Mr. Graves.”
“Thank you. But this is not something I can order you to do.” Harriet turned to her and spoke with a slightly brittle brightness. “I wish to borrow some clothes from you, then have you come with me to Lord Carmichael’s house.”
The woman lost her smile, looked a little stunned and gave a mumbling assent, then turned to leave the room. Her hand on the doorknob, however, she seemed to reconsider and turned back toward Harriet.
“May I speak my mind, madam?”
Harriet kept the bright tone as if she might win her point by sheer good humor. “Do, Mrs. Martin.”
Anatomy of Murder Page 31