by Joan Smith
They parted, neither one completely happy with the meeting, though Corinne was delighted to be rid of Miss Lipman. Lady Cowper had hoped to get the girl palmed off on Coffen Pattle. Charlotte was becoming not only a bore but a nuisance. Gamblers and actors — what next?
As she drove home, Corinne reviewed what she had learned. If Charlotte would take up with a man who ran a gaming hell, would she draw the line at thieves? Might she not have met the thieves at Fell’s gaming hell? Odd, too, that she had “come into a little money” recently.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have said Miss Lipman could leave her at this time. It would be easier to watch her from Berkeley Square, follow her when she left and see where she went. On the other hand, she would be snooping around and trying to find out what steps were being taken to recover the stolen goods. It would be interesting to see if she objected to leaving ...
Miss Lipman took her meals with the family, which made for rather strained conversation. After lunch Corinne discussed the matter with Luten, and decided it would be such a relief to be rid of her that she would tell her Mrs. Middleton would like her to go to her at once. They could have her followed from there. She went to the little parlour where Miss Lipman was supposed to be working, and found it empty. She had written exactly three thank you notes. What the devil had she been doing all morning? She noticed the dustbin was full of discarded efforts. Really the girl was hopeless!
When she asked Evans if he had seen her, he said, “She went to the gold salon this morning. She was very upset when she found the rehearsals had removed to Sir Reginald’s house and darted over there. After lunch she put on her bonnet and left again. Said she was just going to Sir Reginald’s and would be back shortly.”
“How long ago did she leave?”
“Not more than ten minutes, madam,”
“Send her to me as soon as she returns.” Even as she spoke, the front door began to open.
“I believe that’s her now,” Evans said, drawing the door wide.
Miss Lipman looked very upset. “Oh milady! I heard the dreadful news! Whatever will you do?”
Had Reg told her, or Vance? “We are taking steps to recover the items,” Corinne said vaguely, but with a great air or confidence.
“Mr. Corbett is very upset. Indeed they all are, Chloe and Sean as well. Sir Reginald is furious!”
“Yes, we are all upset. Something else has come up, Miss Lipman. Mrs. Middleton needs your help with the accounts for the ticket sales. She would like you to go to her right away. Today.”
“But the thank you notes are not half done!”
Indeed they weren’t. Three notes was not half by a long shot. “Mrs. Ballard will help me. You have been a great help.”
“I cannot like to leave you at this time.”
“Lady Cowper asked me especially if I could spare you. Mrs. Middleton’s nephew is visiting her and she has to spend some time showing him around town, you know, so she needs a hand. I daresay she is trying to find him someone to take to the ball.”
“Ah, a bachelor, is he?” Miss Lipman asked sharply.
“So it seems.” Then she added, “Come to town to look for a wife, I daresay.”
Miss Lipman’s sly smile peeped out. “You’re quite sure you can spare me?”
“I promised Lady Cowper,” Corinne replied, as if sorry to see her go.
“Well, if you’re sure, I’ll just tidy up the desk and send a note to Mrs. Middleton to let her know I’m coming. She will want to send her carriage.”
“Thank you again for helping me, Miss Lipman. And I would appreciate it if you not mention the robbery to Mrs. Middleton, or indeed to anyone. I wouldn’t want to upset them, and we are very sure to find the donations.”
She added in desperation, “We have a very good idea who took them and where they are, and don’t want word to get around. You must promise me you won’t tell.”
“Oh I promise. It’s been a great pleasure working with you, milady. An honour. If you should need me again I would be happy to come.”
Corinne breathed a sigh of relief, went to get her purse for a parting pourboire for Miss Lipman, and asked Evans to let her know when she was leaving. Between tidying up the little parlour and doing her packing, it was going on two hours before Miss Lipman returned belowstairs to receive her pourboire and go out the door to Mrs. Middleton’s carriage.
Corinne went abovestairs at once and searched her room. She had left nothing incriminating, but had thrown out a pair of stockings with only a small hole in the toe. Corinne would not have thrown them out herself before her marriage. She would have mended the toe and worn them for every day.
Parsimonious habits learned in childhood lingered, certainly while one was in straitened circumstances, as Miss Lipman was alleged to be. Corinne wondered just how much money she had come into recently, and more importantly, what was the source of it.
* * *
Chapter 14
Black, desperate to atone for his failure and restore the gloss to his reputation, spent the morning visiting every low dive that might possibly give him a lead on the theft. The likeliest rumour picked up was that the Maccles gang seemed to be active, despite Father’s incarceration, with Mother taking over the reins during his absence. How could it be? She was reputed to have no brains at all, but was good at producing sons and following instructions.
No great coups had been accomplished under her reign, but it was felt by Nappy that her family was responsible for the theft of a dozen masterpieces, including a Rembrandt, from an exhibition in Leeds. Nappy had just heard that the modus operandi was very similar to the theft of the Russian exhibit. She was repeating Father’s system, which Father would never do. He prided himself on always coming up with a new wrinkle to confound the police. P’raps that could explain it. If she was following his instructions for his last case, she’d managed to get one of her gang into the house — either one of Reg’s actors or Miss Lipman. And she had learned enough to hire a carriage with good wheels.
Even if the Maccles had done the job, Nappy had no idea where they had their base. They had decamped from their usual headquarters at Croydon when Father was put in gaol, and hadn’t been heard from since — unless they were responsible for the Leeds job. But if they’d moved to Leeds, it didn’t seem likely they’d have done the robbery at Luten’s. Nappy didn’t know about that robbery, and Black didn’t tell him.
Coffen had spent the greater part of his morning calling around at the various stables to enquire who had rented a wagon the last few days, and trying to find the renters involved. He learned of five people who had hired wagons. Three of them had been moving their household effects out of town, one to Bath, one to Bedford and one to Brighton. As they had also hired a driver, he figured they were legitimate and as he didn’t want to spend time following them out of town, he concentrated on the other two.
One from Newman’s stable was a regular customer who often hired a wagon to haul lumber to a builder. The other claimed he had sold a stove and didn’t need a driver. He hadn’t hired a large wagon, but the one taken was big enough to hold the stolen auction loot. He had left an address on the Euston Road, just on the edge of London. It was doubtful if Fitz would ever find the place.
When Black returned for lunch he made a map for Fitz and tutored him as to the difficult fact that east meant right, and west meant left when you were driving north. The concept of north proved elusive, however, so he decided to go along to make sure Fitz didn’t go astray.
But when they got there, there was nothing but a tumbledown barn, and a derelict farmhouse with no door and no glass in the windows. The road into the house was overgrown with weeds telling them no wagon had been over it recently. They alit and slogged through the weeds, just in case the Maccles knew of some other way into the property.
As they reached the house, they saw it lacked a roof as well. They went in to confirm that it did not hold the stolen items and even pushed through the weeds to the remains of the barn, whic
h was also empty. Mother Maccles, if it was the Maccles gang, had either chosen the address at random or purposely chosen an innocent location to defeat pursuers. Or perhaps the gang hadn’t hired a wagon at all, but borrowed or even bought one.
They returned to Newmans hoping to catch the renter when he returned the rig and were told that the horse and wagon had been returned early that morning. “ ‘Twas hardly daylight yet,” the groom told them.
“What did the driver look like?” Coffen asked, cursing himself for not having asked if the carriage had been returned the first time he was there.
“A big, good-natured fellow, same one as hired the rig.”
“But what did he look like, his face and hair?” Black pressed.
“He wore a hat. A black hat with a largish brim. I didn’t see his hair. His face was just a face, darkish complexion. Put a hat on you and it could’ve been yourself.”
“Did he leave an address?” Coffen asked.
“The one I give you this morning, out the Euston Road.”
“There’s nothing there but a broken down shell of a cottage.”
“Well, he paid up all right, so it’s no odds to me.”
“Could we have a look at the wagon?” Coffen asked, still hoping for a clue.
“I’ve already hired it out. It’s off to Swindon. Won’t be back for days.”
“This certainly looks suspicious, Mr. Pattle,” Black said, as they were driven home.
“It does, Black, but where do we go from here? We don’t know what he looks like and we don’t know where he lives, or where he went with the wagon.”
“I fancy we know where he went to pick up his load, and it wasn’t no stove, Mr. Pattle. That big, good-natured lad was Smiley Maccles, Father’s oldest lad, sure as four farthings make a penny. Now if it was Father, he wouldn’t have wore the black hat. He wore it for the Russian job. And we still ain’t no farther ahead, for we haven’t a notion where the Maccles are calling home nowadays.”
“Let us call on Luten, tell him what little we know and see if he’s learned anything.”
Black was loath to call without any good news, but he went along. Luten had not returned from a meeting at the House. They found Corinne in her little private parlour, writing the notes Miss Lipman hadn’t gotten around to. Her hair was mussed, her fingers spotted with ink, and her usual smile a scowl.
“Black, any news?” she asked eagerly when they entered.
“Not much, I fear,” he said, and told her what they had been doing. “Why isn’t your Miss Lipman writing them notes?” he asked, sorry to see his beloved so busy and tired-looking.
“I’ve managed to get rid of her,” she said, and told them what she had learned. “She was fairly useless in any case. She was here all morning and only wrote three thank you notes.”
“Couldn’t Mrs. Ballard give you a hand?” he asked.
“She’s in bed with a headache but I’ll ask her when she gets up. She is upset about the rehearsals moving to Reg’s place. She enjoyed watching them. Poor soul, she doesn’t have much amusement.”
Coffen’s sharp blue eye spotted the dustbin, half full of discarded paper. “Seems Miss Lipman is like me, keeps blotting the page with ink,” he said. On the off chance that she had been writing something other than thank you notes, he began rifling the basket. It was mostly thank you notes that she had ruined with blots. He straightened one out, glanced at it and his body jerked to attention.
“Here’s something,” he said, and read, “Dear Vance. It is urgent that I see you as soon as possible. Something awful has —” She had apparently upset the ink pot as a heavy splotch ran down the side of the page.
He handed the note to Corinne. “I wonder when she wrote this,” he said. “Is the ‘something awful’ that she’d got the boot here, or did she write it earlier? Was she telling him about the robbery, I wonder?”
“No, I think she learned that at Reg’s house,” she said. “Evans told me she went there as soon as she learned the actors weren’t here. That was before I told her she was to go to Mrs. Middleton, so perhaps she wrote this after. She spent some little time in here cleaning up.”
“Thing to do,” Coffen said, “ask Reg if she made two visits, and left a note for Corbett, and when. If it was after you turned her off, then p’raps she was just telling him she was leaving.”
“Prance is so angry with us for suspecting Corbett that I doubt he’ll speak to me,” she said.
“I’ll have a word with him,” Coffen said. “He’ll want someone to complain to.”
Prance was too upset to settle down to any work that day. He sat in his little salon with Villier, who was serving as someone to complain to until Coffen arrived. When Villier slid out the door with an air of relief, Coffen figured Prance must have been prosing his ears off.
“You’ve heard?” Prance demanded. Coffen had been out in the yard searching for clues when Luten spoke to Prance in the library that morning.
“About the robbery? Yes, of course.”
“About suspecting Vance. It’s ludicrous, utterly ridiculous. He is one hundred percent concentrated on his career. He’d no more steal that rubbish than I would.”
“I daresay. What I’ve been wondering, Prance, is whether Miss Lipman had a hand in it.”
Prance leapt on this like a dog on a hambone. “A much more likely candidate, in my opinion. Who is she anyway? Where did she come from?”
“From Bath, but the interesting bit is that she is, or was, a friend of Fell, that fellow that runs the gaming hell with the bad name.”
“Really! Well, that looks suspicious I must say.”
“You haven’t heard the cream of it yet. She lately came into some money, enough to get out from under Lady Melbourne’s wing and hire a set of rooms for herself. That smells to me as if she didn’t want decent folks knowing just who she was seeing.”
“This is wonderful! I could tell she was no better than she should be by the way she’s been throwing her bonnet at Vance, when I didn’t give her a tumble. Shameful the way she hounded after him.”
“She’s one of them girls that will take up with anyone. Loves widely but not well.”
“Loves not wisely,” Prance corrected automatically.
“Exactly, widely but not wisely.”
Prance ignored him. “She came rushing over here this morning when she heard her ladyship had kicked us out.”
“And you told her about the robbery, and Vance being suspected?”
“It came out, certainly. We were all talking about it.”
“You think she was surprised?”
“She acted surprised, of course, but then she wouldn’t let on she knew, if she’s involved. That is only common sense.”
“Did she come back later and leave a note for Corbett?”
“As a matter of fact, she did. One visit a morning wasn’t enough for her. That’s exactly what I mean about her. One of those tenacious females. I had left word with Soames that we didn’t wish to be interrupted, and he gave Corbett the note as he was leaving. So they now suspect her, do they?”
“I don’t know that they suspect her exactly, but it seems to me it hits you right between the face that she’s in on it. She knew all the in’s and out’s of protecting the donations. Her being a stranger in the house, Corrie was just checking up on her. They have to suspect anyone they don’t know that’s been in the house lately.”
“Especially Vance,” he said with a sniff.
“Chloe and Sean as well, though they was never in the library, and wouldn’t know about the library door and the guards and all.”
“Chloe could very well be in on it. She was certainly eager to get into the library. She was courting Mrs. Ballard most assiduously, trying to get a tour of the house. I know she was visiting Mrs. Ballard in her rooms abovestairs more than once. I found it odd that those two hit it off so well. Chloe is just a little too sweet and complimentary to me to be genuine. She’s the one came running to tell me that Vance w
as handling the missing T’ang horse.”
Coffen had learned what he came to learn. Miss Lipman had left off the note for Corbett after Corinne turned her off, so likely the ‘something awful’ was just that she was leaving. He listened to another ten minutes of Prance’s complaints. As no wine was offered, he then arose to leave.
Prance walked with him to the door. “Of course the Berkeley Brigade is looking into the theft?” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Oh certainly. I daresay Luten will have one of his meetings tonight to talk it over.”
“I have not received an invitation. I harbour dangerous criminals, you must know.”
“Harbour? Do you think the goods were towed away on a barge.” Prance just gave him a withering stare. “No, of course not. They used a wagon from Newman’s Stable.” Prance had to hear about that, then Coffen said, “So how about the meeting tonight, Reg? Are you on?”
“A gentleman never intrudes where he is not wanted.”
“That’s rubbish. You’re making a tempest out of a mole hill.”
“I was not invited, you recall.”
“Neither was I. The thing is, do you want to come?”
“Only if they want me. If I can do anything to prove that Vance is innocent I shall be happy to do so.”
“Right, I’ll tell them you’ll come,” Coffen said, and escaped, glad that the Berkeley Brigade was still intact.
Prance breathed a sigh of relief. He adored being in the Berkeley Brigade. It lent a cachet to his reputation, and gave him ideas for his novels. He was already busy conjuring with the fictional possibilities of this case.
Miss Lipman would be a beautiful, daring adventuress, ensnaring men in her toils. He would call her some wicked, evil name from the Bible, or Greek drama. It was hard to envisage turning Vance, whom he actually disliked, into his hero, but who else? Sean was a nonentity. His rawboned face had all the beauty of a phiz by Hieronmymous Bosch. And he couldn’t act for toffee either. He must jot down a few notes while his muse held him in her thrall.