The very thought of Robert becoming friendly with Alice filled me with revulsion and dread. That he would single her out for some hidden purpose of his own I did not doubt. But what that intention was, and whether Alice was aware of the nature of the man who was making her laugh so gaily, I was less certain. Should she chance to speak of my discovery of Trenti’s body, should she happen to mention the carriage I’d glimpsed, she would place me in greater jeopardy than she knew.
Alice needed my protection. I was poised to advance towards Robert and interrupt his conversation when Foley obstructed me. He was in the company of another young gentleman.
“Mr. Hopson, I don’t believe you have met Lord Bradfield’s son, George. He intends to accompany Robert Montfort to Italy. Is that not so?”
“Indeed,” answered his companion, a well-made, rather baby-faced young gentleman in a gold and crimson coat. “Although I believe I should be cross with you, Foley. The death of Lord Montfort is spoiling all our plans, and I hear you have something to do with it.”
Foley was unruffled by this accusation. He took a leisurely pinch of snuff from his box before responding. “Only insofar as Robert’s father was indebted to me. I wouldn’t say I’m hindering—in many ways I’m assisting. I’ve been appointed to investigate the matter. Hopson here is my assistant. It’s a devilishly complex affair, d’you see.”
George tossed his head somewhat effeminately. “How very tedious for us all.”
“I trust it will be soon resolved,” soothed Foley. “For I make fine progress, thanks to Mr. Hopson. But tell me your news, George. How long have you been in town? I gather you were in Cambridge last week, though I never saw you.”
“I spent a few days at Horseheath with Robert, but we found it dreary, the weather being what it was. So we all came back here yesterday.”
“I trust city life has proved more amusing?”
“The usual pursuits have occupied us. This morning Robert and I took a turn in the park. Pleasant enough. We dined. We passed the afternoon drinking coffee at the Smyrna.”
“And the ladies?”
“A little shopping, I fancy.”
I shuffled about, growing increasingly uncomfortable. I wanted to break away and intervene between Robert and Alice, yet I knew convention (and Foley) demanded that I concentrate on this meaningless exchange. Although I account myself no less civil than any gentleman, every minute I stood there was torment. My desire to shield Alice from goodness knows what perils and to speak to her in private was being hampered by this petulant stranger.
But I soon realized that Foley was making a discreet attempt to find out who might have taken the coach to Golden Square this morning. Of course he was approaching the matter by a typically roundabout route, and one that had yielded nothing precise enough to be of any use. I looked helplessly over towards Alice and saw that she had now left Robert Montfort and stood in a group by the piano where another lady was in the midst of a recital. It was impossible for the moment to approach her. Thus to calm my impatience I applied myself to the identity of the driver of Bradfield’s carriage.
We were in need of information about the movements of the household and its guests. The easiest way to uncover these would be to quiz a member of the staff. Leaving George and Foley, I drifted out of the room. I sat down on a hall seat opposite a window, the curtain of which was undrawn. I shivered as I caught sight of my uneasy, diffident self reflected in the glass panes. Did this face really belong to me? What had become of my former carefree rashness? I had sat there staring at myself no longer than two minutes before, as I’d hoped, I was spotted by the elderly footman standing vigil at the door. Seeing me gazing into space, he probably assumed I’d taken too much wine and came to attend to me.
“Carriage, sir?”
“Not yet. The room is uncommonly stuffy with tobacco smoke; I’m merely taking some air until my companions are ready to leave.”
I hesitated. “Have you come with the Bradfield family from Cambridge?” I inquired as nonchalantly as if I’d asked him to fetch me a glass of brandy.
“No, sir.”
“You live here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you worked here many years?”
“Ten, sir.”
“Then you must be well acquainted with the family and their friends?”
He blinked uncomfortably, as if he were uncertain how to respond. “I do my duty, sir. No one’s said otherwise.”
“The Montforts, for instance?”
Silence. His face turned to wood.
“I ask these questions only because I’m assisting Lord Foley to find the truth about the death of Lord Montfort.”
Still he said nothing. I remembered the purse Foley had given me to cover my expenses. It was still half full. “I’ve half a crown to pay you for your trouble.”
He blinked, and looked at me. “Very well. But I don’t promise what I can tell you will help.”
“Let me be the judge,” I said sharply, for I had his measure now. “Just answer the questions as best you can. The Montforts visit frequently, I believe?”
“They do. Though it’s none of my concern.”
“And they sometimes borrow Lord Bradfield’s equipage?”
“He’s proud of the carriages and likes them to be shown off.”
“And today?”
“The carriages have been at their disposal.”
“Did you say carriages? There are more than one?”
“Three in all, sir. A gentleman’s traveling coach, a four-seater town coach, and a smaller chariot.”
“Can you describe them?”
He looked at me as if I was soft in the head. “They are handsome enough vehicles, two lined with green leather inside, the larger town vehicle with matching green silk curtains. The smaller is a light modern chariot such as a gentleman might drive, with a single passenger.”
“And the paint?”
“Little worse than new.”
“The color, man.”
“The larger is black, as are both the smaller, although they have dark green stripes on the side. They all bear the Bradfield crest upon the door.”
“And today who took them out?”
“The traveling coach wasn’t used. The town coach was taken by the ladies, who went shopping. The chariot was taken this morning, as it usually is, by Lord Bradfield’s son and his friend Robert Montfort. They are partial to racing round the park, I believe.” My heart sank at these words. How right I’d been to fear Robert Montfort.
“At what time did they depart for their promenade?”
“Their usual hour. Around ten-thirty.”
I was exasperated at this reply. It was too late; half an hour after the carriage I’d seen. “And before that, did anyone use the chariot? Perhaps Robert took it out alone?”
“If he did, I’m unaware of it, for I only see the carriages that come to the door. If someone goes directly to the mews, I wouldn’t know it.”
“And the mews is where exactly?”
“Behind the square. But I don’t advise you to visit now. There’s no one there but the horses. The grooms’ll all be abed. You’ll have to wait till morning if you want to know more.”
I was now certain that the vehicle that had run me down, and that I’d seen from the window of Trenti’s bedchamber, must have been the smallest of the three, the chariot, for it needed no coachman to drive it. But I was no closer to discovering the identity of the hunched driver, unless someone at the stables could help me.
“Excellent,” I said, slipping him the half crown I’d promised. “That’s all I need to know. You’ve been most useful.”
I walked slowly back to the saloon and took a glass of wine. I glanced in Foley’s direction in a vain attempt to communicate my wish to leave. But it was impossible to catch his attention since he, like most of the company, had joined the congregation at the far end of the room. Several people, among them Robert Montfort, sat around a circular table playing pique
t; the rest had gathered round a spinet to listen to Elizabeth Montfort play. I could not see Alice, but I presumed, since she was not playing cards, she must be where I last saw her, at the front of the musical group.
“Are you always so unfriendly, Mr. Hopson, as to turn your back on your acquaintances?”
I spun round, astonished. Alice had somehow crept up behind me.
“What do you mean?”
“Merely that I’ve been looking for you these last ten minutes. What have you been doing?”
Her eyes danced and her voice sounded different from earlier that evening. In place of distance there was a note of mirth, as if her anger had suddenly dissolved and she was laughing at me instead.
“I’ve been outside in the corridor. It was too warm for me in here.”
“And hence you’ve returned to the fireside,” she replied archly.
“Very well. I’ve been questioning the footman about the Bradfield coaches.”
“And did your questions bear fruit?”
“I found there are three carriages, two of which have been used today. But who took one out early this morning I have not yet discovered, though I’m confident that tomorrow morning I shall have the answer.”
“I see.”
I wondered if I should tell her that I suspected the culprit might be Robert Montfort and warn her to be guarded in what she told him, but the color in her cheeks and the energy in her manner made me suspect her nonchalance wasn’t all it seemed. Rather than risk riling her, I decided to hold my tongue. She was safely away from him now; I would speak to her on the matter when her mood was more settled. There was a pause while we looked at each other, uncertain how to proceed.
“Alice,” I said suddenly, “I’m wretchedly sorry if I upset you in Cambridge. If I could have avoided it I would gladly have done so.”
I realized as soon as I said it that this was not what she wished to hear. She drew herself up.
“What gives you the impression I’m upset, Mr. Hopson? Do I not seem full enough of merriment?”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
“The manner of your leaving Cambridge…it was so hasty and unexpected, and since then I think you have been somewhat standoffish. You did not wait for me this evening—I presumed it was because you were still angry about Connie.”
She gave a little laugh which I knew she did not mean.
“I grant you I am a woman who acts on impulse from time to time. But you flatter yourself if you believe you have aroused such passions in me. I left Cambridge because I feared the weather might deteriorate and because I’d completed what I set out to do. If I did not disturb you it was out of consideration rather than pique, for if you recall, you were deep in conference with Foley. Since then you have had nothing to complain of. Why, I have been as cordial to you as to any acquaintance. I left word I would meet you at the playhouse, and so I did.”
“But your manner is somewhat…guarded,” I stuttered.
“Are you certain you do not imagine it? After all, it is I who have come to speak to you now. And you who hid yourself in the corridor.”
Whatever she said she didn’t convince me. I knew she was still annoyed and that this parrying was just another way to irk me. She would not have left Cambridge without a word or have spoken so coldly to me in the playhouse otherwise. Both of us knew it, only she would not admit as much. A rush of exasperation at her stubbornness filled my veins. I had no reason to fear her; rather I should fear my own weakness for not confronting her properly.
“Good God, don’t you comprehend my meaning, Alice?” I said. “I have been trying to tell you if only you’d listen. I thought, and hoped, that we had become something more to each other than acquaintances.”
Her eyes opened very wide, and she drew breath as if she was about to say something. But for some reason she held back. Before I could press her further, I felt Foley’s hand on my arm. “Well,” he said, “I believe the moment has come to leave. I trust, Mr. Hopson, the time you spent in the corridor with the footman was useful?”
His intuition on top of Alice’s obstinacy infuriated me. Was I so transparent I could do nothing without him second-guessing it?
“Indeed, Lord Foley,” I replied icily, “I went there for air, and I found it most refreshing.”
“You shall tell me all in the carriage,” he replied, oblivious to my coolness. Then he turned to Alice. “Come, Miss Goodchild. I must congratulate you also. You were something of a success with Robert Montfort, I see. Did you discover anything of interest?”
She gave Foley her sweetest smile. “I found him most charming,” she replied. “We discussed his family’s favorite pastimes. I have discovered nothing of great note so far, yet I do not despair.”
“What do you mean?” I snapped.
“I mean,” she said, threading her arm in mine as we descended the steps, “that he told me he wishes to continue his father’s redecoration scheme at Horseheath. He plans a new staircase to replace the old oak one. It will be made from the finest Cuban mahogany, which he wants me to supply. I’ve promised him a tour of my premises tomorrow morning. I am invited to visit Horseheath Hall and survey it next day.”
Chapter Twenty-two
When I showed my face at the workshop the following day, two letters were waiting. The first had been sent a week earlier from Yorkshire. It was from Dorothy Chippendale.
January 14, 1755
Otley, Yorks
Dear Mr. Hopson,
The last time we met I little thought that our next communication could be under such tragic circumstances. You may remember the occasion, late last November, when you accompanied John Partridge and myself to Richmond and we all larked about on the river. Now, after all that has taken place, the day seems so distant, it might have happened years ago. I can scarcely believe none of us had any presentiment of the terrible events waiting to overwhelm us.
I won’t burden you with the grief that engulfed me when I read your letter and learned of John’s death. The tragedy that grieves me grieves you too, and I see no reason to add to your suffering by worrying you with mine. I will say only that while the violent nature of John’s death shocked me most profoundly, in a sense I mourned for him even before I learned of it—the reason being I’ve known since leaving London that we’d never be wed, and it made me as miserable as if he’d died.
Don’t think me unfeeling when I say I’m deeply thankful to you for troubling to write and tell me of these events. How much more painful would it have been to be left wondering for the rest of my days what had become of him. For all that, it’s impossible for me not to think on his death and not to share your sense of outrage, and obligation to bring whoever’s responsible to justice. Thus, since you ask me, of course I shall do all I can to help you. To this end I’ve recorded as fully as I can the details of my last days in London.
It was soon after noon on December 17—the same day, I presume, that Partridge went missing—that my brother Thomas Chippendale called me to him.
I’m not sure if you are aware of it, but at that time I had lived with my brother’s family for some four months, having been brought from Yorkshire to help my sister-in-law Catherine with her three young children. Until then all my life had been spent in Otley, a quiet market town ten miles from Leeds, the same region where my brother Thomas was born and raised. I was the youngest of our father’s fifteen children, Thomas being the eldest; his mother had died soon after he was born, and our father remarried and sired fourteen more children. You will understand, however, that since I was born almost twenty years after him, until my arrival in London we were scarcely acquainted.
The little I knew of my brother was gleaned from my father, a country joiner, who’d naturally intended his eldest son to follow in his business, as generations of Chippendale sons had done before him. He told me how, ever since Thomas was a child, he’d harbored a burning desire to better himself. He was just beginning his apprenticeship in my father’s
workshop when a London architect, working on the mansion of a local landowner, commissioned him to make a model of the same mansion. So impressed was the architect by Thomas’s work, he offered to sponsor him to go to York and then to London to learn the cabinetmaking trade. Thomas, acting as if he’d been expecting something like this to happen all along, took it as his due and departed without a backward glance, five years before my birth. Our father meanwhile continued as he’d always done in his country enterprise, fabricating furniture and wainscoting and staircases and whatever else was needed, with only the occasional letter from his son to inform him of his progress.
But after my brother married and his third child, Mary, was born, he wrote to our father asking if I would care to join his household to assist his wife with the children. We all knew by then that he had made something of a name for himself, so when this request arrived from his illustrious son, my father could hardly refuse. He accepted on my behalf, only mentioning it to me one day after dinner when I was due to leave next morning. Thus at the age of eighteen I was dispatched two hundred miles to London, a city I’d never expected to set eyes on, to live with my brother whom I’d met only three times before in my life.
I first encountered John Partridge one day last summer. He’d been sent to the house by my brother to repair a wall sconce in the hallway. My sister-in-law was occupied in the nursery and told me to watch over Partridge and be sure he did the job properly. He was aged nineteen, a tall, gangling youth with a mischievous smile, yet a look of sadness in his eyes. Perhaps it was his poignant expression that made me forget my gaucheness. At any rate he made flippant conversation with me, to which I made some clumsy replies, which only encouraged him to joke and chatter more. In any event, when the sconce was fixed and he was about to leave, he turned abruptly and asked me to accompany him on a promenade to Vauxhall next Saturday. I was so startled I accepted.
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