Charles nods. ‘So who is this man? And what on earth are we doing here, of all places?’
‘’E works in ’ere,’ answers Sam, cocking his head in the direction of the door. ‘’E’s the doorkeeper of the New Cut penny gaff.’
Sam pushes open the door and Charles follows him down a long, narrow and unlit corridor. The air is rank with sweat and stale beer. After two turnings, left then right, they end up finally in the lobby of a small theatre, which has been squeezed into the cramped space available by taking out the floor between the ground and first storeys. A gallery of seats has been perched on planks between the joists, and the boards already sag with the weight; and up above their heads there are still scraps of floral paper clinging here and there to what must once have been bedroom walls. An old woman is slowly sweeping up scraps of paper, bottles, meat bones and empty twists of tobacco along the line of benches near the orchestra pit, and on the stage an Italian-looking man with a little pointed beard is playing the piano to accompany two men dressed as women, who are sashaying about the boards singing, dressed in spangles, feathers and bright yellow wigs. Charles has been to penny gaffs before, so he should know what to expect, but even he is taken aback at the explicit obscenity, both of word and gesture. At the back of the theatre a line of little coster-boys greets every indecency with whistles and cheers. The ticket booth is empty at this time of day, but Sam soon lights on a dirty, scowling lad and dispatches him looking for the man they have come to see.
‘Don’t judge ’im by this place,’ cautions Sam, under his breath. ‘Seems ’e ain’t any other way to earn ’is bread. Bucket said ’e were a formidable Runner back in ’is day. Bit of a lesson for all of us there, wouldn’t yer say?’
Charles looks across the theatre and realizes that there’s a man now moving towards them between the rows of seats. His dress is as gaudy as his place of work – bright red cravat, embroidered waistcoat, blue velveteen trousers – but his skin is sallow and his eyes red-rimmed and dull. He must be twenty years younger than Maddox, but it’s clear this old Runner has not had the famed thief-taker’s easy existence. There is an old pride, still, in his erect back, but once or twice he misses his footing and Charles can see, now, the tremor in his hands.
‘Name’s Finch,’ whispers Sam. ‘Started at Bow Street in ’fifteen. Doin’ errands mostly, to start wiv, as far as I could make out. But Bucket swears ’e’s reliable, and even though ’e’s partial to a drop, ’is mind ain’t gone.’
Sam flushes then, aware of his blunder, but Charles just shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry, Sam, I know what you mean.’
‘Two tickets for tonight, is it, young sirs?’ says the man, chirpily, as he comes a little unsteadily towards them. ‘Twopence for the good seats, right at the front. It’s The Blood-Stained Bride tonight, and by popular demand Miss Meredith has extended her engagement with us for a week to appear once more in the role of Emily. Lovely gruesome murder, that one, and afterwards there’ll be all the usual complement of music and dancing. Lots of pretty ladies here, gents, and not averse to showing a bit of leg to fine young gentlemen like you.’
‘We’re not here for the show,’ says Charles, somewhat frostily. Even three feet away he can smell the gin on the man’s breath. ‘I want to ask you about something that happened when you were at Bow Street. Back in 1816.’
The man’s face closes. The jaunty all-but-wink disappears, as if it had never been. ‘That’s a long time ago—’ he begins warily. But Charles has forestalled him. He takes a sovereign from his pocket and lays it on the counter of the ticket booth.
Finch glances down, then back at Charles. ‘I were only a boy back then. I don’t know what I can tell you.’
‘It ’appened that winter,’ says Sam. ‘I’ve ’ad a gander at the files, and there were a mention of an incident ’andled by Mr Maddox, and ’ow Sir Nathaniel was satisfied matters ’ad been dealt wiv in the right ’n’ proper way.’
‘Mr Charles Maddox?’ says Finch. ‘Is that who you mean?’
‘This young man ’ere,’ says Sam, leaning forward and dropping his voice, ‘is ’is great-nephew. Taken over ’is business, as you might say.’
‘In that case,’ says Finch, standing stiffly now and holding out his hand, ‘I’d be honoured to offer you my assistance. I never worked with your uncle, sir, but I knew his reputation.’
Charles bows and, after a moment’s hesitation, shakes his hand. ‘Do you recall the episode Sam mentioned?’
The man sits down heavily at the booth, then looks up again at Charles. ‘It must have been that young woman, sir. I don’t think I’ve thought of her from that day to this. But it must be her.’
‘What young woman?’ says Charles, quickly. ‘What was her name?’
Finch shrugs. ‘That I never knew. They buried her as Smith, though I don’t know if it was her real name. Not likely, I should say. Not much more than twenty, that I do remember. And of good family, they said, though I never saw the corpse myself. Should have been our case – all the lads said so – but the guv’nor told us Mr Maddox had it all in hand, and had requested discretion. Words of that kind.’
Charles and Sam exchange a glance.
‘And how did she die?’ asks Charles, quietly.
‘She drowned, sir. They found her body one winter morning, floating in the Serpentine.’
‘Don’t you see?’ says Charles, excitedly, as the two of them walk back up Waterloo Road ten minutes later. ‘It has to be Harriet Shelley. The right date, the right age, and she drowned, Sam. Don’t you remember what Maddox said – “No poison administered, no blow struck, no weapon wielded”? Of all the deaths she could have died, only drowning matches the murder Maddox talked of.’
‘Sorry, Chas,’ says Sam, shaking his head, ‘I just ain’t buyin’ it. I just don’t fink a gent like Shelley coulda killed ’is wife and got away wiv it. It just ain’t plausible.’
‘Come on, Sam! You know as well as I do he could have made it look like suicide.’
Sam extracts an apple from his pocket and takes a bite. ‘And yer really fink yer uncle wouldn’t’ve noticed?’ he says, spitting juice down his jacket. ‘Of all the Runners and ’takers in London, ’e’d have known the signs. There wouldn’t’ve been no pulling the wool over ’is eyes.’
Charles purses his mouth and looks away.
‘And yer can’t even be sure it really was ’er. Not absolutely.’
‘Then who the hell else was it?’ snaps Charles. ‘My uncle had no other case at that time – nothing that explains how he came to have the death of a young woman on his hands, and doing everything in his power to cover it up.’
But Sam’s shaking his head again. ‘It weren’t coverin’ up if it were suicide. Just a way of keepin’ it outa the papers – and that’d also explain why ’er name was changed. You can see why someone’d ask ’im to do that. ’E’d done that sorta fing for clients before.’
Charles nods slowly. ‘So he had, Sam. But there’s one fact that doesn’t explain. Why in God’s name was Godwin involved? He and his family were the Westbrooks’ sworn enemies. Why should he lift a finger to help them, or spend money protecting a woman his own daughter had supplanted long before?’
But to that question, Sam has no answer.
* * *
Carlo Cottage seems destitute of all life when Charles strides up the steps later that afternoon and slides his key into the lock. There are the remains of a fire in the drawing room, but the embers are dying inwards into ashen ghosts and there is no sign of the maid coming to replenish the coals. He hesitates in the hallway, wondering whether this might not be an ideal opportunity to replace what he has taken. He was going to wait till nightfall, but then the other occupants of the house will be present, even if sleeping, and now it seems there may be no one about to hear. Decisive, once the decision is made, he goes quickly upstairs to collect the papers, then comes back down and strides across the room to the piano-stool, where he removes the drapery, and lumbers the tru
nk round so that he can slide the papers back inside. Which is when he hears the minutest of tiny sounds behind him, and raises his eyes to see—
Claire.
*
‘And what do you think you are doing?’
‘I – I—’ Charles stammers, his face ablaze.
She comes towards him, in that rustle of silk, that breath of dark scent.
‘Shall I,’ she says, taking a seat opposite him and arranging her skirts serenely about her, ‘save you the embarrassment of concocting a story that you and I both know will be nothing but lies from start to finish?’
He looks into her eyes – those eyes so black, so brilliant – and cannot read what he sees there. Fury? Compassion? Even, perhaps, and strangest of all, satisfaction? And then he hangs his head and turns away.
‘Well,’ she says, and now that he cannot see her face she permits full rein to the smile she has been doing her best to repress. ‘If you are not prepared to speak, it seems the task must fall to me. It is only a theory, of course, but I think that what I just interrupted was an attempt on your part to return some papers of mine to where you found them. I think, moreover, that you have made notes about those papers so that you might report back what you have discovered to your master. Or,’ and here she raises an eyebrow, ‘perhaps mistress would be a more appropriate word. Tell me, how long is it that you have been in the pay of the odious Lady Shelley?’
It’s not a word he would have expected from one woman about another, however unconventional the speaker, and his reaction is evident in his face.
‘Oh, you no doubt think my language excessive. You would not, had you suffered at her hands as I have done all these years.’ And then, seeing his expression change, ‘But perhaps they have told you I am the one who persecutes them.’ She laughs then. ‘Well, you must make up your own mind whom to believe. But is not your very presence here the strongest possible evidence against them? I, after all, have not installed an informer within the hallowed portals of Chester Square.’
He’s looking at her now – staring in what would otherwise be the most discourteous manner from a gentleman to a lady. But then again, Claire is like no lady Charles has ever met, and he can hardly call himself a gentleman. Not now that she has discovered what he’s been doing. ‘But how—’
She laughs again. ‘Do you really think I did not guess why you were here? My dear Mr – Mab, is it still? I recognized you the moment I saw you. You had been skulking across the street from here for more than an hour in the rain not two days earlier. I grant you were moderately successful in concealing yourself, but anyone who has lived the life I have lived, and kept the secrets I have kept, becomes more than usually alert to such insistent observation. I confess I was momentarily dismayed to have found your delightful “sister” to be nothing but a fraud, but it has so often been my fate to find those on whom I bestow my affections to be totally unworthy of them that it scarcely distresses me any more.’
Her voice has taken on the petulant tone Charles has heard in it before, but he is hardly in any position to refute her.
‘And besides,’ she continues, the amusement returning as quickly as it had gone, ‘if I had pried into your things as you have pried into mine, I should have discovered that your supposed portfolio of artworks is nothing but a mismatched muddle, clearly executed by a host of different – and indeed indifferent – hands. Whatever you are, you are certainly no painter, Mr Maddox.’
And now she really does have him. He gapes, utterly confounded – even if he’s been stupid enough to give the game away, there’s nothing, surely, that can have given his name away. How on earth—?
She is watching him with that mysterious smile, her head slightly tilted, a lock of hair twisting around one finger. ‘You resemble him, you know,’ she says softly, after a moment. ‘Very much. He was such a handsome man.’
‘Who?’ he says, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘Your namesake. The first Charles Maddox. Your – it must be grandfather, I think?’
Charles shakes his head, blizzarded by this stupefying turn of events. ‘Great-uncle. He never married.’
Claire sighs. ‘What a terrible waste. Heavens, it must be more than thirty years ago now that we met,’ she says, then stops and looks at him, her face suddenly still. ‘But, of course, you know that. No doubt you have spoken to him, and heard every last detail from his own lips.’
She drops her gaze now, but not before Charles has seen fear flicker across her eyes – it’s so fleeting he scarcely registers it at a conscious level, but it is enough. Call it intuition, or interrogator’s instinct, but when he opens his mouth to answer, what he tells her is a lie: ‘My uncle is not well enough to talk of the past, Miss Clairmont, but, yes, I have read his files. I know what happened.’
And now he is certain. Her body betrays her disquiet in signs so slight as to be almost imperceptible – the tiniest tension in her fingers, the momentary quiver about her mouth – but Charles, if anyone, can read the mind’s construction in the frame. Something took place, all those years ago, that Maddox witnessed and she does not want known. Something far more dangerous than mere scandal, since this is a woman who has spent her life flouting social convention, without a care for the consequences. Whatever it was, it made Maddox privy to a secret she believes Charles, too, has now discovered. And it is a secret that gives him power over her. Or would do, if only Charles knew what it was – knew what was in those missing pages he’s claiming to have read. And that will be doubly difficult to discover now, without revealing his pretence and ceding his advantage. They are silent for a moment, she breathing a little fast, a little shallow; he conscious only of his own quandary. Because this is not the first time Charles has been rather too clever for his own good, and it won’t be the last either.
‘And so,’ she says at last, lifting her eyes to meet his, ‘I have exposed you, only to be exposed myself, in my turn. I am not wholly surprised. You seem to take after your great-uncle in more than your mere appearance.’ She pauses. ‘Your move, Mr Maddox.’
And as he gazes at her now he sees a challenge in those beautiful eyes. A look far too direct and forthright for a Victorian lady, and proof once more – if proof were necessary – how little such common proprieties mean to this woman, and how far the long journey of her life has taken her from the mass of her contemporaries. Charles, too, aspires to the unconventional – would like to think himself as disdainful as she is of what others think, and what others expect, and it is this that decides him now, even though it will make him doubly deceitful – both to her and to the Shelleys – and there will be no possibility of retraction, once the offer has been made.
‘I propose that we might be of use to one another, Miss Clairmont. There are things I want to know, which I cannot ask my uncle in his present state of health, but which I believe you can tell me. And by way of exchange—’
‘By way of exchange?’
‘By way of exchange, I will endeavour to help you in this current – matter.’
She looks at him a moment, then smiles. ‘A deal with the devil. And never was Beelzebub more beguiling. Very well, Mr Maddox, I will agree. Though on one condition. Like the djinn in Scheherazade’s tale, I will give you what you seek, but thrice only. You may ask me three questions, and I will give you your answers. But that is all. There must be some limit, even to the truth. What say you – is that not fair?’
Charles hesitates, wondering uneasily if he has not played into her hands, and given her – all unwitting – the better of the bargain. But it is too late now. He nods. ‘That is fair.’
‘And you in your turn will take up my cause? Act as my champion?’
He smiles drily. ‘Within reason, Miss Clairmont. There must be some limit, even to knight-errantry.’
She raises an arched brow. ‘Touché.’
Claire rises now and goes to ring the bell, then returns to her seat with a shiver, gathering about her the same worn old shawl he saw her wear
before. Charles gets to his feet and does what he can to build up the fire.
‘Since we have so much to discuss,’ she says, as the maid appears in the doorway and is dispatched to the kitchen for coffee, ‘I think we might both benefit from a little refreshment.’ She arranges her skirts once more. ‘So, what is it that you wish to ask me?’
As he was raking the fire he was racking his mind. Three questions, three answers. Three opportunities, and three alone, to obtain the information he wants. But how is he to extract the facts without betraying the real extent of his ignorance?
He takes a seat on the sopha opposite her and pulls his notebook from his pocket. There is nowhere to go now but forwards. ‘There is a reference, in those papers of yours I read, to my great-uncle.’
She looks at him for a moment, clearly a little perplexed, but then her face clears. ‘Oh, you mean that horrible man Maddocks? That was someone else entirely. We rented a house from him in Marlow in 1817, and left various things in his charge. After we left for Italy the loathsome little man sold some of them, and attempted to hold us to ransom for the rest.’
‘I see,’ says Charles, wondering if his most promising theory has just shattered into pieces. ‘So the name was merely a strange coincidence?’
Claire sighs. ‘The coincidence is stranger even than that – Shelley had already encountered a man named Maddocks once before, when he was living in Wales, at a place called Tremadoc. Such odd recurrences of names happened to him so often that I think he genuinely came to believe there was some purpose in it – some larger design. That he could somehow contrive to change the past by repeating it. Or if not alter it, redeem it.’
Charles frowns. ‘I am not sure I understand you.’
Charles Maddox 03 - A Treacherous Likeness Page 11