Secret Nights

by Anita Mills

  "I am merely saying what the prosecutor will say."

  "Well, I would that you did not say it to me," she snapped. But as she realized he was utterly serious, her anger faded to fear. "You don't think he will be convicted, surely?"

  "I don't know. I need help, Ellie—I need for him to give me answers rather than bluster."

  "But if he did not do it, he cannot know any answers."

  "I don't have a wand to wave over him, no matter how much he wishes to believe it. In his mistaken belief in my powers, he is fashioning his own noose."

  "Can you not tear this Colley apart with words?"

  He appeared to consider for a moment, then admitted, "As much as you have no wish to hear it, I'm going to tell you that I don't know about that either."

  "But you are Patrick Hamilton! You are the best to be had—you told me that yourself!''

  "Oh, I can make Colley look like a fool, but when everything is considered, will a jury believe he killed woman who earned his bread? What was his reason? Jealousy? Greed? Rage? For everything, Ellie, there has to be a reason."

  "Then what was Papa's supposed to be?" she countered angrily. "If she gave him what he paid for, why would he kill her either? Or why would he have murdered Fanny Shawe? Or Peg Parker?"

  “Orr Betty Wilkes. Or Kate Tilley. Or Bess Miller."

  “Who are they?"

  “Three other women taken from the river in the past year."

  “Surely—surely they are not accusing him of those also? They cannot think he has murdered every dead female in London, can they?"

  “Peale expects to charge him for those I mentioned tomorrow. And while perhaps each can be defended, the sum of all of them may well be overwhelming."

  “But why? What has he done to deserve this? Is it jealousy that a laborer's son should get rich in bricks? Why is it that the streets before the prison are filled mill those who would hate before one shred of evidence is presented?"

  “When bellies are empty of bread, there is a tendency to seek diversion, I suppose. A London mob needs no excuse to pillage and burn, Ellie."

  What they want is a sadistic exhibition—with my father as the attraction," she said with asperity. "Indeed, but it surprises me that they have not been here today to shout insults and throw garbage at his house.

  Did the Runners come?" She went to the window and lifted a hanging. "They are out there—across the street. If anything is to happen, they are to run for the authorities. There is not much they can do alone, after all, and I would not expect them to stand before rioters bent on committing mayhem."

  "I would that you left here," he said soberly. "There is no accounting for the whim of a mob. And once the hearing is held, if he is bound over for a later trial, it could become uglier still."

  "And where would I go? Papa never wished to leave the city for the country, saying he'd been born and bred here. No, I shall stay, I think. I do not mean to let street ruffians drive me from the house I was born in."

  "You could remove to the Pulteney Hotel and be safer."

  "And have every nob in the place look down his nose at me—or whisper behind my back? I think not." Aware that he was standing too close for her comfort again, she moved away. "But we are afield, aren't we? I wish I could be of more help, but I cannot. I do not know precisely when the watch has brought him home—it was not an entirely uncommon occurrence, you see."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. Sometimes he was merely too drunk to stand, and twice at least it was because he'd been robbed and beaten. There is nothing else to tell, perhaps because I was too wrapped up in myself to note it."

  "Can you tell him that if he is not prepared to assist in his defense, he is asking me to go into court with my hands tied at my back? Otherwise, I cannot help him."

  "Yes. I can do that at least."

  "There is not a great deal of time before the first hearing. And if he is bound over for the next few weeks, I can almost promise that a verdict will go against him."

  "I shall go again this afternoon," she promised, sighing. As he looked like he might take another step toward her, she settled her shoulders. "Yes, well—it has been more than five minutes, hasn't it?"

  “Yes, I suppose it has." Picking up his hat from the table where he'd laid it, he set it on his head. He started for the door, then turned back.

  "I have hopes you will wear the bracelet."

  She shook her head. "I have already sent it back to Mr. Byrnes in your office this morning. I hope you will disregard the note attached to it, for it is not terribly civil."

  "It was the announcement in the Gazette, wasn't it? I should have told you of it, but I didn't want to. I'm sorry—truly sorry, Elise."

  "No, it was not the papers." She tried to force a smile, but it twisted. "It was Ezekiel."

  For a moment he was nonplussed. "Ezekiel?"

  "Yes. Chapter 16, verses 35 and 39."

  "Oh—that Ezekiel," he murmured. "I shall have to read it."

  "And if you are possessed of a Bible, you ought to try closing your eyes, then opening it up at random. You might be rather surprised at what it tells you also. What was it that Thomas Gray said?—that 'God works m mysterious ways, his wonders to behold'—-or something very like that, in any event."

  "Sometime I might try that, but just now I think I shall look up a fellow called Weasel somewhere in St. Giles Rookery and see what I am getting for my money," he decided. "Good day, my dear."

  As the front door closed behind him, she sank into her father's high-backed chair, telling herself she had done what she had to do. But as her gaze swept the empty room, she felt so completely alone that she did not think she could stand it.

  And outside, as Patrick climbed into the two-seater, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, unable to deny the depth of his disappointment. For a moment he cursed himself for not compelling her to lie with him, then he admitted he wanted more than that. With the vanity he shared with every man, he'd wanted her to want him without regard for the right of it. He'd wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her.

  It was the night before Rand's hearing. Patrick sat alone over his notes long after the house was quiet and all the servants had long since taken to their beds. Pushing back a lock of hair that strayed over his forehead, he reached again for his bottle of port, and drank directly from it. Leaning back, he loosened the neck of his shirt and stared for a time at the ceiling.

  Nothing Thompson or Weasel had uncovered offered any hope—if anything, the gossip they'd gleaned accused Rand of all sorts of evil, but the most damning of it all were the interviews he himself had conducted in the doorways and alleyways of St. Giles, while Weasel had hovered nearby for dubious protection.

  Between all of it, they'd discovered an alarming pattern of sadistic behavior, for Rand apparently made a habit of degrading and abusing the prostitutes he'd bought, seeking perverse pleasure in their pain until sufficiently aroused to complete the acts he paid for. But the ones they'd interviewed had lived to tell tales, Patrick reminded himself, and probably at least some of what they'd said had been colored by what they'd heard about the old brick maker.

  He'd gone also to the Red Dragon to question the proprietor about Maddie Coates, and that had nearly proven a dead end. The man insisted he'd seen nothing out of the ordinary, nothing at all, the night that Maddie and Thomas Truckle had died. As far as Mad-die's mysterious companion, he'd scarce seen him and could offer no description beyond saying it was a fellow in a hooded cloak. Which could have meant Rand or a thousand other possible men. And it wasn't Patrick’s duty to prove the old man had killed anyone, he reminded himself. It was to cast enough doubt to make a jury believe he hadn't. But regardless of Rand, Patrick still wished to know how she'd come to die.

  No, his concern for a connection between Maddie and Rand was irrelevant just now. Maddie was already dead, and unless Patrick chanced upon some miracle, Rand was going to join her.

  His eyes burned and his shoulders ached, and yet
he knew if he went to bed, he would not sleep. Straightening his body, he took another pull of the port, then returned his attention to the papers before him, sifting through them yet again, scanning them for something he could have missed.

  The trouble, he supposed, could well be that he did not like Bat Rand enough to see what he wanted. Combing his hair back again with his hand, he reexamined John Colley's sworn statement, looking for some discrepancy to twist to his advantage, seeing nothing.

  Both Rand and Elise were determined to believe he could make up something out of whole cloth, but this time he wasn't having much luck at it. Unless—he stopped to make a marginal note to have Weasel search for any other females Colley might have pimped for. As weak as it was, he still saw in Annie's Johnny the best possible key. If Patrick could rattle him into making some possibly damning admission— and if he could play upon the jury's probable dislike of the watch—he might yet be able to shake Peale's case, for how many people aside from a mob desirous of a good hanging could believe the wealthy brick maker would need to visit prostitutes? With his money, he eould afford Harriette Wilson herself.

  As Patrick saw it, the sheer number of charges might work to his advantage, for if he could cast doubt on any one of them, he might gain enough sympathy for Rand to get a dismissal. The trouble with that was that the old man wasn't the sort of fellow to elicit much sympathy. And if he went into the Sessions House with the belligerence and arrogance he'd been showing Patrick, he was going to slip the noose on himself.

  "I should have thought you abed ere now," Hayes said from the doorway.

  Patrick looked up, seeing the man's nightgown and cap above the candle he carried. "I could say the same of you."

  "The pickled tongue I had for supper has come back on me," Hayes explained. "I came down for some digestive biscuits, but they were not in the pantry."

  "I'm afraid I've got them." Pushing the tin across the cluttered desk, Patrick murmured, "It did not set well with me either." Picking the wine bottle up again, he squinted at it and saw it was empty. Disgusted, he dropped it onto the floor with the others. "Before you go back up, I would that you got me another."

  "Port and digestive biscuits, sir? I should think one would negate the other."

  "They probably do."

  His butler glanced at the mantel clock, then shook his head. " 'Tis nigh to three o'clock."

  "And I have to be in court by ten."

  "Yes, I have been reading about the Rand thing in the papers. And a bad business that is, isn't it?"

  Patrick squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, hoping to ease the soreness that came from too much reading in too little light. "It may well be the first murder case I have lost in five years," he admitted tiredly.

  "Do you think he did all those terrible things?"

  "What I think, Hayes, is immaterial—the question is not whether or not he is guilty, but rather whether I can get a dismissal now or an acquittal later." He sat back and linked his hands behind his head. "If you were a juror, having read everything that has been said, what would you think?"

  "Well, I should attempt an open mind, of course."

  "But you would believe him guilty, wouldn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "So you have a fair notion of where I am starting."

  “I think so, sir."

  “Not a very auspicous place, is it?"

  “No, but you have found the means to win more often than most, haven't you?" Hayes said quietly. “With your wit and eloquence, I do not doubt your ability to succeed in this also."

  “But you've never seen me in court."

  “I have lived here and in your lodgings over the grocer’s shop since you first came to town ten years ago, sir. If it can be done, you will do it."

  “Thank you."

  Hayes picked up the tin of biscuits. "Should I leave some for you also?"

  "No. I'll just take another bottle of wine." But even as he said it, Patrick knew he did not need it, not if in were to be alert enough to cross swords with Peale.

  “Never mind the wine," he said, sighing. "I guess I might not to go in weasel-bit, eh?"

  "No. You ought to go to bed," Hayes said bluntly. “Good night, sir."

  Too weary to think anymore, Patrick stood up and stretched, then walked around the room to clear his head. Stopping, he looked into the waning fire for a time, his mind not on Rand, but rather on his daughter, and the ache he felt nearly overwhelmed him.

  Just now, he wished he were with her, not so much for passion, but for solace. Just to lie beside her, to feel her head upon his shoulder, her body within his arms. No, it did no good to think such things, he decided regretfully. He might as well get used to the notion of Jane.

  Jane was more like him, selfish and cynical, more suited to playing the role he needed. In Lady Brockhaven's grand house, she would grace his table and preside over brilliant parties, being for all outward purposes the perfect Tory hostess. With her at his side and Dunster at his back, there was no limit to how far he could climb.

  Elise, on the other hand, was still possessed of ideals, of the notion that one could do something worthwile in this world. She believed and she spoke passionately, espousing causes when she did not have to, when she could be instead the rich Miss Rand. While he had moved about in the glittering, vacuous circles of the haut ton, attempting to climb upward, she had not only survived a broken heart, but she had also managed to turn her grief into something she believed useful.

  And she had the audacity to think herself a sinner, while those who considered themselves her betters amused themselves with numerous lovers, never bothering to consider anything beyond their own pleasures. Even those few virtuous wives who counted themselves above such scandals were more than happy to turn blind eyes on their straying husbands as long as there was money to spend. At least that was the way Jane saw it. She probably would not intend to take a lover herself, lest her slender waist expand to stoutness.

  The bracelet had been a mistake. He knew that now. It had been perceived as a token of payment for what Elise had given him, whether she would admit it or not. In her mind, it had validated that she was no more than any other fashionable impure, which was ludicrous. Cit-born or not, she was heiress to more money than any miss on the Marriage Mart.

  But he needed and wanted more than money or even more than Ellie. With the intensity of an opium addict, he craved power, and not the sort that came with a portfolio of investments in the Stock Exchange, but rather from the portfolio of a minister. Well, he'd made his own bargain for that, and now he would have to live with it. It was, he knew, the price he had to pay for what he wanted.

  He looked around the bookroom, seeing not just books, but the wealth that allowed him to have them. He'd come a long way from the day he'd stood, a boy in mended pants before a father too prideful to allow even a poor Hamilton to go on the stage.

  His gaze stopped on a book of Gray's poetry. Odd that she should have mentioned Gray, for whenever he thought of the poet the verse that came to mind ran something like—he tried to remember it without opening the book—something like "The wealth of nations, the pomp of power, await alike the inevitable hour—the paths of glory lead but to the grave." Not a very comforting thought at all.

  Turning back to his littered desk, he stopped and looked at the shelf. There amongst Pope and Dryden, Boswell and Sam Johnson, Milton, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson was a large, gold-stamped, leather-hound King James Bible. Curious, he picked it up, wondering what on earth she could have read in Ezekiel. He didn't even remember that particular book. Opening it, he tried to remember what she'd said. Chapter 17, verses thirty-something. Finding that, he scanned it and groaned.

  He was about to put it back onto the shelf when he recalled how she'd come to discover the damning verses. It was a hoax of the worst sort, perpetrated no doubt by one of those fanatics she admired. Nonetheless, he closed his eyes, reopened his Bible, then looked down. It was Proverbs. He lifted his finger and re
ad:

  'Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

  Not a very comforting thought at all. He shut it again and returned it to the shelf, too tired to ponder whether it had any meaning for him. Changing his mind about working further, he blew out the brace of candles that illuminated his desk, then he went back to shovel ashes over the fire, suffocating it. Picking up the last lit candle, he went up to bed. As he climbed the stairs, he struggled with himself, knowing that his own oath taken before the bar mocked him. Regardless of whatever reason, whether he liked the old man or not, when he'd taken Bartholomew Rand's case, he was constrained to provide the best defense possible.

  And as the striking clarity of his obligation came home to him, he knew he had to live up to it. Dunster, Elise, Jane—none of them could affect what he had to do. No, if it looked as though Peale was better prepared than he was, then he'd have to ask to delay the trial. Who knew? Given the uncertainties of life in the rookeries, maybe John Colley would die before he could testify.

  Once in his chamber, he undressed, then crawled between crisp, clean sheets, where he lay in the darkness, staring into oblivion, trying not to think of Bat Rand or Dunster or Jane, allowing himself the luxury of remembering: the scent of lavender in red-gold hair, the feel of warm, soft lips parting beneath his.

  The gallery was packed, and outside the crowd surged and shouted, nearly drowning out the usually rote proceedings. While Prosecutor Peale presented his information, Patrick scanned the seats, looking for Elise Rand. Then he saw her.

  She was clad simply in a dress and pelisse of Clarence blue trimmed with black braid. Her bright hair peeped demurely from beneath the upturned brim of a close-fitting bonnet trimmed rather plainly with black-dyed feathers and black ribbons tied beneath her chin. In her lap, her black-gloved hands clasped a black-covered book he suspected was her Bible. She looked as if she were going to church rather than to watch her father being set for trial.

  Her eyes met his in recognition, and her lips moved «s though she said something to him. He looked down at the sheaf of papers he'd brought with him, knowing that no matter what he did, he was going to ultimately disappoint her. Beside him, Rand sat staring first at Prosecutor Peale, then at Justice Russell, his face scowling, as though he thought he could intimidate them.