Pursuit

by Felice Picano

  The other standout, a youth named Clive Bradshaw, was a typical Cumbrian lad, straw hair and sky-blue eyes, square jaw and sturdy body, clad in dark blue waistcoat and trousers with an ivory shirtfront that he surely had had bespoke for the occasion. He stood among a half dozen lads of his acquaintance and allowed himself to be pulled into the dances by females quite infrequently and only with reluctance. Two inches taller and two stone heavier than Grimmins, he had enough sense that when he was approached alone upon a terrace drinking punch and inhaling the night air, he knew Addison for Someone. “My Lord,” he addressed him and cut a half bow, and then he’d smiled beautifully when told to simply call him “Mister Grimmins.” His cast-down eyes had risen several times to meet Grimmins’s, showing their little kaleidoscope of hues amid the blue, especially when he’d been tempted with “lucrative employment of a not difficult nature” in London. Doubtless he was correct in believing he was his family’s future and support, and yet he also wondered aloud if he might communicate with this representative of the earl’s in future, by letter, which favour Addison granted.

  Ah! It had all seemed so comfortably commonplace! And when he thought of it, Her Ladyship seemed in no way aware of her future role of abductee, so easy-going and yet semi-regal was she any time he happened to look upon her. Difficult to believe she was not of noble blood herself, so perfectly had she dressed, looked, and behaved all day and night. But then she had some years of practice, didn’t she? He knew when he next appeared among his own men in London, many would be curious enough to ask about her. Few if any of the earl’s men there had ever laid eyes on Lillian of R——. She and the earl seemed to comfortably lead completely separate lives. At least His Lordship did, with his private but actually public and quite politically chosen mistresses. No one had been surprised when he’d not come north for the nuptials. He had held an earlier, smaller wedding dinner for the couple. This affair had been for his Borough, his People, and for the newspaper columns.

  “Happy to see everyone go?” Addison heard behind him and turned to see that he had company. Mrs. Eagles, he believed she was named. The wife of the owner of a large commercial emporium in ——. And also one of the Marchioness’s closest friends.

  “Not everyone! Mrs. Eagles,” he said, with a modified bow. “Not yourself, surely?”

  “Yes, I must,” she allowed. “A carriage is on its way as we speak. Ah, there it is now, driving up, and surely they will be looking for me and finding naught but my bags.”

  “It’s unfortunate that Her Ladyship is indispos—”

  “Yes, but that was to be expected. Lillian is such a private person, and she rather dreaded all the fuss. Living here so quietly away from everyone,” she added with her sharp tongue and sharp eyes in a rather nice face, taking the very words out of his mouth. That was disconcerting. Did she know? What did she know?

  Today, like last night, Mrs. Eagles was better dressed than everyone but the immediate bridal party, as she’d been yesterday. But such was to be expected when one had thousands of gowns and furbelows to choose from. An entire emporium of them, in fact.

  “I’ll convey your greetings,” he said, liking her despite it all.

  “Do,” she said. Grasping him by the elbow, she had him lead her up to the porte cochère where Smithers was looking around in undisguised terror while the expensive landau was being laden.

  “I present Mrs. Eagles to her driver,” Grimmins said in a loud voice to the aged butler and let go of her without waiting for the sigh of relief from the staff, and then he rapidly took himself away.

  She waved as she was helped into the carriage.

  Once back inside the house within the earl’s study, Grimmins called together whoever was left of his men.

  “You all know the Sandy Arms Inn outside Brighton town? That is where I shall be later today. All of you get yourselves gone except Hatch here, who will remain to further on all notes, telegrams, and messages. Arrange to meet me there. Get food from any of the kitchen maids you’ve been topping or trying to top and get going, all you pack!”

  There was a general, semi-amused dispersal from the room. Simons ducked back in with his lopsided grin. “Shall you be wanting me overnight, sir?”

  “Haven’t I had enough of you?” he asked.

  “Oh no, sir. Hardly. I mean—”

  “Then you ride ahead of me and let me know if anything comes in the way and meet me there at the Sandy Arms. Secure a chamber for the night.”

  “Shouldn’t someone else remain here, sir? In case she returns.”

  “Her return here is as likely as you escaping the pox in this lifetime!” Grimmins said.

  Simons guffawed, then sped away.

  When he was quite alone and the front door once more sealed and the servants about their business, Grimmins couldn’t help but say aloud, “The bitch! Who ever thought a female would come to cause me so much trouble!”

  To: The Earl of R——

  11 Hanover Square

  London, England

  19 September 188—

  Maison d’or-Masson

  Dunkerkque, France

  My Lord,

  Sir, we have made progress in the search for Her L-ship. A very little progress at this time, it is true, but I believe enough to be built upon successfully.

  As you may deign to recall, horsemen were sent out to all of what used to be called the Cinque Portes, and to three others now more generally in use since that glowing past Era of British Commerce. Two of those eight horsemen produced results. Both reported the appearance onboard their respective ferries of a much veiled and shrouded lady of the correct height and approximate figure, accompanied by at least one male and one younger, foreign-born lady servant. One such trio was headed to Calais, another to this very port I am writing from.

  To Dover went I to see for myself, to ask at the Packet Crossing office of the same fellow for a description. This time, however, and even though I was holding a thick wallet in his view all the time we spoke, he altered his description to that of an ancient wench in veils with a cane and two youngish men. I tipped him lightly—why make an enemy? He may be needed later—and then horsed up for Southampton.

  There, alas, I fared less well. The officer in charge was already across the channel. So, was I then to obtain information of a useful nature from the seller of the ferry fare? Not so. The Captain of said ferry was in port, and after a tankard of porter, he mentioned he was onboard that very packet crossing with the veiled older lady and her taller young man and foreign maid. Also, during that particular crossing, a passenger of some note—an international visitor—went missing. That incident was more upon his mind and his conscience than any such trio as I wished to know of, about which he was vague in the extreme. He then paid for his drink himself and told me the boat’s Purser had some conversation with the three, among other passengers, regarding the missing passenger. This entailed the name and general address of the Purser across the channel, which is now in my possession. So, that then is my next mission, to locate this Purser at his lodging and to question him closely.

  Your most obedient Servant,

  Addison Grimmins

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  The packet crossing had been the last regular daily one out of Southampton, and given the month and hour, Grimmins’s arrival had not been until after night had fallen, and in a tempestuous storm of grizzled rain, accompanied by howling winds and occasional cracks of lightning that did little to illuminate the French harbour town in which he, along with another thirty or forty seasick and storm-drenched souls, had alighted.

  With no known confederates making themselves present despite the telegram sent, he allowed himself to be accommodated for the night in one of the shoreline inns which offered a night’s lodging and a bowl of suspicious-looking seafood soup. At least he was among a dozen other, mostly females with children, and elderly at the stinking hostel and thus felt led to believe it was the better of several such hovels the French dared call inns.


  He was not abed but a half hour and beginning to drift off, when someone had knocked at the door mightily. Believing it to be his man here in Dunkerque at last arrived, he’d opened the door to face an inebriated lout of a tall, young tar from that same packet crossing boat. The boy began making certain rather unclean demands of him that he might have been amused to entertain were he not quite so exhausted by his day’s travel. Instead, all the fellow received was a smart knock of a fist upon his forehead, and the door shoved closed in his face before he could fall over.

  He half expected to see the fellow’s body still across his room’s lintel when he exited. But there was no such sight as he passed down the rickety stairs and sat himself at a rickety table for two in that same unclean dining hall, among many of the previous night’s populace, at his breakfast. That meal consisted of a questionable-looking hunk of hard-crusted bread without butter or jam and an undersized tasse of the local drink, a very strong black coffee.

  Before he could exit the place, two rather contrite-looking sailors in the same not quite sanitary uniform of his previous night’s visitor placed themselves in his path, their caps in their hands.

  “You must pardon our mate, Dennis,” one began. Addison immediately assumed that must be the name of his near-visitor of the night before.

  “Must I?”

  “Yessir. He was not to know you were a genl’man. He believed you so much resembled a mate of his from another boat, a steam packet across the ocean, as to be that very fellow. He meant no harm.”

  After a minute of such unclear explication as this, Addison said, “Well, I hope my quick response to his unmerited advances didn’t prove too smart for him.”

  “Oh, no sir. ’Twas his feelin’s was hurt, mostly.”

  Addison decided to make this otherwise fruitless exchange produce some utility. “Tell me, lads, do you know where in this village resides your packet line’s purser? I’m told one such fellow does reside here in France, among others of our countrymen.”

  Mollified by his response and even more by his question, they were quick to point out a street nearby where they believed the purser to live.

  He betook himself to this Little Britannia within France, a squalid quarter not far from the silted-up old harbour and previous dockside, which was now utterly fallen into desuetude.

  Several six-storey-high tenements tottered together here, their top floors extended wooden front beams which he guessed were once used for hauling weights and lading tackle, and which now met high above the sordid little lanes below, blocking out most light, yet not the sooty rain. Here lived those Englishmen who worked the daily boats across the channel as sailors, stevedores, and lower officers who, for one reason or another, could not or chose not to live in their own land. Some, he surmised, had warrants out upon them for debts, others for felonies, and still others were among the lowest sorts who had abandoned their nation through feeling ill-used by it; still others, he presumed, merely wished to be nearest whatever port allowed them to obtain quantities of inexpensive, easily gotten brandy, by which they were enthralled.

  Not a pleasant spot, given the general climate, sliming everything it touched with a scrim of ocean fog, added to the badness of the morning’s weather and the unquestionable penury of the borough. There was a near-thought that tickled his mind without coming fully forward, having to do with the sailor Dennis and his quest. Could he have meant Tom? Addison certainly resembled his brother Tom…No! Of a certainty, Tom was drowned at sea off the coast of Malacca a decade or more ago.

  At the third doorway of those tumble-down French tenements, he found an unsurprisingly low condition of abode, yet when he inquired after the purser by name, he was directed within to a coal-warmed and weatherproofed apartment containing more furnishings than the few sticks of furniture and a flung-down straw mattress of those neighbours whose ajar doorways he had earlier passed.

  The purser, Crittenden, Jas. by nameplate on his door, was entertaining himself by roasting toast smeared with what seemed to be Stilton cheese over the fire, upon which he closely sat, while nearby a chubby lady in a double apron washed an even chubbier baby inside a pewter bowl, all the while singing.

  Finding himself no longer at any disadvantage in this contented little household, Addison relied upon what His Lordship had been kind enough in the past to call his “beauty of person and charm” to ingratiate himself. It helped that he unwrapped a fine rasher of fresh bacon, purchased at the inn. This treat added very well upon the toasted cheese bread, and all of the diners save Baby, who smiled upon them like some tiny Asiatic godling, lit into it with gusto. He’d also purchased and carried a tankard of ale, which they tri-vided.

  Like many such creatures who have travelled but little from their homestead, the purser’s wife, Mrs. Crittenden, recognized Addison’s speech as being not unfamiliar, and when he admitted to being city-born, she soon revealed her own origins as having been near Bishopsgate’s less sun-soaked sub-lanes. Mr. Jas. Crittenden, by contrast, styled himself a North Ender, hailing from far Middleditch, beyond even Bethnal Green.

  Soon they were jolly and cosy, and it was then that Addison pounced catlike yet with so light a paw that the others scarcely felt his claws. Could Mr. Crittenden tell him of a particular trio the Captain mentioned?

  In moments, he had received as humorously varied a description of that mysterious ferry boat’s passenger register as the purser could provide, complete with a mélange of his clever remarks.

  “Under most circumstances,” the purser began, “there would have been not a word passed between us all. But then occurred the serious matter of the disappearance of the Oriental gentleman.”

  He was about to expatiate upon that when Addison asked as simply as possible how the three passengers in question appeared to him.

  “Not at all suspicious, sir. It is true both ladies were heavily veiled, but such is now the custom for ladies of station in public. Only the fellow spoke. To my surprise,” Crittenden said. “He was quality, that one. Not a doubt about it, sir! My distaff, Polly here, has worked downstairs at some public establishments and says that quality may not be denied ever, is how one knows them in a trice to be quality. And so it was with him. He took charge of my investigation as though I were the passenger and he the sub-officer. And he put me at my ease to do so, too.”

  “How, then, were the ladies disposed?”

  “Both sat close together upon a sort of couch-bench in their withdrawing chamber for hire. The younger seemed to have been reading a book, and though I am not learned, I do know it was not written in English. Nor in French, neither. I know enough of that by now living here as I do. The elder lady held some embroidery all the time. I noticed her gloves had little diamonds above each finger and those were sewn open with silver thread, which my missus says is very fine work and not inexpensive. It was an easy crossing, hardly any pitch, and neither lady seemed at all indisposed.”

  “Did the older lady appear coerced in any way? For example, had the younger woman any weapon, even an embroidery needle, held up against her as they sat?” Addison asked. “No? Did she look like she wished to speak and was stopped from doing do? No? Did she appear drugged or in any way physically impaired?” No, again.

  Crittenden did add how he’d “naturally enough, out of sheer curiosity” followed the trio’s movements after the party had disembarked, “despite them being but three out of eighty-six other passengers, as they were so distinctively of quality.”

  That was how he had discovered she and her companions had taken a public wagonette along with ten other passengers away from the quayside, almost immediately after their arrival in France. He even provided the name of the omnibus driver. That earned him a tip at the door of his flat as Addison was leaving.

  “Oh, I couldn’t sir, this has been so pleasant.”

  To which Addison had replied, “Buy something for the lad! A toy. Little lads so love toys.”

  No sooner had he left than he found and accosted that
omnibus driver, who was filling another wagonette full.

  “I well recall the party, sir. They remained inside the car after all other passengers had disposed themselves, right until we reached our terminus, just within the city’s gates, at the main road headed east. With them was a great quantity of luggage. When I asked if they needed further transportation, the gentleman assured me they were awaiting a private coach.”

  “So, you didn’t see in what direction they went?”

  “Afraid, not sir,” the owner said. “Back to ’arbour with me.”

  Damn them! Addison thought. But this does give me much food for thought. For if that was as told, it meant the Lady’s flight was planned in more detail and even beyond England.

  To: The Earl of R——

  11 Hanover Square

  London, England

  24 September 188—

  My Lord,

  I am come near to Her L-ship’s party. I am but one day and a half at the greatest distance from them now, I do believe, Sir. I beg your indulgence to explain how this has come about and why I have certainty that I shall be able to accost them directly before the week is out. Were the ladies alone, it would a far simpler matter. But the co-presence of what I am assured is a large and stalwart male travelling companion signifies other means will have to be utilised in order to reobtain Her Ladyship.

  As Your Lordship has in the past taught me to do, I separate these into three categories and in fact I am only repeating what has been taught me by Your Lordship: