by Regina Darcy
Here, the crime lords, fences, masters of fraud, brothel madames and other denizens of the unseen part of the realm flourished.
George was as familiar with these dark alleys and hidden dens as he was with the refined drawing rooms of Mayfair; he had weapons concealed but easily accessible in the pockets of his greatcoat, in his boot, even—so deceptively that no one would suspect it—in the crown of his top hat. Jiggs, who hailed from the seamier side of London, drove the carriage with one hand; the other hand holding a firm grip on his pistol.
When he saw their destination in the near distance, George tapped lightly on the carriage ceiling. Jiggs pulled the carriage to the side and George exited.
“I’ll be waiting, m’lord,” Jiggs said.
“Careful,” George replied softly. “Behind and in front.”
Jiggs grinned. “No need to teach me my neighbourhood ways, m’lord,” he said. “I’ve as many friends here as enemies. If one comes forth, so will t’other.”
“Very likely. I shan’t be long. If I’m gone longer than half an hour, leave and summon a constable.”
Jiggs snorted. “As if one would come to here,” he replied.
“He will if you hand him the sovereign I’ve left on the seat of the carriage,” George said with a smile.
Jiggs nodded at this. Money was a language understood by all.
With his hand in the pocket of his greatcoat to signal that he was entirely ready to shoot anyone who accosted him, George strode purposefully to the structure that he sought.
It was an old, rickety building that looked as if it would blow away in the next storm. George knew that inside, the business was defended with ample security and only a fool would venture within with the intention of stealing from Larkin, the canniest, shrewdest, most successful purveyor of stolen items, particularly those of foreign origin, of anyone in London.
He went to the door and knocked. No one answered, but that did not mean that no one was at home, upstairs in the living quarters of the business. Larkin never left the building, not trusting the larcenous nature of man.
George knocked again, a staccato beat against the door. And then again.
“I’m closed,” a voice from upstairs cried out. “Come back in daylight, when I can see who I am doing business with.”
“You know me, Larkin” George replied.
The window opened and an elderly man peered out.
“Oh, ‘tis you,” he said with no great enthusiasm. “I suppose you’ll only stand there a-knocking until the Second Coming.”
“I’m a patient man,” George admitted.
“I’ll be down.”
Larkin was old but spry and it was mere minutes until the front door opened.
“Come in, come in, afore the cold beats you to it,” Larkin grumbled. “I’m not burning firewood for you, so make your business known quick.”
George followed him into the main room of the establishment. Larkin bolted the door.
“Now, then, how can I help your lordship?”
“A man came here with an Egyptian artefact. You paid him well, although not so well as you expect to be paid in return,” George said. “I need his name and his description.”
Larkin had dealt with George before, on terms which suited them both, different though their aims were.
“It’ll cost.”
“It always does,” George said with a sigh, as if he would be reduced to a pauper’s status after meeting Larkin’s terms.
They haggled over the price, as usual, and then arrived at a sum which suited them both.
“Name of Muller,” Larkin said. “Short man, not much taller ‘n me. He’d a hat worn low on his head and he was dressed as if he were a workman. Funny way of talking, he had. Like he was one of us, but from the Irish. Looked like he’d be game for anything, he did.”
“Murder?”
“Wouldn’t doubt it. Wouldn’t doubt he’s done it.”
“How old?”
“Living hard ages a man, m’lord. Might be five and twenty, might be fifty. No way to be sure. He walked older, bent over, swaying like he wasn’t steady. Like he’d carried heavy, off a ship or something, once upon a time.”
Larkin’s instincts were honed by decades of dealings with people who came to him furtively. He’d learned to read them as if he’d known them all their lives; that was because he distilled what he needed to know from the rest.
“Like he carried something off a ship . . .” George repeated.
“Aye. That’s all I know. Maybe you’d like to buy the article in question?” Larkin suggested. “Give you a good price.”
But George was already turning to leave. “Not me. I don’t need the pharaoh’s curse haunting me.”
“What curse? Ain’t no curse,” Larkin scoffed.
“Say your prayers and find a buyer. Oh, Larkin . . . if you do find a buyer, I’ll need the name. That way, your name need never be brought into the transaction. Goodnight.”
George left the shop, confident that he had obtained valuable information from Larkin. It was not the Marquess who had brought the artefact to Larkin, but one of his lackeys. Someone who walked as if he’d carried a load in the past . . . or was he a former sailor who still walked as if he were on a ship? Cumbershire had been in the Royal Navy; it would have been no problem for him to meet up with an old tar from those days and, finding a man who was amenable to dark deeds, hire him to commit theft and murder. Muller . . .
George was stepping into the street when, out of nowhere, a carriage drawn by a team of galloping horses came down the street and a shot rang out. Jiggs immediately fired back, but the carriage had passed before he could take proper aim at the Earl’s assailant.
“M’lord,” Jiggs gasped. “Are you hurt?”
“Not at all, Jiggs,” George assured him. “It was a most opportune attempt on my life. I now know the identity of the man who brought the item for sale to this fine establishment, but now I have the bullet.” So saying, he bent down and picked up the bullet that had bounced off the stone wall encircling Larkin’s business. “It might be useful, one can never tell.”
“You’re uncommon cool milord considering you almost got killed,” Jiggs said in admiration.
“I’ve been a target before. Fortunately, Mr Muller was unable to take proper aim because the horses were being driven at too fast a pace.”
“I’d say there’s been enough excitement for one evening, milord. What do you say?”
“I quite agree, Jiggs. Home to Mayfair.”
Once in his home again, George went to his study and locked the door. He placed the fired bullet on a piece of cloth and examined it closely. He had some idea of the make of gun that had fired it, but it was best to go to the experts. Tomorrow he would begin his quest by visiting all the makers of firearms in the area. Someone would recognize, from the bullet, the model of gun that had been used.
Four more days. He clenched his fists.
There was still much to do before he could be proven innocent. But thanks to Lady Beecham, he knew how to pursue justice.
The doorknob rattled.
“George! George, what are you about in there? It’s no use locking the door, I shall rouse the servants if I must and let myself in.”
George rolled the bullet up in the cloth and put it in his desk drawer.
“I’m coming, Aunt. Can a man have no peace in his own home?”
“Can a man not come home at a decent hour?” she retorted tartly as he opened the door to his study.
“There was a ball,” he protested. “I thought you wanted me to accept social invitations.”
“I do. But I don’t want you to leave the ball and make your way to the boudoir of someone’s wife.”
“You have a foul mind, Aunt Elspeth.”
“I’m seventy years old, my boy and at this age, there is nothing about vice and men that I do not know.”
“Really? I had no idea that Uncle—”
“Mind your tongue! Your Un
cle is an upstanding man who obeys all the commandments faithfully.”
“So I always thought. Then it is you who have learned all there is to know about vice and men. Aunt Elspeth, you shock me.”
Great Aunt Elspeth tried to maintain her glare, but she broke into laughter.
“George, you have a way about you that always manages to wear me down. I am concerned for you, my dear boy. You must marry. You are entirely too cavalier with your activities, you know. There is no heir if something should befall you. I have told you that I want to hold a ball here. You have put me off. I will not be put off again. Will you listen to me?”
Marriage. The ultimate snare.
But compared to a hangman’s noose, it was not such a bad alternative. And there were compensations, he thought as he recalled the exquisite curves of Lady Beecham in her ball gown. If he were obliged to wed, then marrying a woman such as Lady Beecham…no marrying Federica Beecham herself, presented a most entertaining and tantalising possibility.
He considered the advantages: she was of superlative beauty and delectable anatomy; she was well educated, at least her alter ego, M. de Bois was possessed of intelligent faculties; she was not faint-hearted, a requirement for marriage to a man whose life was at the beck and call of his monarch; she was not boring at all; she was original. Yes, he could consider marriage to one such as her.
Provided that he managed to prove his innocence, identify the guilty parties and see that they were brought to justice without delay, keep the noose and Newgate away from his neck, maintain her safety while she was in the care of her duplicitous brother; delay and prevent the marriage to Lord Oakland. Not a tall order at all, he thought with a grimace.
He had to woo her of course, but he felt that they had, in their own unconventional way, already embarked upon that process.
“Yes, Aunt Elspeth,” he said. “I will listen to you.”
Elspeth gaped. “Am I hearing you correctly?”
“Your hearing is as sharp as it ever was, Aunt. You hear me correctly.”
“You will agree to a ball and you will entertain the prospect of matrimony and when you choose a bride, you will consent to spend time with her so that she may be properly introduced to the expectations which the family holds for the next Countess of Gilberton?”
“Aunt Elspeth,” George drawled, “if you are asking whether I shall be content to wed her and bed her, to take her on a honeymoon and lavish ardent professions of love upon her, to bring her home in an interesting condition which shall within the generally accepted period of gestation lead to the birth of an heir—I consent.”
“That was not precisely how I would have put it,” his Great Aunt scolded.
“No, but it’s what you would have meant and I have saved you the trouble of taking refuge in all those baffling euphemisms which fail to answer a question. You want to know if I will marry a woman and if we will have children. I shall certainly do my part to bring that latter event to pass.”
“I’m sure that you shall, George, if she is attractive enough to hold your interest. I don’t envision you falling for one of these rattle-brained misses who know nothing but dressmakers and flirting.”
“How very perceptive you are, Aunt,” George said as he ushered her out the door, locking it behind her. “I assure you that when I marry, it shall be to a woman who fascinates me.”
“Humph! I wish you luck finding one of those. Don’t think to foil my plans by searching for the impossible, my boy.”
Her great-nephew turned his grey eyes upon her, candid and guileless. “In all of London, Aunt Elspeth, there must be one such that will serve.”
“Before I am in my grave, George. I won’t last forever.”
At the rate he was living his life, Great Aunt Elspeth bore every promise of outliving him.
“By the end of the year,” he declared.
“This year?”
“This year.”
“I don’t know what you were drinking at the Dennington’s Autumn Ball,” his great aunt stated, “but I hope you will obtain the recipe for me.”
NINE
“Is Uncle very ill?” Frederica inquired. Her cousin Petronella Hastings had come to visit and had just confided her concerns for her father’s poor health.
Petronella’s eyes filled with tears. She was not yet eighteen and had not made her debut because of her father’s failing health. “I do not think he can last the year, Frederica. He is so very weak. His breathing is so laboured that I sometimes fear that even speech wears him to the point of exhaustion. And Mother . . . ”
Frederica was well aware that her cousin’s mother was a domineering and controlling woman who sought to manage her only child’s life without allowing Petronella any voice in the decisions.
Such was not unusual for daughters, but Petronella would have the good fortune of inheriting her father’s title when he passed away and be a baroness in her own right. She would be responsible for the estate and its tenants as well as the properties belonging to the family. Instead of allowing her daughter to become accustomed to the responsibilities, the Baroness had sheltered Petronella.
Even though she had not had her coming out, there were strong signs that a marriage was soon to be forced upon her cousin. That too, was not uncommon, but it seemed to Frederica that her cousin ought to be allowed time to spend with her ailing father and then to mourn him before she was pressured into marriage.
“Yes, I understand,” Frederica said. “Families can be quite dictatorial.”
“You as well?” Petronella exclaimed. “Lord Oakland is not . . . ”
“Lord Oakland is not,” Frederica repeated with a firm tone. “He is punishingly dull, odiously bossy, he has a passion for hoarding funds so that he is not obliged to pay for anything if he can manage to wriggle out of it, and the man is a veritable encyclopaedia of maladies, all of which have been described to me in minute detail. He suffers from gout, his digestion is poor, he—”
Petronella burst out laughing.
“Oh, Frederica, I know I ought not to find humour in your plight, but it is so long since I have felt mirth that I cannot refrain. Why are you marrying him if you find him so detestable?”
“My brother has said that I must. He is irate with me because I did not accept any of the suitors who offered for me after each of the past seasons, and so now he says I will marry where he tells me to.”
“Cousin Rowland is rather harsh.”
“Brother Rowland is a tyrant.”
Petronella looked shocked. “Frederica, I have never heard you speak so candidly. Is it trully that unbearable?”
Frederica did not know how to answer her cousin’s query. She had grown accustomed to Rowland’s rigid control over her after the death of their parents and had accepted it with as good a grace as she could manage. He was after all, her guardian.
But after learning from the Earl of Gilberton that her brother had a venal side to him; she had come to see him in a much more unflattering light.
Dictating her marriage, managing her expenses, decreeing where she could go and what she could do, these were all traits which other guardians would have also displayed. But stealing priceless objects stolen from the tombs of the Egyptian kings and setting the machinations for murder in place were unpardonable.
She sighed. Yes, arranging a sequence of crimes to make an innocent man look guilty was entirely abominable.
“I have found that it is unbearable to be a woman in this enlightened age,” she said. “We live in the most advanced country in the world. We are seeing advances in all manner of enterprises: science, medicine, the arts . . . and yet a woman who states that she wishes to make her own decisions with regard to marriage, money, and raising children is mocked as if she were dim-witted. Let a woman voice a political opinion and she is labelled a frightful bluestocking, a deviant from the prescribed natural order of man and woman, not fit to marry or raise children because her ‘fevered brain’ will not withstand the ordeal.”
Frederica sighed. Petronella was still young and docile. She accepted the edicts of her mother without question. She would never understand the quandary in which Frederica found herself.
But she might understand a romantic affection.
“You see, Petronella,” she began, “I have lately met someone through the most peculiar circumstances and I find myself thinking of him far more than I think of Lord Oakland.”
“Is he handsome?” Petronella asked eagerly.
“He is.”
“Is he a gentleman?”
“He is, at least by birth. I confess that he is rather unorthodox in his manners, but not displeasingly so.”
“Can you not tell Cousin Rowland that you have found someone you prefer to Lord Oakland?”
“No,” Frederica replied without going into explanation. She had avoided Lord Oakland of late, begging off from the evening rides in Hyde Park now that George, busily engaged in acting upon the information she had obtained, was no longer able to make his covert visits to her carriage while Lord Oakland attended to his bodily functions.
The maid came into the drawing-room to inform Frederica that Lady Petronella’s carriage had arrived to bring her back home. And the Marquess’ carriage was pulling up.
Both arrivals were a sign that the visit was over. Petronella rose and allowed the maid to put her cloak on her.
“You must come visit, Frederica,” Petronella said as her cousin escorted her to the door. “Father will be pleased to see you and . . .” her voice faltered.
Frederica put her arm around her weeping cousin just as her brother entered. He thrust out his arm so that his walking stick and gloves could be taken, then waited until his coat and hat were removed, before paying any attention to the young women.
“Cousin Rowland,” Petronella greeted him.
“Petronella,” Rowland replied with a curt bow. “My compliments to your family. Frederica, I will see you in my study.”