Daughters of Night

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  The fifth man, the one with Pamela.

  ‘This girl definitely wasn’t with them?’ Child showed him Pamela’s picture.

  Hector shook his head. ‘Is that her? Kitty talked about Pamela sometimes, when she’d come home from Mr Agnetti’s. She liked her, but then Kitty liked everyone.’

  ‘Did you ever hear any talk about a document? Some papers? Or a letter? From Kitty or Lucy or anyone else?’

  Hector turned, his eyes blazing in the light of his torch. ‘They asked me about that too. I told them I didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘A couple of coves came to see me last week, asking me questions about Kitty. Big. Well dressed. Knew the law.’

  Official sorts. Like the men who’d been looking for Kitty at her rooms. Like the late Richmond Baird, agent of the Home Office.

  ‘Were you telling them the truth?’

  ‘Don’t you start. Took me an age to convince them. They held a knife to my balls. Most fun I’ve had in months.’ Despite his bravado, Child could tell the episode had rattled him.

  They cut through an alley that brought them out on the fringes of St James’s Park. Ahead of them stretched the Mall, a wide, gravelled path flanked by lamps, park-walkers and their customers flitted in and out of the shadows like bats. Hector headed away from the lights, towards the Horse Guards parade ground, the night air pierced by a shriek from the waterfowl patrolling the pond.

  ‘Tell me about Lucy and Kitty, their falling out,’ Child said. ‘Was that because of Pamela?’

  ‘That’s obvious, isn’t it? Kitty tried to talk Lucy out of doing what she was doing – she said Pamela had left town, she was alive and well. Lucy didn’t believe it, not for a moment. Kitty had come into some money lately and Lucy wanted to know where it had come from. Kitty said her duke had given it to her for old times’ sake, but Lucy called her a liar and Kitty cried.’

  ‘Were you in the room when they argued?’

  ‘No, but I have ears, and doors have keyholes. They didn’t speak after that. It upset Kitty. She and Lucy had been friends for years. I think that had a lot to do with her moving out. She didn’t tell me where she was going. I think she thought I might tell Lucy. Lucy came looking for her, you see, after she left.’

  ‘Could it be true what they say on the street? That she found herself a new keeper?’

  ‘Not one I ever met. She’d only been seeing her regulars.’

  ‘Where else could she be?’

  ‘Sometimes she’d leave town to take the waters, used to say she needed a rest from all the men. Given how she’d been acting lately, that’s what I presumed.’

  ‘How had she been acting?’

  ‘Anxious, distracted, upset about Lucy. She’d always been that way – the sort who’d cry after the men went home – but this was worse. She was praying a lot. She’d always done that too. But lately, she’d been doing it more – and going to church, over at St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe.’

  ‘Had she ever dismissed you before when she went away?’

  ‘No, but usually she only went for a week at a time.’

  Four months was a long rest. And Kitty had been anxious, praying. Perhaps guilty about whatever had happened to Pamela.

  ‘Did Kitty ever talk about giving it up? Prostitution?’

  ‘Sometimes. I didn’t take it seriously though. What else would she do? Where would she go?’

  Throw herself upon the charity of the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes? Child was thinking about the card he’d found in Lucy’s rooms. Had Lucy guessed that Kitty had decided to change her life for good, perhaps motivated by remorse? Had she gone looking for Kitty at the Magdalen? That would explain why no one had seen her out on the town.

  They had reached the corner of the park, the black hulk of the abbey looming large over the old houses. Birdcage Walk stretched off to the right, a darkened promenade of trees. Ragged boys of Hector’s age stood in little clusters by the shrubbery, talking and smoking pipes. A man sidled up to them, coins were exchanged, and one of the boys led the man into the bushes.

  ‘Oh no, you bloody don’t.’ Child grabbed Hector’s collar, pulling him up short.

  He grinned. ‘You never know, you might find out you like it down here, sir.’

  ‘A man can hang for what they’re doing in those bloody bushes.’ Child resented the distraction, still trying to think everything through. ‘What did Ceylon Sally mean at the Whores’ Club, when she said Lucy had used up all her chances already?’

  ‘They’d tried to blackball her once before. About a month before they threw her out for good.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Sally, Rosy and Becky. Kitty had already left town by then.’

  ‘They targeted her because of Lucy’s inquiry?’

  ‘Looks that way, don’t it?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘It was before they took me on as secretary.’ Hector looked at him askance. ‘I could find out, though. Take a peek in the club minutes. For the right price.’

  ‘I’ll give you another half-guinea,’ Child said, ‘but I want you to do some other things for me too. Ask around at the Whores’ Club, find out if any of my suspects have a taste for young girls.’ He produced a list of names that he’d made earlier in the jelly-house. ‘I also want to know if any of them have a reputation for violence. You’ll see Agnetti’s name on that list too. I want to know what he does with his sitters – what he does with Cassandra Willoughby. Whether he did anything with Pamela or Kitty or Lucy. And anything the girls witnessed between him and his wife. Arguments, flying fists, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Don’t want much, do you?’ But Hector took the list. ‘It’ll take me a couple of days. You know St Bennet’s, by the river? Meet me there at midnight, the day after tomorrow.’

  Child gave him the first half–guinea, and the flash of gold attracted the attention of the boys by the bushes. One made a move towards them, but Child stopped him with a look.

  ‘I liked Lucy,’ Hector said, perhaps feeling the need to justify the money. ‘I had to take the news to her when the Whores’ Club threw her out. She’d lost almost everything by then. Her job sitting for Agnetti. Most of her clients. She said the lieutenant had got Jonathan Stone’s man of business to look into her past – that’s how they’d found out about Bridewell. I asked how she was going to survive, and she said: “How I always do, H. I am Lucy.” Only this time she didn’t, did she?’

  ‘She was playing a dangerous game,’ Child said, gazing back across the park towards Covent Garden.

  ‘I told her to stop,’ Hector said. ‘Her inquiry, I mean. I said the Whores’ Club might take her back, make an exception. I asked how she expected to beat them, even if she did find out the truth. Those gentlemen were important, powerful, protected. She smiled then, like she knew something that I didn’t. “They think they are,” she said, “but their greatest strength is their greatest weakness.” Don’t even ask me what she meant. I’ve no idea.’

  PAMELA

  28–30 January 1782

  In the days that followed, Pamela discovered many more secrets. She learned, for instance, that Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham had an enemy, and she was responsible for delivering him from that enemy herself.

  She had been walking across Leicester Fields to Agnetti’s house – her watcher, as usual, by her side. Her boots were worn and patched, her feet damp in the snow. Peddlers selling kindling and chestnuts stamped their own feet for warmth. Their whistles followed Pamela across the piazza. ‘Show us your bubbies, miss. We won’t bite.’

  She turned to give them a piece of her mind, but the words dried on her tongue. She’d spotted the lieutenant striding across the piazza, vivid in his redcoat. As she watched, a man walked up to him, short, but powerfully built. He had long black hair and a straggly black beard, his clothes dirty and torn. The lieutenant stopped when he saw the man and Pamela slowed her own pace. Their words were snatched away on the wind, b
ut their faces weren’t friendly. The lieutenant put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and pushed him away.

  Pamela was close enough to see the man bare his blackened teeth. The lieutenant walked on, but the man ran at him full pelt, launching himself onto his back. The pair went down in the snow, and the man rained punches upon the lieutenant. Pamela ran, taking her watcher by surprise. She grabbed the man by the collar, trying to pull him off. The peddlers clapped and whistled. Turning, the man lashed out, striking her on the arm. It gave the lieutenant the opportunity to punch his assailant in the midriff.

  Winded, he fell back. ‘Bloody bitch.’

  Her watcher had caught up with her, and kicked a flurry of snow at the man. ‘Be off with you, churl.’

  The man looked from him to the lieutenant, evidently deciding the odds were against him. He staggered away and the lieutenant clambered to his feet, brushing snow from his redcoat. His face sported a nasty bruise. ‘My champion,’ he said, with an elaborate bow that made her blush. ‘Next time you ride into battle, you must wear my colours on your sleeve.’

  He offered her his arm, and she longed to take it, but her watcher scowled. The three of them walked on to Agnetti’s door.

  ‘You’re a bastardly gullion, Dodd-Bellingham,’ the man with the beard shouted after them. ‘I’ll fix you, you son of a mutt-bitch whore.’

  Pamela glanced up at the lieutenant, concerned, but he only smiled down at her in that way that made his eyes crinkle.

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a man I used to know. Put him out of your mind. I already have.’

  *

  Then there was Lord March, who dropped by to see Agnetti two days later. Pamela was lying on the altar, and from her awkward vantage point she examined the newcomer curiously. Agnetti put down his charcoal and went to shake his hand, addressing him with deference.

  ‘I came with Neddy,’ Lord March said. ‘He’s brought you a letter from Stone. I said I’d bring it up, as I wanted to talk.’

  Much of their conversation was a mystery – snatches in a language she presumed to be Latin, odd names, books – but she understood well enough the way Lord March kept glancing at her bared breast well enough. Cecily had told her that the lieutenant was friends with the son of an earl, the heir to a great estate. Lord March wasn’t a patch on the lieutenant, but he had a thin, fine-boned face and dark pretty eyes. She smiled at him, trying not to think about what the lieutenant and Mrs Agnetti were up to downstairs.

  Lord March dragged his eyes back to Agnetti. ‘I wondered if I might borrow that volume of Dracontius we spoke about?’

  ‘Of course,’ Agnetti said. ‘If you wait here, I’ll fetch it. Pamela, you may take a rest until I return.’

  She took her time sitting up, slipping her breast into her robe, enjoying the effect she had upon the young nobleman.

  ‘So you’re his Iphigenia,’ Lord March said, drawing closer. ‘Neddy’s told me all about you.’

  She gave him a bold eye. ‘Promise not to sacrifice me to the gods?’

  He laughed richly. ‘Do you know the rest of the story? Here, I’ll show you.’

  Pamela joined him in front of another of Agnetti’s giant canvases: the one he was working on with Lucy and Peter Jakes, as well as Julietta, a girl from the Whores’ Club, and a handsome tenor from the Royal Opera House. The painting was nearly finished. Julietta lay dying on a bed, slain by the tenor – who was as flatulent as a bull-calf, according to Lucy. Peter Jakes was crawling across the floor, his blood streaking the mosaic tiles, Lucy standing over him with an axe.

  Lord March touched her arm as he spoke, pointing to the painting. ‘Iphigenia’s murder sparked a chain of recrimination and killing that rocked the Hellenic world. Here you see the murder of Agamemnon, Iphigenia’s father, who had returned victorious from the conquest of Troy. The dying girl is his Trojan concubine, Cassandra. His wife, Clytemnestra, furious about Iphigenia’s murder, enlisted the aid of her lover, Aegistus, to kill them both.’

  ‘He sacrificed his daughter. He deserved it.’

  ‘Their son, Orestes, didn’t think so. In the third scene that Mr Agnetti is to paint, he murders his mother and her lover in an act of revenge. In the final painting, Orestes is driven mad by the Furies, winged demons who demand justice for his crimes.’

  ‘He loved his father, even though he’d killed his own sister?’

  ‘I suppose he must have done.’

  Pamela mused on this a moment. ‘I wouldn’t give my da the time of day. Not even if someone was standing over him with an axe.’

  Lord March smiled. ‘Sometimes I think the same about my own father.’

  ‘I’d kill for love though – like him there in the painting.’ She pointed at the tenor, Clytemnestra’s lover. ‘Murder a rival, or someone who hurt him.’ She thought about that man down on the ground in Leicester Fields.

  Lord March pointed at Lucy as Clytemnestra. ‘Love must have played a part there as well. Love for her husband, I mean. If it was just about her murdered daughter, then why kill Cassandra too?’

  ‘Jealousy can do that to you,’ Pamela said. ‘Mix you up inside, so you can’t see straight.’

  His eyes locked on hers, and he spoke softly:

  ‘I hate and I love.

  And if you ask me how,

  I do not know.

  I only feel it,

  and I am torn in two.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hate and love. That’s it. Did you write that?’ Cecily had said Lord March was a poet.

  ‘It’s Catullus,’ he said. ‘A Roman who lived two thousand years ago. His verses, like the feelings he writes about, are eternal.’ He paused. ‘I could read you more poetry, if you wish. I keep a set of rooms in Duke Street. You could meet me there tomorrow afternoon?’ He ran a hand down her back, grazing her spine.

  ‘I cannot,’ she said, her throat dry as dust. ‘There is to be an auction.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Neddy told me. I’ll do nothing to risk your money. Nothing you won’t enjoy. You have my word as a gentleman.’

  She wondered if it was a test – of her chastity, her virtue. Maybe the lieutenant had sent his friend to try to seduce her? How to respond? She didn’t want to offend him. A peer of the realm, a potential keeper. Her heart was with the lieutenant, but a girl couldn’t live off her heart alone. Be open to every option, Lucy always said.

  ‘I can’t get away from my watcher. But you could bid for me at auction? Or later, after I am sold, you could invite me to your rooms again?’

  He smiled, stepping away. ‘Perhaps I will.’

  She wondered why he kept a set of rooms in which to meet women, when he could visit any brothel in town. Perhaps he had a mistress? A lady of quality, high-born, who needed somewhere discreet to meet him in private. It hadn’t stopped him wanting Pamela. She was a match for any lady in town, and soon the whole of London would know it.

  *

  When Agnetti returned with the book, he asked her to wait downstairs, as he had a private matter to discuss with Lord March. As she descended the stairs, the door to the drawing room opened, and Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham emerged. She caught a glimpse behind him of Mrs Agnetti, sitting on the sofa, and her blood curdled. He closed the door and looked up, catching sight of her.

  ‘I hoped I’d see you here,’ he said. ‘I have something for you.’

  Smiling, she walked to meet him. From his pocket he produced a white and purple nosegay tied with a ribbon. ‘To thank you for riding to my rescue the other day.’

  She smelled it appreciatively. ‘Your poor face.’ Reaching out a finger, marvelling at her own audacity, she traced the outline of his bruise. He turned his head to brush his lips against her finger.

  ‘Dear God, girl,’ he said, stepping away. ‘Jonathan Stone would have my heart, liver and lights fried up in a skillet.’

  She remembered Lucy and Kitty talking about a Mr Stone, the one who had the masquerades out in the country. ‘What does Mr
Stone have to do with anything?’

  ‘I owe him money, which means I have to do what he says.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he want you talking to me?’

  ‘Oh, take my word for it.’ An uncharacteristic trace of unease seemed to settle on his features.

  ‘Does your brother owe him money too?’

  ‘Owns us both – lock, stock. You don’t happen to have a spare three thousand pounds?’

  She shook her head, and he grinned. ‘Pity. Then I could marry you. You’re kinder on the eye than any heiress.’

  She stared at him. ‘You mean to marry?’

  ‘God willing. When the Order of the Bath is announced. My brother says the heiresses will come flocking and I can get out from under Stone at last.’

  The furrow in her forehead deepened as she distilled this information. She committed the name to memory: Jonathan Stone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MIDDAY, THE THAMES shiny as a new sixpence in the sun. Peregrine Child, sweating out last night’s liquor, trudged through the dingy streets of Southwark. From everything Hector had told him, he was convinced that finding Lucy’s friend Kitty was the key to unlocking this conspiracy of silence. Run her to ground, appeal to her tortured conscience, find out which one of these blueblood fucksters had killed Pamela. Then they’d all start talking, trying to save their own skin – gentlemen always did when they felt the lick of the hangman’s rope.

  On the edge of St George’s Fields, he paused to catch his breath. A great expanse of heath and bog on the southern fringes of the city, Child sometimes came down here to attend a fair or watch a riot. Today the only attraction was a gang of itinerant horse dealers showing off a frisky pony to an eager crowd. Caveat emptor, Child thought. He knew all the tricks. Stick a live eel or a wedge of ginger up a horse’s fundament, and any broken-down old nag could look lively. He gave them a wide berth, taking a circuitous route across the grass to the gates of the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes.