‘Debt is a good motive for theft.’
‘He was making far more from Ward’s commission than he’d get for a pair of jade figurines – that’s even without the risk to his reputation. And that part about him drinking on the job?’ Loredo pulled a face. ‘Does he look like a drinker to you?’
Child had to concede the point. He knew drinkers, looked at one in the mirror every day.
‘His other clients couldn’t have been happier with his work,’ Loredo went on. ‘He has a reputation for honesty. That’s why the whole tale was so strange.’
‘Did you ask him about it?’
‘Naturally. He said it was all a misunderstanding. Oh, the theft was real enough. Dodd-Bellingham suspected that one of Ward’s footmen was responsible. Initially, it seemed that’s where the blame would lodge. But Ward’s wife didn’t like young Simon, he suspects because of his illegitimacy, and she pointed the finger at him. You know how women can be when they take against a man. Ward is a doting husband, and she talked him round.’
‘You took Simon’s word for it?’
‘Of course not. I made inquiries amongst my acquaintances, thief-takers like yourself. No dealer in stolen goods remembered Dodd-Bellingham trying to sell a pair of jade figurines. None of it added up, Child. The boy is not a thief. I’d bet my house on it.’ Loredo cried an oath. ‘Watch this. She’s got a choke-hold like you wouldn’t believe.’
Senhora Mascarenhas had Mrs Johnson down on her knees and was strangling her. Mrs Johnson looked in desperate straits, and the crowd, judging by the betting, assumed that it was all over. But she managed to jab an elbow into her opponent’s groin, and wrenched herself free. The men were also bloodied and tiring, Mascarenhas’s eye badly gouged.
Child showed him Pamela’s necklace. ‘Can you tell me anything about this?’
Loredo took it in his big fist, frowning again. ‘Is this also connected to these murders?’
‘Yes, it belonged to the girl in the drawing.’
Loredo examined it, glancing up occasionally to watch the action. ‘You sometimes see Lascar sailors selling necklaces like these down at the docks. The little hand is a token of good luck. Sailors buy them for their sweethearts for a few shillings.’
‘It’s not old or valuable, then?’
‘There’s no way to date it for certain. The Calcutta silversmiths don’t use assaying marks. I’d guess it’s younger than you or I.’ He gave Child a sidelong glance. ‘Jonathan Stone was in India. Could he have given it to her?’
‘I’m told that her father gave it to her mother. The girl grew up in an orphanage.’
‘Hardly uncommon,’ Loredo observed. ‘A girl gets sweet-talked into bed by a sailor, believes she’s going to be married, then gets left high and dry when the next ship sails. She is disgraced, often with child. Most end up turning whore.’
Child grunted, returning the necklace to his pocket. He winced as Mrs Johnson thrust her thumbs into her opponent’s eyes, kneeing her several times in the breasts for good measure. The senhora stumbled back, unable to see for all the blood, and Mrs Johnson delivered an uppercut that knocked her out cold. The crowd cheered as the English pair rounded on Senhor Mascarenhas, buffeting him one between the other.
‘Basta!’ he cried out, but the crowd wanted blood, and seeing that they would not give quarter, Mascarenhas jumped from the ring. Wheatacre and Johnson held their arms aloft, while the crowd sang ‘Rule Britannia’.
Loredo, who had a hatred of the Portuguese for their persecution of his Lisbon forefathers, hugged Child. ‘There now. You have brought me luck, my friend. Have dinner with me tonight. What do you say?’
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
THE GREEN PARK was hot as hay harvest. Caro sat on a rug on the grass, watching Gabriel and Miles race the boy’s wooden wheeled horses up and down the grass. Every now and then, her son would stop to beam at her, and she and Mrs Graves were required to applaud.
Ladies shaded by parasols strolled in the sun, the gentlemen swinging Malacca walking canes. Footmen made little processions carrying hampers and cushions and silver coolers of ice and wine from the grand mansions that lined the park’s borders. Sometimes one of the gentlemen would tip their hat to Caro, or one of the ladies stop to talk. But others of her acquaintance hurried on by. Her entire circle would have read The London Hermes by now.
‘When I am four, I’ll have a real horse, won’t I, Mama?’
She couldn’t even remember making the promise, but for Gabriel it had become etched in stone. Will I even see your fourth birthday? Will you hate me when you know what I’ve done? Will another woman take my place, be your mother?
Last night she’d had a dream: her belly swollen almost to term, the child she’d tried to murder squirming inside her, a vengeful Orestes trying to claw his way out. Lord knows, The London Hermes wouldn’t help her chances of talking Harry round. She kept rehearsing the conversation in her mind, all her pleas and promises countered by talk of honour and principle, and all the other things men cited when pride made them do foolish things.
‘Look,’ Miles said, pointing. ‘There’s Miss Willoughby.’
Agnetti’s assistant was walking across the grass towards them, her face shaded by a white hat adorned with pale-pink roses. She smiled at Caro a little nervously, and raised a white-gloved hand.
People turned to stare. This is all I need, Caro thought. The company of a scandalous outcast. But she rose to greet Agnetti’s assistant nevertheless.
‘I called at your house,’ Miss Willoughby said. ‘They told me you were here.’
‘Please, do sit down,’ Caro said, gesturing to the rug. Miles hastily moved the basket and her parasol out of the way, and stood back smiling. Miss Willoughby has made a conquest there, Caro thought.
Gabriel was staring trance-like at an older child running a hoop.
‘A handsome boy,’ Miss Willoughby said.
Caro smiled. ‘He’s growing up too fast.’
Miss Willoughby took a folded banknote from her panniers and held it out to Caro. ‘Mr Agnetti asked me to return your deposit.’
‘You didn’t need to come out of your way,’ Caro said, secreting the note in her own panniers. ‘You could have left it at the house.’ Given Mordechai’s actions, she was glad of the money. ‘I suppose Mr Agnetti told you how I deceived him?’
‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘That is why I offered to come, rather than send a servant. I wanted to talk to you about your inquiry.’
‘Oh?’
‘Lucy Loveless left Mr Agnetti’s employ some weeks before I came to London. But this afternoon, when we were discussing your visit, Mr Agnetti pointed her out to me in his painting of the Furies. I realized then that I had seen her before.’
The boy with the hoop had wandered off, and Gabriel ran up to Caro. ‘Boat, Mama?’
Caro glanced at him distractedly. ‘Yes, my love. I will join you there in just a moment. Go with him, Miles.’
Looking extremely reluctant, the footman picked up Gabriel’s wooden boat, giving Miss Willoughby a last considered glance. Then he set off across the grass towards the Queen’s Basin, followed by Gabriel and his nursemaid, hand in hand.
‘Do go on, Miss Willoughby,’ Caro said.
‘It was only a few days before Lucy’s murder. Mr Agnetti had asked me to collect some paints and oils from a shop in Marylebone, and I encountered the lieutenant in Leicester Fields as I was leaving. He offered to escort me there.’ She flushed, looking down at her hands. ‘This was when I still thought well of him, you understand. As we were walking along Baker Street, a woman came out of one of the houses and when she and the lieutenant noticed one another, they exchanged cross words. I realize now that this woman was Lucy Loveless.’
This must be the same conversation that Lucy’s neighbouring tenant had described to Mr Child, Caro realized. ‘Did you hear what they said?’
‘Lucy accused the lieutenant of ruining her life. He laughed at her, and this seemed to anger her furt
her. Then she said something that wiped the smile from his face: “Maybe now that I have so much time upon my hands, I’ll visit Somerset.” I thought it an odd thing to say, given the nature of their exchange, and her expression suggested that it was an allusion she thought the lieutenant would understand. And he seemed to – for he pushed her violently. Then he walked off in a fury, leaving me to hurry after him.’
Caro frowned. ‘Did the lieutenant ever mention Somerset in passing?’
‘Not that I recall. But it clearly meant something to him.’ She sighed. ‘That incident should have told me everything I needed to know about the man, but he told me some story, casting himself as an innocent victim of theft, and I told myself that he had a right to be angry. We believe the truth we choose to see, do we not?’
Caro wondered if Lucy’s threat had a connection to the lieutenant’s secret? Another rape? One committed in Somerset?
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘does the lieutenant like to paint?’
She looked surprised by the question. ‘He never said as much, though he was highly complementary about my own work. I presumed afterwards that this interest was feigned, like so much else.’
‘And Mr Stone?’
‘I believe Mr Agnetti once gave him some private lessons. He says Mr Stone has talent, but then he is a valued client, and I imagine all valued clients are said to have talent.’
Caro returned her trace of a smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I will pass your information on to my thief-taker. In return, I have something to tell you. A mystery I believe I have solved, one that might help you understand Mr Agnetti’s anger over your stroll with the lieutenant. People say he was the lover of Mrs Agnetti.’
Miss Willoughby’s eyes widened and her mouth went slack. ‘Now I feel even more of a fool,’ she whispered.
‘I think Mr Agnetti was only trying to protect you. Under the circumstances, one can understand his anger.’
‘Yes, poor Mr Agnetti.’ She bit her lip.
‘It was not your fault,’ Caro said, gazing at her with sympathy. ‘Not for trusting the lieutenant. Not for what happened in that bower.’
She blinked away her tears. ‘It feels as if it is. Everything does.’
Caro wondered if she was talking about her father’s secretary, the man who’d abandoned her. Or something else in her past. Evelina says the father doted upon the girl. Perhaps too much.
‘It is our tragedy to assume upon our own shoulders responsibility for the misdeeds of men,’ she said. ‘But we should be kinder, I think. To one another, as well as to ourselves. Do call on me if ever you should need a friend.’
Miss Willoughby gave a wan smile. ‘Thank you, Mrs Corsham. But my duties leave me little time for making calls.’
They shook hands, and Caro watched her walk off across the grass, a little put out by the girl’s refusal of her offer of friendship. For a few minutes, she sat quietly, watching the children play, thinking about everything Miss Willoughby had told her. She hated the idea of her sweet little boy being drawn one day into that world of twilight pleasure. Buying women, or seducing them, discarding them once they’d succumbed. And how will I be able to teach him differently, if I am not there?
Someone shouted her name, and she looked up sharply. Miles was racing across the grass towards her.
Sweat broke out on her skin. ‘What is it? Where’s Gabriel?’
‘He’s not with you?’ Miles turned, scanning the children. Caro felt a rush, as the world seemed to tilt on its axis.
‘Why would he be with me? You were supposed to be watching him.’ Her eyes swept the crowds. ‘Gabriel!’
‘It was busy.’ Miles was panting. ‘He was running around after his boat. I can’t have taken my eyes off him for more than a moment. Mrs Graves . . .’
But Caro wasn’t listening. She was running towards the Queen’s Basin. People stared, time moving like treacle. Is this happening? Yes, this is happening. Her stomach contracted and a hundred dark thoughts entered her mind. He’s drowned in the pond. A kidnapper has him, for ransom, for unspeakable purposes. No, he’s just hiding, this is all a game. No, he’s being hurt right now, and you’re doing nothing.
She rounded a bend in the path, almost colliding with a passing couple. ‘Have you seen a little boy with black hair in a pink gown?’
They only stared at Caro blankly. Why weren’t people helping? She ran on, but what if she was running the wrong way? She screamed his name again, hands shaking, her vision a tunnel. She ran past the little wilderness that shaded the Tyburn pool.
‘Mrs Corsham,’ Miles shouted. ‘There he is.’
She turned and saw him, crouched by the pool, pushing his boat. She ran, grabbed him, held him so tight she was afraid his ribs might crack. Her tears flowing, she kissed him again and again.
‘Mama,’ she heard Gabriel say. ‘Lady gave me for give to you.’
‘What lady?’
He had something in his hand, and as she took it from him, bile rose in her throat. It was another puzzle purse – this one painted with a pair of masks, one black, one white. With trembling fingers, she prised the folds apart.
Inside were more paintings: a lady, dressed in the same oyster satin she’d worn to Carlisle House; the same lady held by the plague doctor; the lady crushed and bleeding beneath the wheels of a speeding carriage; a little boy crying, perhaps for his mother.
She unfolded the puzzle purse fully to read the message inside:
YOU FIRST. HIM NEXT.
PAMELA
8–14 February 1782
Mrs Agnetti did not bloom during her pregnancy. It was as if she was being devoured by an incubus. Her face pinched and hollow, her eyes sunken and dark-rimmed, her belly distended over her tiny frame like a starving urchin. Sometimes Mr Agnetti would ask Pamela to take tea with his wife, and Mrs Agnetti would sit there glowering, stabbing at her sampler, reminding Pamela more than ever of Mad Miriam at the orphanage.
She didn’t know what she’d done to earn the older woman’s enmity, but she presumed it must have something to do with Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham. Perhaps Mrs Agnetti had sensed a dwindling of his affections? Or noticed the attention he paid Pamela whenever he saw her? In front of her husband, Mrs Agnetti would speak with forced politeness, but sometimes her mask would slip, and she’d snap or speak coldly, her hands clenched like rat’s claws. Pamela was fed up with Lucy’s and Kitty’s excuses for her behaviour. She’s anxious about the baby. Don’t take it to heart. Theresa doesn’t mean to be unkind. It’s just her way.
Mrs Rosell used to say similar things at the orphanage, whenever Mad Miriam shouted or cried or swore. Then one day, Miriam had produced a pigeon from beneath her dress and put out its eyes with a needle, while all the girls screamed.
One afternoon in mid February, Mr Agnetti decided to finish painting early, and invited her downstairs to take Madeira with him and his wife. He talked to Pamela kindly, Mrs Agnetti sitting very still, turning the pages of her book too fast to be actually reading it.
‘You pose very well,’ Mr Agnetti told her. ‘You must sit for me again. You will make a fine goddess when you’re a little older.’ He rose to tilt her chin, turning it to the fading light. ‘What do you think, Theresa? With such beauty and those fine black eyes, she could be my Andromeda.’
Mrs Agnetti looked up from her book, just long enough to skewer Pamela with her gaze. ‘I fear she’d struggle to convince as a princess.’
Nasty old witch. Pamela sat up straighter, tilting her chin in a regal manner.
Agnetti smiled. ‘There now. Her bearing is perfect.’
‘What are you reading, Theresa?’ Pamela asked sweetly, enjoying the moment.
‘The plays of Euripedes.’
‘A Greek tragedian,’ Agnetti explained. ‘One of his plays was about Iphigenia. You should read it – shouldn’t she, my love?’
Mrs Agnetti answered woodenly, scarcely bothering to pretend. ‘Yes, Jacobus. I am sure Pamela would enjoy Euripedes very much.’
*
Know your enemy. It was a favourite saying of the lieutenant’s. He liked to tell Pamela about his exploits on the battlefield. And that’s what this house had become. Unacknowledged but understood. Mrs Agnetti knew it. So did she.
Lord March called late that afternoon to return Agnetti’s volume of Dracontius. ‘I have some thoughts on it, if you’d be interested?’
‘Very much,’ Agnetti said. ‘Pamela, let us finish for today. You may wait for Mrs Havilland’s footman in the morning room.’
She slid off the altar, enjoying the heat of Lord March’s eyes. So predictable. She smiled at him, tucking her breast away.
Downstairs, she found the morning room empty. The Agnettis had argued earlier. Theresa had wanted to attend a party of supper and cards at a place called Craven House, but Mr Agnetti hadn’t wanted her to go. Pamela wondered if that was where she was now, laughing with the lieutenant. So devious. So cold. A woman like that might be hiding other secrets too.
Returning to the hall, she listened out for the servants, hearing only a distant murmur from the kitchen. Taking a candle from the table in the hall, she crept back upstairs. Past the door to the studio, up another flight of stairs, to the second-floor landing. Here she paused.
From the servants’ talk, she knew the Agnettis had separate bedrooms. His was at the front of the house, and she presumed this second door must lead to hers. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened, but could hear nothing. Turning the handle very slowly, she opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her.
The curtains were open to a charcoal sky, the room in shadow. Pamela made out a canopied bed, an armoire and a dressing table. She lit her candle with a tinder from her pocket, and placed it on the dressing table. Studying the jewellery boxes and the bottles of scent, the silver pots and brushes, she wondered why such a plain woman needed such an extravagant toilette – and then decided that the answer spoke for itself. Opening one of the boxes, she took out a diamond brooch. Good silverwork, the stones cushion-cut. About fifty guineas. She wondered if it had been a gift from Mr Agnetti. Or from him.
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