Daughters of Night

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  ‘Put it back.’

  Startled, she almost dropped it. Turning, she glimpsed a figure sitting on a stool in a darkened recess of the room. Theresa Agnetti. Whatever was she doing there in the dark? Lying in wait?

  Her heart racing, grappling for an excuse, she seized upon the first that came to mind. ‘Forgive me, Theresa. I was looking for a hairpin. I thought you were out.’

  Mrs Agnetti rose and came forward into the candlelight. A pair of scissors flashed in her hand. ‘Do you spy for my husband? Or do you do this on your own account?’

  Pamela gave a nervous laugh. ‘What are you talking about, Theresa?’

  ‘You want him, don’t you? Does he ever touch you? When you are alone?’

  ‘Do you mean your husband? I never would.’

  Mrs Agnetti’s voice rose in pitch. ‘You know who I mean.’

  It was out there now. No point pretending otherwise. Battle lines drawn.

  Pamela drew a breath, and the lies tumbled out unbidden. ‘Every chance he gets. We’ll be together when he tires of you. Sometimes he laughs at you when we are alone.’

  The scissors flashed, cold steel pressed against Pamela’s neck. ‘Try to take him from me and I will kill you.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CARO’S ANGER WAS fierce and bright, burning like the fireworks over Vauxhall Gardens. She was hardly aware of the crowds, the bangs, the whiff of gunpowder, reliving the terror of losing Gabriel again and again.

  Her son had seemed quite unscathed by the experience. She’d had Gaston grill him a miniature beefsteak, and he’d tucked into it quite happily. When she’d questioned him about what had happened, all he could tell her was that a lady had given him the puzzle purse. What lady? What woman could do such a thing to a mother? Miss Willoughby had been in the park only a short time before Gabriel was taken, and she certainly had the talent to have painted the puzzle purse – but to what end? Could she be in league with the killer? With Mr Agnetti? But why would a pair of artists implicate themselves like this?

  More likely the killer had paid a woman to do it. Her heart tightened, as she thought of her innocent boy led into danger, his life threatened. I will find you, she promised, and I will enjoy your hanging day.

  The night was cooler, the end of the season drawing near. It seemed to infect the Vauxhall crowds; the wine tents raucous, the women bolder, the men more forward. Carnival masks leered in the crowd, brittle laughter rising, men shouting bawdy remarks to one another across the lime walks.

  Instructing Miles to look out for the Dodd-Bellinghams and Lord March, they made a perambulation of the Grand South Walk, scanning the snaking rows of supper boxes. So many eyes were upon her, people whispering, not troubling to hide it. She nodded at acquaintances, ignoring their sly smiles.

  Catching sight of Simon Dodd-Bellingham strolling alone amidst the crowds, she fought to master her anger. They think that they have won. Because Ezra Von Siegel is under arrest. But I will turn their misplaced confidence to my advantage.

  Spotting her, Simon smiled. ‘Mrs Corsham, I trust you’ve heard the news?’

  No stammer tonight. No sweating.

  ‘About Mr Von Siegel?’ she said. ‘Indeed, I have.’

  ‘The man confessed, so they say. You must be relieved.’

  She regarded him evenly. ‘As must you.’

  ‘A murderer off the streets? Who wouldn’t be?’

  Caro gazed around at the crowds. ‘I thought you gentlemen hunted as a pack? And yet, here you are, a solitary creature. Are Lord March and your brother not at Vauxhall tonight?’

  ‘Lord March has taken Miss Howard to a levée at the Palace. Neddy is around somewhere. He’s with his friends.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it, for I wanted to ask his advice. All this adventure has proved a little much, and I am thinking of taking a trip to visit an aunt down in Somerset. I hear the lieutenant is quite the authority upon that county.’

  Immediately, she sensed his caution. He moistened his lips with his pink tongue. ‘Somerset? Why do you say that?’

  ‘Did he not visit before the war? I’m certain that’s what I heard.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. ‘I was living with my mother then, as you recall. But I must say, it sounds unlikely. For one thing, Neddy can’t abide the countryside. He suffers dreadfully from the summer sneezes – likes to say the best thing our father ever did was sell up his country estates.’ He smiled ruefully, warming to his performance. ‘But then Neddy always does like to put a bold face on things.’

  ‘Oh, he certainly does that,’ Caro said. ‘Perhaps he endured the countryside in order to work on his watercolours?’

  ‘Watercolours? Neddy?’ Simon laughed.

  His reaction seemed genuine, but ‘Somerset’ had clearly meant something to him. A reason to be wary. A weakness. A secret. Probably his brother’s, rather than his own.

  ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘I shall have to seek the lieutenant out and ask him. Enjoy your night, Mr Dodd-Bellingham. I am sure our paths will cross again before too long.’

  He bowed, and she felt his eyes follow her as she walked away.

  Together with Miles, she searched the crowds for the lieutenant, eventually running him to ground at the food stalls near the Rope-Dancing Theatre. He was with a small party of redcoat officers and ladies, part of a much larger crowd gathered around one of the stalls. The object of their interest was an obese man eating a vast tray of pies, another man taking bets on when he might vomit.

  Recalling Miss Willoughby’s story of the attempted rape, thinking again of Gabriel, her anger burned. Yet tonight she needed to play a subtler hand.

  ‘In the thick of the action, as ever, lieutenant,’ she said, joining his side.

  He gazed down at her unsmiling. ‘If it isn’t Mrs Corsham. Where’s your fat friend? Licking his wounds? He’d be enjoying a nice reward right now, if he’d spent less time harassing his betters, and more time quizzing that murdering Jew.’

  ‘We can all be grateful for the magistrate’s efforts, I am sure. You might also be pleased to know that Mr Child spoke to the girls who attended your masquerade on the first of March. They confirmed everything your brother told us.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘Simon did try to tell you.’

  She sighed. ‘I still worry about that girl, Pamela, though. Where she is – why she hasn’t been seen around town. I am thinking of engaging Mr Child to find her.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool. Throwing good money after bad. I told you, these girls like to go wandering off, following their hearts.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Mr Child has got me thinking. Did you know that Pamela disappeared on the same day as Theresa Agnetti? Mr Child thinks there might be a connection.’

  ‘Theresa?’ He frowned. ‘That thief-taker of yours is simply after more of your money. Wherever Pamela is, she’d be laughing if she knew she was putting you to so much trouble.’

  ‘I’d like to believe you are correct,’ she said. ‘Could I ask you a few questions about Theresa? I know the two of you were close. It will help me come to a decision about Mr Child.’

  He hesitated, suspicion writ large upon his face. She could almost hear his mind working, debating which course would serve him best.

  ‘After all,’ she pressed, ‘how could it hurt? If you’re so certain that Pamela is alive and well?’

  She was counting upon his arrogance, his conviction that he could seduce any woman around to his way of thinking.

  The crowd had quietened to a hush. The obese man belched, leaned over and a cascade of vomit spilled from his mouth. People surged around the man taking bets, shouting.

  The lieutenant crumpled his ticket. ‘Very well, then. But I just lost my last crown, so dinner’s on you.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  IN THE CARRIAGE back to London, Child resisted Loredo’s entreaties to stay out drinking by agreeing to dine with him in two days’ time. The
jeweller dropped him at the north end of London Bridge, taking the carriage on to his home at St Mary-le-Bow.

  Child found a Thameside tavern, where he sat dwelling upon his predicament, trying and failing to think of another way out. If he didn’t do Stone’s bidding, then he’d face a trial, the jury bought, which would mean transportation at the very least, more likely a hanging. Do as Stone demanded, and Mrs Corsham would pay the price. Draining his pot of porter, he called for another. While he drank, he wrote a letter to Mrs Corsham cancelling the meeting they’d arranged for tomorrow afternoon. He couldn’t face seeing her again so soon.

  He thought of all the things Mrs Rainwood at the Magdalen Hospital had said. To love oneself. Easy for her to say – that gentle, kind woman who’d probably never committed any sin greater than a fart in chapel. All those loved by Peregrine Child ended up unhappy and then dead – and if that was the way things were going to go, he’d just as soon do it in the company of the bottle.

  A little before midnight, he rose. To go on. That’s all he had.

  *

  Hector was waiting for him in the dark, damp shadow of St Bennet’s church, the light of his torch flickering across the lichened bricks and puddles.

  ‘Mr C,’ he cried. ‘Want to step inside? For six shillings, I’ll let you touch the divine.’

  Child gave him a weary look. ‘Me vexat pede. It means behave yourself, or I’ll drop you in the river.’

  They walked along Thames Street, passed by the occasional coal wagon and once by the odorous cart of a night-soil man.

  ‘I took a look at the minutes of the Whores’ Club like you wanted,’ Hector said. ‘It seems that back in June, not long after Kitty moved out, Lucy stole a ring from Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham.’

  ‘So he told us.’ Then the lieutenant had been telling the truth about one thing, at least. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Lucy used that ring to trick a whore named Moll Silversleeves into telling her something she shouldn’t have done. Lucy made out that the lieutenant had lost the ring at her rooms. She told Moll he was trying to persuade her to give the Priapus Club a try. Moll was young, a little green, the wine was flowing, the ring convinced her – and she opened up.’

  ‘About Pamela?’ Child frowned. There had been no ‘Moll’ on Cecily’s list.

  ‘No, Moll wasn’t there that night, she didn’t know nothing about Pamela. But she’d been to other masquerades at Stone’s estate. Lucy asked her if the Priapus Club would be worth her while. Well, Moll laughed at that – the members were rich, powerful men. Most harlots would give their eye-teeth for an invitation. Still, Lucy scoffed, which was when Moll started throwing names around. The girls aren’t supposed to know who the gentlemen are, that’s why everyone wears masks. But masks fall off, or don’t fit well, and the girls make it a sport to guess.’

  ‘Lucy was still looking for the fifth man,’ Child said.

  ‘Seems that way, sir.’

  They turned into an alley that led downhill to the river, the cobbles a carpet of stinking excrement. The cranes on the roofs of the warehouses resembled a row of gibbets in the moonlight.

  ‘When Moll found out she’d been duped, everyone went mad,’ Hector said. ‘Rosy, Becky and Sally led the charge. Lucy won the vote against her, but only just – people felt she hadn’t behaved in the spirit of the club, that she’d risked their income from the masquerades in pursuit of her strange crusade. Not long after, we had the anonymous note about her time in Bridewell, and that was that.’

  Child wondered if the trick with the ring was how Lucy had first found out about the Prince, and come up with her plan for blackmailing the Home Office.

  They fell silent as they passed a busy tavern packed with sailors, lightermen and their whores. Hawkers stood in the shadows by the door, hoping to tempt the patrons into private pleasures: a toothless crone selling milk of the poppy; a spotty youth with a bag of lewd prints; a pair of young, muscular stevedores – known down here as water rats – lounging in the warehouse doorway opposite, giving Child the eye.

  ‘Do you know where I can find Moll Silversleeves?’ he asked.

  Hector sighed. ‘I doubt she’d have talked to you before, but she certainly won’t now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They found her three nights ago. She’d hung herself in her rooms. It happens from time to time, but this one took the girls by surprise. Moll always seemed such a cheerful girl.’

  They locked eyes. It could be a coincidence – but Child didn’t think so either. Perhaps the murderer – or one of Richmond Baird’s friends from the Home Office – had paid Moll a visit.

  ‘Did you find out anything interesting about my suspects?’

  ‘A little. The girls say Mr Stone’s not a violent man, quite the reverse. Prides himself on his proficiency at the art of love. The girls play up to it. The louder their cries of pleasure, the more he pays. Your lieutenant now is the opposite. All about his own pleasure. Not violent as such, but so clumsy it borders upon it. That’s the trouble with the handsome ones. They never had to try.’

  ‘No rumours of rape?’

  ‘He wouldn’t need to. The girls would never refuse him. He’s the gatekeeper to Mr Stone’s masquerades.’

  They had reached the wharves, a chaotic jumble of ladders, piers, cranes, masts and timbers. Light spilled across the water from the brothels of Bankside opposite, oyster- and eel-boats drifting with each swell of the tide. Hector led him down a set of crumbling waterstairs, along a stretch of muddy beach, past a lone mudlark searching the flats for treasure. They stopped under one of the piers, sheltered from the wharves above, the kind of place the water rats came to do their business.

  ‘How about Agnetti?’ Child said.

  ‘The newspapers have it all wrong. He don’t touch the girls. Pines for his wife, they say. The girls I spoke to didn’t like her, by the way. Said she was a real stone-cold bitch. I heard a good story about Agnetti, though. Want to hear it?’

  ‘That’s what I’m paying you for.’

  ‘His father, the count, was a notorious philanderer. In Italy they called him L’Ariete Dorato, the Golden Ram. His mother entered a convent when Agnetti was only five years old, and he was brought up in a house full of his father’s whores. Never knew who or what he might walk in on – his father or his friends, girls everywhere you looked. Sounds like fun, don’t it?’

  ‘Not really. Where did you hear this?’

  ‘One of the girls who sat for Agnetti. He told her the story himself – said his father’s women were more of a mother to him than his own.’

  ‘Did you learn anything more about relations between Agnetti and his wife?’

  ‘No, but I can keep asking.’

  ‘How about the others? Lord March? Simon Dodd-

  Bellingham?’

  Hector skimmed an oyster shell, the splashes punctuating his words. ‘Didn’t get a chance. Something came up.’

  His tone gave Child pause. ‘Oh?’

  He shrugged. ‘Someone was asking after me last night, a gentleman, at Birdcage Walk. I thought it might have been one of the men who threatened me before. So I spent the day down at Moorfields, out of sight.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Child said. ‘Forget what we agreed. I don’t want you putting yourself in danger.’

  Hector’s voice rose. ‘Do I look scared to you? If they catch up with me, then I’ll convince them that I don’t know nothing, like I did before. Come on, sir. Do a lad a service. I’ve got my heart set on that little yellow-boy in your pocket.’

  Child hesitated, but the lad’s information had proved useful so far – and there were few enough others willing to help him out. ‘There’s a carriage I want you to look for,’ he said. ‘Kitty was seen riding in it.’ He described the harlequin pattern. ‘Find it, keep asking around about my suspects, and I’ll give you double what I promised. But for Christ’s sake, watch your back, do you hear?’

  ‘Didn’t know you cared, sir. Consider me to
uched.’

  Child listened to the lad’s footsteps splashing and sucking through the mud back up to the wharves. He waited a little longer, skimming a few oyster shells himself, thinking about everything that Hector had told him. The lieutenant a little rough. Mrs Agnetti a stone-cold bitch. Moll always was such a cheerful girl.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  THE LIEUTENANT’S PARTY dined in the Grove, a grassy piazza at the heart of Vauxhall Gardens. The rows of supper boxes around the perimeter resembled boxes at the theatre, enclosed on three sides, with a view of the octagonal Orchestra and the dancing. In the silences between the music, the boxes buzzed with conversation, over the chink of silver and crystal. A cork popped, followed by applause.

  The lieutenant’s friends were named Cartwright and Hennessy, redcoat officers like himself. A trio of ladies accompanied them, introduced to Caro as Hennessy’s sisters on a visit from Dorset. Caro could detect little family resemblance between them, and the looks Hennessy gave them were far from fraternal. She wondered if Lucy had ever sat in these boxes, masquerading as some gentleman’s sister or niece.

  Miles was the only servant present, standing with his back to the wall, which was painted with a scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream. Liveried waiters poured wine, and brought platters of roast meat, bread and butter, olives and salad. The lieutenant seated himself and Caro at a slight distance from the others, and their intimacy soon drew the attention of passers-by. More grist to the scandalmongers’ mill, Caro thought, with an inward sigh.

  The lieutenant chewed on a mouthful of chicken, washing it down with a rich yellow wine. ‘Theresa used to assist her husband with his clients,’ he said, ‘much as Miss Willoughby does now. She’d consult me about her husband’s sketches, any quibbles over contracts, all of us wanting to keep Mr Stone happy. Sometimes when we’d finished talking business, Theresa would offer me tea, and we’d discuss other things.’