‘Tell us about the masquerade,’ Child said.
‘There were four of us from the Whores’ Club: myself, Becky, Rosy and Sally. The lieutenant picked us up from my rooms in a hired carriage, and then we collected Pamela from the tableaux house. We rode out to Muswell Rise, everyone giving Pamela their tuppence of advice. She seemed a little nervous, but who wouldn’t be? I wept buckets my first time. When we arrived, the lieutenant took us to a bedroom to change our clothes. Mr Stone makes the girls wear white robes and sandals, like the women in Agnetti’s paintings. He had a special robe for Pamela, embroidered with silver thread. We went downstairs, where the others were waiting. Four gentlemen, including Mr Stone, all wearing masks.’
‘Only four?’
‘Yes, at first. Mr Stone, the Dodd-Bellingham brothers and Lord March. His lordship always wore a mask, because he was afraid of his father catching him in scandal. But we always knew that it was him, because his buttons are stamped with the Amberley crest. Outside, the servants gave the gentlemen torches. We walked across the grounds, skirting the woods, to the lake. Outside Stone’s bathhouse, across the water, I saw more torches, and guessed that was where we were heading.’
‘The little white temple on the edge of the lake?’ Mrs Corsham said.
Kitty nodded. ‘There is a stone pool in front of the bathhouse, which in summer is filled with water from the lake. Sometimes, during the masquerades, we’d go there to bathe. But this was the dead of winter, the lake half-frozen. The pool had been drained, and I couldn’t understand why Mr Stone had taken us there. Now I think he wanted to keep what was to happen away from the servants. Mr Stone knocked on the bathhouse door, and another gentleman opened it from inside. He wore a mask that covered his head: a goat with horns.’
The fifth man. Child exchanged an uneasy glance with Mrs Corsham.
‘Something felt wrong,’ Kitty said. ‘The men were so silent, when normally they’re laughing and joking between themselves. I was afraid for Pamela. I wanted to stop it, but what could I say? I think she was afraid too, because when Mr Stone told her to go to the man, she hung back. But one of the others gave her a push, and she walked towards him. The man in the mask looked her over, then they went into the bathhouse together. Mr Stone ordered the rest of us back to the house.’
‘Did you know who this fifth man was?’
She shook her head. ‘Not then. A banquet had been laid out in the dining room as usual, but no one felt like eating. All the men removed their masks, even Lord March, and Mr Stone tried to raise everyone’s spirits. He called for wine, and pulled Becky onto his lap. The lieutenant kissed me, and Sally kissed Lord March. Simon was just sitting there, and Mr Stone told Rosy to attend to him. But Simon said he wasn’t in the mood. Normally that would earn him a rebuke from Mr Stone, but that night he let Simon leave without any argument. So Rosy disrobed, and went to join Becky and Mr Stone.
‘We weren’t at it very long, before I heard Pamela outside, calling my name. A servant came to the door, and whispered something to Mr Stone, and he left the room. The lieutenant told us to stay where we were, and he and Lord March went after Stone. But we heard more shouting and we were worried about Pamela, so Becky and I got dressed and went outside.’
Kitty started crying again, and they waited impatiently, until she composed herself. ‘They were all in the forecourt, in the middle of an argument. Lord March was holding Pamela. She was struggling, hysterical, and he was trying to calm her down. The lieutenant grew frustrated and slapped her face, which only made her scream louder. I called out to her, asked what was wrong, and Stone ordered us back inside. Then we saw the reason why.’ Her fists clenched on top of the pew. ‘The fifth man, the one from the bathhouse, came forward into the light. He had to use a stick to help him walk. He had taken off his mask, and his face, oh his face. It was all riven with sores, and no nose, just a gaping black hole. Those monsters had given Pamela to a man who was dying from the pox.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CARO STARED AT Kitty, appalled. It couldn’t be true. Ambrose had been so ill back in March, barely able to walk. And he’d promised her, hand on heart, that he’d given up his women. He’d even made bleak jokes about losing the inclination. Why would he have asked Stone to find him a virgin?
Kitty seemed to read her incomprehension. ‘The tales are as old as time. Intercourse with a virgin cures a man from syphilis. That’s why you see them out on the street. Children with rotting faces.’ She shuddered. ‘There’s no truth in it, of course, anyone with half a mind can see it. But when a man is dying, he becomes desperate. Prepared to try anything.’
Caro remembered the parade of physicians and quacks through Ambrose’s rooms at the Adelphi. Mercury, arsenic, fumigation. Poultices of wild pansy and China root. He’d even tried to contract malaria, because one quack had told him the fevers would cure him. His desperation as the disease spread. His terror of dying.
‘I don’t think they wanted to do it,’ Kitty said. ‘The other gentlemen, I mean. Becky overheard the lieutenant say to Lord March that the man with the pox knew too much about Stone’s business. He’d have struggled to find himself a virgin looking like that, so he made Stone do it for him.’
‘Why involve the others?’ Mr Child’s face was expressionless, but his hands were balled into fists. ‘Why the other girls? Why have witnesses?’
‘To make Pamela feel more at ease, less suspicious,’ Kitty said. ‘She wasn’t supposed to find out. The man intended to tumble her wearing his mask. But somehow she discovered it, and that’s when everything went wrong.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Pamela was screaming at them all, Lord March still holding her, trying to soothe her. The lieutenant slapped her again, and I shouted at him to stop. I think Pamela got scared, because she bit Lord March on the hand. He let her go, and she ran off towards the woods. She can’t have been thinking straight, because where would she have expected to go?’
‘Did they run after her?’
‘Not at first. Mr Stone was more concerned about the man with the pox than about her. He followed the man to his carriage, apologizing. But the poxy scoundrel was angry and he rode away.’
‘He left,’ Caro said faintly. ‘You are certain?’
‘Yes, I watched him go, back down the drive. The others were angry. Guilt does that to a man. Mr Stone was worried about the reaction of the man with the pox. Lord March’s hand was bleeding, and he looked furious. And the lieutenant was muttering about Pamela, calling her a bloody bitch. The coward was afraid he’d messed things up for Mr Stone.’
‘How about his brother?’
‘Simon was still off on his walk. Mr Stone said they should split up and look for Pamela. The lieutenant told us to go back inside, but we were angry too – about what they’d done. The men went off after her, towards the woods, and as soon as they were out of sight, Becky and I followed. We got as far as the lake, but I twisted my ankle in the dark and couldn’t go on. Becky helped me back to the house and we stayed up all night, waiting for Pamela to return. But she never did. Neither did the gentlemen. Only Simon Dodd-Bellingham. We asked him if he’d seen Pamela, and he said no. It wasn’t until after dawn that the other gentlemen returned. They said they hadn’t found her, that she must have made her own way back to London.’
‘How did they seem?’
‘Pale, quiet, but they’d been out all night and it was bitterly cold. Lord March had lost his coat, he was shivering. He and the lieutenant had red mud and straw on their boots – and the lieutenant had spilled something white on his redcoat. Mr Stone gave us girls two hundred guineas apiece, and said we were never to speak of this night again. That if we did, it would mean an end to his masquerades and no one would thank us.’ She broke off momentarily. ‘How could we have spoken out? Four whores, up against gentlemen like that. They’d have called us liars, destroyed our lives like they destroyed Lucy’s.’
‘So you took the money?’
She
nodded, her eyes closed. ‘Lucy called it blood money. But we didn’t know anything for certain.’
‘You didn’t wonder, when you didn’t see Pamela again?’
‘Of course we wondered. But why would they have killed her? Those men had broken no laws, however evil their intent. And no one would have believed Pamela against their word.’ Kitty stared at the cross on the altar, her pale face framed by her tumbling red curls: a Magdalen’s penance.
Caro was still struggling to take it all in. How could Ambrose, her kind, amiable brother, have done such a thing?
Mr Child broke in on her thoughts: ‘This puts a new complexion upon our inquiry. For one thing, it rules out a carnal motive for Pamela’s murder. None of those men would have wanted her – not if she’d just been tumbled by a man afflicted with the pox.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Caro said faintly, making an effort to gather her thoughts. ‘We don’t know for certain that things between them ever progressed so far. Pamela might have discovered his syphilis before he was able to take her virginity.’
Was she clinging to false hope? Desperate to believe that whatever else had happened to Pamela that night, this wasn’t part of it?
‘What other motive could there be aside from carnality?’ she said.
Mr Child looked at Kitty. ‘Pamela told her friend, Cecily, that she knew a secret that could make her rich. Cecily dismissed it as foolish fancy, but what if Pamela really did know a secret – about one of those men? Perhaps she’d been blackmailing him? And he took the opportunity to silence her out there in those woods?’
Kitty sniffed. ‘She was always sneaking around Mr Agnetti’s house. Theresa caught her in her bedroom once. And I was convinced one time that she’d been listening at the door.’
‘Mrs Agnetti told another of her husband’s sitters that Pamela had murdered her baby.’
Kitty’s eyes widened. ‘Surely not?’
‘The truth may matter less than the fact that Theresa believed it. She disappeared on the same day as Pamela. Could there be a connection?’
‘With Theresa?’ Kitty shook her head. ‘I don’t see how.’
‘We heard there was a rivalry between them, over Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham.’
‘Pamela and Theresa didn’t like one another. That much was obvious. I suppose the lieutenant could have been the cause of it. Pamela had a fancy for him, I think. A lot of girls do.’
‘Did you know about his amour with Theresa?’
‘Lucy and I guessed – sometimes we made excuses for her, when Mr Agnetti seemed suspicious.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘The morning of the day she disappeared.’
‘How did she seem?’
‘Theresa hadn’t been well. She was jaundiced, running a fever. I said she shouldn’t be going out. But she said Mr Agnetti needed her to take some sketches to Jonathan Stone. Whatever the tensions between them, she was always mindful of her husband’s work.’
Caro turned to Mr Child. ‘Theresa Agnetti visited Stone’s estate on the first of March – only a few hours before Pamela arrived there herself. I wonder what she and Stone discussed?’
‘I read in the newspapers that she’d been out that day on errands,’ Child said. ‘They never said where. Theresa returned home at five o’clock. Her husband was out, but the servants saw her. Then sometime between seven and nine, she slipped out of her house and never returned.’
‘Do you know where Theresa could have gone?’ Caro asked Kitty. ‘Nobody’s seen or heard from her in over six months.’
‘I’ve thought for a long time that she was dead. Perhaps she drowned herself, or jumped from a cliff. I can’t see how she could have had anything to do with what happened to Pamela. It’s those four gentlemen you need to be looking at, not the Agnettis.’ Kitty’s voice had grown warm, and the old woman in the gallery peered down at them.
‘Well, at least we know now that Mr Agnetti isn’t a killer,’ Child said.
‘Mr Agnetti? Of course he isn’t,’ Kitty said. ‘He always treated Pamela well, as he does all his sitters.’
‘The lieutenant tried to suggest that Agnetti had beaten Lucy back in March. I presume, from what you say, that isn’t true.’
‘Lord no. Not Mr Agnetti.’
‘Then who?’
‘I don’t know. Things between Lucy and I were already fraught by then. I saw her bruises and I asked her what happened, but she wouldn’t say.’
‘Perhaps the killer was responsible,’ Child said. ‘Or one of the others was trying to scare her off. They are all complicit in this sorry tale, after all.’
‘What happened after you told Lucy your story?’ Caro said.
‘She told me that I had to go home and write it all down. Not just about Pamela, but about all the gentlemen who came to the Priapus Club. All the names I knew, including the Prince of Wales – especially him. She said she’d be back the following day to collect it. Well, I had no choice, did I? The next day we met here at the church, and I gave her my written account. I asked her what she was going to do with it, and she said she knew who had killed Pamela and that she had proof. She intended to use my testimony to compel the authorities to act.’
‘He knows,’ Caro said. ‘Those were Lucy’s dying words. Presumably the killer found out that she was poised to unmask him, and decided to kill her.’
‘I begged her not to do it,’ Kitty said. ‘She was exposing us both to danger. Lucy wouldn’t listen. She said she knew a woman who might help her, an important lady with powerful connections. Lucy had been to Carlisle House the night before and the pair of them had talked. She said she was meeting the lady again at Vauxhall Gardens that same night, where she’d ask for her help. This woman, you see, was the sister of the man with the pox. He’d been one of Lucy’s clients in the past, before he got sick. Lucy had met the sister before, and thought she might have a conscience. She said she’d had the opportunity to be of service to this lady at Carlisle House, and she hoped that the lady might help her in return.’ Her gaze met Caro’s. ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’
Images were flashing through Caro’s mind. Lucia at Carlisle House, searching the crowd, their whispered conversation in the cloakroom. Lucy went there looking for me. She wanted to talk to me in private, but then I was sick.
Would I have helped her? she wondered. If Lucy hadn’t died in my arms? If she’d told me this story about Ambrose, would I have helped her? Or would I have closed ranks, like Mordechai? Protecting the family name? And then Lucy would have had to think of another way. Because she was never giving up. “I am Lucy.”
‘Lucy wrote a letter to the Home Secretary in which she claimed she had given your testimony to a friend,’ Child said. ‘If anything happened to her, then that friend would give it to the newspaper. I take it this wasn’t you?’
Kitty stared at him incredulously. ‘She’d never have left it with me. I would have burned it. My testimony is a danger – to the Prince, to the killer, and most of all to myself. I knew that it would lead people like you to my door. I wake up every morning afraid that Mr Sillerton will learn of my past.’
‘Then where is it?’ Child asked gently. ‘Can you think?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps Lucy was lying. She had few enough friends left.’ Kitty closed her eyes, tears seeping through the lids. ‘There now, I have told you everything. So leave me in peace, I beg you. I remained silent about Pamela, it is true, and I will live with the guilt for the rest of my life. But in Clapham, here at the church, I can make amends. Even if you do not believe that I deserve happiness, then dear Mr Sillerton does. My love for him is sincere. We hope for children.’
Mr Child, perhaps mindful of his promise to Mrs Rainwood that he wouldn’t make life harder for Kitty, met Caro’s gaze.
‘Enough women’s lives have been destroyed by what those gentlemen did that night,’ she said. ‘And I hope soon we’ll have all the testimony we need.’
BOOK FOUR
12�
��18 SEPTEMBER 1782
CLYTEMNESTRA: ‘What ails thee, raising this ado for us?’ SLAVE: ‘I say the dead are come to slay the living.’
Aeschylus, the Oresteia, 458 BC
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
MRS CORSHAM’S SKIN shone with perspiration. She leaned forward suddenly, grabbing her parasol, thrusting it out of the window, rapping frantically upon the carriage roof. They lurched to a halt, and she threw open the door. Child watched, concerned, as she ran to a tree by the side of the road, followed by her anxious footman. He turned away when she started vomiting, but then turned back. Why would Mrs Corsham ever have agreed to meet Lucy in the bowers? What service could Lucy have done her? An inkling began to form in his mind.
Not wanting to explore it further, he thought about Kitty and the other girls. Yes, they had lied, taken blood money. But only because they were scared – afraid of losing their livelihoods by taking on men with the wealth and power to destroy them.
Thinking about that conversation with Kitty, something nagged at him. A discrepancy in her story? Or a detail that jarred with something else that he’d been told? He couldn’t quite place it, chasing the thought around in his head, until Mrs Corsham returned to the carriage.
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘It must be something I ate.’
‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ he said.
‘It is unconscionable,’ she said flatly. ‘Whatever the truth about Pamela’s death, I hold him accountable.’ She stared straight ahead, and he sensed her words did not come easily. ‘Ambrose’s condition grew much worse after March. And now he is in a prison of his own mind, the place he always feared most. Despite everything we heard today, I still pity him.’
‘He is your brother,’ Child said, thinking of his wife, Liz, who had adored her brother, Frank.
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