Daughters of Night

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  She gazed at him helpless. Those wide blue eyes.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I can’t hold you for much longer.’

  The people behind were hauling him back, inch by agonizing inch. ‘Try, Kitty,’ he urged, his grip starting to slacken.

  Slowly, tentatively, her other hand reached up. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘You only need to grab hold of me.’

  Her fingers were busy. With horror he realized what she was doing, working at the buttons of her glove. Flesh and silk parted with a whisper, and she slid away from him like a woman in a dream.

  Child never even saw her hit the water, through his tears of despair.

  PAMELA

  1 March 1782

  The man-monster was dragging Pamela along, back down the path to the house. Every time she looked at him, she fought the urge to scream again. He had sores all over his face, his nose the worst of all, almost eaten away entirely, like the dying, syphilitic beggars she’d seen around Cheapside. He moved slowly, and it was clear from his grimaces how much it pained him to walk. His stick in one hand, gripping her arm in the other. Stick, drag, stick, drag. She could probably push him over in his condition and run, but where would she go? She wanted to return to the house, to see Kitty and the other girls. Kitty surely wouldn’t let them hurt her?

  Fury surged inside her. Those shitten fucksters would have had her tumble him, a pox-ridden, dying son of a whore. To cure him, she presumed, which was horseshit and anyone with half a brain knew it. Glaring at the diseased man, she consoled herself with the knowledge that the pestilent fuckster would soon be dead. Then she glimpsed the house through the trees, and her anger gave way to fear again.

  He dragged her up to the front door and beat on it with his stick. The footman stumbled back when he saw him. ‘Dear God.’

  ‘Kitty,’ Pamela cried. ‘Help me, please.’

  ‘Fetch your master,’ the monster wheezed. ‘Tell him Ambrose Craven demands an explanation.’

  They waited in the hall, watched over by other horrified footmen. Stone came out of one of the rooms, his eyes widening when he saw them, gesturing them back outside. Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham and Lord March followed them out onto the steps.

  Stone spoke lightly. ‘Put that nose of yours on, will you, Craven? You’re frightening the servants.’

  ‘Do you take me for a chub, you swindling rogue? We had an agreement.’

  ‘What are you talking about, man?’

  Pamela was looking at the three of them, gauging their reaction to the man-monster. None of them looked surprised or shocked by his appearance. They had known, she realized. All of them. Even the lieutenant. Her blood was flowing hot, despite the chill night air, her thoughts fizzing and popping, the anger bubbling out of her.

  Craven thrust the little vial at Stone, who held it up to the light. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘I knew nothing of this, I swear it.’ He turned to the lieutenant. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

  The lieutenant took the vial. ‘The lying little bitch.’

  ‘What is it?’ Lord March said.

  The lieutenant passed him the vial of blood.

  ‘She’s not a virgin,’ Stone said.

  They were all glaring at her now. How dare they be angry, given everything they’d done? And it was not such a big lie. One tumble with David the second footman hardly counted. Most of Mrs Havilland’s girls weren’t precisely virgins. Some had sold their maidenheads several times. A few herbs from the quack to tighten them up. A few drops of sheep’s blood on the bedsheet, and who need know?

  Whereas their lie, these men, their deception by comparison, was so monstrous she could hardly breathe to think of it. Her anger bubbled over, and she screamed at Stone: ‘You lousy, lying fuckster. You could have killed me.’

  Stone didn’t even seem to hear, hurrying after the man with the pox, who was calling for his carriage.

  Lord March took her by the shoulders, trying to calm her down, and she lashed out at him. He grabbed her, holding her easily, though she struggled.

  Twisting her head, she glared at the lieutenant. ‘You gullion son of a whore. You weeping cunny-sore.’ She’d see him dead in his grave before she rode around in his carriage. Calmly, he slapped her. She put a hand to her face, momentarily shocked into silence.

  Kitty and Becky had come out of the house, and Kitty called out to her. Stone, still talking to the poxy gullion, pointed a finger at them. ‘Get back inside.’

  ‘Swiving, lying wretch,’ she cried, at no one in particular. ‘Bastardly buggering cunts.’ Everybody started shouting at once, and the lieutenant slapped her again. Stone was walking back towards her, and she felt afraid again. She sank her teeth into Lord March’s hand, tasting blood. Crying out, he released her, and she ran.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHILD KEPT NODDING off. Each time he did, he saw Kitty Carefree falling away from him again – and he would awake with a jerk, like a fever. He wondered if this was the way it was going to be from now on – if she’d join his wife and his son in his dreams.

  He was sitting in a chair in Mrs Corsham’s drawing room. It was a little before six in the morning. In the hall, he could hear the servants talking about their mistress, speculating about the story in The London Hermes. They were worried about their positions – the prospect of the household being broken up when Captain Corsham divorced her. More lives destroyed by Peregrine Child.

  He kept remembering Kitty’s face. My final sin, it is too great.

  Amidst his guilt and grief, many disjointed thoughts occurred to him. Kitty’s desperation to protect her new life, her one chance of happiness. A happiness that Lucy’s actions in pursuing Pamela’s murderer risked destroying. And Kitty had known that Lucy would be at Vauxhall Gardens that night, that she had evidence that would unmask the killer.

  Humphrey Sillerton had told him that Kitty had only travelled to London on one occasion since he’d met her – which must have been the day he’d attended the dinner at the Devil tavern, August the thirtieth, when Kitty had been seen riding in his carriage on the Strand. August the thirtieth, the same day Lucy was killed. Where had Kitty gone that night, whilst her husband had been at his dinner? To Vauxhall Gardens? To warn the killer?

  Perhaps if he could work out what was still bothering him about Kitty’s account that day at the church, it would give him some definitive answers? But it still eluded him – hovering on the edge of his memory, just out of reach.

  Pinpoints of dawn light pierced the cracks in the shutters. Child heard a carriage draw up outside, and then voices in the hall. Mrs Corsham entered the room. She was wearing a torn dress, looking almost as awful as Child felt. In her hands was a bundle of foul-smelling cloth.

  ‘What happened?’ he said, rising. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Stone’s estate. For the masquerade.’

  He stared at her. ‘Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘In your absence, Mr Child, I had little choice. I found Pamela, I think. I believe her body is down a well on that disused farm.’ She sat down heavily at her tea table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have been there.’

  ‘Yes, you should.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Kitty Carefree is dead.’

  Mrs Corsham listened intently, as he told her what had happened.

  ‘That is a great tragedy. How desperate poor Kitty must have been to do such a thing.’ She was silent a moment and then she frowned. ‘Mr Stone placed another story about me in the newspapers yesterday. It insinuated that I am with child, and that the father is not Captain Corsham. I’m afraid to say it’s true. I thought Lord March must have betrayed me to Stone, but now I wonder. Someone must have told Stone where Kitty was – someone close to our inquiry.’

  Child raised a hand. ‘Madam—’

  ‘Miles, my footman, has been closer to me than anyone these past few weeks. He must have guessed that I was pregnant. And he was with us in Clapham too. I think he reported i
t back to Stone – perhaps unwittingly. Cassandra Willoughby has been flirting with him. I thought it rather odd, but it makes sense if she’s Stone’s spy.’

  ‘Madam, please.’ Child raised his voice. ‘The spy was not your footman. And Miss Willoughby has nothing to do with any of this. I was the one who betrayed you to Stone.’

  She regarded him uncomprehendingly. ‘You, Mr Child?’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Child said. ‘Or rather, I did. But I didn’t choose you.’ He told her about Stone, the Deptford counterfeiting gang, and Sophie Hardcastle.

  ‘How did you guess?’ she asked, looking stunned. ‘That I was with child?’

  ‘You hadn’t looked well since I met you. And those wretched ginger comfits – my wife ate them constantly when she was carrying our lad. Then I put my mind to the question of what service Lucy might have done you, that you’d meet with her secretly like that, in the bower. And then, when you were sick in front of me, it all added up.’

  She spoke coldly. ‘Given all that, why are you here?’

  ‘Kitty Carefree left a letter for her husband. She called it her confession.’ He took it out to show her. ‘It’s all here. Everything she told us – and a lot more besides. About Stone’s masquerades, all the men she went with – including the Prince. I thought you could use it.’

  Mrs Corsham took the letter and read it silently.

  ‘Kitty was ill-used,’ she said, when she put it down. ‘Not just at the end.’ She pointed to the bundle of putrid cloth. ‘Take a look at that.’

  Child unwrapped the bundle on the table, wincing at the smell. It was a gentleman’s coat of blue satin, embroidered with golden thread, stiff with mould and damp. Darker stains stood out against the others.

  ‘It looks like blood to me.’ Mrs Corsham pointed to one of the embellished gold buttons. ‘That’s the Amberley crest. I remember this coat. It belonged to Lord March.’ She rose from the table. ‘I am going to wash and change and then I am going to Amberley House. The only question that remains, Mr Child, is: are you with me?’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  THE ONLY TIME the Strand ever fell silent was in the lull between the night’s revellers departing Covent Garden, and the arrival of the morning shoppers. In that hour, the street seemed to draw breath. Caro took a moment in the carriage to collect her courage and her thoughts. Then she alighted from the vehicle, leaving Mr Child inside. This conversation was one she wanted to have alone.

  At the gate of Amberley House, the blue-liveried footmen listened to her request, and then invited her to wait inside while they conveyed her note to Lord March. One of them accompanied her into the house. A bewildering mix of styles and stone, the mansion had irregular wings jutting at angles, halls both old and new, several gardens and a chapel of stained glass.

  They walked through a baronial hall, lined with suits of Amberley armour, worn by Lord March’s ancestors at Agincourt, Naseby and Bosworth Field. Their portraits gazed down at her from the stone walls. Interloper, she imagined them saying. City people.

  The footman went to deliver her message, and returned some minutes later. ‘Lord March will see you, madam.’

  He escorted her down a corridor to a small chamber overlooking the privy garden – that same location where Mr Agnetti had witnessed Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham’s seduction of his wife. Lord March was sitting in a carved wooden chair, a watery light softening his ashen face. A scent of herbs drifted through the open window, along with porters’ cries from the private waterstairs on the river.

  Caro waited until the footman had withdrawn. ‘I’ve seen the well with my own eyes,’ she said. ‘I found your coat down there, covered in Pamela’s blood.’

  His voice caught. ‘Stone is protected,’ he said. ‘So are we. Whatever you think you can prove, you can’t.’

  ‘Prinny is protected,’ she said. ‘And if the price of protecting him is to throw the four of you to the wolves, they will do it in a heartbeat and not lose sleep. I have the means to make that happen. I have the last testimony of Kitty Carefree.’

  ‘You think the word of a dead whore will count against mine? Against Neddy’s? Look around you. I am an Amberley. That still counts.’

  ‘And I am a Craven,’ Caro said. ‘The City is not without power – and Stone has enemies there. I’ll have the backing of men like Ansell Ward.’

  He held her gaze for a long time. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘First, to know what happened. I know that Ambrose was the fifth man. You offered him a fifteen-year old virgin, Octavius, a human sacrifice. How could you do it?’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘She wasn’t a virgin. Ironic, isn’t it? That’s how it all went wrong. She had a vial of blood and your brother found it.’

  Which was why they were so angry, Caro thought, played for fools by a slip of a girl. All that guilt about what they were doing – for nothing.

  ‘Did my brother—’ She drew a breath. ‘Was it consummated between them?’

  ‘Stone said not. Ambrose found the vial, and brought her back to the house.’

  ‘Did Stone get Ambrose another girl?’ In that moment, this was more important to her than anything.

  ‘He was supposed to, but Ambrose took to his bed and stopped speaking. Stone told me later that he thought that night had finished him off.’

  Because of his guilt and shame, his hatred for the thing he’d become.

  ‘Tell me what happened after Pamela ran off.’

  He gazed out at the river, at a passing coal barge, some birds in flight. ‘Stone said we had to find her, to buy her off. We were to tell her that he’d make no complaint to Mrs Havilland – she could even keep her money – in exchange for her silence. We’d broken no laws, but it wouldn’t look good, and he didn’t want the girl making trouble. She’d run off into the woods, and so we split up to look for her. Stone told me to go to the bathhouse in case she’d gone back there.’

  He paused, remembering. ‘I’d been drinking all day. Didn’t want to face it, I suppose. The girl. Your brother. It wasn’t right.’ His voice rose in anger. ‘But I had no choice. You must understand that, Caro. Stone had us all in a vice. It wasn’t our fault.’

  Caro’s voice was cold. ‘Go on.’

  ‘By the time I reached the bathhouse, my head was spinning. My hand hurt where she’d bitten me – I was bleeding a little. It was so damn cold, and I wanted to rest. The bathhouse was warm. The girl wasn’t there. So I lay down on the daybed, and fell asleep. I don’t remember anything else until morning.’

  He exhaled slowly, shuddering slightly. ‘I smelled it first. The blood. A lot of it. On my coat, on my hands, sticky. Far too much to be from the cut on my hand. At first I thought I’d had a nosebleed, but there was no blood on my face. I had a necklace in my hand, and I recognized it as the girl’s. I went outside to the lake. Dawn was breaking. That’s when I saw her.’

  He stared at a tapestry on the wall, a unicorn and a girl. ‘The water had been drained from Stone’s pool for the winter. She was lying naked in the bottom of it, and her face it was all . . .’ He broke off. ‘She had been so beautiful, Caro. But there was so much blood. Unrecognizable. I just stared. I don’t know how long for. Then Stone and Neddy were there, asking what the hell I’d done. I had no answer for them. I still don’t. I can’t remember.’ His eyes were wet, and his hands shook, as he gazed at them. ‘I wanted her, you see. She had this way of looking at a man.’

  ‘So you raped and killed her?’

  He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t sound like something I’d do. But sometimes I do things and I don’t remember.’

  ‘So Stone told you and Neddy to get rid of the body.’

  ‘He said no one could ever know I’d done it. That his enemies would make him pay the price of my crime. That I’d hang for it. Neddy is a loyal friend, and he’d never have crossed Stone. And I – I couldn’t face the hangman’s rope.’

  ‘Why were you and Neddy arguing over her necklace in that alley?’

&nbs
p; ‘We were worried about your inquiry. Neddy said we should use the necklace to implicate Agnetti in the murders. He never liked the man. I don’t know why. I refused to do it.’

  Caro’s hands dropped to the child in her belly, trying to think clearly.

  ‘I’ll marry you,’ Lord March said suddenly, snapping her out of it. ‘That’s what you wanted me to say, wasn’t it, when you told me about the baby?’

  ‘And you refused.’

  ‘I’m not refusing now.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘Father will disinherit me. A Craven, in the House of Amberley. But your child would have a father, and he cannot take my title. Even Mordechai would forgive a scandal for an earldom in the family. We won’t starve.’

  The price of silence. Marriage to a murderer. Security for her child. Survival. Society would forgive a countess married into the House of Amberley.

  ‘When did Stone tell you that Ambrose never debauched Pamela?’ she asked.

  He blinked. ‘We’re back to that? At breakfast the following day.’

  ‘Then, that night, you didn’t know? When you raped her?’

  He frowned. ‘No. I remember feeling worried for the girl. That she might catch his disease.’

  ‘Then why would you rape her? As far as you were concerned, she had just been poxed. You would have endangered yourself.’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t in my right mind, I suppose.’

  Caro was thinking hard again. ‘Did you attack me in the alley at Carlisle House?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I told you. I could never hurt you, Caro. And I didn’t take Gabriel.’

  ‘Did you kill Lucy?’

  ‘No. I hoped her murder had nothing to do with any of this. Later, I wondered if Neddy or Stone had done it to protect us.’

  ‘What happened to the vial of blood? The one Pamela had – that my brother found?’

  ‘Neddy gave it to me, I think. I put it in my pocket.’

  He didn’t do it, Caro thought. But the killer wanted everyone to think he did.