by Clee, Adele
Beatrice sensed Dante’s anger bubbling hot like lava. Soon it would erupt, spill over and destroy everything in its wake. She glanced at him. A warning to approach the matter from a different angle.
“Madam,” he began calmly, having heard her silent plea, “my parents were murdered in front of me when I was eight years old. I’ve spent a lifetime searching for the man who shot a woman while she clutched her child’s hand.” He paused, closed his eyes briefly. “So I ask you, I beg you, please search your records and put me out of my misery.”
Mrs Crockett considered the man at the counter. Her gaze drifted over the elegant cut of his coat. “Fate’s cruel hand reaches far and wide. Even touches the nobility.”
“We all have a tragic tale to tell, Mrs Crockett. Everyone faces their own form of hardship.” He gestured to Beatrice. “My colleague found herself destitute. For her, solving this case is a matter of survival.”
Mrs Crockett took another puff on her pipe and then placed it on the counter. “A sad tale is like a blade to the heart. Next, you’ll tell me she has three little mites who haven’t eaten for days.” Tutting to herself, she shuffled towards an open door at the back of the shop and called, “Fetch me the ledgers for June and July.”
A muffled voice echoed from the back room.
“Bring them to the counter. Lazy mare. They’re too heavy for me to carry.” Muttering under her breath, Mrs Crockett returned to reclaim her pipe. “Some of these young uns don’t know the meanin’ of hard work. Spends all day preenin’ herself, struttin’ about the place like the world owes her a livin’.”
A young woman appeared, head bowed, her curly sable locks hanging loose, obscuring her face. She carried two thin books a child could have managed, placed them down on the grimy oak surface, but avoided making eye contact.
“What’s the matter with you, girl? Crick in the neck?”
“No, grandma,” came the mouse-like whisper.
Mrs Crockett snatched the receipt found in Babington’s study and thrust it at her granddaughter. “Check this against the ledger for June, and then July if you’ve no luck there.”
The young woman took the note with her shaky hand and opened the first book.
Beatrice glanced at Dante and arched a brow. He appeared equally suspicious. Why would a woman who’d spent the morning tonging her hair, whose dress clung to her hips, a woman who clearly adored attention, struggle to look at them?
“We’ve reason to believe he stole the diamond ring.” Dante watched the woman intently as she flipped through the pages. “We apprehended Babington in the process of stealing a ring from an elderly widow.”
“Yes,” Beatrice said, “he confessed just before he escaped custody and some devil stabbed him in the street. Mr Babington had stolen many items of sentimental value, and we assume one of his victims sought revenge.”
The faint pat, pat was that of teardrops hitting the page.
“Jane?” Mrs Crockett touched her granddaughter’s arm. “Are you cryin’? What the devil’s wrong with you? You’re not havin’ a fit of the vapours again?”
Jane’s shoulders shook. The distressed woman looked up from the ledger, tears streaming down her face. “Please, Mr D’Angelo. I—I don’t know anything about the stolen rings.”
This attractive woman knew Dante?
“Ah—I see.” Dante considered Jane’s fine features. “Everything is a little clearer now.”
“It ain’t so clear to me,” Mrs Crockett grumbled.
The muscles in Jane’s throat worked tirelessly as she tried to speak. “You remember the gentleman I told you about, Grandma.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “The one who agreed to set me up as his m-mistress, give me an allowance, enough so you could close the shop, and—”
“I told you. I don’t want to close the shop.”
“But it’s too much for you, and—”
“I’ve seen you at Babington’s parties,” Dante interjected.
The dark-haired beauty nodded. “My friend is mistress to Lord Stanwick.”
“Stanwick?” Dante raised a brow. “The man keeps a harem.”
Jane shrugged. “That’s how I met George.”
Mrs Crockett suddenly cursed like a drunken sailor. “You bottle-headed fool! These stiff-rumped gents are all the same, rotten to the core. They’d steal your dying breath given half a chance.” She grinned at Dante. “No offence, sir.”
Jane dashed away her tears. “George loves me!”
Beatrice felt a stab of sympathy and didn’t have the heart to correct her use of present tense. Poor Jane wished to escape her lowly station and the clutches of her controlling grandmother. What option did she have other than to use her God-given gifts?
The old woman raised her hand as if to slap sense into her granddaughter’s head, but glanced at Dante and thought twice. “Oh, it’s all fancy talk, sir. The girl has been seduced by a scoundrel and cannot be blamed for the mistake.”
“Babington has never kept a mistress, never wished to be financially responsible for any woman. He played games, toyed with people, discarded them like pawns, and would never have made a commitment to your granddaughter, madam.”
“You’re wrong!” Jane slammed her hand on the ledger to object. “He gave me the diamond ring as proof of his loyalty.”
“Diamond ring?” Mrs Crockett snapped. “What diamond ring?”
“It’s likely stolen,” Beatrice said, saddened by the woman’s naiveté. Stolen from another one of Babington’s victims. “And if it was a gift, why give him a receipt from your grandmother’s shop?”
Jane’s cheeks flamed. Tears filled her eyes.
“Tell us,” Dante said in a remarkably cool tone. “Babington is dead. If you wish to dissociate yourself from his criminal deeds, you must tell us what you know.”
Jane glanced at her grandmother, fear marring her porcelain complexion. “I gave George twenty pounds for the ring. It was a token gesture. A joke between us. But I made him take the receipt because I had to write it in the ledger.”
Mrs Crockett’s penetrating stare proved more terrifying than her rants and curses. “You gave him twenty pounds?” she said in a low, steady voice. “Twenty pounds? Twenty bloody pounds!”
While the young woman pleaded with her grandmother, tried to explain that she had put the money back when she’d sold the ring to buy new gowns, Beatrice attempted to understand Mr Babington’s need for funds.
Failing to come to any conclusion, she glanced at Dante, shrugged and mouthed, “Why?”
“It’s about the game.” Dante drew her aside and dropped his voice to a whisper while the two women continued their verbal tussle behind the counter. “Babington liked dicing with danger. He liked manipulating people. No doubt he kept the receipt because he found it amusing that he’d earned twenty pounds from a woman of little means.”
“That’s so cruel.”
“There are as many wicked men in Bloomsbury as there are in the rookeries. But Babington’s evil streak is the reason a man murdered him in the street.”
Mrs Crockett’s high-pitched screech caught their attention. “Box? What box?”
“The box George gave me for safekeeping.”
“You totty-headed ninny. It’s probably full of stolen rings. What’s the odds he was settin’ you up to take the fall?”
Dante cleared his throat. “Under the circumstances, if Babington left a box here, we will have to take it with us and submit it as evidence.”
Mrs Crockett wagged a wrinkled finger. “I ain’t no fool. What’s to say you won’t take the box, fill it with stolen goods and blame my Jane? The magistrate will want to hang someone for the crime, make no mistake.”
“We will open the box here,” Beatrice said, trying to bring an element of calm to the situation. “We will record the contents and sign our names to the document. Then there can be no errors, no false accusations.”
After a moment of contemplation, and sensing her back was to the wal
l, Mrs Crockett demanded Jane fetch the box.
“She’s a foolish girl, sir, but there ain’t no crime in that.”
Dante’s countenance softened. “I’m happy to testify she knew nothing of Babington’s misdeeds, though she will need to make a statement at Bow Street.”
“And I can arrange to sit with her while she does,” Beatrice added.
“You may trust Miss Sands will ensure Jane is treated fairly.” Dante fixed Beatrice with an admiring gaze while speaking to the pawnbroker. “She is honest to a fault and strives to save those who find themselves scrambling in the darkness.”
Mrs Crockett’s mocking grin showed her rotten teeth to advantage. “Happen you would say that seein’ as you’re in love with her.”
The comment caused Beatrice to catch her breath, but Dante looked as if he’d had the wind knocked out of his sails.
“People round ’ere trust no one,” Mrs Crockett continued. “You’re just another nabob out for his own ends.”
Jane returned, cradling a small metal box as if it were a babe. She shook it—the faint rustle proving Babington hadn’t filled it with stolen jewels—and set it down on the counter.
“Where’s the key?” Beatrice asked, but knew full well Babington had kept it.
“We don’t need a key.” Dante reached into his coat pocket, removed the length of wire and the strange implement he’d used to break into Babington’s desk drawer, and fiddled about in the keyhole.
Mrs Crockett tutted. “See. Crooks. The lot of ’em.”
It took Dante seconds to open the box. They all craned their necks to peer at the contents. Beatrice knew the significance as soon as she laid eyes on the folded paper.
“Letters!” Mrs Crockett complained. “That’s it! Letters! Though I suppose I should be grateful I’m not lookin’ at a pile of robbed rubies.”
Dante removed the letters and read them quickly. “They’re the letters Babington stole from one of his victims. Find me some paper and an ink pot, Mrs Crockett, and I’ll sign to say that’s the evidence we’ve removed from your property today.”
Mrs Crockett seemed keen to be rid of them. Like a sprightly young miss, she hurried to the back room and returned with quill and ink.
Dante took the paper Jane found under the counter and wrote a brief note about the evidence presented. With the absence of pounce, Mrs Crockett blew gently on the document, hitting them with the stench of her stale breath.
“I imagine they will want your statement at Bow Street within the next day or so.” Dante slipped the letters into his pocket. “We’ll send word when you’re to make yourself available.”
And with that, Dante bid both women good day.
He captured Beatrice’s elbow and guided her out onto Holywell Lane. They had barely closed the shop door when they heard Mrs Crockett berating her granddaughter.
Beatrice accepted Dante’s arm, and they strolled along the narrow lane to where the carriage was parked on Curtain Street.
“I didn’t mention it inside the shop,” she said, “but were there not three letters in the box?”
“The other was a letter to Coulter from Lord Summers’ secretary, stating that should anyone make false accusations regarding the integrity of a peer, he would find himself embroiled in a lawsuit.”
“Poor Mr Coulter. Neither of his parents wished to acknowledge him.” Was their disregard the reason for his lack of morals, or had Daphne’s death altered him irrevocably?
“Indeed. No doubt it accounts for his licentious ways.” Dante understood how painful memories dulled a man’s conscience.
“We may not have had our fathers in our lives for long, Dante, but we’ve never had cause to doubt their love.” The men would never have forsaken their children to maintain their reputations. Well, at least she hoped the same was true of Henry Watson.
“In some twisted way, we’re the lucky ones,” he said, this newfound gratitude signalling a shift in him. “But finding the letters at Crockett’s Emporium presents a problem.”
They would need to submit them as evidence. The men at Bow Street would learn of Lady Deighton’s infidelity, of Lord Summers’ indifference to his illegitimate son. One crooked constable out to feather his nest would sell the story to the broadsheets, then it wouldn’t be long before the Earl of Deighton’s lineage was the talk of the ton.
“You have a responsibility to do what is right.” She hugged his arm in a gesture of support, and because touching him brought immense comfort, and because she couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling someone was watching them. “We must present the evidence regardless of how it affects those in your family.”
He remained silent. The creaking of carts making their way along the lane, and the screams of children chasing wild dogs, did little to fill the void.
They’d reached the carriage before he spoke. “I’ll call at Bow Street tomorrow and submit them as evidence.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” she said, glancing quickly over her shoulder. “And I will feel happier when they’re in the hands of the authorities.”
Happier when she knew no one stalked them from the shadows.
Happier when she knew no one had cause to murder them in the street.
Chapter 16
The mantel clock struck the hour, seven chimes that sounded like the ominous peal of a death knell. For fifteen minutes, Dante paced back and forth before the fire in the drawing room. The letters he’d slipped inside his coat pocket for safekeeping weighed heavy, a burden he did not wish to carry. One glance at the hearth, and he contemplated scrunching the paper into a ball and using it to stoke the flames.
The need to be rid of the evidence had nothing to do with protecting the grandmother he despised. Nor did he care if the world learnt of his tainted bloodline. No. His parents had surely died because of the letters, slain at the roadside, and he couldn’t help but fear the dowager’s lackey had followed them to Shoreditch today.
Dante glanced at the clock, every tick growing infinitely louder.
Beatrice was to arrive shortly. Every fibre of his being longed for a night of stimulating conversation, for more passionate kisses, for another chance to sate their lust and sleep, bone-weary, in each other’s arms.
If only he could shake the twinge of trepidation.
If only every muscle wasn’t strung as tightly as a bow.
The crack of something hitting the boards in the dining room rang through the house like the clap of pistol fire. Indeed, he imagined hearing another shot outside, then cackling laughter, imagined darting into the street to find the razor-teethed fiend looming over Beatrice’s blood-soaked body.
“Bateson, I’ve decided to walk to meet Miss Sands.” Dante snatched his hat from the stand and was halfway out of the front door when he stopped abruptly. Should he leave the letters or keep them on his person?
“Very good, sir.” Bateson held the door open, waiting for Dante to make up his mind. “It’s cold, sir. Perhaps you should consider taking your greatcoat.”
“Hmm.” Devil take it! He should have delivered the letters to Bow Street, not brought the damn things home.
“Your coat, sir?”
“No. A brisk walk amid the chilly night air will do me a world of good.”
“As you will, sir.”
The atmosphere outside did little to calm Dante’s nerves. A low fog crept through the streets, a ghostly mass stealing through the darkness, its spectre-like fingers ready to slip into his pocket and rob him blind.
Dante stopped on the corner of Howland Street, scanning the long shadows for signs of movement before giving himself a mental boot to the backside. Where was the man who didn’t care if he lived or died? Where was the man who taunted the devil?
“Dante?” Beatrice’s voice reached him through the darkness. She appeared beneath the soft glow of the lamplight. “It is you. Is something wrong?” Slight panic tinged every syllable. She glanced behind.
“No. I thought I would walk to meet you.” H
e didn’t want her to worry.
Moving a little quickly, she closed the gap between them and clutched his arm. “No. You’re worried, worried that whoever killed Mr Babington will be looking for the letters. You came to offer your protection.”
Dante couldn’t help but smile. “Can a man have no secrets?”
“You have more than your share of those,” she teased.
The world seemed brighter in Beatrice’s company. The night sky was more magical than monstrous. Like fog, fear dissipated as if it lacked substance.
“I presume Miss Trimble knows you’re dining with me.”
“She advised I bring Bower along to play chaperone.” Beatrice laughed. “When I refused, she cautioned me about what can happen between a man and a woman when they’ve consumed too much wine. Then she taught me a manoeuvre should I need to free myself from the clutches of a lustful rake.”
“Let’s hope you weren’t paying much attention.”
During the brief walk to Fitzroy Square they made idle conversation, discussed the dinner menu, whether she liked the theatre, how she came to own a pocket pistol. Dante could have strolled through the streets until dawn, listening to her tales about the drunkards from the Bull in the Barn, watching her eyes brighten when she laughed.
You think you have what it takes to keep a scoundrel entertained for an hour?
Beatrice Sands could keep him entertained for a lifetime.
“Don’t be alarmed, Bateson.” She handed the butler her cloak. “I have my pocket pistol but have no intention of murdering your master.”
Bateson inclined his head. “No, miss.”
“And this might look like conventional attire.” She gestured to the splendid cornflower-blue gown that showed the swell of her breasts to perfection. “But beneath, I’m wearing gentleman’s trousers.”
“I would expect no less, miss.” Bateson turned to Dante. “Would you care to go through to the dining room, sir, or shall I serve drinks in the drawing room?”
“I believe Miss Sands is famished, Bateson.” And Dante wished to get all formal conversation out of the way so he could focus on more pleasurable pursuits. “And our new footman in training is eager to earn his keep.”