A Covent Garden Mystery

  "But perhaps, in his frustration . . ."

  "He hurts them? Naw. He likes the touching, and the girls don't mind him pawing. He doesn't hurt anyone, he's never going to give any of us a by-blow, and he pays good money. And Stacy is friendly, doesn't treat a girl like she's gutter trash and then expects her to give him what he wants, even when it's clear he hates her."

  At this last, her eyes flashed sudden anger, a rage so incandescent I could not believe it could be contained in one human being. Felicity shielded her gaze a moment later, but I had seen.

  "This has happened to you?" I asked quietly.

  She tried to sound offhand. "It happens to all girls who ply a particular trade."

  "You are thinking of a certain instance."

  "It does not matter, does it? When you do what I do, you learn to expect it. There's gentlemen, Captain, that hate women. Perhaps their mothers beat them or their wives scorn them, I do not know. But they hate them with fury. And so they find a woman who must sit still while he despises her. She has to let him unleash every ounce of anger and frustration and hatred on her, and she has to take it, because that's what she's for."

  Her dark eyes swam with tears. She did not cry, as Carlotta might, wanting pity and soothing words. Felicity fought her demons and did so on her own.

  "That is not what you are for," I said.

  She brushed moisture from her eyes. "Don't talk like a reformer, Captain. They come round telling me I can be 'useful.' As what, I'd like to know."

  "My friend Mrs. Brandon found Nancy a position at an inn. Perhaps she can do the same for you."

  Felicity laughed again, this time in true mirth. "Nance is different from me. She's a cheerful soul and gets on with people. I am no fool. Any man who employs me wants me in his bed, and that is all. Women dislike me on sight. Maybe it won't be so when I'm old and wrinkled, but it is now." She gave me a knowing look. "And Nance adores you. If you told her to climb up into yonder church spire and cluck like a chicken, she'd do it. For you."

  "You exaggerate. And I cannot help but notice you also have led me a long way from my original questions. If you think Stacy could not have harmed Mary or Bess or Gabriella, who could have? If you are protecting someone, I will have the law on you as hard as I will on him. I want my daughter back."

  "I know." Felicity laid her hand on my arm. "I really do not know where she is, Captain. I wish I did, 'cause I'd love to see the look on your face when I brought her home to you. You'd be that grateful. You might even forget about that pretty gentry lady you have as your ladybird long enough to thank me."

  I slanted her a quick smile. "You will have to make do with my gratitude." I stood up and pulled her to her feet. I gave the ale seller a coin and had him draw a cup, which I handed to Felicity. "Take some refreshment and then keep searching, if you will. And if you know anything, anything, I want you to tell me. All right?"

  Felicity took the cup. "I'll do my best for you, Captain, promise." She drank the ale, but gave me such a smoldering look over the rim of the goblet that I strode away as quickly as I could. Her low laughter floated behind me.

  *** *** ***

  Major Auberge had come to Grimpen Lane in my absence. He waited uncomfortably for me in the bake shop and, at my invitation, ascended with me to my rooms.

  He looked unhappier than ever, his face aged and tired. "Please tell me you have discovered things," he said. "I cannot bear this much longer."

  "I have been questioning people, but no, I have not found her."

  Auberge covered his face and was silent for a time. I left him alone, moving about my rooms, reading messages and scribbling answers to them.

  When at last Auberge lowered his hands, his lashes were wet. "What are we to do? Carlotta is grieving. She has begun to worry about our children in France, though I assure her that my brother can look after them especially well. Better than we can, it seems."

  "Do not give up," I said savagely. "We owe it to Gabriella not to give up."

  Auberge shook his head. "This is perhaps why France was pushed aside by England in the war. We feel things so, and we cannot go on."

  I tossed down my pen, sending ink spattering over my clean paper. "Do not talk like a fool. We feel things as much, but I refuse to give up. And I will not let you either."

  "I am an old man, and tired. I have not slept since she went, no matter how I have tried." He gave me a look of naked misery. "I know she is not my daughter in truth. I know she belongs to you. But I love her, and I cherish her."

  "Tell me about her," I said suddenly. "Tell me what she was like when she was young, how she grew, what she learned. Tell me everything."

  He looked surprised, then reluctant, as though he did not want to sift through memories that were now painful. After a moment, however, he sank to the wing chair, and began to tell me. He spoke haltingly, sometimes groping for the words in English, but as he spun the narrative, my daughter came alive for me.

  Auberge described how he'd had difficulty adjusting to living with a small girl in his house, how she'd wanted to see everything and explore everything and overturn everything. She'd taken eagerly to riding, with Auberge leading the little horse, she perched on a tiny saddle. Gabriella had grown swiftly, her pudgy arms and legs lengthening to coltish limbs, as she'd run and played and rode across the hills of their home in provincial France.

  She had great affection for her younger brothers and sisters and helped her mother look after them all. She was a quick learner, reading both French and English and writing in a good hand before she'd been six years old. She'd had lessons with her brothers under their tutor and declared she wanted to be a teacher or a governess. Everyone had laughed, because of course, she would marry well and hire governesses of her own. She'd blossomed into a young woman and had already caught the attention of a few young gentlemen, although she had not yet made her debut.

  I listened intently, picturing what Auberge told me, my chest tight with envy. I laughed when he described how Gabriella had told the parish priest that she refused to say rosaries because she wanted to worship the English God, like her mother. Though Gabriella had grown up far from me, some of her antics put me in mind of myself as a child. I smiled with pride at the story of her donning on her brother's clothes at age twelve and climbing a fence to steal apples.

  "She is a Lacey," I said. "Carlotta must grind her teeth over it."

  Auberge nodded. "She is apt to blame Gabriella's wilder escapades on you. In my hearing only, of course."

  Of course. I imagined that Carlotta had never wanted to tell Gabriella of her true origins, because the girl might have wanted to rush off to England to find me. Carlotta, on the other hand, obviously wanted nothing to do with me.

  Once more, in the continuing litany in my head, I prayed to God that Gabriella was alive and well.

  Bartholomew marched upstairs to interrupt our reminiscences. "Mr. Grenville has arrived, sir."

  I heard his step, and then Grenville, resplendent in afternoon riding clothes, appeared. He hesitated at the sight of Auberge, but nodded cordially. "Major."

  Auberge seemed to sense his wariness. He rose. "Mr. Grenville. I will go."

  "No need," Grenville said. "I have come to continue assisting you. Jackson, too, is keen to have another go."

  I got to my feet. "I am grateful. There was no need to come yourself."

  "There was need." Grenville shifted. "Like to see a thing through, and all that."

  I shrugged as though I did not care one way or another. "I was about to go down to the Strand, to the place Mary was found, and look near there. I know Denis's men and Pomeroy's have scoured the place, but I want to look again. Whoever carried the body to Bottle Bill's would not have wanted to take it far."

  "Excellent. I will have Jackson drive you."

  "That is not necessary, but good of you to offer. Perhaps you and he can join Colonel Brandon, who has started searching points farther east, into the City and beyond."

  "Dash it, Lace
y." Grenville shifted again, his eyes dark and troubled. "I am trying to eat humble pie. I am not good at it, never having had to do it before."

  I blinked. "You are apologizing?"

  "Yes, do not sound so devilish shocked. I know it is a strange endeavor for Lucius Grenville, but you might let me get through it."

  "I am surprised only because I had thought to write an apology to you," I said. "I behaved badly, and I know it."

  "No, I behaved badly." Red crept into Grenville's cheeks. "Throwing a tantrum because neither you nor Marianne would think and speak as I wanted you to. I expected you to fall down and worship me because I condescended to befriend you. You ought to have struck me with that walking stick of yours and told me what a prig I was."

  "Why, when you are striking yourself so well?"

  "Do not laugh at me, Lacey, I beg you." Grenville squared his shoulders and held out his hand. "We could both go on and on about who is the worse, but shall we shake and settle it? My stomach will certainly feel better."

  I took his hand, feeling better myself. I had feared my friendship with him at a true end.

  Grenville grinned at me as we clasped hands, hard, then he assumed his usual air of nonchalance. It would never do for the great Grenville to be seen having an emotion.

  "What about Marianne?" I asked as I stepped back.

  He looked pained. "I will cross the Marianne bridge when I come to it. I am certain that she will step on me when I grovel to her, but I will do it."

  "She said much the same thing about you."

  His brows rose. "Did she?"

  "Yes," I said. "She returned from Berkshire very early this morning and was most upset to be turned away from the Clarges Street house."

  "Hmm." Grenville straightened his already straight neckcloth. "Well, this will be an interesting reconciliation. Shall we go out and search, gentlemen? The air around the Thames might not be as cloying as it is here."

  *** *** ***

  The sun had finally set after long summer twilight by the time Jackson let the three of us out on the Strand. Jackson stayed with the carriage while we found the lane near Bottle Bill's lodgings where Mary's body had lain.

  In the approaching night, a few rats scuttled there, but no one else. One of Denis's men went past on a cross street. He noticed us and came to us, lantern in hand. I told him what we were doing, and he left again without word.

  The lane was cluttered with debris, old boards, part of a door, and rusting basins. Bottle Bill and his helper had brought Mary here from Bill's lodgings two streets over. Once the sun fully set, this lane would be inky black. Already the blank walls of the houses to either side cast deep shadows.

  "Let us return to Bottle Bill's rooms," I said, "and widen the search from there."

  Grenville and Auberge agreed, probably because they, like me, felt that there was little else we could do. We walked in silence to the house were Bottle Bill eked out his existence.

  The door to Bill's lodgings was gray with age. The paint had peeled until only a few streaks of black were left to tell us the door's original color. I'd wondered how the murderer managed to get the body inside Bill's lodgings, but I saw that the door did not latch correctly. Bill probably never bothered to lock it in any case. The door was ajar even now, and I knocked on it as I pushed it inward.

  I found an empty room, fairly large but stuffy, the only air coming from the cracked window near the door. A pallet of blankets lay against the wall near a fireplace, which was cold. Across the room sat a table holding the remains of a meal.

  The room led to no other. Where I would expect to find a door to a stair that would take me to the upper rooms, I saw blank brick instead. As Auberge and Grenville looked about, I went outside and noted a second window next to Bill's and a door beyond that, which looked much newer than Bill's door. I concluded that this had once been one house, with the downstairs partitioned off to create a room that could then be let.

  I wondered if the landlord lived next door, or whether the rest of the house was let to someone else. I stepped up to the second door, which had a little more paint on it than Bill's, and lifted my walking stick to tap on it.

  Just then, I heard shouting in the street beyond. "Nab 'im! Come back here, you!"

  Bottle Bill himself hurtled down the lane, arms pumping, head down. I stepped in front of him, and he rammed into me full force.

  I dropped my walking stick and seized him. Bill fought furiously. Auberge and Grenville emerged from Bill's lodgings, and two of Denis's men ran up behind me.

  "Let me go," Bill screamed. "I didn't do it."

  I shook him. "Didn't do what?"

  "Let me go," he moaned.

  "There you are, ye little bugger." Denis's man, who'd looked in on us earlier, breathed hard in anger. "Let me have him, Captain. I'll thrash him for you."

  "What did he do this time?"

  "Didn't stop when we said to. He were trying to hide something, he was, but he runned away when he saw us coming."

  My grip tightened on Bill's bony shoulder. "Bill? What are you hiding?"

  "Nuffing. It ain't nuffing. I didn't do it. Let me go." He began to weep.

  I shook him again, but Bill only cried in gasping sobs, and I knew I'd get nothing coherent from him. "Show me," I said to Denis's man.

  He hoisted his lantern. "This way, sir."

  I dragged Bill along. He tried to twist away from me, but Grenville caught his other arm, and together we half-carried him back down the lane. Denis's lackeys, whose names I had never learned, led us down a street.

  The plaque on the nearest wall that named the street was so worn I could not read it, but I had a vague idea where we were from my searching this morning. This narrow lane led us in a meandering course to a flight of stairs that went down to the river. Another plaque, this one more legible, assured us that these stairs had once been used by Elizabeth the Queen, two hundred and more years before. A house stood at the top of the stairs, worn and crumbling.

  "Not in there, sir," the man with the lantern said. "Over here."

  He led me to a triangle of space between the house and the top of the stairs. The triangle was about three feet on a side, the remains of someone's attempt at a tiny garden. The earth had been turned up here, as though someone had been digging. On the stair side, the bank tumbled away to the roiling Thames, and the house pressed its other side. Nothing the size of a girl could be buried here.

  Bottle Bill whimpered. I let him go, and he sank to the stones in front of the house, pulling his knees to his chest.

  "Why were you digging here, Bill?" I asked, but not forcefully; I knew he would not answer.

  "He was burying something." The lackey with the lantern swung it over the patch, and the second one squatted down and started digging with a flat knife.

  I pulled a clod of earth away and saw the glint of glass. Denis's man slammed his knife into the earth in disgust. "It's gin. Bottles of gin. Bloody son of a bitch was burying bottles of gin."

  Behind me, Bill twitched. "I didn't do it."

  I sighed in exasperation. I pulled out three bottles, green glass and heavy, and let them fall to the cobbles. "Damn you, Bill."

  Denis's man with the lantern yanked out one more bottle, which I had missed, and smashed it to the ground. Bill winced, cringing from the broken glass.

  "Sorry, sir," Denis's lackey said. "It's for nothing." He started to turn away.

  "Wait," I commanded. "Bring the light back. Shine it just there."

  I pointed to where he'd pulled out the last bottle. I'd seen something when the dirt fell away, but I was not quite certain what. I scrabbled in the mud, disliking the cold ooze, but I was beyond caring. I scraped away earth from what I'd seen, and the others crowded in behind me.

  "It's a board," I said. I started to lift it away, then I realized it was nailed in place. I wrenched it, hard, and the rotted thing at last gave way.

  I almost slithered forward into a hole about two feet in diameter. Denis's man
grabbed me in time, but I shook him off. I lay down and inched forward until I could peer into the dark hole. Dank, fetid air washed over me, sickening and heavy.

  "There was a covering here of some kind. It's mostly gone. Give me the lantern."

  Denis's man nearly hit my face with it in his eagerness to hand it to me. I passed the lantern down into the hole.

  I recoiled as a small rat climbed up the dirt, scrambling to get away from the light. I waited, but none others followed. It was either alone, or its fellows were braver. I leaned in again.

  "Careful, Lacey," Grenville said behind me.

  Denis's man held my legs, his weight like a rock. I doubted I'd fall, unless the man suddenly decided to rid Denis of a problem called Captain Lacey for once and for all. I risked it, lowered the lantern inside, and shone the light about.

  This must have been part of an old cellar, but it, like Bottle Bill's room, had been bricked off from the rest of the house. Perhaps the original wall had leaked, long ago, and the owner found it easier to seal off the room. The brick to my right was infested with slime and mold. To the left, rotting timbers barely supported a wall that had crumbled to let in the dirt of the bank. About ten feet below me, or as near as I could judge, was an earthen floor, hard packed.

  I withdrew. "Help me get down there."

  Grenville had pressed a folded handkerchief to his nose. "Lacey, it cannot be healthy down there. It smells like a cesspit."

  "If rats can exist there, so can I." I turned to Denis's man. "Will you lower me until I can drop to the ground?"

  He nodded stoically. I stripped off my coat and handed it to Grenville. He shook it out and folded it carefully over his arm, like a good valet.

  "I, too, will go down," Auberge announced.

  "No," I said. "Let me see how safe it is first. I do not want us all plummeting down there and caving in a wall."

  "You should let one of us go, sir," the man who'd held the lantern said. "Mr. Denis will be angry if something happens to you."

  I eyed their burly, muscular bodies and shook my head. "You'll never fit. Now lower me until I tell you to let go."

  So saying, I lay on my belly and swung my legs into the hole, letting my booted feet drop in first.