The Barrister and the Letter of Marque

by Todd M Johnson

  Under the circumstances, he decided as he gathered his papers, it would be unseemly and ungrateful to ask Father Thomas to join his prayers for more.

  49

  ROAD FROM SUSSEX TO LONDON

  A loud bang. The world jumped beneath her.

  Madeleine came suddenly awake.

  A deep breath filled her lungs with chill air that brought a shiver. Early morning light washed over her. The reins were loose in her hands. She tugged on them to calm her pacing, frightened horse. As her mind cleared, she saw that they were beside a gravel road, bounded by fields of hay stubble.

  Where was she? How had she gotten here?

  “First Mate Quint Ivars,” she said aloud. The man and his horse were nowhere to be seen.

  On the ground lay her pistol, smoke curling from its barrel. It must have fallen from her grasp in her sleep and fired when it struck the earth. That and her mare’s reaction had startled her awake.

  She slid from the mare to retrieve the pistol. Weak as a baby, it took her half a dozen tries to return to the saddle.

  Ahead, the road disappeared through a patch of tall oak. Her legs barely responded to her command when she kicked her horse’s flank to go. The mare obeyed resentfully. The poor animal was as exhausted as Madeleine. She’d have to leave her at the next farm they passed.

  Time meant nothing now. She could have been sleeping minutes or days. It no longer mattered. The last hope of winning her cousin’s case was gone with Ivars’s escape.

  The horse walked slowly on toward London. It took all the strength of body and spirit that Madeleine could muster to even stay upright in the saddle.

  LORD BRUMMELL’S RESIDENCE

  LONDON

  Alone in his library, Lord Brummell again opened the note, hand-delivered through the back entrance not half an hour before, and read:

  “Your bumbling barrister has managed his continuance after all. Have you a plan for what’s coming?”

  Crudely printed to avoid revealing its author, Lord Brummell had no doubt as to who’d sent it. The little princess, worried again. Was she ever not? The fact that she had reason this time didn’t make it any more palatable to the lord.

  What does Snopes have up his sleeve now?

  Everything should be fully settled. Snopes’s junior, stopped in his attempt to ferret out their contacts at the newspapers. The captain’s solicitor, Mortimer, still in Edinburgh. Lady Jameson happily disappeared. Snopes finished with every available witness from the Padget, gaining nothing. Mandy and the McPherson fellow safely bundled away.

  With all that had gone right the past four days, the jury should have received their summation and reached its inevitable verdict by now.

  Then Snopes got his continuance.

  What was he up to?

  Ah, the princess was right—admit it. It would be foolish to make no plan for Snopes coming up with more evidence. But then plans required people to do his bidding—and Mandy and his lieutenants were in storage.

  Though, he supposed, there was still one.

  Brummell pulled out a blank sheet of stationery, lacking any name or address, and scribbled a hasty note. Satisfied, he summoned a servant.

  “Take this to Portman Barracks in Marylebone. Ensure that it’s delivered to a Sergeant Nathaniel Rhodes and to no one else. Stay as long as you must if he’s not immediately available. And hurry.”

  50

  ROAD TO LONDON

  As the sun rose, the road grew busier about Madeleine, riding at her slow pace. Merchant wagons passed headed toward London; another rolled by hauling lumber. A troop of soldiers trundled past, marching the other direction at an easy jaunt. Several whistled at Madeleine until an officer shouted them down.

  The high sun and relenting clouds warmed her early in the day, helping her stay awake. Now, in late afternoon, with the clouds dropping closer to earth, her eyes grew heavy again, demanding sleep.

  The smell of coal fires was growing, the air becoming hazier. London must be near. Not that it mattered anymore. The trial was surely over, and she had little hope for the outcome. What could have happened to Mr. Turner? Maybe he’d met up with the first mate along the way and conjured a plan for both of their profits. The American probably promised to aid Mr. Ivars so he’d testify for the Crown, in exchange for recovering his loan from the Padget’s sale. Roisin was right. She never should have trusted the smuggler.

  It was late afternoon, the road empty under dusky skies as it had been for over an hour, when a horse emerged from a copse of sycamore ahead, coming her way. The animal was frothed with sweat, its tongue far out. It struggled to maintain an uneven trot. Madeleine squinted.

  It was Quint Ivars.

  Her mind cleared. Why was he coming back this direction? Why wasn’t he already hidden in the maze of London?

  Ivars saw her. His head swiveled, taking in the high hedges along the sides of the road that prevented him from reaching the surrounding fields. He flicked his reins. The exhausted horse grudgingly picked up its step.

  He was charging her.

  She should ride to the side of the road and let him pass. What purpose would it serve to try to stop him?

  “Hi-yah!” She reined her mare sideways in front of the approaching animal and rider. “Stop, Mr. Ivars!” she shouted, expending the last of her strength.

  The first mate yanked his reins to try to slip around her. Madeleine tugged on her own, backing the mare fully into his path once more.

  He was twenty yards away when she remembered the discharged pistol in her pocket. Withdrawing it, she cocked it with both hands and raised it to the first mate’s chest.

  Ivars’s eyes widened. He yanked on the reins, bringing his animal to a halt not ten feet away.

  “You wouldn’t shoot me, miss,” the first mate growled.

  “Perhaps not yesterday,” she answered.

  Over the first mate’s shoulder, she glimpsed another rider emerge from the woods. His face was too distant at first, but she’d know that horse anywhere, even far away. It had a chestnut coat and black legs and mane. She first saw it the day the barrister visited her estate, two weeks and a hundred years ago.

  It was William’s handsome bay.

  51

  WESTMINSTER INFIRMARY

  LONDON

  “Edmund, I feel so very close to understanding it all,” William whispered. “We have so many pieces. Just not the assembled whole.”

  Asleep, Edmund didn’t stir in his hospital bed. The young man’s recovery was encouraging. He was breathing evenly, and the swelling had already subsided. Surely a sign of youth.

  “All right then,” William continued softly, leaning back in his chair. “Let’s try again. The American says First Mate Ivars, if he makes it to the witness stand, will testify that he was hired by a soldier—I’d guess Sergeant Rhodes—to get a berth on the Padget and arrange for Simon Ladner to join him. Their true task, however, awaited their journey’s end, when Simon was to steal the Letter in Captain Tuttle’s desk as the ship docked in London, using his skill as one of McPherson’s pickpockets. He then slipped away to the cabin for the Letter, returning the key afterward. The first mate helped, in some fashion, to shepherd the paper off the ship when the constables and soldiers arrived to arrest the captain and crew, as previously planned. Ivars likely forewarned his masters of the Padget’s coming arrival with a mail packet when the ship was in Gibraltar. Added to these facts is that this scheme had been carried out at least once before, presumably for the same bosses.”

  William paused. “Yet I still have no idea what was to be gained by it all.”

  Footsteps approached from behind.

  “Why do you think they didn’t destroy the Letter of Marque while still aboard the Padget, sir?”

  William turned to greet his solicitor. “Obadiah. You needn’t have come tonight.”

  “You’ll need some rest for tomorrow, sir,” Obadiah said, taking off his hat and sitting. “I’m glad to stay with Edmund awhile.”
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br />   “I’ll not need any rest if that American and Madeleine fail to arrive soon with Quint Ivars in tow. But to answer your question, there wasn’t enough time, or seclusion, to destroy the Letter on board. They could do so at their leisure once ashore.”

  “Then how did they get it off the ship?”

  “I suspect the original idea was for the first mate to plead for release of the boy when he and his crew mates were gaoled aboard the Padget, a plan ruined when the boy was accidentally killed. Perhaps the first mate sent the paper off the ship hidden on the boy’s body. If Sergeant Rhodes was in control of the body and the document, he could have destroyed it later or placed it in the coffin for delivery to Mr. McPherson along with the boy.”

  “None of this tells us how they manufactured the Letter in the first place, or the scheme’s ultimate purpose,” Obadiah said. “Or how the poor murdered girl, Isabella, fits into it.”

  “Agreed. As things stand, until we understand the reason for all these things, we’ll never deduce who’s behind it. We’ll need more help for that. With Simon Ladner dead, and Lonny McPherson disappeared, that help seems unlikely.”

  “Does it really matter, sir? Isn’t the first mate’s testimony about theft of the Letter enough to free Captain Tuttle?”

  “Doubtful, Obadiah. Sir Barnabas will cross-examine the first mate and make him out a liar, especially after he admits to being brought here forcibly from a smuggler’s ship to testify. He’ll also confirm that Mr. Ivars has no way of knowing what he alleges he took, since he can’t judge a true Letter of Marque from any other legal document. Barnabas will hammer at the paper not being produced and likely demand to admit evidence from the Lord Privy Seal’s records showing no such letter was ever issued by the Crown. Add all this to the evidence damning the captain so far, and voilà—Ivars’s testimony will smack of desperation or perjury. No, I believe we still must reveal the hands controlling these machinations if we’re to prevail.”

  “The first mate’s testimony will at least be a start, Mr. Snopes.”

  Obadiah’s optimism, though never feigned, could still sometimes annoy. Tonight, William just smiled, which was surely Obadiah’s goal.

  “Yes, it’s a start,” William replied. “If he arrives, that is. Now, if you approve, I’ll get home and hope that Madeleine and Mr. Ivars arrive sometime before early morning. We’ll never get another day’s continuance unless Father Thomas can pray up an earthquake to topple The Old Bailey. With or without the first mate, I’ll be in that courtroom tomorrow at nine.”

  William left the infirmary to trudge the windy London streets. No moon or stars pierced the low clouds overhead. Occasionally he thought he heard footsteps following or tracing his route along the parallel alleyways, but when he stopped to listen, they disappeared. Hunched against the biting breeze, his mind grappled with all the unknowns: their inability to locate Lonny McPherson, the mystery of Mandy Bristol’s role, their failure to locate Bristol’s investors among those he hobnobbed with.

  Mandy Bristol. William recalled his last visit to Bristol’s office. The confrontation. The boy, Tad, appearing, and later standing in the street with tears in his eyes. A boy who seemed to be an assistant to Mandy, delivering court orders and appearing in his office—yet who had his own dark skills.

  William’s mind quickened with it all, swirling like a painted whirligig spinning to the opening of Vaňhal’s Symphony in D.

  Then it all stopped. Oh, how stupid he’d been.

  William reached into his jacket pocket to confirm his new wallet was there, the wallet he’d purchased to replace the one he’d been unable to find since leaving Mandy’s office.

  “Simon Ladner isn’t the only one related to Lonny McPherson,” he said aloud to the empty street. “There’s Tad too. Simon and Tad were pals: both pickpockets, both members of the same canon. That’s why tough, street-hardened Tad was crying after hearing at Mandy’s office that Simon was dead. And if Tad is working with Lonny McPherson . . .”

  There was a sound in a nearby alleyway, of glass crushed underfoot, then footsteps running away.

  William stared in that direction for a moment, broken from his reverie.

  He should never have spoken aloud as he had. More stupidity.

  With a shiver of concern, and still grappling with his new revelation, he hurried home.

  52

  FLAT OF WILLIAM SNOPES

  SOMERS TOWN

  LONDON

  William awoke with painful slowness. He was lying on the couch, papers scattered across his chest and on the floor at his side. Pulling a blanket across his shoulders, he shuffled to the table where last night’s teapot sat, icy cold. He pushed more papers and a stray shirt aside to light the brazier.

  Thomas was right. He should hire a cleaning lady.

  The pot settled, he sat again.

  He’d pondered his midnight conclusion about Tad to a late hour, then continued to do so in his sleep, which was probably why he’d slept so poorly. Now an image of St. James’s Park came to mind, from when he’d stood where the poor Isabella girl had been slain. Isabella, the girl who’d worked at Carlton House and was familiar with and had access to the Lord Privy Seal’s books and records. Murdered.

  And another puzzle piece settled gently into place.

  There was no master forger. They had no need. Isabella prepared the Letter of Marque from templates at Carlton House—a simple task for a modestly trained forger. Even William could have done it. She’d similarly copied the prince regent’s signature from myriad documents at her fingertips. Then she’d smuggled the letter out with the genuine seal already placed—again by her.

  The explanation fit the facts.

  Then why was she killed on the eve of trial? And what was their goal?

  William was reaching for a teacup when the door rattled with a hard knock. The knocks grew more insistent as he stumbled to answer it.

  The American stood on the upper landing. He gripped the arm of a slight, bleary-eyed man with dirty blond hair and beard. The American pushed him hard into the flat, past Snopes, then followed him in.

  “Let me introduce Quint Ivars,” the American said. “Mr. Ivars, this is Barrister Snopes.”

  William rubbed his eyes. “Where’s Madeleine?”

  “I left her at your solicitor’s place.”

  “She’s all right?”

  “Exhausted. But she’ll be fine.”

  “What time is it?” he asked, immensely relieved.

  “Quarter past eight.”

  Quarter past eight? “I have to dress,” William nearly shouted. “Do what you can to make this man presentable for the stand. There’s a bowl of water by the window. Drag a razor over his face and see if you can find any clothes in this room that will fit him. We’ll just have to talk with him in the cab ride to the courthouse.”

  THE OLD BAILEY

  William strode out of the judge’s chambers and into the courtroom, ahead of Judge Raleigh and Sir Barnabas.

  They’d been arguing their positions for nearly half an hour with the judge. The jury looked taxed and impatient with yet another delay. In the courtroom, Father Thomas was seated, head lowered, eyes closed again. Obadiah, in the lower gallery, looked up, uncommonly worried. The perennial observer Lord Brummell, perched in his box seat, appeared oddly pale today. Suzanne, in the middle gallery, wore her usual encouraging smile.

  But his gaze lingered longest on Madeleine, seated next to Suzanne. Pale, weak, strained.

  But beautiful.

  She noticed him and smiled. It brought a sudden draught of strength, though even in his relief he still harbored anger about her lie about the American smuggler.

  Obadiah rose and came to the bar. “Sir, what did Judge Raleigh rule? Will he allow the first mate to testify?”

  “Yes,” William said.

  Obadiah’s expression of joy instantly faded. “Uh, at what price, sir?”

  William sighed. “In exchange for the judge reopening the case and allowi
ng Mr. Ivars to testify, I will accept the judge’s contempt charge and resign from the bar without contest—unless the judge agrees that Mr. Ivars’s testimony was necessary for the jury to render a fair verdict.”

  “Oh, sir, no . . .” Obadiah looked like a hammer had struck him. “That’s no bargain at all. Why would the judge concede that? A day ago, the man wanted to have you horsewhipped.”

  “We have no assurance. But at least the jury will now hear the evidence.”

  “Why do you believe that Ivars will testify to the truth?”

  William leaned closer. “Because the American said he promised the first mate that if he tells the truth, he’ll be escorted from the courthouse to the American’s ship for passage to America, escaping any further proceedings against him.”

  “And if he lies?”

  “The same. Except the man’s passage to America will go only half the distance.”

  “Shall we begin, Mr. Snopes?” the judge said, looking eager to speed his demise.

  William resumed his place at counsel table.

  “My lord, the defense calls First Mate Quint Ivars to the stand.”

  “All right, Mr. Ivars. You’ve explained your experience as a seaman,” William summed up. “Now tell this jury what you were hired to do aboard the Padget.”

  Quint Ivars, looking as scruffy and scared as a cornered rabbit, held tight to the banister before him, not looking at the jury.

  “I was brought aboard as first mate and physician’s mate.”

  “No, Mr. Ivars,” William said. “The jury knows the role Captain Tuttle hired you to perform aboard ship. Please inform them of the other role for which you were hired.”

  From the corner of his eyes, he noted that at least a few of the jury seemed to be shedding their indifference.

  “I was hired to bring aboard a young boy, Simon Ladner.”

  “Hired by whom?”

  “A soldier.”

  “What soldier?”

  “Sergeant Rhodes.”