Moonstone Obsession

by Elizabeth Ellen Carter

  He turned to James.

  “You and I should visit Newgate Prison tomorrow and speak to Morcombe directly; he may be more cooperative now. A month in gaol has the habit of softening even a hard man.

  “In the meantime, I will have agents discreetly patrol around your house, but do take care with your personal safety. The threat in the letter is oblique but should be taken seriously. But for it, I wouldn’t have bothered you tonight.”

  Percy looked in his glass and found it contained a final mouthful. He knocked it back, placed the glass beside the decanter and picked up his hat. He bowed to Selina and shook James by the hand.

  “Good night. I’ll drop by at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Percy let himself out.

  James offered Selina a sherry, but she declined. He poured himself a whiskey, looked at it, and set it down on the table untouched, his expression bleak.

  A dozen scenarios had already played themselves in his mind—an assassination, a kidnapping, an accident on horseback. Any harm that befell Selina would kill him.

  He cursed his selfishness. If he hadn’t wanted her so badly, he could have walked away the night of the ball and not looked back. He should have done so because then she would be safe, but he didn’t. He fell in love with her instead and as a result her very life was in danger because of him.

  “It's all my fault,” he groaned.

  “Stop it,” warned Selina softly, putting her arms around him, surrounding him with her warmth and the delicate scent of her perfume.

  “No regrets,” she continued. “Please don’t ever regret us. For better or for worse, that’s what our vows mean. We will face everything together.”

  James crushed her to him, raining kisses on the crown of her head, her brow, her cheeks and her lips.

  “How can I regret the better part of me?” he told her, stroking her cheek softly.

  “But this is not how I wanted our married life to begin. I want to protect you.”

  “Then let me help you,” she implored.

  James held her beautiful face. Her stunning azure blue eyes met his gaze steadily. What a jewel he had married.

  “For better or for worse, we’ll do it together,” he promised her.

  * * *

  Sir Percy Blakeney was as good as his word. He arrived just as the final stroke of the clock struck nine. At his shoulder were two men, each carrying a wooden box of approximately two feet by one foot by one foot.

  James' butler ushered them into the blue drawing room where Selina and James waited.

  Selina’s eyes widened at the number of documents the boxes contained. Her expression didn’t go unnoticed.

  “You may regret your generous offer, Lady Selina,” Sir Percy grinned. “Alas my wife is not in town to give you assistance; she is French.”

  “I should like to make her acquaintance one day,” Selina responded absently, lifting out some of the contents of one of the boxes and starting to leaf through them on the desk.

  On getting no reply, Selina looked up to find the four men watching her.

  “Well, off you go,” she said, dismissing them with the wave of her hand. “You have work to do. And so do I.”

  Uncaring of the company in the room, James kissed her swiftly and followed Sir Percy out the room.

  The other two, the men who had carried the boxes, remained.

  Selina looked at them quizzically. They were neatly but not expensively dressed. Aged possibly in their early thirties, one was ginger-headed and the other had a receding hairline of fine white hair. She would have said they were clerks, but their physiques looked more that of wrestlers.

  “We are to stay with you, my lady,” the ginger one offered in response to her expression.

  “Ah,” said Selina. Obviously these men were to be her protectors today.

  “Do either of you read French?” she enquired.

  The men looked at one another then back to Selina and shook their heads in unison.

  Selina went to the bell ribbon and tugged it to summon the butler or a maid.

  She regarded the men standing there. She had already begun to think of them as 'Red' and 'White', but that wouldn't do. She asked them their names and learned the ginger-headed man was Murphy and the white haired was Webber.

  “Do either of you read English?” she enquired of the men.

  Mr Murphy, obviously the informal spokesman of the duo, nodded at his associate.

  “Mr Webber reads a little, milady.”

  At that moment, the butler, a proud looking man in his fifties with jet black hair that Selina had suspected from the first day was not entirely natural, answered the bell call.

  “Anderson, could you please ask Cook to keep us in refreshments, I fear that we will be here all day,” she requested.

  “And apart from Sir James and Sir Percy, I’m not at home to any callers. Also, please send Winifred to the stationers for a ream of inexpensive writing paper.

  “Lastly, could you direct Mr Webber and Mr Murphy here to the dining room and add the two extra leaves to the table? I feel that we’re going to need all the space we can get.”

  If Anderson thought her last request odd, he was too well trained to comment on it and instead waited for Murphy and Webber to pick up the boxes and follow him. Selina in turn gathered the papers she had already spread on the desk and took them through to the dining room, then decamped to the bedroom to retrieve her writing box.

  She set up in a well lit corner of the dining room and instructed Mr Webber to examine each piece of paper methodically and direct Mr Murphy as to where they be placed on the by now extended dining table. Those sheets that looked like letters that had been dated were to be placed in one pile, letters that were not dated placed in another; then official-looking documents in English in another pile, official papers in French in yet another. Jotted notes, scraps of paper, and drafts were to make a fifth pile.

  As they worked, Selina hovered, looked at papers, and fine-tuned the piles. After some time, over 300 documents in all had been methodically sorted, more or less.

  Anderson arrived with the ream of writing paper; behind him, the maid with a tea tray and sandwiches.

  Selina began her inventory with the official-looking documents first.

  They were letters of credit on English, Swiss, and French banks, along with bank notes in all three currencies; there were also letters of transit and passports in different names, but where they described the bearer, they were all describing a man in the general appearance of Henri Renauld.

  Selina made note of them all and placed her summary on top of that pile before picking up the letters, some of which were four and five pages in length, to start work on faithfully translating each one.

  * * *

  Newgate Prison was a bleak stone edifice with few windows to relieve its foreboding appearance. It had been deliberately designed that way by George Dance twenty years earlier, his intent to instil terror in those who would offend against the law.

  Sir Percy and James entered the prison through a narrow door that seemed disproportionately small to the size of the imposing centre building placed between two wings eight hundred feet in length. The centre portion extended deep. The arcade opened on to a large quadrangle where manacled prisoners would be marched in file for an hour each day for daily exercise. A passage on the right led to the courtrooms while, either side of the quadrangle, a set of stairs led up to the chapel.

  As male and female felons were separated with their own wards and quadrangles, so too were they separated in the chapel where, each Sunday, the women would climb an extra set of stairs to listen to the sermon from a loft.

  James and Percy made their way along a passageway under the chapel and waited in the arcade while one of the turnkeys went to find the prison keeper, his booted gait echoing loudly across the stone floor as he left.

  As the two men waited, they observed a group of male prisoners herded towards the Sessions House passage. Sharply spoke
n guards yelled reprimands at those of their charges who dared turn to stare at these outsiders who were free to come and go.

  After a few moments, the two visitors were instructed to follow the turnkey up a separate flight of stairs to the Governor’s office.

  This room at least had a window to overlook the outside world or, at least, the Old Bailey Road.

  Governor Rupert Lomax was a retired army officer—walrus moustached, a waist showing evidence of living well without requisite exercise—who ran the prison on strict military lines.

  Everything seemed brisk and impersonal. Even Governor Lomax’s desk in expansive oak was devoid of papers save for three neat piles—one at the end of his desk for his adjutant to take away, another for incoming correspondence, the third beside his blotter for his immediate attention.

  Sitting before him, James could tell the man wasn’t pleased with their interruption to his routine, even when the request to speak to a prisoner had come from the Prime Minister’s office. His greeting to Sir Percy suggested they were acquainted, though not closely. James received nothing more than a passing glance, a nod, and “sir” in deference to his title as introduced.

  “I understand that the prisoner in question has already been interrogated,” Lomax said to Sir Percy.

  “It’s highly irregular that this should have been brought to the personal attention of the office of Prime Minister, I would have thought that you had other more pressing things to occupy your time.”

  Sir Percy was not the man to be intimidated by a semi-superannuated major.

  “No, Mr Lomax, nothing more pressing,” he replied blandly, deliberately affording him the most basic title. “Certainly nothing that would concern you.”

  Lomax huffed.

  “Well, I’m sorry. It’s not convenient for you to see the prisoner today. I suggest you come back tomorrow with proper authority. One issued by the court.”

  At that, Lomax began reviewing his correspondence, effectively dismissing them.

  James held his tongue. There had to be more behind the man’s intractability than just an upset routine. He looked at Sir Percy, whose eyes glittered with ill-disguised contempt.

  Calmly, Sir Percy stood, produced a paper from his inside coat pocket, and placed it under the Governor’s nose on top of the letter he was ostentatiously studying.

  The expensive monogrammed paper bore a large dark green wax seal with the image of George III and an inscription, GEORGIUS TERTIUS DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REX FIDEI DEFENSOR—“George the Third, by the grace of God, King of the Britains, Defender of the Faith”.

  Percy cleared his throat delicately.

  “Now, as you can see, my good man, the authority to interview the prisoner comes from the Crown itself,” he said, “and I should so hate to tell his Majesty that an investigation in defence of the realm was troubled by a fractious functionary.”

  Governor Lomax’s face turned a dangerous shade of puce. His sudden, explosive roar for an aide was deafening.

  A man burst into the room looking as pale as his boss was florid.

  “Get Frederick Morcombe and put him in the spare cell on this floor,” sputtered Lomax. “And take these…gentlemen down to speak with him.”

  The aide waited in the doorway for the visitors.

  “Thank you,” said Sir Percy.

  “Conduct your business and get out,” said the governor.

  * * *

  Selina had finished translating all of the dated letters. What she had read filled her with dread.

  Glancing at the clock again, despite knowing very well that the noon hour had only just chimed, she wondered how long James would be. The importance of the particular letter she had just interpreted drew her attention again and she read it over:

  “R is dismayed that lightning did not strike twice and ruler of Olympus did not look favourably upon us.

  “The loss of his bounty hurts us and our cause but not as much as the enemy within.

  “Mirabeau should be considered our most immediate threat. He is too adept at politics and plays both sides.

  “R demands a public and dramatic assassination and for the royalists to take the blame. Then we will have the revolution we desire.

  “You have been the one chosen for this task. We acknowledge that this poses no small risk to you. There is compensation in gold and safe passage.

  “Seek out Club des Lumières when you arrive in Paris.”

  The letter ended with a flourishing letter ‘D’ and no other identification.

  Selina glanced at Sir Percy’s two men now quietly playing cards, oblivious to the powder keg which sat in the room with them.

  War inside France’s borders would not be contained there for long, of that she was certain. She recalled Edmund Burke’s pamphlet that she had read all those months ago.

  France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France.

  Violence, she knew, would spread like the plague, and revolutionaries in England, currently buoyed by the successful revolution in America and urging on that in France, would eagerly seize the chance to create a republican Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, conveniently forgetting these countries had already fought against each other for hundreds of years.

  And James recognised the possibility of revolution all those months ago, Selina realised. Now, despite everything, the engine of war was moving ever closer to their shores.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sir Percy pulled out his pocket watch. It was ten after twelve o’clock.

  “How difficult can it be to extract a man from his cell and bring him up one flight of stairs?” he asked crossly, passing up and down the ten foot width of the holding cell.

  “We’re wasting our time here. Would you like to accept a wager that we won’t be seeing Morcombe at all?” asked James standing by the wall with his arms crossed, watching his friend pace the floor.

  Sir Percy narrowed his eyes.

  “Your reputation at cards is only middling my friend, but you play a good enough game to hold firm on a bet,” he observed. “What do you know that I do not?”

  “Governor Lomax is hiding something,” he answered. “No diligent man has a desk that well ordered—at the end of the day he might tidy a little, but I believe the desk was neatened for our benefit.

  “Furthermore, Lomax didn’t arrange his desk carefully enough. When he was thought he'd dismissed us, he lifted up a letter and the one beneath had Morcombe's name on it.”

  “How sharp-eyed of you, James,” said Sir Percy. He tilted his head in consideration for a moment. “They might be official papers relating to his trial...”

  “Possibly. But it looked like private correspondence to me. It wasn't letterhead from a solicitor, nor court documentation, but it was expensive paper.”

  “Hmm... Morcombe has no expensive friends, but someone is interested in his welfare,” mused Sir Percy.

  James nodded and was about to speak again when they heard hurried footsteps along the corridor.

  James and Percy placed themselves in the doorway to see a guard rushing out of sight.

  A moment later, a second guard grumbled along, ashen faced. He looked at the two well dressed gentlemen in passing and could not stop himself. “’E’s dead. ’E weren't this morning but 'e is now.”

  “Who, man?” James asked sharply, trepidation settling in his chest.

  “Morcombe, ’im from Cornwall we were supposed to be bringin’ up. They’ve killed him.”

  In the background, an explosive and colourful set of expletives boomed from the direction of Governor Lomax’s office. James supposed that he must have heard the news at the same time.

  The governor appeared then, moving quickly for a man of his girth, following his two officers down the hall. S
ir Percy spared a glance at James who hung back in the crowded hall, then collared Lomax.

  “Is it true my prisoner is dead?” he demanded.

  “How the bloody hell should I know? I only just heard,” the Governor blustered.

  “Well, don’t dally man. I want to see for myself. Take me there now!”

  Reluctantly, Lomax hurried the delegation of four along the hall and down to the cells. In the confusion, no one noticed the party was one short.

  Now completely alone on the floor, James stepped into Lomax’s now deserted office.

  ***

  The Apartments of the Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street

  7pm

  “Welcome to my vast and awkward house,” said William Pitt, greeting Selina and James.

  Although only thirty-one and just three years older than James, Selina could see the weight of responsibility was beginning to bear heavily around Pitt's eyes. Tonight he was impeccably dressed but, in the comfort of his official residence, he eschewed the periwig he habitually wore in public.

  Selina realised that Pitt’s greeting was more than wry humour as they followed a footman along a convoluted set of passages and hallways. Despite architect William Kent's work nearly sixty years earlier, there was no disguising the fact that the residence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain was originally three homes.

  Rather than being directed to offices as Selina had expected, they were ushered into a comfortable, informally decorated breakfast room.

  At first she was concerned that she had misunderstood the invitation and that not changing her jade green day dress for more formal evening attire was a mistake. She was reassured this was a business engagement when she saw Sir Percy was the only other guest.

  They sat at the table with Sir Percy, but the Prime Minister remained standing by the fireplace.

  “I’ve briefed the Prime Minister on the general nature of our work today, but I felt it was important that you share your revelations directly,” he informed them.

  Selina looked at James and he squeezed her hand in reassurance. He would start first.