by T. F. Banks
CHAPTER 15
The Drury Lane Theatre was as busy as a December night, the public having learned that Mrs. Arabella Malibrant had returned and that her understudy was again relegated to a minor role. This was the final month of Dibden's Revenge, and the production had been a resounding success. The theatre was abuzz with speculation about the play now in rehearsals.
Morton stood in the lobby awaiting the evening's leading lady. A stage door existed, but Arabella occasionally had need of the attention of her admirers and would descend among them for a few moments, her unmistakable cumulus red curls making her immediately recognisable. A little ripple of excitement entered the lobby with her, washing through the gathering. Impertinent young men on the stairway turned their quizzing glasses upon her, and gentlemen of more senior years (and in the company of wives) tried not to be seen glancing Arabella's way. Even among the women present she had her admirers.
Morton could not help but warm a little with pride as she took his arm, so that he might escort her out to their waiting hackney-coach. Arabella nodded and said “So kind” and a hundred variations thereof as they made their way through the throng. Here and there she greeted friends and acquaintances, enquiring after children, husbands, lovers.
For a moment they were held up by the crowd pressing around the doors, and Morton found a lovely pair of brown eyes turned their way. It took a moment for him to realise it was he, not the woman on his arm, who was the object of their interest.
“Mademoiselle Honoria,” Morton said, bowing.
“Monsieur Morton,” answered the young woman with a curtsy. She was in the company of her family-all but the elder count-who were engaged in an animated conversation in French. The words flew so quickly that Morton barely caught the gist-talk of returning home to France.
Morton would have introduced Arabella, but she was speaking to another, and by the time she had finished, the d'Auvraye clan had moved on, young Monsieur Eustache d'Auvraye leading the way; a tiny wave from the daughter's gloved hand as they passed out through the row of columns.
A moment later Morton handed Arabella up into their carriage, and they set off at a snail's pace in the press of conveyances. Arabella laid her head against his shoulder.
“Tired, my love?”
“It has been a full day, what with rehearsals, performances, and fittings-the latter in the service of Bow Street, mind you.”
“You saw Madame De le C?ur?”
“Her daughter came to see me so that I might have a gown made. It shall cost a small fortune, but perhaps it will be worth it. We shall see.”
“I shall pay for it myself,” Morton said chivalrously.
“Thank you, Henry, but Arthur has already insisted that the bill come to him.”
Morton felt a strong sense of irritation at this news.
“Of course it doesn't matter who pays,” Arabella added. “The important thing is that we learn more of poor Madame Desmarches.”
“And how go your efforts to that end?”
“First I must gain Miss De le C?ur's confidence. To morrow we meet again. I shall test the waters then, though when I mentioned Madame Desmarches's name today, Amelie became terribly silent for a time. She knows more than she has told us, I am sure of that.”
“Something that can be said of most parties involved in this affair,” Morton reflected.
They soon arrived at Arabella's home in Theobald's Road. “Come up, Henry. I need comforting after my long day.”
“There is nothing I would rather do, but I must be off to Maiden Lane and relieve the man who is watching over a cully who might know something of this same murder.”
Arabella gazed at him in the poor light from her door lamp. “And how is one to compete with Mistress Duty?”
“Easily, if one is the celebrated Mrs. Malibrant. But tonight I could find no other to stand the middle watch.”
She smiled only a little. “Well, I shall dream of you as I lie in my warm bed, Henry Morton.”
Morton stopped off at his own lodgings in Rupert Street to change from his theatre clothes into something more ppropriate to Maiden Lane. Wilkes, his manservant, was still stirring and brought Morton a letter.
“Sent over from the Public Office, sir. They wanted you to have it this night.” He held it out to Morton in a tremulous hand, a condition that had cost him his employment among the quality and eventually brought him into service with a lowly Bow Street Runner- much to that Runner's benefit. The older man fetched Morton's frock coat from the wardrobe.
Morton turned the letter over. “And what is this?” he wondered.
“I don't know, sir. Unusual coat of arms, though,” Wilkes observed.
“Is it?”
Wilkes nodded to the crest stamped at the top of the fine notepaper. His years amongst people of fashion had made him something of an authority on matters heraldic.
“Three chevrons, saltire”-he wrinkled up his nose- “the cross flory-a little unusual. The beast, I think, is a lion salient, although I must say, sir, it looks as much like a hedgehog as it does anything else. Certainly such devices are not English, nor even British. If I were to guess, with such a lion, I would say French.”
Morton broke the seal and opened the letter. “You impress me, as ever, Wilkes. It belongs to the Count d'Auvraye, although I do wonder how long he's had it.”
“I have not heard of the family, sir. But there are ever so many counts over there, even if one doesn't heed the lot that Bony hatched. Is the letter something important?”
“A request by d'Auvraye, or at least from his secretary, to meet with the count in Barnes tomorrow morning. I shall be in late tonight and up early, I'm afraid.”
“I'm sorry to hear it, sir.”
Morton smiled at the man, as much a friend and confidant as a servant. “Can't be helped. Will you have a breakfast ready for Mr. Presley and me at six?”
“Six it is. Coffee will be steaming.”
“You are a warm hearth in a cold world, Wilkes.”
The older man performed a slight gracious bow, his trembling hands held carefully out of sight behind his back.
CHAPTER 16
Morton was back in Paul's Court a few minutes later, as the church bells were giving midnight to the great city, soon to be almost silent. The dingy little close was even emptier and darker than it had been during the day, with only a faint greyish glow showing in a couple of windows around its narrow space. He climbed the stairs of the doss house and found Presley tucked into the shadows down the hall from Boulot's room, concealed behind a massive crumbling chimney. They spoke in whispers.
“Anything stirring, Jimmy?”
“Some time ago I heard our man jabbering in his cursed language-too drunk for even a Frenchman to understand, I'll warrant. Quiet as the grave, upstairs and down. Couldn't you find anyone to stand watch? Farke or some other?”
“Jacobs is coming at four, and we're up the river at seven. Come by my lodgings at six, and Wilkes will find us somewhat to break our fasts.”
“Up the river?”
“The count has invited us up to his country home tomorrow morning. Perhaps for a bit of shooting.”
“Ah, I wonder what he has to tell. Remembered something he didn't tell when last you met?”
“Maybe, Jimmy. Maybe. We'll just go up there and see. But for now…”
Presley crept back down the rickety stairs, each tread crying out as his weight came to bear, as though they'd carried too much over the years and could stand it no more.
Morton settled himself silently into Jimmy's hiding place, sitting on what seemed to be an old wine cask. Below him the house lay quiet, with only the low murmur of an occasional voice or, somewhere in the deeps, a cough, the sound of a door closing. The fumes of urine, which had assailed his nostrils and eyes like a physical force, gradually faded from his attention, and he began to turn over the day's developments.
He had obtained a new piece of intelligence at Bow Street after he had left Jimmy
to stand guard over Boulot. John Townsend had returned from his little jaunt into the country.
“Well, Mr. Morton,” the elder Runner had told him, as he leaned on the mantelpiece in Sir Nathaniel Conant's anteroom and stuffed his briar, “Waltham-stow's a sleepy place, with one very great advantage for an officer of police. Folk having considerably less excitement in their lives than is normal in our metropolis, they are consequently much starved for subjects of conversation and far more prone to watch for and talk about even the smallest doings of their neighbours. And to do it gratis, I might add.”
Morton gave a brief grunt of laughter. “In the public interest only, of course.”
“Of course. So it was no great matter for them to direct me toward a Frenchman of the Protestant faith- whose name is Dubois, incidentally-known to have amongst his labourers a hefty-sized man named Gil. But when I sought out Farmer Dubois, I learned from him that his man, Gilles Niceron, had just recently gone off, without warning and without explanation.”
“Really? How recently?”
John Townsend had lit his pipe and drew deeply before fixing Morton with a meaningful look.
“Four days past.”
Letters would be sent to all the magistrates of London and the surrounding counties, asking them to have their officers look out for one Gilles or “Gil” Niceron- tall, seventeen stone or more, dark of hair and, of course, French-speaking.
Morton shifted now on his hard seat in the top-floor darkness, as he mused. There were connections between Boulot, d'Auvraye, and the woman buried beneath the snowdrift on Surgeon Skelton's bloodstained table. Boulot had not fired his pistols at a phantom, and he had not made that visit to the count by chance, not the very day, the very hour the French aristocrat had turned against his mistress. But what were they? What actually linked these men?
His thoughts were interrupted, however, by sounds in back of him, the opposite direction from Boulot's room. From behind the thin wall against which he leaned, the moans, the cadenced gasps… the age-old sounds of a man and a woman. Morton could not help but listen, his blood stirred a little in mere animal sympathy. But pitifully soon a slight speeding up, the single louder grunt. And then silence. One low mutter, and silence again. Was this how it was, then, in a place like Paul's Court? The joy that ought to be equal for all, in castles and hovels alike-was it not, in fact, smaller and nastier and shabbier for the poor, the miserable, the denizens of narrow tenements and narrow lives? Henry Morton could well believe it. He had been raised on a steady diet of the improving works of Hannah More and Elizabeth Hamilton, forced down his throat by his Evangelical “aunt.” But it was a food he had hated and resisted with every particle of his young soul. He would never, ever accept that anything was better in poverty, the way the lady authors and their moralizing ilk constantly claimed. Because nothing was. Not love or friendship, not character, virtue, or human-kindness, not wisdom, nor the simple pleasures. Nothing. The only good poverty ever produced-and then only sometimes-was the passionate desire to get out of it.
In the midst of these morose reflections, he heard, below, the staircase begin its wailing. Morton stood quietly and pulled himself back farther into concealment, listening intently. Slowly they came up. He tried to guess how many. Three at least, perhaps four. At the top of the stairs there was no hesitation-they turned directly toward Boulot's chamber. They'd been here before.
Morton risked a careful glimpse around the flue. But in the dimness of the unlit hall, he could barely see a little cluster of people at the far end. The knock on Boulot's door was quick, soft, confidential.
“Ouvrez. C'est nous.”
The demand that he open was also quiet, discreet, although Morton heard an urgency in the tone of the speaker. There was only silence in response.
“Boulot, c'est nous. Ouvrez.”
Now one of the other men in the hall-for those who spoke, at least, were certainly men-took it up. But his voice was more husky, and Morton could not follow what he said, except to know that it, too, was a remonstrance, accompanied with more rapping at the door.
Now came the sound of a voice from within-Boulot, low, muffled, maybe still drunken, and too far off for Morton to understand either.
“Non, non,” replied the first man in the corridor, his voice rising a little in impatience. “Il n'y a pas de cause. Pas de danger. Ouvrez!”
Boulot must have been convinced that there was indeed no danger. After a short hesitation, there was a squeak of hinges, and the visitors all went in. Their voices continued inside, as the door closed behind them. Morton immediately left his place of hiding and went as quietly as he could to Boulot's door.
Within the room they were speaking quickly, intensely. He had almost to press his ear to the door to hear anything. At Bow Street Morton was thought fluent in French, but the truth was, he did better when he could see the speaker, hear clearly what that person was saying, when he could slow the sounds down, hearing them again in his mind. Standing in this dark hallway with his ear almost to the door, trying to follow this rapid babble of foreign voices, angry, voluble, interrupting one another-this was a different matter. It was maddening-he could grasp only fragments, parts of sentences, make out some speakers better than others. They were arguing, he could tell that. Boulot was defending himself, but oddly, his visitors did not seem to be accusing him. They seemed to be trying to mollify him, reassure him of their trust.
But the drunken Boulot kept repeating, “Ce n'est pas ma faute!” It was not his fault! He claimed to have had nothing to do with it.
Another voice, lower, impossible for Morton to hear. Calming, reassuring.
Finally Boulot seemed to understand and fell silent. Then the sound of a man weeping-Boulot. No one spoke for a long moment, and then a calm deep voice, almost impossible to hear.
They could not do it without him. Assassiner, another said. Assassinate. “They would assassinate him,” or something like. Morton felt a growing sense of alarm. Perhaps Boulot was not quite so pathetic as he seemed. But then, he remembered, the word in French was not quite the same as in English. It could mean plain “murder,” and perhaps, in the manner of all excitable continentals, they were just flinging their words about loosely, carelessly. Perhaps nothing so serious as assassination was at issue, or even killing of any kind.
Boulot spoke again, his words slurred one into the other. Oui, Morton heard. Un botiment. Berman sur le quai. Ratton-berri. Words Morton could not understand. Nancy. “He could do no more. Leave him in peace.”
The door Morton held his ear to swept suddenly open, so that Morton all but fell into the room. The pale blur of five surprised faces, and then the largest of them charged him, catching him before he'd regained his balance and throwing him across the hallway and almost over the banister into the stairwell.
The others shot out the door in a panic. Morton made a grab for one, his fingers grasping futilely at the coarse buckram of a jacket. Cursing, he lashed out with his foot, half-tripping one of them, who careened into the stairwell after his fellows. Making a sprawling dive, Morton stabbed his hand though the banister posts, briefly catching the man's shoe, upsetting him completely and sending him spilling head over heels down the groaning stairs. A voice cried in panic, then grunted with an impact, thumping sounds, and other voices shouting out in fear, as he must have fallen onto them. In an instant Morton had regained his feet, scooped up his baton, and pulled himself round the newel post to give chase down the staircase. But his quarry seemed all to have managed to regain their balance and resume their own descent. He charged after them, bellowing out to the inhabitants of the house to stop the thieves in the name of the king.
Down they all went, thumping and clattering in the lightless shaft, taking three and four steps at a bound, causing the flimsy staircase to shake and scream. By the time they reached the bottom hall, Morton had almost caught them up. They were just ahead of him, struggling through the front vestibule. Reaching out as he surged forward, he was just about to sei
ze the hind-most-when he fell over something solid and went sprawling face-first. He had been tripped by a booted foot, thrust deftly out from one of the rooms. It withdrew in a trice, and the door of the room clapped closed again. The “traps” had no friends here.
Henry Morton had fallen hard. For a moment he lay stunned, wheezing and gasping to regain his breath. Then slowly, painfully, he pulled himself to his feet again. His knee throbbing, he pushed through the front door and stumbled out into the cooler air of Paul's Court. But from the darkness there came only the echo of receding footfalls.
Morton went a few paces down the almost black street, then gave it up and hobbled back. Boulot would not proclaim his innocence now. Assassiner, they had said, whatever the specific meaning of the word. Morton would drag the drunkard down to Bow Street and keep him from his bottle until he'd told everything he knew.
Morton made his slow way up the stair, at each step his knee screaming in concert with the tread itself. When he reached the door to Boulot's room, he found it wide open, a lone candle guttering, and Boulot gone.
CHAPTER 17
The slick surface of the Thames, that July morning, was scattered with boats of all shapes and purposes, from the river wherry that carried Morton and Presley, to swimmies and stumpies, dobles and peter boats. Morton could see the lightermen on their barges, lying alongside or to anchors, waiting for the tide to turn, searching the sky for signs of a breath of wind below the bridges. The river was a high road of commerce and transportation through the heart of London and out to the sea and the great world beyond.
“Tide'll turn in two hour,” their waterman said. “Carry you back downriver afterward, sir, if you've a mind to return. I could tarry if ye not be too long.”
“We shan't be more than an hour or so, I wouldn't think,” Morton said.
