by Issy Brooke
“Excellent. For I have the help, tonight, of an … uh, acquaintance … who, in return, could do with some help in his own legal affairs north of here, in Holborn.”
“If all goes to plan, then I shall do what I can.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said. “And here they come!”
“Good heavens,” Mr Delaney said. “Have you raised an army?”
***
Hugo Hawke was at the head of the small band of very large men. “You are moon-struck,” he said. “Quite, quite mad.”
“And yet you have agreed to do this.”
“I have.”
She could not tell if he was smiling or grimacing. The faint light from the gas lamp overhead was reflected in his eyes, giving them a twinkle. But his voice was low and gruff. “Anyway,” he said. “You asked, and I have delivered. Here they are. Eleven men, all in dark blue, with their coats and hats as close as I can make it so that they seem to be policemen. But you had better hope that it remains dark, and we that have no moon tonight, for the disguise will not hold to close inspection.”
“The moon will be but a thin sliver, and I doubt we shall see it through the clouds,” she said. “I am grateful indeed for the rain, and your presence.”
“I am listed in the rank after rain? Charming,” he said.
She could definitely hear a smile in the rogue’s voice. She still had little respect for the man, but she was, truly, pleased that he was here, even if it was for his own purposes only.
“Come,” he said. “We must go. Oh! Sir, I apologise…”
Mr Delaney came forward from the shadows into which he had melted. There was a brief introduction, and then the genteel peace was interrupted by the arrival of Geoffrey who seemed to be carrying half of a blacksmith’s shop with him.
“Just in case.”
Cordelia nodded. “Thank you.”
A look of startled horror passed between Hugo and the magistrate.
The assembled men were shuffling their feet, eager to be on their way.
“Hugo, can your men move swiftly and silently? I do not want to attract much attention in the streets.”
He sighed. “Nearly half a dozen street-fighters and boxers, my lady, cannot blink without attracting attention. We had better get to this man’s house, and start the business.”
“Lead on,” she said, but ignored her own remark and took to the front of the group.
***
Hugo strode to the left of her. Close behind them and trying to get in between them was Geoffrey. To her right was Mr Delaney. It was thrilling to have a posse of strong men following at her back.
“Which of these men could play the part of an arresting officer?” she said.
Mr Delaney cut in. “Do you not expect me to do that?”
“No, but I thank you, sir. He knows you, does he not?”
“He does.”
“And I cannot do it,” Hugo Hawke said. “Smith will do it. He can speak nicely enough, for a foundry-worker.”
“Excellent,” she said.
The magistrate then said, “I have one more concern. We cannot allow these men, rough as they are, to lay hands upon the Lord Brookfield. Even if you force a confession from him, which I am sceptical about, what then? Do you expect that he will come quietly with me?”
“No,” she said. “Do not fear. I have other contacts hereabouts, and that is quite in hand.”
Hugo said, “There is no point pressing her. She will have her way. I have learned this to my cost.”
She ignored them both now. Lord Brookfield’s house in London was a tall, narrow affair in Bloomsbury. The rain was keeping most people inside, though their little crowd had turned a few heads. There was not the same bustle on the streets in the more exclusive areas. Here, people could live fully inside. In the poor places, the dwellings were so cramped and dirty that family life existed as much outside as it did within the cracked and unsafe walls.
Gibbs had made enquiries for her, discreetly, and had discovered that to the best of his knowledge Lord Brookfield would be at home that midweek evening. She had not told him the full extent of her plans, because she knew he would worry.
And she, herself, was worrying. What if the information was wrong? Or what if he had changed his mind and gone out? She stared up at the house. There were lights in some of the windows, but that meant nothing.
Was he home?
Her chest felt tight.
He had to be home. She could not organise this lunacy, this folly, another time. If she stopped to think about what she was doing, she would have laughed, then cried, then committed herself to the nearest asylum.
What else could she do? Write to The Times? Take out an advertisement in The Daily Post? The only solution had to be a public confession, and she had to use all her skills of acting and artifice.
What is a woman, she thought, if not someone who has had to learn to survive in this world by her acting, and artifice, and conversational cunning? This is truly what all my education has led me to. This is what we are all bred to, in the end.
She pushed away her doubts. “Hugo, bring me your man, Smith.”
A very tall man with wide shoulders but a narrow waist was brought to her. He dipped his head in respect briefly, but then met her eyes as she talked to him. He reminded her of Geoffrey, a man secure enough in his place to fear no one of any standing, higher or lower.
She explained, at length, what he was to say. “Can you remember all this?” she demanded.
“Of course,” he replied, and he spoke with confidence.
“Go to it, then.”
He rolled his shoulders as if adjusting his jacket, and then strode up the steps to the door. She hastily placed the other fake policemen all around, and hid herself with Hugo, Mr Delaney, and Geoffrey at the back.
Smith hammered loudly. The door was answered very promptly by a livered man.
“Can I help you?” the overdressed flunky inquired.
“We are here on the business of justice,” Smith said, his voice strong. “We are to arrest the Lord Brookfield and take him into custody.”
The man in livery laughed. “You are not serious. Get off this property.”
Smith pushed forward, and Cordelia cheered inside. He wedged himself in the doorway and shouted, “Lord Brookfield! You must show yourself or we shall come in and take you by force.”
“You cannot! This is a disgrace!” The manservant shoved at Smith, who shoved back.
“Assault a member of the police, would you? Arrest this man, too!”
Lord Brookfield then appeared behind them, in the hallway, lit by the lamps and candles that adorned his large home. He was dressed for a quiet evening alone, in a rich smoking jacket and comfortable trousers. “What is going on here?” he demanded.
“Lord Brookfield? You are arrested for the murder of Louis Bonneville. You must come with us, sir.” Smith then waved his arms to get two more men to join him on the steps. Cordelia was impressed.
Lord Brookfield laughed, just as his manservant had done a moment before. “Oh, get them away from here, Travers.”
“We have evidence, sir.”
“Oh, you haven’t been listening to that poor, ill Lady Cordelia have you? She’s not right in the head. She is a widow, you know.”
As if that explains anything, she thought crossly. Although it was an excuse she had often used to justify her erratic behaviour, it was not one that she wished to have foisted on herself.
“We have a confession from Albert Socks, sir. He has confessed to his part in the crime, and to your own most fatal involvement.”
“You have a what? From Socks?”
“Indeed, sir. He is at the station house at this very moment, telling us all.”
“That two-faced, lying, duplicitous little —! Why, I warned him …”
Mr Delaney, at Cordelia’s side, hissed in surprise.
“So you see, sir,” Smith was continuing. “We have evidence and a confession. It is inevitab
le.”
“Look, man,” Lord Brookfield said, suddenly lowering his voice. “This is all so loud and unnecessary. You have a man in custody now, so go along with Albert Socks. Goodness knows, he will be no great loss to the political community. Travers, some money, if you will.”
“I cannot take a bribe,” Smith said proudly.
Now Mr Delaney was positively fuming.
“It is not a bribe,” Lord Brookfield said. He lowered his voice even further so that they could no longer hear what was being said but he gesticulated inside and was clearly inviting Smith to step in and discuss terms.
Smith stepped back, and motioned his men forward, and said in a clear voice, “I will not! Men, arrest him. You will be charged with perverting the course of justice, with the attempted corruption of an officer of the law, and murder!”
“Your Smith is really very good. Maybe he should consider a career in the police himself,” Cordelia whispered to Hugo.
“And take a pay cut, for terrible hours, and the daily threat of violence? He is better working at an honest job,” Hugo replied.
“I am innocent!” Lord Brookfield was saying. “This is just slander and lies. You cannot believe anything that Socks says.”
Smith pulled out the trump card that Cordelia had furnished him with. It was the coded message that she had found in Albert Socks’ study. “And this, sir? This note that you wrote, on your own notepaper, with the heading torn off, to Socks? It condemns you, sir.”
“It is not mine and I have never seen it before. Get off my property!”
“When you hold it to the light, sir, your watermark, your family crest, is fully visible.”
Lord Brookfield lunged forward but he was immediately grabbed by two of the boxers and the rest rushed up the steps to surround him and bring him down, jostling and pushing.
Cordelia stepped forward. She had no one left to hide behind now, and she brought herself out into the light.
“You!” he yelled in fury. “I might have guessed!”
Now her other confederates were arriving and moving towards them, watching and listening.
“Yes, me,” she said. “You are condemned by your own mouth, and by your hand, and by your deeds, now that I have unravelled it all.”
“Why?”
“Because you are guilty.”
“No, why would I want to kill a member of my own party?”
“You were hardly on the same side,” she said. “You have made that very plain to me. You are a man of tradition, of history, of stability. You do not even like what your own party leader is doing! I understand what ‘coercion’ means now. It refers to the Bill that Peel wants to bring before Parliament, the Irish Coercion Bill, and you oppose it. You oppose all that he stands for. You oppose free trade and progress and the repeal of the corn laws.”
“I oppose a man who has turned from a Tory to a Whig! He is a liberal in disguise, my lady, and you know nothing of what you speak!”
“And Bonneville was more radical even than Peel,” she said. “Peel still has his supporters in the house, but when Bonneville was killed, he had one less, and it sent a signal to the rest. Constable Evans?” she called.
“I am here, my lady.”
“Arrest this man.”
Smith and the boxers fell away as the real policemen came up and took hold of Lord Brookfield.
“What is this? Was this a sham? A trick? This is—”
He was hauled away, and suddenly Cordelia was surrounded by a throng of laughing and celebratory fighting men, all slapping one another’s backs.
“That was good sport,” said Smith. “Now, let us take you to show you our kind of sport…”
Chapter Forty
Even Hugo was alarmed at the suggestion that Cordelia attend a boxing match. She was urged into a cab instead, and Mr Delaney accompanied her. “We must go to the station house now, and set things right,” he explained. “Your Mr Hawke, and your coachman, and that Smith must come also. Constable Evans and his men will take the Lord Brookfield.”
“Do you think he can really face justice?” she asked as they rattled through the drizzling streets. Her cloak had kept her dry, but her feet were wet and the moisture had wicked up her fine woollen stockings steadily.
“I hope so. This is the New Police, don’t forget. We have had some issues but the principles remain sound. And the good men do outnumber the bad.”
When they reached the station house, they discovered that word had preceded them, and the place was abuzz. Albert Socks had been brought in and the two detectives that had been so rude to her were now claiming everything as their own.
She was taken into a small room, and insisted that Mr Delaney come too, so that her words could not be twisted, and she told them everything. Smith had handed over the message and they confirmed that it looked likely to be from Brookfield, not Bonneville.
Then she was asked to wait while they went about their enquiries, following her information and her hints. She was put in a small room, but this time it was not locked.
Ruby came from Furnival’s Inn, and Geoffrey left briefly to obtain some food for them. Cordelia picked at it. “Oysters at last,” she said. “Thank you.”
“It was all I could obtain,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It has been an extraordinary night.”
“But this is not extraordinary food.”
“Exactly,” she said. “It will ground me.”
Ruby laughed. “I think it would take more than rough street food to ground you, my lady! What do we wait here for?”
“News. I could go home but I need to know the outcome of all this. And anyway, the police might need my help again.”
“I think they would rather eat a bad oyster,” Ruby said. “Your name is not spoken of with great praise out there.”
“Only because they seek to take the credit for themselves, and they cannot.”
But they could.
Constable Evans came to her at nearly midnight, when her eyelids were dropping. Ruby had fallen asleep in a chair, and Geoffrey was sitting on the floor. “Your butler is here,” Evans said. “Come to take his daughter. I thought you might like to see her.”
“Thank you! Yes, I will.” She followed him to the lobby where Florence stood at the desk. Another policeman was writing things down in a ledger, while Neville Fry stood at his daughter’s side, flapping his hands awkwardly.
“My darling child!” he said.
She looked at him as if he were a stranger — which, indeed, he was. “What is to become of me now?”
“We can find you a suitable position.” He looked to Cordelia, who nodded.
“Of course. I have many kindly contacts.” Well, she knew Ivy Delaney. That would be a start.
“I do not want to be in service!” Florence said haughtily. “I was engaged to be married to a powerful man, you know. I do not want a future as a maid.”
“But you were used,” Cordelia said. “Can you not see that, now?”
“We were in love,” Florence insisted. “They said, that Inspector and his men, they said that Bonneville had been set up to fall for me, but I cannot believe it.”
Neville tried to take her arm but she shook him off. She flounced out of the station house and he followed, dejectedly. Cordelia shook her head in sorrow, and noticed that Inspector Hood was watching her.
“Tell me about the relationship between her and Bonneville,” she said. “What have you discovered?”
He smiled smugly. “Oh, I thought you knew everything,” he said.
“You know that I do not.”
He was triumphant, and in a most unseemly fashion. “We have decided to drop the charges of house-breaking against you, although the manner in which you obtained the evidence was very suspect. If one of my own men had acted in such a fashion, I would have had to have sacked him.”
“Lucky, then, that it was me not them.”
“Indeed. We have returned to Mrs Clancey’s and have conf
irmed that the panel in the wardrobe was false, and that Socks not only rented one room, but both; he had the adjoining one, too, and the key fitted both doors.”
“I knew it!”
“And on the night of the murder, he arranged for Florence to be there, and for the Lord Brookfield himself to be in the adjoining room.”
“He arranged?”
“Well, at the Lord Brookfield’s insistence that he arrange things, so that Lord Brookfield himself could add the poison to the wine. Both of them knew that Florence would not drink it, and would be a perfect person to blame.”
“And what of Socks and Brookfield?”
“Complicated,” Hood said. “Once they were friends, and Brookfield his mentor, but lately they are more and more estranged. Both are odious in their own ways.”
“And there, sir, we can agree,” she said.
He twitched and hesitated before saying, “Yes, I believe we can. Now, my men are working on the investigations and we are satisfied that this will go to trial very soon.”
She waited for his thanks, but none were forthcoming and she realised they never would be.
“Good evening, Inspector Hood,” she said. “Let me fetch my maid and coachman, and I will be away.”
“Do not leave London yet,” he said. “We may yet …”
“Need me?”
“…have to talk to you,” he concluded.
***
Mrs Unsworth was remarkably sober for the late hour. She had been waiting in the kitchen, and even seemed relieved to see them all arrive back safely. She made some hot drinks without being asked.
Geoffrey was feeling very pleased with himself. He sat at the table and stretched. “They have even sacked some of the worst policemen,” he said.
“I am still surprised that some of them are corrupt,” Cordelia said. “And saddened.”
Geoffrey shrugged. “What do you expect, when we take such rough men and put them on rough beats, and expect them to act like gentlemen?”
“Why, you almost sound as if you are sympathetic.”
He snorted, and reached out for a biscuit. Before Cordelia could stop him, he had bitten deep into the dough that had an impression of the key on it.
