by Joan Smith
“I never thought of that,” Coffen admitted. “Have you got anything, Luten?”
He outlined Brougham’s findings regarding the financing and told them of Prinney’s visit, which sent Prance into paroxysms of jealousy. “You will soon be dubbed Beau Luten at this rate,” Prance snipped.
Corinne outlined Lord Clare’s interest in the Morgate Home, and the auction ball that was approaching.
“There’s my chance to get rid of that ugly Chinese jug in my saloon,” Coffen said.
Luten gave a gasp of horror. “I hope you don’t mean the blue and white flask with the flying phoenix pattern! That’s from the Yuan dynasty. It’s priceless.”
“The only decent– the best piece in your entire house,” Prance added.
“The handle’s too small and it don’t pour worth a damn.”
Prance groaned, to think of a priceless piece being used for wine.
“If you’re planning to get rid of it, you can sell it for more than fifty guineas,” Corinne informed him. Coffen understood money better than art. “What are you going to donate, Prance?”
“I must consider the matter. I have a rather fine pearl cravat pin that I’ve taken in dislike. It disappears against a white cravat, but on the other hand, it looks well with a black stock for funerals. I also have a vast store of bibelots I’ve outgrown aesthetically. I’ve taken a certain small Greuze painting of a boy with a duck in aversion. The French genre school doesn’t really suit my decor. I had thought of sending it home to Granmaison to amuse Tante Phoebe. I’m not sure I want Clare’s guests to think it represents my taste.”
“They won’t,” Coffen said. “You wouldn’t be giving it away if you liked it. The question is, why did you buy it?”
“A temporary lapse of judgement, like your accidentally having one decent piece in your house.”
“If you mean that blue jug, I didn’t buy it. It was there when I inherited the place.”
“That explains it,” Prance said. “And you, Luten, what will you donate? Or will you not be attending the ball?”
“I plan to attend.” With a long gaze down the table to Corinne, he said, “It will be for Corinne to decide what she wants to be rid of, since she’ll soon be mistress here.” He bowed at her and added, “Anything she chooses, so long as it’s not myself.”
She said saucily, “And who in her right mind would pay fifty guineas for you, milord?”
“A hit!” he cried, clutching playfully at his heart. “A palpable hit.” This, too, was unlike Luten. She was happy to see him in such good spirits.
When there was only one lady at the table, the gentlemen forewent the traditional port and cigars and accompanied her to the drawing room after dinner for coffee.
Coffen was the first to leave. He rose with a flustered look that wouldn’t fool a child and said, “I’ve promised to visit my aunt tonight. She’s come down with a cold, poor soul.”
“Which aunt is that?” Corinne asked, as they were related, and the aunt might be some kin of hers as well.
“Aunt Marion. You wouldn’t know her. I had a note from her while I was out this afternoon.”
“You want to be sure you don’t catch her cold,” said Prance, who was extremely cautious in matters of health.
“I will, never fear. Mind it’s more a stomach complaint than a cold. Plus she has a touch of lumbago.”
“I hope she’s seeing a doctor!” Corinne said.
Prance gave a wave of his hand. “Sounds like a touch of hypochondria to me.”
“That as well. She’s falling apart. I must be toddling along. Aunt Mary will be waiting for me, A dandy dinner, Luten. What time are we having breakfast?”
“You are shameless, Coffen!” Prance charged.
“You’re right. I’ve been at Luten’s trough enough for one week. I’ll join you instead,” he said, and left.
Prance looked at the remaining couple. “Such a plethora of ailments as he hobbled his aunt with causes a doubt, n’est-ce pas? What is he really up to, I wonder ?”
“I noticed Aunt Marion becoming Aunt Mary,” Corinne said. “I never heard him mention either of them before. I’ll take a look out the window and see if Fitz goes for the carriage.” She went to the window. After a moment she turned around. “Fitz just ran out the door. He’s gone to fetch the carriage.”
Prance said, “I’d offer to follow him, but Byron has invited me to join him and some other writers at his place this evening. I expect Coffen is only going to pick up an actress.”
“You and Byron are becoming thick,” Luten said, smiling as he knew Prance’s interest in the poet.
“He quite insisted. But I can send a note begging off if–”
“Not at all. Run along. Corrie and I will keep an eye on Coffen.”
“If you’re sure you don’t mind. One shouldn’t eat and run.”
“That’s quite all right. You didn’t eat anything.”
“Au contraire! I feasted on olives. They were delicious.” Prance left in a flurry of thanks for dinner and promised to call the next morning, “After I have fed Coffen.”
“I wish he hadn’t left,” Corinne said. “I really feel someone ought to follow Coffen.”
“Coffen’s not a child,” Luten scoffed.
“He is where women are concerned. You should have seen him making a cake of himself over Fanny.”
“He’s off to the green rooms.”
“No, it’s Fanny Rowan he has in his eye.” She sat, frowning a moment. Then she looked up to see Luten wearing a similar expression. “You don’t suppose he’s–”
“He mentioned a convenient ladder.”
“Oh dear! He’s set up a rendezvous with Fanny. He’ll get the poor girl in trouble.”
“She’s already ‘in trouble.’ That’s why she’s there. We’ll follow him,” Luten said.
“How can we? You can’t–”
“I can hobble to my carriage.”
“Shouldn’t we stop him from going instead?”
“We can’t forbid it. He’s not a child.”
Luten pulled the bell chord and ordered his carriage. Corinne felt a surge of excitement. This was more like it! Having Luten back in the game added to the thrill of it all. It was not as exciting with him hors de combat.
Evans first bundled Corinne into her shawl, then Luten into his many-collared greatcoat and handed him his cane. When the carriage drove up, they looked up the street to see that Coffen was not watching. Luten asked his driver to drive to the corner and follow Coffen’s carriage when it left his house.
They hadn’t long to wait. Within minutes, Coffen’s carriage came rattling along. He scuttled out of the house, looked up and down the street as if checking to see he was unobserved, then hopped into his rig and Fitz was off.
* * *
Chapter 13
The carriage was so well sprung and Luten’s team of bloods so well behaved the occupants were scarcely aware of the motion as the sleek black barouche sped down the roadway. With velvet squabs to cushion their backs and a fur rug over their knees, they were as comfortable as if they sat on a sofa. The lighted mansions of the west end flashed past the windows unnoticed. Their attention was on the carriage ahead of them, that lurched and bucked under Fitz’s inexpert hands.
“He’s not going to see Fanny,” Luten said, as they followed the carriage eastward along Piccadilly toward the theater district. The streets were filled with carriages delivering their occupants to the many balls and routs, plays and concerts that made up the social calendar of the autumn Little Season. They could follow Coffen without being observed. “He’s going to the green rooms, as I thought.”
“Let’s continue following him a little longer, see if he doesn’t turn south on Haymarket,” Corinne replied.
At Haymarket, Coffen’s carriage continued east. “You’re right,” she said, with a sigh of relief. “He’s off to Covent Garden or Drury Lane. Imagine, we must be happy about that! We really must find a nice girl for him,
Luten. It will be my first project, as soon as we solve Fogg’s murder.”
His head, in the darkness of the carriage, turned to her. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Countess?”
In days gone by, when Luten called Corinne Countess, it meant he was annoyed with her. His quizzical tone that evening, however, robbed the title of umbrage. The word and the tone combined relayed a subtle message–that he knew he had been a pompous ass in the past, that those days were over, and they were now free to make a joke of it. Or at least he was. Pleased with the progress, she gave him the answer he wanted.
“As soon as we solve Fogg’s murder, and are married. While you fiddle with your politics, I shall find Coffen a sensible girl and make him marry her.”
“Fiddle! Fiddle with politics? Is that any way to speak to a potential Prime Minister?” he asked, still in a quizzing vein.
“Brougham thinks they’ll choose you, then, if Prinney keeps his promise and brings the Whigs in?”
“It appears to be a consensus.” That was what had put him in this jovial mood! “But I take nothing for granted, including Prinney’s keeping his word. I’d feel more confident if he spent less time on Manchester Square, hearing the Bible according to Lady Hertford. Well, my pet, here we are, out on the town again, like old times. Where would you like to go? I have no invitations with me, but I daresay we wouldn’t be turned from the door if we attended one of the do’s I received invitations to. I can’t dance, but I can–and shall–keep a sharp eye on you as you jig it with all the handsomest gents.”
She slid her arm through his. “I don’t want to jig it with any other gentlemen than you, milord. Let us go to Lady Mandel’s concert. She’s hired that new Italian soprano everyone is talking about.”
“You don’t like Italian singers. The last concert we attended, you complained of the earache for a week.”
“That was a violinist. And he wasn’t Italian.”
He knew Corinne loved to dance nearly as much as she disliked classical music, and was touched that she chose an entertainment that allowed them to be together. They were not the type to fawn over each other in public but he sensed, as they sat together holding hands beneath her feathered fan and half listening to the Italian soprano, that a new closeness was growing between them, and was more contented than he had been in years. Perhaps ever.
* * * *
Coffen, looking through the carriage windows as he was bounced mercilessly over the cobblestones, saw ahead a stream of carriages, spotted the imposing complex of marble and porphyry that was the newly rebuilt Drury Lane Theater, and realized they were heading in the wrong direction. Fitz was lost, again. He gave the drawstring a tug and Fitz drew the team to a halt. When Fitz’s scowling face appeared at the window, Coffen said, “Demme, what ails you, Fitz? You ought to have taken a right turn at Haymarket. Down Whitehall and across Westminster Bridge to Lambeth. You’d get lost going ‘round the block.”
“It’s the team, Mr. Pattle. They’ve been to the theater that often they go on by themselves. I’ll have a word with them and see if they’ll turn about.”
It was some time before the horses agreed to turn around and go to the Morgate Home. Coffen was afraid Fanny would have given up on him and gone to bed. The explicitness of her instructions left no doubt that she had done this sort of thing before. He was to leave the carriage at the corner and proceed on foot to the Morgate Home, go down the walk to the garden shed, get the ladder and put it against the third window from the right on the second row of windows in the annex.
After a dozen perusals, he had the instructions by heart, but they proved difficult to execute. The first problem was the ragamuffin lad who appeared from nowhere when he reached the Morgate Home and dogged his every step, taunting him. “Know where you’re going, mister. You’re going to pick up one o’ them girls from the house, ain’t you?” He swiped a ragged sleeve across his nose and grinned.
“Run along, lad.”
“I know your sort. Dandies, preying on them pore, fallen wimmen.”
Coffen handed him a coin. The fellow bit it to test its authenticity before sliding it into his pocket. “Thanks, mister,” he said, but he didn’t leave. In fact, he seemed to think the coin had hired his services. “This way,” he said, leading Coffen unerringly to the garden shed and the ladder.
The ladder was long and exceedingly heavy. Coffen wished he had brought Fitz with him. The urchin watched and kept up a constant stream of chatter but when invited to “Take hold of t’other end,” he danced away. Dragging it across the flagged walk made a deal of noise. And to add to the fear of getting caught, it was cold and dark and scary. Swaying branches caused an eerie sensation of someone moving in the darkness, ready to leap out at him. It lacked only the haunting hoot of an owl to complete the gothic effect. As to his jacket and gloves, Coffen feared they were beyond repair, and certainly beyond appearing at any polite spot.
He had hoped to sneak Fanny into his box at Covent Garden for a treat. No fear of Luten or the others seeing him. They were all accounted for. If they heard he had been at the theater with a lady, he would say his cousin Susan was in town visiting Aunt Mabel, whom he must remember to let on was cured of her various illnesses. What was that expression Prance often used — “Oh what a tangled warp we woof, when first we practise to– no, that didn’t rhyme, but it was something to do with weaving anyhow.
When he felt the perspiration dripping into his eyes, he raised one hand to wipe it away. The ladder was too heavy for one hand. It fell with a clatter. Not two seconds later, a back door opened and a woman wearing a mob cap peeked her head out.
“Here, what’s going on?” she called in a harsh voice. Coffen froze. She looked all around but failed to spot his dark jacket in the shadows. “Is that you, Willie?”
The urchin strolled forward. “It’s only me, Meggie. Any leftovers from dinner?”
“I’ll take ‘em to your ma on my way home. Now be off with you.” Muttering, she went back inside and closed the door.
Between fatigue, soiled jacket, frustration and the conviction that he was too late, Coffen was ready to give up. If Fanny’s head had not appeared through an upper story window at that moment, he would have left.
She peered out and called enticingly. “Is that you, Mr. Pattle?”
He went forward. “It’s me, Fanny,” he called back in a whisper. “I’m having a bit of trouble with the ladder.”
“Give the gentleman a hand, Willie. What ails you?”
Willie, who had refused repeated urgings from Prance, immediately took up one end of the ladder. With his help, Coffen got it propped against the wall below Fanny’s window and she struggled out, feet first, followed by an interesting display of legs and petticoats. Willie watched with a lecherous grin on his dirty face.
Once on the ground, Fanny made a great commotion of straightening her skirts, rifling her reticule to extract a comb, tidying her hair, adjusting her shawl and generally getting herself into shape. This done, she said to Coffen, “Where’s your rig then? I hope you don’t expect me to go by shank’s mare.”
“My rig’s down the street, where you told me to leave it.”
She put her hand on his arm and said, “What are we waiting for? We’ll slip along the back, in case Bruton is looking.”
She led him to a path that ran between the back of the house and the stable. He noticed a dark carriage waiting in the shadows in front of the stable. “What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s nothing to worry about. Come along.”
They were eight or ten yards beyond the Home when he heard the noise of an opening door. Some scattered shrubbery made vision difficult, but he stopped to listen. It was voices, girls’ voices, laughing and chatting excitedly. They could only be coming from the Morgate Home.
“What’s going on? Where are they going?” he asked Fanny.
“To a retreat,” she said. “It’s a religious thing. They have prayers and fasting to purge their souls.”
&n
bsp; He hunkered down and peeked through the bushes. The girls were certainly rigged out in high style for this religious retreat. In their low-cut gowns with their hair piled high on their heads they looked like a flock of ladybirds.
“Come on,” Fanny urged, tugging at his hand. “We don’t have all night. I’ve got to be back in my bed before daybreak.”
He allowed himself to be drawn away. Fitz stood at the carriage, chewing a cheroot. A cloud of ill-smelling smoke billowed around his head. He had the door open and the steps down, to atone for having got lost en route. Fanny stepped in with a bold smile to the coachman. Coffen was about to join her when he saw Willie, trailing after them.
“I should give the lad a few pennies,” he said to Fanny, and closed the coach door. He dropped a handful of coins into Willie’s outstretched palm. Willie’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he espied the glint of silver.
“Follow that rig that’s leaving the Home,” Coffen said. “Take a hackney if you can get hold of one. If you can find out where that rig goes, there’s a golden boy in it for you. Here’s where I live.” He routed in his pocket and handed the boy one of his dogeared calling cards.
Willie stared, unable to believe his senses. “Yessir,” he gulped. “Yessir, I will. You can count on Willie Sykes. Yessir.”
Coffen joined Fanny and the carriage was off. “Anywhere in particular you’d like to go, Fanny?” he asked. “I thought you might like to see a play. Fear I’ve got a bit of mud on my clothes.”
“I could do with a spot of dinner. The slop they feed us at that place!” Coffen was never one to argue about eating. “There’s a cozy little inn out the Chelsea Road where they’re not too nosey. Know what I mean?” She gave him a nudge with her elbow and a bold wink.
Coffen had made the date with honorable intentions, but he saw now that he could relax and enjoy himself. It was just like being out with one of the actresses. Of course Fitz couldn’t find the inn Fanny wanted to visit, but after driving around in circles for three quarters of an hour he found one similar without ever crossing over the Thames.
