by Jane Feather
“Interviews, eh?” The duke looked them over fiercely while they tried their best to appear ingratiating and submissive. His Grace observed the ink on Charlotte’s nose, Elf’s eye patch, and the fact that Rupa was trying to eat one of the wax apples from the table decorations. “Damnation, they’re a disreputable-looking bunch.” His gaze lit on the telltale scattering of wineglasses, in various stages of emptiness. He thundered, “By God, you haven’t been giving them spirits, have you?”
“No, sir. Certainly not.” George was fighting to achieve a lord-of-the-manor posture. “This was … I was … I had laid out the glasses to test them. To see how well they would do, cleaning up after a—a soiree.”
George’s grandfather had screwed up one eye to squint into the empty burgundy bottle. “I don’t see that you had to waste the ninety-seven on it. I carried it back myself from the Continent.” He seemed to warm to the recollection. Mellowing slightly, he pointed to Charlotte. “The spindly one might clean up to advantage, I suppose.” When his gaze reached Lucy, he said severely, “You’re not thinking of this one, I hope?”
“No, sir!.”
“See that you don’t. Your father’s got a weakness for blue-eyed redheads. Your mother’d never have her in the house.” Looking down his nose at her, he said, “Weren’t thinking to come here and ensnare my grandson, were you?”
“Oh, no, sir.” She tried for a cockney accent. “Oi’m a good girl, oi am.”
“Humph. No better than you should be, I’ll wager.” He turned his attention to Elf. “And you, sir. Get yourself to a good barber next time before you go looking for a post.” Then, waving vaguely in George’s direction, he continued, “You might as well carry on, but stay out of my wine cellar. I’ll see you at dinner.” He frowned at the clutter of dirty dishes. “Which you appear to have begun already.”
The shuffle of slippers faded down the hallway.
George looked at Charlotte. “You’re hired. The rest of you can leave.” And got a shower of pillows lobbed in his face.
They had just voted to adjourn when Charlotte pointed out the rain was over and the sun had come out.
“Look,” Rupa said from the window, “there’s a rainbow. It seems it’s rising straight out of Human Bone Creek.”
IN SPITE of the sunny weather, and in spite of a late-afternoon catch of two very fine pike, Lucy found she was able to put the glass bottle out of her thoughts. She was even able to laugh at her previous bout of nerves. Temporary delirium.
Tomorrow, they would kidnap Lord Kendal.
Lucy spent the evening designing some promising new fly patterns, reread “Observations of the Eel, and Other Fish that Want Scales; and How to Fish for Them” in her tattered copy of The Compleat Angler, said Gentle Jesus with her mother, and slept like a schoolchild.
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE MORNING, Lucy trimmed her straw hat with violets and bluebells, watching fondly as her mother ate a breakfast of bread and tea while poring over the newspaper.
“I’ll be off soon, Mama. You shouldn’t expect to see me till late.”
“Umm-hmm” sounded from behind the paper.
“I’ll be on a mission, with Elf and everyone. For Justice, you know.”
“Justice. Excellent,” came the absent reply.
“Do you know anything about Lord Kendal, Mama?”
“Umm? Kendal? A Whig. And a bigot.” She peered around the corner of the paper and said, “It’s wonderful to see you’re taking a greater interest in politics,” and disappeared again. “Please endeavor not to put Charlotte’s father to the trouble of having to collect you from the police magistrate again. You do remember what it did to George’s father’s dyspepsia.”
“Yes. Absolutely. He chased us across Piccadilly with a horsewhip.”
“That kind of exertion can’t be good for a man of his age.
“No. Absolutely not. But he’s out of town, you see. So there can be no objection.”
“None in the world,” her mother said. But Lucy noticed her tone was somewhat sardonic.
Lucy took a sip from her cooling teacup and watched the scattered tea leaves tumble over themselves like glitter in a snow globe.
She plucked another bluebell from her garden basket and studied the pedals. “Mama?”
“Umm-hmm?”
“Do you remember yesterday—”
“Despite my advancing years, I am able to remember yesterday, yes.”
Lucy laughed and kissed her mother on the top of her head. “I was going to say, do you remember yesterday when we saw the man in the park?”
“You’re spilling pollen on my toast. Yes, I remember the man in the park.”
“That was Henry Lamb, you know.”
“I did know. But I’d rather hoped you didn’t.”
Examining her hat, finding a place to add the bluebell stem, Lucy said casually, “He was attractive, I thought.”
“Yes.”
“Notably attractive, I thought.”
“He is as handsome as hell is wicked.”
“But bad, though,” Lucy added. “I mean he doesn’t look bad, but I hear he is bad.”
“Very bad.” The newspaper sagged, rustling as her mother released a hand to pick up her teacup.
“Women pay him?”
Without a trace of expression, her mother answered, “I’m happy to report I have no personal knowledge of his obligations in that area.”
“Don’t you find it interesting, Mama, that a profession that excites one to so much compassion when it is engaged in by women excites one to so much revulsion when it is engaged in by men? How did Henry Lamb come to be so bad?”
Lucy’s mother readjusted the newspaper with a snap. “He was unkindly treated as a child.”
“Why?”
“His mother had a liaison and in time, gave birth to a child who had clearly not been fathered by her husband. Her husband is a hard man with an unforgiving nature and he sent the baby to the country, where it was raised under extremely harsh conditions. The husband did everything in his power to make sure neither his wife nor her child had a moment’s happiness until the day she died.”
“But how cruel. How barbaric.”
“It was. But the husband had been deeply in love with his wife and his sense of betrayal was very sharp. It must be some small comfort to Henry Lamb that his present way of life gives a maximum amount of embarrassment to the proud man who is not his father and who should have been.”
Lucy waited for more, but her mother had evidently said all she had to say on the subject. It was clear she had gone back to reading the newspaper because in a moment, she turned the page.
“Mama?”
“Yes, dear.”
“When I was born, thank you for not letting something like that happen to me.”
Lucy’s mother set down her paper, leaned forward to clasp her daughter’s hand, and held it.
Just held it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS MAY be surprised to learn that the greatest difficulty in a successful kidnapping is not the abduction. The average metropolitan resident can be plucked from the street in broad daylight in the wink of an eye. (The Justice Society acknowledged that it was a sad comment on our times. But useful, in this case.)
No, the greatest difficulty in a kidnapping lies in finding a place to stow the victim. This is especially true if the abductors still live with their parents.
Even as liberal a parent as Lucy’s was not likely to let her store one Lord Kendal in the family linen cupboard.
In this case, the Society was in debt to George’s grandfather, who owned a small property George discovered in the Inventory of Rents Owing ledger under the heading Properties Untenanted. The keys, neatly labeled Property #32, were discovered in the key closet. An urchin, paid five shillings a week to pass the house twice daily, reported that it was completely abandoned.
The history of Property #32 was obtained from the duke’s valet, mellowed by the gift of
expensive sherry. The stone-and-red-brick structure dated back more than two centuries. Conveniently barricaded with a tall sticky-bush and blackthorn shrubbery, it had been used as both dowager house and bachelor digs; and, if you could believe anything said by a drunken valet, back in the days of hair powder and skirt hoops, George’s grandfather had employed it as a love nest.
Most recently, Property #32 had been pressed into service by the Crown. During the Napoleonic Wars, it had become a secret facility to hold highly sensitive political prisoners—French spies, who would have been executed if their powerful familial connections had not made it impossible to do so. Following the peace, they had been shipped home with invitations never to return. The alterations to the property necessary to make it useful as a prison had made it unattractive as a rental home, so it had not been let since.
Perfect.
At noon, Lucy met George and Charlotte at Dudley’s bookshop in Pall Mall, and from there they made their way east, along the Thames.
They arrived at Property #32, and found their key ring opened nothing. This was a setback, since they planned to meet Rupa, her brothers, and Elf here with a wagonload of Lord Kendal.
After trying each key in the kitchen doorlock, George said, “Elf could have this open in a second.”
Charlotte struggled with a stubbornly shut rear window. “We can’t waste time. I’ll take my cousin’s hackney carriage and look for Elf and Rupa.”
“They’re shadowing Kendal. They could be anywhere.”
“That makes it simple. I’ll look for Kendal. When I find them, I’ll bring Elf back here, and he can pick the locks if you haven’t had any luck.”
Charlotte left quickly.
It seemed that the house was locked up tighter than a mint. But eventually, by standing on George’s shoulders, Lucy was able to pull the board off a high window, smash the glass, and wriggle inside. George tossed her up the nub of a candle.
Cleaned and inspected twice a year by the ducal staff, the house was in respectable order, smelling faintly of stale varnish, cold ash, and cedar. It was rambling, dark, and quiet, with room after empty room, and the uneven floors of a building that had settled slowly over time. The windows were barred and sealed. The interior doors, however, were of modern origin and grimly reinforced.
Only one room retained its furnishings. In a remote corner of the attic, at the end of a narrow, twisting corridor, was a small room with spotless, whitewashed walls, a feather bed with a dimity bedcover patterned with tiny violets, and a delicate basin stand and table carved in walnut to the same pattern. Two tiny circular windows let in a smear of diffused light. The room door was solid iron, the lock like the jaws of a beast.
When she let George inside by a ground-floor window, she led him back to the attic room.
“What do you think, George?” She set down the candle. “Was this a cell or wasn’t it?”
George tested the feather bed. “It was a cell, all right.”
“For some great lady?”
“Not as I understand it. She was a commoner but she’d made a powerful friend, if you know what I mean.”
“Someone in the government?” Lucy was mindful of her mother’s encouragement to show an interest in politics.
“Someone so high in the government, you have to call him Your Highness. I don’t know what secret she pried out of him, but it must have been good because they kept her locked up here four years. He wouldn’t let them execute her, I guess. Of course, when Grandpa’s valet said all that, he was so intoxicated he was guzzling soap from his shaving mug.”
“In any case, there was a key in the lock. You’d better take it, I suppose.”
“All right. Let’s go explore the cellars. We don’t want to keep Kendal up here. It’s too comfortable. He won’t have enough of an inducement to give in.”
They located the locked cellar door in a windowless stillroom, and it proved as inaccessible as the rest of the house. Even the key from the attic chamber was useless.
Lucy opened her tackle box and began to gouge at the lock with her pocketknife and her bodkin. George went off to map the perimeter and watch for Elf and Charlotte.
Lucy knelt on the cool kitchen tiles, the quietude broken only by the screech of her bodkin in the lock. Candlelight made a flood of bobbing shadows on the drab wall paneling. Damp, chill air crept beneath the cellar door, carrying with it a whiff of arsenic. Someone had laid down rat poison, below.
When she heard a muffled commotion from their entry window, her knees were too stiff to stand. By the time she was upright, Rupa had hurried into the room, smiling and winded.
“We’ve done it,” she said. “We’ve got Kendal.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
APPARENTLY, LORD KENDAL’S abduction had been no amble in the park. It had taken three men to cudgel him into submission. One of Rupa’s brothers had lost two teeth. The other had a cracked rib, a black eye, and a nosebleed. Elf’s right hand was broken. The three seemed to be in excellent spirits.
The cellar being still unavailable, the decision was quickly made to haul the unconscious viscount to the attic. There was consensus among his three assailants that it would be better if he was behind a locked door when he awoke.
Lucy showed Elf the cellar door while Rupa’s brothers puffed their way upstairs with his lordship’s deadweight. Lucy left Elf armed with the tools in her tackle box and joined the others in the attic.
She met Rupa’s brothers on their way downstairs, and said good night, because they were leaving until morning. Rupa and George were standing outside the open iron doorway. They had already worked out a plan of action.
George said, “I’m going to be downstairs to see if I can lend Elf a hand. Rupa’s going outside to keep watch for Charlotte. It seems they missed each other, so Charlotte’ll probably show up here any minute. You keep an eye on Kendal. The first sign he shows of waking up, shout.”
Alone once more in the attic gloom, she tiptoed into the whitewashed chamber, where Lord Kendal lay as they’d dumped him, facedown on the bed, covered in his greatcoat.
The chamber and hallway seemed dimmer than they had been when brightened by candlelight, and the overcast daylight from the windowlets gave the room a fragile haze. Kendal could have been a mound of clothes. Beyond, the corridor was a somber, gaping hole.
The aged house had an eerie way of swallowing sound. She could no longer hear George or Rupa and certainly not Elf. She began to wonder if they would hear her if she did shout.
Far down the corridor, she heard a faint creeping sound … a footfall. Quickly, she stepped to the doorway. And saw nothing. It was so quiet, you could have heard the spinnerets of a spider.
Lucy wished her nerves weren’t so on edge. She shut the iron door and began to feel better.
There was no place to sit so she stood against the wall and designed lures in her head. She was relieved to see Kendal shift slightly once or twice. At least they hadn’t murdered him.
She was even more relieved when she heard footsteps in the corridor and Elf call out, “Luce? I’m sorry we’ve been so long, but we had an accident belowstairs.” He tried the door handle. “Open the door, will you?”
“What sort of accident?” She tried the door herself. “Elf, it doesn’t seem to be opening.”
“Oh, hell, Lucy, what possessed you to shut it? Is Kendal still out cold?”
“Yes. Elf, this won’t open! George has the key, though. What accident?”
“When we got into the cellar, George fell headfirst in a cistern. I’ve only just got him out. He smells like a cat box. Stay put. I’ll be right back with the key.”
Lucy found her shaky feeling of security retreat with his running footsteps. The minute he was gone seemed like a lifetime. The clothes pile on the bed slept on.
She was grateful to hear two sets of running footsteps echo in the corridor.
“Elf? George?”
“Lucy? Are you all right? Any change in Kendal?”
“No,
Elf. But could you get me out of here immediately, please?”
George’s overexcited tone came through the door. “We’ve got a problem, Lucy. I don’t have the key.”
“Don’t have it? What do you mean, don’t have it?”
George’s voice lowered, as though he’d got a sotto voce stage command. “Elf, she’s getting hysterical. I told you she was going to get hysterical.”
Elf said, “Gently, Luce. We’re not going to let anything happen to you, I promise. Take a deep, slow breath. George lost the key in the cistern but I’ll pick the lock. I’m working on it now, can you hear?”
“Please hurry, Elf,” she encouraged shakily.
“I will. Try not to worry.”
Considerable time passed. Elf said, “All right, Luce. Try the door again.”
She tried. Nothing.
“Damn it to hell, Lucy.” George’s voice was taut with frustration. “What made you shut the damn door?”
“Damn it to hell, George,” Elf snapped. “What made you lose the damn key? Will you stand back out of my light? And don’t pace. You’re making the candle flicker.”
Lucy glanced fearfully at the greatcoat on the bed, which didn’t seem to be quite in the same position it had been in before.
“Elf,” she moaned softly. “Elf, please …”
“Luce, I’ll get it open. I promise.”
Moments slipped by. Lucy could hear distant footsteps. Then voices. Rupa. And Charlotte.
Charlotte was saying, “I can’t understand where you and Elf disappeared to. When you two shadow someone, you vanish completely. I’ve been following Kendal all afternoon and I didn’t see you once. Ugh! George, you smell like a privy. What on earth, Elf? Rupa tells me Lucy’s got herself locked up in a cell?”
“She’s in here.” Elf spoke without interrupting his work. “With Kendal.”
“No,” Charlotte said. “She’s not.”
“Charlotte? I am,” Lucy said miserably.
“No, you’re not. I just left Kendal a quarter hour ago. He’s at his haberdasher on Bond Street being fitted for a ‘chapeau.’”
