Fraser 03 - The Mask of Night

by Tracy Grant

  “Lord, yes. Wouldn’t miss a masquerade. But—“

  “What were you doing near a dead body?” Bet asked him.

  “Turned up in the fountain during the Lydgates’ masquerade last night. The dead man, that is. Someone stabbed him.”

  “And they say we lead wild lives.” Bet shook her head.

  Mr. Trenor got to his feet and tugged at her hand. “Let’s go to the Pig & Whistle and bring back some food.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this’ll be private business. They won’t talk if we’re about.”

  “But— Oh, very well. I don’t know why Nannie always gets all the luck.”

  “We’ll find some of those pies you like,” Mr. Trenor promised, grabbing a blue velvet cloak from a hook on the wall and wrapping it round her shoulders.

  “Before we speak further,” Charles said when the door had closed, “there’s something we have to sort out. We seem to have exchanged a lot of information in the past hour.”

  Nan looked up at him. She had unpinned her hair and was leaning forward to let it dry before the fire. “You mean because I know your wife worked with Sam?”

  “I don’t think,” Charles said, in a gentle, inexorable voice, “that you know anything at all.”

  “I don’t peach on my friends, Mr. Fraser. Or do you think a St. Giles mort takes her word less seriously than a gentleman?”

  “On the contrary. But I’ve learned anyone’s word can at times give way to circumstance and exigency.”

  Nan tossed back her hair. “I doubt anyone who’d matter would believe me if I did try to peach. But anyways, you could ruin Sam and even if I didn’t care what became of Sam, Sam could ruin me, so I’d say we’ve all got jolly self-interested reasons to hold our tongues.”

  Charles nodded.

  Sam was staring at Charles. “Speaking of self-interest, you could have let Eckert’s men take me. They’d have let you and Mélanie leave.”

  “Probably.” Charles turned his mug between his hands. “I didn’t much fancy their methods. And I did give my wife my word I wouldn’t let any ill come to you from our visit.”

  Lucan laughed. “A besotted madman. But this is one ill you couldn’t blame on your visit.”

  “I’m not so sure. Did you peach on Mr. Eckert?”

  “What the devil business is it of yours?”

  “Your denials seemed singularly vehement. And if you really didn’t peach on him, it looks to me as though someone set you up for the little scene that was enacted just now.”

  “And you think that has to do with St. Juste?”

  “I think it’s possible. But then you know more about your dealings with St. Juste than I do.”

  Sam struck his palm against his knee. “That bastard.” He took a swallow of tea and brandy. “I suppose now you expect me to tell you the truth in recompense.”

  “I doubt you ever do anything merely in recompense, Lucan.”

  Sam punched his fist into the chair arm. “I should have bloody well shown him the door the minute he showed up.”

  “When?” Mélanie said. “When did he?”

  Sam stared at her.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Sam,” Nan said.

  He wiped his hand across his face. His lip was still bleeding. “A month since.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Help is hiring a staff.”

  “What sort of staff?”

  “He wanted someone who knew the ropes of a break in and could read and write. And who’d know where to hire on others if needed.”

  Nan was staring at Sam with smoldering eyes. “You slimy bastard. What have you got Billy into?”

  “Billy can take care of himself,” Sam said.

  “Billy?” Mélanie asked.

  “My brother.”

  “You’re an enterprising family,” Charles said.

  “We know how to look out for ourselves. But,” she added, swinging her gaze back to Sam, “that doesn’t mean we can walk out of any danger unscathed.”

  Sam grabbed the brandy bottle from the floor and splashed more brandy into his tea. “He was eager enough for the rhino, wasn’t he?”

  “Of course he was. He’s eighteen and he thinks he’s as immortal as one of those Greek gods there’re all the statues of in the British Museum. What good’s that going to do him if he gets a knife in his chest?”

  “He didn’t. St. Juste did.”

  “Exactly. If this St. Juste of yours couldn’t take care of himself, you think Billy can?”

  “Nannie, I told you—“

  “I know what you told me.” She turned away from him, arms folded across her lace-vandyked bodice.

  “What did St. Juste want Billy for?” Mélanie said.

  “He didn’t say,” Sam muttered.

  “When did you last see St. Juste?” Charles asked.

  Sam took a swig from his mug, as though too tired to prevaricate further. “When he came to me a month ago. We haven’t spoken since.”

  “And Billy?”

  Nan chewed her nail. “He was here Monday last. Flashing his blunt and talking about his secret work.”

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “No. I was tired of him putting on airs, truth to tell.” She rubbed her forehead, eyes stricken.

  Charles leaned forward. “What was St. Juste planning?”

  “I tell you, I don’t know.” Sam stared into his mug. “But it wasn’t an isolated job. He was setting up an operation here.” He frowned for a moment. “You think someone connected to St. Juste set Eckert’s men on me? To shut me up? Who?”

  “St. Juste himself before he was killed, if he thought he’d revealed too much to you. Whoever killed St. Juste if they were trying to tidy away lose ends. Or whomever St. Juste was working for.”

  “I didn’t say—“

  “But you had to have known he was working for someone,” Mélanie said. She looked at Nan. “Why are you still so worried about your brother now St. Juste is gone?”

  Nan started to speak, then bit her lip and looked at her lover.

  “Why were you so afraid to tell us the truth, Sam?” Mélanie said. “Who could threaten you now?”

  Sam looked up at her. “Mélanie—“

  “Surely after today you trust us.”

  Sam stared at her for a long moment. She remembered much the same look in his eyes once in Spain when he’d been trying to decide how to tell her that the barn they were hiding in was surrounded by British soldiers. At last he set his mug down and turned to Charles. “Fraser, could you leave the room for a minute?”

  “Certainly, if you wish it.”

  “For God’s sake, Sam,” Mélanie said. “Haven’t we established that Charles is to be trusted?”

  “It’s not that.” Sam drew a long breath, gaze fixed on the cracked floorboards. “It’s—“

  “If you tell me alone, I’ll just turn round and tell Charles.”

  “But that’s a decision you can take for yourself.” Charles started to get up.

  Mélanie gripped her husband’s arm. “Better for us both to hear it at once. Who was St. Juste working for, Sam?”

  “Christ. Have it your own way.” Sam snatched up his mug, took a long swig, and stared at her over the chipped enamel rim. “St. Juste was working for the man we all used to work for. The man you used to sleep with. Raoul O’Roarke.”

  Chapter 10

  I thought you might enjoy Figaro's adventures. Perhaps we can talk about it and have a game of chess when next I'm in Scotland. I fully expect the chance for redemption after your victory in our last game.

  Raoul O'Roarke to Charles Fraser

  5 February 1796

  Charles bit back a desperate laugh, but he heard the raw sound echo in his head. How sick, how absurd, how damnably inevitable. Beside him, Mélanie was still as ice. “Did St. Juste tell you he was working for Raoul?” she asked.

  “Course not. Since when does that bastard tell anyone anything?” Lucan cast
a sidelong glance at Charles. “I said I hadn’t spoken with St. Juste since he came to see me a month since. Which is true. But I caught a glimpse of him in the Pig & Whistle a week or so ago. Sitting at a table toward the back. With O’Roarke.”

  “Did you speak with them?” Mélanie said.

  “What kind of a fool do you take me for? If there was any profit in it, they’d come to me. Otherwise I give them a wide berth, same as I did in Spain.”

  “So you don’t know for a certainty that they’re working together.”

  “What the devil in this life is a certainty? St. Juste is working for someone. He used to work for O’Roarke—“

  “Among others,” Mélanie said.

  “—and now here they both are in London, conferring together. I didn’t think O’Roarke was supposed to be in London.”

  “Nor did I.” Mélanie smoothed her hands over her cherry-striped skirt. “He went to Ireland before Christmas.”

  “You see?” Lucan said, with the air of a don writing Q.E.D. on a proof. “He’s here on secret business. Before St. Juste got there, O'Roarke had been talking to another man—younger, longish dark hair and spectacles. No one I recognized. But I'll lay you odds O'Roarke's setting up a network.”

  Nan was looking back and forth between her lover and Mélanie, a gathering frown on her face. “Who the devil is O’Roarke?”

  “Cove I—we—used to work for in Spain,” Lucan said.

  “And you were his mistress?” Nan asked Mélanie.

  “A long time ago.”

  “And you were worried I’d peach about your past. No bleeding fear of that. No one would believe me if I did.” Nan took the teapot from the spirit lamp and refilled her cup. “What would this O’Roarke be wanting with St. Juste now? Last I checked, the war was over.”

  “Not for everyone.” Charles scrubbed his hands over his face. “O’Roarke’s half-Irish and half-Spanish and a revolutionary on general principles. A William Godwin/Tom Paine sort of Radical.” Who had once given Charles a copy of Rights of Man, but that was another story. “He sided with the French in Spain because he thought Bonaparte’s regime offered the quickest route to reform. Now he’s allied with the Spanish Liberals—many of whom fought against the French but oppose the restored Spanish monarchy.”

  “A monarchy which hasn’t exactly proven itself friendly to the rights of anyone,” Mélanie said.

  “Quite,” Charles said. “O’Roarke would like support from the British for a Liberal rebellion in Spain.”

  “I don’t see why he’d need St. Juste for that,” Nan said.

  “No,” Charles agreed. “But God knows what intrigues he may have become involved in in Spain. And his involvement in Irish protests goes back to the uprising of ’98.”

  Nan added milk to her tea, then splashed in some brandy. “You know a lot about O’Roarke.”

  “He’s an old friend of my family’s,” Charles said.

  Which was true, though it didn’t begin to explain the complex web of ties between him and the man who had been his wife’s lover and spymaster.

  Nan took a sip of tea. “So you think O’Roarke set Eckert’s men on us?”

  “Doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Lucan said. “Not that O’Roarke’s not cold-blooded enough to do so, in the right circumstances, but he should know I don’t blab. Besides, he always tended to look after his own. He tried to make sure his agents were safe out of it after the war. It could have been St. Juste himself who wanted us out of the way, as Fraser said. Or someone else. Mayhap whoever killed St. Juste.”

  “Where’s O’Roarke staying?” Charles asked Lucan.

  “How should I know? Mélanie’d be better able to guess where he might go to earth than I would.”

  Before Mélanie could reply, a rap fell on the door. Trenor poked his head in and asked if they were done talking for the moment. As the questions about O’Roarke were exhausted, Charles nodded. Bet and Trenor entered the room with a parcel of warm meat pies and a pitcher of ale.

  Bet produced plates, in a variety of transfer-ware patterns, and served the pies while Trenor poured the ale into an assortment of cups and glassware.

  “You’ll have to lie low.” Bet looked from her sister to Lucan. “You’re no match for Mr. Eckert, Sam, and don’t go thinking you are.”

  Lucan grimaced and nodded. “We’ll go carefully for a bit.”

  “We can’t leave London though,” Nan said. “Billy might need us.”

  “Oh, poison.” Bet clunked down her glass of ale. “Is that the man who’s dead? The one Billy was working for? Is there still danger?”

  “We’re not sure,” Lucan said round a mouthful of pie.

  Trenor cast a quick glance from Lucan to Charles, then looked at Bet. “If your brother’s mixed up in something dangerous and those are the people who came after Lucan and Nan, then you could be in danger as well. This settles it. You’re coming with me.”

  Bet shook her head. “Stop talking like you’re on stage at the Tavistock, Sandy. How’m I supposed to make a living?”

  “You won’t need to. It’s high time we changed things anyway.”

  “Sandy, that’s very sweet, but you’re not in a position—“

  “Yes, I am. My father makes me a very good allowance. And he’s always telling me to take more initiative.”

  Bet turned to Charles and Mélanie. “Is Billy in danger?”

  “We can’t be sure,” Charles said. “Do you have any idea where your brother might be?”

  “Not in his old lodgings. He’d had to skip out just before Sam found him the job and when he was here last week, he told me he’d be hard to find as long as the job went on.”

  “Did he tell you anything else that might indicate his current whereabouts? Or anything to do with the job?”

  Bet twisted a strand of long, fair hair round her finger. “He didn’t tell me anything. But—“

  “It’s all right, Betty,” Nan said. “We can trust them. As much as we can trust anyone.”

  Bet pushed the strand of hair behind her ear. “I went into the bedroom for another bottle of gin and when I came back into this room he was holding a piece of paper in his hand. He stuffed it into his pocket, but I caught a glimpse of it. At the top it said ‘17 Rosemary Lane’.”

  “Thank you,” Charles said.

  Bet turned back to her sister. “If the man Billy was working for is dead, where’s the danger coming from?”

  “We’re not sure,” Nan said, breaking off another piece of pie. “We’re not bloody sure what the man Billy was working for was doing and we’re not sure who killed him and we’re not sure why. And there’s this man called O’Roarke who fits in somewhere—“

  Trenor looked up from his mug of ale. “O’Roarke? You mean Raoul O’Roarke? I thought it was odd when I saw him last night. Didn’t have any notion he was in London.”

  Another shout of bitter laughter echoed silently through Charles’s head. “You saw O’Roarke last night? Are you telling me he was at the masquerade?”

  “Yes, didn’t you know? ” Trenor leaned forward. “He was in a costume that looked like something out of Thomas Malory, and he had a mask on, of course, a heavy black thing that covered most of his face. I daresay I wouldn’t have recognized him, but he collided with one of the footmen and his mask got knocked loose for a moment. I’m sure it was he. I met him when I was visiting my cousins in Ireland two years ago, and I saw him again in London last autumn. Very interesting chap. I looked for him to pay my respects later in the evening, but I didn’t see him again.”

  Jeremy Roth stared through a scarlet-framed screen of rope netting at the walled, rectangular court before him. The whack of a ball striking a racket echoed off the blue-painted walls. Two men in their shirtsleeves raced back and forth at either end of the court, rackets in hand, returning volley for volley in a contest every bit as intense as a rapier duel. At last, a shot to the far corner of the court skimmed over one gentleman’s racket and bounced against the flo
orboards.

  “Bad luck, Pendarves,” said the man who had made the shot. “My game, I believe.”

  The loser inclined his head and retrieved the ball. Before they could begin a new game, Roth stepped away from the net-covered window and walked through an archway onto the court.

  “Best match we’ve had in an age,” the game’s victor was saying, “we really ought— Who the devil are you?” He swung round to stare at Roth. He had thick, light brown hair, now slick with sweat against his forehead, and a strong-boned, good-natured face.

  “My name’s Roth. I’m from Bow Street. I’m looking for Lord Pendarves.”

  “I’m Pendarves.” The second man advanced toward Roth. He was taller than his companion, with curly, umber-colored hair and a square, serious face. “Is this something to do with the unfortunate accident last night?”

  “Quite, my lord. Though it doesn’t seem to have been an accident.”

  “No, I understand that. I only meant— I’m at your disposal, of course, though I don’t know what I can tell you.” He turned to his friend. “I’m sorry, St. Ives.”

  The brown-haired man swung his racket over his shoulder and gave a mock groan. “Good old Pendarves. Always so devoted to duty. But would you be quite so determined to do the right thing, if you’d been leading in the set, I wonder? No, never mind, I’m due at Boodle’s in any event. My regards to Caroline.”

  He took a towel from a shelf against the wall and sauntered off the court.

  “You’ll have to forgive Lord St. Ives,” Pendarves said. “He has a difficult time admitting he takes anything seriously. If you’ll give me a moment to put my coat on, there’s a coffeehouse across the street where we can speak.”

  He vanished down the passage for a few moments, giving Roth the time to remember that Lord and Lady St. Ives had also been on Lady Isobel’s list of the guests at the masquerade.

  Pendarves reappeared in an olive drab greatcoat, hair combed into order beneath a curly-brimmed beaver, York tan gloves on the hands that had previously held a racket, umbrella tucked under his arm. He led the way across the rain-splashed street to the coffeehouse. It was filling up with a crowd of sporting gentlemen, raffish betting types, and a few obvious pickpockets, but the proprietor bowed to Pendarves with alacrity and showed them to a table in an alcove at the back of the room.