Fraser 03 - The Mask of Night

by Tracy Grant

  Mélanie, who had argued as much with her husband, held her tongue.

  “You on the other hand,” Bartlett continued, turning to Mélanie, “didn’t hold back a bit in the article on capital punishment. Took even me by surprise.”

  “Yes, well I’m a woman. I can afford to be more extreme because no one takes me seriously. And the Political Register is a bit different from the House of Commons.”

  “Shouldn’t be, m’dear, shouldn’t be. In a just world it wouldn’t be.“

  “The troublesome question of course is how to bring that just world about.”

  “Without resorting to unjust means? Question for the ages. Plato would say—“

  “Do stop pontificating, George. You’ll scare them off.” Hetty Bartlett slipped her hand through the crook of her husband’s arm. She was gowned in dark gold lustring cut to show her figure to advantage. Her thick ebony hair was dressed in a style that looked as if it might have been copied from a Renaissance oil, and her dark eyes sparkled brighter than the topaz ring that gleamed on her hand. The daughter of a forward-thinking engineer and an East Indian former slave, she had grown up in Jamaica and Italy, performed as a singer, and then turned novelist.

  Hetty turned to Mélanie. “How’s your little boy?”

  “Much better, thank you.”

  “Devil take it,” George said. “My apologies to you both. I wasn’t thinking. Of course you’ve had more pressing matters to deal with.”

  “And no doubt it’s the last thing you wish to discuss tonight.” Hetty squeezed her husband’s arm. Her gaze skimmed over them, taking in, Mélanie was sure, the scrape on her cheek, the bruise on Charles’s jaw. “Do come in and make yourselves comfortable.”

  The company were ranged about the drawing room with the ease of familiarity. The intense, fair-haired young man at the piano played for rehearsals at the King’s Theatre. The Bartletts’s daughter Eliza, a seventeen-year-old copy of her mother, was turning the pages of his music. Henry Brougham, lounging against the wall on the opposite side of the room, was exchanging flirtatious banter with Cecily Summers, the charming (and very happily married) leading lady at the Tavistock. He looked up, nodded at Charles, and blew a kiss to Mélanie. The Bartletts’ youngest child, ten-year-old Clara, moved about the room, replenishing drinks with aplomb.

  They found Will Gordon perched on an age-mellowed crimson velvet sofa in a corner of the small parlor. He was laughing at something the man beside him had said. A tall, straight-backed man with curling brown hair, who wore an immaculate dark blue coat and held himself with stiff correctness. It was Lord Pendarves, Mélanie realized. The Bartletts had a wide acquaintance, but she’d never thought to find Pendarves among their number.

  Her gaze skimmed between Pendarves and Will Gordon. They were sitting a few feet apart, not even touching, and yet there was something in the way Will’s gaze was fastened on Pendarves’s face and the way Pendarves’s hand was clenched on the red velvet of the sofa…

  Mélanie gripped her husband’s arm. “You take Will. Let me have a word with Pendarves.”

  Charles looked down at her for a moment, then flicked a glance at Pendarves and Will. He nodded.

  When they approached the sofa, Will looked up with a grin that almost masked the flash of concern in his eyes. “Mrs. Fraser. Mr. Fraser. Didn’t expect to see you here tonight. I thought you were busy assisting Bow Street.”

  Charles smiled. “It’s been a long day. As a matter of fact, I could use a word with you, Gordon. Pendarves, will you excuse us?”

  “Lord Pendarves, might I prevail upon you to procure me a glass of sherry?” Mélanie asked. “I confess I’m feeling the chill more than I’d like to admit. To think I could once weather a Spanish winter and not think twice about it.

  Chivalry and upbringing won out over qualms. Pendarves inclined his head and offered her his arm.

  Jessica Fraser's brows drew together in a scowl that rivaled her father’s. “Daddy’s supposed to read me a story.”

  “You’ve had two stories.” Laura Dudley smoothed the pink-flowered quilt.

  ”Daddy didn’t read them.”

  “I’m sure he’ll make it up to you. And your parents will come in and kiss you when they get home.”

  Jessica caught at Laura’s sleeve. “Will they be all right?”

  Laura leaned in and touched her fingers to Jessica’s cheek. “Your parents can take very good care of the themselves.” She bent to kiss her young charge and patted Berowne, who was kneading the quilt by Jessica’s feet.

  Jessica gave a sigh that was almost capitulation. Laura went through the connecting door to Colin’s room. Colin was flopped on his stomach, reading a book, the covers bunched up about him. He looked over his shoulder at her. His gray eyes were slate dark and seemed to belong to someone far older than a six. “Tell them to wake me when they come in.”

  “I promise.” Laura adjusted the tin shade of the night light. “Your parents are very good at this, Colin.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Daddy told me that.”

  Laura smoothed his hair. “Read until you get sleepy. Ring if you need me. For any reason.”

  She stepped out into the corridor. The sound of voices from the ground floor hall stopped her in her tracks. At first she thought the Frasers had returned, but the tone and cadence were wrong. One of the first rules for a successful governess was to turn a blind eye to anything that was potentially dangerous or inflammatory. In her years in the Fraser household, she had found a great deal to which to turn a blind eye. But she had also not done as good a job as she might of keeping her life neatly compartmentalized. Sometimes, her care for the children and the friendship she had come to feel for their parents (always dangerous to feel friendship for one’s employers) had led her into the Frasers’ adventures.

  The voices, the words indistinguishable but the tone sharp with concern, tugged at her conscience and her curiosity. If only Addison or Blanca were here—

  She drew a breath, aware of a prickle along her nerves that might have been anticipation, smoothed her hands over her gray poplin skirt, and walked down the corridor to the landing.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know when Mr. and Mrs. Fraser will return. Is there a message I can give them?” That was Michael.

  “Do you know where I can find them?” It was a gentleman’s voice Laura did not recognize. She leaned over the oiled mahogany stair rail. The chandelier and wallsconce tapers revealed a man speaking with Michael. From this angle she could see little more of him than rain-slick dark hair and the three damp capes on his olive drab greatcoat.

  “No, sir,” Michael said. “That is—“

  “Perhaps I can be of help.” Laura ran down the two flights of stairs.

  “Miss Dudley.” Michael met her gaze with obvious relief.

  Laura held out her hand to the young man. “I’m Laura Dudley, governess to the Fraser children.”

  “Alexander Trenor.” The young man shook her hand. He could be little past his majority, but his jaw was set with determination and his eyes dark with fear. “I think we’ve met. My brother sits in the House with Fraser. Sorry to call so late, but it’s important. Do you know where I can find the Frasers?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know where the Frasers have gone,” Laura said, “or when to expect them back. But you’re welcome to wait for them. Perhaps if you explain the matter to me we could decide if some action should be taken first? Why don’t you come into the library. There’s a fire laid.”

  She was prepared for further protests, but the young man followed her, apparently eager to grasp at the prospect of any information at all. He was right, they had met, she realized as she closed the library doors. But it was difficult to reconcile the haggard man before her with the young gallant she had been introduced to when she brought Colin and Jessica into the drawing room at one of the Frasers’ evening parties. She remembered him sitting by the piano, flirting with a girl in sprigged muslin. His shoulders lo
oked broader now and his face seemed to have hardened, the schoolboy softness forming into sharp planes and angles.

  “Do you know about Mr. and Mrs. Fraser’s investigation of the murder at the Lydgates’ last night?” he asked.

  Laura picked up a tinderbox and lit the candelabrum on the library table. “I know something of the matter.”

  “This morning, their investigation took them to a young lady of my acquaintance. Apparently her brother had been employed by the murdered man. Bet—Miss Simcox was very much concerned for her brother’s safety but did not know where to find him. As there was reason to believe she might be in danger herself owing to her relationship with her brother, I insisted that she come home with me. But this evening she disappeared after receiving a mysterious message. I suspect the message was from her brother. I fear she may be walking into great danger.”

  “But you aren’t sure where to look for her?”

  He shook his head. “The devil of it is, she left the message behind. It must have been smuggled in with the laundry or the order from my bootmaker. But I can’t make head or tail of it. I hoped the Frasers—“

  “May I see?”

  “What? Oh, yes. Of course.” He reached into his greatcoat pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Laura held it to the candlelight. The note was brief, written in a scrawled hand with a smeary pencil.

  Betty—

  Cunning Dare.

  B.

  “I think it’s in rhyming slang,” Laura said. “Unfortunately, I can’t make sense of the rhyme. But I think I know someone who might be able to help.”

  “Fraser? You said he won’t be back—“

  “No, not Mr. Fraser, someone else. Someone we should be able to find at Bow Street.”

  Trenor took the note from her fingers, his gaze wary.

  “Jeremy Roth is a friend of the Frasers,” Laura said. “You can trust him.” Odd how to find herself using the word “trust” so glibly, considering what cause she had to know how hollow it was.

  Trenor folded the paper and gave a slow nod.

  “You brought your carriage?” Laura asked. “Good. Let me get a cloak and we can be on our way.”

  Chapter 19

  I think you'll like the new actor I've engaged. He can think for himself, which some playwrights might consider a drawback, but I find quite refreshing.

  Simon Tanner to Charles Fraser,

  5 December, 1816

  Charles felt Will Gordon’s gaze on him as they settled themselves on the sofa in the Bartletts' parlor. Will had crisply-cut features, intelligent dark eyes presently hidden by his spectacles, and dark hair worn fashionably long. It hung about his face in Corsair-like disorder in many performances but was combed severely back tonight. “I’m happy to be of help,” he said. “But I wasn’t at the Lydgates’. A bit above my touch.”

  “Hardly that, Gordon. You have a knack for fitting in to most society.” Charles returned Will’s frank regard. The young actor was almost as much of an enigma as Julien St. Juste. He had appeared one day at the Tavistock and asked for an audition. The doorman had laughed in his face, as had the stage manager. But then Simon had strolled in and agreed to hear him. An hour later, Will had a role in Simon’s next play. A year later, he was on his way to becoming one of the most talked about young actors in London. He was clearly educated, but whether the education was self-acquired or university taught remained unclear. Charles had never heard him mention his family, his childhood, or any other detail of his life prior to the moment he had walked through the door of the Tavistock. Nor, until Mélanie had touched his arm just now at the sight of Will and Pendarves, had Charles seen or heard the least hint of Will’s being involved with anyone of either sex.

  “Perhaps,” Will said. “But I wasn’t invited to the Lydgates’. More’s the pity as things turned out, though in general society balls aren’t to my taste.”

  “How did you fit in at the jail in Lancaster?”

  Will’s back stiffened. Then he relaxed against the sofa cushions. “What does that have to do with what happened last night at the Lydgates’?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Do you want me to make up a story? I could come up with a damned good one if I put my mind to it, but I don’t see how a farago of lies would be of much help to either of us.”

  Charles dived a hand into his pocket and pulled out the list he and Roth had found in St. Juste’s rooms. “Do these dates mean anything to you?”

  Will scanned the list. “They’re dates of Radical disturbances. I was involved in several. On one occasion, as you alluded, I spent a few nights in jail in Lancaster. I owe my release to the kind offices of your friend Worsley. Don’t think I’m not grateful. But what the hell does that list have to do with last night’s murder? Don’t tell me you believe the idiots who say the man was killed by bloody-thirsty Jacobins.”

  The puzzlement in Will’s face appeared utterly genuine, but Charles was not sure. In a lot of ways, Will reminded him of himself at two-and-twenty. And Will was an actor. A very, very good actor.

  “We found the list in the rooms in which the dead man had been staying,” Charles said.

  “So you think he was one of us?”

  “One of whom?”

  “Radicals, Jacobins, Sans-Coulottes—“

  “Those names are a bit French Revolution, aren’t they?”

  “A lot of people can’t get past the French Revolution. Who is the dead man?”

  “I’m not sure,” Charles said. That was the truth. No one appeared to know who Julien St. Juste really was or where he had come from.

  “But you think he may have been working with my friends.”

  “I think there’s an explanation for what he was doing with that list. I’m not in the least sure what the explanation is.”

  “You’re starting to talk like someone at the Home Office, Fraser. Seeing conspiracies everywhere. Imagining we’re all connected. Look about you.” His gaze swept the parlor and the open doors to the drawing room. “Do you see ten people who could find a half-dozen topics to agree on, let alone plan a conspiracy? Lack of agreement has been the curse of Radicals back to the United Irish Uprising.”

  “Why the United Irish Uprising in particular?”

  “Because it seems less obvious than saying the French Revolution.” Will regarded him for a moment. “Aren’t you going to give me the lecture?”

  “What lecture?”

  “About how you were just like me when you were my age, but now you see the dangers of too much agitation, and if I were sensible I’d stand for Parliament like you and work for reform through legal channels.”

  Someone was singing Dove Sono in the drawing room. Whoever it was had a pretty voice, but lacked the passion Mélanie brought to the aria. “When I was your age,” Charles said, “I spoke and wrote a bit, largely for an audience who already shared my beliefs. I hardly think I had your flair.”

  “That’s not the way I hear it. You and your friends—Tanner and Worsley and Lydgate—caused quite a bit of consternation among Government types like Carfax and Castlereagh and Sidmouth.”

  “I’d take that as proof of their paranoia rather than of any power on our side.”

  “And then when your reckless undergraduate days were behind you—“

  “I ran off to the Continent, mostly because I couldn’t face the demons at home. I met my wife and got quite good at picking locks and decoding documents. But as far as living up to the ideals I’d espoused in my undergraduate days, I can’t claim I made a very wise choice. For what it’s worth I do think you’d be quite effective in Parliament.”

  “Yes, well we can’t all afford to buy our way in. Sorry, that was a low blow.”

  “No,” Charles said, “I’d call that above the belt.”

  “I like you, Fraser. More important, I admire you. But you’re never going to get Parliament to reform a system that favors its own members to so great a degree.”

  “So what�
�s your alternative?”

  “I don’t know. At this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out, though.”

  “On a number of issues of the day—capital punishment, abolition, suffrage—the official positions of the Whigs and Tories are so close as to be almost indistinguishable. Yet the fact that we have two parties gives us the illusion of debate, while neatly excluding from the discussion any opinions that fall outside that narrow spectrum.”

  “That’s quite well put. Are you trying to mimic something I’d write?”

  “No, I’m quoting something I wrote myself.”

  “When you were a heedless undergraduate?”

  “Last week.”

  “One can argue that anyone who doesn’t actively oppose an unjust system is complicit in the tyranny,” Will said.

  “So one can. Have you read Cagano?”

  “A former slave. He claimed every man in Great Britain was responsible in some degree for slavery. I wonder what Hetty Bartlett would say.”

  “You’ll have to ask her. I certainly wouldn’t disagree with him.”

  “So what’s your solution?”

  “I don’t know,” Charles said. “I haven’t ruled anything out either. But as a former diplomat I incline to compromise rather than confrontation.”

  “Diplomacy can become a quagmire.”

  “So can war.”

  “But it offers the possibility of victory.”

  “Violence can have unintended consequences.”

  “In other words if you let the ends justify the means the ends become warped?”

  “Whom do you identify with in Julius Caesar?” Charles asked.

  “The plebians. They’re pawns whoever’s in power. But I feel a certain sympathy for Brutus’s fear of tyranny.”

  “And yet in the end Brutus and his companions assassinate Caesar and Rome still ends up with an emperor. A colder, more calculating emperor as Shakespeare portrays him. Morality aside, violence tends to convince those in the middle that any sort of reform will lead to blood in the streets. Which in turns lends support to tyranny.”