Susan’s hands became still on the keys. “Papa is dead, sir. But my brother is well.”
Leacroft covered her fingers briefly with his hand. “I am sorry to hear it, dear. He was a good man.”
Susan did not lift her eyes. “He was. Mrs. Westerman and Mr. Crowther here found who killed him and saved Jonathan and me.”
Leacroft looked up rather wonderingly at Harriet and Crowther; it was clear he had forgotten they were in the room.
Susan removed her hands from the keys and Leacroft began to play himself. It was a mournful, empty sort of sound. “Why are you here, sir?” Susan said quietly. “You do not seem mad to me.”
He continued to play. “I am not always as I am today, Susan. You have woken me a little, you and Mr. Mozart. But there has been such coming and going in the last little while. An old friend came to see me yesterday. She sang to me. It is strange, I had thought seeing her would make me very happy, but I felt as if she had brought all of London into the room. All the hurry and finery of it. I felt she was dragging something out of me. It made me very tired. Though I am glad she is well, I hope she does not come again.” His hands paused. “Do you understand? I know it is difficult. .”
“I think so, sir,” Susan replied. “I went to the opera on Saturday. It was wonderful, but it is exhausting to be so bright all the time.”
He nodded and smiled slightly, and his hands began to move on the keys again. Susan suddenly frowned and began to pick out a tune over the chords he played. Harriet concentrated. She was sure Susan was playing the theme from the “Yellow Rose Duet.” Leacroft continued to play as he asked, “You know this piece of mine? The young man in their picture stole it then.” He indicated Harriet and Crowther with his chin. “Strange. I wrote it thinking of Isabella. Then she came yesterday and sang it to me. She was amazed when I played alongside her. She asked too about that young man. Everyone does. It made her unhappy. I do not care that he took it.” He gave Susan a slightly twisted smile. “He came when I was in one of my shining moods. At such times I play and write day and night and think myself a king. He listened like a thirsty man drinks.”
Susan suddenly paused in her playing. “That part is different. In the opera house the harmony is this.” Leacroft raised his hands from the keyboard and Susan repeated the passage they had just played.
Leacroft shook his head. “No, no. The bass collects what has been, and hopes for what is to come.” He played the phrase again. Harriet could only tell it was different from the way Susan had played it, though it seemed more mournful, a deeper color somehow in the air.
Lady Susan seemed to hold her breath, then nodded very slowly. “That is a great deal better.”
Leacroft kept his eyes on the keyboard. “Yes.”
“Do you really not mind, sir, Mr. Bywater saying he wrote this piece when it is yours?”
“Miss Adams, I cannot feel it. I do not want the world to come and look at me. I was unhappy in the world. Here I am content. Perhaps that is enough to show I am mad.”
Susan looked down at her hands. “May I come and see you again, sir?”
He stopped for a second and looked into her face with calm consideration before he said, “Yes, my dear. I think I should like that. Who takes care of you now?”
“Mr. Graves. And Mrs. Service who lived opposite the shop.”
Leacroft looked up into the air to his right. “I remember Graves a little. He wrote for newspapers. And Mrs. Service. A quiet lady. How far away it seems. Yes. You may come, and bring Mrs. Service to watch you, but no one else, and not too often.”
“Thank you, sir.” She watched him for a little while, the way his hands moved over the keys. “I think perhaps you are weary, sir. We should go now.”
“Thank you, Miss Adams. Yes. I think so.”
Susan stood and gave him her hand; he bowed over it from his seat without standing, then returned to the keyboard. Susan walked toward the door. Harriet and Crowther simply followed in her wake, unnoticed.
Mr. Gaskin met them on the porch as they put on their cloaks. Susan fastened hers at her throat and, cutting across Mr. Gaskin’s compliments, turned and said to him, “Mr. Gaskin, I am Lady Susan Thornleigh. My brother is the Earl of Sussex. Theophilius Leacroft is my friend. We shall send manuscript paper for him to write on when the mood takes him.”
Mr. Gaskin’s greasy smile froze on his face and his eyes darted about in confusion.
“But, my lady, they are mere scraps! All in confusion! He writes on what he likes and leaves them fit for nothing but the fire.”
Susan was very still and spoke quietly. “We shall send paper. If he does not wish to keep his work by him, you must send it to us in Berkeley Square, and you will be paid for doing so. But if you put one more note of that gentleman’s music in the fire, I shall burn your house down.”
With that she turned and her footman handed her into the carriage. Harriet and Crowther, having nothing to add, followed her in silence, leaving Mr. Gaskin gasping and bowing on the gravel.
Harriet felt Susan trembling a little beside her. After a while, the girl turned toward her, and Harriet found herself looking down into her clear blue eyes. They had a thin rim of gold that matched her hair: it reminded her of Rachel.
“I did not want to be a lady, or rich, Mrs. Westerman,” she said. “But there are times when it is very useful, I think.”
Harriet put her arm around her and Lady Susan settled into her shoulder with a sigh.
“Indeed it is, my love. Indeed it is.”
4
The man Jocasta was looking for did not have any fixed place of business. He kept his wife and two boys in a first-floor room and saw that they ate well enough, but one was not likely to find him there after dark. His nature was not settled, nor did he hunger for domestic comfort, and he had made enemies enough in his time to make him wary of fixed sleeping places. His business made it needful though that he could be found by those who wanted him, so he had his public haunts. She knew he’d be in one of half a dozen places, so was ready to visit them in turn. The Season had started, so the Quality were beginning to run back to Town and get through their allowances. That meant the start of his hunting season, and as long as there was blood in the water he’d be in one of his haunts, though where he laid his head on any night remained a secret even from his woman.
Jocasta had taken a slow walk around Seven Dials, went first to the Peacock and then to the George’s Head before she found him hunched over a pint pot and with a clay pipe of cheap tobacco in his dirty hand. His face was hidden by the pointed brim of his hat and his figure shrouded by the shadows of the dark corner in which he sat curled, but she knew him well enough. Jocasta set herself down on the opposite side of the table. Sam stood behind her like a scrubby footman with Boyo in his arms.
“How do, Molloy?” she said.
The hat tipped slowly back to reveal a face so lined and cracked it looked like a milk jug smashed and restuck a dozen times. His cheeks were caved. He let the smoke drift out of his mouth softly, softly, like fog rising off the river.
“Mrs. Bligh. And a young friend. There’s nice.”
“I need a little tutoring from you, Molloy.”
“Them cards gathered you a bit of capital, have they? Want to learn how to send it to work in rich men’s pockets?”
Jocasta sniffed and folded her strong arms. “I’ll leave that business to you and the long beards in Whitechapel,” she retorted, then let her words come out slow after that. “I want tutoring in the ways of your former trade.”
Molloy leaned back, putting one arm along the back of the settle, his mouth twisting round his pipe.
“And what might that be, Mrs. Bligh? I don’t rightly know what you mean.”
Jocasta pulled out the pack from her pocket.
“You forget, I’ve been round here a time. And people who are proper and tight-mouthed in their day-to-day get chatty about all sorts of things when they look at the pictures. I know where you got that
first guinea you lent to some fool and made into two. Take a card.”
Molloy reached warily into the pack, looked at the image on the card in his hand and slapped it down on the table. Jocasta spoke over her shoulder to Sam. “Remember this one, boy?”
The lad concentrated hard, then his face suddenly brightened. “Thief!” He caught the look on Molloy’s face and dropped his eyes, mumbling into Boyo’s fur, “That is, can say a few things, like pulling apart, but mostly that’s thief, thieving and that.”
Molloy watched him go red then he reached forward and slid the card suddenly back to Jocasta, following it with his thin body till his cracked face was up close to hers. She didn’t flinch.
“Ha! A pretty trick, lady! Say what you like. Old stories and I know how to keep quiet.”
Jocasta looked into his eyes, all reddened with the smoke, his blue irises swimming about in them like devils in hell. “Me too, Molloy.”
He pulled away from her again, took the pipe from his mouth and blew a smoke ring into the dusty air, watching her cautiously. “I suppose I can hear you out. What’s the matter of it then, Mrs. Bligh?”
She spoke low. “I need to get in somewhere quick and quiet, then out. And I don’t want to leave any sign of my coming or going.”
Molloy considered the ceiling for a while.
“You after something of your own, or something of theirs?”
“Something that belongs to another, I reckon. And I reckon they should have it back.”
His eyes narrowed. “That smacks of philanthropy to me.”
“It’s known you’ve done a favor before where there was no need.”
“I don’t like that put about. Doesn’t do any good for a man in my business to get a reputation for charity.” He spat on the floor, thick and yellow it came from him, and sank into the wood. “When?”
“Tonight.”
“You’ll never learn the trick of it in a day,” he said angrily, “even if I were willing to share. Locks are like your fancy cards. They take learning and a little love.”
Jocasta remained still. “It needs doing, Molloy.”
Behind them, a man rolled up to the bar and set down a coin. The barmaid gave him a measure of gin without a word, and without a word back he drank it and turned to go. Molloy didn’t move, but Jocasta could see the blue devils swimming the way the man went out of the room.
“Give me the hour and place and I’ll open up,” he grunted. “Then I’m gone. You see trouble, it’s all yours. Coin, and you share-and don’t think I won’t find out if you don’t. Good enough for you?” He put the pipe back into his mouth.
“Good enough. Nine o’clock,” Jocasta replied evenly. “Top of Salisbury Street.”
She stood and walked out of the room, feeling him watching her all the way.
5
Knowing that Harriet and Crowther were to attend the second performance of Julius Rex that night, Mrs. Service had arranged for dinner to be brought forward, and so the company sat down at the rather country hour of four o’clock. The interim had been consumed with an intense debate between Harriet and Crowther as to the wisdom of going immediately to see Mr. Tompkins’s acquaintance, Gladys, with only Mr. Bywater’s picture in their hands, or whether they should wait till Mr. Crumley’s artistry had provided them with a full set of the leading figures at the opera house. Harriet wished to go at once. Crowther urged caution and was in the end successful, if only because the time had become impossibly short. Susan they had delivered back into the bosom of the household as soon as the carriage had drawn up. Beyond hearing Graves’s general greeting as he returned from the shop and various footsteps throughout their discussion, the rest of the household did not enter the library.
“Fitzraven must have been attempting to blackmail Bywater,” Harriet stated with great determination. “He went to visit Leacroft as soon as he saw the parts for the duet. He wished any romance between Bywater and Isabella to end, and no doubt thought he could put some of Bywater’s wages in his pocket too. He would never have been able to resist. No doubt he told Bywater what he knew and arranged for him to visit and discuss terms on Thursday afternoon, then they fought.”
Crowther leaned against the library desk, watching her stride back and forth in front of the fire like a general.
“But what of the French, Mrs. Westerman? What of the spies and Mr. Palmer?”
Harriet threw up her hands. “Whatever else they are guilty of, perhaps they are innocent of this. Mr. Palmer himself thought it odd that Fitzraven was killed.”
Harriet was surprised to find a certain uneasiness in the air when they sat down at table. Graves remained polite, but was distinctly reserved. Rachel looked serious and quiet, and Susan looked rather unhappy and confused. When Graves begged for a moment of her time before she went to dress for the evening therefore, Harriet followed him into the library with a feeling of distinct dread.
Graves stood in front of the fireplace and put his hands behind his back, rocking forward off his heels. He looked steadfastly at the floor in front of him. Harriet began to attempt some light remark but was cut off.
“Really, Mrs. Westerman, I must ask you what you are about.”
Harriet took in a breath, but Graves continued at once.
“Lady Susan is eleven years old, yet you bundled her out of this house and took her to an asylum. Took her to visit a madman of whose temperament you knew little, and that little only by report. Took her to a place, a situation, that sounds unpleasant at best and involved her-intimately involved her-in the investigation of a murder. All this without a word to her guardian or friends. I must ask you again, what are you about, madam?” Now he looked up. His face was flushed and he repeated slowly with bell-like clarity: “She is eleven years old.”
Harriet said in a rush, with a smiling placatory tone, “Graves! You were not to be found, and I believe Susan enjoyed the visit. She got along with Leacroft quite famously, you know.” She found as she finished that her pulse was running rather fast.
“Indeed, Mrs. Westerman. Such is the nature of Susan’s open, good heart I find my ward has promised to watch over this gentleman’s interests. Lady Susan will be noticed as a regular visitor to this dreadful place, thanks to you. And I returned from the lawyers to the shop within an hour of your departure. You knew perfectly well if you had only a little patience, you would find me there during the day.”
“But Mr. Leacroft, it seems, is a family friend. You are possibly acquainted with him yourself!”
“So Susan informs me. But you did not know that, Mrs. Westerman, did you? The man could have been raving! Even if Trevelyan had told you he was not dangerous, can you tell me you had assurances from him, or from anyone, that he was suitable company for an eleven-year-old girl?”
“I did not think-”
“That much is clear, madam. You must think more about the consequences of your actions. You trust again and again to luck and your own forward momentum. At some point you will seriously harm those near to you, who can do nothing to defend themselves against the damage you bring.”
Harriet had been listening angrily, feeling her face growing hot, but at this last a vicious little bud blossomed in her mind and she said with a quick shake of her head, “My sister has made you her confidante, I see, in the matter of her concerns as to my behavior.”
Graves looked a little disgusted. Harriet could tell he was clasping his hands together hard behind his back. She felt her own nails beginning to dig into her palms.
“She has done no such thing. But if she has made mention to you of such concerns already, I wish to God, madam, you had listened to her! Miss Trench is a model of good behavior without ever losing her naturalness. And she is possessed of remarkable good sense.”
Harriet felt a jealous flame in her throat. The world seemed suddenly unjust in the extreme. Her words came spitting out, hot and angry as grapeshot. “Yes, and she can make up a dozen foul-smelling recipes from the Household Doctor!” She held onto th
e back of one of the armchairs hard enough to whiten her knuckles and showed her teeth in an unnatural smile. “She is a paragon of all virtues. I admit it. The community round Caveley declare it, just as they used to in my father’s parish, and now she is lauded here! Perhaps her virtues even exceed those of Miss Chase. Poor Verity, and just when she has persuaded her father to spend her marriage portion on buying the shop for you from the estate, but instead it seems so overwhelming are my sister’s attractions, you will be too busy cutting out Daniel Clode to make use of it. And as to Susan and Jonathan, where would they be now if it were not for my headstrong ways and Crowther’s knives you all shrink from so!”
She came to a sudden stop, looking at the pain flickering in his young, kind face, and in the silence that followed began to realize with a cold sort of horror what she had just said.
Graves spoke softly. “The children had other friends.” His hand traveled unconsciously to the right side of his waistcoat, as if the scar there he had received from a blade the previous year had woken and needed calming. He had defended the children. He had put his own flesh between them and danger. Harriet found herself dumb with sudden shame. She could admit she liked to think herself rather above her fellow creatures at times, but when Rachel was praised above her, when her own actions were condemned, she found herself behaving like a jealous child. If Stephen had spoken as she just had, she would have been ashamed of him.
Graves moved away from the fireplace and sat down heavily in one of the armchairs.
“I do not care what you do, Mrs. Westerman. I am well aware of the debt we owe you. But Susan and Jonathan both look up to you so much. You are a model to them. They must live in the world and learn to do so soberly and decently, despite their wealth, the history of their blood. I am trying to guide them. Yet you do these things. . Remember they look to you, that is all I ask.”
Harriet took a step toward him. “Graves, I am so very sorry!” He did not look at her. “And what I said about Rachel and Verity-it is such nonsense.” He twisted painfully in his chair. “I am weary, yet this business has lit up my brain and carries me forward.” Harriet sat down in the armchair alongside his own and put her head in her hands.
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