CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A ROAR OF uninhibited conversation and masculine laughter filled the dining room. Child dipped his spoon into his mock-turtle soup. The Prince of Wales supper house lay in the vicinity of Drury Lane and the yellow-and-blue velvet booths were packed with patrons enjoying a meal before the playhouse. Each booth sported a portrait of young Prince George, and every now and then someone would stagger drunkenly to his feet to propose a toast to ‘Prinny’. No women were present – this being a respectable house – but there was a staircase round the back, and in the upstairs rooms, a gentleman could entertain a lady discreetly. Rumour had it that the Prince himself sometimes met actresses here over oyster suppers, assignations arranged by older friends like Lord March. Child gazed at the patrons’ powdered faces, too many chins or too few, framed by lace cravats and scented hair – and concluded that the Prince of Wales would be much improved by a house fire.
‘So go on, then,’ Solomon Loredo said. ‘To what do I owe this generosity? It is, I have to say, uncharacteristic.’
Child had called on Loredo earlier and had invited him to dine on Mrs Corsham’s coin. Each man filled his side of the booth more than amply, Loredo’s bald brown pate moist from the steam of his soup.
‘Simon Dodd-Bellingham,’ Child said. ‘I’ve heard you have dealings with him. What can you tell me?’
Loredo looked surprised by the question. ‘He is an antiquarian, a classicist. Gentlemen employ him to make them a collection of Roman artefacts, or to assist them in assembling a library. If an older piece comes into the shop – coins, medallions, seals, that sort of thing – then I call Dodd-Bellingham in to take a look. As I said, he knows the collectors, and usually gets a good price. He’s worth his commission.’
‘Do you know much about his background? I heard he is a by-blow.’
‘The fortunate kind. His father did right by the boy, paid for a good education, and when his wife died, he married the mother and adopted the son. Sadly for Dodd-Bellingham, the father had debts as well as a generous heart. I hear the boy is in hock himself. Lives with his half-brother in the family home, neither man able to buy the other out.’
‘Is he trustworthy?’
‘As much as anyone in this trade. I made the usual inquiries and heard nothing untoward. I certainly haven’t had cause to regret our association.’
‘Did you ever hear any stories about his dealings with women?’
‘No, but I was talking to his clients and the goldsmith’s guild, not his bawd.’ Loredo frowned. ‘What’s Dodd-Bellingham supposed to have done?’
‘He’s a suspect in a murder. The doxy killed at Vauxhall.’
Loredo raised his eyebrows. ‘A lady came into my shop the other day, speaking of that murder. She’d found one of my rings at the scene. It had a connection to Dodd-Bellingham.’
‘My new client.’ Child explained about Stone and the Priapus Club. ‘The prostitute killed at Vauxhall believed one of them had murdered another girl. She was fifteen years old, a maidservant turned harlot.’
The eyes of Loredo, who had three daughters, misted over. ‘Ah, that is too bad. I see those poor girls out on the street and my heart aches. Even good Jewish girls are tempted – and is it any wonder? They can earn five pounds a year in service or five pounds a night on their backs. My wife struggles to keep a maidservant past six months.’ He shook his head. ‘But Dodd-Bellingham? He is a scholar, a thinker. And have you seen him? Not a man built for violence.’
‘I’ve rarely met a man who couldn’t kill a woman with his bare hands. And whoever killed the whore at Vauxhall had a knife. Could you ask around for me? Any rumours about women or violence that have reached the City?’
‘Buy me tickets to the Mascarenhas fight, and I’ll ask around all you like. But I think you’re up a blind alley with this one, I’ll be honest.’
They shook hands, and Child winced at Loredo’s grip. The jeweller had himself been a pugilist in his youth, when the newspapers had called him ‘The Hefty Hebrew’.
Catching sight of a man who looked like the proprietor, Child waved him over. Bewigged and a little harassed, he was got up like his customers in a smart blue coat with gold frogging. Child slipped him a silver crown. ‘You know a gentleman named Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham?’
‘He comes in when he can afford it.’
‘Was he here a week ago today? Around ten?’
The man thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. No, I’d remember.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘When he comes in, I keep an eye on him. He’s a trouble-maker.’
‘You ever see him with his brother?’
‘Yes, that one’s all right. Tries to calm the lieutenant down when he fancies a brawl.’
‘Could the brother have been here that night?’
‘I don’t remember him, but that’s not to say he wasn’t here. We were busy like tonight, and he’s not the sort to stand out in a crowd.’
Child thanked him, and he hurried off to attend to another table.
Loredo pushed back his bowl. ‘A brawling soldier sounds a better candidate for murder than an antiquarian.’
‘It never pays to overlook the unlikely ones. People can harbour odd resentments. Being a dirty secret for all those years cannot have left Simon unmarked.’ Child scraped up the remains of his soup. It was a specialty of the house, but calves’ brains weren’t a patch on genuine turtle. ‘What can you tell me about Jonathan Stone? Is it true what people say? That he’s a secret Jew?’
Loredo laughed a little bitterly. ‘All moneylenders are secret Jews according to the newspapers. If an English gentleman is financially embarrassed, it cannot be because of his own ineptitude, but because he has been tricked by a conniving Israelite.’
‘Then it isn’t true?’
‘I don’t believe so – and I knew Stone in the old days. He lent money in the City, before he went to India. I borrowed from him myself once – and cursed the day I did so. I almost didn’t take Dodd-Bellingham’s job because of it, but I salved my conscience by overcharging Stone forty guineas.’
‘Is his business legal?’
‘Men don’t make fortunes like that by lending at five per cent. A few months back some City aldermen tried to have him investigated by the Home Office for dealing in illegal loans, but it all came to nothing. Stone has friends in high places, I suppose.’
Like Eyebrows? Child wondered. Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence?
‘Back in the old days,’ Loredo went on, ‘Stone’s rate of interest was twelve: the legal five on the contract, the remaining seven governed by a gentleman’s agreement. I daresay that hasn’t changed.’
It was just how Finn Daley liked to do business. Child was painfully aware that his own arrangement with Daley had a matter of hours to run.
‘Gentlemen’s agreements are easily broken,’ he said. ‘So are legs, which is one way of doing business. But that wouldn’t work on gentlemen like this.’ Child encompassed the supper house with a sweep of his arm. ‘Stone would end up on a hangman’s rope.’
‘Stone never used violence. Even in the old days. It was beneath him, he liked to say, which is ironic because little else is.’
‘Then how did he enforce his debts? If they weren’t legal?’
‘I shall tell you about my own experience,’ Loredo said. ‘But you must first swear to me that you will never tell a soul.’
‘On my son’s grave.’
Loredo placed his hand on Child’s arm to acknowledge his sincerity. ‘It happened not long after my life as a pugilist came to an end. I was new to the jewellery business, lately married, and I made some bad decisions. I borrowed money from Stone – a small amount at first, but he encouraged me to borrow more, and my debts grew. I could not easily repay at twelve per cent, and so I proposed dropping that rate to the legal five – just until I was in an easier place. Soon after that, his man, Erasmus Knox, paid me a call.’ He sighed. ‘One of my bad decisions was named Eli
za. I thought I had been discreet, but somehow Knox had found out about us. My indiscretion would have destroyed my wife’s happiness, and so I came close to bankruptcy trying to put everything right. It was the worst time of my life, Child, I don’t mind telling you that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Stone still uses the same methods and Knox is still his man. A client is slow to pay, or talks about adhering to the legal rate alone, and Knox comes knocking at his door with one of his dossiers. Illegitimate children, forged cheques, ill-treated women, and so on. Unless a gentleman wants to see his peccadilloes in the newspapers, he pays up.’
‘Stone has lent money to the Dodd-Bellingham brothers. I wonder if he has anything on them?’
‘Not a crime to have secrets, as my own case demonstrates.’
‘That depends on the secret.’
They fell silent as the waiter cleared the empty bowls and brought Child a goose pie and Loredo a plate of Turkish mutton with buttered cardoons. ‘Your client is a beautiful woman,’ Loredo said, when he had gone. ‘You can bring her to the Mascarenhas fight, if you like.’
‘She’s married to a friend of mine.’
‘The best kind of friend.’ Loredo wiped his mouth, and his smile faded. ‘This inquiry of yours – will it bring you up against Jonathan Stone?’
‘I think so.’
‘We have a saying in the Jewry that comes to mind right now: “The stone fell on the pitcher? Woe to the pitcher. The pitcher fell on the stone? Woe to the pitcher.”’
‘I take it I’m supposed to be the pitcher?’
Loredo gave him a serious look. ‘Stay away from Jonathan Stone. That’s my advice.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE LETTER CAME that evening. Caro didn’t recognize the neat copperplate hand that had inscribed her address, and there was no imprint on the yellow wax seal. Breaking it open, she discovered that the heavy linen paper simply served as an envelope, with no writing on the reverse. Something smaller was inside and she shook it out onto the desk.
A puzzle purse. She stared at it in surprise. Caro and her friends had used to make them for one another as girls: artfully constructed squares of folded paper with poems inside proclaiming undying friendship. This one was painted with an elaborate border and a large pink heart, a message penned around the edge: My dear, this heart that you behold, will break when you these leaves unfold. Could it be from Lord March? Could he have had a change of heart?
Prising apart the interlocking triangles of paper, she opened the puzzle purse to the second layer, so that it now resembled a star with four points. She stared at it, appalled. Ordinarily the star would be decorated with images of courtly love or devout friendship, but the painted figures depicted so delicately here were of a different nature entirely. In the first painting a couple were kissing. The woman had brown hair like her own, wearing the same peacock-blue gown she had worn to Vauxhall Gardens. In the second, the pair were engaged in lewd coupling, the man taking the woman from behind like animals on the grass. In the third, the woman wore an expression of fear, looming over her a man in a plague doctor’s mask. The final painting had a border of leaves, surely supposed to depict the bower. The dark-haired woman was standing over a lady in a pink dress, bleeding from many wounds to her stomach.
Hardly able to bring herself to touch it, she unfolded the puzzle purse fully, in order to read the hidden message at its heart.
STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING OR YOU’LL BE SORRY
*
Later, after she’d put Gabriel to bed, Caro examined the puzzle purse again. The artist was not without talent. Could Agnetti have painted it? It seemed ridiculous to think of the great master turning his hand to this childish task, but then there was nothing childish about the lewd and violent depictions. Nor the threat inside.
Yet Agnetti had talked about Lucy with regret, and he had attended her funeral, which was more than anyone else had troubled to do. And why – if he’d played any part in these events – would he send a threatening message that pointed to an artist? More likely, one of their four suspects was trying to divert suspicion away from himself – and trying to scare her. She resented herself for his success. Closing her eyes, seeking distraction from her fears, she found herself thinking about that strange, unhappy woman, Theresa Agnetti.
When the Agnettis had first moved to London, three years ago, Caro had made an effort to welcome Theresa into London society. She had always enjoyed the company of educated women, and Theresa was said to be learned, fluent in Greek. But in conversation she had proved distant and disinterested, and Caro had judged her a cold, ungrateful creature. This opinion was shared by others in her circle. Only Louisa, Mordechai’s wife, had persisted with her acquaintance, saying she thought Theresa’s aloof bearing concealed a shyness underneath.
Yet on occasion, when in drink, Theresa’s sullenness would desert her entirely, and she could be lively, flirtatious even. Laughing with other women’s husbands, probably trying to make her own husband jealous – Lottie Heneker had even overheard her complimenting one of her footmen! It was apparent to anyone that the marriage was unhappy. When the first stories had appeared in the newspapers about Agnetti’s sitters, Louisa had been despatched by the wives on a sympathy mission. ‘Much good it did me,’ she had reported back. ‘Consider my head bitten off. She just said it was lies.’
After that, nobody much troubled with Theresa Agnetti. The invitations dried up, and she was rarely seen out in society alone. Then came the scandal when she left her husband – simply walked out of the house one evening, and never returned. Some said she’d fled back to Naples or India. Others that she’d run off with a lover. Mordechai, who was always suspicious of educated, flirtatious women, said Theresa was a drunk, who’d probably thrown herself off a bridge. Agnetti was said to be distraught, but given his reputation for philandering, nobody accorded him very much sympathy. Any residual compassion evaporated just three months later, when he had moved his new assistant into the house. This fresh scandal had eclipsed the first, and now Theresa Agnetti’s name was rarely mentioned except in this context.
Caro sipped her wine slowly, her sickness starting to abate at last. Her breasts were still heavy and sore, her head swimming whenever she rose. Don’t think about the baby, she told herself. You will only drive yourself mad. Don’t think about Harry. Yet it was easier said than done. She forced her eye to the puzzle purse again. Think on this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
AFTER CHILD LEFT Solomon Loredo, he returned to the Covent Garden fleshpots. No one had heard of Pamela, but everyone knew Hector.
‘Little Gannymede gets around,’ one coffeehouse moll told him.
‘You know where I might find him?’
‘Like I said, he gets around. That your thing, is it? Boys?’
‘Not on your life.’
She grinned. ‘Take me outside for a guinea. I’ll show you things a virgin never could.’
‘I’m old enough to be your father.’
‘Wouldn’t ask if it mattered. I don’t mind a man with a bit of fat.’
Which was the kindest thing anyone said to Child all night.
In a posture house on Southampton Street, where young girls danced and contorted on silver platters, Pamela’s picture was again met with blank faces.
‘If I was virgin and looked like her,’ one girl said, peering between her legs to study the drawing, ‘I’d have sold myself at auction. You get more that way. Try the Horseshoe. People put cards up there.’
‘You ever see a card like this before?’ Child showed her the satyr.
Her eyes widened. ‘You didn’t say you was rich. Take me there, will you?’
‘Where?’
‘Some big house in the country. They have private masquerades there. A girl needs one of those to get in the door.’
‘What goes on there?’
‘Everything you’d expect. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve not been invited.’
�
��Who does the inviting?’
She shrugged. ‘I only know the money’s good.’
Child thanked her and walked over to Drury Lane, thinking about the notorious libertine, Jonathan Stone, and his country house at Muswell Rise. Had Lucy or Pamela gone to one of these parties? Was that why Hector had slipped the card into his pocket? He wondered if these masquerades had a connection to the Priapus Club. Was that why Lucy had been so convinced that one of their four suspects had killed Pamela?
At the Horseshoe tavern, Child studied the advertisements pinned to the wall. One card caught his eye, and he took it down to examine it:
A Delightful BEAUTY of FOURTEEN years, NEW to town, appears nightly at MRS HAVILLAND’S establishment at 16 COMPTON STREET, as the VIRGIN princess TAPOA of the SOUTH SEA ISLANDS. On the 17th day of SEPTEMBER she will be offering her COMPANY for sale to any GENTLEMAN willing to RELIEVE her of her present CONDITION.
Compton Street, home of the Golden Pear Tree, favoured haunt of Lord March and Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham.
It being after three, the place would be closed by now. Child trudged slowly home, looking over his shoulder for Finn Daley. His seven days were up.
When that poxy Irishman comes for me, he thought, fingering his pistol, I’ll take him down with me. A man should leave a legacy. Let this be mine. Yet, somewhat to his surprise, he reached his front door without incident.
His peace of mind lasted all of twenty seconds, the time it took him to climb the stairs and unlock the door. Moonlight picked out the disarray of his rooms. Drawers pulled out, their contents strewn on the floor, furniture overturned, like the scene in Nelly’s rooms.
Drawing his pistol, then lighting a lamp, he checked the bedroom for intruders – but found only the same scene of domestic chaos. They’d opened every cupboard and drawer, swept the contents from every shelf, torn the pages from his books, and slashed open his old feather mattress. Child picked up the remnants of a Toby beer jug that Sophie Hardcastle had given him at Christmas. The handle and spout had broken off, and his distress at its destruction surprised him.
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