Turning back, she watched the lieutenant, who was gazing at the ground, walking up and down, presumably looking for the thing Lord March had thrown. He wandered around for a while like this, and then unbuttoned his breeches, urinating long and loud. Once he had finished, he emitted a soft belch and gazed around the alley again. Muttering beneath his breath, apparently giving up on his search, he walked back towards Carlisle House. Again Caro drew into the shadows.
At the door, the lieutenant paused, and took a long look around him. Then he ran a hand through his golden hair, brushed something from his redcoat, and walked inside. The door closed behind him, and Caro allowed herself to breathe again.
She walked down the alley to the spot where she’d seen them talking. It stank of cat and urine and rotting food. At the end of the alley, in the distance, she could see carriages trundling past on Soho Square. What had they been arguing about? The thing in the lieutenant’s hand? She looked around her, trying to work out how far Lord March might have thrown it.
She walked back and forth across the alley, poking mounds of unpleasantness with her slipper. After about ten minutes of careful searching like this, she caught sight of a metallic glint in a pile of vegetable peelings and rags. Wincing, the stench of urine sharp in her nostrils, she retrieved it with her handkerchief. A silver necklace with a charm on the chain: a tiny hand with a turquoise bead on either side. It had an exotic look, not English in design. She wondered if it was old, like the jewellery she’d seen in Stone’s collection.
The music stopped, and she heard applause and approaching footsteps. Slipping the necklace into her panniers, she turned. A man was striding towards her from the Carlisle House end of the alley. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and she made out the long beak of the plague doctor’s mask. Fear curdled in her stomach. She turned and ran.
She could hear him behind her, the rasp of his breath, the fall of his feet. Her own feet skidded on the cobbles, and her muscles burned. Up ahead, she could see lights and passers-by. She tried to call out to them, but couldn’t find the air. Then he was on her, dragging her back, an arm across her throat. She fought him, clawing for the mask. At any moment, she feared a knife would slide between her ribs, but he only forced one arm behind her, marching her on towards the lights.
Hope flared. What was he doing? Why was he taking her towards safety? Carriages rattled past, their lamps dazzling. She was still fighting him, but he was too strong, forcing her on into the square. Caro could see her own carriage and footmen, drawn up with many others outside Carlisle House. She took a breath to call out to them, but the man released her without warning, throwing her away from himself with tremendous force.
She landed hard on the cobbles, the air expelled from her lungs. Her ears filled with a tremendous clatter, and twisting, she saw a carriage bearing down on her. Foam on the horses’ nostrils, the sharp iron of their hooves. A stench of horse sweat hit her hard. She rolled.
Her face struck the cobbles and she tasted blood. She cried out as one of the coach wheels grazed her leg. Then as the carriage rattled on, she drew a sobbing breath, and all she could hear was Miles calling her name.
PAMELA
23 January 1782
Pamela stared at the canvas. The lines of chalk and charcoal. Light and shadow. She could discern arms, legs, a nose: her and Peter Jakes. The line of his sword. A bulge of muscle in his arm as he held her down.
‘Who is she, Mr Agnetti? The girl I’m supposed to be?’
‘Her name was Iphigenia, the daughter of a Grecian king named Agamemnon. The Greeks were going to war with the kingdom of Troy, and on the eve of their embarkation, one of his soldiers accidentally killed a deer belonging to the goddess Artemis.’
He was growing on her, the Italian, despite his grizzled jowls and his paunch and his salt-and-pepper hair. He liked her to ask questions, and thought about the answers he gave. This one she knew.
‘Artemis is the goddess of virgins.’
‘Strictly speaking, that is Hestia. But Artemis was renowned for her virginity too, as well as her capacity for vengeance. Alarmed, the Greeks consulted a seer who said that in order to appease Artemis, Agamemnon must sacrifice Iphigenia.’
‘His own daughter?’
‘He told her she was going to be married. That’s what she thought the altar was for.’
‘The poxy gullion.’ She clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’
He smiled. ‘No, it is probably a fair description. What would be going through her mind, do you think? Fear, hope, confusion? Something more?’
‘Anger,’ Pamela said. ‘Her da is the person supposed to keep her safe.’
‘Anger wouldn’t make her father change his mind. Pity might. Tears and so on. Wouldn’t that be a woman’s calculation?’
‘You can’t calculate for feelings. Not the ones that bubble out of you. Anger’s the worst for doing that.’
‘So it is.’ Agnetti considered a moment. ‘But I think fear is what people will expect. I might make a few more sketches. Can you think of something frightening while we work?’
Returning to the altar, she thought of the cupboard in the two-room orphanage, the darkness, the smell of must, the spiders. Mrs Rosell had used to lock her inside it when she refused to say her prayers. She tried to recall terror, but remembered only rage: at her parents for abandoning her; at the other orphans for their compliance; at Mrs Rosell for her grating voice and old patched shoes.
Fake it, she thought. Like the Pamela on stage at the tableaux house when Squire B tears her dress. Eyes full of submission, the way they like it.
*
Two hours later, the door opened and Mrs Agnetti entered the studio. She was wearing another of her ridiculous turbans, this one a vibrant scarlet in hue.
‘Jacobus,’ she said, ‘Greyling says you told him I wasn’t to take the carriage out today.’
‘Dr Latimer says it isn’t wise for you to go out. I thought we could take supper together. Vermicelli, to remind us of Naples.’
‘But we agreed that I would go. I accepted the invitation.’ She turned to Pamela, who was suddenly conscious of her bared breast. ‘Leave us. I want to talk to my husband alone.’
Agnetti frowned. ‘Speak to her kindly, Theresa.’
‘I will speak to her any way I choose in my own home.’
Bitch. Pamela smiled sweetly. ‘I don’t mind.’
Agnetti put down his brush. ‘Go and join Lucy and Kitty. I will send for you shortly.’
Downstairs in the morning room, she found Kitty at the tea table, playing solitaire. The lieutenant’s box of rose-petal macarons was by her arm. Lucy was lying with her feet up on the sofa.
‘They’re arguing,’ Pamela said. ‘Mr and Mrs Agnetti.’
‘Last time he wanted to go out,’ Kitty said, ‘and she didn’t want to go. Whatever he wants to do, she wants the opposite.’ Her eyes flicked to the decanter. ‘He’s right. She shouldn’t go. Theresa needs to take better care of herself now.’
‘If she drinks,’ Lucy said, ‘it’s because she’s unhappy. He bears a responsibility for that, don’t you think?’
‘He is kind to her,’ Kitty said. ‘Tries to make her smile. Could have any harlot in town he wants and chooses not to. Would that I were so unhappy.’
‘A prisoner in your own home? Him your gaoler?’
‘Since when was it a crime for a man to care for his wife?’
‘There are no crimes between husbands and wives. Short of him cutting your throat. That’s the trouble with marriage.’
Lucy and Kitty seemed to have slipped away from the Agnettis, into some wider argument they’d had before.
‘Not all marriages are unhappy,’ Kitty said. ‘Some are full of love.’
‘And some of hate.’
‘Will Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham be there?’ Pamela said. ‘Wherever she wants to go to supper?’
Lucy frowned. ‘She said it was just ladies. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason.’
She poured herself a bowl of chocolate, wondering if Agnetti suspected what his wife was up to. ‘Does Mr Agnetti really never tumble his sitters?’ The newspapers suggested otherwise.
‘Never, though many have tried. He only has eyes for his wife.’
‘When he’s not ignoring her for days,’ Lucy said. ‘Closeted away up there painting.’
Kitty sighed. ‘One day you’ll meet the right man, Boleyn. Handsome, rich, kind, and he’ll adore you, just like Mr Agnetti adores his wife. And you’ll turn your back on happiness because you’re stubborn.’
‘And will he ride into town on a unicorn, this man?’
‘Why do you call one another that? Aragon? Boleyn?’
‘We first met at a brothel in St James’s called Hampton Court Palace,’ Kitty said. ‘Six girls, each named for one of King Henry’s wives. Nobody ever wanted poor Ann of Cleves, so they changed the name.’ She popped a macaron into her mouth. ‘Here, there’s only two left. Do you want one?’
‘What was that card the lieutenant gave you?’ It had been nagging at Pamela for days. ‘The one with the man-goat.’
‘An invitation to a masquerade out in the country.’
‘At the lieutenant’s house?’
‘Lord, no. The Dodd-Bellinghams haven’t owned a country house in thirty years.’
‘But he’ll be there?’
‘And plenty of better gentlemen. It’s the sort of rout where a girl might find herself a rich husband.’
Lucy snorted. ‘Dreaming don’t make it so.’
‘It happens,’ Kitty protested. ‘Remember Lavinia Fenton, who became the Duchess of Bolton?’
‘When you’re a duchess, then you can say “I told you so”.’
‘When I’m a duchess, I’ll find good husbands for you all.’
‘You can keep mine,’ Lucy said. ‘Buy me a country house instead.’
‘I’ll buy you nothing if you don’t stop being such a cynic.’ Kitty flounced. ‘The money’s good anyway. Twenty guineas a night.’
‘No constables. No watch. No one to hear you scream.’
Kitty threw the last macaron at Lucy’s head. ‘Stop scaring the girl. Mr Stone would never let a harlot get hurt.’
A door slammed upstairs.
‘She’ll be crying,’ Lucy said.
Tears . . . a woman’s calculation. Except Mrs Agnetti wouldn’t even convince at the tableaux house.
‘They were happy once,’ Kitty said. ‘Maybe they can be again. If she’s a little kinder. If he tries talking to her properly. Maybe things will change, when . . .’ She curved a hand in front of her stomach.
‘When a baby isn’t being sick, it’s screaming,’ Lucy said. ‘When was that ever a wand to wave over a marriage?’
Pamela frowned. Was Mrs Agnetti with child? And if so, then who was the father?
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
‘YOU COULD HAVE been killed,’ Mr Child said.
Caro studied his horrified face. ‘Well, I wasn’t. Just a little bruised.’
She had covered the graze on her cheek with lead paint, and Emilie, her ladies’ maid, had bandaged the cut on her leg. The jolting of the carriage along Oxford Street jarred her aching bones, but all told, she’d been lucky. Haltingly, she told Child about the attempt on her life.
‘My footman, Miles, picked me up off the street and I sent him after the plague doctor. There was no sign of him in the alley. He must have gone back into Carlisle House. Miles asked around inside, but nobody had seen him. I suppose he had removed his costume by then, just as he did at Vauxhall Gardens.’
‘He’s bold,’ Child said. ‘I’ll give him that.’
Mordechai had turned up at her door at ten, having heard all about it. He’d whisked her off to Bow Street, where he’d torn strips off the magistrate.
‘It is unconscionable,’ he’d said. ‘I insist that you do more. We’re no longer talking about a dead whore. A man who would murder my sister might murder anyone.’
Sir Amos had been much less solicitous today. ‘There was a reason he chose you, though, wasn’t there, Mrs Corsham? I understand from Lord March that you have engaged a thief-taker to look into the murder at Vauxhall.’
Mordechai stared at her incredulously.
‘Yes, I have,’ Caro said. ‘I want Lucy’s killer caught.’
‘As do we all,’ Sir Amos said. ‘But I hope last night demonstrated the folly of your actions. Leave this matter where it belongs, madam, in my hands.’
Remembering the business with the missing documents, and the magistrate’s closeness to Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence and the Home Office, Caro was past trusting a word he said. The attack last night had frightened her, but it had angered her too – her rage hardening her resolve.
Mordechai had lectured her all the way home, as much about the scandalous story in The London Hermes as about the attempt on her life. She’d barely bothered to argue. How could she expect him to understand? Mordechai, who had never in his life felt the compulsion of desire. The heat of a lover’s body. The rush of watching the hazard dice tumble and fall. The need to know who’d killed a woman who’d died in your arms.
‘Dismiss this thief-taker from your service,’ had been his parting words. ‘Do it at once.’
‘Did you get any sense of him?’ Child asked now. ‘Height? Weight?’
‘He wasn’t a short man, but I had my back to him most of the time. He was strong enough to manhandle me along the street.’
‘You have the waist of a wasp, madam. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred could do the same.’
The carriage had halted again, caught up in Oxford Street’s endless tide of coaches, chairs, curricles and phaetons. Bewildered country folk, come to London to see the sights, stared at the shop windows with their displays of painted fans and china plates, the pyramids of sugar plums and exotic fruits.
‘They were all there,’ Caro said. ‘Our four suspects. Jonathan Stone threatened me not long before it happened. And Lord March and Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham had been in the alley just minutes before.’
‘Would they have had time to get changed into the costume?’
‘Yes, I think so. Just about.’
‘Why throw you in front of the carriage? Why not just knife you in the alley – forgive me, madam – like he did with Lucy?’
‘If my death was thought to be a murder, my brother wouldn’t have rested until the killer was caught. This way it would have looked like an accident.’ She breathed deeply. ‘We have him rattled, Mr Child. It suggests to me that we’re doing something right.’
‘Oh, we’re making progress, that’s for sure.’ She listened as he told her about his visit to the tableaux house and his conversation with Pamela’s friend, Cecily. ‘I think we can safely presume that the Dodd-Bellingham brothers took the girls to Stone’s estate that night, and that Lord March too was a guest at this masquerade. Neither he nor the lieutenant mentioned it, and if they didn’t precisely lie, that’s a devil of an omission. As far as I’m aware, nobody’s seen Pamela since. Cecily shared Lucy’s view that something bad happened to her there. I’m inclined to agree.’
‘As am I.’ Caro frowned. ‘And she mentioned a fifth suspect? Why, this inquiry does not narrow, it only expands!’
‘My best guess is Agnetti.’ Child told her about the knife he’d found at Vauxhall Gardens and the scene he’d witnessed afterwards between the artist and his assistant. ‘He knew both Lucy and Pamela, he has a temper, and he isn’t shy of losing it with women. He also had the means and the opportunity to kill Lucy. The murder weapon belonged to him.’
‘Couldn’t someone else have taken the knife from amongst Agnetti’s tools? I saw several at the Rotunda the other day.’
‘It’s possible. Was Agnetti at Carlisle House last night?’
‘Yes, he was. And he did say he had once attended the Priapus Club. Perhaps he was talking about that night with Pamela?’
‘There’s more,’ Child said. ‘I went to the offices of The Public Adv
ertiser this morning, and read up on our friend Agnetti. Want to know something interesting? Theresa Agnetti disappeared on the first of March, the same day Pamela went to the masquerade.’
‘You think there is a connection?’
‘It seems rather a large coincidence. Two women who likely knew one another, both disappearing on the same day. The newspapers say Mrs Agnetti walked out of her house that evening, taking no money and no clothes. She left no letter, no explanation. She simply vanished.’
‘Are you suggesting that Agnetti might have killed her too?’
‘He wouldn’t be the first husband to dispose of an unwanted wife that way. The newspapers say the marriage was unhappy.’
‘I think it was.’ Caro thought for a moment. ‘Mr Agnetti hired a thief-taker to find his wife, as I recall. My sister-in-law, Louisa, answered his questions. Why would Agnetti do that, if he had killed her?’
‘To make it look as if he hadn’t. Did your sister-in-law know the wife well?’
‘Louisa tried harder with Theresa than anyone. She wasn’t always easy company.’
‘Could you talk to her? You must concede the timing’s odd.’
‘Very well. But there are other possibilities for our fifth suspect too. Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence, for one. The Home Office must be taking an interest in Lucy’s murder for a reason.’
‘Couldn’t Lord March be that reason? Pamela told Cecily that he had a fancy for her. His father, the earl, could surely pull strings with the Home Office?
‘Yes, he could.’ Caro was long past any instinct to defend him. Courting Clemency Howard behind her back. Whoring with Jonathan Stone. Lusting after a fifteen-year-old virgin.
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