Caro inclined her head, acknowledging the compliment. ‘There was one other matter I wanted to ask you about, sir. Jonathan Stone. I heard some City aldermen wanted him investigated for dealing in illegal loans, but the Home Office refused to get involved. Can that be true? I ask because Captain Corsham has had concerns about Stone for some time. I wanted to write and let him know.’
It was the best she could come up with, but fortunately Ansell Ward was an unsuspecting man. ‘It is gratifying to know that we have allies in Parliament, though rather too few, I think. It runs too deep.’
‘It, sir?’
‘Corruption,’ he said. ‘The ministry complicit, the law not worth a candle, the authorities looking the other way, paid off. It’s how Stone really made his money. I’ve gone to the heart of that little mystery. Another sorry tale.’
‘I thought that, like so many others, he made his fortune in India.’
‘So he likes people to think. Oh, I don’t deny that he returned to England moderately prosperous, but no more than that. Yet very soon he was lending vast sums at interest. Tens of thousands of pounds, a nabob’s ransom. What do you make of that, then? Eh?’
Caro made the appropriate noises of bemusement he seemed to anticipate.
‘Stone was just a broker,’ Ward cried. ‘A middling-man. For the banks. That’s what he was back then, and little has changed. Now don’t look like that. Not every counting house is as respectable as the Craven, and some of your competitors aren’t shy about breaking the law. Usury doesn’t pay, see, not with the legal rate of interest at five per cent. But that’s where Jonathan Stone comes into play. He brokers the loan, the bank lends on paper at five per cent, but the real rate is twelve, the bank and Stone splitting the difference. Stone’s part of the endeavour is to ensure that their debtors pay up at the higher rate, which they do with a regularity that should alarm the righteous man. A group of us aldermen, as you say, were determined to put a stop to it. Go into the banks, open the books, identify the guilty parties, hold their feet to the fire. But the Home Office made plain where their interests lie. Too many powerful gentlemen up to their necks in it, I suppose.’ He peered at Caro. ‘Mrs Corsham, are you quite all right?’
Memories assailed her: the still, tense faces of Mordechai and Cavill-Lawrence, her feeling that Stone mattered to them in some way. Wanting to know if Stone had asked her about politics. Or the bank.
She recalled Stone’s coded warnings about Ambrose, which she’d taken to refer to his syphilis, but now she wondered. Did you talk to him, as I asked? Brother Ambrose?
Ward’s martial mementoes stirred other memories too: those terrible days back in the spring, when her brothers had gone to war over the bank. Ambrose’s quiet despair; Mordechai’s fury. The refusal of the pair of them to answer her questions about what on earth was going on. And afterwards, when the board had voted and installed Mordechai as chairman, Ambrose had taken to his bed and stopped speaking at all.
Gazing at Ward’s concerned face, she murmured a few words about what a disgrace it all was, and how she was sure that Harry would want to see something done. Glowing with pleasure, he took her hand in his soft paw.
‘If only every parliamentarian was as staunch as your husband, and every banking house as honest as the Craven. Virtue will prevail, of that I am in no doubt. Until then,’ he raised a fist, ‘A la bataille!’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHILD SPENT THE next few hours wandering the streets of Covent Garden, stopping to talk to tavern doormen and grooms in stable yards. No one remembered the distinctive carriage with the harlequin pattern, in which Kitty Carefree had been seen riding. Child asked the whores he encountered too, but none of them recalled a client with a carriage like that.
At eight o’clock, fortified by a bowl of cockles and a quart of gin, Child walked up to Soho, to continue his inquiries there. First, he stopped off at Compton Street, where he watched the girls arriving for work at the tableaux house. Spotting Cecily, he hurried across the street to intercept her.
‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘I got into trouble the other night for disappearing.’
‘It won’t take long. I just need a minute of your time.’
Back in the coffeehouse, Cecily stirred her capuchin, while Child held up the necklace for her to examine.
‘It was Pamela’s,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Her father gave it to her mother. It was the only thing she’d ever had from either of them. She’d never have parted with it willingly. Where did you find it?’
‘Two gentlemen were arguing about it. One of them threw it away. My client was watching.’
‘Was one of them that soldier? The one who picked her up?’
Child nodded.
‘A pox on his eyes. Do you think he killed her?’
‘Quite possibly.’ The necklace span between Child’s fingers. He examined the silver hand and the turquoise beads. As Mrs Corsham had said, they looked exotic. ‘Did Pamela ever say anything else about her parents?’
‘Only that she was left as a baby at an orphanage. Pinned to the blanket was a note from her mother, and that necklace. Her father had abandoned them, the note said, and her mother couldn’t afford to keep them both – it’s a common story. That didn’t stop Pamela making up other stories about them, mind. Most orphans do.’
‘What kind of stories?’
‘She said that when she was at the orphanage, and the girls used to walk to the park, a gentleman would sit and watch her from his carriage. Silly cow had convinced herself he was her father, when he was probably just tugging at himself over the girls.’ Cecily smiled sadly. ‘Pamela was always dreaming up tales to make herself seem grander. I told Lucy that, when she asked.’
‘She asked you about Pamela’s parents too?’
‘No, about another piece of silliness on her part. Pamela said she knew a secret that was going to make her rich. That’s what I mean, she was always making up stories. She had great plans for the future, said she was going to marry her handsome soldier, be the next Lavinia Fenton. I told her she was already rich. A hundred and twenty-five guineas! But she said that was nothing compared to the value of her secret.’
Child frowned. ‘She never said what it was?’
‘Of course she didn’t. Like I said, it was just another of her stories.’
*
Soho was coming to life, lamps flaring in the windows of the chophouses and brothels, the taverns filling up, laughter rising. Child decided to begin his inquiries after the carriage at the Golden Pear Tree across the street. He also had a few questions for the doorman about the lieutenant and Lord March.
Weaving his way between the revellers on the street, he was forced to step aside as a very large man, probably drunk, veered into his path. He turned to make a sardonic remark, but it died on his lips as the man stepped in front of him again, no longer looking drunk, but very alert. Someone else seized him from behind, and the large man drove a fist into his stomach. Winded, Child doubled over, vomiting onto his assailant’s shoes.
‘Fuckster,’ the large man said, and hit him again.
People stared, but no one intervened as the pair manhandled him towards a waiting carriage. He struggled and shouted, to no avail. The second man reached into his pocket and removed Child’s pistol. They opened the door to the carriage and bundled him inside, where the large man sat on him. The door slammed, and the carriage moved off.
Shite, Child thought. Finn Daley.
BOOK THREE
9–12 SEPTEMBER 1782
‘We should know what is true before we break our rage.’
Aeschylus, the Oresteia, 458 BC
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
AMBROSE SAT IN his porter’s chair, the hood shielding his eyes from the lamp, a fragment of light glinting at the end of his silver nose. Caro held his bandaged hand.
Footsteps in the hall. The door opened and Mordechai entered, dragged away from a supper party by Caro’s note.
‘Come down to t
he study,’ he said.
‘I want to talk here.’ Skewering him with her gaze, she cast about for questions, so many to choose from she didn’t know where to start. ‘Answer me honestly. When Ambrose was chairman of the bank, did he authorize loans brokered by Jonathan Stone?’
Mordechai gazed up at a painting, Cronos castrating his father with a scythe. ‘The bank has always used men like Stone, ever since Father’s time. You think he went from grocer to banker by following the rules?’
She closed her eyes. ‘Breaking the law.’
‘Everyone does it. Everyone with any sense.’
‘Do we use Stone now? Is that why you were so troubled when you confronted me with Cavill-Lawrence the other day?’
‘Yes, we still use Stone – among others. I’ll not apologize for it. The laws on usury are clerical cant. Parliament can’t repeal them without upsetting the Church, so we just ignore them and everyone looks the other way.’
‘Then why did you force Ambrose out of the bank?’
Mordechai glared at her. ‘Every day I take decisions in the best interests of this family. I don’t anticipate gratitude, but I do expect to be obeyed. I told you to dismiss your thief-taker. Have you done so?’
‘No, and I won’t consider it. Not without answers.’
More footsteps were heard in the hall. The door opened to reveal a footman. Behind him, Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence, who stopped when he saw Ambrose. ‘Good God. It’s as bad as that.’
‘What’s he doing here?’ Caro asked.
‘I sent for him when I received your note. This concerns him too. The damage our brother has caused goes far beyond our family, I regret to say.’
Caro waited until the footman had withdrawn and closed the door. ‘What damage?’ She looked from one to the other. ‘Why do the Home Office care about Stone if everyone makes illegal loans? Why does the bank?’
Cavill-Lawrence walked to the window and threw it open, one of those men who couldn’t abide disease at close quarters. Taking an enamelled snuffbox from his waistcoat pocket, he took a pinch, then nodded at Mordechai. ‘You might as well tell her.’
Her brother frowned. ‘Are you sure?’
‘What’s she going to do? Bring down her own family’s bank? It might make her see sense.’
His gaze stony, his voice hard, Mordechai addressed his words not to her, but to Ambrose. ‘He was never cut out for the chairmanship. The responsibility. The hours. I knew it. The board knew it. Everyone except you and Father.’ He looked up. ‘That damn painting.’
‘Just the facts, please,’ Cavill-Lawrence said. ‘Everyone here is aware of the family history.’
Mordechai dragged his eyes to Caro. ‘In November last year, when Ambrose was in his last months as Chairman, he authorized a new loan brokered by Jonathan Stone. Nearly a hundred thousand pounds, larger than any we’d ever made. When I found out, I queried the sum, as one would. Who, I wanted to know, could afford to borrow so much? What guarantees did we have that the money would be repaid? What Ambrose told me was even worse than I had imagined.’
‘The Priapus Club,’ Cavill-Lawrence said. ‘That’s where they did their business, your brother and Stone. Did it together, until a year ago, when Ambrose was forced to withdraw from society. After that, Stone did the seduction part alone. Enticing young men of good family into debauchery and debt. Masquerades, drink, women, God knows what. Stone used Lord March to make his introductions. He brokered the loans, and Ambrose came up with the money. Everybody happy – except the fathers – but fathers die eventually. Ambrose always had an eye for the future, much like your own father. And these young men stood to inherit some of the largest estates in the kingdom. Catch them while they’re young, Ambrose used to say, and you have their business for life. And one day, late last year, Jonathan Stone walked into his rooms at the Adelphi, and told him that he’d hooked the biggest fish of all.’
Caro stared at him, realization dawning. ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘You mean Prinny.’
Prince George Frederick Augustus. Nineteen years old, in fierce pursuit of pleasure, kept on a tight purse string by his moralist of a father, who’d told the banks not to lend him money on any account. Caro saw how it would have happened. All Lord March would have had to do was dangle the prospect: Stone’s money, his club, his women – to Prinny it must have been as tempting as the apple in the Garden. The future King of England in the pocket of Jonathan Stone – and the Craven Bank.
Ambrose made a noise, more than a gasp, not quite a moan, and they all stared at the hollowed-out man in the porter’s chair. Caro shook her head. ‘If the King found out that we had illegally lent money to his son . . .’
‘Then Ambrose and I would be facing prison,’ Mordechai said. ‘Perhaps worse.’
‘But it makes no sense. Ambrose was daring, but never reckless.’
‘His wits were failing. Presumably Stone took advantage. Ambrose should have stepped down as Chairman long before he did.’
‘But his wits weren’t failing back then. Physically he was worse, but he was only a little forgetful in the mind. That came later.’ She looked from Mordechai to Cavill-Lawrence, wondering if there was something else they were not telling her. ‘This document your agents are searching for – does it have something to do with the Prince?’
‘A witness account of the Priapus Club,’ Cavill-Lawrence said. ‘A potted history, if you will. Names, dates, and all manner of detailed depravity. It was in Lucy’s possession before she was killed, and now we can’t find it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because she took it upon herself to write to the Home Secretary and tell him. The letter was found next to her body after she was killed. A constable passed it to Sir Amos Fox, who acted entirely properly by involving my office. Lucy claimed in her letter to have a dossier of evidence pertaining to the murder of a young prostitute named Pamela. These papers include the witness account I mentioned: a document that could cause enormous embarrassment to many important families, not least the House of Hanover. Lucy demanded a Home Office investigation into this alleged murder, and the arrest of the guilty party. Failing that, her dossier would be sent to the newspapers. The public, she felt certain, would want to see justice done. One has to rather admire her presumption.’
In the wrong hands a secret is a weapon. Oh, Lucy, Caro thought, you were playing with fire there.
‘Lucy said in her letter that her dossier was in the possession of a friend,’ Cavill-Lawrence went on. ‘She was afraid for her safety – and when you’re blackmailing the Home Secretary, you’re right to be. She said that if anything happened to her, then that friend would ensure the newspapers got their dossier. We didn’t kill her, we weren’t even aware of any of this until we read her letter. But I don’t see how this friend is supposed to know that. Every day since Lucy’s murder, we have braced ourselves for the dossier’s appearance in print. Perhaps this friend was not as reliable as Lucy thought. Perhaps it was merely a bluff and there is no dossier. But if that document exists, then we must find it. I ask you now, as a loyal subject, if you or your thief-taker knows where it is?’
‘I’d hardly be here now, asking these questions, if we did.’
Cavill-Lawrence took another pinch of snuff and sneezed his frustration. Mordechai paced the room. Ambrose had tipped back his head, as if to study her, but seemed to gaze through her.
‘Lucy had five suspects in mind for Pamela’s murder,’ she said. ‘Jonathan Stone, the Dodd-Bellingham brothers, Lord March, and a fifth man. Was Prinny at Muswell Rise that night?’
Cavill-Lawrence gave her a look, the kind that had cemented his reputation in Whitehall as a man never to be crossed. ‘I will pretend you never said that. Prinny was hunting in Northamptonshire throughout March, and for that we can be thankful.’
Except that Northamptonshire was not so very far from Muswell Rise.
‘In any event,’ Cavill-Lawrence said, ‘it makes no odds. The royal heir, nights of depravity, whores and
masks and all the rest, a fifteen-year-old virgin. The newspapers won’t care who was where when. Any scandal that touches the Priapus Club, touches Prinny.’
‘So the murderer is to walk free? Perhaps to kill again?’
‘What murderer? We have no evidence that this girl, Pamela, is even dead. Only the ravings of a whore in the grip of an obsession.’
‘A woman who is now dead. You certainly have evidence of murder there.’
‘Sir Amos Fox tells me he arrested a suspect for Lucy’s murder last night. A lamplighter named Ezra Von Siegel.’
Caro stared at him aghast. ‘Von Siegel didn’t do it.’
‘On the contrary, it seems that he confessed.’
‘Under what duress?’
Cavill-Lawrence’s cold gaze never left her face. ‘Less than forty years ago, a bloody battle was fought on British soil for the crown of our kingdom, and across the water, the Stuart Pretenders watch and wait. It is only because of this King’s steadiness, his sense of duty, his private morality, that their cause has diminished. Other enemies plot from within: Papists, foreign spies, those who would have us follow the American example. A scandal that rocks the House of Hanover, that threatens the bond between King and heir, would be a gift to those enemies. There’s very little I would not do to prevent that happening.’
‘Father indulged you,’ Mordechai said. ‘Ambrose and your husband too. But I am not prepared to do so any longer. I am stopping your allowance until your husband returns home – I have spoken to the other trustees, it’s all in order. If you need any household bills settling, then you may come to Louisa or myself. But don’t think we’ll be subsidizing thief-takers, or nights trysting at Vauxhall Gardens.’
‘If this story about the Prince becomes public knowledge,’ Cavill-Lawrence said, ‘the fall of the Craven Bank won’t be far behind. Let destitution concentrate your mind, if nothing else will.’
Daughters of Night Page 25
