Child had gone down there earlier and had questioned the boys by the bushes, but nobody could give him a description of the man. They were shaken by Hector’s murder, and from the look of them, scared stiff. He wondered if the Home Office had paid them a visit.
‘Someone had been looking for Hector for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘I think word got back to the killer that he’d been asking around about the murders. That’s why he was killed.’
The chairwoman encompassed the room with a sweep of her pipe. ‘Our members are plainly conflicted. The Whores’ Club must stand neuter. We cannot help you.’
‘You could take a vote on it,’ Child suggested. ‘A secret ballot.’
‘Who the pox do you think you are?’ Rosy Sims demanded. ‘I’ve seen stains on my bedsheets that look better than you.’ She looked around at the others. ‘You’re not seriously listening to this fat jackanapes?’
But they were listening. Child could see it in their frowns and their tears and their clenched fists.
‘I say let’s vote,’ another voice said. ‘I was with you on Lucy. But this is different. We can’t do nothing.’
Rosy Sims started shouting and others shouted back. The chairwoman rang her bell for silence, and the arguments gradually quietened to whispered insults. She pointed at Child with her pipe. ‘This club will discuss the matter. You will wait downstairs.’
Child descended to the taproom, where he nursed a gin that cost a shilling and tasted of turpentine. The voices upstairs grew increasingly rancorous, and half an hour later, Rosy Sims, Becky Greengrass, and Ceylon Sally trooped down the stairs. They turned to glare at him as they passed, walking out of the tavern with an air of outraged dignity. A small, dark girl followed in their wake. She beckoned to Child. ‘You can come up.’
The chairwoman gave him a look that said he was there on sufferance. ‘This club has voted to help you, if we can. Three of our members chose not to, and that is their prerogative. You may ask your questions, sir.’
Child gazed at their expectant faces, marshalling his thoughts. ‘Did any of you ever hear any talk about Pamela’s disappearance? Or know anything about a fifth man who was there at Muswell Rise that night?’
His words were greeted by a long silence.
‘All we know is that Lucy thought a girl had been killed,’ the chairwoman said. ‘But Becky and the others swore it wasn’t true. They said Lucy was going mad. She often sounded it.’
‘How about Lucy’s murder? Did anyone ever hear any rumours about that?’ He gazed out at a sea of blank faces.
‘Only what was in the newspapers.’ The chairwoman pursed her lips. ‘They shouldn’t have talked about her like that. It wasn’t right.’
‘Does anyone know the whereabouts of Kitty Carefree?’
Several women started talking at once, but it was only the same old stories about a wealthy keeper with no name.
‘Kitty was spotted riding in a gentleman’s carriage on the Strand about two weeks ago,’ Child said. ‘If she has found a keeper, then it seems likely that this was him. The carriage was distinctive.’ He described the harlequin pattern.
‘I’ve seen that carriage.’ The speaker looked about fifteen, with soft skin and piled fair hair. ‘I saw it pull up outside the Devil tavern in Fleet Street a couple of weeks ago. Might have been the same day. A gentleman got out. There was a woman inside, but I didn’t see her face.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Well dressed, about fifty, maybe a little older. They had a guild dinner that night, in one of the upstairs rooms. A lot of rich merchants coming and going. I called out to him, but he didn’t stop, just walked inside.’
This was something to go on, at least. The Devil was only down the road.
‘Am I right in thinking that some of you sit for Jacobus Agnetti?’
A few hands shot up.
‘Did any of you ever meet Pamela at his house?’ Child held up her drawing.
‘I did.’
Child swivelled in the direction of the voice. The girl had coiled black hair and a strong-featured face with thick black brows and a Roman nose.
‘My name’s Julietta. I was Agnetti’s Cassandra. I don’t mean his assistant,’ she clarified. ‘The one in his painting.’ She wound a finger round one of her ringlets. ‘Pamela’s painting was part of the same quartet as mine. So we got to talking.’
‘How did she feel about Agnetti?’
‘She liked sitting for him and she wanted to do it again. He’d talked about painting her as his Andromeda, though I know at least three other girls he was considering.’
‘What about Agnetti’s wife? How did Pamela feel about her?’
‘They didn’t get on. I don’t know why. Theresa could be mean sometimes. Take against a girl for no reason. It ought to have been a happy time for them – the Agnettis had wanted a baby for so long – but Theresa went around with a terrible scowl, and Pamela seemed to get the worst of it.’
‘Theresa was pregnant?’ This was news to Child.
‘Until she lost the baby and nearly died. The doctors came and went for three days and three nights. Lucy, Kitty and I took it in turns to sit with her. The poor thing all yellow and shrunken, sweat pouring off her, shivering. She was delirious too, saying all sorts of terrible things.’
‘Such as?’
‘That Pamela had tried to kill her. That she’d murdered her baby.’
‘Was she serious?’
‘Like I said, she was in a fever, delusional. The next time I saw her, she was a little better, sipping gruel. She cried about her baby, but she never said anything more about Pamela.’
But maybe she still believed it, Child thought. And if so, that was a powerful motive for murder. Not that he believed Mrs Agnetti had killed Pamela with her own hands, but it spoke to his conviction that she had played a part in it somehow.
Child listed the names of their four main suspects. ‘Did Pamela ever talk about any of these men?’
‘She had a fancy for the lieutenant,’ Julietta said. ‘He’s a fine-looking fellow, I told her, but not worth breaking your heart over. A girl needs to think about what a man will put in her purse, not in her cunny. But her feelings were all mixed up. They often are at that age.’ She thought for a moment. ‘She mentioned Mr Stone too. Asked me a lot of questions about his money and his background.’
Child addressed the room: ‘Have any of you ever had a violent encounter with any of these men? Or heard a rumour to that effect?’
The girls all started talking at once. The chairwoman rang her bell, and once order was restored, she called out each name in turn. Those of Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham and Jonathan Stone were greeted with silence, and Child reminded himself that many of the girls benefitted from the masquerades, and might not want to stick their necks out.
‘Lord March,’ the chairwoman announced, and one of the girls put up her hand.
‘He tumbled me a few times, when I was working at the Nunnery over in St James’s.’
Child had heard of the Nunnery. The sort of place where the girls spoke French and played the harp, and a man didn’t get much change from twenty-five guineas. If Lord March was a regular visitor, then no wonder he had debts.
‘He was rough with you?’
‘Not exactly. He liked brandy, and struggled to hold it. Sometimes he’d drink himself into a stupor, and the next morning he wouldn’t remember what he’d said and done. One night, he’d had a skinful, and he could be real trouble to get primed when he was in his cups. I raised him up eventually, but it had taken a real effort. He was pleased and gave me five guineas as a tip. But in the morning, when he awoke and found his purse empty, he claimed he’d been robbed. He grabbed hold of me and searched me, and found my guineas. I thought he was going to hit me, so I screamed for the bullies. They calmed him down, and I told them what had happened, but he wouldn’t believe it. Neither did the bullies. They threw me out.’ She bristled with indignation at the memory.
‘An
other time,’ she went on, ‘he got into a brawl with some friends, and they broke the place up. Smashed a looking-glass, pulled down some curtains. The bullies locked him in a cupboard until he sobered up. In the morning, they showed him the damage and he couldn’t even remember doing it. A man like that, who knows what he could do.’
And he’d wanted Pamela, Child reminded himself. Had Lord March been drunk that night too? Out of control? Orin’s words came back to him: Mad or bad. A real frenzy.
The chairwoman called out the final name: ‘Simon Dodd-Bellingham.’
Several of the girls glanced at one another. One pulled a face.
‘What is it?’ Child said.
He was answered by a girl with a long aristocratic face and silver earrings. ‘I’ve never seen him in the brothels, but we’ve all met him at the masquerades. He talks about his old pots and statues and bores everyone to tears. The other men, they’re there for the girls, but not him. Some of us wonder if he’s a molly, but a molly wouldn’t look at us the way he does.’
‘Go on,’ Child said, his interest stirring.
‘Like he wants us and hates us all at the same time – and hates himself for wanting us too. One time, he just sat there watching me. Stone noticed and told me to attend to him. I didn’t want to, but you don’t argue, or you don’t get invited back. And afterwards, he treated me so coldly.’
‘Contempt isn’t a crime,’ Child observed, remembering Simon’s disgust when he’d talked about whores that day in his workshop.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t say he murdered anyone, only that we don’t like him. But a girl learns early to be careful when they’re quiet like that. The hot, angry ones might break your nose, but it’s the cold, distant ones who’ll kill you. Then afterwards use your hair to wipe your blood off their shoes.’
*
Limping a little, Child walked east to Fleet Street, thinking about Lord March and Simon Dodd-Bellingham. One with a propensity to be hot-headed, violent, and irrational in drink; the other cold, perhaps nursing a hatred of prostitutes. As for Pamela and Mrs Agnetti, their disagreement over Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham was sounding less like a petty jealousy and more like a full-blown feud. But did that rivalry have any bearing upon whatever had happened that night at Muswell Rise?
The Devil tavern lay just beyond Temple Bar. Child stooped under the old wooden lintel. The place was popular with men of letters, and a number of gentlemen in the taproom were listening to one of their number declaiming poetry. Child ordered an ale, and bought the tap-man one too. They enjoyed a moment in companionable silence, and then Child asked him about the harlequin carriage.
The man shook his head. ‘I never saw it, but I wouldn’t, not stuck behind here.’
‘Apparently, you had a guild dinner on that night. It was about two weeks ago?’
He nodded. ‘August the thirtieth, it must have been. The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers booked one of our upstairs rooms.’
Fruiterers. Child stared through him for a moment, searching for the connection his answer inspired. When it came to him, he smiled. ‘Pineapples.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
THE NEW FRENCH lamps lately installed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, were so bright they bathed not only the stage but also the entire auditorium in light. Not that the audience cared. They were there to watch one another, not the play.
The galleries were full. The Prince of Wales sat in the royal box, surrounded by friends and sycophants, powdered to the point of pastiness, already running to fat. Caro watched him through her opera glass, wondering if he was the fifth man. The one with Pamela.
On stage, the actors perspired in the heat, white stage paint sliding off the face of the man playing Sir Oliver Surface. Swivelling her opera glass to observe those seated down in the pit, Caro watched Jacobus Agnetti, his arms crossed, unsmiling. The Dodd-Bellinghams were sitting nearby: Simon laughing, the lieutenant scanning the boxes with his opera glass, looking up at the ladies.
Earlier, at home, she had consulted Harry’s atlas, and discovered that there were three Somersets in the American colonies: one in New Jersey, one in Massachusetts, and one in Maryland. She would talk to Mr Child about it tomorrow.
She had also given some thought to the footman’s story about Simon. Why had Mrs Ward been so desperate to get Simon out of her house? To the point where she’d manufactured an entire theft to manipulate her husband into dismissing him? Caro had a theory, which she’d talk to Mr Child about too.
Training her opera glass upon the Amberley box, she watched the earl and countess, the latter smiling benevolently upon Lord March and Clemency Howard. The door to their box opened, and a footman in the distinctive livery of Amberley blue handed Lord March a note. He read it, and then looked across the auditorium to meet her gaze. Rising, frowning, her note in his hand, he murmured something to his mother and Miss Howard, and left the box.
He arrived in her own box a minute later. She nodded at Miles, and he left to stand guard outside.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Lord March said quietly, taking the seat beside her. He turned the note to face her, the only message she’d been certain would bring him running:
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID
‘The plague doctor tried to kill me outside Carlisle House,’ she said. ‘And somebody took Gabriel from the park. They gave him a note that threatened his life.’
‘You think I did that. That I’d hurt a child?’
Opera glasses swivelled in their direction. Normally it would not raise eyebrows – a gentleman could visit a lady in her box without judgement being passed. But as that season’s scandal du jour, Caro’s every movement was now scrutinized. Judging him in part responsible for her predicament, her anger surged.
‘I’m not sure I know any more what you would and wouldn’t do. I never thought that you’d lead Prinny into danger.’
Was that a flicker of relief she saw in his dark eyes? ‘That’s what this note is about? Prinny?’
What else would it be about? she wanted to ask. Only she knew the answer: a cold winter’s night at a masquerade at Muswell Rise with a girl named Pamela.
Studying his face, she wondered if the lines of weariness and strain were the product of more than a few late nights with Neddy Dodd-Bellingham. Had whatever had happened at the masquerade exacted a toll upon him? Did it gnaw at his poet’s heart and his underworked conscience?
‘It was the thing you valued most,’ she said. ‘That the King placed his trust in you. You were supposed to keep Prinny away from men like Stone.’
‘You say it as if I had a choice,’ he said, wearily. ‘After Father cut off my allowance, I couldn’t make my repayments to Stone. He bleeds a man dry.’
‘Because he knows their secrets. What did he know about you? You might as well tell me. We are the keepers of one another’s secrets, are we not?’
He stared at the actors on the stage: Joseph Surface flirting with Lady Teazle. Her husband knocked at the door and, hastily, she concealed herself behind a screen.
‘Stone got hold of a book of my verses,’ he said. ‘Poems about ladies I knew. It was in my private collection, and I think he bribed one of my servants to steal it. He threatened to have it printed up as a pamphlet: The Libidinous Lord. Each verse entitled with a ladies’ initials – women who’d trusted me, exposed to ridicule. I couldn’t let it happen.’
‘So chivalrous,’ Caro said. ‘Tell me, did you armour yourself while you were bedding half of London?’
‘Of course I took precautions. And don’t look like that. You’re married, remember? Hardly in any position to judge.’
They were long past the time for such quarrels. ‘Well, at least let’s not pretend that you had anybody’s interest in mind but your own,’ she said. ‘Your father had already threatened to cut you off once. I imagine you feared he might go through with it if faced with such a scandal. And so Prinny pays the price for your misadventures.’
He spoke sullenly, from a place of guilt
. ‘His Highness has merely taken on a little debt.’
‘A hundred thousand pounds? You call that little? Prinny – in the clutches of a man like Stone?’
His lips grew white with the intensity of his whisper. ‘Given the source of that loan, you’d do as well as I not to speak of it.’
They studied the stage, pretending to watch the actors. ‘Was I in this book of yours?’ Caro said.
He wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.’
‘Then Stone knows about us?’ The news alarmed her. ‘Did he return the book? When your father settled your debts?’
He nodded. ‘He won’t use me against you. He can’t.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘Because you’re all in this together?’
‘Because Stone keeps his word. His business depends upon it. But he’ll have Erasmus Knox looking into your life, and if he finds out about the child . . .’
‘He won’t find out. Not unless you tell him. And you know what I’ll do then.’
He glanced uneasily across at Clemency. ‘I told you, I won’t say a word.’
Not when his inheritance was at stake.
‘Why didn’t you go to your father back then?’ she asked. ‘When Stone threatened you with this book? Wasn’t Prinny worth eating a little humble pie?’
‘You know why,’ he said. ‘Father would have made me marry Clemency. I didn’t want to do it.’
‘But now you are unhappily engaged, which makes me wonder what has changed. What could have happened to make you so desperate to get away from Stone? That you’d marry a woman you didn’t love, just to escape him?’
He gazed at her mutely. Down in the pit, the Dodd-Bellingham brothers and Agnetti were watching them. The Prince gazed across from his box. Only Jonathan Stone was missing.
‘Did you know that the magistrate has arrested an innocent man for Lucy’s murder?’ Caro said. ‘Are you going to let him hang? Because I think you know who killed her, Pamela, too.’
‘Nobody killed Pamela. Simon told you what happened. Neddy dropped her off in Soho the following morning.’ But his voice lacked conviction.
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