‘I will acquaint you with the story another time. It will do your reputation no good to stand here talking to me.’
He smiled again. ‘There are many things about which I care, but my reputation has never been one of them. I am happy to talk to you, Mrs Corsham, at any time.’
Caro studied his face: his tired eyes, his hair streaked with grey like an old badger. She’d already decided to say nothing about his wife. ‘I do not anticipate that I shall be in London for very much longer. But I wondered if I might change your mind about painting my portrait before I leave town?’
He bowed again. ‘It would be an honour.’
‘Then I shall call on you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’
He looked past her, to the watching beau monde, to Prinny and his admirers. ‘We could start tonight, if you prefer. I find I tire of this company.’
She laughed. ‘Walk out on your public, on the Prince? That would certainly cement your reputation for breaking convention.’
‘And yours for public scandal.’ He offered her his arm. ‘What do you say?’
Smiling at his audacity, she slipped her arm though his. The crowds parted before them, her name and Mr Agnetti’s rising like an echo. Together they walked out of the Rotunda, into the moonlit night.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
CHILD VISITED THE riverside taverns where the watermen drank, asking if anyone had heard about the body of a pretty redhead being pulled from the river. The alleys were dank and dripping, the taverns choked with cheap tobacco. Eventually, an ancient bearded waterman nodded slowly at Child’s questions, and told him to try the dead-house south of the Strand.
The wharves stank of sea-coal and shit, but as Child descended the steps to the dead-house, the river’s aromas warred with a riper, sweeter smell. Grimacing, Child knocked on the door, and explained his purpose to the beadle on duty.
The dead-house was about fifteen feet square, each wall lined with slate shelves containing cadavers pulled from the river. The beadle walked to one of the shelves and held up his lantern. Child gazed down at Kitty’s pale face. He’d hoped she’d look at peace, all her sins washed away by the tides. But her wide blue eyes seemed to stare into some private horror. Child reached out a hand and gently closed them.
There had been so much he’d wanted to ask her, just as he’d wanted to ask Simon Dodd-Bellingham. Those questions nagged at him now.
‘Is she your daughter?’ the beadle asked, with a trace of sympathy.
‘No,’ Child said. ‘Just a girl I used to know.’
He walked out of the dead-house, carrying the stink of the place with him, and decided to head up to the taverns on the Strand. He was halfway up Villiers Street, when it came to him. The thing that had been troubling him for days – ever since their conversation with Kitty. Turning around, he headed back towards the river.
*
Child hired a waterman to row him across the Thames, alighting on the south bank at King’s Arms Stairs. He walked south, past darkened meadows and silent orchards, until he reached St George’s Fields and the Magdalen Hospital.
He knocked at the door several times before someone came. The porter eyed him sullenly. ‘We’re closed.’
Child begged an audience with the matron, Hester Rainwood. ‘It concerns the welfare of a prostitute she was concerned about. I think she’d like to know.’
The porter told him to wait outside. He returned after several minutes and nodded at Child. ‘She says I’m to show you up.’
Child followed him through the darkened quadrant, the place silent and still, the inmates asleep. Mrs Rainwood received him in her study again. He had evidently interrupted her reading, for a volume lay on the desk, next to a large fruitcake and a teapot. Child glanced at spine of the book: the plays of Sophocles.
Mrs Rainwood’s lead-white countenance was creased with concern. ‘Do you bring news of Kitty Carefree, Mr Child?’
‘I’m sorry to tell you that she’s dead.’
Her face crumpled. Child studied her carefully, still not entirely certain that he was right.
‘Before she died,’ he said, ‘Kitty told me something that’s been puzzling me. She said Stone paid her and the other girls at the masquerade two hundred guineas apiece for their silence. Lucy knew this; she called it blood money. It was enough for Kitty to be able to set herself up quite comfortably in Clapham. Whereas the women you help at the Magdalen are poor, in need of charity. So I asked myself why Lucy would have come looking for her here.’
Mrs Rainwood examined him uneasily. ‘Forgive me, sir, but I don’t know what you are saying.’
‘Kitty told me that in early August, she wrote to her former governess. She said Lucy talked this woman into showing her the letter. Lucy wrote the details from that letter down on a card she picked up here at the Magdalen. Fifty to sixty pineapples, two s, one d.’ Child pointed to the stack of identical cards on the edge of Mrs Rainwood’s desk. ‘And early August was when Lucy came here to see you.’
Mrs Rainwood set down her teacup and Child noted the rattle.
‘I don’t think Kitty wrote to her former governess,’ he said. ‘I think she wrote to you. I think you showed that letter to Lucy that day she came here to see you. And I think the reason she came was because you were her friend, Theresa Agnetti.’
Child studied her face again, recalling his brief glance at the miniature Theresa had painted of herself and Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham. Her gloved hands. Her mask of lead-white paint.
The girl at the Whores’ Club had said that Theresa’s skin had yellowed when she’d lost the baby. Theresa had been stick-thin then, but with effort – Child’s eye fell upon the fruit cake – a woman could gain a lot of weight in half a year.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I have burnt it. I swear it.’
‘Kitty’s testimony?’ he said. ‘Lucy gave it to you to look after?’
She nodded, biting her lip.
‘She told you that if anything happened to her, you were to give that testimony to the newspapers. Why didn’t you?’
Her words were very faint. ‘Because I was afraid.’
He could see the truth in it, the fear creeping out of her into the room. He thought she might be the most frightened person he’d ever seen.
‘Simon could surely not have found you here? And once the newspapers had Kitty’s account, you could be no further threat to him? I don’t understand. Why were you so afraid?’
She placed one hand upon the other to stop it trembling. ‘Because I married a monster, Mr Child.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
MR AGNETTI SKETCHED Caro by candlelight, while she told him about Simon Dodd-Bellingham and his motive for murder.
‘I always thought Simon the best of them,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘It is a struggle to believe that he killed Pamela. And Lucy too.’
‘And a young boy named Hector.’ Caro sighed. ‘It was a strange life that Simon led. A gentleman’s son, but illegitimate. Part of a great family, but not part of it. In society, but poor.’
‘You say he loved this girl, Julia Ward? And was afraid of losing her?’
‘Yes, I think he did it all for her.’
Agnetti nodded soberly. ‘Love and money are powerful motives for murder. When the two are combined . . .’
‘At least it is over now. Justice, of a sort, has been done.’
‘But at great cost,’ Agnetti said. ‘Not least to yourself. What do you intend to do now?’
‘Wait for my husband to return. Confront my fate.’
He looked up from his sketch. ‘If ever you need a refuge in a storm, then my door stands open. This is already a house of scandal – what’s one more sinner?’
She smiled. ‘Thank you, Mr Agnetti. It is good to know that I have a friend.’
Laying down his chalk, he flexed his hand. ‘I need to rest. Would you like some wine?’
She smiled her assent. The servants had been in bed when they’d arrived at the house
, and Agnetti had seen no reason to rouse them. Caro presumed that Miss Willoughby must be in bed too, for there was no sign of her.
‘It may take me a little while to hunt down the key to the cellar. If you would like to look at the paintings, then please do.’
Listening to his footsteps descend the stairs, she walked to the window. It was lively in Leicester Fields, parties of drunks wandering from tavern to tavern. She’d told Miles to wait outside by the carriage with Sam in case there was trouble. Yet the revellers seemed in happy enough spirits, bellowing bawdy songs.
Caro crossed the room to study Agnetti’s giant canvas. It was nearly finished. Lucy’s ghostly face, her howl of accusation. Orestes kneeling, hands to his head, punished for his crimes by the Furies, the daughters of Night.
She found herself thinking about mothers and children. Pamela, abandoned by hers, raised in an orphanage. Lucy, sold into carnal servitude when she was twelve years old. Lucy’s child, Olivia, starved to death by her wet-nurse. Mr Agnetti, raised by his father’s whores.
And Gabriel.
I should not be here, she thought. I should be at home with my son in case he wakes, in case he needs me. For if I am not there for him now, how will he know that I ever was?
Going to the door, she hurried downstairs to find Mr Agnetti. There was no sign of him in the hall, but one of the doors stood ajar, a lamp lit inside. Pushing it open, she found herself in Agnetti’s dining room. On the table were two glasses of claret. Perhaps Mr Agnetti was in the water closet? She decided to wait for him there until he returned.
On the table was a half-finished watercolour painting, and next to it a box of paints with Cassandra Willoughby’s initials burnt into the wood. It was a scene from Leicester Fields, the piazza bustling with street hawkers and artists. Caro frowned. The painted figures bore a marked resemblance to those on the puzzle purses.
Looking up from the painting, she hesitated, confused. Across the room was a china cupboard, the doors standing open. Its shelves were filled with crockery and glassware, as one would expect. Yet something odd had caught her eye.
Walking over to the cupboard, Caro put her hand up to the hole. About two inches square, it had been cut into the back of one of the shelves, at eye-level. A shaft of light was shining through it, which was what she had seen. Pressing her face up to the hole, Caro realized that she could see right into Agnetti’s panelled drawing room.
Cassandra Willoughby was seated on the sofa, her dress unlaced, her breasts exposed. Miles was standing over her, lacing up his breeches. He reached down to fondle her nipple and smiled.
‘I’d better be getting back to the carriage,’ her footman said. ‘If Mrs Corsham catches me here, there’ll be hell to pay.’
She barely looked at him. ‘As you wish.’
Caro’s throat was dry. She looked again, her mind racing. Had someone been here watching them? Mr Agnetti?
Miss Willoughby was showing Miles to the door. He murmured something to her, and she shook her head. They disappeared from view, and she heard the front door close. Then Miss Willoughby returned to the sofa and stared right at her, a look of despair that confused her even more.
‘There,’ she said. ‘I have done it. Are you happy now?’ Putting her head in her hands, she started to weep.
Many thoughts occurred to Caro at once. Ezra Von Siegel’s account of Miss Willoughby’s distress, when he’d seen her fleeing the bower after her encounter with Lieutenant Dodd-Bellingham. The lieutenant’s denials that he had tried to rape her, which Caro had presumed to be a lie. Now she wondered. Could Mr Agnetti have made Miss Willoughby do it? The thought was shocking, incomprehensible, but she couldn’t deny the evidence of her eyes. Had he forced her to endure a similar violation just now, at the hands of Miles? If the lieutenant had been as oblivious as Miles to the role he had played in this obscene tableau, then it would explain his laughter when she’d confronted him with Miss Willoughby’s allegation.
Caro stood frozen, watching the girl weep. Agnetti had told her that the lieutenant looked for vulnerability in a woman and preyed upon it. She wondered now if, in truth, he was describing himself.
She needed to leave this house, to speak to Mr Child, to ascertain if there was a connection between the scene she’d just witnessed and the puzzle purses and Lucy’s murder. Stepping away from the cupboard, she froze. Agnetti was standing in the doorway.
He spoke calmly. ‘You should not be in here.’
‘No,’ she said, smiling brightly, as if to deny what they both knew she had seen. ‘That was what I was coming to tell you. I am leaving now.’
He didn’t move, blocking the door. Miss Willoughby appeared behind him in the hall, presumably having heard their voices.
‘Run and fetch Miles,’ Caro cried out to her. ‘Quickly. Go now. I’ll never let him do any of these things to you ever again.’
Miss Willoughby glanced at Agnetti. He placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘My love,’ he said. ‘I think we have to kill her.’
CHAPTER EIGHTY
THE LAMP CAST a yellow light onto Theresa Agnetti’s lead-white skin. She spoke softly, but the fear hadn’t left her. Child could see it in her eyes, could smell it on her, could feel it in every corner of that room.
‘To understand what happened,’ she said, ‘you need first to understand the child I was. I was never strong like Lucy. Nor bold like Pamela. Nor brave like Kitty. As a girl, I lost myself in books, forever nervous when people spoke to me, which they seldom did. But one day, when I was fifteen, still living in India, a younger friend of my father’s paid me attention. He was handsome and amusing, and he knew so much about the world. An attachment formed, and he led me to believe that we would be married. When he announced his engagement to another lady, I tried to kill myself.’ She turned her wrist to show him an old scar.
‘Fearing a scandal if we remained in India, my father moved the family to Naples. There I lived an isolated life for several years, until the day Jacobus Agnetti came to paint my portrait. I didn’t like him at first. He told me that I was not beautiful enough to suit one of the principal goddesses, that he would paint me as Hestia, goddess of the home. For many weeks I sat for him, hearing not one kind word from his lips, until one day he complimented my eyes.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Women are strange creatures, Mr Child. A kind man can offer us compliments and we think less of him for it – we ask ourselves if his judgement is in doubt. Whereas a man spartan with his praise makes us feel as if we have earned it – and to crave more, like scraps tossed to a hungry dog. Jacobus and I began to talk while he painted – about myths and their meaning, about the classics and the philosophers. He said I was the most learned young woman that he had ever met. I began to look forward to his visits. It felt as if I had been sleeping for many years and was just waking up. I had never been happier before or since, than the day he asked Father for my hand.’
She was still smiling now at the memory. Then her smile faded, as she gazed through Child into her past.
‘Jacobus says that when he paints you, he sees into your soul. All your hopes, your fears, your dreams. And he saw precisely how to turn me to his advantage. I think he knew I was broken inside, and a woman like that was what he wanted. Because he thought I was weak, and I’d never leave him, as his mother did. No matter what he did to me.’ She drew a shuddering breath. ‘I was happy for the first three months. Jacobus bought me presents – he said I was his world. When he smiled at me, it was like stepping into the Neapolitan sun. The first time he spoke harshly to me, I was so shocked. I had said the wrong thing to a potential client at a dinner and he was angry. I apologized, I wept, and he said that he forgave me. I thought it was an aberration, not the Jacobus I knew. But I soon discovered that the kind Jacobus had never existed.’
Child listened, in mounting horror, as Theresa described her life with Jacobus Agnetti.
‘He was always kind and solicitous to me in public. People who knew us called him the perfect husband. B
ut when our front door closed, I could not do anything right. Our house was not well kept enough. My gowns were not the right fashion. I embarrassed him. He accused me of flirting with other men, though I only had eyes for Jacobus. He would withdraw to his studio, and refuse to speak to me for days. Sometimes he would break one of my favourite things and call it a punishment. If I tried to speak to him about philosophy or the classics, he scorned my ideas and called me stupid. Sometimes, in the midst of a tirade, he would extinguish every lamp in the room and order me to sit there in the dark until he returned. If I made a friend, then Jacobus would say cruel things about her. He would force me to cancel my engagements at the last minute so they’d be vexed at me. I lost more friends than I could count, and soon I stopped trying to make them. I made excuses for him to myself: his work, my shortcomings, his lack of the success he craved, my failure to conceive. I thought if I could only make him happy as I had before, then it would all stop.
‘For several years we lived in Naples, until Jacobus decided that England was a brighter prospect for his work. We moved away from my family, and the few remaining friends I had. I thought that things might get better, but they only got worse. Jacobus filled the house with prostitutes, aware that it would cause me humiliation in polite society. He would praise their looks in front of me, and compare them to mine to my detriment. He said I was fat, and so I lost weight, so much I could scarcely stand without feeling faint. I was forced to converse with his sitters as equals. Jacobus made me serve them tea and chocolate, as though I was their servant. Sometimes he gave them presents: my favourite books, or ornaments that I loved. Some of them laughed at me. I heard them. But mostly they were kind. And the irony of it all was that Lucy and Kitty became the dearest friends I ever had.’
Tears rolled down her cheeks, making tracks through the paint. ‘After we had been in London for about six months, Jacobus became fixated upon getting a commission from the Duke of Shropshire. We attended a dinner at Shropshire House, and he told me to be sure to pay His Grace attention, to court his favour. Afterwards, as I’d feared he would, he accused me of flirting. It was an argument that we’d had many times before, but this time, he said that if I was going to act like a whore, then I might as well go through with it. At least that way, we might get a commission. I told him that was neither kind, nor funny – but soon I realized that he was serious. Jacobus said that if I loved him, then I would do it. That grotesque old man—’ She broke off. ‘I refused, naturally. That night he forced me to my knees in our bedroom and cut off my hair.’
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