A Disappearance in Drury Lane

by Jennifer Ashley

  “My own business,” I said in a hard voice.

  “A very convenient business.” Spendlove gave me another smile, his side-whiskers moving with it. “Never worry, Captain. If the magistrate binds you over for trial, you can now afford a very nice room in Newgate.”

  *** *** ***

  Donata continued to argue, but I cut the altercation short by walking out of the house to the hired coach that would carry us back to London. My wife tried to stop me, pointing out I could at least leave at a sensible hour of the morning if I wished.

  But I wanted to see the magistrate as soon as I could and clear this up. I told Donata I’d let her decide whether to stay in Bath, move on to Brighton, or return to London. Grenville was here and would look after her.

  She was not happy with me. Donata maintained her chill, aristocratic façade even as she kissed my cheek and bade me farewell. Pomeroy helped me into the coach, Bartholomew came running down with my bag, and Spendlove climbed in close behind me, as though still assuming I’d bolt. The inside was a tight fit once Pomeroy was inside with us, three large men in a small conveyance.

  The coach rolled through the dark streets of the elegant little town, around the famous Crescent and Circus and then through narrow, straight lanes back toward the road that led to London.

  We took the route the mail coaches used rather than back through Chippenham. Snow began around Devizes. The canal company had overcome the problem of the steep hill that led to the town with several series of locks that stair-stepped up the rise. I couldn’t see the canal now in the darkness and swirling snow, and I didn’t much look out the window.

  Pomeroy sat across from me, quiet and embarrassed. Spendlove, on the other hand, bade us a cheerful good night, folded his arms, leaned against the side of the coach and went to sleep. Or seemed to. Pomeroy started to speak once or twice, but I shook my head to silence him.

  It occurred to me to wonder, as we traveled, whether Denis had asked one of his men, such as Brewster, to rid the world of the troublesome Mr. Perry for me. I dismissed the idea almost immediately. If Brewster or another of Denis’s toughs had murdered Perry, they would not have left him to rot in my rooms. They’d have taken Perry’s body away and thrown it into the river, with no one the wiser. They’d also have made sure they caught Perry alone, in his own house perhaps, or in a deserted street, not waiting until he’d fixed himself in my rooms.

  I wondered what Perry had been doing there—waiting for me? Why, when everyone had known I’d moved out?

  I had another thought, one more chilling. I remembered Felicity leaving Donata’s house to stay with her “pal” a few days before we left for Bath. Had she and Perry met, for whatever reason, in my rooms, and had Felicity struck him down? I did not like the idea, but it was one I could not shake.

  We returned to London much faster than I’d left it. The coach changed drivers and horses in Marlborough, then Hungerford, Newbury, Reading, and Maidenhead, and then on into London. The sun had long since risen by the time we reached the metropolis, and we’d left the snow behind in Berkshire. Though clouds and cold hugged the city, some of the icy bite had gone from the air.

  They took me straight to the Bow Street magistrate’s house, clopping to it around from Long Acre instead of trying to make their way through Covent Garden market, thronged with its usual customers.

  The magistrate’s court occupied two narrow houses in Bow Street. Inside, the arrests of the previous night awaited a hearing with the magistrate, who’d decide whether to dismiss the case, fine the offender, or whether enough evidence existed to send him or her to Newgate to await trial. Because of the nature of my supposed offense—murder—I was taken to a private room to stand in front of Sir Nathaniel Conant, the current chief magistrate of Bow Street.

  I’d come in front of him before, last spring, to support Colonel Brandon, when he’d been accused of stabbing a fashionable dandy at a Mayfair ball. Conant was a thin, spare man with a dry voice, quiet despite the many years of watching the dregs of London parade before his bench. His only acknowledgment of our previous meeting was a slight nod of his head when Pomeroy brought me inside.

  I was haggard, tired, and still cold. Pomeroy didn’t look much better, but Spendlove seemed refreshed by his sleep on the road.

  Sir Nathaniel took a seat at his large desk and signaled for me to stand in front of him. He began without greeting us. “Captain Lacey, the coroner has concluded that one Mr. John Perry died of heavy wounds to his head, inflicted there by another person. Because he was found in rooms you let, behind a locked door, for which only you and your landlady have the keys, and because an article of yours was left there that might have been the murder weapon, you have been named as a possible culprit. I want to point out that this is a preliminary interview, not a trial. From here I will decide whether you are to be taken to Newgate to await a trial for either murder or manslaughter, as I decide. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” I understood perfectly well.

  “Very well, then, I—“

  We were interrupted by the door opening again without anyone knocking. The floor creaked as a large man stumped across it, limping a little and supporting himself with a stick. The newcomer had a broad face, a mouth quirked into a perpetual half smile, and eyes that could look kind but had a hard, shrewd twinkle. Not much got past this man.

  Conant rose and cleared his throat. “Sir Montague, I beg your pardon. I would have waited had I known you were coming.”

  “My fault entirely.” Sir Montague Harris, magistrate for the Whitechapel house, hobbled to a chair and let out an “Ahh” as he sat. He stretched out his leg with another groan, planted his walking stick on the floor, and leaned his hands on it. “I ought to have sent word. I did not learn of Captain Lacey’s arrest until a few hours ago, and I move slowly in the cold.” He spent a moment wriggling in the chair then he pointed at Spendlove with his stick. “You, my boy, fetch me a footstool. The weather makes this gouty leg ache something fierce.”

  Spendlove’s expression went wooden, but he said nothing as he picked up a crate the right height for a footstool and brought it to Sir Montague’s chair. Sir Montague lifted his leg onto it with his hands and let out another noise of relief.

  “Coroner’s court concluded Captain Lacey was a person of interest?” Sir Montague asked once he was settled.

  “Indeed,” Mr. Conant said. “I was about to begin my questions.”

  Sir Montague waved to him. “Carry on, sir. I am only here for interest.”

  Mr. Conant, unmoved by the obvious tension between Spendlove and Sir Montague, cleared his throat, took up his pen, dipped it into his ink pot, and prepared to write. “Captain Lacey, you were acquainted with the deceased?”

  “I would say acquainted is hardly the term. The man set ruffians on me and took me prisoner.”

  Mr. Conant looked up, raising his brows. “I did not hear of this reported to my patrollers. Or the Watch.”

  “Because I did not report it,” I said.

  “Why not?” Spendlove interrupted. “I’d have run out looking for a Watchman first thing upon escaping.”

  “I was more concerned with my immediate safety from Mr. Perry’s ruffians,” I said. I carefully did not mention Felicity. She might have nothing to do with Perry’s death, but a dark-skinned prostitute might be more to a jury’s taste as a culprit than a captain who’d fought with valor during the war. “And I needed to hurry to my own wedding before I missed it,” I finished.

  “Tell Sir Nathaniel where you did take refuge,” Spendlove said, his eyes glittering.

  I heartily wished Sir Nathaniel would send him away. “I went to Curzon Street. To the home of James Denis.”

  Another lifted head and raised brows from Conant before he wrote. He took his time, scratching out every word before speaking again. “Mr. Denis is quite notorious among the magistrates, Captain.”

  “Captain Lacey is his particular friend,” Spendlove said.

  Sir Mon
tague broke in. “I would not put it quite like that. An uneasy truce, I would say, wouldn’t you, Lacey?”

  “Exactly,” I said. I could not be certain Conant or Spendlove would believe me, but Sir Montague was perceptive. “I knew Mr. Perry would hesitate to bother me if he knew I was under Mr. Denis’s roof. I needed to rest and recover in safety before I traveled to Oxfordshire.”

  “For your wedding, yes,” Conant said. “When you returned to London, did you seek out Mr. Perry? Or did he seek you?”

  “No,” I said. “I did not see him.”

  “But upon your return, you would have had ample opportunity to report what he had done to you,” Conant said. “You could have had him arrested and prosecuted.”

  “I kept an eye out for him, of course,” I said. “But I saw no reason to bother reporting what had happened. It would have been my word against his.” I would have needed Felicity or Perry’s ruffians as witnesses to prosecute him, and the likelihood of finding any of them was small, let alone convince them to come to court. I’d meant to deal with Perry myself, but of course, I could not say so to Bow Street’s chief magistrate.

  “. . . saw no reason to bother reporting what had happened,” Conant murmured as he wrote. “Now let us come to the night of January fifth. What did you do that afternoon and evening?”

  I tried to cast my mind back to the days before we’d headed to Bath, but it was a bit of a blur. “We were packing the household to remove from London for a holiday. I was integrating my household with my wife’s at the same time, so I had much to do.”

  “You moved into the house of the Dowager Viscountess Breckenridge in South Audley Street,” Conant said. “And not two days later decided to leave for Bath?”

  “Yes.”

  Conant said nothing for a few moments as he continued to write. “You started to vacate your rooms in Grimpen Lane,” he said after a time. “According to your landlady, Mrs. Beltan, you decided that instead of leaving the rooms entirely, you’d continue to rent them from her. Why did you suddenly change your mind?”

  I shrugged. “I thought the rooms would be a good place for meeting people, without bothering my wife and her household.”

  Conant’s brows lifted even higher. “Meeting people? What sort of people? Will you explain, please?”

  Pomeroy answered before I could. “The captain styles himself an amateur thief-taker. Unhappy folk come to him to ask him to find their missing daughters or diamond necklaces and such. Even Mr. Thompson of the River Police asked the captain to help him look for game girls who’d gone missing.”

  “Yes, so I heard.” Conant regarded me in faint disapproval. “Very well, you decided to keep your rooms, whatever your reasons. You retained the keys?”

  “I did. To the outer door as well as to my flat.”

  “Did anyone else have keys?”

  “Mrs. Beltan does, of course,” I said. “If she gave them to someone, I would have no idea. But consider, Mr. Conant, the locks are quite old. I’m certain the doors and locks would yield easily to someone determined to get in.” I gave Spendlove a pointed look, and his slight smile was his only answer.

  “You are saying that either Mr. Perry or his killer broke into your flat?” Conant asked.

  “I am suggesting the possibility,” I said, trying to remain patient. “I did not go near Grimpen Lane that day. Too busy.”

  “Preparing for your journey,” Conant said. “So you have told me. Can you speculate how a walking stick belonging to you came to be in the flat as well?”

  “Maybe it broke in,” Pomeroy said, sotto voce.

  Sir Montague made a noise of amusement, but both Spendlove and Conant looked annoyed.

  “Mr. Perry must have brought it with him,” I said. “He’d stolen it from me, or had it taken from me, when he’d abducted me.” Felicity had told me my walking stick had been left in the street, but one of Perry’s men could have taken it to him.

  I went on, “I cannot believe Mr. Perry had come to return it, so perhaps he was using it himself. Or it was left next to him on purpose to incriminate me.”

  “Perhaps,” Conant said. “In any case, the coroner judges that, from the state of decay of the body, the man died somewhere on the afternoon or evening of the fifth. I must ask you to relate your exact movements.”

  “And I tell you, I don’t remember. I was at the shops with my man until late, buying sundries for the journey, and then at home with my wife.”

  “You did not leave the house after you entered it that evening?”

  “No.”

  “And her household staff will corroborate this? They saw you every moment?”

  Not every moment. Barnstable had brought a light repast to Donata’s boudoir, and then he and the rest of the servants had left us well alone.

  “I give you my word I was in the house from five in the evening until six o’clock the next morning, when we departed for Bath.”

  “Mrs. Lacey can confirm this?”

  “She could. But I do not want her brought here and questioned.”

  Conant’s dry voice grew stern. “Captain, this is a case of murder. It is my duty to decide who should be brought to trial for it. I will question whom I must. I need you to explain to me exactly where you were, and I need to ask whoever was with you for the truth. A witness puts you in Grimpen Lane during the hours Mr. Perry must have met his death. I will tell you, it looks very bad for you, Captain.”

  I blinked. “What witness?”

  Conant looked stubborn. “I will say only that it was a lady of very good character. She swears up and down she saw you return to Grimpen Lane and enter the door that led to your rooms at eight o’clock in the evening.”

  “She could not have seen me,” I said. “Is she certain? It is very dark at eight in the evening.”

  “True, but she maintains that she saw you in the light from the bakeshop,” Conant said. “She knew it was you. So you need to tell me, Captain Lacey, exactly where you were and what you were doing at eight o’clock on the evening of January fifth.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  In bed with my wife, were not the words I wanted to say. I was not prudish, nor my appetites less than healthy, but Donata was a lady, and I did not want to embarrass her.

  No, even if she had been the most ragged of street girls, I would not have wanted to give her name. It was none of these gentlemen’s business what I had been doing in the privacy of my chamber.

  “The witness was mistaken,” I said. “There must be a number of tall men in London who resemble me, who walk with a limp, even. I have been mistaken for others before—in fact, I have been told more times than I care to that I resemble the late Lord Breckenridge.”

  “The witness was quite positive,” Conant said. “You were known to her.”

  I could not imagine who they were talking about. “Not Mrs. Beltan, was it? Her shop gets very busy of an evening when she’s selling off the last of her bread, and she might have mistaken someone for me, or been wrong about the hour or day when she’d seen me.”

  “Not Mrs. Beltan,” Spendlove answered before Conant could speak. “Mrs. Beltan never saw you. As you say, her shop keeps busy.”

  “What we have,” Conant broke in firmly, “is a witness putting you entering your rooms on the night in question, and you claiming you were nowhere near.”

  “I was nowhere near.” I barely stopped myself from shouting.

  “Then we will have to ask your household and your wife to confirm your whereabouts.”

  I got to my feet, too agitated to sit. “Damn and blast, gentlemen. I am recently married. Where do you think I was?”

  Pomeroy guffawed, and Sir Montague let out a dry little chuckle, while Conant did not change expression at all. Pomeroy said, “Don’t want Mrs. Lacey on the witness stand saying that to the court, do you?”

  “I have no wish to make my wife a laughingstock,” I said. “It is unfair to her. You have already made things awkward for her by dragging me off in the
middle of the night. I hardly want to tell her that she can save me from the noose only by confessing she let me give in to my ardor.”

  Conant cleared his throat. “Then what we have is the witness’ words against yours and your wife’s.”

  “I’m afraid so.” I sat down again, letting out a breath. “But if I had left the South Audley Street house that evening, someone there would have seen me. There is always a footman in livery at the front door, kitchen staff always in the kitchen, some servant or gardener in the back. My man tends to keep an eye on me wherever I am, Mr. Spendlove here has had a man following me about, and I have had yet another man watching me in case someone tries to abduct me again. Ask any of those people whether they saw me that night.”

  “I intend to.” Mr. Conant let out a long breath, wiped his pen, and laid it down. “I will do you a favor, Captain. I do not feel I have enough evidence yet to keep you for trial, but I must request that you remain in London and return to me if I summon you. Will you give me your word that you will do that?”

  “I give you my word.” I could barely say the response in my anger, but I knew he was being lenient when he did not have to be.

  “Sir,” Spendlove broke in, his face reddening. “Are you certain? The witness . . .”

  “Will remain anonymous, and I will be ascertaining whether Captain Lacey was at his house as he claims. This hearing will remain open until I am satisfied one way or the other. Is that clear?”

  Spendlove did not look happy. Pomeroy got to his feet with his usual energy. “I’ll go round to South Audley Street and question the staff, shall I?”

  “No, I will,” Spendlove said.

  “Pomeroy will do it,” Conant said with a frown. “You, Mr. Spendlove, are too adamant to obtain the conviction. I want someone less eager to prove the captain guilty.”

  “Pomeroy used to be his sergeant,” Spendlove said. “He’s hardly a neutral party.”